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[MM15] R1: LUKE HARPER vs. JUN AKIYAMA


LUKE HARPER vs. JUN AKIYAMA  

95 members have voted

  1. 1. CHOOSE ONE



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This is the hardest match up so far.

 

I think Harper had a sneaky great year last year.  It's easy to lose him in the shuffle of bad WWE booking, broken up stables, and start/stop pushes, but he was a guy who was arguably the best worker in the best WWE match of last year (trios v. Shield at EC), had great tag matches with Rowan v. The Usos that exceeded the expectations of many and were sometimes the only good thing on shows, and then had some incredibly fun and spirited singles matches against a wide variety of opposition.  He is probably the best in ring performer in the WWE right this second, as he's been great on the C-Shows and any chance they give him on the bigger shows.  Dude has a legit really good match with R-Truth this year for fucks sake.  He's probably the best base in U.S. wrestling aside from maybe Cesaro, has really great offense, has my favorite look of anyone in any major promotion, and never seems to phone it in.

 

The problem is that Akiyama is fucking great.

 

Akiyama as the cranky old man, who hates the young whippersnappers and beats their ass with more violence and contempt than anyone around is one of my favorite things in wrestling.  He Omori TC match from last June was an amazing vet v. vet performance, with better psych than just about any match I saw last year.  He was also incredible in the Finals of the tag league, and his sprint with Miyahara - hell his entire feud with Miyahara -was brilliant. At his best he's better than Harper.  At his best he might be better than anyone.  But he's not at his best all the time, or at least isn't always in a position to show it.  

 

I will think about this more before I cast a vote.  Right now I'm leaning Harper because his work this year has been better than Akiyamas.  But voting on this in the first round makes me feel dirty 

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Throwing a support vote for Akiyama so he doesn't get completely annihilated. I'd agree with Dylan that Harper is more consistent than Akiyama and that Akiyama's highs are higher than Harper's, although Akiyama is consistently good in his own right and his best matches were significantly better than Harper's. I think I might've leaned towards voting for Harper regardless but fuck it, it's not like Akiyama has any chance of winning anyway....

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I like both these guys a lot. For me it came down to if Harper won the whole thing, I would say "That's fair. I guess I see it". If Akiyama won the whole thing I'd say "The board has devolved in to trolling and madness and something went seriously wrong somewhere." 

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I like both these guys a lot. For me it came down to if Harper won the whole thing, I would say "That's fair. I guess I see it". If Akiyama won the whole thing I'd say "The board has devolved in to trolling and madness and something went seriously wrong somewhere."

You say that like it hasn't happened already/

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I think Luke Harper filled in the gap left by the burial of Cesaro as the midcard guy who was incredible in every match he was in despite the bookers not really knowing what to do with him. 

 

I haven't watched a Akiyama match in years, but I've heard he's been really good since going back to All Japan. 

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It hurt to vote against Akiyama, he was always my guy out of the AJ/NOAH big names when I first started watching Japan. But Harper's probably one of the five guys in the world that most grabs my attention right now.

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It hurt to vote against Akiyama, he was always my guy out of the AJ/NOAH big names when I first started watching Japan. But Harper's probably one of the five guys in the world that most grabs my attention right now.

Samesies. Really tough draw and while I really enjoy grumpy Akiyama, Harper had some very good high end stuff on top of his excellent week-to-week consistency.

 

I thought the Miyahara match was better than the Omori one. All that arm work was done so he had to hit TWO axe bombers instead of one. Kind of lame.

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It was all Omori had left in the tank.  It's the only thing he had that could work and it was a last ditch effort after he'd tried non-arm based offense and it got nowhere.  It was ten times more logical/better than the touted Tanahashi/Okada Invasion Attack match, where Okada didn't even try to do something that wasn't arm based, even if his selling was generally good throughout.  

 

Anyway, I got off the fence and voted Harper on the basis of volume.  Still feel dirty about it, but there is something right about feeling dirty when you cast your lot with Harper. 

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Why should Okada have moved away from arm-based offense in the Invasion Attack match? The Rainmaker is his meal ticket. Even with a damaged arm, there's the sense of "this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me."

 

I can't decide which of these two to vote for, and it's enough of a blowout at this point that my vote doesn't matter, so I'm sitting this one out.

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If he's so reliant on that one move and you do your damndest to take it away from him, I don't buy that the logical conclusion should be him winning with it (after hitting multiple variants) at first thought. I get your side too, it's just not my ideal story. Maybe Jun wins because Omori is fairly limited in terms of match ending moves. But with Omori going over, that is the finish to that story, I suppose. He sold it enough and having to hit it a second time does the arm work some justice but at the same time I'm thinking it nullified the entire story Jun told.

 

Maybe Jun is a nihilist and he's talking about the futility of assigning meaning. Maybe.

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