MISAWA! Cat Burgler! KOBASHI! Mark the Shark Shrader! KANEMOTO! Wreckless Youth! PSICOSIS! and other stuff I saw and heard this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #27! It's been a big week of
tape watching as I began it intending to have a full blown Lucha Fest 97,
since I had 9 (!) tapes of Lucha that I had partially or totally not seen
yet, so I was going to watch all these and make a mini's compilation
since HELL! why not? Of course three tapes in and I had exactly one
mini's match on tape, so so much for that.:) I also got a bunch of
Mid-Atlantic Independent Wrestling (CHEETAH!!! TIM!!!) and you gotta
support the indies, so I started watching those for a while and THEN I
got a tape from Glenn which had GAEA and NJ/NWO AND TWO (!!) Ohtani
matches, so I watched those immediately! With this much stuff I'm
definately gonna wait until next week to yammer about the GAEA (which
RULED THE FREAKING WORLD.) and BattlARTS (which is actually amazingly
good in spots) so the nCo minions of Champ Forum can get their copies and
join me in the yammerfest.:)
-I watched the Misawa/Kobashi Triple Crown match (GLENNNNN!!!!!) and
GOLLY did it rule! Kobashi finds ways to continuously get out of the
weenie doghouse and this time he does it by doing the TRULY HELLISH
RELEASED BRAIN BUSTER. I had never seen that one before and had never
seen a wrestler allow his own vertebrae to be crimped like that, but hey!
That's the price you pat to be the Man.:) Misawa was brilliant as usual
and there were so many little things to love about this match (except the
finish) that I don't know where to start. The basic thrust of the match
was that each one would take turns driving the other deeply onto their
heads via an assortment of spinal-chord-severing released German suplexes
and what have you. Misawa sells "near-death" like a freakin GOD for a
minute there after Kobashi has put him through the ringer, and Kobashi
actually tried a little subtlety in his selling after the second Tiger
Driver (which looks really tame now, ESPECIALLY after Misawa hit the
released German suplex which Kobashi can make look like attempted
homocide). As one would expect it builds to about as hot a finish as you
can get since these guys work so freakin stiff, so gradually the slowing
of the workrate into the psychology drenched last ten minutes of
nearfalls make them ALL look like they could definately be the finish.
My beef is that after the highly complex finish, with each elaborate
combination of suplexes and powerbombs and counters leading to logical
extension in the next move and countermove, to finish it off with a
Misawa elbow is sort of a letdown. I mean he did that to Tamon Honda
last week, right? Well, I guess it didn't bother me too much because
this is still a great match. My favorite thing about this match is that
it has ten moves that are so stiff that they would kill Hulk Hogan, and I
find that comforting as justification for watching Japanese wrestling
as anything else I can think of.:)
I watched the Jun Akiyama/Akira Taue surprise match:) and it was more
interesting than good. Taue just isn't the one to do an effective
Exploder suplex on. He's too big and lumpy and doesn't land real pretty
like everybody else.:) Akiyama was impressive as always, but you could
tell Taue wasn't digging the putting-over-the-punk idea, as Taue wasn't
as sharp as he has been lately and was slapping Akiyama in the head and
what have you. This wasn't a horrible match and it was kinda neat in
parts, but it's just unseemly to watch the 12 year old spunky Jun getting
all fired up and psyched when the man across the ring exudes such innate
(and inert) stoicism. I mean Taue isn't the best wrestler in All Japan
but he is the second most stoic and thus the second coolest. I dunno-
stick Akiyama in a feud with Kobashi so it isn't so apparent and then Jun
can work up the coolness food chain: Kobashi-Williams-Kawada-
Taue-Misawa.:)
-I watched a batch of mid-atlantic independent promotions- one being the
ECWA (somewhere in Pennsylvania with the card actually taking place in
Delaware. TIM RULES! and he LOVES my dogs!:)) and the Leader (YES!!)
sent me the bonanza batch of MEWF from Baltimore (I think!) so I saw all
the young highflyers that everybody up there yammers about but I never
see. The prognosis for Junior Heavyweight wrestling in the US is quite
good if these matches are an indication. I saw Mark the Shark Shrader,
(W)Reckless Youth, Billy Kidman, Adam Flash, Earl the Pearl, Devon Storm,
Steve Corino, Romeo Cassanova, and the Cat Burgler all within a
twenty-four hour span, so comparisons can definately be made- though
these assessments may change as I finish watching both batches of
tapes.:) The one I would definately keep my eye on (excluding Kidman
since we all know what he is capable of) is (surprisingly) (W)Reckless
Youth in ECWA and the Cat Burgler in MEWF, I would say. (W)RY is quite
the heat machine and seems like he can work and was trying some unique
stuff, my fave being the vertical abdominal stretch with the added
headstretch, made famous by OOOCCCTTTOOOOGGOOONNN back when he used to
wrestle (as opposed to SUCK). He sold well, did some tricky midlevel
highspots and had about the best psychology of the two wads of indie
wrestling I watched. The Cat Burgler was fabulous I thought. Very sharp
in his execution, inventive in his moves, competently hit his fair to
middling array of upper echelon highspots, was decent at telling a story,
his workrate was good if not great. He could get stiffer and learn a
wider array of mat moves, but the potential seemed there (of course I
have about five more of his matches to go, so the jury is
definay=tely out.:)) Steve Corino looked good in the one match I saw with
him. He's kind of a goofy heat machine, but he hit a couple of decent
mat moves and flies well. He needs to put on some weight, because to be
as small as Rey Misteri Jr, you have to springboard twenty feet to the
floor on a regular basis (or be a magnificent bastard like TAKA) to get
away with it.:) Adam Flash was a spot machine, as his matches were Devon
Stormesque in their lack of story and psychology. His spots were fair
though still basically moves that Psicosis would use to SET UP his high
spots.:) The only Devon Storm match I saw on these so far is against
(BARF!) Jim Powers and God! does he stink! So poor Devon is in with a
roided out megastiff and Devon can't do any spots and has to put
Power's fat useless ass over anyway. (HEY! That must have been his WCW
tryout. He passed with flying colors. Mr.Nash. Mr Hall...:)) Earl the
Pearl I wasn't impressed with and Casanova seems too green to tell. All
in all, it will be fun watching these kids grow and I hope all you folks
who are going to the Mid-Atlantic Super J Cup have a good time (and get
me a tape.:))
-I watched a KICK ASS Kanemoto/Jericho vs Liger/Samurai match (GLENN!)
where, as always in a Kanemoto match, the point is to be the world's
biggest dick. Once again the award goes to WILDLY resurgent El Samurai
who is getting to Togo-esque terms of bad-assness. Liger was as great as
Liger always is, slapping the punks around and being Godlike in so many
ways, but Kanemoto is BACK and it RULES! WOO HOO! The Stiffness! The
Surliness! The Sun-In to bring out his highlights! It really gets no
better than this! He is equally as awesome in the
Takaiwa/Ohtani/Kanemoto vs Liger/El Samurai/Honaga match with the angry
old guys using age and guile to outsmart their youngster opponents. El
Samurai does a major selling faux pas by basically no-selling a Death
Valley Drop by Takaiwa but it may have been that the young fella move to
his next spot too quickly (which actually was probably the case).
Kanemoto brings out the bastard in Ohtani and Takaiwa has the makings of
a great bastard, so this match was pretty dang perfect. WHO DO I HAVE TO
KILL TO SEE TAKA MICHINOKU VS KOJI KANEMOTO!?!?
-I watched the Rey Misterio Jr camcorder tape of him, Jericho and
Psicosis wandering around Japan and it was pretty interesting in a weird
travelogue kinda way. Psicosis look REALLY FREAKIN........... normal
without his mask.:) Jericho seems like the kind of guy you would want to
hang around. He seems like a real goofball, in a good way.:) The two
matches on the tape are pretty good for a WAR houseshow, I guess. Damian
and UD trade fabulous comedy spots and Psicosis tries to kill himself a
couple of times. These two matches are nice enough but the strong
selling point of the tape is sights and sounds of Japan through the eyes
of young men who are fascinated by the snow on the ground and everything
else. Plus Jericho is a riot.:)
-Nitro ruled this week. I thought it was funny that they stuck a zillion
angles in the undercard matches of SuperBrawl at the last minute. The
Makenko/Syxx part was great, I thought and actually worked in heating
this baby up, I think. Calo/Rey was the best they have done so far
against each other. Konan/Guerrero was pretty choice. The Steiners of
Hazard (tm-somebody!:)) had me thinking- "Last week the Cornette angle,
this week a Lawler angle. Hmmmm... what is a trademark Dutch Mantell
angle?:)" The TV title thing was very odd. Does this mean Rey gets the
TV title at Superbrawl and loses it back to Regal? How did Rey get mixed
up in a Regal angle? Where will this leave Iaukea? Will King Curtis
come back? Will Sullivan run through the woods and disappear?:) I have
weird feeling that they stumbled across the key to getting the Women's
Division over, and she used to be Miss Texas. The good thing is that she
may spark interest in a women's feud that could get over. The bad thing
is that SOMEBODY that I hold dear from GAEA is gonna have to put her
over. Or maybe we will luck out and only Medusa will have to do it.:) I
dunno- Chigusa could guide her along and get her to the point where she
could become a credible brawler, I guess.
NEXT WEEK: THE ASS-STOMPING GAEA Champ Forum! The good BattlARTS Champ
Forum! That Ass-load of Lucha Libre I scratched the surface of
(LOREFICE!)! The rest of Mid-Atlantic IndieMania! Buff Bagwell and
KOjima Blow a ZILLION spots and sorta make up for it in their next match!
NWO buys New Japan and other things! YES!
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, Thunderbirdiac!
