OHTANI! BENOIT! STEAMBOAT! MISAWA! and other stuff I saw and heard the last couple of days!
Howdy!
It's time for the Death Valley Driver Video Review #4! It's been a big
week, in that I almost got caught up except for the batch that St. Phil
has sent me and a couple that Scott sent me. Lemme yammer on.
-I saw the 94 Best of the Super Jr commercial tape and it was pretty
freakin choice! The best part was Super Delfin's outfit, which was a
bizarre variation on his opponent's outfit, Jushin Liger. That was
probably the best match I've seen Delfin work and I've been on a real hot
streak of finding seven great Delfin matches in a row. The irritating
parts were the fact that the Benoit/Fit Finlay match was slashed to
ribbons- they showed about two minutes of it- and that TAKA Michinoku at
that point was a Motegiesque style whipping boy in these tournaments and
was whupped by everybody. I wanted to see the Belfast Bruiser work TAKA
over but they edited that to about one minute.
-On the same tape was the Junior Tag Tournament and that absolutely
kicked ass. Malenko and Ishizawa rule as a tagteam and their match
against Benoit and Ohtani is a classic, but my fave is Ishizawa and
Malenko vs Funaki/Ishikawa who I'm guessing are UWFi young punks. I love
when Malenko kicks it into gear with guys who mat wrestle for a living.
Ishizawa kicks and suplexes his shoot style opponents, using their own
style against them, but when Malenko gets in, he uses pro style mat
wrestling sped up to a blinding speed. I'm guessing this tournament was
the beginning of Ohtani's ascent in the Junior Division because he is
absolutely brilliant and way intense. Motegi and Kamakaze from Social
Progress Wrestling get their hinders handed to them by Two Cold Scorpio
and El Samurai. Motegi is growing on me because he is spunky and will
never win a tournament match and he has a nice head scissors. Plus he
runs the greatest named promotion on earth now that WAR doesn't mean
"Wrestle and Romance" anymore (Live For Today!). Another cool tagteam is
the Great Sasuke and Black Tiger. Sasuke better not retire, he is too
f*ckin cool. They do all these lucha variations during double teams that
scream for a reprise of this tagteam. Eddie better get his hinder on
Nitro soon, I'm going through withdrawals.
-I watched the 8/28/94 FMW show (Scott rules!) and it had some pretty hip
things on it. The Hayabusa/Sabu match was pretty great if really
disjointed, but it is definately official- Billy Kidman has the best
Shooting Star Press in the world. The match that impressed me the most
is the Tarzan Goto/Ooya match which had vestigal garbage elements in it
(YEP!) but it was basically Ooya ruling like a MotherF*cker and still
jobbing to the over-the-hill Goto. Ooya is the most overlooked wrestler
in Japan and should be a superstar already. I don't know what Keiji Mutoh
and Chosyu were bitching about when it came to the garbage organizations.
I can understand someone saying IWA is pretty crappy from a technical
standpoint (except for Silver King, who can work circles around anybody
on earth) but FMW has plenty of good wrestlers. I'd much rather watch a
Masato Tanaka match than another Masa Chono snoozefest. Matasunaga and
Kanemura have to rely on the chairs and barbed wire, but Hayabusa,
Tanaka, Hisakatsu Ooya, Koji Nakagawa and even the Gladiator on a good
day can produce great, technically sound matches. I've seen them! Plus
FMW's women's division in conjunction with GAEA is producing the most
interesting women's wrestling to me at this point in time, especially
with the enigmatic presence of Chigusa amd the trailblazing of KAORU.
(Added points for Matsunaga wearing the ass-stomping "W*ING, KING OF
DANGER!" black longsleeve t-shirt during death matches. I fell out!:))
-I watched a bunch of Ricky Steamboat matches including a fabulous match
against Misawa as Tiger Mask that Scott sent me. Guess what! The
psychology was flawless! This was from 89 and Steamboat was NWA champion.
Misawa was just settling into being the greatest wrestler on earth and
this match is just great- sort of a showcase of what 80's NWA and All
Japan had in common. Solid wrestling moves, stiffness and flawless
psychology. Paul sent a batch of WWF Steamboat and I can't believe I was
driven so far away from WWF back then that I missed this aspect of
Steamboat's career. His match against Don Muraco is great. Cliff warned
me that Muraco used to be great and know I can see why. Very old school
pro style that builds to logical endings and what have you. Stuff they
should teach you in wrestling school before they let you on the mat.
They also showed those cretinous WWF "Dragon in Japan" vignettes that
drove me deeply into the arms of the NWA. I'm trying to remember if Ed
Leslie was ever sort of good or if Steamboat really could carry Beefcake
to that high of a quality match like the one on this tape. Ditto Davy
Boy Smith.
-Paul sent me a compilation with AAA match that was very-second-hour-of-
Nitro-like. Los Villanos and Fishman are wrestling Perro Aguayo and, for
some reason, Cien Caras, Universo 2000 and the other brother who's name
has escaped me all day. I'm guessing this related to their feud with Los
Villanos but I don't know if it was before or after the feud was ended
with that cage match and couldn't figure out how Perro got mixed up in
it. Perro, of course, gets the holy crap beaten out himself as the
brothers refuse to tag him and the truly great thing is that when Perro
is knocked out of the ring and is laying on the floor of the first row
and it is clear that they are not helping helping Aguayo, the Dynamita
Brothers go into the ring and beat the crap out Los Villanos and Fishman.
I'm glad that WCW has stopped stealing lame angles from the WWF and now
only steal great angles from New Japan and AAA.:) I love the different
levels of evil idea and for WCW to pull it off, they need a Los Villanos
group, which the Dungeon of Doom could be if they put good wrestlers in
it. They've already produced their own Los Locos Gringos with the NWO.
AAA has the blueprint for the two tier heel vs heel feud, one within and
one outside the organization. To duplicate this effect, WCW needs guys
who can go at it (Jericho, Psicosis) in the Dungeon of Doom. There
really isn't anyone in the dungeon that looks like he would last thirty
seconds with Benoit or Flair and they won't make this feud successful
until they do.
-I read in Herb's tidbits that WCW is going to use GAEA wrestlers as part
of an effort to establish a women's division. Since it is my second fave
organization in Japan, behind Michinoku Pro, you can imagine how stoked I
was! The weird thing about this is that ECW is gonna be bringing in the
BIG gun of Minami Toyota at about the same time, so WCW won't be
following the lead of ECW this time around. I gotta bad feeling that ECW
will do it right, like they did getting over the NJ3 and the AAA4, and
that WCW won't have a blueprint to steal for gettting them over and just
totally drop the ball. The major difference is that GAEA is so angle
driven that it seems like it would adapt to America easier than AJW
wrestlers, so maybe it will all equal out. I think Chigusa will get over
before Minami to the marks even though she isn't close to being the same
class as Minami technically, but I think she will get over just because
she is a tough old broad that fights for what is right (a female
Steamboat in that sense). The key will be if WCW has ANY sense and
brings her and her entourage of tiny wrestling disciples in as faces as
opposed to the universally unsuccessful Japanese-as-evil policy they have
maintained. ECW has the major advantage that to see Minami is to fall in
love with Minami and if they can con Yamada to have another hair vs hair
match with her, we will have a beautiful wrestling moment in the bingo
hall again, because that one in Japan was one of the most intense things
I have ever seen.
-I didn't hear Juventud mentioned on WCWSN so I wonder what the deal with
his match with Konan is. I need to get a grip.:)
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, Juventudiac!
