Subject: DEAN MALENKO! takes on his older and possibly better brother JOE MALENKO! JUMBO TSURUTA! and STAN HANSEN! beat the living dogcrap outta each other.
ALOHA~!
WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #54!
Today was a big day, as I rearranged some furniture and ate a whole
bunch of cookies. Oh. And Dr. Katz comes on during the day sometimes
too. To quote the immortal Go-Gos- "Vacation. All I ever wanted.
Vacation. Oh got to get away.":)
I've been bulling my way through two months of Porno Azteca and I'm
starting to dig it the most, since a.) the best guys are sometimes not
their most famous WCW-based guys and b.) everybody beats the hell out of
the scrawny Super Elektra. So far I have seen a guy finally go
backfirst into the fixed chairs after getting toped and recieving a less
than beautiful cut in the real hurty part of the small of the back, and
I've seen a lot of guys I need to figure out the names of, because they
all do cool armdrags and as soon as I get all that straight I'll report
on it proper.:)
!@!@!@!@! BEST OF JAPAN 1989, VOLS. IV- VI
Remember a while ago I said I was gonna dissect parts of this tape that
Doug sent me? Well, here it is and they you go and there you have it.
The first match is Stan Hansen against Jumbo Tsuruta and GOD! do they
beat the living shit outta each other. Hansen just potatoes the crap
outta Tsuruta and Tsuruta stomps the crap outta Hansen. Hansen does the
super dickish GIANT elbow across the throat to which Jumbo responds by
punching Hansen dead in his fat ugly face. This goes out of the ring
and they beat the hell out of each other with chairs and they basically
maul each other until the ref stops the match. They, of course,
continue to break everything they can get their hands on until they go
to commercial. This is Phil Schneider's favorite match off this tape
and we discussed it and I was able to con him into thinking I liked the
Takada vs Yamazaki UWF masterpiece a little more, but I'm lying to
myself- this match is just TOO stiff and TOO amazingly violent for me to
quibble about things like technique. Tsuruta was SO freakin great and
Hansen was SO freakin great. It was like a bear mauling but it was
beautiful because it was wrestling so it was better than art. Then the
rematch is shown and it isn't what the first one was, in that they take
it to the mat and they wrestle and stuff, which is cool because it is
different than the previous encounter, but I didn't fear for anyones
life in this match.
Vader vs. Shinya Hashimoto was not nearly as good as it should have
been. It was a good wrestling match in every traditional sense of a
match but after watching the Tsuruta and Hansen matches and Considering
that this was Vader before he got old and not good and then there is
freakin Shinya Hashimoto, one would come to expect a veritable mountain
of stiffnes, delivered with gusto, until one of these big boys dropped.
Instead we get the highflying Vader hitting a dropkick. Good but still
disappointing.
Atsushi Onita vs. Ryuma Go is neat because it has Onita before he ruined
his knee and stuff, but it also has Ryuma Go, the King of Pioneer
Wrestling, and this match goes on for eternity. Neither of these guys
are gonna make you swear off of Sakuraba with their half-assed brand of
shoot-wrestling. And there is a big batch of blood. And, CRIPES! does
this match NOT END.
Jushin Liger vs. Hiroshi Hase was absolutely great, despite the horror
of what Liger is wearing (the Monkeyboy outfit). Hase is the greatest
wrestler in New Japan at this point and he supplies the goods hitting
all the moves that Malenko stole from him and perfected. Liger is
spunky and tough and flew a whole lot back then. I don't recall a giant
swing so maybe this was the perfectest Hase match ever. DON'T GIVE AWAY
THE INCREDIBLE ENDING!
Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiku Takada is fukcin Akira Maeda vs Nobuhiku
Takada. Takada works for the crushing suplex to set up kicking the crap
out of Maeda. Maeda works to set up the cross-armbreaker by kicking
the crap out of Takada. This is about as awe-inspiringly fast, complex
and stiff as you can possibly want. I dunno. It's at a different plane
than other wrestler and even other shoot wrestling you are wont to see.
These two are the only ones capable of having a match as intricate and
deep and all-encompassing, yet shootstyle simple as this match. Both of
these guys might be the best wrestlers of this generation, because this
is Pro Style wrestling taken to such a beautiful and esoteric extreme
and they execute it with such flawless verve and gusto you gotta be in
awe of it all.
Joe Malenko and Dean Malenko go at it and, for some reason, THEY TAKE IT
TO THE MAT! Tee-Hee! Joe is kind of a bigger stronger power version of
his brother and yet they both have pretty flawless pro-style mat
technique so one can argue that Joe would be better because he was
bigger. Joe hits some suplexes early and then it really slows down to
leglocks and wristlocks. Dean gets all highflying on his sangre to
differentiate the two (okay, maybe Dean was better) and does a lot of
lucha stuff that I was figuring he had picked up recently to suddenly
work with Luchadores on WCW but Au Contraire. Hell, I'm guessing Dean
has always been the most technically sound North American wrestler in
every style and he just kinda didn't show everything in his New
Japan-exclusive tenure because he didn't need to use it like he did when
he was suddenly facing the straight Lucha of Rey Misterio Jr and
Psicosis. The more you learn, the more you realize that PWI got it
right for once.
$%$%$%$ EXTREME CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING- TV Late July through Early
August.
^&^&^&^ USWA TV- Late July and Early August.
My ECW and USWA TV connection, Walt, sent me these babies and its as hit
and miss as major indie wrestling usually is. The best match was in
USWA when masked Rex King and the steroidically-deflated Paul Diamond
took on Steve Doll and Flash Flanagan in a high-flying little affair
that was about the best usage of the workers of the highly troubled
promotion that I have seen. King did those flying kicks to the corner
to give his identity away. Flanagan would be a good addition to the
on-again-off-again WWF Light Heavyweight Division- in that he is
technically sound and flies pretty well. Diamond is having a minor
miracle of a comeback. He is still a good worker, even without the
chemical assist, and he wouldn't look too bad as having some roll in the
big two. Cane was stinking up USWA rings as Doomsday weeks before he
was ruining perfect cage matches at Titan. Speaking of Titan! Rick
Titan trashes the Razor Ramone gimmick and takes a face turn right on
TV. Now if only he was a better worker, I would care more. And Doug
Gilbert did one of the best interviews I've ever heard ever during the
53 hours he was in USWA.
ECW served up the usual spotty wrestling, booked sixty ways to sunday,
to show that they STILL haven't found anyone to carry guys the way that
2 Cold Scorpio did. The best match of this batch is the Full Blooded
Italians (still my current favorite gimmick circulating around the
world) Tracy Smothers and Little Guido took on Spike Dudley and Chris
Chetti. All these guys can work and this was a good little match. The
ending was truly hideous as Tommy Rich was pinned for some reason and
they counted it. Gimme a break. Chetti and Guido are gonna be the shit.
TAZ continues to be the chattiest wrestler on earth and his match
against Sabu- the rematch from Hardcore Heaven- was much less than the
very okay match they had on that inaugural PPV. TAZ can't take bumps
and his suplexes aren't that cool. Welcome to hell as another Heyman
creation is slowly exposed as each match is wrestled. Sabu looks great
in the suit though and he should definately go whole-hog Sheikhlike. Van
Dam vs Tommy Dreamer was a couple of matches that weren't horrible by
any stretch, but neither really knew what it wanted to accomplish. If
it would have gone full garbage match, it would have helped, because
Dreamer isn't athletic enough to wrestle the highly specialized style
(and when you do get somebody who can wrestle the VAn Dam style match,
it still isn't all that earth shattering) though Dreamer tries WAAAY too
hard- doing all of Van Dam's spots and hitting an actually kinda cool
Frogsplash. If it played more into Dreamer's hand and it became a
double hell death match or something, at least we'd get a chance to see
Dreamer beat the crap out of the prancing little pantywaist.:) Al Snow
vs Shane Douglas was about as good as I expected it to be. Shane
Douglas is so unflashy and Al Snow is so technically proficient that
Snow really dumbed the match down in terms of moves attempted usually by
Snow, but the psychology was thickened up so it didn't hurt too bad.
Douglas had one cool move with neck-wrenching forward flip over the back
move (SEE! I told you it was cool.:)) The main problem with this match-
and considering what could have gone wrong, this will be real
nitpicking- is that they work off of Douglas's attempts to get to his
finisher and Snow countering it, getting an escape from it, and survivng
the application of it- which is great psychology and made the match
really sound in that aspect, but there was two things wrong- 1.) of
course, Douglas' belly to belly suplex is JUST LAME as a finisher, and
2.)Snow doesn't really have an over finisher that anyone can remember
(GOD! How long has it been since he got stranded and wasted in Titan?)
so they couldn't work it the other way, like these type of matches
usually work the best. Overall, though, there was very little to
quibble about. Douglas is wrestling his way out of my doghouse and that
Pitball II match is almost forgiven.:)
TOMORROW: All the Lucha I started watching today! All that WAR I put
off watching today and MAYBE THAT DAMN RINGS TAPE! VOLK HAN! VOLK HAN!
VOLK HAN!
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, who loves it when Blue Panther takes it to the mat.
