Hard-Headed Listenin' to Some Rock and Roll, Tenryu's Driving a Hand-Me-Down Like it's One He Stole

Genichiro Tenryu & Nobutaka Araya v Satoshi Kojima & Taiyo Kea (All Japan, 10/12/02) - GREAT

Why can't some people just let sleeping dogs lie? Our boy Tenryu was fairly quiet for the first half of this. Other than one moment where his rage almost got the better of him and he threatened to throw the ring bell he was damn near civilised. The early outburst might've even left him a little ashamed, emotionless as he was to any further prodding. Kojima takes a swing at him while he's standing on the apron and Tenryu is unmoved, literally so as he doesn't so much as blink in response. Didn't stare a hole through Kojima or nothin. Of course you wait in anticipation but maybe tonight will be different and he won't flip out and you don't really want that because why would you but it could also be cool as an anomaly one time? When Kea swings on him, again as he minds his business on the apron, he's so unbothered he even dusts his shoulder off. That's how unperturbed he is, how little his opponents are under his skin. Kea and Kojima isolate Araya for a spell and when Kojima spat on Tenryu I would've put the savings on him coming in rampaging. I'd have lost everything because once again he never rose to it. Then Kojima hits the ropes and out of nowhere Tenryu clobbers him with an enziguri from the apron, a real cannon of a shot and it did not look like Kojima expected to be getting hit in that moment. And really from there we're off to the races. Tenryu takes off the turnbuckle pad and smashes Kojima's face into it, throws blistering chops, punches to the jaw and eye socket, the full revenge tour that was expected deep down even if a small part of us questioned if we'd get it. Kojima in peril is good stuff and I loved Tenryu hitting his own flip senton as an insult. From the point he took the shackles off Tenryu was pretty much a total wrecking ball and looked as strong as he might've 10 years earlier. There was really only one instance of him properly being put on the back foot and that was late on when Kojima hammered him with a lariat. Because Tenryu was so dominant before then that one move landing felt huge and it was also the catalyst for them putting away Araya, much the same way all those boys would have to get Misawa out the road long enough to tear down Kobashi or Akiyama. Kea's never been someone I've thought too much about honestly, but he always hits like a bastard and his striking was world class here. At one point he hit a wild axe kick to the back of Tenryu's head and Tenryu sold it like he'd lost control of his limbs, almost falling into a Dick Murdoch face-first splatter. Kea will also open himself to BEING hit like a bastard and Tenryu lost the plot with him, dragging him to the floor and throwing a full table at him. I forgot Araya was one of those AGILE beefy boys and when he went up top I thought he was going to copy Kojima's elbow, which is the sort of petty shit you expect from Tenryu, but Araya was always pretty straight-laced. Then he hit a moonsault instead and I remembered he was wont to doing such things now and then. Everyone really leaned into establishing and playing off their status in the hierarchy and the match wound up being pretty awesome because of it, led by a wonderful second-half performance from Tenryu. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Dandy v Casas - the Lead-In Trios

Negro Casas, Espectro Jr. & Espectro de Ultratumba v El Dandy, Mano Negra & Ringo Mendoza (CMLL, 6/19/92)

This was the lead-in to Dandy v Casas for the world middleweight title a few weeks later. If I didn't know already that it was a title match they were building to I'd have bet the house on it being the lead-in to an apuestas match. It was not the title match lead-in I was expecting, basically. I figured we'd at least get a clean start, maybe some chain wrestling before it got tetchy, by the end both guys even throwing a fist or two. It did not start the least bit clean and Casas had fouled Dandy two times in the first 90 seconds, then fouled him a third time a couple minutes after that. First he kicked the middle rope into Dandy's privates, then hoisted him up on his shoulders and rammed him balls-first into the ring post. The third low blow came as a cut off from his own knees, practically a double punch to the nuts. This was a phenomenal Casas performance. He walked the line between cowardice and confidence as well as anyone. At points he was only properly willing to fight when his boys had his back, but then at other times he'd pare away the bullshit and go full force, no backing down. It was sort of Flair-esque, like when the latter would bare his teeth and attack with fury when he knew his title was in jeopardy. Even if there was no title on the line for Casas here there was still a point of pride and people weren't about to forget how good he was. In true Nature Boy fashion there was even a spot where Casas was throwing knife edge chops in the corner and the crowd exploded when Dandy turned the tables and unloaded with his own. It never needed any escalation as such, because Casas had turned it into a street fight from the jump, but Dandy going from the chops to the punches was amazing and of course these were some ungodly punches. Casas' signature running flip bump off the ropes might've been the best of his entire career, practically landing him in the middle of the ring, coming up affronted and holding his face only to be kicked in the jaw immediately. In a match loaded with awesome moments my favourite was when Casas had Dandy's leg stuck in one of the front row folding seats, repeatedly kicking the chair closed into Dandy's knee while some guy has to shield his poor mother in the seat directly next to them because she's too old or frail or both to get up and move. Dandy effectively spent the whole match chasing a one-on-one with Casas and the final exchange was the perfect payoff. Casas was always the sort to come out guns blazing when he knew he had no other choice and pretty often his hubris would bite him. It did again here when he charged Dandy and flung himself like a torpedo, Dandy moving and Casas taking a fucking absolute screwball face-first bump into the middle turnbuckle, something that I really can't do justice by typing nonsense on a page. The fight and STRUGGLE over the tapatia is as good as you'll get. There has never been a wrestler more belligerent than Negro Casas and he would not give up an arm for this hold, not when Dandy was punching him in the ribs, not when he was slapping him about the ears, not for anything. And not only did Casas manage to buck him off, he went and fucking pinned him with the man's own cradle! I don't even know where this would rank among Casas' best performances - probably not top 20, maybe not top 50 - but it had everything from wanton cheating to technical mastery and whatever else we might fawn over. I haven't said a single word about the other four guys in the match, not because they never added value but because Dandy v Casas needed however many hundred words they got. The Espectros were a really fun pair of idiots though, routinely complaining about being fouled when they very obviously hadn't, stooging to the back row while getting vicious when they needed to, sort of like their captain for the evening. Post-match Casas offers up a handshake, then kicks Dandy in the chest instead. Based on how livid Dandy was I'm surprised they never changed the title match to a hair match on the spot.  

Re-Watching Jushin Thunder Liger (part 5)

Jushin Liger v Shinjiro Ohtani (New Japan, 2/7/98)

This felt like a story of Ohtani trying his absolute best to exorcise his demons, or at least the very singular demon that is Jushin Thunder Liger. Almost a year to the day earlier he came up short against Liger for the J Crown, 11 months before that stumbling at the last hurdle for the IWGP juniors title, letting his emotions get the best of him and paying for it. He'd beaten Liger in non-title matches, probably pinned him in tags (cagematch it or something), but never for a belt. Ohtani's journey over the previous couple years was one that had him primed for success, but it was also laden with hiccups in big moments and most were of his own doing. He wasn't about to let it happen again and this was as aggressive as I've ever seen him. The match started with a rugged collar-and-elbow tie-up, Ohtani then sprinting at Liger only to get flipped on his head with a shotei. After that he makes the conscious decision to not get hit in the face like that anymore and goes after Liger's arm because maybe trying to take that strike away would be smart. It was the same strike that put an end to him the year before so it's hard to question his judgment. Ohtani wasn't the least bit afraid to take liberties here, milking the ref's count on rope breaks and even outright ignoring it on occasion. This wasn't the same Ohtani of years past though, who'd get frustrated and start making weepy faces when things got rocky - he got MEAN but stayed focused and the aggressiveness was an asset rather than a hinderance. It felt like he could control it more, harness it in a way that he couldn't in some of his biggest matches previously. There were some callbacks to those matches too, like the springboard dropkick to the arm as Liger used the rope to pull himself up, which almost sealed him the deal a couple years earlier. And really just any time Liger smashes Ohtani in the face with a shoei feels like a callback of a sort, if for no reason other than it being the one thing in Liger's arsenal Ohtani has never quite been able to overcome. I thought Ohtani was pretty incredible at putting across a sense of desperation whenever Liger mounted any serious offence. Maybe desperation is the wrong word, maybe it was more urgency, but either way you knew HE knew he needed to put a halt to momentum whenever Liger started picking any up. Sometimes he'd take a bullet and immediately roll close to the safety of ropes, sometimes he'd crawl there and almost cling to them, then sometimes he'd just roll out the ring completely. After the initial stretch of arm work Liger hits a brainbuster and Ohtani rolls straight outside, so Liger hits a plancha and follows up with a brainbuster on the floor, a big bomb for the big occasion and one that tells you how serious he's taking this version of Ohtani. When Ohtani comes back from that he goes to the arm again and Liger progressively sells the damage incurred. Liger set the bar for selling a busted arm higher than anyone back during the Sano feud and I'll be honest with you, this doesn't come close to that, but even still if there's anyone who can make you buy that their arm is fucked it's Liger. The stretch run is super dramatic and not knowing the result going in I found myself pulling majorly for Ohtani to get the win, to finally get that monkey off his back. He seemed assured as they went into deeper waters, or at least more assured than he'd been in the past, not grasping at openings or getting too far ahead of himself. There was some by god growth and maturity and he didn't almost burst into tears when Liger refused to stay down, an unfortunate tendency of the past that never did him any favours. He also takes Liger's best shots and manages to stay in the fight, kicking out of the shotei and avalanche brainbuster, scrambling again to the ropes after the latter. When he escapes a second brainbuster off the top by the skin of his teeth, reversing it in mid-air and almost landing on Liger's chest, he pumps his fists like he knows this is his chance. He hits the release dragon suplex but composes himself right away, a stark contrast to a couple years earlier where he immediately went for a second but lost his bearings and dropped Liger too close to the ropes. When he took down the kneepad and followed up with a springboard wheel kick I thought for sure he'd pulled it off, only for Liger to slip out in an amazing nearfall. Maybe Ohtani should've stuck to the arm until the very end though because Liger always had that shotei in him. Even when Ohtani ducked Liger would improvise and the shotei to the back of the head was fucking diabolical. Honestly I could be convinced that there not being a payoff to the arm work IS the payoff, as Ohtani dropping a successful strategy a little too early had been his undoing in the past, one time against Liger himself. In the end maybe it wasn't a matter of strategy anyway; maybe Liger was still just that much better, the cream of the crop, an inevitable force like Pep's Barca. That might've stung Ohtani even more. He never fucked up or let any inexperience steer him off path, he just simply wasn't good enough to beat The Man in the biggest moments. This was fantastic and might be my favourite of all their matches together (even more than the '93 match I proclaimed my favourite not but three weeks ago). 

Tenryu's Grandaddy Ran Shine in East Tennessee. I Guess that's Where He Got His Need for Speed

Genichiro Tenryu, Masa Chono & Manabu Nakanishi v Yuji Nagata, Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yutaka Yoshie (New Japan, 6/13/04) - FUN

The old (somewhat) guard versus the new (sorta) guard. I could not have told you this before I looked up cagematch to confirm the date on this but apparently Tenryu, Chono and Nakanishi were in a stable together, along with Scott Norton (!), called Pirates Gundan. It was very much news to me but it feels right somehow. They didn't really work like they were in a stable, unless Nakanishi was always the unruly scruff going rogue and starting fights. He went rogue and started many fights here but maybe his partners were used to it. Either way you could boil this down to three main pairings - Nagata and Nakanishi, Chono and Tanahashi, Tenryu and Yoshie. Yoshie was the one I most wanted to see matching up with Tenryu so maybe sometimes life really does give you lemons. Chono was smart enough to almost goad Tanahashi into taking a yakuza kick, Tanahashi still a few years away from being the unquestioned Ace of the company and a little more prone to naivety. I think I prefer him hitting inverted atomic drops here to what he was doing against Okada and the boys years later. But then I would, wouldn't I. Tenryu hits Yoshie with many a punch and chop and even nails a vertical suplex, like Murdoch on Abdullah once upon a time. Yoshie responds with a PHAT Thesz Press then hits a Vader Bomb/bronco buster thing in the corner and Chono gets in irate like fuck sake mate is that even a wee bit necessary??? Nagata v Nakanishi made up the bulk of the match and both of them brought the testosterone-fuelled stupidity, but in a sort of endearing way maybe. They trade chops and headbutts and at a certain point Nakanishi can no longer be contained so he starts swinging on his own partners. He clobbers Tenryu for stepping in and throwing a cheapshot to Nagata, which begs the question why anyone would hang around with Tenryu if they didn't know for a fact he would do that at least once, but maybe you conclude Nakanishi is just a stickler for sportsmanship. Then he and Nagata start wellying each other with chairs so I guess it was never about the sportsmanship? Nakanishi finally wins the exchange by just smashing a broken piece of chair over Nagata's head and, you know, fair enough. Nakanishi is a drunk and aggressive cousin of the groom at a Yorkshire wedding starting fights with strangers and family alike so Tenryu just walks away like any sane person would. Always the bigger man, was Tenryu. Eventually Nakanishi gets counted out when he puts Nagata in a Torture Rack up by the bleachers and Chono looks on like what the fuck did I bother getting myself into. Pirates Gundan, fer cripes! A countout in 2004 Japan is rare as hen's teeth so I guess that was cool? 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Casas being Casas, Los Cowboys throwing punches, Rambo and Hamada! And Dr Wagner Jr!

Negro Casas, Dr Wagner Jr. & Rambo v Gran Hamada, Silver King & El Texano (UWA, 2/23/92)

About as pure a representation of the beautiful lucha libre trios match as you can get. It was sort of like a lucha version of the best Rock 'n' Roll Express v Midnight Express match, with all of the shtick and sequences and ridiculous fun while still having the serious edge to it when needed. And like the very best of your Rock 'n' Rolls v Midnights, it had so many cool and notable moments that to mention all of them would turn this into a play-by-play and not a single soul can be arsed with that. You'll just have to take my word for it and when have I ever steered you wrong before? In a broader sense, Rambo acting like a bully shithouse was amazing and definitely worth talking about. On the rudo side Wagner Jr. was the most low key of everyone given his standing and relative youth, Casas was Casas and as magnetic and captivating as only peak Casas can be and not even remotely low key, so Rambo was there to be the grizzled bruiser, just as happy to eat shit and look the fool as to run someone over like a boar in army fatigues. He also took one punch late on from Texano and I swear to god, this might've been the best KO sell of a punch I've ever seen. Your All Japan folks will tell you Kawada did it better but let me tell you he did not. Texano actually threw several - SEVERAL - amazing punches in this and clocked Casas with one that was absolutely impeccable. Some inventive rudo miscommunication results in Casas throwing his toys out the pram and defecting to the tecnico side, which of course is only a ruse and really he deserved to be punched in the face like he was, probably by both sides if we're being honest about it. He looked phenomenal in all of this though, Casas. Every time I watch him from this '92-'97 period in particular I feel like it's one of the very best runs of any wrestler in history; just a staggering level of consistency and peak output up and down the card. Outside of getting punched in the face by Los Cowboys his exchange with Hamada here was exceptional. He matched the wee fella for grace every step of the way and that it no small thing given Hamada is who he is. That guy is in the absolute top tier of hitting things clean as a whistle regardless of difficulty. He was damn near majestic in this and nobody flips out of a back body drop like Gran Hamada. The rudos must've taken exception, especially Casas, because they even bloody him up with Casas punching him in the cut and Wagner Jr. trying to guzzle blood out his head like a ghoul. At the core of it the rudos always had that nasty, vicious side. They'd be made to look like doofuses more than once and people might have a chuckle at their expense, but they'd always be able to regain credibility with some savagery. 

Danielson v Bandido!

Bryan Danielson v Bandido (AEW Dynamite, 1/18/23)

It's kind of cool watching this two years after it happened, knowing how the Danielson retirement tour went and who he got to work with the following year. At the time I can only imagine that it must've made THOSE folks amongst us melancholy for the fact Danielson is clearly in his element working luchadores but we'd never get to see him against, say, a Blue Panther. What did we know, right? I actually think this is the first Bandido match I've ever seen. He got to look like quite the superstar and the crowd, who I guess were more familiar with him than me, were really into him. I liked the beginning of this with them going at least somewhat down the lucha matwork route, even if it had an Americanised spin on it. They traded the tapatia and Danielson stomped down on the knees when he couldn't quite grasp it, then Bandido teased the nudo lagunero which was a cool tip of the hat to Panther, a favourite of Danielson's but maybe an idol of Bandido's or maybe that's horse shit and just sounds cool in my head, who can say? Some of Bandido's stuff came off great. The delayed vertical suplex with Danielson trying to go dead weight only to be muscled up was awesome, there was a go to sleep thing out of an Atlantida that looked way better than I'd have thought it would running through the idea in my head, the double topes, and then the backflip fallaway slam off the top which was insanity. I usually can't be bothered with moves that use elaborate rope-bouncing prior to being hit - the jawbreaker lariat comes to mind - and when Bandido tried his 21 plex initially (which was reversed) I sort of hoped that would be the end of it. But he went back to it later and wouldn't you know it but it looked like the bounce off the rope while headstanding on a bent over man's back actually did generate extra momentum, as absolutely nonsensical as that sounds. I thought this was quality stuff and I definitely wouldn't be opposed to checking out more Bandido. 

Whiskey & Wrestling 1300!

It's now been 15 years and change since I started up this here stupidity of a blog. Fuckin 15 years! Who'd have thought I'd be 1300 posts deep by now? Not me, I'll tell ye that. As with every 100-post milestone I went BIG for the occasion, watching some matches I've been meaning to watch for ages. A time was had by all. Here are words to express such things. 

Harley Race v Wahoo McDaniel (Houston, 2/10/78)

This may be the most Wahoo performance I've ever seen. You hear a lot of stories about Wahoo being one of the toughest men to ever wrestle and if you watch enough of him you can see why people tell those stories (usually the people who wrestled him). Sometimes that stuff can sound like carny nonsense, old-timers waxing nostalgic about an era of REAL men who knew how to WORK and get HEAT. Our time was a better time, by god! My old man and his friends would tell me about some of the people they grew up with, the real basket cases, spouting all sorts of outlandish shit about big Billy McGilverie who once drank a litre of Grouse, beat up three policemen and punched a mountain goat to death. They don't make them like Wahoo or Billy McGilverie anymore, they tell us. Well I never did meet Billy McGilverie and as far as I know there's no footage on this here internet of him beating up policemen or punching mountain goats, but if the NWA Classics on Demand service did anything it was give us a look at the Wahoo we all heard about. This was the Wahoo who'd chop down trees with his bare hands, those chops looking like everything Flair told us they did. He was scooping Race up with body slams like Race was not the size of man Harley Race was, hitting a gorgeous butterfly suplex and his cross body block must've felt like getting smashed by a car. It was an awesome Wahoo performance. And yet somehow I thought he was only the second best guy in the match. This might be the best representation of Harley Race, NWA Champion that I've ever seen, or at the very least it's my favourite. I guess I say that through the lens of what I've come to expect from touring NWA champ, which honestly is mostly driven by years of watching Flair. I don't really know if the chicken or the egg came first, whether Flair was the obvious choice to succeed Race in the long term because of how he worked to begin with, or Flair took parts of what he admired about Race (and Stevens and whoever else) and used them himself. I haven't watched enough non-Flair touring champ stuff in too long to say one way or the other about Dory's reign or Brisco's reign, never mind Thesz or O'Connor or even Rogers. Plenty of what Race did here brought Flair to mind though; maybe less frantic and exaggerated, less constant motion and momentum, but still very much a keep things moving approach. I wonder if Flair got the kneedrops from Harley because there were some absolute corkers here and any sane person would want to steal these. One landed right across the eyebrow, one to the forehead, one to the gut that I thought was about to make Wahoo puke. The first fall was basically the inverse of a heel control segment, with Wahoo using the headlock to grind Race down, letting him up for air before cutting him off and bringing him back down again. Race was taking these awesome bumps off of Wahoo's chops, almost hanging in the air before crashing down on his back, really playing to that back row of the Sam Houston Coliseum. I loved how Race would go to the headbutts in desperation, nailing Wahoo in the gut several times and a few might've been lower than that. Again it reminded me of Flair, where he'd cut people off with those nasty short knees to the midsection. More than the headbutts to the gut it was the headbutts to the face that were truly savage. These were legitimately some of the best headbutts I've ever seen, total Fujiwara shots to the jaw and cheekbone, just ramming cranium into face and every single one of them looked brutal. He backed Wahoo into the ropes at one point and hit about five in succession, then later he outright jumped at Wahoo's face with one like a human battering ram. I also liked how Race would be a little more overt with the cheating the longer it went, the more desperate he got. The headbutts were entirely unnecessary but choking a guy in a front facelock is a steeper sort of cowardly. By the third fall he was fully scrambling and they'd whipped the crowd into enough of a frenzy that someone in the second row was cuffed and carted out by three cops! I guess Nigel McGuinness borrowed Helmsley's Harley Race tapes because Race was a fucking lunatic eating these post shots. I thought they were going to do a blood stoppage the way he was hunched in the ropes spurting blood out his head, but then he sneaks it in the end by reversing a roll-up and grabbing the tights, an NWA champion through and through. This was fantastic stuff. Maybe if I tell myself often enough to go back and watch a bunch of touring champ Harley Race I'll eventually do it some day. 

Rick Rude v Masa Chono (New Japan, 8/12/92)

I really wanted to love this. Rude is one of my 10 favourite North American wrestlers ever and I thought he was the best wrestler in the world in 1992, his absolute peak year. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get to this, something that's been heralded for years as a Rick Rude masterclass. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe I still haven't recovered from Chono fatigue from years past, but it never really landed like I wanted it to. I did at least love Rude being unashamedly, 100% Ravishing Rick Rude. He never toned down anything about his act and it garnered some amazing heat for the occasion. Maybe someone else might've come in and thought to toe the line for the G1 Climax final, but not Rude. This was fully a Rick Rude match, something you could see him working in the States, like his match against Sasaki earlier in the tournament. That meant there were obvious pros and I'd rather see a Rick Rude match than a Masa Chono match anyway, but there were some cons as well. Early on he got bumped around for a string of clotheslines and even took an amusing sort of Flair Flop. I love Rude bumping around off clotheslines so I naturally loved this. When he swivelled the hips like we knew he would the crowd were on his case, then Chono mocked him with his own and the place erupted. Pro wrestling doesn't need to be hard, I guess. Once they brought it down it lost me for a while though, despite moments like Rude trying to break a headlock by yanking on Chono's goatee. Rude is someone who'd slow things to a crawl at times and really grind on a chinlock or whatever, and normally it would work for me and I find him compelling enough in control even when it's brought to a crawl, but this time I was left zoning out and I can't blame it all on Chono from underneath. Rude had used the top rope kneedrop throughout the tournament to get him to the final and it's presented as a big deal, so Chono working the leg makes sense. It neutralises a major offensive weapon and sets up his own STF. I just never found it all that engaging and they spent a chunk of time on it. The final third dragged me back in some, at least. They really put over everything from the top rope as being important and used it to tease or follow through on big momentum-changers. The superplexes swung the tide and any time Rude went up there it created real drama, because everyone knew the kneedrop could follow. Chono had to operate with some urgency to get him down and when he couldn't he at least needed to be upright, which made for a cool progression from Rude hitting the top rope axe handle to the missile dropkick to finally the kneedrop that he wanted all along. The pop for Chono kicking out of the latter was huge and of course Rude was off his chops that it didn't end things. Chono winning with his own top rope shoulderblock was cool too and maybe Rude really bought into Watts' philosophy about moves off the top being treated as death. 

LA Park v Dr Wagner Jr. (TXT, 5/11/13)

Is there anybody better at these insane plunder murderfests than Park? I've seen this referred to as the best ECW match ever and boy it might be, but you can take it a step further and say Park is the best ECW wrestler ever. Some FOOL, some uncultured SWINE, will take that as a slight, turning their nose up at such a notion, but I assure you I mean it as a compliment and there isn't a soul I'd rather see work this sort of thing more than our boy LA Park. This had the incredible pre-match image of Park draping a Wagner Jr. t-shirt over a chair in the middle of the ring, setting the thing on fire, then getting down on one knee and flipping Wagner the bird. The fire wasn't even extinguished by the time Park had taken the chair and walloped Wagner with it. The primera followed the tried and true path of a thorough rudo beatdown, only this rudo beatdown was loaded with the tecnico being annihilated with furniture. Some of these chair shots were ludicrous but he was also slamming Wagner on top of pieces of guardrail, throwing a step ladder at his kneecaps, powerbombing him onto a stack of upright chairs. He smashed Wagner's head against the ring post while the latter was sitting up on the turnbuckle, then he grabbed him by a torn piece of mask and smashed his head into the mat like he was trying to break open a piggy bank. To start the second caida we get an amazing grizzly image of Park licking Wagner's blood off his own fingers, the sort of thing that would've had those old ECW bingo halls in raptures. I was expecting the segunda to be a short tecnico comeback fall, but revenge is not a dish to be hastily prepared and I guess Wagner knew that too. The start of the comeback was amazing, Wagner spearing Park through a stack of chairs to counter some other madness Park was trying to cook up (something with the chairs, probably). After that he took his time and paid Park in kind for all of the shit he'd unleashed previously. Park basically takes a chair shot fully in the face and then Wagner bonks him with a glass bottle, smashes the bottle on the ramp and uses a piece of it to stab Park in the head. Park bled so much that at one point the doctor either tried to wrap tape around his head to stem the bleeding and keep part of his torn mask attached, or he was trying to keep his face attached to his face. You couldn't even SEE his face for the blood. It was wild stuff and some of the close-ups were ghoulish. All of those chair shots must've scrambled their brains because for a brief second they went about a rope running sequence. Thankfully Wagner cleared the cobwebs and stopped Park mid-run, put his hands up like "what are we even doing here?" and then went back to chopping him in the neck. You can even forgive the ref' shenanigans at the end with how they were booting each other in the balls before it. This was unbelievable and it's sort of crazy that Park has at least three matches like this that I'd easily call a match of the decade contender. What a mad bastard. 

Darby Allin v Konosuke Takeshita (AEW Dynamite, 1/3/24)

Speaking of mad bastards! This was an awesome Darby performance. It had all of his qualities on show -- the bumping, the selling, his knack for making creative yet sensible comebacks (sensible within the context of who Darby Allin is), his timing on nearfalls, everything you'd expect from him. I don't have a whole lot of time to watch a whole lot of pro wrestling these days so in that respect I don't have a whole lot of time for Konosuke Takeshita, but we are all about fairness and impartiality here so credit where it's due, I thought he was great in this and it's easily the most I've ever enjoyed him. It's kind of easy to forget that he's a pretty big dude but he really played up that size advantage here and almost worked like a Coke Zero Takayama with the knees and suplexes. He slowed the pace down and seemed to enjoy being able to chuck the little fella around, and some of those moments where he tried throwing him gave Darby a beautiful canvas to work escapes or teased momentum shifts on. Darby backflipping out of the first big high-angle German was gorgeous and seamless and could not been remotely easy to do, even if it looked like Darby did it with a graceful ease. Darby flies out for a tope and Takeshita hits him with one of the best looking knees to counter it you'll see. Following that up with the triple rolling German on the ramp was lunacy and Darby taking that last one on his neck looked hideous. Takeshita ends up in most trouble when he gets cocky, taking too long soaking up his own bullshit and giving Darby a window for recovery, smashing into the barricade off a missed flying knee. Darby's code red was perfection, partly in his timing of it and the speed with which he hit it, but also with how Takeshita set it up, hunched over selling the leg without making it obvious he was getting into place to take a move that requires an obvious level of cooperation. Allin is certifiable so those moments where he tells someone to hit him don't come off as typical macho strike-trading nonsense and more like a pain junky trying to rev himself up. Only here he asked for Takeshita to hit him again and Takeshita fucking obliterated him with an elbow. The Everest German was complete madness and then the running knee finish was a picture. It's been a while since I've watched Darby and it only took me a couple minutes of this starting to remember how good he is. He is very, very good, brothers and sisters. 

There we go then. 15 years, 1300 posts, all nonsense all the time. Here's to 1300 more. 

Re-Watching Jushin Thunder Liger (part 4)

Jushin Liger v Shinjiro Ohtani (New Japan, 5/28/93)

Outside of a couple brief moments where they frittered in a kneebar, this was pretty much fantastic. Ohtani was a phenomenal underdog with a chip on his shoulder and took it to Liger right from the start, slapping him when Liger offered up a handshake before the bell and really never letting up. His performance had a great balance of defiance and understanding of the gap in hierarchy between them at this point. It's kind of insane that he hadn't even made his debut 12 months prior so he was a literal rookie here. It felt like he went to the leg because that was what a young guy not even a year into his career would do, especially against the ace of the division. It's probably a decent enough strategy to begin with, nothing overly complicated, nothing that forces him too far out of his comfort zone, and he wouldn't have enough bombs to go at Liger more directly yet anyway. Liger is one of the best "okay he's about to kill this kid" wrestlers ever and there were a couple stellar moments where you knew he'd had enough. Ohtani had him in one of those leglocks and Liger broke it by rolling onto his back and heel kicking him in the face. When he stood up I would've put money on where it would go, and initially it went there when he fucking obliterated Ohtani with a shotei, but I loved how Ohtani fought back quickly and weathered the storm before Liger could really punish him. You could tell Liger made a point of giving him a ton, selling big for everything Ohtani hit and Ohtani absolutely made the most of it, to the point where the crowd were molten getting behind him. Liger hit one disgusting rolling kick to Ohtani's face, then whipped him into the corner to follow up with another, but at the last second Ohtani flipped out onto the apron as Liger crashed into the buckles, Ohtani hitting a springboard dropkick as Liger gets up and turns around. Ohtani followed that up with two more of the same, the second as Liger is down on one knee selling the leg and Ohtani basically lands across that leg while dropkicking him on the back of the head. It was an awesome sequence and people were going ballistic. Towards the end Liger starts picking apart Ohtani's arm, trying to break the thing across his own shoulder with some really nasty shots, and Ohtani was amazing selling all of that. Liger was always going to string together some proper offence and he wouldn't need much of it to put Ohtani away, but the Ligerbomb being as outrageous as any you've ever seen is sort of a compliment when you think about it. Liger might've been bang in the middle of his peak here - not a particularly short peak either - and honestly, this was probably par for the course for him in terms of performance level. He gave Ohtani the floor though, something that maybe isn't as easy as we take for granted, and you better believe Ohtani ran with it. I really think this might be my favourite of all their matches together. 

Re-Watching Jushin Thunder Liger (part 3)

Jushin Liger v Rey Misterio Jr. (WCW Starrcade, 12/29/96)

Imagine being a tape trader in 1996 and you hear they're running this match on PPV. Tenay as the voice of the wrestling nerds tells it true when he calls it a dream match and I can only guess how crazy people went when it was announced. It's cool to see Liger work as a base and get to bully a much smaller guy, even if he never truly mauls Rey like he might've if he were INVADING. Maybe there wasn't enough enmity between New Japan and WCW for that. I loved the early moment where Rey tried to take him to the mat with an ankle pick and Liger just looked down at him like no. If you're taking him down you're earning it and I guess Rey never earned it, although he never got stomped on the back of the head like Gran Naniwa would've. Liger hits Rey with a crazy suplex off the apron and then a powerbomb on the floor, sort of working the back for a little bit. Liger putting the clamps on someone in their own house is usually fun and I wish they played it up a bit more. They don't go for crazy epic here, probably due to card placement, but Rey still gets to hit some spectacular stuff, the springboard moonsault looking amazing as always. I think that finish might've been mistimed so I'm sure the 1996 internet wrestling community would've had a word or two to say about that. You know, probably. 

Jushin Liger v Chris Hero (PWG Battle of Los Angeles, 9/2/16)

This might be the most recent Liger match I've seen, four years shy of his eventual retirement. It was pretty minimalist, first round match of a tournament and all that, but also pretty awesome! It's ageing junior heavyweight legend versus peak beefboy heavyweight and Hero is extremely BEEFY here, looking almost Takayama-ish. He throws lots of really nice elbows and kicks, nice stomps and knees, some great running variations and rolling variations of everything. I usually cannot be arsed with most most modern strikes, all thigh-slapping for the audial effect, but these ones looked good and some were great. He's obviously substantially bigger than Liger and plays up the size difference in amusing ways, patting Liger on the head condescendingly before the bell, then challenging him to a shoulderblock contest, mockingly searching for Liger afterwards because he's a little guy and whatnot. When he got mean he got mean and there was one snap piledriver that looked brutal. Liger mostly played the hits when he got the chance to play anything at all, but the hits were probably what this crowd wanted out of a 51-year-old Liger at this stage of the game and of course he played them well. He also threw a number of palm thrust and koppu kicks and those still looked as great as always. I like that he couldn't hit the Liger Bomb due to the THICKNESS of Hero, so instead he used his veteran smarts and waited for Hero to climb the turnbuckles before catching him and hitting a regular powerbomb from there. In the end Hero was too much for someone at the tail end of their career, finishing the old man with a flurry of elbows that even prime Liger might've gone down to. I liked this a lot and I will endeavour to watch more old man Liger.