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Yeah, going from their American work to their Japanese work is like watching a rat cook a four-star meal. What I’m saying is that Williams/Kobashi I reminded Meltzer of that time his mom cooked... gently caress, what does Dave even eat Does Dave even eat Well this simile went off a cliff It’s amazing how underutilized both guys were in WCW/WWF - Williams I can understand because he was coming to the company after a long Japan run and another half-decade of 80s territory work, so he was basically 90% to retirement already, but Scott Norton was IWGP champ WHILE THE NWO WAS A THING, HE WAS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME, YOU IDIOTS 
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Oct 28, 2018 06:02
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i havent seen any matches that i remember with scott norton. can you recommend anything that i can find on youtube? my favorite wrestler is stan hansen. i like some of the matches from williams and vader. brody only looks good in tags. the funks are awesome rate your top gajins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp8hlOQFkwE
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Oct 28, 2018 14:54
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They jobbed Scott Norton to the Cat. AFTER he was IWGP Champion. Then WCW brought the Great Muta in 2000. And jobbed him to the Cat.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:15
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Almost as if there is some link to late WCW and TNA that would lead to them misusing New Japan talent
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Oct 28, 2018 19:40
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Scott Norton actually defended the IWGP Championship on WCW Nitro......against Van Hammer. In a 2 minute squash.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:40
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Shiki Dan posted:They jobbed Scott Norton to the Cat. i mean he was eric bischoffs sons karate instructor they just had to job muta and scott norton to him!!!
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Oct 28, 2018 22:20
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When I was first getting in to wrestling in the late 90's, the 1994 Super J Cup was legendary. It had some of the best talent in the world and the most beloved names in the Internet Wrestling Community at the time(plus Ricky Fuji) all in one tournament. It had Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Taka Michinoku, Hayabusa, Jushin Liger, and The Great Sasuke, plus more obscure, but still talented, guys like Super Delfin, El Samurai, Shinjiro Ohtani, Negro Casas and Gedo. It featured talent not just from New Japan, but FMW, WAR, CMLL and Michinoku Pro. Check this out. I even sprung for the fancy reproduction case.  This was how you got Japanese wrestling in the late 90s and early 2000s'. You ordered it from Highspots then printed out the match list because the computer and your TV were in different rooms and you didn't know who anybody was at first and the titles were all in Japanese and the printout was always blue because your printer was always out of black ink. Dave Meltzer called it "the most incredible single night of wrestling ever" and when I first saw these tapes I was inclined to agree. Let's see if it still holds up. Dean Malenko(NJPW) vs Gedo(WAR) Super J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match April 16, 1994. Ryogoku Kokugikan Of course the NJPWorld version cuts out the entrances. What was cool about the Super J Cup entrances was the name plates had a little logo of the company the person was from. Dean Malenko should need no introduction. The Man of 1,000 Holds. Easily in the Top 6 Best Horsemen of All Time. At the time of this tournament, he had been working for New Japan for a couple years, but had spent most of his career so far working in All Japan in a tag team with his brother, the oft-forgotten Joe Malenko. Gedo... I used to strongly dislike Gedo. I didn't(and still don't) see the point of fat, brawly junior heavyweights. If you'd'a told me at the time this mediocre, babyfaced(as in literally fat like a baby) indy geek would turn in to the savior of modern New Japan, I wouldn't've believed you. Hell for a little while I didn't even believe this Gedo and the current Gedo were actually the same person. This was a great showcase for Malenko. He spends most of the match wrestling circles around Gedo(who, to his credit, had better mat wrestling chops than I remember). Even when Gedo has the advantage, Malenko quickly executes an answer for it. He just looks tremendous in everything he does. His technical wrestling is smooth, his suplexes are crisp, his strikes are forceful. Apparently I had forgotten just how good Dean Malenko really was.   The last third of the match features some pretty good near-falls that got a strong reaction from a mostly quiet(or respectful?) crowd. The finish was kinda flat as Gedo won off of an out-of-nowhere powerslam. Though to be fair it was a pretty strong slam.  A pretty good little match, even if the finish was kinda bad and the wrong guy won. Would have been great to see Malenko make it further. Worth checking out if somehow you've never seen Dean Malenko. Even if you have seen Dean Malenko, it's worth checking out because it's loving Dean Malenko and he's great. Shinjiro Ohtani(NJPW) vs Super Delfin(M-Pro) Super-J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match One of the fist Japanese wrestling tapes I ever ordered(besides this one) was a Best of Ultimo Dragon compilation. It featured matches with the usual suspects of early-mid-90s Junior Heavyweight wrestling like Liger and Sasuke, but there were several matches with someone I had never heard of before: Shinjiro Ohtani. Ohtani impressed me so much I soon bought a Best of Shinjiro Ohtani compilation and I feel like he's the most underrated Junior Heavyweight of the era. At this point he's still a Young Lion, though. Super Delfin... is fine. He's spent almost all of his career, as far as I know, on the Japanese indies like M-Pro or Osaka Pro. He goes into this tournament as the UWF World Super Welterweight Champion. This was another match where the cool talented guy dominated but then the less-cool less-talented guy won with an out-of-nowhere move. Ohtani showed the kind of aggression and relentless viciousness that would become his trademark, spending most of the match wrapped somehow or another around Delfin's leg. Deflin did, y'know, a couple things, but this match was all Ohtani. Until Delfin hit a Tornado DDT for the win.    This hurt just watching it. As a Young Lion, the outcome of this match was inevitable, but Ohtani outclassed Delfin in every way. Black Tiger(NJPW) vs TAKA Michinoku(M-Pro) Super J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match This is the kind of match up that made this show a dream for wrestling fans in the late 90s, especially those that had just gotten in to wrestling at that time. Even though this took place years before, it was like watching a WCW vs WWF match. It's interesting watching Eddie Guerrero as Black Tiger because he's much more aggressive(and less sleazy) than he ever was working in the US. TAKA has only been wrestling for a couple years at this point and it kind of shows. There's a few moments where he looks like he's not quite sure what to do next. But asides from some (very) minor fumbling by TAKA, this was a tremendous spotfest of a match. It opened with Black Tiger hitting a string of signature spots and getting a nearfall off a powerbomb in less than a minute and just kept going from there. It's shorter than the previous two matches but more action-packed than either of them and full of big spots and jaw-dropping sequences.    In the end, Black Tiger gets the win with a Tornado DDT(and a way better one than Delfin's.) El Samurai(NJPW) vs Masayoshi Motegi(SPWF) Super J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match Motegi, who just retired this past August, spent most of his career working in various deathmatch promotions like Big Japan, IWA Japan, W*ING, and even a few matches in early ECW. For this tournament, he's representing Social Progressive Wrestling Federation, a company that doesn't even have a wikipedia page, and searching for it just leads to links about the current British company Progress Wrestling. Apparently he invented the Rolling German Suplex. This was such a step down from the rest of the matches so far. It was... Fine. It was OK. There were a couple dives. But compared to the other matches on the show it was so uninspired and kinda felt outdated. It's not bad by any stretch but it feels like everyone is trying to wow the audience then these guys come out and just have a regular match. Motegi did a rolling Mexican Surfboard that was actually pretty cool, but too long to gif. But other than that, there's a strong chance this is the worst match on the show. Almost forgot, Samurai wins with a German Suplex. Negro Casas(NJPW) vs Ricky Fuji(FMW) Super J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match Even though he's credited as being a part of NJPW, Negro Casas has been a mainstay of CMLL since his debut in the early 80s. He's a part of a significant wrestling family(Including Heavy Metal, El Felino, Puma and Tiger), and helped trained the likes of NOSAWA, TJP, and Rocky Romero. Plus, he has an 18-9-1 Apuesta record with his latest victory being this past January. Ricky Fuji had an interesting early career. He was apart of the NJPW Dojo class of 84(alongside The Three Musketeers and Jushin Liger) but left to join the UWF, failed, then went to Canada and trained under Stu Hart at The Dungeon. In Stampede Wrestling he was booked as Tiger Mask but then dropped the gimmick once they found out AJPW had the rights to the character. He then adopted the Ricky Fuji character which was inspired by Shawn Michaels and was almost hired by the WWF at the recommendation of Bruce Hart before winding up in FMW. A match as short as this shouldn't have this many rest holds. A match this short shouldn't have any rest holds, really. The only thing that saves this match from being worse than the last match is that it was just barely over 5 minutes, plus this dive from Casas.  You'd think that someone that trained in the New Japan Dojo and the Dungeon and took inspiration from Shawn Michaels wouldn't be as bad as Ricky Fuji, but somehow he is. For what I assume is the sake of adding promotional variety to the second round, Ricky Fuji wins with a Tiger Bomb. Jushin Thunder Liger(NJPW) vs Hayabusa(FMW) Super J Cup 1994 Preliminary Match While Hayabusa has a reputation as an innovator and influencer in pro wrestling, especially in the late-90s and early 00s, this match marks the first time the Hayabusa character appeared in Japan. He began wrestling in 1991 under his real name and was sent on excursion to Mexico in late 1993. So not only is this his debut as Hayabusa, but he had only been training in lucha libre for a few months by this point. They did a great job of making a 10 minute match feel like an epic, back-and-forth contest, even if the early portion did suffer from Pointless Leg Submissions. The match starts with Hayabusa attacking Liger before the bell and there was a dive within the first 15 seconds.  I think Hayabusa's only offensive moves that weren't either spinning kicks or off the top rope were a bodyslam and a rib breaker. His inexperience was obvious, though. I think this was supposed to be a flying headscissors?  And then there was this.  I think this should have been a big moment, as Liger was the only person to do a Shooting Star Press at this point. But then he botched it and made himself look like an inept imitation of Liger. Despite the minor flaws, this was still a pretty good match, and my second favorite from this stage of the tournament, next to TAKA/Black Tiger. And that's the first round of the Super-J Cup. They weren't all great, but the good far outweighs the bad, and the show is only beginning. You may have noticed that I mentioned Chris Benoit and The Great Sasuke in the list of participants, yet they were not in any first round matches. That's because Benoit and Sasuke got byes into the second round, for reasons I've never been able to discover. Next time I'll be watching the quarterfinal matches: Jushin Thunder Liger vs Ricky Fuji, Super Delfin vs Gedo, El Samurai vs The Great Sasuke, and Black Tiger vs Wild Pegasus .
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Nov 10, 2018 00:10
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Takuan posted:Black Tiger vs Wild Pegasus . Hell. loving. yes. It still blows my mind to think this stuff was going on in 94. I had stopped watching wrestling for a little while around this period but even if I'd have been able to watch it I wouldn't have been able to believe my eyes compared to what I grew up on with WWF.
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Nov 10, 2018 11:18
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Some notes: -I don't remember the details, but I remember reading something about TAKA Michinoku being a kinda last-minute substitute for someone else who pulled out. -SPWF was one of the splinter companies formed in the wake of Super World of Sports going under, its entire idea being that it would be by and for people who held down day jobs and college careers, plus offering training to them. It also held a few intergender matches in the early '90s and iirc actually took on female trainees, so basically it was a precursor to the modern indie? Somehow it shambled along until the late '00s, but I think they weren't putting on shows for years at a time. fake edit: I just went to go double-check some of my info and the company died in 2011 and then again in 2017. Yowza.
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Nov 10, 2018 19:14
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LvK posted:Some notes: Probably Gran Hamada or Kikuchi
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Nov 10, 2018 19:55
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Great thread. I’m a little late getting through it but in case no one else mentioned it, you’d said you hadn’t heard much of Buzz Sawyer so here’s Cornette with some pretty good stories of how insane and unpleasant he was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M6vNVTjo6c
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Nov 11, 2018 21:27
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Aesop Poprock posted:Great thread. I’m a little late getting through it but in case no one else mentioned it, you’d said you hadn’t heard much of Buzz Sawyer so here’s Cornette with some pretty good stories of how insane and unpleasant he was Buzz is the fuckwit who ripped off Taker when Take was trying to get trained, right?
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Nov 12, 2018 06:20
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Wild Pegasus vs Black Tiger Super-J Cup 1994 Quarter Final Match By this point in his New Japan Career, Chris Benoit had won the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship in 1990 as well as the 1993 Best of the Super Juniors. As much as I enjoy the works of bothe Benoit and Eddie Guerrero, I've always found their matches together to be underwhelming. I don't know if it's because they're styles just don't mesh well, or if it's because I'm expecting too much out of them. I remember the first time I watched this show, I was really excited for this match and it was just kinda disappointing. It's not a bad match, by any stretch, but it's an average match by two amazing performers, so it feels like a let down. Both of these guys have better matches on this show with other people, when you would think putting two of the best of all time together should be a show-stealer. All that being said, there were some impressive spots in the match.   And then this:  To me this is incredibly impressive. Everything about a ring rope makes it a difficult surface to stand on- it's smooth, it's small, it's round, and when you're doing something like this you're landing on it with the least amount of surface area coverage you can have. So for him to land on the rope with one foot, lose his balance, then hop over to the other foot and stabilize himself, then continue on with the spot, is a staggering level of balance and coordination. I dunno, maybe it's just my personal taste and this is actually a great match. Super Delfin vs Gedo Super J-Cup 1994 Quarter Final Match Both Delfin and Gedo look much better in this match than they did in their preliminary matches. Then again this could be because they weren't overshadowed by much more talented opponents. It's a simple, though unremarkable, but still zippy and fun, back and forth between Gedo's hard-hitting brawling and Delfin's flippy lucha style. Gedo even does a flip!  Once again Gedo wins out of nowhere after Delfin hits the Tornado DDT, but Gedo reverses the pinfall after. Somehow I enjoyed this more than the Benoit/Guererro match. Or at least I was more engaged in it. Jushin Liger vs Ricky Fuji Super J-Cup 1994 Quarter Final Match If I were booking this tournament, I would've had Ricky Fuji and Hayabusa swap places. Liger gets an easy first round win, Hayabusa gets to shine a little more by actually beating someone, an FMW representative would still be in the second round, and I wouldn't have had to watch this match. This might be the worst match of the show. Ricky Fuji/Gran Hamada was bad, but at least it was short. This felt like a slog to watch, even though it was only 8 minutes. Liger tried, but Fuji just contributed nothing of value to the match when he was in control, which was for most of the match.He couldn't even take a monkey flip right.  This was pretty cool though.  Liger(thankfully) wins with a flying hurricanrana. The Great Sasuke(Michinoku Pro) vs El Samurai Super J-Cup 1994 Quarter Final Match The Great Sasuke made is debut in 1990 and returned to Japan in 1993, founding his own independent promotion, Michinoku Pro, in March of 1993. This was the first wrestling promotion to not be based in or around Tokyo. Sasuke would work, and win titles, across the Japanese independent scene. This was his first match in front of a New Japan audience, but a portion of the crowd seemed already familiar with him judging by the "Sas'ke!" chants he was getting as soon as the match started. Most of the match is spent with El Samurai trying to, and succeeding at, keeping Sasuke grounded with mat wrestling, and generally working his legs and knees. Once Sasuke manages to fight his way free...   At this point the match changes gears to Sasuke throwing everything he has at Samurai to try to finish him off and trying to find a way sneak a victory.  And Sasuke eventually succeeds by rolling through a hurricanrana and barely scoring a victory. A solid match, a good showing by El Samurai and a great introduction for The Great Sasuke. Wild Pegasus vs Gedo Super J Cup 1994 Semi-Final Match This was a short, formulaic match that was... I guess 'serviceable' is the best word for it. Benoit started out strong and Gedo, even though he was in control for most of the match, looked like someone who knew he was in way over his head and was desperately throwing everything he could think of at his opponent. He even went for a moonsault from the top rope to the outside. He even tries to use Benoit's own move against him.  But fails. Benoit wins with a diving headbutt that's horrible to watch. Even removed from the context of who's doing it, it just looks awful and like it's hurting the person doing it way more than it could possibly hurt the person taking it. I don't want to gif it, but he basically does a Flair Flop off the top rope and lands face-first. Jushin Thunder Liger vs The Great Sasuke Super J Cup 1994 Semi-Final Match Match starts off with some fun and creative mat wrestling with Sasuke on the bad end of most of it.   Sasuke gets knocked out by a rolling kick and the referee shows a great way to attend to someone who's may have a cranial injury.  I know it's a work but this is like an EMT saying "Hmm, This guy might have a spinal injury. Let me try repositioning him." Even after he recovers, Liger continues trying to dismantle Sasuke with a series of arm submissions. This match and the Gedo/Benoit match are an interesting parallel. That match was the story of someone who had squeaked through the tournament trying anything he can to beat someone he knew was out of his league, but can't. This match is the story of someone who feels this tournament is his to lose trying to put an upstart in his place, but can't. Sasuke finally gets his feet under him and hits a beautiful Asai Moonsault.  He follows that up with slightly less beautiful but still amazing swanton that, due to the camera angles, I can't make a decent gif of. The rest of the match is Liger and Sasuke trading big moves and neafalls and it's pretty loving great.   And then there's one of my favorite moments in all of wrestling:  It's Liger's reaction that makes it. Sasuke doesn't let it get him down, and hits Liger with a rana to not only move on to the finals, but get a huge upset victory. This was a tremendous match and easily the best match of the tournament so far. Wild Pegasus vs The Great Sasuke Super J Cup 1994 Final Sasuke and Benoit have had dramatically different runs to the finals. Benoit had 2 relatively short, comparatively easy matches while Sasuke has had 2 gruelling contests, both of which he just barely came out on the winning side of. Even though Sasuke is visibly more tired and worn down at the start of the match, this is a much more even, back-and-forth match than either man has had so far in the tournament. It's a refreshing change of pace from the Dominant Benoit and Underdog Sasuke dynamic their other matches have had. In the early stages of this match, Sasuke has a chance to show off some of his acrobatic abilities.   There are some great reversal sequences in this. They're either too long or have too many camera cuts to make gifs of. Despite clearly being exhausted, Sasuke can still not only keep up with Benoit, but do poo poo like this.   In spite of everything, Sasuke comes so close to winning but makes the fatal mistake of playing to the crowd while on the top rope instead of going for the win, allowing Benoit enough time to recover and hit a super gutwrench suplex.  Chris Benoit wins the 1994 Super J Cup. Another tremendous match. Maybe didn't have as gripping of a story as Sasuke/Liger, but still a fantastic showcase for both Benoit and Sasuke. Even though Benoit won, this show was a star-making night for The Great Sasuke. If my math is right, he wrestled for 49 minutes on this show, about 15 minutes longer than Liger or Benoit, who wrestled for 36 and 35 minutes, respectively. And so that was the legendary Super J Cup. Was it as great as I remember? Not really. Is it still the best single night of wrestling? Definitely not. Is it still worth watching as a whole? Yeah, I'd say so. It's still a great show, as a whole, and it's still interesting to see all these different guys from all over the world who would go on to each have their own significant legacies in the wrestling business all on one show. Liger/Sasuke and Benoit/Sasuke are still must-see matches, Sasuke/Samurai, Liger/Hayabusa, Michinoku/Guerrero, and(Depending on your tastes) Benoit/Guerrero are also really good. Everything else on the show(other than maybe 2 matches) are at a minimum decent. I would absolutely recommend watching the whole show, if you have the time. Next time I'll be looking at Antonio Inoki vs The Great Muta, the rematch between Tatsumi Fujinami & Shinya Hashimoto, and the Best of The Super Juniors Final, Jushin Thunder Liger vs Super Delfin.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:06
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I love when Liger has those flashes of arrogant dickishness in his work.
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Dec 13, 2018 22:37
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Tonfa posted:I love when Liger has those flashes of arrogant dickishness in his work. Yea it’s great. He’s Liger so he can’t ever be a full heel forever but the Togo match or the NOAH feud where he gets to turn it up
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Dec 14, 2018 03:39
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Willninho posted:Yea it’s great. He’s Liger so he can’t ever be a full heel forever but the Togo match or the NOAH feud where he gets to turn it up New fans need to watch that NOAH feud (and G1 2003) before writing off the entire 00s as a "dark period" for NJPW.
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Dec 14, 2018 05:27
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