|
sticklefifer posted:I remember an early UFC where Don Frye and Dan Severn, two really good fighters who were kicking everyone's asses, were hyped into this big match. The match happened, and they lightly paced around each other for literally 15 minutes, barely throwing so much as a strike. I think there were two minor clinches in the whole thing. The referee had to yell at them to get them to fight. I don't know if they were just being extra cautious or if they just decided they could rake in tons of money without an actual fight, but it's the most boring fight I've ever seen. That's actually Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock at UFC 9, aka the Dance in Detroit. Severn and Don Frye never fought, they were actually friends and training partners. Frye was in Severn's corner for a lot of his UFC fights, and vice versa. The story behind the fight is that the UFC was coming under heavy government scrutiny, spearheaded by Senator John McCain. A lot of states and localities were passing laws to ban "no holds barred" competitions. The district attorney for Detroit initially tried to stop the event from happening, but finally allowed it to proceed with major alterations to the rules, such as no closed-fist blows to the head, no headbutts, etc. Severn and Shamrock were told that they would be arrested in the cage if they broke the new rules, and the result was that they didn't really know what they were allowed to do, or if they would be arrested for breaking some rule they hadn't be told about. So they both played it safe and wound up doing almost nothing. I think when they discussed it later, Severn said that he played it safe because he'd fought Shamrock before (at UFC 6) and lost by submission. For UFC 9 he wanted to force Shamrock to make the first move and then counter it, particularly because of the confusion about the rules. On his end Ken Shamrock claims that he fought like poo poo because he was badly injured from training, but he's a notoriously dishonest egomaniac so who knows.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2014 21:49 |
|
|
# ? Apr 24, 2024 04:55 |
|
In honor of August, a short compilation of Mr. August himself, Masahiro Chono. When he was on, he was on, but when he was off, holy poo poo it was bad. vs Ravishing Rick Rude, Part One Part Two WON's Worst Match of the Year for 1992 - for context, this was on the same card as the Coal Miner's Glove match and during a year where Erik Watts was getting a push. Absolutely wretched, no heat, no action, ends on a DQ. w/Team 2000 vs Tatsutoshi Goto, Hiro Saito, and Hiroyoshi Tenzan - Featuring Chono at the rear end-end of his career, broken down from injures and borderline immobile, an absolutely ancient Goto, Giant Silva from the Oddities, Tenzan, and an extremely green, barely-trained Great Khali. vs Hulk Hogan, Part One Part Two - Goes almost twenty minutes when both men were no longer capable of convincingly working longer than half that. Worth watching at least for Hogan shouting "axe bomber!" in a Japanese accent. vs Chyna - I mean I don't know what you're expecting by clicking on this link but if it's not exactly what you get then you may have brain problems I can't track down a video of him vs. Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Brock Lesnar for the IWGP title or else it would've been the first thing I put in here. At least it's mercifully short. That entire stretch of NJPW with Fujita constantly in the main event was ghastly, and on top of that it came on the heels of a year of loving Tenzan.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2014 21:54 |
|
EvanSchenck posted:That's actually Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock at UFC 9, aka the Dance in Detroit. Severn and Don Frye never fought, they were actually friends and training partners. Frye was in Severn's corner for a lot of his UFC fights, and vice versa. You're right, my bad. I've somehow forgotten everything about Ken Shamrock beyond WWF.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2014 22:21 |
|
Solomonic posted:vs Ravishing Rick Rude, Part One Part Two WON's Worst Match of the Year for 1992 - for context, this was on the same card as the Coal Miner's Glove match and during a year where Erik Watts was getting a push. Absolutely wretched, no heat, no action, ends on a DQ. This is also coming off the heels of their G1 Climax final a few months prior, which was a terrific match. RE: Fujita. As great as New Japan is now, at this time a decade ago it was absolutely horrible thanks to Inoki's crazy rear end, winning Worst Major Promotion in the WON and badly shortchanging the star potential of guys like Nagata and especially Tenzan. In particular, Kaz Fujita's IWGP title defense against Kensuke Sasaki (who was in the middle of a career renaissance in '04 after sucking for years) was one of the title's low points. A weak match with a remarkably lovely finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-KcDTJaKfA Currently trying to find the Osaka Dome main event where Inoki comes out and berates Nakamura after the match to the point where Nakamura was allegedly within a hair's breadth of legit beating his rear end. hunnert car pileup fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Aug 23, 2014 |
# ? Aug 23, 2014 22:42 |
|
The Mick Foley/Kevin Kelly commentary, the insanely dead crowd and the dog sex all combine to transform the Kennel from Hell match into an absolutely special experience.
|
# ? Aug 23, 2014 23:04 |
|
Fauxhawk Express posted:Currently trying to find the Osaka Dome main event where Inoki comes out and berates Nakamura after the match to the point where Nakamura was allegedly within a hair's breadth of legit beating his rear end. Oh man, you're looking for this match, featuring three of the worst wrestlers in NJPW history (edit: I am being deeply unfair to Kendo Kashin, who has been in some really good tag matches, but I don't care ) and Shinsuke back in his 'the most boring man in the world' phase. Inoki is so mad at how incredibly awful the match is that he just straight up punches Nakamura in the face, not even trying to act like he's working. If Fujita hadn't gotten between them the old man probably would've been murdered and we would now be in a different timeline where Mutoh inherited NJPW or something. Solomonic fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 24, 2014 |
# ? Aug 24, 2014 00:28 |
|
In another alternate history bit, that match was originally supposed to be Nakamura vs Ogawa but was changed to get Ogawa out of there because he was afraid of Shinsuke shooting on him.
|
# ? Aug 24, 2014 00:42 |
|
Solomonic posted:Oh man, you're looking for this match, featuring three of the worst wrestlers in NJPW history (edit: I am being deeply unfair to Kendo Kashin, who has been in some really good tag matches, but I don't care ) and Shinsuke back in his 'the most boring man in the world' phase. This is like watching an alternate universe Nakamura.
|
# ? Aug 24, 2014 01:13 |
|
This is goddamned amazing and I want to know all of the story behind CLONE'S CLONE
|
# ? Aug 24, 2014 01:57 |
|
There are no videos of the matches I can find online, but here are the stories of the three worst Chikara matches I've ever had the honor of seeing, all taking place during the peak of the promotion. 1) La Parkita vs. Payaso del Futuro Kind of similar to what Beyond does now, Chikara used to do "secret shows" where they'd film a couple matches with no audience and then charge like $3 for people to download it. Somehow, La Parkita -- a midget version of La Parka, obviously -- got wind of one of these shows, showed up and convinced Quack to book him for a show. And he was like, sure, why not. At 2007's Maximum Overdraft, they had La Parkita vs. Payaso del Futuro, who was a fat guy in a ridiculous set of cyborg clown tights. I was excited for it because of the novelty, but it wore off real fast. First off, Parkita was more than likely intoxicated. Before the match, he brought some middle-aged woman into the ring with him and danced with her for an extended amount of time. The match was just him doing a couple hurricanrana-type moves to Payaso here and there, then spending about 70% trying to get the fans to chant, "PARKITA!" And we did. The first couple times. But he kept asking again and again and again. Payaso never got any offense in or anything. He was just there to bump for Parkita's headscissor takedowns in-between him constantly trying to start "PARKITA!" chants. After the match ended, he brought that woman back into the ring and kept dancing with her. He drunkenly danced forever. From what I understand, Quack's response was less anger and annoyance and more incredulous, claiming, "He just wouldn't stop dancing!" In case you were wondering, La Parkita was murdered by a couple prostitutes a year or so later. 2) The Cold Front vs. the UnStable You could argue that King of Trios 2009 was the best Trios show they ever did just based on the talent involved. Bryan Danielson, El Generico, the Young Bucks, Austin Aries, Kota Ibushi, Johnny Saint, etc. Even Necro Butcher was used extremely well. Unfortunately, the show is hurt from having two awful matches on the card. The first round was slated to have Vin Gerard/Stigma/Colin Delaney take on Al Snow/Glacier/Iceberg. Glacier appeared at the show the previous year and was over as gently caress because he's Glacier and it's Chikara. Putting him with two cold-based wrestlers made sense and because he and Snow were mainstream names, it made sense to make this the main event of the first night. I don't know if it was legit or if it was planned from the beginning, but it was announced that Iceberg missed his flight and would be replaced. They did an amusing bit in the beginning where they picked replacement partners out of a hat and drew guys like Shinobi, Avatar and Lief Cassidy. Finally, D'Lo Brown's name came out and he showed up. The match could have been passable if it was 10-15 minutes long, but the whole thing was at least a half hour and it just went on forever. D'Lo was okay. Glacier was... Glacier. Al Snow, meanwhile, didn't give the slightest poo poo, wrestled like he simply didn't want to be there and the UnStable guys weren't good enough to offset it by a longshot. How lazy was Al Snow in this match? When it was time for him to do a hot tag spot, he couldn't even be bothered to crawl and did a standing hot tag. Look at that. Look at Glacier giving more of a poo poo than Al Snow. It thankfully ended in a surprise roll-up and the Cold Front was gone from the show. Glacier and D'Lo appeared a couple months later and D'Lo was a regular co-host on the Chikara podcast, but Al Snow was never even mentioned ever again. From what I hear, he acted like a dick backstage. The match is kind of hilarious when you match it up with Snow's philosophy of how important the main event is and how the undercard shouldn't be allowed to be better than the last match because that's what people came to see. Also notable because HulkaMatt bought the entire weekend on DVD and after seeing this match, he never finished the rest. It was that bad. 3) Pierre Abernathy and Evan Gelistico vs. Davey Vega and Gary the Barn Owl This one is head-and-shoulders above the other two matches and it even led to some fun stuff down the line, but it's still infamous for its badness. The second night of King of Trios 2009 had a couple showcase matches from other promotions. Inter-Species Wrestling had Player Uno vs. Twiggy, which was fun and the crowd was into it. They also had a tag match with some representatives from the Lethal Wrestling Alliance and it was crap. Now, if this match was on almost any other Chikara show, nobody would have really minded. Indy guys are allowed to have bad matches. It was just that they were smack in the middle of the biggest show amongst some of the biggest indy names, so it stuck out like a sore thumb. None of the guys were very good and none of them appeared to be in very good shape. The crowd turned against it pretty badly and by the time it was over, there was a "DON'T COME BACK!" chant. It worked out in the end, since the four guys came back a few years later as a stable called the Submission Squad, where they keep trying to invade Chikara to get back at the fans, only for things to constantly go wrong. So at the very least, they can still do "stable of comedy jobbers" better than Al Snow ever could.
|
# ? Sep 7, 2014 15:03 |
|
UFC 83. Nate Quarry vs. Khalib Starnes. Kalib claims he injured his hand in the fight, but that doesn't excuse his performance as he spent the majority of it circling away from Nate. I can't find the whole fight or a video with sound but here's the last 40 seconds of the fight. As you can see, Nate gets a bit frustrated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBQnlwq-sCQ Quarry beat Starnes 30-27, 30-26, and hilariously 30-24, one of two times that score has ever been recorded. Not surprisingly this fight led to Starnes' release from the UFC.
|
# ? Sep 7, 2014 15:24 |
|
Gavok posted:2) The Cold Front vs. the UnStable Just FYI this is 100% true. This to me is the worst loving match in Professional Wrestling History. I bought those shows as a set. The first match I watched was the 4 way from Night 2 that people were raving about - and then I went to watch the whole thing in order. I watched Night 1, and have not touched the disc for Night 2 ever since. I haven't even opened Disc 3.
|
# ? Sep 9, 2014 20:21 |
|
|
# ? Apr 24, 2024 04:55 |
|
2009 is the only King of Trios I own and that match almost made me hate everything about it.
|
# ? Sep 9, 2014 23:18 |