[stinger-splash]

MCMG vs Briscoes (Return Engagement) ***3/4

First ROH match I watched in a year, and probably the last one for a while. I'm a huge MCMG fans and they were fantastic in this match, but still I was bored during parts of the match. Crowd was pretty dead, except for some claps after a spot, they were silent all the time. I even heard the wrestlers and referee talk to eachtother many times.
Another annoying thing was no replay of big spots. Some spots weren't even shown, like Shelley's running kick and a dive to the outside. Other than that I think they only had two cameras, which sucked as well.
The action in the ring was still great, lots of fantastic back and forth, especially the final minutes. A few slower parts, but the chemistry was great. Psychology and storytelling were missing tho.
If you're ROH fan and in for some tag team wrestling, definitely watch it.

[GOD of CUNT]

Seriously, what Tiger Mask and his New Japan buddies were doing in 1982 pretty much shits over today's "innovation"! Nedless to say, I watched more Tiger Mask.

Tiger Mask v Steve Wright (NJPW, 4/1/82)

I probably shouldn't have been surprised that this was great, given the fact that Tiger Mask is Tiger Mask and any German guy wrestling in New Japan during he 80s was gonna provide something cool, but still, I was very surprised at how much I really dug this. Steve is the father of a certain Wunderkid, but I've never seen young Mr. Alex Wright pull out a fraction of the super fun stuff his daddy does. The cartwheels out of wristlocks into nip-ups into headstands into hammerlocks, so on and so forth, are some really fun sequences, and I must say, I marked at a couple of them. My favourite part of the whole match was probably the striking, though. Well, the forearms in particular. Sayama throws some sweet kicks, but this was all about the manly forearms, and both guys just slapped the taste out of the other's mouth with them. I love it. So yeah, minus the completely out of nowhere finish (albeit clean, for a change) this most definitely wasn't a waste of 20 minutes. ***3/4

-----------------

I also watched some more good shit involving Tiger Mask, as well as another Tiger (black), a snake man, and an assortment of Japanese fellows:

Tiger Mask v Black Tiger (NJPW, 5/26/82) ***3/4
Riki Chosu, Animal Hamiguchi & Yoshiaki Yatsu v Tatsumi Fujinami, Akira Maeda & Kengo Kimura (NJPW, 12/8/83) ***1/2
Yoshiaki Yatsu v Nobuhiko Takada (NJPW, 4/19/84) ***3/4 (Crowd is freaking MOLTEN)
The Cobra v Kuniaki Kobayashi (NJPW, 8/2/84) **** (Cobra somehow manages not to break his spine. And Kobayashi no-sells a tombstone on concrete)
Nobuhiko Takada v Shiro Koshinaka (NJPW, 8/5/86) ****
Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Don Nakaya Nielson (NJPW, 7/31/88) ***3/4 (STIFF)

All of this, aside from the Fujiwara/Nielson match, is available on D-man's site.

[vivalabrave]

Finally finished the 1st disc of my Kobashi comp today:

Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada (7/1/89) - ***3/4
Kenta Kobashi vs. Ricky Fuyuki (07/11/89) - ****
Kenta Kobashi & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Stan Hansen & Genichiro Tenryu (7/15/89) - ****
Kenta Kobashi vs. Johnny Ace (9/2/89) - ***
Kenta Kobashi vs. Great Kabuki (1/3/90) - ***1/2
Kenta Kobashi & Tiger Mask II (Mitsuhara Misawa) vs. Dynamite Kid &
Davey Boy Smith (1/20/90) - ***3/4
Kenta Kobashi vs. Tiger Mask II (Mitsuhara Misawa) (3/6/90) - ****1/4

Jobber Kobashi owns.

[KeepItFresh]

Originally Posted by stinger-splash

MCMG vs Briscoes (Return Engagement) ***3/4

First ROH match I watched in a year, and probably the last one for a while. I'm a huge MCMG fans and they were fantastic in this match, but still I was bored during parts of the match. Crowd was pretty dead, except for some claps after a spot, they were silent all the time. I even heard the wrestlers and referee talk to eachtother many times.
Another annoying thing was no replay of big spots. Some spots weren't even shown, like Shelley's running kick and a dive to the outside. Other than that I think they only had two cameras, which sucked as well.
The action in the ring was still great, lots of fantastic back and forth, especially the final minutes. A few slower parts, but the chemistry was great. Psychology and storytelling were missing tho.
If you're ROH fan and in for some tag team wrestling, definitely watch it.

Try MCMG/Age of The Fall. It was their best match from their return even if people don't pimp it because they weren't looking forward to that match as much.

[KaijuFan]

Originally Posted by Maxx Hero

I picked up from FIP the Danielson/Punk 2/3 Falls, the Punk/Strong show, and Evans/Strong, as well as the best of AJ in ROH. I don't really know the names of the FIP shows, they don't really matter though, all I care about on those shows is the main events.

I picked up the 2/3 falls for Dragon/Punk the last 5 dollar sale(Bring The Pain). The match itself is fine but I feel a bit awkward sometimes watching because the crowd is just so small. Aries vs Strong from the same show is worth a watch too. Plus a Heartbreak Express match, not bad for 5 bucks eh?

Next time that comes around I'd reccomend you getting Heatstroke 2006 Night 1. Dragon and Colt have a fantastic match with great comedy bits and an interactive crowd as well.

[-Mystery-]

Punk/Danielson fucking OWNS. Probably the best FIP match to date.

[stinger-splash]

Originally Posted by KeepItFresh

Try MCMG/Age of The Fall. It was their best match from their return even if people don't pimp it because they weren't looking forward to that match as much.

Heard good things about this one as well and it was on my list.

Will definitely try it one day. COD IV is the now the first ROH match on my list to watch.

[peep4life]

Speaking of owning and FIP how awesome was it seeing Sal job on ECW last night.

[vivalabrave]

Originally Posted by -Mystery-

Punk/Danielson fucking OWNS. Probably the best FIP match to date.

I think I'd agree. That or the Redifined main event.

Dragon/Punk's Dangerous Intentions match is also pretty awesome (though not as great). I also like Punk/Cabana from Payback if were talking great matches from FIP.

I thought MCMG/AOTF was better than MCMG/Briscoes II pretty easily until the end of the match. Just went into overkill for me. Same ratings but I liked the Briscoes match a tad more because of that.

[GOD of CUNT]

Originally Posted by vivalabrave

Finally finished the 1st disc of my Kobashi comp today:

Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada (7/1/89) - ***3/4
Kenta Kobashi vs. Ricky Fuyuki (07/11/89) - ****
Kenta Kobashi & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Stan Hansen & Genichiro Tenryu (7/15/89) - ****
Kenta Kobashi vs. Johnny Ace (9/2/89) - ***
Kenta Kobashi vs. Great Kabuki (1/3/90) - ***1/2
Kenta Kobashi & Tiger Mask II (Mitsuhara Misawa) vs. Dynamite Kid &
Davey Boy Smith (1/20/90) - ***3/4
Kenta Kobashi vs. Tiger Mask II (Mitsuhara Misawa) (3/6/90) - ****1/4

Jobber Kobashi owns.

From what I can remember, these raings are pretty much exactly the same as mine. I saw a few of them a few years ago (and a couple more than just a few years ago) when I never kept any record of my ninja stars (now I'm a sad bastard that keeps them all in a word doc. because I've seen that much shit), but I don't imagine them being too far off what I have them at.

It's really fuckin' amazing how awesome Kobashi was when he was a friggin' young lion that did the job every week.

I actually downloaded a Kobashi/Kawada match from 6/30/90 yesterday which I don't think I've seen. I was gonna watch it earlier, but the pills kicked in and I fell asleep watching Super Tiger knee Yoshiaki Fujiwara in the fucking skull (which is also awesome, btw).

So yeah, Kobashi owns. As does All Japan in general. And the 27 disc Stan Hansen set I came across today blew my mind. I was hoping to make a big-ass order of comps on payday (Friday), but still manage to keep enough cash for everything else I need (ie. alcohol and protein bars). Now I'll have to eschew the protein bars in favour of 27 discs of Western Lariat.