I Do Like SLL's All-Request Monday

Randy Savage vs. The Ultimate Warrior (WWF, 8/29/1992)
Requested by Jingus

Hey, it's that other Savage/Warrior match, and I tend to think there's a good reason it's the "other" one. This is a fine example of a match that's very easy to like, but hard to love, a lot of which is down to the angle surrounding it, which I'll get to in a second. The work itself is strong enough to enjoy, and certainly higher-end than your average Warrior match, but not particularly impressive for a Savage match, and overall, not enough to make this really stand out from the pack. If nothing else, Savage deserves credit for eating Warrior's typically shitty offense really well. I've written before about the nature of a good carryjobs, and whether or not a carryjob where you draw all the attention to your own performance while your opponent still looks like shit is really a carryjob. This is a match where Savage actually makes Warrior look like a competent - albeit flawed - wrestler. This is a good carryjob. Still, it is the Warrior. You can polish that turd a lot, but not often, and while this was a game effort from all involved, there was still some classic Warrior suck shining through. Most notably, there was his selling of the neck when Savage was working it over. I guess I should be impressed when Warrior sells a body part at all, but it was mostly him lolling his head around like Stevie Wonder, which just looked goofy. Speaking of musical references and Warrior looking goofy, I hadn't watched a Warrior match in a while, and I had forgotten how silly his no-selling comebacks looked. I had remembered him doing no-selling comebacks. I had forgotten he did them by dancing like Jennifer Beals did to "Maniac". He also blows a top-rope axehandle. I know Warrior didn't come off of the top rope regularly, but I seriously don't get how you blow an axehandle. He released his grip before it hit Savage, and essentially turned it into a tomahawk chop. I don't know how you fuck up in that specific way. On top of all of this, this was the period that Warrior was wrestling in his proto-Giant Gonzalez flesh singlet...ewwwww. Still, the match is pretty solid overall, with Warrior's problems present but minimal. Then the angle kicks in, and this is where they lose me (well, Savage drops Warrior with a sweet piledriver around this point, so it doesn't lose me completely). In case you missed it, Mr. Perfect had been telling everyone that he was going to be in either Savage or Warrior's corner, but wouldn't say who, getting into both guys' heads and making them paranoid (as if either of them needed help with that) over who had sold out to Perfect. So far, so good. Now, as I have heard it, the plan was that Warrior was going to be the one who would sell out, and that he would win the Title as a result, but Warrior nixed it and didn't get the belt as punishment. I can't recall how much of that is fact and how much is bullshit Scott Keith made up, but it seems like a believable story in light of what actually happened: neither man sold out to Perfect, and the match ends with with Savage coming off of the top rope to Flair on the outside with an axehandle, only for Flair to dodge and hit him in the leg with a chair. Well, that's what was supposed to happen - Savage actually appears to be pulling right of Flair, and Ric seems to stay in place as he hits Savage with the chair. Savage gets counted out (Hebner is really awful down the stretch here, too, with his bit where he gets hit and basically regresses to infancy, conscious and crawling around, but unable to stand upright and deliberately crawling as far away from the match as possible...this is not him unable to see what's happening because he's out of it, this is him actively trying to avoid involvement in the match), and Flair and Perfect work over his leg, and that does lead directly to Flair regaining the Title from Savage, but it seems like you don't need to stage this elaborate ruse to achieve that. "Flair playing mind games" was a shitty excuse for the Black Scorpion angle. I'm not sure whether or not the fact that this was a better angle until the payoff and that the blowoff match was better makes "Flair playing mind games" a more or less shitty excuse here. Either way, it's still a shitty excuse.

Tito Santana & Tony Atlas vs. Randy Savage & Jesse Ventura (WWF, 12/7/1985)
Requested by Lacelle

I don't know that I really had any clear expectations here, but I come away feeling disappointed regardless. We have Tito (who I like), Savage (who I love), Atlas (who is one of my favorite bad wrestlers of all time), and Ventura (who is one of my least favorite bad wrestlers of all time), so we have enough going on here that this could be really good, really bad, or some kind of mixed bag. I wasn't expecting boring, and that's what I got, so yeah, I guess that explains disappointment. Savage really didn't show up for this. Atlas was bad in all the ways he's usually bad, but with none of the enthusiasm that makes me enjoy him despite myself. Ventura was bad, but his stuff with Atlas wasn't as big of a train wreck as I kinda hoped. Tito was probably the best guy in the match. The Paso del Muerte looked really good. But he was the guy in the match the least, as they inexplicably booked Atlas as the face-in-peril, and Santana only gets to show up at the very beginning and very end of the match. There just wasn't a whole lot going on here worth noting.

Jun Akiyama, Yoshihiro Takayama, & Jun Izumida vs. Akira Taue, Takeshi Morishima, & Takuma Sano (NOAH, 3/6/2004)
Requested by ダニエル

This is a lineup that promises some clubbery fun. It doesn't really deliver on that promise to the extent I had hoped for, but still ends up being really enjoyable, largely on the efforts of another one of my favorite bad wrestlers of all time, Jun Izumida. Izumida is like the poor man's Masao Inoue. Not really gifted in any traditional aspect of wrestling, he is a guy who became watchable by wholeheartedly embracing suck. He never elevated it to a high artform the way Inoue did, but he at least made otherwise bad performances fun, and that counts for something. Akiyama and Takayama waste no time going on the offensive, and it's pretty fun, but nothing to get too worked up over. But then they start taking turns dropping elbows on Sano, and Izumida comes in, looking for a piece of the action. He gets completely ignored by his teammates, and I crack a smile as the poor dope stands there, waiting for the opening that isn't going to come. Then Akiyama makes the cover, and Izumida counts the fall, much to the bafflement of his partners. Izumida continues his zaniness for a while before Taue gets tagged in, and he actually has a really nice, energetic little run here, wiping out the opposition with kicks, slaps, and nodawas. Morishima also has some fun smacking Izumida around before Izu turns the tables and goes after Morishima's knee, which had been attacked earlier in the match, leading to him procuring a half-crab for the win. Afterwords, he grabs the mic and challenges Morishima to put the WLW Title on the line against him, while the audience applauds his teammates, who walk away without him. Awwww....

Kamui vs. MASADA (FREEDOMS, 12/25/2009)
Requested by Curt McGirt

Curt seemed to intimate that this match wasn't very good when he recommended it. I don't know why, because I thought this was off the hook. I don't think I've ever seen Kamui before unless it was under a different gimmick. He was solid, but nothing to write home about. But I do dig MASADA, and this is one one of the better showings I've ever seen from him, both dishing out and eating beatdowns. He throws some some shots with a cinderblock into Kamui's back and ribs early on that look suitably mean, and there's a lot of fun brawling through the crowd and into the concession stand/parking garage area. MASADA enthusiastically charges into a garage door when Kamui dodges an elbowsmash, and for whatever reason, the folks at the building decide to open said garage door, which allows Kamui to jack a car, drive it through the crowd to ringside, and into MASADA. Kamui's second attempt at vehicular homicide is foiled when MASADA chucks his cinderblocks into the front windshield, breaking it, but Kamui just continues the fight outside, throwing MASADA onto the trunk of the car and hitting a nice running splash off of a chair onto him for a nearfall in this apparently falls count anywhere match (in fact, every pin attempt in this match happens on top of the car...groovy). MASADA recovers and hits a running powerbomb that sends Kamui through the rear windshield, but that only gets two, and Kamui is able to fight back, knocking him onto the roof of the car and coming off the top rope with a roof-denting somersault senton. His top-rope rana gets countered into a borderline Sid-in-WarGames '91 powerbomb on the roof that's absolutely horrifying. It only gets two, as does the almost as horrifying brainbuster onto the roof that follows. And then there's a piledriver onto the roof that leaves it completely concave, which gets two...because MASADA pulls him up? Wha? Why would you go for the win twice in a row and then pull the guy up on the third attempt? He does a death valley driver on the roof for the win, and I know that's actually his finisher, but of the four moves he pulled in the final stretch, it was very much the least impressive. It was kinda odd, and a flat finish. Also, there was a little bit of blatant positioning done by MASADA to properly eat some of Kamui's flying offense onto the car. But fuck it, he looked great otherwise, I really dug the gimmick here, and this was a lot of fun to watch.

Shingo Takagi vs. Daisuke Sekimoto (Buyuden, 5/10/2008)
Requested by Brandon-E

This is a little tough for me to sort out my feelings on. Shingo is the one Dragon's Gate guy distinct enough for me to hate, and Sekimoto is a guy who grew on me, but hadn't done so yet when this match happened. I had pretty low expectations here, but this match...well, I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it, and I found things in it that I liked, and most of what I expected to go wrong didn't. This is a grudge match, and it is actually wrestled like a grudge match, with both guys really going after each other and putting some emotion behind it. You can tell that they both wanted this to deliver, and they went about it the right way...but while I appreciated the thought and the effort, most of what they did fell flat with me. This was structured like a match I would like, but they weren't bringing much to that structure to keep me interested, and they ended up losing me. About half-way through the match, Shingo turns up the dial, and I start to care a bit more. His lariats had some real force behind them, and I could get behind that. Sekimoto follows suit, busting out some really snappy German suplexes. One of the problems I always had with Sekimoto is that he is a guy who uses the German as his big move, but they tend to look really low-impact. Not here. He really planted Shingo with a few of them. But the finishing stretch is a really generic finisher kick out pop-up scream etc. fest, and my worst fears about the match were finally realized. They waited until the last moment to realize them, though, and the two Last Falconries that Shingo finished Sekimoto off with looked suitably nasty. Overall, not as bad as I expected, and something that I can see people getting into, but it wasn't really for me.