SLL's All-Request Friday Night 3/20/2015

Ron Starr vs. Leo Burke (AGPW, 1980's)
Requested by Mr. Lacelle

We kick off the lean, mean, new-look All-Request with my attempt to court the important "Dave Musgrave" demographic. This is actually my first exposure to Leo Burke. I'm looking forward to him being more than just a running gag. Actually, I think the thing I ended up liking most about this match was the commentary of Buddy Lane. He sounds very grandfatherly, and describes the match in much the same manner I imagine most people would describe fly fishing. This took a few minutes to get into gear, but Starr really started laying into Burke. Still, despite the excellent beatdown, I do think the highlight of the match is the announcers' discussion of Starr's valet Peaches.

Rod Trongard-Sounding Guy: Question I have right now is...why does Ron Starr even bother to have a manager? Peaches has contributed nothing to this match!
Lane: Well...maybe she looks after his out-of-the-ring activities, such as, uh, airline tickets, negotiating matches...uh, his investments all over the world....
RT-SD: Are you saying she has brains as well as beauty?!
Lane: Well, he obviously has her around for some reason.

My main observation of Burke is that he has a funny way of bumping and eating offense. It sort of reminds me of when Chris Masters was first starting to get really good, and message board dullards would try to shoot him down by - amongst other things - bitching about how he bumped or ate offense. "Oh, he fell off the apron and landed on the concrete like this. Sure, it still looked like it hurt, but he was supposed to do it like this." Leo Burke seems like a guy who people with shitty taste in wrestling would hate. "That DiBiase bump Burke did was really ugly. Oh sure, he looked like he really fucked up his neck and shoulder doing it, but everyone knows wrestling is about grace and delicacy!" After taking a chair to the head, Burke reaches his breaking point, and heads to the ring with a chair of his own, looking he's about to channel Buzz Sawyer. Badass. Of course, Peaches cheats to win. I guess that's what she was there for.

Masa Takanashi vs. Yuji Hino (DDT, 5/4/12)
Requested by Brandon-E

The pre-match video package is set to "Desperado"? Well, I hope this ends with Terry Funk and Sabu wrapped in barbed wire. Also, is it wrong that there's a woman interviewed here who, before she spoke, I just naturally assumed was a man? Not because she's really manly in any way, mind you, but because it's puro in the 2010's. I literally had no reason to suspect that a cisgendered woman wasn't Hiroshi Tanahashi on his day off.

Man, Takanashi is one scrawny dude. He's a guy I've seen a bunch of times before, but I always forget about him, because I always forget about everyone on the DDT roster unless they're an inanimate object. Although I do remember Takanishi last year having a great match with HARASHIMA (and I remember HARASHIMA, but that's a story for another day) built around him as this weird lamprey eel who latched onto HARASHIMA's body and kept turning into submissions and pin attempts. That's not what happened here. This was more about HARASHIMA as your scrawny guy doing American heel schtick. Think a watered down, fifth-rate SUWA, and you're not far off the mark. He loses a test of strength. He gains a momentary advantage and then commits the cardinal sin of pointing to his forehead to indicate intelligence before losing it. The ref gets bumped, and he almost wins the match when he pulls an Eddy Guerrero-style fakeout where he tosses his belt to Hino and pretends that Hino hit him with it. This is an act I usually like in puro. Hell, I stuck up for Kotaro Suzuki when he was doing it. Kotaro Suzuki, people! I don't know...maybe Takanashi just doesn't have the conviction? Or maybe it's just that I've seen this enough times that you can't just trot the shtick out and expect me to pat you on the back for it.

Anyway, Afro GM says "no dice" to Takanashi's chicanery, and that's when Hino starts to turn things around. Thankfully, "things" include "this match", because Hino really smacks the shit out Takanashi here. Seriously, ouch. I read earlier today that Hino and Yuji Okabayashi are going to be wrestling the Twin Towers late tonight. If nothing, this match succeeded in really making me want to see that, because I imagine he'd be a lot of fun teeing off against those two. Takanashi makes a comeback and starts working over Hino's knee. It's alright, and Takanashi has a neat standing STF in there. Hino catches Takanashi with a pair of really nice looking deadlift throws, though I kinda question the wisdom of doing them right after having your knee worked over. And then, not long after that, they go into the finishing stretch, which really is just a bunch of finisher and nearfall exchanges that has nothing to do with the rest of the match. It's not bad, per se. There was some cool stuff in there, like Hino's splash and his super CB4 driver. But the rest of the match did seem like it was building up to something, none of which really paid off here, and instead, we got a finishing sequence that really could have been preceded by anything. And then there was this really weird part at the end after the aforementioned super CB4 driver, where Takanashi slowly climbs to his feet and tries to fight back, all while making faces and gesticulating like a graduate of the Adam Copeland School of Wrestling Theatrics. He had been acting kinda goofy the whole match, but I was OK with it, since he was playing a kinda goofy character. Here...I think they wanted me to take him seriously. Instead, I kinda just said "fuck this match", and fortunately, Hino ended it soon afterwords. In hindsight, that was slightly harsh of me. This match wasn't bad, but in the true Websterian sense of the word, I have no desire to ever see it again.

Read more!

2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

14. HARASHIMA v. Masa Takanashi DDT 2/23/14

ER: Hot match that threatens to go into overkill but doesn't, with some cool move sequences that I've never seen. I'd seen HARASHIMA before but definitely have not seen Takanashi, as I would have remembered him. He works fairly unconventional, not quite like the first time you saw somebody like Johnny Saint, but kind of like that. His unpredictable spark added to the match, but could almost just as easily been obnoxious. You heard it hear, Takanashi walks the line of innovative and obnoxious, in about as entertaining manner possible. HARASHIMA was the glue in this one but it was wild watching Takanashi climb all over him like a spider monkey. You've seen a million Code Red spots at this point, but I've never seen one where another man is literally clinging to another man's body, crawling all over him for leverage. Elaborate reversal sequences often come off far too choreographed, with the workers having vacant expressions as they try to remember the timing of 1-2-3 Duck 5-6 Jump 2-3 Knee 5-6 (indy spot monkeys clearly do moves in 6/8 time signature). But a lot of the misses and hits and memory spots here looked really cool. I really liked HARASHIMA committing to miss a Shining Wizard and flying knee first into the turnbuckle. I dug Takanashi putting a neat twist on the Lady in the Lake spot by turning into a nasty armlock (with his feet!). These two seemed to complement each other really well. I'm not sure they could have this good a match with other opponents, though I suppose I'll find out soon enough.

PAS: I really enjoyed this, it felt like something different which isn't something you get much in current wrestling. Wrestling Takanashi must be like wrestling a boa constrictor or one of those face huggers from Alien. He just hangs all over HARASHIMA and uses body contact to transition into submissions and roll ups. Meanwhile when HARISHIMA was able to get a little separation he would brutalize the little guy, there was some especially violent looking stomps to the chest. This never got no selly or excessively 2.9y which are the major flaws of current Puro. I am not sure this is a matchup that would survive lots of repetition as I am not sure if this would be as much fun if the newness was gone, but the first time it was great.

Read more!