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Random Great Match of the Day


Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi by OnlyWrestlingMatters

One you may have heard of before.

Comments

  1. Yup this match rules

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  2. Never gets old.

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  3. It really does. Odd that we're three matches into to this "Match of the Day" gimmick and I currently the last two matches on DVD. I fancy myself a rasslin' aficionado.

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  4. I love the psychology of the chops at the end of the match. It's like Joe is saying "I've still got some fight left!" and Kobashi retaliates with "OH NO YOU DON'T, BITCH!"

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  5. I'm liking this match of the day thing. Good way to get discussion going and gives me something to read.

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  6. I had the pleasure of being there. It was the first ROH show I ever attended live. Suffice it to say I got hooked on going to their shows from that point.

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  7. Tempted to call this match a dud and then just sit back and watch all the downvotes come pouring in.

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  8. What an awesome match. I think most expected a good match between the two but not them going all-out like this, especially since they didn't really have any familiarity with each other. And Kobashi really let Joe shine in this match.

    A long time ago, I read a review of the match and the reviewer mentioned that Joe was using a lot of holds and moves that Kobashi's most notable foes had employed against him. That cool bit of psychology makes me love this match even more.

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  9. one of the best matches you'll ever see, no question

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  10. I have to ask then how loud where the chops live

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  11. Such a brutal match, love this one.

    The fans at the start are annoying and totally reminds me of the Impact Zone. Two minutes in and they're screaming "this is awesome" and "holy shit" for a suicida. The match was "awesome" and had plenty of "holy shit" moments later on, but 2 minutes is just dumb.

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  12. I've never really been a big fan of the chop the other guy 300 times in a row spot. I know it plays into the "fighting spirit" thing that is important in Japanese wrestling, but it just comes off as silly to me. Good, violent, hard-hitting match though.

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  13. I agree, it's just stupid, and it nearly ruins the match for me.

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  14. turning the other guys chest into hamburger is the best part of the match!

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  15. Kidding aside, Randy Orton vs. Edge from Vengeance 2004 would actually be a really good pick. Orton's match with Mick Foley from Backlash 2004 is obviously a no-brainer as well.

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  16. Thank god this is from the original release of the show and not from the "Best In The World" DVD. Lenny and Dave's atrocious commentary nearly made the match unwatchable on that DVD whereas on the original releases of these shows Sal and Gabe were at least wise enough to tell Lenny and Dave to shut the fuck up when there was a truly great match that was miles above anything else on the show.

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  17. Phew, I was worried I was the only one who had that opinion and was going to have to be the contrarian grumpy old man on this. Chops are just fine with me in small doses, but as far as akyfabe strikes go the only real defense you would need against them is to PUT UP YOUR HANDS. When the guy taking those bazillion chops has to stand there visibly keeping his arms at his side it just takes me out of the match a bit.

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  18. There's a hilarious story about this match on the Samoa Joe episode of The Art of Wrestling podcast. Cabana tells Joe about how he was watching Joe vs. Kobashi in the balcony with James Gibson, and Gibson was overwhelmed with national pride over the USA vs. Japan element of the match. Joe says that after the match Gibson came up to him and said "Man, we almost had him." and then proceeded to berate Jay Lethal for failing Joe as his second. "What the Hell were you doing out there? I mean hey, your boy's out there dying on the line trying to defend this thing and you're standing around with your dick in your hands."



    I love stories where wrestlers loose track of kayfabe.

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  19. I'm not a fan of that style of wrestling in general. I believe it's called strong style? It's just not my cup of tea. But it's a really good match. Nothing beats a motivated Samoa Joe.

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  20. Close. It's "Fighting Spirit."

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  21. Ah! Thanks! I always get those names mixed it.

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  22. The "this is awesome" chant annoys me a lot. It's basically a bunch of people screaming "look at how much I appreciate this". It's fine to appreciate a match of course, it's just the chant is used in places where there's nothing to appreciate yet far too often and it just comes off as phoney.

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  23. I'm not a fan either. 9 times out of 10 (at least) when I hear it I think "This is decent" would be more appropriate. By the same token I find that the "Holy shit!" chant is used when it's not deserved a lot too.

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  24. Sweet! Awesome match. Probably not my match of the year for 2005 like a lot people claim. I'd put it behind Angle-Michaels WM, Trips-Flair Cage match. And MAYBE Unbreakable Triple threat. Depends what day of the week I watch.

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  25. Didn't see this until recently. Great match.

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  26. I would love if a crowd started a "This is decent!" chant. Especially if the match escalated to a point where a "This is awesome!" chant would be appropriate.

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  27. Let's just say they sounded VERY satisfying. The whole match was just glorious.

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  28. That would be awesome, yeah.

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  29. You know what's sick about this match? Joe was badly bruised across his chest from chops. This year it took hard chairshots to bruise Taker.

    If a match is a true war of attrition, it's always great.

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  30. Dude!!!! This took place in 2005, quite possible the best year in indy wrestling history in terms of both match quality and future star power! IIRC this may be the last year where all the amazing top indy stars of my generation were altogether to wrestle each other the WAY THEY WANTED, without corporate bullshit to filter and water them down.

    You had SAMOA JOE...the TRUE King of the Indies! I love Punk, but to say he was bigger than Joe was during this time would be crazy! Joe was supposed to be our answer to John Cena one day, which Punk ended up being instead. This match takes place almost a year after his amazing 21 month ROH World title reign ended. It was five or six months into Joe's TNA undefeated streak; putting on classics with Styles and Daniels. He dominated the 2004 Ted Petty Invitational, arguably the best indy tournament ever. He destroyed the Necro Butcher in IWAMS, which was indeed the most anticipated match in independent wrestling history. Not only did that match live up to the insane hype, but even surpassed it! Simply put....Joe could do no wrong.

    And nothing really needs to be said about Kenta Kobashi! One of the "four wrestling Gods of AJPW". Countless singles and tag team match with the likes of Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Hansen, Akiyama, and so on. So when ROH announced that Kobashi would fly to the States for one time only (which indeed was true) to square off with Joe, everyone went insane! In our eyes, Joe was A STAR! Even though he was, in reality, just an independent wrestler - to the fans, he already was or could easily be on the same level of the main eventers in WWE/TNA. It is really weird in 2012 to write about how amazing Joe WAS as opposed to how amazing he IS.

    But I digress. Anyway, when a Japanese wrestler visits from the States, the smart fans know that whoever faces him will be jobbing. It's just the way it works. However this was the exception! Even though Kobashi is forever a LEGEND, it certainly was not out of line to say or think there was a chance Joe could beat him! Kenta is on a whole different level than Joe, but it wasn't farfetched to think that maybe he would give Joe the win.

    Even if you didn't care who would win, from an actual wrestling standpoint, we all knew that Kobashi was coming here with his "A" GAME! This wasn't the Great Muta calling it in. This wasn't Ikuto Hidaka against Red in the mid card. This was PRESENT LEGEND VS. FUTURE LEGEND in the main event in NYC! Back in the early 90s, Whereas Kobashi used to be the legend in the making fighting the old cats, it would be years later for Kobashi's to come full circle by fighting the up and coming legend.

    I remember seeing years of ROH vs. Japan dream match threads on the ROH forums, Joe vs. Kobashi was on the top of everyone's list (or Joe vs. Misawa, which happened two years later!). So yes, I'm getting goosebumps remembering this all occurring at the time, and not from the lens of looking back in time. It's safe to say that this was the biggest thing to happen in 2005, at least in my eyes anyway. I can't believe seven years have already passed since this match happened.

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  31. Have you seen Sheamus's chest? Big Show lit him up.

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  32. Elaine Benes would say you used too many unnecessary exclamation marks! :-)


    I kid. Great points and yeah, this match was this shiznit and the anticipation for anyone following indies at the time was off the charts.

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  33. A "pretty standard" chant would be good.

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  34. he lights his own chest up every match he's in when he starts punching himself in prep for the brogue kick

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  35. Slight threadjack: On a Random Not Good Match Of The Day note, I'm watching a 2002 match between Chyna & Masa Chono. The only upside to this is, I think I've figured out the plot of the next Gerard Butler romcom.

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  36. Just out of curiosity, why the FUCK would Chyna and Masa Chono even be in a match with each other? Really, I'd love to know the circumstances that led to that.


    I propose we also have a Random Shitty Match of the Day on the blog. I nominate Zeus vs. Abdullah the Butcher for the first one.

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  37. It's part of an invasion story where a team of "legit" athletes (Chyna, Bas Rutten, Bob Sapp) shows up to wreck shit, and Chono was one of the guys defending the home turf. From what I gathered looking at some reference sites, it was an attempt to play off of Inoki's foray into MMA around 2000 and 2001, where he'd have shoot fights on the card and send wrestlers off to do MMA shows.

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  38. OK, I understand Sapp and Rutten being there, but is porn considered a sport these days?

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  39. First of all, this got 5 stars? Seriously? I mean, it's good. But 5 stars? Joe got chopped in the gut and he went from sitting in a chair to jumping over the guardrail. He also took 3 minutes playing musical chairs with Kobashi just to run at him with a boot. That would get shit on so bad if it happened at a WWE show. If you take out all the kicks and chops, there's like 10 moves total. How is that any different than the typical punchy-kicky WWE main event that people bitch about all the time?

    And it's just soooooo slooooooooow, at least for the first 10-15 minutes. This may come off as me hating the match, but that's not the case; it was very enjoyable. I just don't see how it's one of the greatest of all-time. Is it because one's a Japanese legend and the other was THE indy darling at the time?

    Anyway however good the match is, these fans ruin it and they are everything I *don't* want in a wrestling crowd. Flairfordagold already mentioned the "This is awesome" and "Holy shit" garbage, but also the constant chanting of both guys' names is just downright annoying. And chanting ROH 10 minutes in? Chanting the promotion's name died with ECW. OH! And don't forget the OH! after every little move. Drop a knee? OH! Kick a guy? OH! Smile in a general direction? OH! These assholes care more about the audience themselves than the match. Quit thinking about the next cutesy chant you can scream and enjoy the fucking match.

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  40. It was 2002 - a more innocent time.

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  41. Throw a tic tac hard enough and you'll leave a mark on Sheamus. I hate pales.

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  42. Still, what legit sport has Chyna ever been in?

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  43. Oh shit, as someone who reviews ROH I'll be the first to say that their crowds are fucking AWFUL. At least for the TV shows anyway, it's like taking the worst parts of the Impact Zone and ECW and combining them. And at the last TV taping (in Pittsburgh instead of their usual spot in Baltimore) they were even worse, dead silent for much of the show and doing nothing but shitty chants for most of the rest of the show. I've never been to an ROH show, they don't come to Buffalo, but I'd be embarrassed to even be in that audience. Note that this only applies to the TV tapings, the PPV crowds are normally quite good, in fact the Final Battle crowd was the best I saw this year.

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  44. Holy crap, I think I threw up in my mouth when I read that.

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  45. I love this feature! Would it be asking too much to include the rants for matches if one exists as well?

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  46. Lenny and Dave were terrible. Them and the ROH camera men of that era that loved pointing the cameras right at the goddamn spotlight so most of the matches were buried under lens flare were the biggest things to put people off of ROH.

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  47. Bodybuilding, I guess, but that's a real tenuous connection.

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  48. Haha I was getting pumped as I was writing this taking myself back to this time period, but funny non the less.


    Yea man, now that the years have gone by and the buzz from it is long gone, someone can easily say "Ehh its overrated" or "I didn't find it to be 5 stars" but this was more anticipated than Wrestlemania. Like it was almost too good to be true that the epic legend of Kobashi would ever come to the US, let alone to fight arguably the best North American wrestler at this point.

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  49. I think it's an excellent match but still stunned to this day people like Meltzer and Scott gave it 5 stars. I respect their opinions the match just isn't my cup of tea. Both Angle-HBK ppv matches were better and even they weren't without flaws.

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  50. You're asking to get inside Inoki's insane head and that's something you just don't do.

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  51. You see he just converted to Islam?

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  52. Yeah, that's not a sport.

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  53. It's definitely a sport, it's just not something that would make me put a woman against a man in combat.

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  54. I have seen two ROH shows in Buffalo and the crowd there is tiny and silent, both of which are reasons why ROH won't run there anymore. It didn't help that they got "b-shows" both times, but the crowd was completely dead, didn't react to anything, and was probably not much larger than the average EVOLVE crowd.
    The tapings crowds are very weird. I'm thinking that a lot of the time they're silent to save their energy for near the end of the taping, but then the final shows of the tapings are usually the worst for crowd reactions... so I'm not sure what the hell is going on. I will say that going to a TV taping sounds ridiculously mundane and lengthy - like sitting through a typical ROH PPV with almost zero PPV quality product to actually watch.
    I fucking loved Kobashi/Joe, and I was amped at how insane the crowd was. I hate the "THIS IS AWESOME", "THIS IS WRESTLING", etc chants, but the constant crowd electricity, smark-filled or not, helped me get more pumped for the match.

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  55. Your excitedness is getting me amped to re-watch the match again.

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  56. That's awesome, I'm gonna go listen to that right now.

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  57. They had shows in Buffalo? Where?

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  58. The ones I'm aware of off the top of my head [although I had to double check the dates]:
    06/04/04 New Frontiers
    08/27/05 Dragon Gate Invasion
    10/15/05 Buffalo Stampede
    06/18/10 Buffalo Stampede II

    I don't think any were held in Buffalo proper - New Frontiers and Dragon Gate Invasion were in Williamsville and Buffalo Stampede II was in Hamburg - but they were marketed as being Buffalo events.

    Reading some reviews, it seems as though there was a lot of crowd issues. Small, angry crowds. AJ Styles had a bunch of garbage thrown at him which caused a few fans to get tossed, and Austin Aries had a fan actually punch him at the Dragon Gate Invasion show. I guess you can see why there was a five year gap between Buffalo Stampede and Buffalo Stampede II.

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  59. Well, holding these shows way out in the burbs might be the reason for the small crowds. I assume the Hamburg show was at the Agricenter at the fairgrounds, right? I went to a TNA show there a few years ago and I swear that there were more wrestlers than fans there, probably because it's such a long drive. Doesn't help that that's a totally fucking awful venue for wrestling shows to begin with. Where were the Williamsville shows held, one of the high schools maybe? Because I can't even think of a place out there that would be a suitable venue out there.


    I don't know why they aren't doing shows at the ECC city campus gym that ECW used to use. It's a good location and perfect for wrestling.

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