People selling stiff strikes and high-flying moves like roll ups...

[JoshiFanficz]

I don't know about you guys but this pisses me off to no end. And it happens A LOT in Joshi, as I've seen.

If you have just taken an elbow strike from Tamura or Yu Yu you should out cold, or at least stunned, but no, you see them trying their absolute hardest to kick out, like they were barely even touched.

And before you say anything, I know it dosen't happen 100% of the time, but that dosen't mean it should. It just makes the move look weak no matter how stiff it was IMO.

[孤星]

That is annoying after awhile and one of the major complaints from people who don't "get" that style. After awhile, it weakens the match because things don't mean as much as they should.

[El Bloody]

To add on to this, another pet peeve of mine is when they constantly repeat moves in a row like dropkicks, and in doing so it tends to make it seem that each individual strike is weak and ineffective on its own - even from dropkick queens like Toyota or Kurihara -. Hamada's spin kicks sometimes have that effect too. It can work when they're facing larger opponents or matches, but it can look weak and repetitive if it's done in every match imo.

[孤星]

And then that creates an environment where the wrestlers have to constantly outdo themselves and each other and you end up with 80s-90s joshi (and all wrestling in general) eventually giving away to what we have now. This is why WWE changed it's style from the Attitude Era, pretty soon all that ultra-violence and 90 miles/minute wrestling style meant less and they had to keep outdoing themselves. To put a cap on that, they changed to a slower pace that will hopefully create/generate fertile ground for a fresh return to that style.

Unfortunately, the new era has less than 1/10th of the story telling the previous era did. I wonder why....

[HybridOctopus.Ozaki-lover]

To add on to this, another pet peeve of mine is when they constantly repeat moves in a row like dropkicks, and in doing so it tends to make it seem that each individual strike is weak and ineffective on its own - even from dropkick queens like Toyota or Kurihara -. Hamada's spin kicks sometimes have that effect too. It can work when they're facing larger opponents or matches, but it can look weak and repetitive if it's done in every match imo.

Same with Ozaki's uraken and Kayoko Haruyama's Lariat.

[孤星]

She gets a pass because she reminds me of Kojima.

[Sakebito_ONI]

She gets a pass because she reminds me of Kojima.

And Kojima can do no wrong!

But I think you're looking at it wrong.  It's not making those moves look weak, actually...it makes the one who can eat that kind of damage and continue to fight look strong, ya know...like the style.

If it's not your cup of tea to have that kind of action, then watch some S.E., personally, I love the fact that it takes more than just one move out of nowhere to end a match just because "it's a finisher"...I'd much rather see big moves wear down opponents incrementally before a chain of false finishes builds things up to the point where once someone does take the three, it's a big deal.

[孤星]

She gets a pass because she reminds me of Kojima.

And Kojima can do no wrong!

But I think you're looking at it wrong.  It's not making those moves look weak, actually...it makes the one who can eat that kind of damage and continue to fight look strong, ya know...like the style.

If it's not your cup of tea to have that kind of action, then watch some S.E., personally, I love the fact that it takes more than just one move out of nowhere to end a match just because "it's a finisher"...I'd much rather see big moves wear down opponents incrementally before a chain of false finishes builds things up to the point where once someone does take the three, it's a big deal.

Damn right Kojima can do no wrong?

For the other person to look strong through it without making the other person look weak there'd have to be good enough psychology to leave no doubt about what's going on. That's what's missing. The storytelling (as in how the moves are sold and how the wrestlers react to each other) isn't good enough most of the time to convey endurance and just come off looking like someone forgot to sell or can't figure out how to sell while still staying in the match or they just don't make the time to get the sell over. I've seen plenty of matches like this, sadly, in joshi as well. But not from the 80s/90s era vets, I wonder why?

[Sakebito_ONI]

If everyone in the match is doing it, then everyone looks strong...

And about the 80s/90s vets, did you ever see any of them NOT do exactly what you're talking about to any of the newer girls coming up?  Back when they were all working like you say they were, it was because they were all working against each other.

[孤星]

If everyone in the match is doing it, then everyone looks strong...

And about the 80s/90s vets, did you ever see any of them NOT do exactly what you're talking about to any of the newer girls coming up?  Back when they were all working like you say they were, it was because they were all working against each other.

? I'm not sure what you're getting at. I think they were working like that because that's what the 80s gave way to naturally and it's what got them noticed internationally. Everyone does not always look strong when everyone is doing it (especially if one of the wrestlers isn't good enough at selling to get the endurance across, a lot of times it does look like a no sell because of bad selling), tho. That's way too axiomatic and doesn't take into account individual ability (also, if everyone's equal and it's just an endurance test, what does that say about each wrestler?). If that were true this thread would not exist and similar complaints would not be made about joshi, puro, WWE and the American indy scene whenever people did wrestle like that.

90s wrestlers didn't wrestle the newer girls like that because it wouldn't make any sense for the newer girl to be able to stand toe to toe with them and because they were so broken down by the style they couldn't really do it anymore.

It makes the moves look less damaging than they really are (the OP brought up Tamura and Ran YuYu's elbows, no one should superman out from that, just like no one should superman out of a Misawa elbow without a good enough backstory to justify it: that's the problem, justification is lacking- what reason does wrestler A have to look as strong as wrestler B?) and causes a "top this" craziness that focuses less on storytelling (why do you need to know how to make a good story if every match is a variation on the same theme?) and more on the complexity/insanity of moves.

That's not a lot of peoples' cup of tea. It clearly isn't mine. To each their own. I'm just saying I totally understand why some people don't like that type of wrestling.