The guys over at WrestlingKO published a list of their Top 100 Wrestlers for 2009 and one of the points raised (amongst many it must be said - these lists always bring forth a myriad of opinion) was Shawn Michaels' abscence (on a list that featured, amongst others, Jerry Lawler [68], Bill Dundee [67] and, of course, Mark Henry [36]). Now, of course, as one of the seemingly few Shawn fans around on the internet (and, no, I don't think he's remotely in discussion for "Best Ever") it's par for the
I've often thought the greatest barometer for how good or bad a wrestler is isn't necessarily how good a match they can have when they go all out, but rather how good a match they can have on auto-pilot. Watching Misawa/Kobashi/Akiyama vs. Kawada/Taue/Omori (January '94) last night - a 25/+ six-man that's available on Ditch's site, it's really staggering how strong a match it was considering how much stuff they left in the bag and how casual they seemed to work. This is about as far removed from
I've recently started to gradually collect all AJW releases from mid-1990 through to the Dream Slam interpromotional era. I had a fair few to begin with; but prior to the summer of 1992 they were very sporadically spaced between events and, as I guess would be obvious, the idea is to see and plot the development of the top talent of that era; Hokuto, Aja, Toyota, Kyoko, Yamada... I mean as a twenty-three year old it's actually rather daunting to think of the ages of those girls at that time. Eve
Paul Heyman made (mainstream US) wrestling grow up goes the thought, but I don't think it ever did. The "Attitude" era wasn't grown-up at all. It was for an older audience than "The New Generation" era and the Hogan era, sure, but if those previous eras were "childish" then 98-01 was, at most, adolescent.
Realistically the next logical step was to become more adult; more intelligent. They can give Chris Jericho every Backlundword under the sun to say in his promos (without as best I can re
Sixty-Minute Sprints
On KENTA/Marufuji and Toyota/Kyoko...
I'm a huge Manami (and Kyoko as much, for that matter) fan, and certainly out of the current crop of wrestlers KENTA's one of my favourites; but really neither are cut out for going 60:00. Whereas in the days of Lou Thesz and Dory Funk when most matches were at a pace you could keep for sixty, Manami and KENTA are two people whose strength lies in their great athleticism, creativity, speed... generally the qualities for super "spot" w
