Graham Crackers

I'd agree with that. Not nearly as severe but the Onita/Tenryu deathmatch reminds me of the Choshu/Onita deathmatch. Usually Choshu and Tenryu would be guys I'd enjoy working with someone lower in the hierarchy but maybe a deathmatch requires something more even? It's been a while but I think Tenryu takes one bump into the cage but I mostly remember it feeling one sided. I really like Onita's performance against Choshu but Choshu seemed to be taking the night off in that one. Choshu actually runs into the barbed wire and sells it like he just ran into regular ring ropes. I am an Onita fan, particularly from 1989-1994. If he made my list it'd be towards the bottom. I prefer the Aoyagi and Goto singles matches and the 1990 Texas Death Tag to the big explosion matches.

https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1anBM92Zct8OgcovdPc0LcphQPs_roO7_?usp=sharing I don't remember if the formatting is the same but this guy converted them to pdf.

Have you seen the tag match that sets up the Tenryu match? Not that it'll change your mind about Onita but it is much better than the singles deathmatch.

Oh man, this really activates a sentimental impulse. Actually Sabu often does that for me. Sabu was not my favorite wrestler as a kid because I hadn't seen him. But I knew about him. I heard about him in magazines and I'm positive I saw him in an ad during an episode of Monday Night Raw (I know I missed the ECW invasion episode, I didn't watch Raw that winter/spring). I had no idea how to watch ECW until it was on TNN. Kids with cooler parents than mine had seen him wrestle at the Elks Lodge. I love when people talk about his mystique/reputation because that actually how I remember it from my childhood. When I first became aware of the idea you could watch older wrestling on tape, ECW shows were the first thing I wanted to find, before I ended up buying a copy of Kawasaki Dream. I was a Foley fan but I finally got to see Sabu. I was a teenager at this point and we had a friend that used to get drunk and "act like Sabu" which basically meant jumping from high places. This was 2004 or so. One Night Stand got me back into watching WWE, meanwhile my friends and I got into puroresu, ROH, and watching lucha libre on Galavision. When the Benoit murder/suicide occurred my friends and I stopped watching wrestling for a few months. I briefly thought that I might be finished until a friend just said "let's watch some Sabu matches." It was a reminder that we still loved this stuff, in spite of the shadows that obscure it. I've been a pretty casual viewer in the last few years. I've followed AEW off and on and not much else. But to me, the Sabu retirement match was something I had to see. And it was a mess! I wouldn't have asked for anything else. Sabu was my number 100 for the 2016 GWE and I'm sure I'll put him there again.

What are the odds Vince appears with Trump at WrestleMania?

A real titan in wrestling history. You're in safe hands when you look at the match listing and Gran Hamada is part of the tecnico trio. Some of the most precise yet spectacular offense in wrestling history. Nobody took a better back body drop, and his back body drop counter is one of my favorite sequences, a spot that works for me every time I see it. That's without talking about his legacy as a trainer.

I know '91 and '92 are great but the 1987 Wargames where The Road Warriors try to kill JJ Dillon is the classic. The last stretch has the old school cage match logic where being stuck in the cage is an opportunity for babyfaces to get revenge, but the alternating entrances means you still get heat, as opposed to something like the first Rockers/Rose & Summers cage match that's all shine.

This was a hell of a show. Demus vs Connolly was extremely sick and clear MOTN to me, though Makabe vs Thatcher and Slim J vs Priest were great as well.

You've all missed the greatest second generation wrestler in Japanese history, Mitsuo Momota.

Two decades of indy dream matches may have diluted this but Northeastern indies were heavily influenced by/had a good deal of overlap with Puerto Rican wrestling culture thanks to the concentration of Caribbean diaspora in the area. Lucha libre on the other hand does not have the same kind of drawing power in NY or NJ that it does in Chicago or the Southwest.

They need to book Mankiewicz vs Joe Bob Briggs for All In.

I'd go with Yuki Ishikawa. The match with Greco and the 7/26 elimination are MOTDCs for me. He elevated inexperienced guys like Super Tiger II and as a bonus he showed up in Real Japan a few times and would have these fun small scale matches. I haven't revisited it since the time but Blue Panther did some really compelling work leading up to and in the aftermath of losing his mask.

Do we have the Ray Mendoza footage to justify that assertion or is that based on reputation? Only Mendoza match I've seen is the great Fujinami one.

The news about Dean really hurt, in large part because of the huge expressions of love and support that have been shared on various boards and on Twitter in the last few days. It's so rare that we actually tell people how much we appreciate them when they are still with us. I had hoped that Dean might get to see these with his own mortal eyes. I'd been lurking on DVDVR starting in 2005 or 2006 and was a relatively active poster during a few of the 80s sets. The various boards in this orbit have been an active part of my media consumption throughout my entire adult life. I've made a few real life friends via these boards and I 've been lucky to meet a few others and simply say hi at shows over the years (that was easier when I lived in NY). That's all to say that this is making me realize I'll miss a lot of you when you're gone. Take care.

Best at swinging a weapon: Bull Pain Best at taking a back body drop: Gran Hamada (also best back body drop counter) Best at being cornered by multiple enemies: Mitsuharu Misawa Best at bumping into a post: La Fiera Best kneelift: Yoshihiro Takayama Best triple teams: Los Bucaneros Best at breaking up pins/submissions during tag matches: Daisuke Ikeda Best backbreakers: Atlantis