Loss

Who is he?

New Japan was the number 1 promotion in the world for nearly 20 years. Yes. I think there was a brief period in the mid 80s when All Japan was beating New Japan, but that coincided with Choshu's jump. Am I correct?

This. Also, I don't know if I'd call either of them the most important promoters in wrestling history, but it feels wrong to have a conversation like this without mentioning Paco Alonso or Antonio Pena. I'm pretty sure the answer to this question is Antonio Inoki, but I could be persuaded otherwise.

The yearbook has the other part spliced together with this one.

Interesting fact: Eaton trained hard for weeks for that match and wanted to have the best match of his life. Then, they started the match with 14 minutes of air time left. I'm not sure what happened on that show. I think they crammed too much in.

And yeah, it says a lot that they faced each other without any build in a throwaway match and it took the creation of this thread for me to even notice.

Not a singles match, but HHH/Jericho/Matt Hardy had a triple threat in 2008 when they were the WWE/World/ECW champs, respectively.

I always found it amusing that Ellering was a shoot manager for them.

He's old and has lost his touch. He also stopped doing things for business at a certain point and started using TV to bury people for kicks and work out his own psychological issues. Sadly, even with all his baggage, he is still way better than any of the people surrounding him.

He's still extremely involved. He's just not the Vince he used to be.

The idea of Sting seducing a woman while wearing his face paint is really funny to me for some reason.

It was something I remembered seeing when it happened and liking, but not remembering specifics. DEAN also raved about it in an old DVDVR.

Fair warning: Until the Dangerous Alliance stuff begins, you're in for a bumpy ride.

It seems like a lot of people were expecting Jericho to draw #30 with no one left in the ring and win by doing nothing, which is honestly what I thought would happen too.

I loved the gimmick in 1995, but I suppose he wasn't a manager then. I've heard great things about his match with Beulah which I still need to watch at some point.

Yes, but even pre-brand split, I don't remember Undertaker every having a match every week like Show usually does. The Attitude era had him on TV quite a bit, but usually doing promos or angles. Not very often he got in the ring.

Well, even when he was younger, Undertaker was more protected than Show is now. Part of that is a change in TV, but was Undertaker ever a guy who was always on TV at any point?

Fun fact: Vince used to call Dave to criticize how WCW used him, saying that he was on TV too much, took too many bumps, didn't have the aura he should and so on. So Vince gets him and does an even worse job of all of those things.

I'll clarify -- More Undertaker from 2004-2007 or so. He wasn't wrestling every week, but he did occasionally.

Why does Big Show have to be on TV more than Undertaker is now? Undertaker has stayed protected and only shows up occasionally. Shouldn't they book Show just as strong?

That I can agree with. Maybe a Crockett Cup-style presentation, maybe Hogan and Flair having matches in the cup and maybe taking an extra 3 months or so to introduce the Japanese guys to the American audience. Maybe also using guys like Muta who already had a following. Maybe showing clips of WCW guys on New Japan shows on American TV. Sasaki, Chono, Tenzan, etc. weren't guys the WCW audience really knew, so it fell short. I think a few years later when fans were more accustomed to international guys on TV, they could have done a three-promotion one, also including AAA, but I can only imagine the booking headaches surrounding jobbing associated with that.

I think there's some truth in that. The foam fingers were handed out by WCW for free, along with other Hogan merchandise. They would tell fans if they would hold it up and wave it, that they could be on TV. I'm sure Hogan merchandise sold decently, but I think that's the reason WCW audiences looked so red and yellow by that point. And yeah, the JCP audience had been dwindling since Turner bought the company (Really, since 1987), so I don't mean to imply that they stuck around. More that of the remaining people watching WCW, I think that was the bulk of their fanbase, and why Hogan didn't connect. The reaction Flair was getting toward the end of the year when they reunited the Horsemen and started pushing him back into the title picture was easily the biggest reaction of anyone in WCW. Flair, and to a slightly lesser degree Sting, were the only guys who consistently got a superstar crowd reaction on every show by the end of 1995. Luger's jump I think helped because for years, WCW had been unable to hang on to top talent, which was a big factor in how they were perceived compared to the WWF. So WCW raiding a top star helped their perception. That continued with Hall and Nash, but the Luger signing got the ball rolling in that direction.

More Crockett Cup-like, and less about evil Japanese people. Hogan was the top star, but I wouldn't call the WCW audience a Hogan crowd at this point, based on how much they hated him. I'd still call it more of a Flair crowd with JCP hangers-on making up most of their fanbase.

#20 - Manami Toyota vs Dynamite Kansai (AJW 12/04/95) #19 - Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta (AJW 09/03/95) #18 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW Championship Carnival 03/26/95) #17 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/13/95) #16 - Kenta Kobashi vs Akira Taue (AJPW 07/24/95) #15 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 01/19/95) #14 - Shinjiro Otani vs Koji Kanemoto (NJPW 04/16/95) #13 - Yoji Anjo vs Naoki Sano (UWFI 06/18/95) #12 - Manami Toyota vs Aja Kong (AJW 06/27/95) #11 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 10/15/95) #10 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (AAA 09/22/95) #9 - Aja Kong vs Dynamite Kansai (AJW 08/30/95) #8 - Keiji Muto vs Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW G-1 Climax 08/15/95) #7 - Mayumi Ozaki, Cutie Suzuki, Candy Okutsu & Sumiyo Toyama vs Dynamite Kansai, Devil Masami, Hikari Fukuoka & Hiromi Yagi (JWP 03/17/95) #6 - Manami Toyota & Sakie Hasegawa vs Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue (AJW 01/04/95) #5 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/08/95) #4 - El Hijo del Santo, Octagon, Rey Misterio Jr & La Parka vs Pentagon, Blue Panther, Psicosis & Fuerza Guerrera (AAA 06/18/95) #3 - Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF Summerslam 08/27/95) #2 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 06/09/95) #1 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Akira Taue (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/15/95)

#40 - Masa Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs Hiroshi Hase & Kensuke Sasaki (NJPW 03/07/95) #39 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Gary Albright (AJPW 10/25/95) #38 - Hayabusa vs Hisakatsu Oya (FMW Korauken Hall 06/27/95) #37 - Juventud Guerrera & Fuerza Guerrera vs Rey Misterio Jr & Rey Misterio Sr (AAA 02/06/95) #36 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Psicosis (ECW TV 10/07/95) #35 - Manami Toyota vs Aja Kong (AJW 03/26/95) #34 - Kenta Kobashi vs Akira Taue (AJPW 03/21/95) #33 - Bret Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs Owen Hart & Bob Backlund (WWF Action Zone 02/26/95) #32 - Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai (JWP 07/23/95) #31 - Ricky Morton vs Al Snow (SMW TV 04/08/95) #30 - El Hijo del Santo, Octagon & Rey Misterio Jr vs Blue Panther, Psicosis & Fuerza Guerrera (AAA 03/16/95) #29 - Chigusa Nagayo & Dynamite Kansai vs Mayumi Ozaki & Devil Masami (GAEA Debut Show 04/15/95) #28 - Al Snow vs Marty Jannetty (SMW Superbowl of Wrestling 08/04/95) #27 - Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai (JWP 03/17/95) #26 - Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata vs Masa Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan (NJPW 06/12/95) #25 - Volk Han vs Yoshihisa Yammamoto (RINGS 06/17/95) #24 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (AAA 04/21/95) #23 - Espectrito vs Super Munequito (AAA 07/08/95) #22 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW 07/24/95) #21 - Hayabusa vs Hisakatsu Oya (FMW 08/31/95)