gordi

War Games is coming, and you have done a great job of setting it up. I don't need anything more to keep me paying close attention... but we also have Tojo Yamamoto's stable forming and a ton of other intriguing stuff going on. Including the 'Birds unifying the six-man titles! We'll give the Von Erich's a shot at the JWA trios titles next month... but the Machines are tough to beat!

Man, I love Cobra & Kazuo as the Assassins! Yamazaki's stiff kicks and Cobra's size/athleticism combo means they will be exciting on offense, but the real fun will be Kazuo's sublime selling and Cobra's big bumping when it's time for them to show some ass. If you were to ask me, "What do you think about turning Bad News face...?" I'd be all "ahhh.... well..." but then if you add"...against King Kong Bundy," I'd be all "Hell yeah!" So: Hell yeah to that!

Nah, just kidding. that is a truly sweet set-up.

I wondered where you'd gone. Welcome back!

He sincerely does. I hope he gets it.

Just in case anybody had any lingering doubts, in case anyone thinks that banning this guy was the wrong idea: He has, no fooling, been stalking me on Facebook and sending threatening messages (in character): I am curious if anybody else has been getting these.

Jetlag makes some excellent shoot style edits, too.

I haven't started watching season 2 yet, but I just saw that the finale is titled “Every Potato Has A Receipt” which is truly perfect.

It would be convenient to have a button on the forums that we can click to go to the main site.

I should have updated this earlier, to avoid confusion: JWA ROSTER Baba-Corp International: Giant Baba Mitsuharu Misawa Dos Caras El Canek Fishman Gran Hamada Anoaro Atisanoe Siva Afi Coco Samoa “Carpenter” Teranishi Hiro Hase - currently on excursion to Portland Choshu’s Army: Riki Choshu Jumbo Tsuruta Yoshiaki Yatsu Rusher Kimura Umanosuke Ueda Black Tiger Kuniaki Kobayashi Yoji Anjo Billy Robinson Kensuke - currently on excursion to Portland Phil Hickerson Mike Shaw Vader (on excursion from the AWA) Tenryu’s Gang: JWA Champion Tenryu Ashura Hara JWA Trios Champs the Machines Tarzan Goto Samson Fuyuki JWA Middleweight Tag Champs Facekickers (Fuchi & Kawada) Naoki Sano Mighty Animals (Inoue & Hamaguchi) Fujinami’s Family: Tatsumi Fujinami JWA Japanese Champion Yoshiaki Fujiwara JWA Middleweight Champion Tiger Mask Kengo Kimura Shiro Koshinaka “Esperanza” Takada Masakatsu Funaki Keiichi Yamada - currently on excursion to Portland Kantaro Hoshino Wild Pegasus Shinya Hashimoto Masa Chono – currently on excursion to Portland Mutoh – on excursion… but where? It’s a mystery!

Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai (Street Fight - JWP 3/17/95) Truly, one of the all-time great brawls. It's a violent spectacle, for sure. Ozaki biting Kansai until she draws blood and then spitting the blood on the ref is a very memorable moment, as is Kansai wrapping the chain around her boot and kicking Ozaki in the head. They brawl all over the building. There is a ton of blood. But... it's not just a violent spectacle. There is also some truly amazing character work here, from both wrestlers. They go way beyond the obvious "big vs small" storyline. Oz is one of the great "actors" in pro wrestling and this match is a showcase for that.

I'm all in on this. Loved the first season, and I have read that season 2 is even better. For those who enjoy th 80s nostalgia/combat sports combination, I also heartily recommend Cobra Kai, with Ralph Macchio and Billy Zabka reprising their iconic Karate Kid roles, but with Danny LaRusso now the successful, powerful one and Johnny Lawrence playing more of an underdog role. It's very very entertaining.

Sure. I have a couple of ideas...

Who are you to doubt Cheeseburger? He's a great technician in the ring, and he's a jam-up guy.

There is an excellent article about Spinks' pro wrestling career here It would seem that this match was for the WWA Martial Arts Heavyweight Title, which Spinks had won from Tarzan Goto... which makes the whole thing even weirder and more beautiful, in my opinion. It's exactly as you descried it: Onita putting on a clinic in bumping and selling. A classic Onita battle-back-from-from-way-behind story. I was a little worried that this would be uncomfortable to watch, but in fact I got a warm feeling from it. Everyone involved displayed a lot of class and heart.

Is there much (any?) footage from St. Louis in the 1960s? Sam Muchnick had a great rep as early as the 1960 for being a guy who treated wrestlers fairly and paid well. Fridays at the Kiel Auditorium generally meant 7000 to 9000 paying fans. So you had some big matches taking place there, like January 7, 1966 when Gene Kiniski defeated Lou Thesz to end Thesz’s last NWA title reign and take the belt.

I'm gonna start my "month off" now, coming back a week before August to hype up JWA's August cards (which are going to be sick). There's a condensed write-up for JWA's July cards here (in case you missed it) I'll still be around the site. I'll definitely answer pms. I am not sure if I'll be posting comments in armchair booking during my time out or not. Gonna play that by ear. I will definitely keep reading everyone's work.

Joe vs Punk is an excellent point of comparison for this match, in my opinion. As you say, both are more about a "learned psychology" type of story-telling. I suppose that kind of match is best enjoyed with the maximum amount of context... I guess one of the things that impressed me about the Dominion match is that I was able to pick up on and follow the story even though I had only seen one of their previous matches (which, again, I hated) and I was watching with Japanese commentary. So, that gave me the feeling that these guys were telling a story this time. w/r/t: favourite/underdog/face/heel etc: That is my big problem with watching a lot of current pro wrestling. They don't seem to emphasize that kind of stuff enough for my tastes these days. There seems to be a whole lot of 50-50 back and forth I go you go until someone hits their official finisher structure, and not much showing ass or struggling back from underneath. It really stands out when I watch 80s matches, how much more important that stuff seemed to be back then. I sometimes think that with a lot of current stuff we are meant to root more for "a great match" rather than for one wrestler or team to win, if that makes sense. There were a few matches on Dominion that I felt did a good-by-current-standards job of getting me to root for one wrester (or team) more than the other. I don't know if it was good-by-80s-standards... but I appreciated the effort.

Oh! Those Russians! - Boney M I wonder who the 4th team will be. Lots of action on this show, all of it building to something in the future.

As always, great job using your TV to build up to the big cards. Brown & Myers were a top team in Calgary in the mid-80s. They should fit in great with your tag division. Slim Sam Houston challenging King Kong is just great stuff. Backlund vs Professor Brad and Youngblood vs Blackjack are great additions to the Philly card. Anticipation for the Bash is almost too high now.

Nice to see you back here, MJH. I think you did a great job of explaining your issues with the layout of this match, and I'm pretty sure that I understand them. I can absolutely see how it might come across as "they could have done a better job of having Kenny overcome adversity and fight from behind within the match itself," and I don't disagree with you there... but.. I am perhaps an interesting test case for "coming into this cold." Prior to Dominion, I had simply not been able to get myself "into" current New Japan. I utterly despised the Omega vs Okada match at WK 11. I felt deeply frustrated by guys like Ospreay and the Young Bucks, with all the talent in the world but seemingly no clue how to use it beyond "hey look what we can do!" I only watched scattered, highly-pimped matches between WK 11 and WK 12 and I was almost always disappointed. Watching WK 12 on TV with my friend as it happened, I found myself very happily surprised by Cody vs Ibushi; I utterly loved Goto vs MiSu; I enjoyed Jericho vs Kenny a ton; and I was a bit burned out by the Main Event but I could tell they were working hard in there. Between then and Dominion, I watched a tiny handful of pimped matches, and was again generally let down by the "I go, you go" style. So, I was fairly close to going into Dominion cold. I'd seen Kenny lose at WK 11, read about their other matches, and I was aware that NJPW were booking Okada as their super-duper-ACE of all Aces. And I, at least, was hooked from beginning to end of their Dominion match. Utterly captivated. Completely into it. The mountain that Kenny had to climb was baked into the long-term story telling (as Childs and nivvad have explained). Even for an extremely casual NJPW fan like me, that was pretty clear. The story being told in the match itself was more of a "these guys know each other so well now, they have a dodge, defense, reversal, or counter for everything the other guy does" type of tale. I thought that they did more with that type of story-telling than anyone else I have ever seen wrestle that kind of a match. A lot of the "Even with all the momentum, Kenny might not win the belt" drama came from the simple fact that Okada didn't use the Rainmaker to take the first fall. I'm not a fan of the common current trope that every wrestler only has one finisher and that nothing else can end a match... but here it was employed effectively to tell a compelling story. And: They tied that in perfectly with the "dodge, defense, reversal, or counter for everything" story. I absolutely agree with you that AJPW story telling is the best kind of in ring story telling ever. But, it isn't the only kind of effective pro wrestling story telling.

This is not a wrestler's name, but it is definitely on topic. To say more might give it away: Worst Yelling Porn

LeDuc had a championship run in the WWC in 1986 in real life, so it's extra cool to see him turning up here now. I also enjoyed the conversation between Dutch and Chicky. Nobody is yelling. Nobody is getting belligerent. But: It's clear that some violent stuff is about to go down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Siaw-vpQ4Ck