gordi

I'm curious how Fatu managed to beat Singh so quickly. Borne going over in the Main Event in TO must be one of the highlights of his career. He's a guy I like, so I am happy to,see that.

I think it would be pretty cool if Benoit and Owen crossed paths in San Juan... It's always entertaining when good guy wrestlers go on the Sports Shop. "...I think both the battery and the rock missed!" As always, your patience in letting angles develop is one of the things that makes your booking stand out. Reading this really feels like watching a well-booked 1980s wrestling TV show.

The JWA Trading Block: Just in case anybody else feels like adding some Japanese spice to their roster: These are all guys that I feel like I haven't been using well enough recently, and I don't have any clear plans for them in the near future. I'm happy to consider a full trade or a 6- 8- or 12-month exchange. I'm looking for guys who I think I can fit into the JWA booking style, so basically big hosses, tough brawlers, technical wizards, high flyers, with preference given to guys and/or established tag teams who were over in Japan in real life... I'm only looking to make 2 or 3 trades max at the moment. I'll also be happy to just send these guys over on an excursion if you don't want to trade and I don't get any offers for them. Shiro Koshinaka: #286 on the PWO GWE list. 6'1" 231. Speaks English. Charismatic and Entertaining. Can work face or heel. Hiro Hase: #76 on the GWE. 6' 231. Rookie. A great pure wrestler and a great bloody brawler. Very unselfish, makes everyone he works with look better. Kengo Kimura #371 on the GWE. 6'1" 236. Great tag partner. Kind of a poor man's Fujinami. Rusher Kimura: 6'1" 275. Grizzled brawler and cage match specialist. Great on the mic. Mighty Inoue: 5’9” 231. Has a mix of European and Lucha Libre styles picked up on foreign tours. Solid mid-card veteran. Very good tag team wrestler. Animal Hamaguchi: #375 on the GWE. 5’7” 227. Has the strength to match up with heavyweights and the athleticism to match up with juniors. Naoki Sano: #126 on the GWE. 5’11” 220. Recent NJPW Dojo graduate. Works a very aggressive and physical style. Famous for his classic series vs Liger in '89 and '90. Kuniaki Kobayashi: #489 on the GWE. 6’ 0” 238. Aggressive style. Makes the people around him look good. Black Tiger (Mark Rocco): #216 on the GWE. 5’8” 196. Classic heel who works a fusion of British, Mexican, and Japanese junior styles. Can be sloppy. Great at bumping, stooging, and working the crowd. Super Ninja Shunji Takano: 6’7” 286. Tall, athletic, and talented. Never got the push he probably deserved. Umanosuke “Professor” Ueda: 6’3” 260. Pure brawler in the Tiger Jeet Singh/Abdullah tradition. Great sleazy blonde look. Akira Nogami: 5’11” 198. Flashy high flyer who can also work as a cocky heel. Nobuhiko Takada: #134 on the GWE. 5’11” 198. Good striker. Very adept at combining Shoot Style with other styles. Charismatic. Masakatsu Funaki: #232 on the GWE. 5’11” 212. Outstanding young athlete at the beginning of his career. Hig level of technical ability. Charismatic and good looking. Kensuke Sasaki: #174 on the GWE. 5'11" 254. Rookie power merchant. Yoji “Mr. 200%” Anjo: #214 on the GWE. 5’11” 220. Background in judo and muay thai. Doesn’t mind fighting dirty. Tatsutoshi Goto: 5’10 209. Bleached blonde heel, master of the Backdrop Suplex.

I think you are making a mistake by only releasing your shows on VHS. BetaMax and LaserDisc are the wave of the future!

Are any women being used? Bomb Angels? Judy Martin? Sherri? What would I be looking at? Lutte books women once in a while. Wendy Richter, Madusa, and so on... Sherri and Woman are with the Horsemen in WWE now. There are other valets, like Baby Doll and managers like Elizabeth who are active in various promotions. I have often thought about booking a Joshi match on a big card but so far have never done so. I can't speak for everyone else, but something like what I'm doing with Japan where I have a huge roster of basically "every important male Japanese wrestler who was active in 1986" but am always happy to send them to work elsewhere would probably be workable. So, you'd be able to have most everyone you'd want on your roster but with the tacit understanding that you'd be generous in allowing them to work for other promoters. That's just me spitballing, though. Abdullah, Hansen, Brody, Inoki, and Maeda are on the Freelancers list and I can book them whenever and so can any other promotion. I don't know if that would be necessary for any specific female workers but it's a possibility if there's any dispute. I volunteered Inoki and Maeda for the list because they are huge-enough names and I wanted to make some room at the top of my cards. SirEd would probably be the main guy to work out details with, since he seems to use the women more than anyone else. I imagine LowBlow will have some solid suggestions as well.

I mean... right now Chiggy, Jackie, Dump, Devil, Jaguar, Lioness, Kong, and Kandori all are just sitting around doing nothing. Seems like kind of a shame.

I wasn't able to get tix to see Dominion live, but my good friend who gets the NJPW shows on TV has invited me over for a Dominion-watching get-together, which is the next-best thing. I was at the first-ever Dominion show, live, in 2009. The one with Nakanishi vs Tanahashi on top. Had a blast. Anybody else have plans to watch Dominion this year? My feelings on the card: I absolutely despised the one Okada vs Omega match I watched last year. I think it was the WK11 one. On the other hand, I loved Jericho vs Omega and thought MiSu vs Goto was MOTN on Jan. 4th this year. Definitely enjoyed WK12 more than WrestleMania 34. As of today, I am not in any way a fan of either The Young Bucks or Will Ospreay. I am excited to see Rey in Japan. My goal is to watch with an open mind and I really hope that Okada or the Young Bucks will convince me that I am wrong about them being everything that is wrong with pro wrestling today. Even if they don't, I expect to have a good time watching this. Worst case scenario, I'll try to have fun complaining about it.

I'm getting a huge puroresu.tv flashback here! GREAT choice to get the ball rolling. A couple of days ago I made a long post going over my "old man yells at cloud" talking point of how current wrestlers are too concerned with getting all their stuff in, and too many recent matches are 50/50 my turn/your turn back-and-forth, and these young whipper snappers don't show any character in there, nor are they willing to look bad to get the other guys over... And here you post a match that is ALL character work, simple but violent, with Inoue selling his ass off to put Supernova & Ikeru Densetsu way the hell over. The character stuff is perfect, illustrating exactly what I so badly miss when I'm watching current stuff: Sakuraba & Shibata are both real-life high-end ass-kickers and they both absolutely look the part, with cauliflower ears and shooter's physiques, and the casually athletic way they carry themselves. Inoue looks like a guy who is badly out-matched but just tough enought o keep fighting back. Makabe is a very big very angry-looking dude. And Laughter7 play the role of: Asskickers. And Inoue plays the role of: Guy getting his ass kicked. And Makabe plays the role of: That guy's big tough friend who is not afraid of the ass-kickers. It all fits together perfectly. Thanks to Inoue's selling, Laughter7 come across as guys who can just overwhelm their opponents, immediately establishing them as a real threat. With Makabe also involved, they are not just steamrolling a couple of ham-and-eggers, so that makes them look like even more of a threat. Makabe igets to show that he isn't afraid of these guys, so he keeps his aura even in defeat. It's not a long match, but it tells a perfectly clear story. After seeing this, how can you not want to see what Sakuraba & Shibata are going to do next? When I'm doing armchair booking, I'm sometimes at a bit of a loss when it comes time to match shoot style guys up with pure pro wrestlers. These guys make it look so easy and so natural.

You know what I'm really enjoying in this project right now? It's all of the awesome things going on in the last few months that never happened "in real life" even though those things almost certainly would have been amazing. The biggest one is probably Flair as WWF champ in '86, but there are so so many, big and small, in every promotion. For example: Tim Flowers getting a main event run in the US. Windham and Savage, in their primes, feuding (which is what made me start thinking about this). All the different NWA feds working together and co-operating. AWA and Lutte promoting a joint show. AWA TV that is actually GOOD. Dusty vs Hansen! Rick Martel as a touring world champ. Owen Hart going full heel in the WWC. MS-1 and Pirata Morgan in Montreal. Jake and Roddy leading groups of young wrestlers and feuding against each other. Big John Studd as a champ, down in Texas. Bam Bam Bigelow and Dan Spivey, getting early pushes and maybe reaching their full potential. Steamboat as a top guy against wrestlers other than Flair, and Orndorff on top against guys other than Hogan. Honky going after Lawler. ​Rocky Johnson & Wendell Cooley as a team. Million Dollar Man as a Southern Heel. The Road Warriors as old school touring, fighting, tag champs. So many SuperCards, each one booked really well and full of action and surprises. I could go on and on and on. Anyway, hats off to all of you.

"I bet Flair made Billy Jack look like a million bucks" is almost word for word exactly what I was thinking. That's got to be a huge part of the value of Flair: He can make your babyfaces really shine, even in defeat. I'm happy to see Ganter and Gang are going to face off. I imagine they still have heat left over from WrestleMania 2. I'm looking forward to seeing the Harts defend their belts on TV! I really like Tonga Kid and Sting as a young babyface tag team. Savage and Windham make such great rivals. I'm looking forward to Showdown at Shea.

Man, the foreshadowing for the arrival of Ladd and co. was just extremely well done, with events in the UWF and Iceman getting more politicized... it all makes sense now... whether you ans kevinmcfl planned this out in detail or it just fell into place, kudos to both of you. Great stuff. I kind of wish that Koko and Brown hadn't turned and joined with Ladd immediately... at least JYD is still working face in Texas. Of course I got a big kick out of seeing Tiger Mask defend the JWA Middleweight Title and Riki Choshu/Rusher Kimura/Tatsutoshi Goto challenge for the NWA World Six Man Tag Team Championship on that card. Dream, King, Dog, Kevin, and Lance all ending their nights getting beat down has got to have your fans all fired up for what comes next. And they have Kerry's victory to feel good about.

I like the Austin Idol vs Sheiky Baby match-up, as I have always thought of Idol as kind of a shorter-sized Hulk Hogan type. I like Duggan vs Mulligan as kind of a Doc Williams vs Lariat Hansen type of all-American big hoss battle. You've done a great job building up "Professor" Brad. I didn't even blink seeing him vs #1derful in the Main, whereas a few weeks ago that might have seemed nuts to me.

If only there were a picture of Baba standing beside a wheel of Mammoth Cheddar.

Calf Brander/Calf Branding Abdullah's pointed elbow drop was a thing of great beauty.

...and even then it was in spite of the booking, not because of it. No matter how much the WWE version of history tries to spin it. Not co-incidentally Bryan is also one of the current guys who does everything mentioned that babyfaces used to do to draw sympathy, and is one of the few in WWE with a real connection to the audience. Completely agree. Bryan absolutely "gets it."

Fair enough, I suppose, though you have totally misunderstood my original post. With all due respect to you and KawadaSmile, though... I absolutely do not see Roman as some kind of well-booked, well-formed, well-acted, and successful pro wrestling character. He seems to me to be a guy with all the potential in the world who has lost his big chance to get over because he has been booked miserably. He's a good looking well built super-jock with impeccable blood-lines. He's obviously a good Conpany Man. Vince tried to book him as a rebellion underdog that the company was trying to hold down. That was so obviously disingenuous that a huge number of WWE fans rejected the booking and the character completely. That's not a subtly-written post modern character. That is a catastrophic failure to match a workers look with how they are presented. Vince hit it out of the park with Hulk Hogan in the '80s then repeatedly failed to create another Hogan until striking gold again with Warrior. Then circmstances forced him to give Bret and Austin their shot, and he hit again with the anti-authoritarian rebel angle with Austin. Since then, he has ruined guys like Cena and Roman by trying to give them that Austin push when they look nothing like underdogs and are obviously good loyal employees without a rebellious bone in their bodies. He's going to blow it with Rousey by doing the same daft and doomed thing again. Just watch. VInce did hit again on his one big booking idea with Bryan... because Bryan at least looks the part of an underdog. Again, in pro wrestling, your look defines your character and your character should define what you do in the ring. I don't get that with Roman, at all. It's not entirely his fault. And, with all due respect to Mad Dog,.. To me, the Young Bucks are the absolute kings of "my turn/your turn get all our fancy stuff in, and it ends when somebody hits their finisher" style. Good looking babyfaces need to work from underneath sometimes, not just bounce right back and get more fancy moves in. Good looking heels need to show ass. In my opinion, The Young Bucks don't seem to do much of either. I think maybe you are mistaking catch phrases and gestures for character... or maybe catch phrases and gestures have simply replaced character for the post-modern pro wrestling fan... that's probably worth talking about more. I'll be watching Dominion this weekend. I promise I'll watch their match with an open mind and I hope they will prove me wrong. And, while I might disagree with you guys about some specifics and I'm focusing on that here, we actually agree on a lot as well. For example, like fxnj I find that struggle is an important and underrated aspect of pro wrestling and I absolutely agree with Mad Dog that good comedy workers are often woefully underrated when it comes to showing character in the ring.

Man, Ron Wright is just such a classic heel. They really don't make them like that any more. I love love love the idea of Baba joining Magnum and Ole to take on Ivan, Nikita, and the masked man. Baba is Japan's babyface of all babyfaces right now, and Magnum is right up there among the biggest babyfaces on your side of the Pacific... and with Ole there is always gonna be the question if he can be 100 percent trusted...but he is definitely a guy you want on your side in a fight. And these particular Russians are just pure evil, and so dangerous. Just such a compelling story at this stage.

Hahaha! Holy shit! WHAT?!?!? Really? You don't think good vs evil was something Shakespeare cared about? You figure Macbeth is painted entirely in shades of grey? You don't think Iago is a true heel character? I mean, sure, it's a more psychological idea of good and evil than in, say, the medieval mind; and characters could be a mixture of good and evil, and could be capable of change. but without the concepts of good and evil and the conflicts between the two, there could be no Shakespeare as we know it. Huckleberry Finn is all about Huck searching for his own moral and ethical authority. He ends up questioning and even rejecting what he's been taught about right and wrong by religion and society and makes morally ambiguous choices along the way... but the whole point of the story, and of so much of what I have read from Twain, is that Huck needs to figure out how to be a "face" in a complicated and changing society. It's about finding our own standards of good and evil, right and wrong... it is in no way "beyond good and evil." Even with Joyce... it's standard first-year University thinking to consider Ulysses Modernist and Relativistic and as such (once again) "beyond good and evil" but that is woefully short-sighted. I'd argue that Joyce, like Twain, wanted to help his readers to think for themselves, to find spiritual liberation. It's certainly not a religious work, but that does not mean it isn't concerned - deeply concerned - with questions of morality. There are lots of other interesting and provocative ideas in your post and in the ones above it and hopefully I'll find time to get around to those eventually... but this part of your post just struck me as extremely unclear thinking. What you call "the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Twain, Joyce, etc." could not exist without the struggle between good and bad, right and wrong... pleasure and pain...

I like how you are setting up those six-man tags, with different guys joining forces against mutual enemies.

A lot of potentially great match-ups on that June 5th card. It will be interesting to see who rainmaker sends.

Giant Baba used the Uki Waza, a Judo throw that looks exactly like a Russian Leg Sweep, and to me his version always looked awesome. I think there was a Canadian wrestler in the 80s and 90s who also had the excellence of execution to make it look good. I also think that when Koji Kanemoto uses the Reverse STO to transition into the Koji Clutch it can look pretty swank. CM Punk apparently thinks so too, since he openly ripped that transition off. Absolutely agree that both of those moves look bad and dumb when executed poorly, though.

It's interesting to watch Big Leon White start to figure out who he is and come into his own. It's like he's getting a sense of just how big and powerful he really is. There's just endless potential for putting together main event tag matches on your roster. Ricky Steamboat & Ron Garvin vs. Ken Patera & Jerry Blackwell is a really good one. Some rugged, manly pro wrestling going on there.

No need for fireworks after the card, there will plenty of fireworks in the ring!

Is the pm system down for anybody else now? Edit: Never mind. Signed out and signed back in and now it's working fine.

Bam Bam Bigelow keeps on pulling off the upset victories. How far can he go in this version of reality? Loved the ending to Orton vs Steamboat. Escaping the Superplex and hitting the Flying Cross Body is a perfect visual.