gordi

I watched the clips of that on YouTube and... What the F@&K are they going for with that segment? Who the hell is that supposed to amuse or entertain? Honestly, I think that $#*t is proof - rock solid evidence - or the fact that these shows are really only being written, booked, and produced for an audience of one. I can kind of understand Rovert and others maybe feeling sorry for Vince here. His bit in particular was so very very bad that I couldn't even get any schadenfreude out of it.

That makes sense. I mean, I really like Masashi Aoyagi, Masato Yakushiji, and Alexander Otsuka. Why shouldn't Tommy Rich be one of some Japanese hotel owner's favourite wrestlers?

Nikolai Volkoff had some pretty big trunks, too. The Tommy Rich Inn is in a very nice neighbourhood in Kyoto, near the Manga Museum and the Kaleidoscope Museum. I used to teach at a language school near there once a week. Not sure about the name. There is also a cosmetics brand in Japan called Rich Tommy which always cracks me up when I see it.

I don't think that my experience here (I've been living in Japan for 11 years) has been entirely typical, but I very often wear pro wrestling t-shirts in the gym and walking around on days off and when I go drinking (and I wear my beloved AJPW jacket whenever the weather is suitable) and I often get compliments and positive comments and I've even made friends with people that I met that way. Everybody who knows me at all well (fiends, family, drinking buddies, people who go to the same gym, the staff at my local Starbucks and favourite sake bar, my adult students...) all know that I love pro wrestling. Anyone who also likes pro wrestling is - invariably - delighted to meet a gaijin who knows something about Japanese wrestling. I have never, ever, had the sense that anyone here looked down on me at all because I love wrestling. My private students have included surgeons, lawyers, university professors... none of them seem to have a negative take on it at all. It gets a very similar response to my love of Japanese sake. People are generally just pleased that I have an interest in some aspect of Japanese culture.

It also strikes me pretty insensitive to release Gallows and Anderson while they are still in mourning for their good friend AJ Styles.

So, when do you figure?

That's kind of what I was thinking. Hopefully after 90 days, the world might be safely back in business - or at least headed in that direction. I am guardedly looking forward to seeing Rusev and the Revival working live shows in front of hot crowds for AEW in July or thereabouts.

Do you think Vince will hold everyone to the 90-day no compete clause?

I am genuinely, legitimately excited at the idea that, in 90 or so days, we might get a return to live shows in front of hot crowds featuring The Revival vs The Young Bucks or the Lucha Brothers... I'm enjoying that feeling of looking forward to something that just might happen and if it does happen it just might be really really good.

Do you think that at some point during the HHH Celebration, that there might be a cake? If so, I have a totally original idea: Someone should get thrown... get this... OMG it would be so funny... someone should get thrown *into* the cake!! Could you imagine? That would be some hilarious and groundbreaking comedy that would shock everyone and never get old. I'm so excited about this idea that I am going to go and cross-post it everywhere.

I am not going to lie. That actually sounds like a hell of a match.

That episode was a lot more entertaining and compelling than the actual tournament.

Reportedly, WWE have made every WrestleMania ever, every Rumble, and a bunch of other stuff, available for free on the network. As much as I love to hate on that company, it sure seems like a very classy move to make that available at this time. Hats off to them for doing this.

Yeah, this place is pretty great. It's really nice to have somewhere to engage in actual discussion and to learn something new once in a while. It's great to know that I am not the only person who obsesses over the finer details of, for example, a Japanese wrestling match from 1995. Thanks for posting this, MLD1083. When times are tough it's important to take a moment to appreciate the good things and feel a sense of gratitude for what we have.

Yep. "Better than the US gov't has handled it so far" is a very low bar, though. By the way, Happy Birthday oj!!

Yeah, it would have been very interesting to hear the crowd reaction for the Brody Lee reveal. "You are not the first out of touch old man to not believe in me" cracked me right up.

Considering the the elderly are the most at risk from COVID-19, cancelling a show built around Undertaker, Goldberg, Cena, and Edge just seems like the humane thing to do.

The best match I saw live last year was the New Japan Cup match between Archer and Ospreay. Archer was great, beating the hell out of the much smaller Ospreay and tossing him around in genuinely dangerous-looking ways and then believably bumping and selling when it was time for the little guy to make his comeback. Do you think a guy like that might be a good fit in AEW? I think so.

A stupidly large number of "newz" sites were reporting that Kairi Sane is now married to EVIL

What kind of amazes me about this show is that both Cobb and Wardlow lost clean but I don't feel at all like either of them were buried. I mean, both of them looked like powerful bad-asses and I think they both kept that aura even while taking clean pinfalls in a "henchman softens up the hero for his boss" type of role. AEW somehow seems to have a knack for getting guys over without always needing to have them go over. Darby Allin is probably the best example of this. I'm not sure what it is, but I am really impressed by it... [Jesse voice] and I don't impress easy. [/Jesse voice]

Fun project so far. I'm abstaining a fair bit, which I hope is OK, either because I don't like a wrestler enough to give them a vote or because I don't feel like I have seen enough to judge. With 2048 wrestlers, some are going to fall into one or the other of those categories in the first couple of rounds. On the other hand, there have already been a couple of tough calls. It's going to be insane once we get into the later rounds.

I'll be sad when this is finished. It's fun to have something like this to read every day. With the matches I'm familiar with, I enjoy comparing your opinions to mine (often very similar, but even when I disagree I can see where you are coming from). And then there are all the matches I am less familiar with. El Hijo del Santo/Scorpio Jr./Bestia Salvaje vs. Negro Casas/El Dandy/Hector Garza (CMLL, 11/29/96) for example. I'm sure I must have seen it before. I had one of those poor-video-quality "Santo Heel Turn" comps back in the day. But, now I want to watch it again and see if I like it as much as you do, see if I can find the same stuff in it that you do. That's fun, for me. I'm still slowly making my way through a list of matches that got nominated during the GME project... between that, and this, and all of OJ's obscure wrestling threads (50s wrestling, 70s NJPW, French catch, Mile Zrno...) I feel like I will literally never run out of new-to-me and interesting pro wrestling to watch. I'll also never drink every wine, every sake... or listen to every great jazz record or classical recording, or see every great film or fun popcorn flick... That's a good thing, in my book. It's nice to always have something to look forward to.

I've got nothing to contribute, discussion-wise, but I wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this, the French catch thread, and the 70s NJPW thread. It's fascinating to read and learn about so much stuff that I have never seen. I appreciate you taking the time to write all this up.

Seriously. If I had paid to watch this, I'd have felt like it was well worth it.

I made it out to the Doutonbori Pro Wrestling Shinnenkai (first party of the year) at Kemura & Flower, a Chinese restaurant and bar in Minami a/k/a Namba a/k/a Naniwa, the entertainment district of Osaka. It was all you can drink for three hours, with the staff bringing plate after plate of food to the tables, as usual. Kuuga and Kazuaki Mihara (a/k/a Shiro Kuma, the erstwhile tag team partner of Shigehiro Irie and the current Doutonbori Pro Tag Champ alongside Katumi Oribe and also the current Kyushu Pro Wrestling tag champ alongside Naoki Sakurajima a/k/a Setoguchi) were there, along with MMA fighter and promoter Testuo Kondo. We took up the whole restaurant, there were old friends at every table, and I ate and drank so much that I thought I was going to rupture my stomach. I spent the whole train-ride back to Nara sweating uncontrollably. I'm OK now, though. I'll post some pictures up on DVDVR. I can cross-post them here if anybody would like that, it's just a little easier to get them up on that site first.