gordi

NJPW New Year Golden Series, January 23rd, Kobe World Hall - Airing live on Asahi TV Yamada, Funaki, and Kosugi vs. Black Tiger, Black Cat, and David Morgan It’s just an opening match, but there’s quite a lot going on here. The main purpose of the match is to continue Black Tiger’s slow push toward the top of the juniors division, but everyone in the match has a role to play. Black Cat is there to give Yamada and Funaki some experience working in a Lucha Libre style, Morgan is there to give them a chance to work some European Style, Yamada and Funaki are there to learn and grow, and Kosugi’s main purpose is to let the bad guys shine and help hold the match together. That’s quite a lot to accomplish in just over ten minutes. JYD vs. Don Arakawa A face vs. face comedy match to help establish Junkyard Dog as a likeable character and help set up tomorrow’s Main Event. After the match, as the victorious JYD is putting on a big show of respect for Arakawa, the villainous trio of Anoaro Atisanoe, Kendo Nagasaki, and Umanosuke Ueda make their way to ringside and start jawing at the Dog in a threatening way. This draws Hogan and Inoki out from the back, and the heels respond with a slow retreat – talking and gesturing all the way. Hashimoto, Chono, and Mutoh vs. The Barbarian, Haku, and Siva Afi A showcase for the WWF stars that makes them look like huge threats, a chance for Afi to prove himself, and an opportunity for our Young Lions to look brave and strong in defeat. Hashimoto, Chono, and Mutoh give it everything they’ve got but The Barbarian and Haku are simply too big, too powerful, and too experienced for them. Hash and Haku going toe to toe is a real highlight that gets a nice pop from the crowd. The Strong Machines (nos. 1 through 4), and Big Machine vs. Ueda, Goto, Kim, Kim, and Hata Mainly a showcase for Darsow and Eadie, as all of the heels except for Umanosuke Ueda bump around like rag dolls for The Machines. Ueda gets to look strong by comparison and also he does everything possible to get under Strong Machine #1’s skin. In the end, Strong Machine #4 and Big Machine take Hata’s head off with a Backbreaker Hold/Diving Elbow Drop combination that looks absolutely devastating and seems like something they might be able to use as a signature move in the future. Sakaguchi and Hoshino vs. Atisanoe and Nagasaki The heels attack before the bell and manage to keep the advantage for almost ten minutes, until Hoshino uses his speed and guile to finally make the hot tag. Sakaguchi goes on a great house afire run that gets interrupted when The Barbarian, Haku, and Siva Afi make their way to ringside. At first, they don’t get involved but their mere presence is enough of a distraction that the heels get the advantage back. Eventually, Haku trips Hoshino up as he’s running the ropes and this enrages Sakaguchi to the point where he flies out of the ring and attacks all three men. He actually manages to hold his own against them for a bit, but while he is out there Nagasaki blasts Hoshino with the Green Mist and Atisanoe flattens him with a huge Samoan Drop for the 1, 2… 3! Barbarian stays outside brawling with Sakaguchi while Haku and Afi head into the ring to join in the beat-down on Hoshino. Inoki, Fujinami, Kimura, and Koshinaka rush the ring to make the save and we go into the break with all ten men brawling to the back while the doctor checks on Hoshino in the ring. *** Break *** Fujinami, Kimura, and Koshinaka vs. The Freebirds Doing variations on “heels play the numbers game, faces run in for the save” three times on one card is a lot, I know. We are trying to ameliorate that by spacing it out (once in the undercard, once before the break, once after the break) and escalating it from jawing to mild interference to blatant interference. The main purpose of this show is to build to tomorrow’s show in Nagoya and then to the show in Osaka on the 26th, but we still need to put on a good show for the crowd here in Kobe at the same time. Anyway, The Cobras accompany The Freebirds to ringside, and Shunji Takano grabs the mic and announces that since Fujinami, Kimura and Koshinaka are cheaters and couldn’t stop themselves from interfering in the last match, they are here to watch the Freebirds’ backs. They proceed to blatantly interfere and cause havoc while rookie referee Red Shoes Unno struggles to keep order in the ring. When the face team somehow still manages to regain the advantage, Ueda and Atisanoe make their way to ringside to participate in the chaos. As things begin to get completely out of hand, all five Machines rush the ring and a huge brawl breaks out. In the chaos, Hayes and Garvin manage to catch Koshinaka in a Double DDT and Red Shoes make the count to give the bad guys another win. Hogan, Andre, and Inoki vs. The Lucha Libre Legends (Canek, Dos Caras, and Fishman) After all of that cheating and heeling, it comes as a nice change of pace to finish up with a match wrestled cleanly and filled with shows of mutual respect. Obviously, nobody is going to go over the team of Hogan, Andre, and Inoki in a New Japan ring, but the Lucha Libre Legends get a ton of shine… including the biggest spot of the night when: Canek picks up Andre the Giant and Slams him! It’s an amazing feat of strength that brings the Kobe crowd to their feet. Canek sells the herculean effort as having done damage to his back and knee. Dos Caras and Fishman try a double pin on the supine Andre but he presses them off, sending Dos Caras flying out of the ring and leaving Fishman to eat a dropkick from Inoki and a big Axe Bomber from Hogan for the 1, 2…3! Afterward, all six men gather in the ring to play to the crowd. Andre makes a big show of putting Canek up on his shoulder and carrying him to all four corners to wave at the appreciative fans.

It's the 90s... but it is pretty close for me. I prefer the pacing and psychology of how the best guys worked in the 1970s and 1980s and recently I've been watching almost exclusively matches from those eras... but footage from those days is filled with unsatisfying finishes. The increased focus on clean finishes and (as you say) the variety of matches available from the 90s gives that decade a slight edge.

Yeah, pacing is really important. I absolutely hate the go! go! go! pace of a lot of recent wrestling. I believe the moves and spots need room to breathe sometimes. That being said, I don't think that meandering is the answer either.

I'm definitely stealing that Best 3 out of 5 Falls 10-Men Tag Match gimmick at some point in the future.

I'm really interested to see what happens next with 24 Karat, and I think the Adrian Street and Mastes of Torture gimmicks are intriguing as well. There's always something going on to pique my interest.

Grimmas has been posting his thoughts on Fantastica Mania in the Current New Japan thread in the Megathreads folder.

Working with Mauro was cool, and fun. I'm hoping to bring another friend from that period into this story in February, as an ongoing character. Anyway, I suppose I should explain the thinking behind that dessert discussion. You see, once Doriya-mon got back into this timeline, he and I decided to go 8, 16, and 32 years into the future to check out what NJPW was doing on January the 4th in those years. In 1993, they ran the Tokyo Dome for what I believe was the second time. The crowd was enormous, but kind of subdued. There was some fairly sloppy wrestling, which probably didn't help. Choshu vs. Tenryu (!) and Ultimo Dragon vs. Liger both featured some pretty bad screw-ups, though it was cool to see those match-ups. I really liked Fujinami vs. Ishikawa and The Hell Raisers vs. The Steiner Brothers. Chono vs. Mutoh and Hase vs. Sting were... OK. Overall, I felt the show would have worked better in the Sumo Hall, but on the other hand, you aren't going to fit 65,000 people in the Ryōgoku Kokugikan and it was legitimately amazing to me to see that many people at an NJPW show. In 2001 the whole show was based around an IWGP Heavyweight Championship tournament culminating with Kensuke fighting Toshiaki Kawada (!!). I wouldn't say that there were any great matches on the card, but every tournament match was at least interesting and the in-ring action was very, very stiff. The crowd was over 50,000 and they were really into it, for the most part. I also got a real kick out of seeing Kawada in new Japan. Then, we jumped ahead 16 years. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe we should have jumped another 8 years, first. Maybe that would have cushioned the shock, somewhat... ...but, I really did not like what I saw from New Japan on January 4th, 2017. The attendance was about half of what it had been in 2001. The crowd was pretty hot for a lot of the last three matches... but the things the wrestlers had to do to pop the crowd just about made me weep. The whole show seemed to be big move after big move after big move with almost no subtlety, build, story-telling, pacing... and I hardly saw a single well-executed basic pro wrestling move... and other than some nice body-part work and some struggle to hit finishing moves in a couple of the matches I don't think there was a trace of basic pro wrestling psychology. It went way beyond overkill. I kind of hated it. So, obviously, that's what inspired the frosty forum. It killed me to think that what we were doing might lead to a world where people think that a match with an Avalanche-style Dragon Suplex as a throwaway move in the middle of the match is what constitutes "Great Pro Wrestling." I had no idea what to expect when Doriya-Mon popped out of my desk drawer. I certainly hadn't expected Andre to call out his name and for the two of them to embrace like old friends. I think Sakaguchi was the only person more surprised than me. Everyone else seemed quite able to accept the presence of a blue robot cat in the booker's desk drawer. Canek seemed particularly delighted by it. We moved out to the arena floor and Doriya-Mon set up a giant screen and projected Wrestle Kingdom 11 on it for everyone to see. Our plan had been to watch the whole thing and then hopefully discuss how what we had seen applied to yesterday's treat talk, but in fact we barely made it half way through before things broke down. We skipped over the New Japan Rumble because Liger was in it and we felt it might be weird for Yamada to see that...the trouble stated with the second match we showed, with the The Young Bucks running and flipping all over the place and Barreta of Roppongi Vice going for a Tope Con Hilo and hitting nothing but floor. There were some dark mutterings of "This is not pro wrestling" from the gallery. About two thirds of the way through the dangerous slop-fest of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match, Fujinami leaped to his feet and kicked over the giant screen. He went on a long, furious rant about catch wrestling and strong style and tradition. He got right up in the face of every single wrestler in the room and, one by one, implored them to keep New Japan from heading down this dark road. I suppose it's just as well that he didn't see the Kenny Omega match. Over the next few days, most of the boys took a moment to speak to me in private, letting me know how they felt. It meant a lot to me. Really, only Mutoh didn't seem to completely understand what we were trying to get at. Probably just as well that he didn't see the main event, either.

That's interesting because I haven't gotten that sense at all from what I have read of your stuff. There is always something I love on every one of your shows. That being said, I think that using the '85 PWI rankings is a good idea to help establish a hierarchy if that is something you are interested in doing. I don't think it's completely necessary, but I am pretty sure that the big Japanese companies have almost always booked that way which is why I think I should try to do something similar with my New Japan booking.

So... Andre the Giant missed out on the ice cream lecture because he was busy with promotional duties, making an appearance on a popular variety show. He was curious about what he'd missed, so I invited him into my makeshift office on the ground floor of the arena. Just as we were wrapping up, Fujinami knocked on my door. With him were Sakaguchi, Kimura, Koshinaka, Hoshino, and Don Arakawa. They were curious about why I had called the sundae seminar. As we started talking, Canek and Dos Caras came into the office, followed a little later by Hogan and JYD, and then finally by most of the young lions and dojo boys. The Double Daves also poked their heads in, but by that time my impromptu office was staring to look like the Stateroom Scene from A Night at the Opera. I had about two dozen wrestlers crammed in there, none of them angry, but all of them wondering why I had felt the need to hammer home a point about less sometimes being more and more not always being better. About half of the guys had already met Doriya-mon and were aware that I have a robot cat from the future who helps me with my booking... but I really wasn't sure how the rest of them would react as I opened the fourth-dimension pocket in my desk drawer and he popped out.

You are too kind, kevinmcfl. Thank you. I hadn't really considered it until you asked me about it, but I do have elements of Pro Wrestling, Motivation and Management, and Writing in my background. In the mid 1980s I used to write for the glossy magazine Wrestling's Main Event, and I was a manager and colour commentator (alongside Mauro Ranallo) on Al Tomko's All Star Wrestling TV show out of Vancouver. In the early 90s I ran the Youth Leadership Development program at the local YMCA on a volunteer basis in exchange for free use of the weight room. I got into performance poetry and one summer I toured across the US, as far south as Flagstaff and as far East as Chicago, reading my poems. In the late 90s I moved to Europe where I taught English, including spending a semester as visiting lecturer in creative writing at the University of Western Bohemia in Pilsen, in the Czech republic. I also coached the local American Football team and helped to run an English language theater company. In the 2000s, I moved back to Canada to take over as Director of a small children's summer camp. I wrote columns about wrestling and MMA for the pop culture website Inside Pulse. Then 8 years ago I moved to Japan to start up a little business teaching conversation skills, travel English and business English. I got really involved with my local indy here, Osaka Pro Wrestling. Looks like leadership, language, and pro wrestling have been constants in my life. I feel like I am a very lucky guy. I've never made much money with any of that stuff... but I guess it is a good background for an armchair booker

This match proved it right here: Billy Robinson is still at the top of his game is such a perfect heel thing to say after a cheating victory.

I really like the idea of Hernandez and Adams working a kind of Art Barr type role. I imagine them dancing on the edge of causing an actual riot to break out.

Thanks! In the middle of the tour, I rented out a convention hall in a large hotel and hired a group of student confectioners from a nearby community college to set up an ice cream sundae buffet. We set out little cups with sample-sized standard popular three-topping sundaes like vanilla ice cream with strawberries, whipped cream, and a drizzle of chocolate; chocolate ice cream with hot caramel, pecans, and a maraschino cherry; matcha ice cream with black sugar syrup, sweet soybean powder, and a spoonful of sweet red beans… It was promoted as a voluntary event, but almost all of the wrestlers and a fair number of the staff participated. Everyone took one little sundae cup, ate it, and made some notes on the form we’d provided. Then we directed them to the tables in the back where they were allowed to make their own little sundaes. Most of them stuck to the tried and true, using only two or three well-matched toppings. Then we had the students present a selection of sample-sized gourmet sundaes: Lemon and pistachio; roasted strawberries; caramel apple; shaved chocolate, coconut, and macadamia… everyone was allowed to try as many as three. I don’t think anybody stopped at just one. This was followed by a short break, some tea and coffee, and a quick round of light calisthenics. Then we all sat down for one last sundae. This time it was full-sized. A very rich caramel-chocolate ice cream topped with powdered sugar, maple syrup, honey, hot fudge, caramel sauce, butterscotch, raspberry and blueberry syrups, strawberry jam, crushed oreos, chocolate chips, black sugar, sweet beans, rainbow sprinkles, crushed sweetened pineapple, and several maraschino cherries. Hashimoto and JYD came closest to finishing theirs, and even they barely manage to get half of the disgusting concoction down. We served more tea and coffee and had a little discussion about how this lesson might apply to pro wrestling. Thankfully, almost everyone seemed to get the point: More isn’t always better, too much of a good thing is still too much, there is real value in moderation… a couple of the boys brought up the concept of Hara Hachi Bu, which basically translates as: Eat Until You Are 80% Full. We talked about how that concept applies to what we do. We also talked about how the standard popular sundaes are popular for a reason, and how that applies... and about how some of the newer flavours that the students presented were exciting to try as well. Overall, I felt like it was a good use of our time and resources. We encouraged the wrestlers and staff to keep the form with their tasting notes somewhere they could see it, to help keep the lesson in mind. There was a lot of ice cream left, and the boys were encouraged to have one more for the road. About a third of them chose one of the standard sundaes, about a quarter of them tried one more gourmet-style sundae,and the rest gave it a hard pass. I think there might be a lesson there, as well, but it might be a little too on the nose to say much more about it. .

Thank you.

Really like the idea of Da Crusher getting a pin on Muraco right off the bat. They took him lightly and they paid the price.

Is Martel, Brito, and the Rougeaus the most Montreal team of all time? That's more Montreal than poutine! Maybe get Carpentier to put the tights back on and make a 10-man or a Survivor Series match.

Looking forward to KOTR

I'd be interested in seeing how Flair and Billy Graham worked a longish match like that. I am imagining a lot of stalling and stooging, but all of it entertaining

Would El Dandy have been kind of a "young boy" at this stage?

I'm loving Big Country. Gotta mix things up a little for the fans. A plus-sized Hillbillies type team is a great way to do that.

I'm loving Sheik Hacksaw Butch Reed and Sheik Hercules Hernandez.

The semi-unreliable narrator Stan Grimmas is a great gimmick! Lines like "Black Terry got in some cheap shots just like Skandar Akbar" had me rolling. I don't think I could come up with a better way to present this. Also, those are some incredible matches for your first show. Like I said, imagine putting on Brazos vs. Villanos... and it's not even the main event!

Thanks for thinking of us in your scheduling. One advantage of that is that my whole roster will be available to participate. Anyone you want, full participation. (Inoki and Fujinami would need to be protected in the booking, though).