gordi

Thank you, as always, for your kind words! I'm a little tired now, but I want to get this down while it's still fresh in my mind: Since that outdoor show, I've been meeting with Wally almost daily. No complaints there. You know me, I love an enthusiastic and motivated student. Even better, we have been talking (in English) about Michinoku Pro more or less non-stop. Wally seems to know all of the ins and outs of the promotion, in great detail. We've been over (and over and over) stuff like gimmicks, move sets, who is a rudo (heel) and who is a technico (face) and how that shifts depending on the crowds; who is over with the crowd in different towns, who has good ring chemistry, who is getting pushed, which guys hang out behind the scenes, who has some heat with whom... For the most part, everyone seems to get along pretty well, but there are some cliques and apparently not everyone gets along with Delfin and Naniwa. Those guys were both a complete blast at karaoke, though. Speaking of having a blast: I watched that tape you sent me (that terrible South African sci-fi flick, Space Mutiny) with Lance, Orihara, Kyoko Inoue, and Smiley Norman at Lance's place. It went over like Grover! We got into this thing where we were making up funny names for the main character, like "Flint Slabtrunk" and "Brock Ironbeef." Kyoko, in particular, was just killing herself laughing... which is kinda odd since she doesn't seem to speak much English. Hopefully you'll get to meet some of these guys if you ever make it up here. It's almost hard to believe how nice they are. Anyway, Wally brought up today's show in Yamagata at our lesson a couple of days ago. He said they were running a small hall in Kajo Park, where the fans sit on big blue mats around the ring. That's a common set-up for them, and in that situation they usually keep the show short and tight, with only four or five matches including a decent-length action-packed main event. Wally said that the Kajo park shows usually draw a hardcore crowd that likes a lot of variety in their matches, and that they love older guys who were big in the 1980s, and also that they go absolutely crazy for Sasuke and El Samurai. Then he asked me to fantasy-book a card for that crowd, using every wrestler on the roster, and trying to get some of the younger guys some shine without disappointing the more traditional crowd. I figured it would be good to finish off with a high-flying 6-man tag with Samurai leading one team and Sasuke the other, and let them have some moments during the match but have the finish come down to two of the younger guys. Maybe have more of a technical match - a regular tag or six-man - as the semi-main, where you could feature Dos Caras and Kobayashi to please the old school fans, while continuing to build the heat between Caras and Delfin. Kyoko and Smiley had really seemed to crack each other up at the bad-movie party, so I asked Wally if maybe they could work a comedy tag match. He loved that idea. So, we have high-flying, technical wrestling, and comedy... and we have ten wrestlers left, and only one or two matches... how about opening with a 10-man battle royal? We spent the rest of the lesson talking about who would slot where on the card, and discussing finishes and high spots and story lines and so on. Again: This is my job here in Morioka. This is what I'm getting paid for now! I thought that was awesome enough all by itself, but late this morning we headed out to Yamagata in the panel truck, with Kyoko sitting between us. It's a three-hour drive, and we spent about 80 per cent of it talking about noodles, with Wally often translating for Kyoko or I. Yamagata is famous for cold ramen in the summer, and for a soba dish made with chicken stock. Kyoko and Wally spent a long time trying to work out how they could manage to eat both before we headed back to Morioka. The other 20 per cent of the time we spent talking about fruit. They were really, really excited about picking up some cherries on the way to the show. Wally spent a lot of time on his new Nokia 880, with the antenna pulled all the way out, trying to make arrangements with noodle restaurants and cherry orchards in town. He and Kyoko got super excited after his last call, but I couldn't completely understand what he'd managed to set up. We got in around 1, and I helped Biff and Buffalo set up the ring. Biff kept calling me "Flex McStrongpants" so I have to assume that Lance or someone told him about the in-joke. Buffalo was "Base Slabpecs." Biff is already named Biff... so there wasn't much I could do in return. Around 3, they guys got their gimmicks on and we paraded over to the picnic area in the park. There was kind of a soup-kitchen set-up, and we all got little styrofoam bowls of cold ramen and room-temperature chicken soba. It was hotter and more humid n Yamagata than in Morioka, so the cold food was perfect. I can see why getting some was priority for Kyoko and Wally. After our late lunch, Wally took me out to look at some soba fields, while Kyoko and the boys were getting prepped.

Nice-looking tourney. I'm with Grimmas on this one. I can imagine picking that tape up from Tabe or Verne or someone back in '95 and being blown away.

"Asia" Kong! Awesome.

I passed on your thanks, he had this to say: Hey, Gordi. Really? I am really glad to hear that. Thank you for telling me. So, you made Jumbo's son happy.

Will do, and he'll be happy to hear it.

If it's a chain store and they don't have it , they might be able to order it in from another store, too. In my opinion these games are well worth the effort of finding them.There is a good chance I'm gonna work Fire Pro into my M-Pro story, as well.

I'm originally from Vancouver. Fire Pro Returns, for PS2, and the two Fire Pro games for the GBA (which can also be played on the DS) shouldn't be hard to find. I got all of them cheaply and easily. Have you tried Amazon or eBay? Is there an EB Games near you? Every wrestling fan should try fire pro. The rosters are insane, and the CAW even more so.

I'm pleased to see that Misawa booked Tenryu and HDA as the main focus and let Hansen's beef with him play out a little more in the background. You can see the various battle lines beginning to be drawn.

I like the subtle Japanese-style booking touch of how Hogan and Mutoh don't need to hate each other or have any specific beef in order to build anticipation for their fight. It's enough for now that we can see that the two legends are destined to meet in the ring.

I like how everything that happens here seems to be building toward something in the future.

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns. I love Fire Pro. Probably my all-time favourite series.

It's September 2nd in Japan now. Sept 1st M-Pro show write-up has been posted.

It's a little too early to say for sure, and it might just be recency bias... but if that wasn't the best day of my life it was at least in the top ten. It started with being woken up pretty early (10 am, so early for me anyway), which is generally not a good sign. It was Wally and Lance (the guy with the rat tail, from the gym) banging on my door, come to pick me up for the show. Start time was 2 pm, but according to Lance they'd already been out at the stadium parking lot for hours, setting up. He said I should bring my gym bag, shower there after we were done. "Done what?" I wondered. There was a panel truck blocking half the road outside my apartment, piled high with folding chairs. We squeezed into the cab. Apparently the show was part of some local summer festival, and apparently the crowds were way bigger than anticipated. Lance said they had set up 500 chairs, but the festival staff were worried that wouldn't be enough. Wally was really excited about that. I guess "more than 500" is a pretty good crowd for an M-Pro show. So, yeah, Wally, Lance, a tall muscular guy with an English accent named Smiley, and I spent an hour and a half setting up another few hundred folding chairs in the afternoon sun. I was glad to shower and change after that. Lance and Smiley set up the gimmick tables while I was getting changed. There were a bunch of really attractive, but mostly kinda young, girls working the tables. They were selling t-shirts and towels with various wrestlers' images on them, mugs and document folders with the M-Pro logos, stacks of Gong and Weekly Pro-Wres magazines, video tapes, beer, chuhai, calpis sour, soft drinks, rice crackers, and kakigori (like a sno-cone, but very tasty). Wally was chopping up salami with his red-bladed katana, drawing a crowd as usual. I was waiting in line to buy a beer when Lance came over and grabbed me. There was kind of an impromptu hanamichi leading from the dressing rooms out to the ring, plywood and scaffolding to make a little elevated walkway, with railings on either side. A few rows of chairs, all with paper "reserved" signs on them, separated the ring from the dressing room. The walkway ran through the middle of those rows. On one side there were nine chairs - 3 rows of 3 - spaced a bit more widely apart. There were three big coolers and a table of camera and video equipment placed behind those 9 chairs. That's where we were sitting. Lance cracked open one of the coolers. It was packed with ice, beer, fruit, and water. "Help yourself!" Lance grabbed a water and disappeared, I grabbed a big bottle of Yebisu beer, an apple, and a third-row chair, and watched as the rows across from me began to fill up. Pretty soon, there weren't many empty chairs left. There was a small hill to the West, and I could see families and small groups setting up picnic blankets with a view of the ring. People had bags and baskets of drinks and snacks and even though M-Pro was also selling drinks and snacks they didn't seem to mind if people just brought their own. There were a few fluffy clouds in the sky. There was a light breeze. The reserved seats started to fill up, too, and I recognized a few faces. Some of the shop ladies from my English class leaned over the hanamchi and passed me a basket of sandwiches and rice balls. I plopped it on top of one of the coolers. Lance came by to check on me, and later Smiley did, too. He introduced himself as Norman. The pretty receptionist from Wally's office came and sat in the chair right beside me, and took a big swig of my beer. "I like Yebissu in summer," she said, "It's little bitter." Wally was over at the camera table, setting things up. He shot me a thumbs up. Kuniaki Kobayashi, Terry Boy, Yakushiji, Tajiri, and Miracle Man vs. Jado, Gedo, Masaaki Mochizuki, Biff Wellington, and Black Buffalo Man, Biff Wellington looks way different from what I remember. He's balding and stocky, and he fights almost shoot-style now. He and Mochizuki, and later Mochhizuki and Tajiri, just kicked the crap out of each other. The match itself was mostly character work, with Jado, Gedo, and Black Buffalo in particular jjust heeling it up something fierce, and Yakushiji and Terry Boy selling like crazy. Eventually, Kobayashi got the hot tag and went to town on Mochizuki. He hit him with a savate kick, then a gorgeous fisherman's suplex which he transitioned into a leg lock and then the rear naked choke for the finish, as his teammates blocked Jado, Gedo, Biff, and Buff from interfering. The crowd was amazing, booing any heeling tactics like crazy, chanting for the underdogs, and just losing it when Kobayashi finally got tagged in. Sho Funaki and Kato Kung Lee vs. Dick Togo and Masao Orihara Oh boy, was I ever wrong about Dick Togo! That chubby little guy can really fly. He is amazing. This was kind of a comedy match, with Funaki and Kung Lee really working the Hong Kong martial arts movie gimmick, including a couple of slow-motion sequences. The athleticism to pull that stuff off was pretty close to incredible. In the end, Orihara finally got hold of Kung Lee's nunchaku only to accidentally clock his partner, which allowed Funaki to hit a tornado DDT and get the pin. TAKA Michinoku and Shinjiro Ohtani vs. Gran Naniwa and Shiryu This started out like another comedy match, with TAKA and Ohtani desperately trying to block Naniwa's rope walk elbow. After almost ten minutes of working variations on that theme, Naniwa finally nailed it, only for Ohtani to kick out at one. After that, it was all technical wrestling, with Ohtani and Shiryu working a great long sequence of roll-ups and reversals that had the crowd going crazy. Eventually TAKA hit Naniwa with a crazy dive to the outside, leaving Ohtani to hit a beautiful dragon suplex on Shiryu, and hold a bridge to get the pin. During the break, Lance, Norman, Orihara, and Yakushiji came out and handed drinks and sandwiches out among the fans in the reserved seats, then sat and helped themselves to rice balls, fruit, and water. The pretty receptionist (her name is Kaoru or Kaori or something like that) fed me grapes and shared another bottle of Yebisu with me, The boys busted my balls over that, which actually made me feel really good. The young girls from the gimmick tables came over to have some snacks and sit with the boys. One of them giggled and smiled at me, and the receptionist grabbed my arm, like, "He's mine!" which... no way that would ever happen to me in Canada, having two hawt women competing for my attention at a wrestling show. Super Delfin vs. Dos Caras This was a pure display of technical wrestling. It doesn't exactly seem like selling is Delfin's main thing, but he was able to match Caras hold for hold. They were working almost a pure Mexican style, even down to working the right side of the body. It didn't seem to throw Delfin off at all, as they kept working longer and longer chains of moves right up to the 15 minute time limit. It struck me as odd that Caras didn't go over in his debut... but during the show of respect after the match Caras clobbered Delfin with a huge clothesline, then tore his mask half off. I guess maybe they wanted to get him over as a rudo, and figured this was how to do it. It didn't seem to work to well, though. At least half the crowd was cheering wildly during the mask-ripping. I have to admit, I was marking out. It was pretty cool to see that in person. El Samurai and Shiro Koshinaka vs. The Great Sasuke and Kyoko Inoue In a way, this match was almost disappointing. I really wanted to see a Samurai-Sasuke war. Instead, they gave the spotlight almost entirely to the debuting Koshinaka and Inoue. I guess "disappointing" is the wrong word. It just subverted my expectations is all. Kosh and Inoue told a great story in there, with Kosh initially reluctant to hit a woman, frustrating Kyoko to the point where she was all but begging him to engage in a strike exchange. Eventually, Koshinaka was forced to open up on her, and that led to a solid five minutes of back and forth power moves. As the two were staggering around the ring in the aftermath, with the ref distracted, Sasuke snuck in and hit a huge mule kick on Kosh. Kyoko seized the moment and finished him with a Niagra driver for the one! two! threeee! Wally, who had been ringside taking pictures all day, got one of his staff to take me back to my apartment. He told me that since I helped with set-up, I didn't need to help with clean-up. I was getting kinda drunk, so I didn't argue with him. I had strict instructions to be at a bar called Otaru at 7:30. I got there at 8. About half the guys on the card were there, some of them wearing their masks. M-Pro workers, insiders, and hardcore fans had taken the bar over completely. Wrestlers moved from table to table, signing stuff and posing for pictures. I was welcomed like one of the family. It's a 1500 yen nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) bar with really good food. We were there at least two hours, and drank like animals the whole time, but they still only charged 15. The food was really good, too. I couldn't stop eating, even though I wasn't hungry. I ended up sitting with a couple of women who work at one of the restaurants near Wally's knife shop. They don't speak much English, but we had a blast trying to communicate. They both drank like fish. Around 11, we moved across the road into a karaoke place. The pretty receptionist met us there, along with El Samurai and Kyoko Inoue. I guess at that point I had my arms around the fun-loving restaurant girls. Kaori (or Kaoru) looked so disappointed in me. Story of my life. So, I probably blew it with the receptionist and I got such a bad sunburn that I look like a boiled lobster today... but even with all that, yesterday was still one of the greatest days of my life. I love my local indy.

My mistake! I assumed incorrectly that Jim Steele was an early Val ring-name.

So many possible story-lines going forward from here! Very nice job of show- don't-tell re: explaining your thinking to start things off. Looking forward to reading what comes next.

So today's lesson with Wally ended up going for the better part of four hours. He brought four huge photo albums, a scrap book, and a collection of trading cards; and we barely scratched the surface of it. Guy has a story about everyone, and I mean "everyone" almost literally: In particular, he has a TON of stories about anyone with a local connection. I told him that I saw TAKA at the super J Cup last year, and he lit up like a Christmas tree. He had, like four pages of pictures of the two of them together, and a story for every picture. He gave me a couple of TAKA trading cards, too: The big thing we talked about was the September 1st card. It's gonna be held outdoors, in the stadium parking lot. Apparently they are going to be welcoming a bunch of new wrestlers to the roster, and everyone on the card is going to be an M-Pro regular going forward. Here's the run-down: The opening match is a ten-man tag: Kuniaki Kobayashi, Terry Boy, Yakushiji, Tajiri, and Miracle Man vs. Jado, Gedo, Masaaki Mochizuki, Biff Wellington, and Black Buffalo Biff Wellington! You gotta remember him, he used to tag with Benoit in Stampede. Remember their match with Liger and Pillman from Clash XIX? No wonder Wally freaked out when he saw my stampede shirt. I'm freaking out now. And Kobayashi! Remember his matches with Tiger Mask? Right up there with the Dynamite Kid matches. Wonder how much he's got left in the tank. And Jado and Gedo from WAR. Those guys are crazy! I wonder if Samson Fuyuki is up here too. I heard he's working for Baba now. Any news on Baba, by the way? I heard he collapsed at a show down there, or something. Second match is a regular tag: Sho Funaki and Kato Kung Lee vs. Dick Togo and Masao Orihara Orihara is the Japanese guy I met coming out of the gym! I don't know why it never occurred to me that he might be a wrestler. That hairdo makes more sense now. Aparently Funaki and Togo are Michinoku Pro young lions. Wally seems really high on them. I'll be honest with you, though, that Togo guy looks a little pudgy. I doubt he's going to be doing much flying around. Apparently Kung Lee is a Panamanian wrestler who spent most of his career in Mexico, working what looks like a ninja-type gimmick. The third match is set up to welcome Shinjiro f'n Ohtani to Michinoku Pro! Another Benoit partner. That match they had with Black Tiger and Great Sasuke in the finals of the Super Grade Junior Heavyweight Tag League in October. Oh, man. What a match. I can see why they brought him up here. And check out who he's tagging with: TAKA Michinoku and Shinjiro Ohtani vs. Gran Naniwa and Shiryu That's gonna be insane! Naniwa's the guy who does that hilarious crab-walk elbow. Shiryu's another guy who Wally is crazy about. The next guy they are bringing in is Dos Caras! Yes! Crazy Mexican submission holds, please! Super Delfin vs. Dos Caras Delfin's got a rep as a pretty good technical worker, too, so that should be another fun one. And finally (try not to get too jealous here): El Samurai and Shiro Koshinaka vs. The Great Sasuke and Kyoko Inoue The match is about bringing in Mr. Butt-based offense and the Joshi star... but... Samurai vs. Sasuke! And we'll probably have great seats for it. My first-ever North East local indy show, and look at that card. I can hardly wait! I realize I'm using too many exclamation marks here, but hopefully you guys can understand how I'm feeling. How are things back in Tokyo?

I think he's somewhere in the Mid West I'm looking forward to dexstar's write-up on him.

So Yamaguchi-san owns at least two little businesses in town. There's a knife shop that sells, repairs, and sharpens; specializing in (if I understood correctly) left-handed shellfish knives and a special true-forged sushi knife called a honyaki. Honyaki go for the equivalent of about 500 bucks! You could literally buy two hand-made custom replica katana (which they also make and sell) for less than that. Across the shopping arcade from the knife shop, there is a little public patio with a handful of specialty food shops arranged around it. Wally owns one of those: A food import shop selling things like long loaves of french bread, various kinds of salami, black pudding, and even New Orleans style andouille! Gonna get me some of that on payday. Next door is a little farmers market that sells daikon radish, eggplant, plantains, zucchini, cucumber... Wally has a big display table set up on the patio, and several times a day he'l go out there and draw a crowd by just chopping the hell out of a salami or cucumber with one of his knives. He hands out samples and I'd have to say that the majority of the people who get one go into the shops and buy something. It's amazing to watch. He's quite a showman. There's a meeting room upstairs in the knife shop, and I do business classes there. The people who make and fix the knives are really cool. Older guys, mostly. Their English is mostly so-so, but none of them are shy about talking. The ladies from the import food shop all speak pretty good English, and most of them are well-traveled. It's an unusual set-up. I'm in there for three hours twice a week, and anybody from any of the neighbourhood businesses can come in and chat with me while I'm there. I've had from one to eight students at any one time, and the Murphy's Law for this job is that if there are two students in the room one of them will be a total beginner and the other one will be nearly fluent. It doesn't seem to bother them, though. The better English speakers help out the lower-level ones. They mostly seem to know each other and they love joking around. I dunno if it's just a first-week thing, but a lot of the students brought snacks and treats and there was always some kind of soft drink or tea available. It's impossible to plan a lesson in those circumstances, but the first two session flew by. For his private lesson tomorrow, Wally said he's gonna bring his pro wrestling photo books. I'm not sure if he meant, like personal photo albums or those big magazine-books that list everybody working for every promotion. AND!! There's gonna be a Michinoku Pro show on September 1st, and Wally's gonna take me. I think a few of the people who work for him are gonna come, too. Hopefully I'll get more info on that tomorrow. One last thing: I finally made it to the gym. The facility itself is pretty big but the weight area is crammed into the back corner, behind row after row of machines. There are machines for cardio, machines for stretching, and - of course - machines for pretending to lift. There's a Smith Machine, and Hammer Strength Bench and Row machines, and a rack of dumbbells going up to 30 kilos. There's also a big pile of weights for the Smith and Hammer Machines but no barbells or squat rack. Guess I'll have to figure a way to do squats and deads in the Smith. Or something. The craziest thing that has happened to me here so far (which is really saying something) happened just as I was leaving the gym. Two guys - both absolutely jacked up - were coming down the sidewalk, sporting zebra-striped Zubaz pants and Venice Beach Gold's Gym tanks. A white guy with a flat top and a long, flowing, blonde rat-tail (!!) and a Japanese guy with a blonde flat-top, with two black tiger stripes running front to back (!!!). Amazingly, that is not the crazy thing. This is the crazy thing: They came right up to me. Rat-tail held out his hand. "You must be Go-di. I'm Lance. It's a pleasure to meet you." He seemed absolutely sincere. "I am Masao, Yoroshiku onegaishimasu." said Tiger-stripes. I tried to speak, sputtered a little. "Talk to you later!" said Lance, as they walked inside, "Gotta get our workout in."

Of course there's a chance that in cases like Owen or Hayabusa, collective sentiment might overrule real life... But is that necessarily a BAD thing? On my own roster, I can imagine Kobayashi easing into a comfortable semi-retirement in the next couple of years, joined eventually by Kato Kung Lee and Dos Casa. Nostalgia acts get over pretty big in Japan, but I am not sure how it goes when they are wrestling week in, week out.

I assume that the standard pattern would be: 1 - Announcement of retirement/injury is made. 2 - Owner proposes an extension. 3 - Grimmas makes a reasonable counter-proposal 4 - Owner accepts the counter-proposal. 5 - Nobody objects. I assume votes would be rare, but fun.

How about this; We stick with real life, BUT... IF the owner so chooses, he can make a case(in this thread, maybe, after the injury/retirement announcement is made) that the circumstances are different enough from real life that an exception/extension should be granted. So: Dan Spivey was injured in October 1995 after being powerbombed twice by Diesel. LowBlowPodcast could make the reasonable case that, since Diesel is not in the promotion Spivey would maybe not be injured, and considering Spivey is 43 years old in the game world, it would be reasonable for him to keep wrestling for X more years. There would be a 24-hour period where Grimmas could make a counter-proposal (say, X minus 2 years, followed by 2 years of semi-retirement). The original owner could either accept the counter-proposal or ask for a vote. If a vote is requested, another full 24 hours (48-hours?) are given where the other owners could vote to A. accept the original proposal or B. Accept the counter-proposal or C, Stick with real life. I think that four votes should be counted a reasonable number of votes to make a decision, i.e. if 4 owners vote to accept the counter-proposal then the counter-proposal passes. If no counter-proposal is made, there could be a 24-hour period where other owners could vote to accept or reject the original proposal. Again, 4 votes would be considered sufficient. If a counter-proposal is offered but not accepted, both Grimmas and the original owner are exempted from voting. If a counter-proposal is offered and accepted, no vote is necessary, UNLESS another owner asks for one. This might never happen, but it gives us an option if someone strongly disagrees. If there is no counter-proposal, the original owner is exempted from voting but Grimmas may vote. In case of dispute, or in case of fewer than four votes for any option, real life would always win.

Good points. I also agree that Kawada's at his very best when he's putting other people over. Then again, that's probably true of the vast majority of great pro wrestlers.

As I'm putting fantasy cards together. I'm coming to realize that more doesn't necessarily equal better. Apparently, it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. If Liger the and Ultimo Dragon both got dropped tomorrow... of course I'd add them... but it would mean more wrestlers doing jobs when I'd prefer to put them over, more guys stuck in the mid-card when I'd rather be moving them up the ladder. My opinion (and of course you may not agree) is that we both need more young guys and cannon fodder... if we need anything at all. More top-line workers might just create log jams.

Yep.