gordi

The guy on the left in this picture! The guy on the right in this picture!

This has always bugged me, too. Particularly these days, when guys like KENTA are widely vilified online for being "no-sellers" why does HBK generally get a free pass for his unstoppable superhuman comebacks. In general, I think it's fair to sum up as a guy who was once an excellent tag worker who, once he got his big singles push, simply became too melodramatic in his style and too fond of overwrought match structures. He's always been capable of playing his role in a self-conscious epic-style match, and he really hits the heights from time to time... but he also generally seems to need that big-match structure, that overstated Dramatic Moment and that stunt-type Big Climactic Bump in order to put a really good match together anymore. I tend to rank wrestlers who don't generally need all the bells and whistles above those who can't seem to get it done without them. HBK and HHH, to me, seem to fit into the latter camp pretty neatly.

Osaka Pro now has a significant number of hardcore fans - almost 20 per cent of the people who come regularly to Minami Move On Arena - who wear JOKER t shirts and carry JOKER towels and exclusively cheer for the members of the heel faction JOKER. Even though JOKER's leader Kuuga (the former Asian Cooger) is a pretty good friend and I really should be one of the Rudo-cheering crowd by now, I prefer to show my appreciation for JOKER by booooooo-ing loudly throughout their matches. I've known of a few Japanese forums dedicated to posting rips of every wrestling & mma show you can imagine (imagine a ramped up version of the matches forum on DVDVR) so it's def out thear but i'm not sure how big the regular user base is. That's actually shocking to me! When I bring up the subject of downloading and pirating with my Japanese students and friends, the reaction is (to me) hilariously over-the-top in its negativity. It's like I brought up producing amateur snuff films or selling counterfeit penicillin to children's hospitals. In particular, one Chinese-born woman who works for a major corporation that I do business classes for was outraged at my question. Apparently, grey-area downloading is something that Japanese people think that only Chinese people do, and so she was absolutely adamant that she isn't like that! I only have one student who openly admits to pirating stuff. He's a guy in his early 40s with a very respectable job who also happens to be a huge anime nerd. He will happily download an anime file... if and only if there's no way he can buy a DVD. Since the overall attitude about pirating seems to be pretty ubiquitous, I'd just assumed that the kind of casual file-sharing that some of us engage in from time to time would not be a part of the scene in Japan. I'm intrigued to hear that I was wrong about that! I wonder if, in general, the people doing the downloading aren't the people who go to shows and that's why I've never met them... or if it's seen as such a shameful thing that even my good drinking buddies wouldn't own up to it if I asked them...

That's an excellent question! The young guy front and center in that pic is my little bro Yuji. He is the one and only Osaka Pro fan I know well who is also any kind of WWE fan. He likes John Cena, but his favourite wrestler is Don Fuji. He's definitely an exception among Osaka Pro fans in the way he also follows other promotions. From what I've seen and heard, Japanese people who follow WWE at all are way more likely to be into "American Culture" as a thing rather than "Pro Wrestling" as a thing. Among the wrestlers, I've had the chance to talk pro wrestling with most of the Osaka Pro roster at one time or another and usually they got into wrestling because of being fans of guys like Choshu or Tiger Mask. Only two of them seem to be WWE fans, though I'm probably overlooking someone. Tadasuke As far as I know, Tadasuke is the only O-Pro guy who openly dreams of working for WWE one day. Hideyoshi is also obviously a big WWE fan. I've never talked to him about it, but it's pretty clear just from watching the way he wrestles that he's watched a TON of HHH matches. Hideyoshi Other than that... I honestly think that - among the Osaka Pro fan base and the Osaka Pro roster - the lion's share of them give way more of a crap about the Chikara Pro and PWG guys who've come to Osaka than they do about anyone on the WWE roster, or the NJPW roster for that matter. It's just a different world in terms of how wrestling fandom seems to work over here. In terms of "...the pinnacle of the business" I just don't think that even hardcore Japanese pro wrestling fans generally think of it that way. For most Osaka Pro fans, Osaka Pro is what they care about. That's the only pro wrestling that matters to them. I've met quite a few Japanese guys in their 40s or 50s who are really nostalgic for specific eras: late 80s/early 90s AJPW or Early 80s/Tiger Mask-era NJPW, for example. For them, that's the be-all and end-all of pro wrestling. I've never ever met a single Japanese pro wrestling fan who discusses pro wrestling in terms of "the business" or who seems to give the tiniest hint of a damn about who is drawing or which company is the biggest. They are fans. They don't try to position themselves as experts. As far as I can tell, the Japanese equivalent of "knowledgeable insiders" are, perhaps, the fans who go out to eat and drink with the wrestlers (like my good friend Kenji), rather than people who have access to behind the scenes numbers and info and so on... Japanese wrestling fans who discuss pro wrestling as a business presumably do exist, but I've never met them... and talking about pro wrestling with Japanese people is something I've been doing obsessively for three years. . I suppose if any thought whatsoever is given to which promotion represents "the pinnacle of the business" it would probably be NJPW for most Japanese fans anyway... Reminds me of the time I came across an 80s Joshi bulletin board where they were posting pictures of crotch shots for everyone to admire. I've seen and read the equivalent of Japanese sleaze threads. It's the internet; all sorts of carry on goes on. I'd have to assume, though, that the overall mode of discussion would be almost entirely different on a Japanese board. I can imagine a Japanese board where people post crotch shots and admiring comments... but I can't imagine that anyone is snidely dismissing anyone else's choice of crotch shot or making "I can't believe this thread has gone 25 pages without anyone posting THIS shot!" type of comments. YINLING! Queen of Crotch Shots! (In Japan, everyone would either politely agree or just not reply. Here, I'd only expect someone to reply if they violently disagreed and had the Apple Miyuki or Manami Toyota crotch shots to back it up). I also simply cannot imagine that Japanese smark boards feature intense nuanced arguements about which crotch shots (or matches or wrestlers or promotions) are the best and which criteria to use when ranking them or whatever... As I've said, I'd have to imagine that what you'd get in a Japanese smark community would be way more shared appreciation and way less competing to see who can demonstrate the deepest degree of esoteric knowledge or most refined tastes and virtually no arguing about which or whom is the best. It's been my experience here with everything from pro wrestling to sake tasting to music appreciation to visiting temples that - among Japanese people - hipster oneupmanship culture doesn't seem to even exist here in anything like the form it takes in the west, nor does arguing about stuff as a form of enjoyment and appreciation. It seems to be mainly about getting into it, about working up some excitement and happiness over a shared enthusiasm... whatever that enthusiasm might happen to be. I have to assume Japanese smark community discussion boards would have to be like that, as well. EDIT: The one clear exception to the "Japanese people don't disagree with one another and argue about things for fun" rule of thumb is when it comes to food. Significant segments of the population love arguing about stuff like what rice-ball filling is best or what spices and/or sauce to put on a fried egg or which region of Japan produces the most delicious oranges... That's really the only exception I can think of, though.

Background, for the people here who don't know me from other boards: I've been living in Japan for over three years now. I live in Nara City, near both Osaka and Kyoto. I go to Osaka Pro shows about three times a month, and other promotion's shows a handful of times a year. My Japanese is still pretty basic, but I have made a lot of casual Japanese friends through my hobbies (pro wrestling, sake tasting, weightlifting, music...) And my work (teaching private English lessons in cafes) and I love going out to inexpensive bars and talking to strangers. I always bring up pro wrestling right away when I meet someone new, because I have also always wondered about what the pro wrestling maniac scene is like over here. Here's what I think I've found out so far. It's based entirely on my own experience and conversations and friendships. Others who live in Japan might have a different perspective: The vast majority of the wrestling fans I've met over here are fans of one promotion in particular rather than fans of pro wrestling in general. Two examples, to make it absolutely clear: I was with my close friend Kae and several other Osaka Pro fans when I met Akiyama in Osaka. Kae saw him first. She told me, "He is wearing a pro wrestling NOAH t-shirt!" but neither she nor any of the others recognized him. Everyone waited patiently while I got a picture and had a little chat. I was all excited "That was Jun Akiyama! Pro Wrestling NOAH champion!" It meant little to them, but they were happy for me, since I was so excited and everything. Another time, we got free promotional cans of Chu-Hai (a fruity carbonated alcoholic drink) with pictures of Chono on them. I had to explain to Kae who Chono is. Kae goes to Osaka Pro every week, but neither Chono nor Akiyama rang a bell for her. That's not the least bit uncommon. You do, at least occasionally, meet pro wrestling super-nerds who travel the country attending shows and collecting stuff and getting pictures with wrestlers. They are usually awesome to talk to, and also usually quite excited to meet a foreign fan of Japanese pro wrestling. In my experience, though, they are few and far between. The lion's share of pro wrestling fans over here are entirely "I love this promotion or this pro wrestler so much!" in their attitudes and not at all "Hey everyone! Come read how clever and original my personal opinions about pro wrestling are!" This is pretty clearly cultural. It's extremely important to be seen as displaying humility when expressing oneself in Japan. Japanese culture tends very strongly toward a polite uniformity of (expressed) opinion rather than an individual expression. As such, discussion boards like this one where the posters enjoy expressing and arguing about widely diverging opinions are pretty unlikely to exist in Japan. What's far far far more likely is a kind of shared appreciation scenario where someone posts a picture and everyone admires it. I often discuss stuff like this with my higher-level private students and the idea that westerners find arguing to be fun and social is as difficult to grasp for them as I imagine the appeal of continuous gushing fan appreciation is to many of us. I'm just beginning to wrap my head around it after three years... Underground tape trading is likely to be seen as a pretty shady deal over here. Bootlegging/pirating isn't seen the same way here that it is in the west. People will spend real money to get official DVDs and DVD collections. Very few Japanese people will resort to pirating, compared to how ubiquitous it is in the west. I'm sure tape trading exists over here in some form. Dan Ginnetty surely knows way more about it than I do. That being said, there's no way, in my understanding, that it could possibly be as wide-spread in Japan as it is in the west. That's my opinion. It's hardly the last word... but to me it's pretty clear that the smark community in Japan would have to be way different from the smark community in as we know it.

I cast my vote for Al Tomko, who booked Gene Kiniski's old Vancouver territory into the toilet by relentlessly pushing first himself and then his two sons, and by absolutely losing track of every single story-line he ever started. He was a nice enough guy, though, by wrestling promoter standards... and his kids were not bad in the ring... That being said: I doubt that there was a worse-booked wrestling show on TV in the 1980s than good old UWA All Star Wrestling out of BCTV studios.

Who gets the "credit" for booking the Invasion? Was it just Vince?

Now THAT I could see happening here. (It's Tully)

I was at the Philly Spectrum for Mania 1. They had the giant square scoreboard thing that hung from the middle of the place draped with four large screens. Like a giant movie theatre with seating for all four screens. Well then you're lucky. In Dallas they got one 45-inch screen for a 10,000 seat building. And the event was promoted in such a way that many of the fans in attendance thought the matches would be taking place there live. I find it easy to imagine Jerry Jones, in his early 40s, being in that audience and thinking to himself "Screw this! One day I'll build a stadium in Dallas with the biggest TV screen.... in the world!!"

It somehow warms my heart to read that they did that. Nice one, WWE creative!

I'd suggest calling it pro wrestling.

To be honest, half the time I don't even know who the various champs of the various federations are and the vast majority of the time I simply don't care. I used to care, at least a little, on and off. Belts certainly used to have meaning in pro wrestling, and people certainly used to argue about who was the greatest champion, at least a little, from time to time. Now? I absolutely cannot remember the last time I "argue(d) over who is the greatest champion of the sport." I find it faintly ridiculous that you suggest it's something we all do. I don't think too many people really argue that any more. I doubt that many people really care. I certainly don't. Also: *looks around furtively, whispers to skinsfan* Pro wrestling isn't a sport

Way to burn money, French Presidential Election! Does nobody working for FPE understand that the heel needs to go over first, so the face can make his comeback later and get revenge?

Either the Angolan sauntering tree, because that would make a good match-up for The Great Khali, or the Deku Tree because, you know, who doesn't want to be able to fly?

I generally hate using irony as a weapon but I tend to make an exception on those rare occasions when someone tries to hit me with "You know it's all fake, right?" I respond with a surprised "REALLY!?!?!" then a broad widening of the eyes and an exaggeratedly sad face, like I'm a naive four-year-old who has . Usually by that time the other person has caught on that it was a pretty stupid question to have asked. On one particular occasion, the dude who asked the question was somehow unable to pick up on my obvious mockery and so I took it a step further, making bug puppy dog eyes and and an exaggeratedly quivering lower lip. At that point, a good female friend came over and asked me (In a totally mock-concerned, motherly voice) what was wrong. "That man says that pro wrestling isn't real," I said quietly, and sadly. "Oh no! It's real! It's real!" she replied, gently stroking my bald head while shooting 'that man' a reproving look. He told us we were crazy and walked aggitatedly away, apparently still unaware that it hadn't really come as news to me.

http://youtu.be/U3UvA_yM1hE http://youtu.be/k4GlsMzJv5g http://youtu.be/6aA_H9lIBKU Caol Uno working with Great Sasuke just warms my heart. I wish Uno would have done more pro wrestling, he seems like a natural. Oh. Awesome. Thank you! Uno really is something else!

Osaka Pro. I live half an hour by train from their home base in Namba, and I usually go to two or three Minami Move On Arena shows per month as well as the monthly big shows at IMP Hall or the Prefectural Gym and I also try to hit the wrestler-produced special cards and various drinking parties and fan events as often as possible. If I'm to busy to get to the shows in Minami I keep up with the storylines by following the Osaka Holiday Paradise website. I'll got to a handful of NOAH or NJPW or SMASH or IGF or friend-promoted jndy or whatever shows in Osaka or Kyoto or Kobe every year, but Osaka Pro is my total mainstay. If I have to chose between buying tickets for a big O-Pro show or, say, a New Japan PPV taping in Osaka, I'll go O-Pro every time. I've always been a "support your local indy" guy... and O-Pro is my local indy now. More than that, though, I'm kind of part of the Osaka Pro "family" now. I mean: I have tons of friends and acquaintances at the shows, including a pretty big chunk of the roster and some of the staff. We exchange emails and little gifts and go drinking and hang out before or after the shows... it surprises me how big a role it's come to play in my life over here.

Good Lord! That was amazing! That has to be a serious contender for Hottest Crowd of All Time, it's right up there in Canadian Stampede/Chiggy vs. Dump Hair Match Nuclear Heat territory. Wow.

I think Lesnar's biggest difficulty will be living up to expectations. People seem to remember him as being a fair bit better than he actually was, so I'd have to imagine that anything less than a superlative performance out of him will be seen as a disappointment. It's a pretty safe bet, I'd guess, that Victator is correct and that Lesnar and Cena will have a lot of help laying out the match. If ring-rust isn't too big of a factor, they might be able to pull something off that satisfies most people... but I'll be pretty damned impressed if their match doesn't wind up being seen as a disappointment in most circles. It should make for some pretty animated discussion, either way.

Awesome! If there is any of that on tape, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend it for the 2000 yearbook right now. That is also something I would like to see.

Mark Coleman & Mark Kerr vs. Takashi Iizuka & Yuji Nagata is a match from Bom-Ba-Ye that I might recommend for the 2000 yearbook on its own merits as an interesting pro wrestling match. kjh, were there any other stand-out matches from that show? I think the Coleman one is the only one I've seen, since I have it as a bonus match on a Coleman MMA compilation set. Bas Rutten & Alexander Otsuka vs. Naoki Sano & Ricco Rodriguez and Nobuhiko Takada & Keiji Mutoh vs. Ken Shamrock & Don Frye both sound interesting to me! I've seen Rutten in worked matches before and he seemed to have a real knack for it. I like the idea of MMA guys crossing over into pro wrestling much more than the idea of pro wrestling guys crossing over into MMA... except for that whole Sapp - Fujita title run fiasco! Works just fine for me as a special-attraction type thing, though. Too bad it couldn't have been kept at that level!

Hash/Ogawa was the start of it I think. I know it pissed Mutoh off and was atleast part of the reason he left & took Kojima & the rest with him to All Japan. Shortly after that happened Choshu was out of the company too. Yeah. Interestingly enough I have just recently had a couple of conversations with Japanese dudes around my age who were right into Pro Wrestling and/or MMA around that time and Hash vs. Ogawa definitely came up as a thing where Ogawa using UWF-style legit strikes got over like Grover driving a Range Rover through a field of sweet clover. My understanding is that it wasn't just Inoki's insane "Pro Wrestling is a martial art" obsession but also that the fans really ate it up at that time in that situation which in turn presumably pushed Inoki's madness into "If a martial artist can get over in a pro wrestling setting, then surely pro wrestlers can also get over in an MMA setting. For the yearbooks, the following MMA matches should probably be considered for inclusion if you want to take a look at Inoki's insanity in action: Shinsuke vs. Daniel Gracie from Bom Ba Ye 2002 Nakanishi vs. Fujita and Shinsuke ve. Jan Nortje from Ultimate Crush 2003 Cro Cop vs. Nagata from Bom Ba Ye 2001 and Cro Cop vs. Dos Caras from PRIDE Bushido 1 (2003) Sapp vs. Tamura from PRIDE 21 (2002) Takayama vs Frye and vs. Sapp from 2002 and also perhaps vs. Fujita and vs. Schilt (both 2001) and Saku vs. Conan Silveira from UFC Ultimate Japan 1 (1997) would be interesting to show the start of his story (which is by far the best thing to come out of the Pro wrestling/MMA mix-up, I'd say)! Also, Takada vs. Rickson Gracie from PRIDE 1 and PRIDE 4 and his (reputedly) worked bout with Mark Coleman from PRIDE 5 (97, 98, 99 respectively) all help tell the story of how MMA in Japan was grown from pro wrestling roots! There's tons more, but that's a start! Inoki only became directly involved after Dream Stage Entertainment took over PRIDE. They reached a business agreement prior to PRIDE 9 for Inoki to supply New Japan wrestlers for PRIDE fights. That was in May or June of 2000. PRIDE basically started when a guy named Xavier Cullars promoted a fight between Rickson Gracie and Nobuhiko Takada in October of 1997. Takada and Anjoh had called Gracie out several times back when UWF-i was at the height of its drawing power and Gracie was Vale Tudo Japan champion, which led to the infamous "fight" between Gracie and Anjoh in Gracie's LA gym where Anjoh got his ass kicked. This turned Gracie into a sensation in Japan and eventually Takada and Gracie had their fight which Gracie won. Sakuraba's rise happened by accident. At the time he was wrestling with the other UWF-i workers in the Kingdom promotion that rose out of UWF-i's closure. Anjoh and Kanehara signed on to compete in the UFC Japan show in December 1997, but Kanehara was injured in training and Sakuraba took his place. His fight ended with a ref mistake and to make a long story short he got a rematch as the final of the tournament they were particpating in due to an injury to the other finalist and he manged to win the rematch. And that's how Sakuraba got started. Pro-wrestler vs. shooter was very much the drawing point of the early PRIDE shows and in particular pro-wrestling vs. Gracie jiu-jitsu. Later on it became more of an MMA promotion and shat all over Japanese wrestling with its superior matchmaking, title fights and production values. What oj says here is very much the sense I got from my conversations on the topic as well. Also, I have been re-reading evilclown's MMA book and it seems to support both what oj says here and FLIK's contention that Hash vs. Ogawa was the tipping point. It would be damned interesting to include a look at aspects of the pro wrestling/MMA crossover in the yearbooks even if I agree with jdw that it's gonna be like peeling back a scab! Yoshida vs. Ogawa at PRIDE Shockwave 2005 was probably the apotheosis of the "MMA is pro wrestling" era in Japan, since it seems to have been understood as "Pro Wrestling/Judo (Ogawa) vs. MMA/Judo (Yoshida) and the pre-fight promotion included Ogawa paying a visit to Hashimoto's grave to pay respects and the post-fight included Ogawa doing "The Hustle" on a broken ankle!

I think that a lot of these tropes only become annoying when pro wrestling is consumed in the form of watching match after match after match after match on DVD or as an .avi file in a (somewhat?) analytic fashion. Of course, that's not how pro wrestling is generally meant to be watched. Of course, that is how very many online commentators watch pro wrestling. Things like FIP, well-established finishing moves, established finishing sequences (of doom), setting up the finisher only for the opponent to escape, outside interference causing max damage, easily-damaged referees, the bad guys taking advantage of a distracted or KOd ref to pull nefarious tricks, bad guys cheating to win, fired-up babyface comebacks, heels repeatedly popping up and then dropping back down and then popping back up to feed those superman comebacks, having the guy trapped in a hold struggle to grab the rope, the crowd chanting for the good guy to twist his body and extend his arm that extra couple of inches... Since moving to Nara and switching my viewing habits from "watching tons of stuff on tape, DVD, and my computer" to "going to Osaka Pro a couple of times a month and other live shows a handful of times a year" I have absolutely fallen in love with all of those tropes once again... and it's glorious. Osaka Pro has a justly deserved reputation for comedy and silliness... but they also runs shows every day and so I'd have to imagine that the roster guys there work in front of a live audience more than almost any other indy wrestlers in the world. They are really really really good at using those basic tricks (and others) to work a live crowd. In a live situation, you can really get caught up in well-executed delayed comebacks and drawn-out transitions... you can get all worked up over the bad guys doing bad guy things and you can pop like crazy for legitimately earned hot tags and subsequent fired-up comebacks... I'm not going to try and argue that all of the above-listed tropes are always a great thing. They are often done poorly. They can certainly become rote and lifeless in the wrong hands. And: I can easily understand - I can absolutely relate to - how watching tons and tons of matches can lead to the feeling that, even when common tropes are done well, it's just something that you've already seen a few too many times. All I'm trying to say is this: Since going back to consuming pro wrestling mainly as part of an involved crowd getting caught up in live action, I think I have come to understand why these things have become tropes. Wrestlers do them because - when they are properly utilized - they work to get the live crowd involved, they work to build the crowd's tension up, and they work to pop that tension. In the hands of a competent worker, all of those tropes can be awesome in a live setting. I mean, those simple, basic, oft-repeated things can still make you lose your shit if you have any reason at all to get caught up in caring about who wins and who loses. It probably won't help... but maybe keeping that in mind might take some of the edge off of seeing those things again and again and again...

Yep, me too. It was so stupid and so insulting... and at the same time it was so clear that the people producing the show sincerely believed that they were being hilarious and cutting edge. I had to ask myself how much of my time and money I wanted to keep handing over to people like that. I have simply never been able to just be a fan of WWE from that moment on. I will still, a couple of times a year, take a look at something that has everyone talking and if someone gave me a ticket to a show I'd go... but I'll never be able to fully enjoy their stuff again. That was a legit breaking point for me. Yeah... 90s AJPW was the one thing that I thought I'd always be able to enjoy without qualifications, the one thing about pr wrestling that would always be great in my eyes... but anytime I see a guy taking a head-drop now, it always reminds me of how I felt when I heard that Misawa had died in the ring... I've got so many DVDs from that era, but I can hardly bear to watch them now. 90 per cent or more of my pro wrestling jones these days is satisfied by going to live Osaka Pro Wrestling shows. I'm happy giving those fine people a fair chunk of my time and money and I can just relax and enjoy the show, the atmosphere, the camaraderie, the characters, the stories, and the good times without having my intelligence insulted or worrying about seeing one of my friends destroy themselves in the ring. I feel pretty damned lucky that I have easy access to a form of pro wrestling that I can still enjoy that way.

Please ask him what his opinions are on Brody, as a wrestler and as a person.