jdw

I love wrestling. Last time I spent a decent amount of time watching wrestling in a day, I saw some matches that I enjoyed the hell out of... some stuff I thought was "eh"... and got some laughs in at Flair: http://otherarena.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2202 Last time I wrote about a match was a couple of days ago here, where I talked about a match that I liked that someone else didn't. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31793-jvk-reviews-pimped-matches-from-late-90s-10s/?p=5708431 * * * * * As far as this, it lost me right around here: JA: Dropkick to knee JA: Dragon Screw JA: five stomps to the knee while Kobashi Hulk's Up JA: Running kick to knee KK: Chop JA: Stomp KK: Urakana (blocked) JA: Exploder KK: No Sells KK: Half Nelson Suplex JA: Zombie sells JA: Dropkick to knee Oh... they're dead now as Jun rolls to the floor and Kenta rolls towards the apron. Oh... they're not dead yet as Jun comes over and theydosey doe around until... KK: Half Nelson Suplez on the floor Kenta rolls him back in the ring for a count, which Jun kicks out close to three because he's freaking dead 11+ minutes into this. KK: DDT + cover KK: Full Nelson Suplex + cover Kobashi suddenly again remembers that his knee hurts. He still decides to set for a move where he'll need his knee: a power bomb. No, wait... it hurts too much and he drops Jun and wanders around a bit. No... wait... it's okay now.. KK: Choppy choppy chop KK: plants the fuck out of Jun with a power bomb + sells the hell out of the knee... Jun takes the opportunity to roll onto the arpon, which everyone who has been following along for a while knows is to set up a spot off the arpron to the floor. Kobashi sets Jun for a Half Nelson Suplex off the apron, which makes perfect sense if you're selling your knee like Kobashi has been. Hell, any move off the apron makes perfect sense, as does the 50/50 chance that it will get counters, as is always the case since All Japan went to needing to have these in damn near every big match that it's become a meme by this point. Jun counters the half nelson suplex attempt with a weak back elbow, then wins the "struggle" with Kobashi by eatting some chops while giving Kobashi's knee some love taps, puts on the hold for the Dragon Screw surprisingly easy, which Kobashi makes no attempt to stop or block and really only tries to position himself so that he eats it in a really nice visual fashion. Dude in the first row really likes it. But then again, Dudes in front rows like Sabu going through tables. Jun is surprisingly okay for a guy who ate a pair of Half Nelson Suplexes (one to the floor), a Full Nelson Suplex and just got power bombed the fuck out of. 7/94 Doc after the backdrop driver this ain't. Jun proceeds to attack the knee in a variety of ways for close to seven minutes, which would be compelling if (i) we hadn't just seen Kenta blow off the prior knee shit by Hulking Up, (ii) Jun had any knee related finishers, and (iii) damn if Kobashi doesn't just pop up to cut off all of this knee work as well. Oh well... It's kind of funny that folks coined the term self-conscious epic more recently, especially for later day WWE Main Event Style. It would have been a good term for back here. I did see Pete use it for a Misawa-Kawada the year before, but this one really has the vibe even more.

It is amazing to recall that this trade happened: November 16, 1989: Traded by the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 1990 1st round draft pick (Loy Vaught was later selected), a 1991 2nd round draft pick (Joe Wylie was later selected) and a 1992 1st round draft pick (Elmore Spencer was later selected) to the Los Angeles Clippers for Danny Ferry and Reggie Williams. Because: * Ferry wouldn't sign with the Clippers * the Cavs decided it would be better to have Price+Ehlo in the backcourt than Price+Harper On the first, it shows how overrated Ferry was at the time. He wouldn't come to the Cavs until the 90/91 season, and then never amounted to a true quality player. On the second... Harper did seem to be going into Ball Hog mode: 22-7-7 with 20 shots a game (+6 from the prior year) and .442 shooting (minus near .060 from the prior year). I don't recall how focused he was on defense at the time, relative to the solid defender he became with the Bulls and Lakers. The Cavs being the Cavs, this worked out just great for them: - Ferry wasn't good - Harper blew out his knee in January - Price would blow out his knee the following November and wasn't quite the same after - Craig Ehlo was... well... Craig Fucking Ehlo Boy what a strange career Harper had. 20-6-5 in his last year with the Clippers, though his shooting was poor. There probably was some team in the NBA he could have conned out of good money. He wanted $20M for five years from the Clippers, but they balked. The Bulls gave him $19.2M over five years, but adjusted it around the cap with a backloaded deal. His playing time was cut in half, and he dropped to 7-2-2... and this was the year *before* Jordan came back. Or better to say, the year where Jordan came back later in the season. On some level it worked out. He got paid, and though he lost the ego-f of being a "big star" that he could have been somewhere else, he won 3 rings with Jordan, which earned him boned with Phil so that he was able to win 2 more with the Lakers (one as a starter, the other as a scrub because of his last major injury). 5 rings... not bad.

That's an interesting take This was 40 minutes of my life by going over to Youtube to see if I'd forgotten about this one. I now recall why I specifically wrote that "one last time" comment in the DVDVR 90s Poll. The one thing I'd take back from it is that 6/98 isn't really all that great either.

Every five-year period is not created equal. Taue was a main-event player during a run when All-Japan sold out Budokan like clockwork. Akiyama headlined Dome shows that did far bigger numbers than New Japan has hit during its recent resurgence. I wouldn't say either has a strong case as a HOF draw. But I also wouldn't say it's at all clear that Nakamura is a bigger star than either of them. During All Japan's peak from 1990 to 1996 or 97' Taue was never higher than the number 6th or 7th star in the company. During that period of time Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Tsuruta, Stan Hansen, Steve Williams and Terry Gordy were all bigger stars than Taue. And while this is a minor point when Taue did become Triple Crown champ, it was his first defense of the title at Budokan Hall that lead to All Japan's first failure at selling the building out in something like 6 years. Out of all the Japanese stars that peaked during the 1990's Akira Taue is not even in the top 10. I've never seen Taue or even Akiyama as a Hall of Famer, heck besides brief periods of their careers neither have stood out as major stars. I don't vote for Taue as a HOFer, but... He was a bigger star than Williams after the Narita Nightmare: 3/95 through the rest of the decade. He was a bigger star than Hansen from the Carny in 1995 through the rest of the decade as well. Gordy was gone after 7/93. One could point to Vader, but it's little over a year and Vader basically was an outsider being brought in rather than someone who had worked for the promotion for a dozen years, like Taue. They're not really comparable by that point. Vader was a bigger star for a year than Kobashi and Kawada as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. Jumbo was always bigger, but that was over in 10/92. Taue was pushed harder than Kobashi through 1995, and after that they were pushed pretty much the same through the end of 1997. Kobashi was more popular, Taue was ranked higher. One can rate that however they want. He was behind Misawa and Kawada the entire decade, with the exception of the period where Kawada was in the dog house. Jun was pushed harder at the very end of the pre-split promotion, but not really a bigger star. It's hard to rate where one would rank the guys for the "decade" because only the Four made it through all of it. Regardless, I wouldn't rate him as never getting higher than "#6 or #7" in the promotion. He was the #3/4 star of the promotion from 4/95 to the split, dipping lower if one counts Vader for a short period of time with the note that Vader himself is an oddball case. It was a structured, closed promotion. No one other than Misawa had runs like Hash, Mutoh and Sasaki had in New Japan as the #1 guy. Kawada didn't have the run. Tenryu didn't have that run opposite Jumbo. It's just not how Baba operated.

I could swear that folks gave Tanahashi all of the credit for drawing in the turnaround when pushing to get him into the HOF quickly. So now it's Nakamura? I could find two dozen Budokan's that Taue main evented or co-main evented between 12/90 & 6/00 for All Japan, probably close to 40% of the Budokans they ran in that period and largely packed until the tail end (interestingly enough when he mained fewer). How much credit do folks want to give Taue for that "drawing" when trying to pimp him as a candidate?

BTW, if one wants an idea of how widely Dave hands out ballots: Japan Region Shinsuke Nakamura-- 73%--120 Volk Han got 54%--86 The fewest ballots that there could be in the Japan Region for Volk to get to 54% would be 160. Of course that would give Nakamura 75%, so either Steve typed it up wrong or Dave did the math wrong. 160 votes in the Japan Region is a shit ton of votes in a year where there isn't someone like Kobashi or Liger on the ballot i.e. someone who would draw a lot of votes from marginal puroresu fans or even lots of votes from non-puroresu fans just voting on the rep. Given Brock's 297 = 76%, that means there were between 389-393 voters in the Big Region... which is pretty mind boggling. Again, the break down on the types of voters is meaningless without Dave indicating how the roughly 400 voters break down into the specific buckets. Even then they're pretty meaningless unless he also then breaks down the regions. Who is voting in the Puroresu and Lucha categories?

It's really a meaningless breakdown unless there are actual numbers attached to the breakdown. Dave doesn't tell us how many are in each bucket, and how those votes break down.

This has been a trainwreck aspect for years. Which is kind of ironic given Dave's love for both (i) his Stats on who voted what, and (ii) his Who i.e. different groups of voters. I can't think of a junk stat in sports that's worse than Dave's HOF stats, and lord knows I run into tons of junk stats in sports.

Japan was filled with plenty of bullshit. Brody was a big star, and he was all bullshit.

Babe = Londos Bonds = Hogan

I kind of get it: both were batshit crazy when young, and then eventually settled down when older. The big difference is that Sheff didn't really have any time off until older: there's no hole in his career. He was a bit up and down at times. I'm wondering is this guy is more like Shawn: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/carpech01.shtml Established himself at a certain level, then has the 2002-03 injury that's a bit like early Shawn screwing up in the first run with the WWF, and also walking out with the IC Title. Comes back, gets his shit together, that 21-5, the Cy, the 3rd in the Cy the next year and the WS... that's kind of like Shawn's "peak" in his 1996 run with the WWF Title. Then he has what looks like the career ending injury, toasting two seasons. Then BOOM he's back, he's in main events again, he's praised, he's 2nd in the Cy, then the following year 2 wins in the WS (Mania vs Taker), then the year after is all banged up and knows the jig is up but comes back for the build to Mania (the post season)... gets the sympathy push through the Nationals... before the Taker Giants squash him and end his career with a 0-2 NLCS. Carpenter will also be overrated by Cards Fans who think he was at the level of one of those All Japan shorter career as a great worker, Roy Halladay or Johan Santana, or Bret Saberhagen, or David Cone when... no, he really wasn't.

You missed the earlier ones where Midnight Run was in every column. We've talked about Bill a lot in the earlier parts of this thread. As a columnist, Bill peaked before he ever had a peak. He never was consistently strong. He had long stretches of being "fun" if you were into his type of stuff, lesser stretches of it didn't tickle your fancy but he didn't annoy you, and next to no stretches if he annoyed you. I'd have to go back and look at the columns I pointed to early in the thread, several years back, as examples of when he could still focus and deliver something useful. The only one that I remember off the top of my head was the Duncan pieces in the 2013 playoffs: http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-1 http://grantland.com/features/tim-duncan-part-2 "Career Arc" became one of the many cliches run into the ground at Grantland, but I thought that was a good one. It's not a masters thesis on Timmy, but it's a good overview, it's a good reference source to look back at, and it drops in some good forgotten stuff that even someone like me who has watch his entire career with interest has forgotten over time. Someone like Will probably would want more from it, because there is so much more than can be said about Tim and the Spurs in the period that was covered. But I also suspect Will would find it a pretty fair and positive and loving summary of Tim's career, and the ups-and-downs-and-ups of the period (missing of course the finish of 2013, the triumph of 2014, and the annoyance of the first round draw with the Clippers in 2015). It's not GREAT~! but it presents Timmy and the team in a very accessible way to pull folks into looking at him some more. Which is among Bill's better skills. Of course I look down the archives and find three columns later: The NBA’s Midnight Run: Summer Moves, Part 1 The NBA’s Midnight Run: Summer Moves, Part 2 So... yeah... he could churn out Good Simmons with Shit Simmons really quick. Looking around the 2013 archive, maybe the T-Mac piece and the "Daring to Ask the PED Question" were others that I pointed to. I think The Basketball Book is probably the best representation of his writing, both in terms of things that he does best, things that he does poorly, along with his ability to pull in stuff long forgotten and present them to an audience of readers that otherwise wouldn't go down those rabbit holes. Biases o' plenty, but when one sees Jabbar #3, Magic above Bird, and things like that... even with all the biases there are some subjective decisions he makes that run counter to them. So perhaps that's the peak as a "writer", one that isn't really as a columnist.

Zach both could head off to Time Warner where he has multiple platforms to work on. They have NBA.com and NBA TV for years to come, so writing for NBA.com would be easy. They even have those goofy The Starters guys doing podcasts, having a blog, having their own daily show... that thing employees 4 guys in front of the camera, and lord knows how many behind, which is mind numbing. There's Bleacher Report. Being in the Time Warner family means he's close to Simmons at HBO, depending on what Bill has planned for future ventures. Sports Illustrated got spun off from Time Warner as a piece of Time Inc. They do seem to be putting some effort into the website, even if I hate the redesign. But it's Old Media, and I'm not sure if Zach would want to tie his horse to that. My guess is that it's Time Warner vs ESPN. It's not terribly easy to sign up with ESPN at a time when (i) they've just killed your best job ever, and (ii) they're going through a multi-year reduction in force. That reduction in force comes just two years after the last one ESPN went through: the one in 2013 that killed off jobs such as Howie Schwab's that everyone thought was cold blooded. Business is business, and one tends to go where there is the most money. But Lowe has seen a fair amount of ESPN cold hearted shit in his 4 years there that might make him take a pause. We'll see. Edit: Keri strikes me as one who might go the Time Warner/TBS or Fox route since they both have baseball coverage. He also could easily drop into MLB.com imbed for a long haul.

Yeah, I pulled out the Vader and Blackwell, then went looking for a J and thought... "Is this fucking Scrabble and those are the rest of his tiles?!?!"

Ah... longer form. I was looking for the J with Blackwell.

I think it's telling how much ESPN is going to use most of these guys that Zach hasn't had anything published. He already had a column in mind for Tuesday that he mentioned on twitter. Keri is fine, because he already was getting some ESPN run. The rest will only see the light of day if they've already resigned with ESPN. My guess is that Lowe is in the same boat as Morris and Rembert and Greenwald: contract is about to expire, and he's been shopping around. He hasn't announced anything yet as he hasn't made up his mind. I read that a little as Zach isn't quite as hip to the cutthroat realities of the business as Morris and Rembert are i.e. line up your gigs and get out of Dodge when the shooting starts. On Greenwald's side, my guess is that he had a vibe as soon as Simmons left that ESPN wasn't going to be in the pop culture side for the long haul. He was smart enough to cash his chips on a book deal, and whatever regular writing gig he appears to have lined up.

I don't know if Matt is playing Scrabble or doing anagrams, since he has too many letters for both.

For reference, pulled from his various posts: Jerome's / El-P's Top 10 #1 Jumbo Tsuruta #2 Stan Hansen #3 Terry Funk #4/5 Toshiaki Kawada #4/5 Kiyoshi Tamura #6 Genichiro Tenryu #7 Mitsuharu Misawa #8 Nobuhiko Takada #9 Jushin Liger #10 Nick Bockwinkel

Beats the hell out of me. Haven't watched much of of his stuff in the past decade. Of the top of my head of his age peers as far as who I'd prefer to watch a random match/performance from, I would probably place him in the middle of the group that includes Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi, Taue, Hash, Mutoh, Hase, Chono, Sasaki, Maeda... I'm probably forgetting someone in there. Strengths? I think Jerome hit on them above and in his various UWF 2.0 reviews recently tossed in the Yearbook recently. One that Jerome didn't touch on it specifically since he was focusing on UWF 2.0: I also liked Takada's bend-don't-break ability to work with people outside the confines of UWF-style. More so than the rest of the top UWF guys, at least until Yamazaki found his grove in 1996 in New Japan. Folks like to crap on the Cobra match, but I'd much rather pop it in than watch Misawa against Steamboat, Bret or Albright. That's not something that makes me toss Misawa on the woodpile, but I do give Takada kudos for finding a middle ground to work with Cobra in a way that rocked that crowd. Frankly, any goofiness in the match isn't anymore goofy than the goofiness we see in a typical Flair match.

That's what I would have thought.