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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF26dYwb21U

It's awesome, but it's not a pro-wrestling match. Doesn't bother me. It gives some insight into how good a grappler he truly was and you can also use it to judge how good/realistic his worked shoots were. I doesn't give us an idea of how good a grappler he is. Frank wasn't a world class wrestler. He was a world class shooter at the time, for his weight. Grappling is just an element of MMA.

It's awesome, but it's not a pro-wrestling match. Neither is the Funaki-Bas. So I haven't got a clue why anyone would take it into consideration.

I'm sure there was an element of digging the cool heels, but when you find a heel worker so sympathetic that you watch matches from their POV that is not standard pro-wrestling storytelling. Maybe heel fans do it all the time, but I can't remember seeing it when people discuss US wrestling, for example. Have you ever seen anybody talk about Tully vs. Magnum from the POV of Tully, or Dibiase vs. Duggan from the POV of Ted? It doesn't seem to happen. A chunk of fans in Japan watched matches from the heels POV. I mean... what the fuck do you think was going on in New Japan in 1983-84 when Choshu was clearly the heel but just as clearly had a big fan base behind him. In turn, Tenryu was the hell when going opposite Jumbo, but ended up have his own large fan base. Fuck standard pro wrestling storylines. If the heels had large fan bases, as they did in those two feuds, it didn't matter as long as the company was making good money. Which was the case. Kawada was quite literally Tenryu's heir. That he ended up playing the exact same role as Tenryu, leaving a succesful partnership with the ace of the promotion to go opposite of him in a heated feud, really couldn't get the storyline across anymore clearer to fans who had watched Jumbo-Tenryu the decade before... and had seen all the Choshu stuff. If Kawada was somehow the creator of a new kind of heeldom opposite the established face ace and his group, then I could understand not getting that he was actually a heel. But since the role he played went back 1983 in Japan, I'm not sure why anyone who claims to follow Japanese wrestling over that decade would view him as something different. I mean... not rocket science.

People always knew Kawada was the heel from 5/93 on. We talked about it all the time online, that Misawa and Kobashi and Jun were the faces, and that Kawada and Taue were the heels. Knowing he's the heel and viewing him as one are two different things. Kawada was an internet darling the same way Benoit was. People watched the big AJPW matches from his POV. They didn't (at least in my experience) watch the matches from the POV of Misawa, or Misawa and Kobashi, overcoming the dastardly heels. It was viewed more along the lines of a sporting rivalry such as Borg/McEnroe, Sampras/Agassi, or what have you, and I stress ]i]what have you]/i] as I don't want to go round and round in circles about analogies. One of the talking points about AJPW used to be whether the heel/face roles were the same as in US wrestling. MJH argued many times in the past that there were clearly defined heel/face roles. Others didn't see that as they were caught up in the chase narrative. That's the way I remember it. I may be wrong, but I think there's a history of internet fans not really viewing Japanese workers as heels but rather as favourites whether it's Akira Hokuto, Mayumi Ozaki, Genichiro Tenryu or indeed Toshiaki Kawada. All of those workers were heroes to online fans and whatever heel/face dynamic there was in Japan or in the matches was meaningless. Kobashi was the internet darling when I came on line. Behind him, Misawa was over at the pefect champ, which is something Meltzer started to push no later than 1995. If people online saw matches from Kawada's POV, I'll take 100% of the credit for that since I was the one who started talking about things from all of their POV's rather than just Misawa and Kobashi. On the other hand... I'd disagree that everyone focused on just Kawada's POV. People sure as hell didn't all agree with me that Kawada was the best worker of the three, or the most compelling, or had the most compelling storylines. You're reading too much into how things were at the time. I suspect that the Kawada fans were just more vocal, or just more so in your eyes.

I don't believe in either of them any more than I believe in Santa Claus. That doesn't matter, really. They're both good performers, and more similar than disimilar.

It's not like Ole and Stan would have sold for Liger in the Techwood studios either.

I would be stunned if he finished below Guerrero, Benoit or Liger this time, and I don't see their cases as particularly linked to the same trends in thought that might or might not hurt Flair. From that list, only Hansen and Funk seem like solid bets to pass him, and I don't think that's a given in either case. My gut sense is he'll finish higher this time, not lower. It would be funny as shit if he finished #8 again, but it's highly unlikely. He'll move up.

This was about a year and a half after he debuted, and actually was taped a few days before his TV debut match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Buo6ht8XqA That would be a great young boy. Not a "great wrestler" yet, but a great young boy. He does one obvious thing that's a bit flaky, but considering how Kawada works after transitioning back to offense, I'd have a hard to calling it overly flaky. It's quite likely Kawada called the flakiness. On the balance, I'd say his performance is better than Kawada's... and that's coming from someone who likes Kawada a good deal more than Kobashi. Then there's this two weeks later in his first TV main event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnaQRLllOUY I'd forgotten how ridiculously good that match was. The key here is that it's four days after Hansen & Tenryu lifted the World Tag Titles off Jumbo & Yatsu, making Tenryu the Five Crown Champion (TC+Tag). A week after this, Jumbo & Yatsu would get their chance to get "their" belts back. Jumbo is about as full of piss and vinegar as you'll ever see him, kicking the fuck out of Tenryu any chance he gets. In turn, Tenryu takes that beating out on Kobashi. The kid fires back, which only pisses Tenryu off some more. Kobashi is rather good in this for a kid just a ways into his second year in there with a trio of #1 GoaT Candidates. There's one false-step section, and one kind of wonders what's up with Hansen as it seems he botches the vertical suplex, then is off on the dropkick into the corner, and then drags Kobashi over to Jumbo's corner for *Hansen* himself to tag in Jumbo. Don't know if he got knocked a little goofy, or... what. Jumbo kind of gets it (whatever "it" is) and maneuvers Hansen into a quick sequence where Stan can tag Tenryu in. It's an odd segment, and after going back to rewatch it, I have no clue. If it were Brody, I'd have fun ripping him. Anyway... the kid is very good for a kid in that sequence. He took steps up in 1990 and 1991 and 1992. I think he was better than Misawa in both 1991 & 1992. At the time, I didn't think there was much daylight between he and Kawada, and by the end of the year they were the best men in the world, especially with Jumbo on the shelf. There have been very wrestlers who were as good as he was young.

I look forward to the "Banks is the Rhonda Rousey of Pro Wrestling" talk.

Hokuto-Kandori is a bit different since it's interpromotional. My guess is quite a bit more was worked out ahead of time on that due to lack of familiarity in the ring and the politics of work interpromotional matches, especially with a customer as tough/difficult as Kandori. Not in the sense that they got all DDP in laying out all the details (allegedly) in advance. But that they, and their handlers on each side, worker through more than a pair of guys who'd worked together for more than a decade and opposite of each other for the past year.

Barry is a pretty interesting tag guy because he could play so many roles well. He could eat up the FIP perfectly so someone else could get the hot tag, as Barry was a terrific seller, could work hope/near tag spots, and then get ripped back down into peril. He could let someone else FIP and work extremely well both on the apron, run all those spots of losing his cool coming into the ring with the ref working to get him out, then work the House O' Fire hot tag kicking the heels asses. He could heel, both working on top putting a face in peril with all the cool stuff he could do, and bumping & selling his ass off. He could work Big Man, but also was just about the best Big Man ever at working where size didn't matter. He could work where his storyline (i.e. Barry vs Somone On The Other Side) was the central one, but was quite good at taking a back seat when someone else's storyline needed to be front & center (Steamer & Gilbert vs Flair & Barry). He could work Vet Partner to Dustin's Young Gun. He could do a turn angle in a tag. As a face he could make a heel look better than just about any face good, and as a heel he could make a face look like gold. Able to stooge and bitch. He wasn't quite as blessed as Eaton or Arn with a longer term partner that he could work out a load of spots with, but he worked enough tags over the years, and worked with and against enough top tag wrestlers, that he was pretty quick in putting stuff together with partners, or working standard spots/sequences. Pretty much everything you'd want out of a tag worker, he could do.

Since the next President is probably going to have to fill up to three Supreme Court seats, not really this time . Unless you live in a really short list of states, yes really. There are other races and props down the ballot as well. Who I vote for in California as President doesn't matter other than to help run up the Popular Vote. But down ballot there likely are important things. Take 2008 in California: 2008 Presidential 8,274,473 (61.01%) Obama 5,011,781 (36.95%) McCain Prop 8 7,001,084 (52.24%) Yes 6,401,482 (47.76%) No Would 100% turnout have made a difference with Prop 8? Who knows. Simply that there usually are other things on the ballot worth voting for/against.

Pancrase is tough because (i) it was worked far more than they let on, and (ii) sifting through to find the works vs straight 100% shot from start to finish is a chore. All of Shamrock's three jobs to Funaki (one) and Suzuki (two) are likely works. There were Shamrock "wins" with lesser guys that felt more like sparring/training sessions until Ken was ready to take it home. There were Funaki matches that felt the same way. So you try to figure out what's a work. Then you try to figure out how one judges it as Pro Wrestling Work, except that it's suppose to fool us that it's Real, except if we've think / have figured out that it's a work is that a negative? It's kind of a fucked up process. I'd chuck Pancrase, and I'd chuck the Rings stuff that were shoots.

I have no idea who had "most" or was the "best" at this concept. In part because "great" is a fuzzy word, but also because we haven't seen a ton of shit. But even if we took what's available, we could take Rey Jr and two people who have watched just about everything of his (say Dylan and then say someone who loved the AAA/WCW version of Rey like Meltzer), and then totaled up all the people that they say Rey in "great" matches against, the number were be rather staggering. More than we likely would get to with Flair or Jumbo, in part due to availability issues but not entirely. My guess is that we could do the same with Liger, especially if we get someone who really likes juniors style work... because those folks REALLY like juniors stuff. Hell, I was at a Liger match that I thought was a perfectly fine ****-ish level match (which appears to hit the "great" standard here), and some other folks thought it was *****. So... yeah. Kobashi might get there too since people thought he had **** matches against everyone, well into the 00s. So I don't know. But more to the point: I don't really care if Jumbo is #1 in "most", or Flair is #1 in "most", or Liger is, or Rey is, or Kobashi is, or Terry Funk is. That's not terribly important, or at least not to me. I think what's important is being able to say/show that Wrestler X had great/good/solid/all-time classic/MOTYC/EPIC~!/whateverthefuck matches against a wide number of opponents. It's of value to say that Kawada had excellent matches involving a wide variety of opponents while Sting (to pull a name out of my ass) had them against a more limited number of opponents. One might think Stings matches with Flair, Vader and Foley are all-time classics because they float your boat, but moving outward from there it gets thinner in terms of opponents. There's value in knowing that, and in people being able to add some more quality Sting opponents (which there are) to the list. But when it reaches a certain threshold, it really doesn't matter anymore. If Jumbo is 40, Kobashi is 41, Flair is 42, Liger is 43 and Rey is 44, it doesn't really mean anything at that point... other than Flair hit Life, the Universe and Everything. We've reached the point of marginal return. I frankly don't know if we've reached the point of marginal return at a lower level of 30... or 20... or who knows.

If you go up and see where I initially made the point about those three matches, it was in relation to someone potentially running in to dump on Meltzer's ratings: all ratings can be reasonably disagreed with. I used three of you matches as an example where I wouldn't agree. I didn't/don't agree with Dave's ratings all the time, either That was the point: any list that we used to do this would be open to questionable ratings by people looking it over.

I don't love the match, but I wouldn't rate it as low as the 10/93 Misawa-Hansen as poor All Japan Budokan main events.

I suspect that Dylan would agree that even "roles" is just the tip. Someone like Steamboat largely played the same role for the overwhelming majority of his career on tape: Ultimate Babyface. But within that "role" or "character", it's possible that one could still have versatility in the type of wrestling they do. Perhaps most of his time such a wrestler works as a technical babyface. But it's possible that he also is a kick as brawler when called on. It's also possible that in a blood feud he plays short fused pissed off out of control face. I'm not saying that Steamber did all that. But it is possible to get *some* versatility despite playing the same primary role/character pretty much all the time. Sano is a wrestle we talk about having versatility due to the variety of styles and promotions he worked in. We talk less about the variety of characters/roles he played. His character typical only comes up when talking about his New Japan time opposite Liger. So... Versatility can cover a lot of things. It's not really a single thing, it's more in how the term is being used with the specific wrestler. Sano was versatile in styles. Jumbo was versatile in evolving characters, and flipping between face and heel.

It's difficult to be more clear. When someone as delusional about Jumbo as myself doesn't think the Hennig or Rich or Backlund & Roop tag (and good lord... I'm as delusional of a Backlund Mark as there is) doesn't think those are ***1/2+ matches, they probably aren't really ***1/2+ matches. I like the Rich match for what it is. Fun to see Jumbo have a watchable match with Rich. The Backlund-Roop match really isn't any good. It's worth watching since it's our earliest Backlund footage of any note. But it's poor relative to Bob's matches that come later, and poor relative to good Jumbo matches. The Hennig match is more interesting from Hennig's career than Jumbo's. There's stuff in it that I like, there's some cool stuff, but it's too often a choppy and not well executed match after the early solid hammerlock & top wristlock exchanges. Not all of it are Curt's issues, either.

The masses didn't think Misawa was a dick, and they kind of got that Kawada and Taue were the dicks. On the other hand... I had a Japanese co-worker who thought Misawa was a dick, that the promotion favored him, and that Kawada was getting screwed. Of course he was a Kawada fan, and before that a Tenryu fan, and before that a Choshu fan. He liked the rebels, and hated the establishment guys like Inoki and Fujinami and Jumbo. He wasn't unique. Plenty of people cheered Choshu and Tenryu even when they were technically the heels and more-than-a-bit dicks. Kawada got the same thing. But there also were also more people who liked Misawa.

People always knew Kawada was the heel from 5/93 on. We talked about it all the time online, that Misawa and Kobashi and Jun were the faces, and that Kawada and Taue were the heels. In turn, prior to that in the Jumbo & Co vs Misawa & Co feud that Kawada was on the face side. These were talking points online before 2001, and certainly were out there in 1996 when I came online. I sure as hell pushed the notion, and I kind of was the primary person talking about All Japan on a serious level at that point. * * * * * People were slow to come around to Misawa as Champ. In 1993 people were looking forward to Kobashi being the Ace, and frankly impatient. That was a pretty common vibe among hardcores. I recall when Yohe, Hoback and I did our "draft" in 1993 with me ending up with pretty much all of the good puroresu wrestlers of that (Misawa's) generation, and then I pushed Misawa as my Baba-style Champ/Ace, they scratched their head on why I didn't push Kawada or Goofy Mutoh or Kobashi into that role. By 1994 and certainly in 1995, the notion flipped. People got Misawa as the Champ. The 1995 & 1997 WON Wrestler of the Year awards kind of gets that across, especially in contrast to looking at who finished #2 in 1993. Kobashi is accessible. Kawada is too. Misawa took some time for folks, even those who "got" him opposite Jumbo. On the flip side, hardcores appreciating Misawa was a common enough thing by 1996 that I met little resistance to putting him over when I got online. Nor was there any resistance to it in the Torch when I pushed it that year. Dylan can confirm that I sure as hell pushed Misawa, his role and his character harder in the Torch than I did Kobashi's. Part of that was to try to get him across to people, and part of was simply because Misawa was so great by that point while Kobashi (to me) was stagnating.

Misawa By Numbers? Though that would more apply to later Misawa-Jun matches.

I can speak to this directly. Let's start with Jumbo, a guy who didn't travel that widely, taking in both singles and tags, and see ... Dory Funk Jr, Jack Brisco, Terry Funk, Harley Race, Ric Flair, Billy Robinson, Rusher Kimura, Animal Hamaguchi, Kerry Von Erich, Stan Hansen*, Ted Dibiase, Dick Slater, Nick Bockwinkel, Rick Martel, Riki Choshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Toshiaki Kawada, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi. That's 20 different guys he had 4+ star affairs with in singles or tags. Not even starting to scrape around or dig deep. That's top end, we could also then go into the merely "very solid ***1/2 - ***3/4" category and we get Doug Furnas, Dan Kroffat, Ricky Fuyuki, The Road Warriors, Bruiser Brody, Mil Mascaras, Manuel Soto, Gypsy Joe, Kevin Sullivan, Tommy Rich, Bob Roop, Bob Backlund, Horst Hoffman, Dos Caras, Pat O'Connor, Ken Mantell, Dick Murdoch, Fritz Von Erich, Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, Curt Hennig ... how deep do you want to go. He has the goods, he has more goods. Could do same with Flair. I don't see how you see this expectation of a GOAT candidate as "limiting". It's saying "wow, that's a GOAT career, this guy had it, this other guy over here, he didn't". * See 10/21/86 20? Tsuruta Taue Fuchi Inoue Fuyuki Kikuchi Kabuki Ace Ogawa Kobashi Gordy Williams Rude Hansen That's people in 1990-91 that Kawada had Meltzer rated **** matches in singles or tags. That's 14 in just two years. That's not even starting to scrape around or dig deep. Obvious people like Misawa (who he didn't have a match opposite of in that year), or the Can-Ams, or Jun, or Albright, or Baba, or Bossman, or... well... a fuck ton of wrestlers that he was in ****+ matches against. I mean, it's Meltzer's ratings, and plenty of us disagree with them. But the guys you listed were by your ratings, and you have some match with Flair rated above the famous match with Mil, and I've yet to see any Flair-Jumbo match that's close to the Mil match. I don't even want to get into rating the Backlund & Roop tag or the Rich match or the Hennig match as ***1/2, which even a noted delusional Jumbo Mark like myself wouldn't get close to. So **** is a pretty subjective and goofy standard. We're at the point of making up standards as we're going along when the prior one didn't work, ala Jumbo Was Lazy. Flair and Jumbo has more variety in their career. I doubt anyone is seriously going to deny that. On the other hand, believing that Misawa, Kobashi and Kawada didn't have variety in their careers is just misstating reality. They didn't have as much as Flair and Jumbo. But they also had interesting things like Bossman passing through the promotion and each one of them having a ****+ tag with him in it that would rank among the handful of best matches of Bossman's career.

There isn't any evidence that the All Japan guys laid things out ahead of time anymore than Flair and Steamboat. Nor is the notion that Flair and Steamboat just completely winged it in the ring and laid nothing out before hand ties at all to reality. The two clearly laid out the finishing ideas of the second and third falls of the New Orleans match. Not just the good old boy bullshit of "You beat me with X" nosense. There clearly was thought there. And it wasn't just something they made up in the locker room five minutes before going out. Ross was clued in as well. How much of El Clasico was laid out by Misawa and Kawada? My guess is that it's considerably less than the storylines that *we* draw from it.