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I'm not sure that prior to this week that I even had 3 pages out of anything this year.

I do think this is a valid critieria and I think gets around to Parv's main crux for more analysis of some of the holy grail comments. He DOES believe that Clash 6 is a match that transcends wrestling and has multiple layers of storytelling and development. I happen to agree with him as well as someone like Shoe who said he would put that match as the GOAT. We really haven't found that naysayer for 6/3/94, 6/9/95 etc. In the threads in the Yearbook section, Tim Evans felt flat about 6/95 and Matt was critical of it. I suspect there are a number of other posters such as Daniel and/or Dylan who are ambivalent to either or both. Not everyone who watches them thinks they're the GoaT. Not everyone who watches them thinks they're a MOTYC.

This match is actually 1/26/93. The other date is it's air date. I like their 7/9/93 match more. Kawada is heel at that point and gets to be more of a dick.

Their Souled Out match is on DM. It's pretty funny to see Benoit letting stuff "breathe" every bit as much, if not more, than Scottie. Just watch the big transition spot in the middle of the match where Benoit sells the prior damage far longer and far harder than say Toyota or Kobashi would. He lets the whole home stretch "breathe" rather than being in go-go-go mode. First Benoit match that I've watched this decade. Two things strike me: #1 - Benoit was a very good worker. That seems to be written out of history for the obvious reasons: largely the murders, but also the long counter movement away from his old God Of Work rep. There's not getting away from the first of those - it's why I don't watch his stuff. But the second... perhaps he was on a high alter, but we write him off as not being a very good worker. This is a pedestrian match with a pedestrian opponent who needs a major prop to be able to do much of anything. Benoit's performance is very good: the selling is spot on, the transitions are not only sharp but he also sells his ass of in them even when going onto offense. He makes Scottie look good, which he didn't really have to at this level. So, yeah... he was a very good worker. #2 - I still hate Raven. I could list a number of things, but I'll stick with one. This reminded me that Scottie was one of the worst "calling spots" guys ever. He's always leaning in to his opponent in overly obvious ways to tell them what's coming next. Just a lazy fuck about it rather than trying to be subtle.

I can't believe no one's challenged this yet it's complete bollocks. You have exactly two Flair-Steamboat matches at *****. You don't even have Wrestlewar at ***** let alone their matches from 83 or the 90s. Misawa and Kawada have had 16 matches on tape out of which only one didn't take place between 1992 and 2000. All of them are badass. I can't even begin to describe how toxic it is for wrestling watching to come into matches expecting a ***** match but you're attacking an all time great feud based on nothing. At least form a consistent opinion before making claims this ridiculous. Glad someone asked that, as I was wondering the same thing, though from two directions: * are all Flair-Steamboats ***** affairs every single time I don't think that even Dave Meltzer and Bruce Mitchell believe that. Doubt any poster here does, as many think some of their matches were subpar / mediocre. For example, I don't think many people who watch stuff at the variety that we do rates the 1994 Flair-Steamboat matches above a certain 1994 Misawa-Kawada. * Did Flair hit it out of the park in all of his 60:00 matches? I mentioned the Boogie Jam match was being a chore. I like the Flair-Jumbo draw quite a bit less than most people. Flair-Hart gets some mixed views. Loss liked it a good deal, but rated it lower than Kawada's two 60:00 singles matches in the 90s in terms of both stars and yearly ranking. That's not a knock on Flair-Hart: he had it at ****1/4 and #43 in 1993. But that's still a level below the two Kawada singles. There are people who like the draw with Taylor, and others who find it painful to watch. There are fans of Flair-Reed, but is there a consensus that it's a ***** affair? It seems to have finished a little low on the Mid-South set to be considered a consensus ***** classic. A fair number of us laugh at the "classic" tag being put on the Flair-Brody. So just what batting average did Flair have in his available 60:00 that were high end ***** classics? Note of course that the New Orleans match isn't a 60:00 match.

I kind of like irony implied in "atmospheric pressure". We all would like to think of this as gradient akin to "temperature gradient", if we're honest there always has been and always will be a lot of pressure in how one properly measures GoaTdom.

Flair is the barometer because he has been the consensus GoaT for pretty much the entire history of hardcore wrestling fandom. He is the starting point for these discussions. This isn't laziness. That Flair didn't win the last GWE, and might not win the new GWE, doesn't change that. We are a fly on the ass of hardcore wrestling fandom. That the small circle of fans here might pick someone else doesn't change the reality that there remains a strong consensus among hardcore fans that Flair is the GoaT. More than that, the only person who would challenge that consensus is someone who won't make the Top 10 here... probably won't even come close to getting in the Top 20. So Flair is the barometer.

I don't disagree with it. However, there's a long standing debate / disagreement about Hogan with respect to that. Hogan popped crowds more than Flair. Stuff we all hated like the Hulking Up and the Posing Routine and the Ripping Off The Shirt all popped the crowd. I've spent years trying to say that Hogan was an effective, smart worker. But none of that makes him a candidate for #1 in this poll, even through he did these things better than anyone that we have a good deal of footage on. So doing stuff that pops and entertains the crowd is smart, and we all have limits to how much we credit it when ranking folks. I mean... Sabu going through tables.

Kobashi is extremely accessible and enjoyable. Similar to Toyota in joshi, or the juniors in general. Nothing wrong with being a big fan of anything of those things. Folks may be critical of them, but they did put up a load of entertaining matches for their fans.

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28585-toshiaki-kawada/?p=5704430 Almost certainly can find more from just today.

I would agree with that. Just to be clear: I'm not sure that he (and by extension Doc, Misawa and/or Baba) were thinking on that level. They're wrestlers, and unlike some wrestlers in the past few decades who get overly masturbatory in overthinking their shit1, I'm not sure Kawada thought on that level in those two matches. Simply that it's the way it played. We often project our own bullshit onto matches. That could be projection. It could just be a cool thing that happened, without thought. A similar example: I've said for years that the 12/93 Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue harkened back to the 12/88 Tenryu & Kawada vs Hansen & Taue, a match that was in the exact same spot in the All Japan calender in their respective years. I've also said that in 12/93 that Kawada "played both roles" (or more accurately *storylines*) that Tenryu and Kawada did in the 12/88. In other words: * 12/88 Kawada destroyed knee = 12/93 Kawada destroyed knee * 12/88 Tenryu fighting to the death but worn down & pinned = 12/93 Kawada fighting to the death but worn down & pinned Did Misawa & Kobashi & Kawada & Taue and Baba sit down before the match and chart stuff out to do a storyline at that level? Highly unlikely. It's more that *if* you'd been watching All Japan for a while, and if you had that early match as one of your memorable reference points, you might just see similar things unfold because... All Japan used storyline structures like that from time to time. We all recall Terry getting knocked for a loop on more than one occasion and Dory having to "go it alone". We'd see it again in the final match of 1996. Etc. We as fans often think about this in far greater depth than the wrestlers. John 1 "You see... it was a No DQ Match." -Carlos Espada

I find this to be contrary to one of the key values of online message boards. We're always meeting people who don't see things like we do. Among the reasons we engage in discussions is to learn things from others, have them convince of us their views, convince them of ours, or just come to the realization there is no agreement. I was in a discussion on a sabermetric based baseball website about Tim Raines vs Tony Gwynn. Most people came to the discussion set in their view of the players. Some of us hashed it out, why we saw it as a close and very interesting call. In the end some people saw things differently, others didn't, but it was a useful little discussion. Which it was: a very little, short discussion relative to some of the longer ones that I've seen not just on comps like that, but on specific discussions about one or the other of those two players. Ric isn't any different. I'm a Dylan fan. Longer than you have been. Ages ago I saw some list of ***** albums you gave him. I disagreed with a good deal of it. Being a fan doesn't mean you see everything eye-to-eye. I'm a Misawa Fan, and have seen more good Kobashi matches where he was a positive in the goodness than I'll ever remember... so I guess I'm a Kobashi Fan as well. Yet up use a few minutes ago I pissed on five Kobashi MOTY winners, three with Misawa in it. Look, if some Misawa or Kobashi fan wants to dismiss everything I have to say about Misawa and Kobashi because I happen to be bored by those matches, and think a couple of them are shit, well... that's less my problem than his. There are a few hundred thousand words words that I've written on those two over the decades. If one wants to get hung up on the stuff I don't like rather than pick up the other info and opinions I'm tossing out that would be useful, that's a rather closed off mind. I'm a Shakespeare fan, ago long before you. I'm at the point of being bored by Hamlet, though will always acknowledge that's it's great even if I'd just as soon not watch it again or pull one of my several copies of it off the shelf. Lear is something I'm less bored with, but am leaving it up on the shelf for another decade until I want to get good an depressed with age and reflection. On the other hand, I completely enjoyed pulling Hal off the shelf earlier in the summer, with the father-son aspect hitting home. Different things hit you at different times. And even Greatness can bore the living fuck out of us at various points in our lives. I tend to think life is too short not to be open to think and rethink shit through. There was a time when I thought Backlund was a shit worker. I never thought I would think otherwise. I'm rather thankful to the person who made me reconsider, as it's opened up a great deal of enjoyment for me. Your Dory thread isn't for everyone. Plenty of people will never like Dory, and think he's as fun as watching paint dry. But you are putting the effort into it, and explaining it, and engaging people with it. There's not doubt that you've probably swayed some people into seeing Dory as better than they thought he was. So... I'm not buying the life it too short stuff. Eh. I still see Flair-Steamer in Chicago as high end. New Orleans was the last time I saw it. If forced to sift through his body of work, I'm sure that there's other stuff that I would point to as high end work. The difference is that I don't see all the high end matches that you do as high end. But that's normal: you don't see some matches as high end that others do. You just did it with at least one match that Loss has as high end, and I don't doubt there are plenty others. You're basically saying it's okay for you to go "not high end" and others have to listen and engage you, but refuse when on the flip side. That's odd and inconsistent, Parv. Kind of think you know it is, and that "life's too short" doesn't cover it.

They did? In a dozen years of discussion about this match, this is literally the first time I've ever heard anyone mention that. And is the psychology really that clear-cut, considering that Misawa soaked up a bunch of other finishers during the match from both of his opponents? I've talked about it for years (decades?) in the 06/03/94 tying into the Carny Final that year with the 2 vs 3. Whether it was a point hammered home in the commentary or in the mags, beats the shit out of me. But just sitting there watching it as a fan, Kawada hits the two big power bombs for the two big extreme near falls, and Misawa avoids it the rest of the way. However... and this is a big however... I've not tied that into slews of other matches, or even the 06/09/95 match. I don't think I've ever bothered counting the power bombs by Kawada in it. There's other stuff going on to the point where I've never seen it as a key part of the match. Nor have I bothered to look for it in other matches, so don't look to me to pimp it outside the bubble of two matches less than two months apart. Even then, I admittedly might just being seeing what I'm seeing, and it's just how things worked out. Wrestlers often don't think this shit through as much as we do.

Oh, of course Ric's matches have storylines. It's usually that the babyface kicks the living shit out of heel Ric and he looks like a weak champ at the end. Which is effective in the sense that it makes the fance thing that the next time the face will beat Ric. Until they get tired of waiting for the next time. That's Ric's pysch: make the face look good. I'm just saying that there are chunks of Ric's Got Shit To Do that fill up long matches ends up being "mindless in terms of adding up to much from a storyline standpoint or being terribly interesting for me to watch". We get the point that Ric is weak. I don't need the 5th Gorilla Press or the 4th begging off in the corner to tell me that. It becomes not terribly interesting. I was high on high end Flair matches before you watched your first Flair match. If you chose to shutdown listening to discussions Flair's work other than those that wax poetically about him, it's a bit more of a sign of you not being terribly objective about him as opposed to one who can seeing the goofiness while still saying he was a great and effective worker.

I would differentiate Flair in this way. * Flair's Got Stuff To Do to fill that time * Lots of other workers are Just Killing Time to fill that time Some of us who wear the heavy mantle of being tagged Flair Critics point out that Flair's method is very effective. Mindless in large chunks, but every effective in keeping the fans engaged in what could be a chore for them. It's a positive. The second is a chore. Harley-Baba in 1975 has a whole slew of Just Killing Time because of Harley's weak chops on the mat. We all know Baba could go on the mat because he and The Destroyer filled twice as much time with a lot of interesting stuff. And we can look at Baba's matches from the era with Brisco and even Jumbo the following year and see a guy who had mat chops. Harley... not so much, as again seen by his draw with Lawler which is a high example of loads of Just Killing Time. I'd say the Baba-Destroyer or second Inoki-Backlund draw is a higher level of filling time. They're not doing mindless but entertaining stuff. They're not just laying around killing time. They're working on some interesting stuff to fill the time. Some of it might be pedestrian, and stuff you'd see in a lot of their matches. Destroyer has his sequence of ways to get out of a head scissors, each time getting tossed back in them before coming up with a different way to get out. It's was a sequence that a lot of different wrestlers used, and not something Dick invented. He just did it very well, had certain accents to it, and rather than mindless was a sequence that developed as he pass through it. Every 60 minute match, or frankly every long match, has to figure out how to Fill Space. Flair was a master of filling space. He had a lot of shit he could cram into it, kept things moving along, kept the fans engaged. While I would argue that it's mindless in terms of adding up to much from a storyline standpoint or being terribly interesting for me to watch, I also always mention that it's very effective in entertaining the fans.

Don't know what to say about that as it's a take your pick thing for me. I've long been one of those who thinks the WrestlerWar Steamer-Flair is wildly overrated. I've stated a number of times, including here in the past few days, that the WorldWide Barry-Flair was disappointing on re-watch, especially in terms of what Flair did to fill the time. I never thought the Flair-Funk *match* at the Bash was all that great given Flair's lack of comfort as a heel, and playing a role of wanting to kill someone who nearly "ended his career". Terry's fine busting his ass, but there's a bit of sadness even in watching his end. On the other hand, the post match is AWESOME, right down to Flair pulling off one of his best mic spots ever. I probably was the only person at the time who thought the I Quit Match with Funk was kind of "eh". Flair struck me as looking tired in it, and not really having the stuff to work an I Quit Match. Terry busted his ass, but I never felt like the crowd felt he had a chance of winning, which leaves some flatness to it. I don't even want to think about the Lex matches. I enjoyed them at the time with the exception of the RoboCop one and the original Bash one... well... the Battle of the Belts match was tedious as all hell. But they had a number of matches at the time I thought were good or watchable. I'm fearful of watching either of the 1988 Starcade or 1990 WrestleWar .matches. Garvin... Garvin... Garvin... hmmm... Oh! There isn't a single Flair-Garvin match that I'd rather watch than the Tully-Garvin match from WorldWide. That's while admitting I watched a perfectly solid, hard hitting Garvin-Flair live at the Forum (though it did have an extra shitty walk-out finish), and I find Flair-Garvin to be a perfectly fine match up. It just never blew me away as watching MOTYC. In contrast, the Tully-Garvin might be my favorite US match of 1986. So Flair Critics can, and have, pointed to matches with those other opponents. Heck, I've recently pointed to a pair of matches with my patron wrestling Saint Jumbo that struck me as either boring (the 1983 draw that most people love) or incredibly laughable in Flair's performance (the 1978 match). I'm not "expecting" you to take what I posted into account. I offered it up as information for you or anyone else reading to use as they might. Perhaps you don't think it's noteworthy when talking about Kawada going 60 to know that it was the first 60:00 singles match that he'd ever worked. Perhaps others do. As far as "less than stellar", I'm not sure everyone agrees. Here's where Loss rated the four one hour draws that Kawada was in that made the Yearbook: Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 01/19/95) ****1/2 Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 01/24/95) ***3/4 Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 10/15/95) ****1/2 Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 10/18/96) ****1/2 He rates three of them very highly, and the fourth as a very good match. For some context on how he ranked them relative to Kawada's other matches in 1995 & 1996: 1995 Rankings #1 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Akira Taue (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/15/95) #2 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 06/09/95) #5 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/08/95) #11 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 10/15/95) #15 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 01/19/95) #17 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/13/95) #22 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW 07/24/95) #39 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Gary Albright (AJPW 10/25/95) #52 - Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi & Satoru Asako vs Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue & Tamon Honda (AJPW 06/30/95) #55 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW Championship Carnival 04/06/95) #66 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 01/24/95) #86 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Jun Akiyama (AJPW Championship Carnival 03/21/95) 1996 Rankings #1 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 12/06/96) #4 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 11/29/96) #8 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 07/09/96) #14 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 10/18/96) #22 - Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue vs Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (AJPW 11/22/96) #37 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 05/23/96) #39 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue (AJPW 03/31/96) #44 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Johnny Ace & Gary Albright (AJPW 04/20/96) #53 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 05/24/96) Other than the first tag draw, he rates them extremely high... up in his stellar range in a pair of very competitive years for matches, and not just Kawada matches. I get that you don't care for them. Not everyone does. I never thought the first tag was as great as Meltzer rated it, and spent one entire taxi ride in Tijuana arguing with him about it's merits that ended in one of my favorite Meltzer quotes ever. The first Kobashi singles match always annoyed me for the lack of a finished that could have happened after 55 minutes and still make it a "special" match for the Osaka-Kobe area. So it's fine to think they're not off the charts. It's a bit like me thinking that Jumbo-Flair is a boring match. We all have things that we don't care for that loads of other people like. I find a lot of his high end stuff to be uninteresting. Including a lot of stuff that I found interesting at the time. Of course I'm also the guy who at the time thought that these five matches: 10/31/98 Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi 06/11/99 Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi 03/01/03 Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi 07/10/04 Kenta Kobashi vs Jun Akiyama 10/01/05 Kenta Kobashi vs Samoa Joe Either bored the fuck out of me or were dumb ass matches. Those would be five matches that won the Match of the Year Award in the Observer's year end poll, as voted on by my fellow hardcore wrestling fans. They also are liked in varying degrees by a lot of posters here. So I find a lot of high end stuff by any number of wrestlers to bore me or be weak sause. Not just Ric's, but also stuff by All Japan Sacred Cows like Misawa and Kobashi. My thought is to eliminate the persecution complex about Flair: people aren't out to get Flair. They're critical of all sorts of shit. Some of Ric's work is just part of it. Misawa being a lazy fuck in the 1994 Carnival is another part of it. Kobashi being a goofball who didn't grow up quick enough is another. Kawada basically abdicating how he might have preferred to work and just tossing in the towel to go along with however Misawa or Kobashi or Mutoh wanted to work is another. Everybody takes shots.

I suspect that if I watched any of those draws that I would be more critical of them the last time I watched them. Though I was critical of the first tag draw to the point that I still get grief over saying what a dog Taue was in it. Ric and Sting had been working singles matches against each other since early December. Sadly, very few have time listings. We don't know how close Flair and Sting got in one of those matches to the 39 minutes the "45 minute draw" went. It's likely that Flair used at least one of those matches to test going close to 30, if not a bit above. I don't think Ric was in a terribly tough spot. He'd spent close to a decade and a half working like that with people, be they inexperienced like the two-year vet Sting or longer vets. Some of them with fewer matches together than he had with Sting by that point. I found it rather boring the last time I watched it. I did enjoy watching it live on TBS while taping Mania on another TV. Did it make Sting a legit star? My thought at the time is that it didn't change a ton. Sting had been elevated after Starcade in a promotion nearly devoid of stars. Ric had run his course with Barry, Dusty was old hat, and Lex just turned and they didn't want to run that match yet. The fans liked Sting before it, liked him after... he really didn't draw close to Ric-Lex, but he was a "star" in a dying promotion. It's kind of history and the respective legends of Ric and Sting that try to make that the star turning moment. I always thought it was the Gate Crashing that did it. Ric did what he had to do to fill space. Which is what even Flair critics say he does. He had a very good performance. It wasn't mind number or anything: basic Ric against a face similar to plenty of his matches.

I think the "rejected by his audience" is a bit problematic when one looks at JCP's drawing in 1987 & 1988 compared to 1986. We can blame that on any number of things, and it's easy to never blame Our Hero Ric for anything related to the decline and (repeated) fall(s) of JCP and WCW. But the 10K+ who would come out to see Ric and the crew in 1986 dropped to embarrassing (for a Flair Fan at the time like me) numbers as the decade went on. If we try to limit Flair's "audience" to just his most hardcore fans, on some level they rejected him by the turn of the decade. 1,800 turned up for a Flair-Lex in Greenboro in 1990, and 700 turned out for a Flair-Simmons cage match in the middle of the Doom vs Horsemen feud. Ric was the face in both. That's kind of a rejection, even among the hardcores. I'm not so sure that Hogan's similar fans, the hardcore Hulkamanics, similarly deserted him. His numbers weren't great in the early days of WCW, but one needs to remember that WCW wasn't *his* fans. WCW wasn't all that great getting WWF Fans to wander away from the WWF at that point. They really weren't that great at it until Hogan turned heal. On the other hand, back in the WWF as the heel against the #1 face in the promotion (Rock) in a baseball stadium, what did "his fans" do? They turned him babyface in the match and Rock at the very height of his popularity into being the heel. I don't think Flair Fans showed up at a later Mania in large enough numbers to turn Taker the Heel and Ric the Face in their match. * * * * * I do agree with the sentiment that the hardest of the hardcore Flair Fans have never rejected Flair. I was a hardcore Flair Fans and have been excommunicated from Flair Fandom for pointing out that at times Ric's shit does actually stink. You'd still see stuff from Ric's last run in the WWF, and even in TNA, that "he's better than most on the roster" even when having a match that wasn't good. So on that level... yeah, there are fans of is that haven't rejected him. He's a bit like religion in that way... forgetting of course St. Paul and his rejections.

Ric has been thought of as the GoaT since the 80s. He's been facing this scrutiny for 20+ years. Winning or not winning this poll changes nothing in that regard. Just as winning/not winning the last GWE poll changed nothing. In another 20 years there will be discussions just like this.

Even if we pretend that shoot MMA matches are in line with worked Pro Wrestling matches, I'm not sure how the MMA stuff helps Brock. He had 8 fights. Exactly Zero of them were Fight of the Nights, let along winning a significant Fight of the Year award. Almost all of them were one sided ass kickings, including his loss to Mir (a rare one sided match when the ass kicker ends up getting caught). They are important matches on a level because Brock was over huge. They all had a buzz... because Brock was over huge. But they weren't great fights. An example? Take this fight, with its ranking from the more-than-a-bit-goofy ranking on the UFC Top 100 fights dvd back in 2009: 78. UFC 76: Keith Jardine vs. Chuck Liddell It's hardly the best fight in UFC history, and who knows if today it would be one of the Top 100 in a realistic ranking. But it's better than more than half the matches on that goofy set, and probably better than more than 2/3rds. That was a terrific, dramatic fight with a huge upset that screwed up the "booking" of the promotion. Point: Brock never had an MMA fight remotely as good as a fight that might not be one of the Top 100. Again, big buzz around his matches. But there never were very good due to being one sides. If we count Brock's MMA as Wrestling, it doesn't help him as a worker. It just adds to his HOF candidacy as a Big Star. Of course a lot of us could give a shit about MMA when it comes to a Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame. It means even less to "work". A good fight is one where you win or atleast don't get smashed on from my experience. Having a pro wrestling back and forth real fight is rare in real life. I'm only speaking on bar fights and highschool stuff because I am pretty much that casual UFC fan that is only interested in the big attractions, freakshows and the like. I'm kinda like that guy that gets into wrestling after years and years during Wrestlemania season if something really cool is happening. The flip side would be a huge boxing fan, Mayweather as his favorite fighter. This fan watched WWF in the early to mid 1990's when he was a kid and two favorites were Undertaker & Shawn Michaels. So he watches the Mayweather scrap on Big Show online, sees The Undertaker is in the main event Title Match and that he's a great wrestler now with "fighting skills", Shawn-Flair career match and is into the promos and that there's a ladder match with 8 guys and sees clips of how crazy they are now, when you thought HBK/Razor was the best match.(remember a time when you didn't watch for years, and how crazy stuff was when you came back???) So a casual fan gets into Mania mode and they sell him. I don't know how this quite relates, oh well. I'm the guy Vince books Mania for, except with UFC. The only time I have ever been Into it was the Lesnar run, when Chuck Lidell was in beast mode as champion(I live in San Luis Obispo, everybody was talking about the Iceman, and I was always like "Dean Malenko?"), and whenever Kimbo fights. I also watched a lot of the early UFCs on VHS(I still have UFC 1 and 6 on tape) because of Shamrock, Dan Severan and Tank Abbott getting me interested in seeing it. Those shows were like ECW 1995 vs. UFC now which is like a Miz match to me. Oh but you can bet your ass I'll be at the club/bar to see CM Punk hopefully kick some ass and the eventually earn a "Lesnar deal" when he returns to WWE. He became World Heavyweight champion and beat/dominated some big fighters, drew huge buy rates and was the #1 star. I think those are the only things that should factor in his favor if MMA factors in at all. Which it shouldn't. I'm not sure what to make of this. Taking it in chunks: On Chuck... Chuck was in beast mode as LHW Champ from April 16, 2005 - December 30, 2006. Took it from Randy, then defended it four time. Then on May 26, 2007 he got his ass kicked by Rampage. Chuck then went 1-4 through his last four UFC matches, never challenged for the title, and had to be forced into retirement by the kindness (!) of Dana's black heart. Brock debuted in the UFC on February 2, 2008, a year after Chuck's rampage (not Rampage). So I guess that you got into it during Chuck's time, like a lot of people did. Then Brock came along. As far as Brock dominating... He debuted in the UFC on February 2, 2008, as mentioned. He jobbed in his first match. Then he had a stunningly boring decision win over Heath Herring. Somehow going 1-1 with an embarrassing loss and an embarrassing win "earned" Brock a shot at the UFC Title. Really it was more Dana's Eff U (as in fuck you not FU) at Couture after the contract dispute they had over the past year. Put the 45 year old Randy in with a fellow Wrestler who was much bigger and... well... we pretty much all knew this would be ugly. Then he beat Mir. We all knew how the would go after watching the first match between the two. It was unlikely that Brock would fall for a submission again, having not trained to defend against them for several years. Then the illness... the Shane Carwin win. Wrestler vs Wrestler, with Shane having some knockout power but being a much lesser wrestler. The only thing that made it in doubt was Brock's health. Then more health issues, and the easy losses to Cain and Overeem. He was 4-3 in the UFC. Let's not confuse him with GSP or Silva. He was a Big Star. His W-L record is unimpressive.

The Choshu-Jumbo is a chore. The Race-Jumbo that won the 1978 Tokyo Sports Match of the Year is wildly disappointing, and that's after they JIP'd each of the three falls. I've never been a fan of the Flair-Jumbo 60:00 match and tend to think it's one of the more overrated matches around... and I'm a delusional Jumbo Mark who should be putting everything he does over. If Jumbo's 3/11/77 draw with Robinson his best match with Billy? Is it as good as Billy's PWF match with Baba the year before? As good as Jumbo's match with Terry the year before? There are more than a few "no" answers there. I love Jumbo. I'm not sold he had an off the charts 60:00 singles match that survives. Some watchable ones, some disappointing ones. We could say the same about Flair. Lord knows how many 60 matches he had with Steamboat over the years. Despite the mass quantities of them, the Boogie Jam match just lays there luck a egg. I remember Hoback being really excited to roll that one out for me to watch, and I'm thinking it would be cool to watch some 1984 Flair-Steamer. Then the thing just lays there. And snoozes along. And keeps going. At some point before 30 minutes it *felt* like it was going 60 minutes, and I asked James: "Is this thing a draw?" "Yeah." "Oh God..." Just a painful experience. I've been on record talking about what a clusterfuck of a stupid ass match the Flair-Brody "the never grabbed a hold" and "they never stopped working" draw from St. Louis is. All of these guys worked turd matches going 60:00. Don't get me started about the Brisco-Funk draw in Japan... It gets hard to judge week-to-week in 1995 because the TV was cut down, and the Budokan cards would eat up more time. TV had been cut down in 1994 starting with the 3rd week of Carny (04/02/94 TV show). But with the Carny commercial tapes, you got more coverage than usual for that series. So the first three series were well covered. The 4th series was well enough covered as well with TV and two commercial tapes. After that it gets a little spotty, but the TV time even in the last half of the year is dealt with better than it would be in 1995. For the year as a whole, there's plenty of stuff to make a week-to-week type of judgement. Misawa evolved into a terrific Triple Crown champ over 1993-95. That warrants a lot of credit. He also was a very good tag worker. It's a little hard to figure out credit there since Kobashi was his partner, and Misawa let Kobashi have his way to fill up loads of space in those matches. Misawa doesn't strike one as the tag worker in that period that he would be when teaming with Jun in 1996, where he seemed perfect in his role. In the non-title, non-Carny, non-Tag League matches... Misawa was spotty relative to Kobashi and Kawada. There also were times like a number of the the 1994 Carny matches where he looked like he'd rather be somewhere else. That never was the case with Kobashi, and I don't recall that from Kawada in that period unless he were in against someone like Nord. I wrote this during Loss' run through the Yearbooks, and have mentioned it several times since. Watching the Big Matches, the Usual Suspect Matches, or even a bit deeper cut like the Yearbooks, doesn't give a full picture of the workers. Just one small example: 03/19/94 Korakuen Hall, Tokyo (03/20/94 NTV) League: Misawa vs Akiyama (13:57) 04/01/94 Okayama (Carnival Commercial) League: Kawada vs Akiyama (11:25) 04/10/94 Sendai (Carnival Commercial) League: Williams vs Akiyama (12:26) 04/11/94 Osaka (Carnival Commercial) League: Kobashi vs Akiyama (14:40) These are four singles matches involving top All Japan workers (this was Doc at his peak) against Jun, who was right around 18 months into his career. The workers are taken out of Big Match setting. These aren't long drawn out matches, as Jun isn't at the level yet where he should be taking these guys 20+ minutes. They all work a similar theme: Top Vet vs Young Near-Rookie. It's a direct comp one can make between the four workers, in addition to of course being a gauge to where Jun is at. The Yearbook has space limitations and tries to cover everything. You can't really have 16 matches from the series on the set, and they 12 picked aren't unreasonable. Three of these were among the four left off. Well... Kobashi is Kobashi in his, and Kawada is Kawada in his. You pretty much get exactly what you would expect from the two in that setting. Which ones likes more is a matter of taste and the decades long running Kawada vs Kobashi debate. The Williams match might be an even better indication than the various Usual Suspect matches of just how great Doc had gotten at that point. It's hard to imaging 1992 Doc having that match with a wrestler at Jun's level and skill. Then you have Misawa who is way off his feed in his match. Jun is game and trying, and Misawa gives him rope to run. But overall, Misawa doesn't seem terribly intent on putting together a smart, solid match like Kawada and Doc were, or put on a spot show like Kobashi was. It's just four matches, just one of Misawa's. Means nothing in the big picture. Yet... Misawa in general throughout the entire series doesn't seem to but on his feed. This is opening night, and on closing night he's the least interested (not interesting but interested) of the six people in his tag match. They worked the injury angle to give him most of the series off, and all but his initial few League matches off. I tossed out after the re-watch that it's possible that one of the reasons that they ran the injury angle, beyond the obvious booking one, was to give Misawa a lesser schedule to heal up a real injury. That's possible. But he also had a general air of not being into things. Of course that would change at the next two Budokan's after Carny where he had two exceptional performances. If all you see are those two great Budokan matches, then yeah... Misawa is right there with Kawada. Carny '94 wasn't the only case. There were plenty of other times in a routine tv taping six man tag where he picked his spots, but for the most part gave Kawada, Kobashi, Kikuchi or Akiyama the rope to do most of the work. A lot of that can be defended: a top guy on a side should pick his spots, with his moment upping the intensity or heat in the match. He also spent a good deal of the period banged up, working through injuries, probably more of them than we'll even know. Of course that's the same with the rest of the AJPW boys, but he seemed to be the most banged up from 1991-94. But, if you want to make a reasonable argument of Kobashi or Kawada over Misawa in that period, it's very easy to do. Kawada can get dropped into a tag with Kikuchi against the Can-Ams, and have a super intense match that's loads of fun to watch. There are any number of matches like that. Kobashi can get dropped into a match with Asako against the Can-Ams, with Kobashi already having "grown up" away from wrestling the Can-Ams in a match like this, and you'll see Kobashi in one of his better performances of the era being a more senior guy supporting a young kid getting the crap kicked out of him. All four are really good and it's hard to pick any over the others, but Kobashi is the one who could have killed the thing if he went into the Kobashi Show. Instead he's right on the mark. They are a load of other forgotten matches where Kobashi did things like this to help make matches better than they could have been, even if it *is* putting on the Kobashi Show in a potentially ** mundane TV six man that he elevates up to ***. With Misawa, it's far harder to find that in this period. One can make a reasonable argument that he's the best of the group, but it's almost entirely driven by big title and league matches.

People have been critical of Kawada since the 90s. Well, at least I was. Same with the other three. The 60 minute thing is kind of funny. Here is his experience working 60 minute matches prior to 1995: Nada. Zip. Zilch. Then he works four 60:00 matches in 1995: 01/19/95 Triple Crown Title: Toshiaki Kawada © vs Kenta Kobashi - Time Limit Draw (60:00) 01/24/95 World Tag Team Title: Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi © vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue - Time Limit Draw (60:00) 03/24/95 Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue & Giant Baba vs Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Stan Hansen - Time Limit Draw (30:00) 10/15/95 World Tag Team Title: Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue © vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi - Time Limit Draw (60:00) His first every 60:00 match if his first defense of the Triple Crown, and it was a total audible from Baba because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquake It wasn't something that Kawada and Kobashi had been hashing out for a month, pondering how they were going to fill space. Instead, it was a last minute thing where Baba decided to give a suffering down something special. The second one was also an audible thanks to the Naritta Nightmare. Doc's off the tour. My recollection is that Doc-Taue was going to be the main on that show, but someone can sift through the WON archive to check. The plans were out the window for the card the fans bought the tickets for. Baba decided to give them something special. We don't have the first 60:00 match of Flair's, or Race's, or Bock, or any of those guys back in the 60s or 70s. I Inoki had worked in 60:00 draws for years before the Dory match. Baba had for years before the Destroyer and Bruno and O'Connor matches that we have. I suspect that if we sift through Backlund's record, we'll find him working 60 before the matches with Inoki in 1978. Even with those two, the first one is rather pedestrian before they take of to incredible heights in the second one. As far as I can recall, Kawada's longest prior singles match had been the 37:58 with Doc when he won the titles. Kobashi had worked only one singles match over 30:00 in his career, going 41:23 against Doc at the Budokan before that. This was entirely new shit for them. * * * * * With respect to the matches themselves, I don't think Kawada is the worst worker in any of them. Whether Kobashi or Kawada is the better worker in the singles is likely a matter of taste. Kobashi is a classing Got Shit To Do worker, and can do about as much as anyone. Is (i) he doing loads of shit because it was his idea of how to carry it, or (ii) was Kawada smart enough to know that when working with the heavyweight who can Do More Shit than any heavyweight in the world at that moment and being asked to go 60 it's probably a smart way to fill all that fucking space by letting the face Kobashi go deep into his bag of tricks. Who knows. On the first tag title, Kawada is the best worker in the match. I don't think that even the biggest Taue Fan would claim that he's as good in that match as the wrestler he would blossom into during the Carnival Series in March-April. I suspect that myself and Taue Fans could reach a middle ground of agreement: Taue wasn't as shitty in the 1/95 tag as I once railed, but he's also not Really Great Taue yet. That guy was still a ways from evolving in 1995. As far as the six man tag, which is a boatload of fun, I'd just point out that Kawada isn't the one sitting on the ring apron for a breather and telling a ring boy to get him some water. And that's not a massive knock of Baba: I fucking love him being in there for one last 60:00 ride with the top guys in his promotion. As far as the last match, it's fantastic given the limitations put open it relative to old 60:00 tags of the past: the guys in 1995 couldn't break up the match with Falls. They were stuck in a one fall match that removes the ability to build to three high points: first fall, second fall, and the work towards the final finish. In fact, that's a problem with all of these matches that is out of the control of the workers. Part of the greatness of the second Inoki-Backlund is that they were able to build to three separate finishes. Flair-Steamboat were able to break across three falls, and actually *not* go 60 by having a finish in the 3rd. The two closest things we have to Kawada-Kobashi are the Backlund-Valentine and the Bret-Shawn. The second was badly hurt by not having at least two falls during the first 60:00 to help break things up. I was there live and thought it was solid... but I'll also admit that those 60:00 were very flat with the crowd once it sunk into a long, unending, uninterrupted, high point lack stretch. As for the first, as much as I and others like it, I suspect that most would join me in saying it would have been better if wrestled under 2/3 falls to break it up. That's not how the WWF did things in that era.

Slightly earlier than 2002, but one that Elliott would recall: Frank Jewett's 2001 Titan Sports Entertainment Thread This was in the early days of the WWF pondering a second brand, though of course at the time it was WCW which they were in the process of killing off. That does touch on contemporaneously some of the issues in the company. For old time readers, you get the joy of the old short line formatting. John

Even if we pretend that shoot MMA matches are in line with worked Pro Wrestling matches, I'm not sure how the MMA stuff helps Brock. He had 8 fights. Exactly Zero of them were Fight of the Nights, let along winning a significant Fight of the Year award. Almost all of them were one sided ass kickings, including his loss to Mir (a rare one sided match when the ass kicker ends up getting caught). They are important matches on a level because Brock was over huge. They all had a buzz... because Brock was over huge. But they weren't great fights. An example? Take this fight, with its ranking from the more-than-a-bit-goofy ranking on the UFC Top 100 fights dvd back in 2009: 78. UFC 76: Keith Jardine vs. Chuck Liddell It's hardly the best fight in UFC history, and who knows if today it would be one of the Top 100 in a realistic ranking. But it's better than more than half the matches on that goofy set, and probably better than more than 2/3rds. That was a terrific, dramatic fight with a huge upset that screwed up the "booking" of the promotion. Point: Brock never had an MMA fight remotely as good as a fight that might not be one of the Top 100. Again, big buzz around his matches. But there never were very good due to being one sides. If we count Brock's MMA as Wrestling, it doesn't help him as a worker. It just adds to his HOF candidacy as a Big Star. Of course a lot of us could give a shit about MMA when it comes to a Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame. It means even less to "work".

1. Kawada 2. Misawa 3. Kobashi 4. Taue Though I might prefer watching a Taue match to a Kobashi match at the moment since it would challenge me to think about the work more.