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The Wolves vs New Japan feud was under way by this point: 03/04/95 Tenzan & Chono & Saito vs. Choshu & Hirata & Hashimoto ***3/4 (2/12/95) 03/11/95 Tenzan & Chono vs. Hase & Sasaki **** (02/17/95) 03/18/95 Tenzan & Chono & Saito vs. Sasaki & Choshu & Hase ***3/4 (02/19/95) 03/25/95 Chono & Tenzan vs. Hase & Sasaki **** (03/07/95) 04/01/95 Tenzan & Chono & Saito & Sabu vs. Hirata & Hase & Choshu & Hashimoto **** (03/13/95) 04/08/95 Hashimoto & Choshu & Iizuka vs. Tenzan & Chono & Saito *** (03/19/95) I suspect you guys looked at the match the week before. That had a batshit crazy brawl as well. I don't recall if Tenzan turned on the 02/18/95 TV show where the main was Hirata & Tenzan vs Chono & Saito. He challenged Hash for the IWGP on the 2/25/95 TV show... think the all out heel joining with the Wolves was on the 3/4/95 TV show. Clearly whoever did the Cho-Ten wiki page screwed up on when they started teaming. John

Give it time... we'll come up with something else. Like how Lennon & McCartney were the Hogan & Savage of the Beatles, keeping Harrison down, treating Ringo like a session musician, and never giving master booker George Martin proper credit for being the 5th Beatle. Or was it the Glimmer Twins fucking over Mick Taylor... John

Please don't go there. I just saw a Sasha Grey article that pissed me off... don't tempt me with wrestling-porn analogies until this passes. John

I love at 4:47 Dillinger just shakes his head over the humor of all of it. Not sure why he finally waves Eric down there to chill stuff out. John

Just don't ask me to do the booking in the 80s... it would come across as Russoific TNA & WCW booking taken to the hilt with all the title changes, coke and crazy ass bookers. Good lord... Tyson married Givens in the 80s too, right? What a freaking trainwreck of the decade, with Buster Douglas "shooting" on Tyson to take the belts at the turn of the decade when everyone thought they'd be able to milk the Tyson Money Train for another decade. John

One of my favorites what in the Flair-Shawn match in MSG where one of the two fans was trying to sell it as a great match, his buddy thought it was kind of boring. Don't have the exact quote... but we has a good laugh at that point in the painful match. John

Nah... that was the begining of Bad Booking, which started an entire era of Horrible Booking in the 80s (and into the 90s... well... forever). They never should have booked Norton-Young as a #1 contenders match with that result: 04/30/76 WT: Ali over Young 09/28/76 WT: Ali over Norton Norton beat a pair of jobbers, doing nothing to make the fans want to see Ali-Norton IV. Young had this push: 11/06/76 Young over Lyle 03/17/77 Young over Foreman Granted, Young was suppose to put over Foreman to get Foreman ready for the mega rematch for Ali, but Foreman's heart wasn't in chasing Ali anymore so he crossed everyone up by taking a dive. After Foreman went out of the picture, Norton's was suppose to put over Young, which would allow Ali to clean up the dusty finish in their title match... when Ali could fit Young into his schedule. But first the promoters wanted to strike at Spinks coming off the Olympics, create an instant star by having Ali put him over before eventually getting the belt back. The plans where: Ali --> Spinks --> Young --> Ali Spinks gets "made", then is a clear face going against Young. Young gets the "title he was screwed out of", but in beating the young Olympic face Spink would become a larger heel. This would put Ali in the role of Veteran Olympic Face to gain revenge by taking Young out. That would lead to Ali-Spinks II. If Spinks was over enough as a major face, Ali would take him in a close fight in Ali-Spink II before an rematch puts the belt back on Spinks to carry it into the 80s. They were also building up the younger Larry Holmes to be Spink's rival for the next decade, with Holmes' first big match against jobber to the stars Ernie Shaver in early 1978 after Ali-Spinks I. Except... 11/05/77 #1: Norton over Young Norton had to go and work a double cross on the Boxing Syndicate. 02/15/78 WT: Spinks over Ali That one went off as planned. But the promoters quickly realized that Spinks wasn't reliable, was often in "no condition to perform" a lot of the out of the ring functions needed of the Champ, there was no way he could hold up his end of the deal to promote fights, and knew they had to get the belt off him. No way in hell would they go to Norton after his double cross, and the fact that people had already seen Ali-Norton three times. Holmes in their eyes wasn't ready to draw in a major match against Spinks. So they had to put the belt back on Ali, and deal with Norton at the same time since he was "#1 Contender". 06/09/78 wt: Holmes over Norton They conned Norton back into the ring by giving him a fake claim to the World Title, and also to set up a unification match later after they got the belt off him. The younger shooter Holmes was sent in to take care of him. Norton thought he was going over. There was always the risk that Norton might sniff out a double cross, and with his punching power (i.e. Ali's broken jaw) that he might drop Holmes. So Holmes was under clear instructions to "keep it close". Norton was also told that there was a need to keep Holmes strong in case they had a tough time getting the Ali-Spinks II winner into the ring: Norton might need to draw against Holmes again. Norton went out early, but Homes waited for him to tire and drop his guard. He beat the snot out of Norton in the 13th and thought he had him, only to have the bell save Norton. Holmes shot on him again in the 15th, tore into him, and made it close enough that two of the judges in the Syndicate's pocket came through with a decision. Norton was never let close to a title match again. 09/15/78 WT: Ali over Spinks They had to get the belt off Kerry Von Spinks before we had our first heavyweight champ to overdose while holding the belt. It shows what a draw Ali was that he draw 65K to the dome for it. The plan was for Ali to win, take off until June 1979, build up Holmes to that point, then pass the torch by unifying the title. Ali was tired of all the screwy booking and double crosses, so he retired. He got dragged out of retirement to try to light a fire under Holmes' start as the new anchor to the division, but by that point Ali "lost it" in terms of both promoting a match and working one. Holmes tried to carry him and get Ali engaged, but it just didn't work. Worst disaster since Gotch-Hack II. Booking pretty much went to shit when Foreman took a dive, and they had to rush Spinks to the title before he was ready. Then Norton screwed things up more by taking Young out of the title mix when they could have built him up as the new monster heel who took out Foreman and had the earlier controversy against Ali. Then Spink screwed things up because he liked coke and broads too much, getting in the way of being able to be a proper champ. Then Ali got tired of things, and Holmes didn't take off but was too good of a shooter to get the belt off and onto someone more marketable. It wasn't until Tyson came along that they had a marketable shooter that the fans got into. Then he screwed things up. John

I'm pretty sure Dave gave it ****1/2 or ****3/4. Not to defend or vouch for him, all I can say is that sitting one seat over in Yokohama Arena... it was one motherfucker of a spectacle *live*. Very different from what you expected to see in an AJW ring. Haven't watched it in ages. I do wonder how it stands up in that Frye-Takayama, Frye-Shamrock, Griffin-Bonnar, Guida-Griffin "this shit don't make a fucking bit of sense in a shoot... but I'm watching it in a fucking shoot" sense, if you know what I mean. Or goofy shit like Matt Hughes being pretty much Knocked Out by Trigg, then damn near Submitted by Trigg, than lifting Trigg up, running across the ring and slamming Trigg like a Motherfucker, then Chocking Trigg Out... all in one batshit crazy *round*.... That doesn't even do it justice in edited form for just how insane it was (especially watching it on PPV as it happened). So maybe all the goofiness of Lioness-Hotta isn't so goofy in hindsight. John

When Smoking Joe died, Bruce posted a link on the Torch Board to Foreman knocking out Frazier and Cosell's famous call. A posted mentioned how Frazier stayed over despite the ass kicking, which I had to explain was due to the intricate booking... Good booking. 03/08/71 WT: Frazier over Ali Ali "makes" Fraizer by jobbing to him in their first match. 01/22/73 WT: Foreman over Frazier Since Fraizer isn't a good enough draw on his own away from Ali, they decide to create "The New Sonny Liston", a monster heel perfect for Ali's babyface turn. 03/31/73 NABF: Norton over Ali As part of his babyface turn, Ali "makes" a new star by putting Norton over and doing an double sided injury angle: Norton breaks Ali's jaw to get over his punching power while Ali looks sympathetic by going the full 12 rather than quitting. 09/10/73 NABF: Ali over Norton With Norton made, Ali gets his heat back as part of the babyface turn. Norton goes down three times, but doesn't quit. Split decision to create some controversy, set up a third match, and keep Norton is over enough that he can main event against Foreman. 01/28/74 NABF: Ali over Frazier Grudge match, and Ali's turn to win. This is to set up Ali for the monster heel, but they work an good enough match that people would pay for a rubber match down the line. 03/26/74 WT: Foreman over Norton Norton gets fed to the monster heel, and like Fraizer he gets killed. Major doubt over whether Ali will have a chance against Foreman. 10/30/74 WT: Ali over Foreman Monster Heel Champ vs the new Ultimate Babyface beloved by the fans. Ali "out smarts" the monster heel, and knocks him out. Major paydays all around! 10/01/75 WT: Ali over Frazier After a pair defenses against white jobbers to the stars (where Ali was nice enough to carry them to the 15th to help win over more White Fans) and a defense against the tough Ron Lyle, Ali was ready for a huge payday. Frazier was rehabed against Quarry and Ellis. They have a money mark dictator to host it. Epic super classic to finish the feud. 06/15/76 NABF: Foreman over Frazier Ali was worried that if he put over Foreman in the second fight to set up the ultimate mega fight in the third match that Foreman might instead freeze Ali out of the title picture. So in a sense he was ducking Foreman before Foreman could duck him. This forced Foreman into fighting Frazier, who came out of the loss to Ali strong even in defeat because Ali sold the beating so well. Of course Foreman wanted the rematch with Ali so badly that he didn't bother making Frazier look good, and just destroyed him again. Foreman thought this would get his monster heel gimmick back over, but instead it made Ali worried again: Foreman just couldn't be trusted in the ring to work a program and avoid making opponents look like heck. The Road Warriors before the Road Warriors. 09/28/76 WT: Ali over Norton Not trusting Foreman, Ali decided to work a stadium rematch against one of his favorite opponents: Norton. Ken got booked into a seven match winning streak against jobbers as he was too valuable of an opponent to risk against top fighters. Ali let Ken go 15. Ali's ducking finally got to Foreman as he lost the following March to Jimmy Young, who Ali made the prior year by working a dusty finish (Ali "lost" the match to the heel Young, but the judges "reversed" the decision to let Ali keep the title which made the fans happy). Foreman took Young lightly, and Young beat him. We ended up getting robbed of a three fight Ali-Foreman series, and instead got stuck with an uninteresting Ali-Spinks series where Ali tried to make Spinks by looking like an Aging Champ Hanging On, but it just didn't click. Leon was way to green for the push. They don't book boxing that well anymore. John

Claw's results for the last TV taping: 8/11/90 Rochester, MN AWA Champion Larry Zbyszko beat Harley Race dq DJ Peterson & The Trooper beat Destruction Crew Mike Enos & Wayne Bloom to win AWA Tag Title Buck Zumhofe beat Jonnie Stewart to win AWA Light Heavyweight Title Jake Milliman won a battle royal to give Larry's Legends the victory in the AWA Team Challenge Series for $100,000 http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/13870-4.html Yeah... Larry-Race should go on there. Looks like Larry had one more defense the next week, but it wasn't a taping. The tag title probably should at least be highlighted, and probably the Team Challenge Final as well. John

That missing Four Corners tag could be something of a Holy Grail to bring to Dan's attention to keep an eye out for on handheld. I know he's focused on a few other projects, and 90s AJPW isn't really a current one... so I wouldn't want to drag him away from it. John

"Another reason to hate the going to 30 minutes on TV, and Sammy not having AJPW at the time." Means: NTV went to 30 in 4/94 + No AJPW Sammy until 10/96 = lots less AJPW TV than 1993 = sucks The 1995 Four Corners match in the Tag League would be on tape if either one of those things existed in 1995: the old one hour NTV show or AJPW on Sammy. John

Yeah... the Pride = Pro Wrestling meme that he's had for years appears to be taken off the table for that article, while shoot matches in RINGS magically count. John

I agree with Loss on the Team Challenge. It needs to be represented somehow. Also agree with Kevin: Larry vs Saito on some level needs to be on there. John

Ditch: you can remove your spoiler comments now. One does wish that the 5th match between the teams (the league match of the RWTL) was available, even if just in Hand Held. That one actually has the likelihood of being better than 1/95 and 12/95 given (i) it has a finish just short of the time limit, and (ii) given Misawa & Kobashi going down, it's likely that Kawada & Taue gave them a chunk of the match to "do their thing". Another reason to hate the going to 30 minutes on TV, and Sammy not having AJPW at the time. On the other hand... it was a really weak group of teams in the league. They really should have just taped the show that had their league match. John

According to legend, this originally was going to be the expected Kawada successful defense over Kobashi before the titles headed off in their direction back to Misawa. Instead, this happened two days before: Great Hanshin Earthquake According to legend, Baba changed the result to a draw to give the region something "special" in the aftermath. Take the legend for whatever it's worth. There is a level of believability to it as the result in inconsistent with pretty much all other Baba booking of TC matches in the era. The flip side is that it's not like Baba was very vocal in telling other people his reasons for making booking decisions. John

Bull/Kyoko would be good additions to the "Additional Matches" set. I think some of us get bummed when something isn't on the set, but we probably should just advocate such matches to make the ETC set and have a good vibe that it will turn out to be a good set in its own right. As an example, take a look at Beatles 1. 27 songs. Loads of classics. But given the guidelines of putting it together, a lot of great Beatles songs aren't on it. Not just great album tracks like Day In The Life, but even songs that were hits on the singles charts in either they US or UK such as Please Please Me, Strawberry Fields Forever, Revolution, Twist and Shout, And I Love Her and Nowhere Man. If you were to compile another 78 minute CD of Beatles songs that were great and didn't make Beatles 1... you'd end up with an amazing awesome CD. Or if, instead, you compiled *two* additional CD's rather than just one, and had songs that weren't on Beatles 1... it would fucking rule. There's a lot of cool stuff that Will and Loss had to cut because of space... even with all the space that they had to work with each year. So my thought would be that folks keep adding it into the Additional Matches section. What we might find out is that there's another 10-30 DVDs of ETC material, which would be pretty freaking cool. Don't be shy in tossing stuff in there. There may be some stuff of historical value that didn't make the cut. There also may be some stuff that's not really all that great, but is of value to see. Example: I'm kind of mixed on advocating the 10/93 Misawa vs Hansen TC match. It's just not good. On the other hand, 1993 is Hansen's career year, and also the year where Misawa makes the big leap forward to become The Man in AJPW. If we're trying to figure out who is the best worker among Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi and Hansen in the promotion that year (and where they fit among the best in the world), it's kind of worth while to see Hansen & Misawa work a dog and not think *every* time they faced each other in 1993 (there were four of them) that they're at the level of 5/93. The Carny Final earlier in the year is kind of "just there" as well. Triple Crown match and Carny Final... two big matches, and kind of doggish. Perhaps it doesn't make the ETC cut. But there is no harm in tossing out additional matches for Will & Loss to consider. If we end up having all of Bull's Big Red matches on the Yearbooks except for one, we having the perception that Bull nailed it every time out. If that one was a bit of a dog, it might be worthwhile to pimp it for the ETC set. You're still not going to have pimping in the range of 50/50 Great-Cool Matches vs Important Dogs... simply because few people even think to toss out a dog. But if you end up with 5% to 10% that are worth watching but but great... that's not bad. I don't recall if the Hogan & Savage vs The World clusterfuck cage match made the cut on the Yearbook. I could see it being left off with just the finish making it. But it is one of the most famous epically shitty matches of all time. So if there's LOTS of good-great matches to load up a lot of disc for an ETC set, then carving out the time for that shitty match probably isn't a bad thing. If a 30 disc ETC set seems like a lot, think of it this way: 30 discs / 10 years = 3 ETC disc per year That... isn't that much when you look at it that way. I think we could all look at 1995 or 1993 and think of 3 bonus discs of material. So pimp away over in the Additional Matches thread. John

01/20/80 - Ivan Putski vs. Ken Patera 01/21/80 - Bob Backlund vs. Ken Patera 04/12/80 - Rene Goulet vs. Ken Patera 04/21/80 - Pat Patterson vs. Ken Patera 05/10/80 - Ivan Putski vs. Ken Patera 05/19/80 - Bob Backlund vs. Ken Patera 07/26/80 - Bob Backlund vs. Ken Patera (Gorilla Monsoon guest ref) 08/09/80 - Tony Atlas vs. Ken Patera 08/23/80 - Gorilla Monsoon vs. Ken Patera 09/22/80 - Rene Goulet vs. Ken Patera 10/11/80 - Andre the Giant vs. Ken Patera 10/20/80 - Pedro Morales vs. Ken Patera 11/08/80 - Bruno Sammartino vs. Ken Patera 12/13/80 - Bruno Sammartino vs. Ken Patera 12/29/80 - Pat Patterson vs. Ken Patera 08/10/84 - Tony Garea vs. Ken Patera 08/25/84 - Pat Patterson vs. Ken Patera 09/22/84 - Rick McGraw vs. Ken Patera 09/23/84 - Rick McGraw vs. Ken Patera 10/13/84 - Tony Garea vs. Ken Patera 10/22/84 - Rocky Johnson vs. Ken Patera 11/13/84 - Andre the Giant & SD Jones vs. Ken Patera & Big John Studd 11/20/84 - David Sammartino vs. Ken Patera 12/01/84 - Jose Louis Rivera vs. Ken Patera 12/10/84 - Jim Powers vs. Ken Patera 01/21/85 - Andre the Giant vs. Ken Patera 03/17/85 - Andre the Giant, Jimmy Snuka & JYD vs. Big John Studd, Ken Patera & Jesse Ventura 05/07/85 - Hulk Hogan vs. Ken Patera 05/18/85 - Tony Garea vs. Ken Patera 05/20/85 - Tony Atlas vs. Ken Patera 05/25/85 - Hulk Hogan vs. Ken Patera 05/26/85 - Paul Orndorff vs. Ken Patera Pretty interesting. John

I think there's been a fair amount of criticism over the years of the IWGP Tag Title going into the crapper when it went into the Hellraisers Era. Steiners / Hase & Mutoh / Vader & Vader Era (3/91 to 9/92 in terms of title wins & successful defenses) wasn't bad at all as a change of pace after gaijin vs gaijin dominating the division from 12/85 through 3/91. A decent batch of watchable to good matches in that period. Not so much from 11/92 on through 1993 and 1994. John

So the folks on The Board who think it's okay to pirate Gabe's stuff would think that it's okay for people to pirate Bryan and Dave's stuff that's behind the firewall and instantly make it widely and easily available to the public for free? I've always been pretty strongly against people doing that to Dave's stuff. But if the arguments being made in this thread that are drawing a link between Gabe and what RF Video did a decade or so again, then there is the matter of Dave tape selling/trading not just puroresu by US wrestling back in the early 80s, along with allowing other people to advertise in the WON such things well into the 90s. I've never bought that as a reasonable justification for ripping off Dave's stuff. But we're talking apples and apples here... well, maybe not since it was actually *Dave* doing that tape stuff, rather than in Gabe's case the company he worked for (RF Video). Do the Board folks who are slagging Gabe get that? You think Bryan would be happy with folks giving away his stuff for free as soon as it went up (which would be exceptionally easy to do)? John

God I hope they don't give PWG any ideas. I liked both of the long Hero-Claudio matches earlier this year, but it did seem like the fanbase didn't want to see them go that long. John

Just to be clear on the purpose of my original comment: If it's missing known matches below 60, then it's likely missing some 60+ matches. Example: the 3/95 six man tag at Korakuen that's on the Carny tape isn't on the list. It's a pretty cool dB. I suspect that anything they can get their hands on, they'd add. Fab already... should be off the hook in several more years as they drop even more in. John

The list in the link goes well below 60 minutes. It's got shorter matches on the list... damn near looks like it's a list of any result they can get their hands on. This decade (less than 2 years old) has 24,441 results in it already, the shortest: So there's room for those two matches in the dB. John

And drop into google translator. Pretty cool. It's not 100% complete: for example they don't have the 4/91 AJPW six-man, unless I'm overlooking it... or 5/94. Suspect that they'd add it if people shot them more stuff. John

Not sure if it will end up $5M: Initial max is $5M, which would be an advance. If the WWE was at the high end of that, it's: * $5M to WWE * Google keeps all the ad revenue until reaching that $5M * possible other "costs" on Google's part on top of that $5M * then the WWE get up to 55% of ad revenue after that Google is the king of sucking ad money out of the online world at a time when others, even a high traffic site like the WWE, have issues doing do. Probably a reason why the WWE is willing to do business with Google: tap into ad money that they'll have a problem getting. That said... I'm not 100% sold yet that this will be "The WWE Network" in exactly the same fashion as we'll eventually see on Cable. It doesn't make a great deal of sense for the WWE to undercut their own network that could generate considerable more revenue for just a $5M advance from Google where it's not even clear how long it's expected before they reach the revenue sharing point (six months? year? two years?). In turn, if the WWE Network is able to get on Basic in the following 5 out of the Top 8 providers: 22,525,000 Comcast Corporation 19,433,000 DirecTV 14,056,000 Dish Network Corporation 3,848,000 Verizon Communications, Inc. 3,407,000 AT&T, Inc. At $0.08 a month per household: 63,269,000 * 0.08 * 12 = $60,738,240 per year. On the list I included Comcast because: * WWE's deals are currently largely Comcast (USA Network / SciFy) * Comcast is a good partner in creating a Network Verizon and AT&T seem to be easier at cutting deals since they want to offer alternatives to Cable, and one of the ways is to offer stuff that Cable doesn't. The Dish companies have historically done the same, though have had some issues recently with content providers. I left of TWC, Cox and Charter as they might be tougher sales... though that's where the power of Comcast comes in during the long term, especially if it gets a cut. Would the WWE really want to draw viewers away from banging their service providers to get WWE Net onto Basic when they could go watch it on Youtube "for free"? $60M+ vs $5M+? Perhaps the WWE thinks that working with Google is a cheap way to do a network. But it's really hard seeing them grow that business into something that will be pulling in $50M+ a year. I'm not even sure if $5M covers the cost of producing the content to fill the network to a degree where it will draw enough advertising to move beyond the $5M advance. My guess is that what gets rolled out onto Youtube is a heck of a lot that's already been on the old 24/7 rather than "new content". :/ John