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That was my point. And the reality is that *he* hadn't personally overseen that stuff. He was at the top of the company, but Misawa and Kawada were learning that stuff from Jumbo and Tenryu, the Funks, Hansen, etc. Hansen and Tenryu have their famous shooty spot. Kawada is right freaking there at ringside. He doesn't need to have Coach Babacheck break it down on the tape for him between series: Kawada saw it, and got it. Misawa needing to have Baba tell him how to work something shooty like specifically The Punch with Kawada? He'd already done it years before with Jumbo. He knew how to work a shooty spot in a match. He'd dished one out, he'd seen the best in his promotion sell it, and he's seen the best respond with fire once he got his head back. The Punch wasn't any different. It's a bit like me tossing you my keys and say, "Take it for a spin." Do I really need to tell you how to turn the ignition, how to put it into drive, and how to work the gas pedal? I work for a Japanese company. We're empowered to make decisions on our own. We have some guidance. We have some clear objectives from the parent company (i.e. the products in the pipeline). We have some clear budget plans and forecasts, which are of course needed since they're making the shit in factories around the globe. But how we lay out the selling of the product... that's almost all us. And if we find that we're having issues selling the shit, we inturn go back to them and bang them to improve the next generation with features or price points needed to be competative. They are our Baba and Mrs. Baba. There are clear things they lead on, and clear things which we have our head to run on. It's little different from: "Misawa goes over tonight." And Jumbo knowing how to do it. You really think after nearly 20 fucking years that Baba needs to tell Jumbo how to layout a match to put over Misawa? Or how to do it in such a fashion that there's a storyline coming out of it? I mean, with the result, there really was only one storyline coming out of it and it was obvious to everyone: "HOLY SHIT!!! MISAWA PINNED JUMBO!!! HOLY SHIT!!!" I don't think much of any instruction needed to be given. The majority of it was standard stuff. And it could have as easily been Kawada telling the other three: "Taue has been carrying me the whole tourney. In this one the leg catches up to me." And worked through the general nature of the match with the rest. Again, it's not a complicated match. I'm sure I can write it up to make it sound deeper than it really is, but that's just because they crafted a smart, simple match that when it all comes together is really quite good. Booking started to go to shit in 1995. The year in general was quite boring. Kawada's reign was chopped off short, with an uninteresting bridge of Hansen back to Misawa. There were five Misawa & Kobashi vs Kawada & Taue matches, as if they had nothing of note to do once Doc went out. It was played out by the Tag League Final. They sort of got lucky that Taue stepped up and they got a surprising two good Budokan mains out of him opposite Misawa. The Misawa-Kobashi in October felt kind of thrown out there, kind of far removed from the 10/92 "dream match" vibe of Misawa vs Kawada as young gun partners against each other. Hansen had nothing interesting to do in 1995, despite winning the TC. Jun and Omori shrank. Nothing interesting happened to the once good All Asia tag division, and the Junior division wasn't good for much. Asako seemed wasted... Ace had nothing interesting to do after Doc went out. Kroffat & Furnass had been talked about as moving out of the All Asia division and into the World Tag group, but nothing came out of it. There was no depth to the Four Corners feud like there had been Misawa & Co. vs Jumbo & Co.: just the top four guys. Hansen & Albright was an especially weak "dream team" in the tag league. All in all, it was a big backwards step from 1993-94, and even in 1994 the issues with the depth of booking was falling off. Now perhaps you're going to say Baba got sick in 1995 and was declining from 1995 until January 1999. I'm not buying that. 1996 is a bit flucky in covering up the weakness of the booking: * Jun became Misawa's partner * Taue won the TC * Kobashi gets the TC and went over with Patriot * Doc came back The first was overdue in a general sense: Jun had spun his wheels for two years. Really and truly, not much of a damn inteesting thing happened to him in 1995, and hardly anything in 1994 after that match in July with Kawada. Even before that, 1994 was largely spinning his wheels. As far as Taue and Kobashi getting the TC, it was "their turn" similar to Doc and Kawada in 1994. It actually ended up being poor booking as Taue was at his peak of overness and work, and he got cut off after little over a series with the belts. They really could have booked him in a more interesting fashion. It's also not like Kobashi *needed* it at that point, and instead had a good storyline of going out on his own if they did anything with it. Instead, you can see by Loss' comment in the 1996 Set: "Kobashi doesn't seem to be up to much." No, he wasn't. Largely spinning his wheels. Getting Patriot as a partner was something an after thought in October: "Okay... we've had Jun with Misawa for a while, maybe it's time to get Kenta a group." Except that they really wouldn't get him a true group away from Misawa until 1997. Patriot was just kind of slapped together. So it's not like Kobashi was very well booked in 1996. Doc kind of cameback to where he was, except that the company didn't bother to get some strong closure or play on the obvious thing: He'd won his last singles match with Misawa and taken his title. You know... something you'd might want to do a little something with. We look at the "booking" of All Japan in 1996 as being "good" because of two things: * they had some great matches * the Misawa & Jun team storyline The first thing always happened anyway. The promotion had good matches even with mediocre / subpar / aimless booking. The second thing... I'm really loathed to credit Management with nailing that one when they didn't nail much of anything else, even easy ones. Instead, it looks more like one they lucked into. :/ AJPW match quality may have been high in 1996, but it was pretty much guys who'd been having great matches in their small circle for years. None of us were surprised by it, save for things like Taue-Williams that went above our expectations. The booking continued to be pretty pedestrian, as it had been for a while. Folks really weren't rah-rah for great booking in All Japan. Even I, as big of an All Japan fan as there was, often was critical of All Japan's booking. John

I see vastly more artificial, planned out shit at indy shows. And even there, I'd be surprised if Hero is going over literally *every* spot with Tozawa in advance. How elaborate are the transitions in 6/94 relative to what they had been doing for the past year against each other? Not that much. Perhaps they add in one thing we hadn't seen. For example, instead of: Kawada Tries + Misawa Blocks + Misawa Hits They went to: Kawada Tries + Misawa Blocks + Misawa Tries + Kawada Blocks + Kawada Hits This is common for them, and the style and not terribly elaborate. What's elaborate and sucky is how workers sense have turned every segement along those lines into a "You Can Never Hit The First Attempt, And Usually Not The Second" as the dance around. It's gotten to the point in PWG (and ROH when I've seen it) that almost no one ever hits what ever they try off the top ropes the first time. They have to have a struggle, and either B reverses A, or B reverses on to have A recounter and hit something off the ropes. If you're paying attention to the predictablity of it, i gets to suck. Anyway, given how much more elaborate we've seen people get with a dozen such segements in matches since then, and guys that I doubt many of us would think are as smart of workers as say Kawada and Misawa and Kobashi were in 1993-94 (I mean Chris Daniels for fucks sake), can we at least admit that what Kawada and Misawa were doing wasn't that complicated. I think that's one of the interesting things of watching 6/94 now: it's not that complicated of a match. They're not throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the match. It's kind of simple, just very well done, and very well built. Here's the thing: these two had worked 50-100 "opening segements" against each other in the prior year. They kind of know their stuff. It's a bit like watching a bunch of Savage-Steamboat matches. They have certain gambits that they ran against each other. The had certain spots that they did. Some of it was basic Savage stuff, things you'd have seen him do against Tito or even Hogan. Some of it was Steamer stuff, though he's a bit more reactive to his opponent that forcing his will on a match. Some of it is Savage-Steamer stuff: things they within a couple of matches with each other knew worked well. 6/3/94 *isn't* say the first Kawada vs Sasaki match where the two need to figure out what works with each other, and perhaps have to talk a fair amount of it out in the dressing room before had. Kawada and Misawa may not be literally the Flair-Steamboat of Japan at that moment (I'd argue Mutoh-Chono were the two even more use to each other's shit)... but they're pretty close. They know each other's shit. I don't think the opening is anymore complicated than the opening of Jumbo vs Animal from 3/86. And that one probably only need the following from one smart worker to the other: Jumbo: "I'm going to let you go out on top early." Animal: "Okay." Jumbo: "I'm going to turn my back for a little stretching pre-match, drop kick me, and kick the shit out of me." Animal: "Okay." It's not like Jumbo had to add any of the following: Jumbo: "You see... you're a litte fucker, and no one would buy you going toe-to-toe with me and getting the advantage... so this gives you the opening. Also, I'm being a dickish heel right now to Choshu, so there's going to be a chunk of the fans who eat this shit up and will love you getting the jump on me. Hot opening, pull them right in, then we can take them down a bit, and work them up-and-down after that." He doesn't need to tell Animal that shit. He's a smart worker too, and gets the concept of starting the match hot, giving Animal a reason/way to get the jump on Jumbo, and pulling the crowd into it. Now I'm not going to say Kawada and Misawa are as smart as Jumbo (or even Animal who was a fun little bastard)... but in the contect of 1994, they were roughly as smart as Jumbo had been in 1986 because there were even more dumb idiots running around in 1994. So coming up with an opening gambit isn't exactly Bobby Fischer stuff. I think that was always the thing with DDP that we talking about when he was in with Benoit: Chris had to slow his shit down for the slow "A-to-B-to-C-to-D... let me check my notes... D-to-E-to-F-to G" type of wrestling that Page did. Benoit, when in there with someone who could go and knew his shit, like say Eddy, knew generally where they were going. Chris: "I'm going to work the headlock." Eddy: "Okay." Chris: "A lot." Eddy: "Okay." Chris: "And keep going back to it." Eddy: "Alright, I get it." Chris doesn't have to tell Eddy to be wobbly going up to the top that one time: Eddy *knows*. Either he does, or he doesn't... and in this case, he does. Misawa's neck had been an issue since Furnas knocked him out of the Carny. It was one series before. I suspect if we pop in the 30 minute draw between Kawada and Misawa in the Carny, we'll see the neck be an issue. Well, screw it... I don't know where my tape is buried, so here's someone on 411 reviewing it. I'll highlight a few things... all the bold is mine. Okay... thats not *my* review, and maybe he sees more relating to the neck than I do... or perhaps he sees less than I do. Now I don't recall the exactly the date in Carny when Furnas too him out... it was early in it, in March if I recall. And the Misawa-Kawada was more in the middle of it... early April. But Kawada already was going after the neck. Really, it's not like anyone needs to tell him that either: Misawa got knocked out of the Carny with a neck injury... of course you go after the neck. He pushed him more in 7/93 than he had in 4/93 and 10/92. They progress. It's a standard thing. He also was losing, and unlike say Hansen (who like to control a lot against Kawada), Misawa tended to give large chunks of matches to *everyone* who challenged him as TC champ. It's just Misawa's style. I don't really see it anymore compossed than 7/2/93, which was just a fall out of bed six man tag that was pretty good. These guys had shit that they did together. :/ I don't think Baba even needed to tell them that. They generally know that *they* want to top 7/93. Baba told them who wins, and probably even tells them to go past 30... perhaps even said go 35. Probably not since they don't go a whole lot past 35 and were well into the stretch run by that point getting extremely close to the finish. Beyond that... probably not much. I don't think there's a whole lot of George Martin debate to people who've studied the Beatles. He's pretty much the 3rd Beatle behind John & Paul, with Harrison and Ringo far behind. I love John & Paul, but they don't do what they did without him. The difference is: It's well documented what Martin did on song after song, and not just Martin blowing smoke up people's asses. Lots of people documenting it, including Paul and John supporting it (though not exactly saying Martin was the third Beatle). With Baba... we're generally making stuff up because we want to believe there's a Higher Power involved. John

One of my favorite live experiances was watching Johnny Ace be slow in coming off the turnbuckles on a transition where he was to go on offense. Kawada knew it was obvious to everyone that he was "waiting" for Johnny to do what he was suppose to do, so he side stepped it once Johnny came, gave him a stiff counter kick, and went back on the offense for a couple of moves before feeding Johnny another transition spot. Which Johnny executed very well. And Kawada sold the fuck out of for him. I think we all see them call spots. You can see them learn into the ear, little different from the US. On the other hand, they've also worked with each other a ton, and you kind of know that after certain things, it's time to transition and you're kind of waiting for one of the usual transition spots. And you take it. Or if you don't or are shitty in taking it, they try o cover for it and move forward until giving you the next one. Anyway, the match with Ace was a Carny singles match infront of not exactly a huge crowd, on a spot show, not TV and no commercial filming. They still expect you to hit your marks and not fuck things up too obviously. John

The name & copyrights was $2.5 million and the entire tape library was $1.7 million. From their 10-K for the year ended 04/30/01: $2.5M = Tape Library + Coyrights/IP + Other intangible assets Another $1.8M in costs on the deal, which is where the $4.3M comes from. The number in the Cash Flow Statement is -4,155, which is -$4.155M... so go figure. On the costs, obviously some legal work... not sure what else they would have rung up. Since you can amortize acquisitions across 10 years, it's likely that the WWF wouldn't mind puffing up that $1.8M number on their books to include just about as much as possible: always cram as much as possible into this year's books to keep them clean going foward. Basically, the WWF gave TW $2.5M. TW ate the biggest liabilities (wrestler contracts), and almost certainly all the outstanding accounts payable while getting whatever receivables were left. $2.5M for the "assests", of which the tape library was the jewel, was cheap. I think at the time some of us thought it was dirt cheap. Hell, we should have passed around the hat to buy the tape library, then sell it to Vince for $10M. John

It was probably not "bought", and instead they took over some of hist debts/obligations, which if he was smart enough he rolled into the company and just move over to SBGI. In turn, SBGI probably wipes off the ROH books money that ROH "owes" Cary either as loans or as shareholder equity, etc. John

For all our criticism of Dave, this is an insane issue. For 20 years, in a "normal" issue, a WWF/WCW PPV would be a lead article. It's not in this one. For most of the past decade, a story as newsworthy and especially strange & twisty as the Chael Sonnen suspension would be the lead article. In almost any issue, something as "big" as one of the top second tier promotions having a major operational change would be the lead. We can argue the significance of ROH (count me in the camp that think they don't have much of a pot to piss in). But this is a bit like something of this nature of Smokey or ECW having a Big Change, which if there wasn't something bigger in the WWF or WCW, would be a lead. That's three Lead-worthy stories, all of which Dave covered at the length that he would normally cover something like that. But before we even get to those, there's a lengthy bio of Savage, which obviously is a lead over just about anything. Pretty damn newsworthy week, and Dave didn't seem to be slacking on covering any of it. Good job. John

I suspect that Anti-Trip folks can point to quite a bit of fucking over Cena stuff to balance out tapping to Cena at Mania. Folks liked to point to Shawn putting over Cena and that Cena "won" the feud. Others walked through the feud/series, and it was quite a bit less clear than Shawn was as giving as folks tried to say. John

It's been out there for a while. I think I got my copy from Dan G years ago. I've seen some talk of it in the last year... I'm trying to recall if the AJPW 80's gang looked at it in the nomination process. John

$2M over the course of 7 years... say a quarter million a year. That's not a shitload per year. It's not chump change, but not horrible. Wonder if that's increased over the past few years: higher burn rate since the economy when in the shitter. Think of it in another direction... Given all the money that the WWE makes (christ, just focus on the amount th goes into Vince's pocket each quarter in the dividend payments), the WWE could fund a ROH on each coast as "live" programing for a new WWE Channel and it probably would pay for itself in terms of ratings and advertising sales. I'm not saying *anyone else* could do it. But under the WWE umbrella... not too hard at all. Especially if they're smart on keeping costs reasonable rather than having it a money pit for old, washed up wrestlers both running it and also in the ring. Granted there are arguments against it: there's the concept that you don't want say a Hero & Claudio on you channel in a small time promotion and instead you want to save them coming in to Raw or SmackDown as "new" talent. I'm not totally against that notion. But... The WWE could probably run a very smart cost effective ROH and PWG. John

Trip's goofiness with jobs, his cutting people off at the knees, and all of his other games has been detailed to death over the years. We've had a ton of threads here on it. What usually happens early on is that a Trip Hater points to one or two things. Then a Trip Defender points to a few more things that "balances out" the picture, but still leaves an incomplete story. Then someone runs in and drops about another dozen examples of Trip being a cocksucker. After that, Trip Defenders slink off, though on occassion they'll man up and say, "We forgot about those other ones... sorry about that." I'm not trying to say that every Trip Defender cooks the books in these discussions. I actually think quite the opposite: they probably don't get the depth and width of Trip's stuff over the years, have heard just enough defenses of him over the years to think there's a point, and then when faced with a mountain of Trip's power games, they grasp that they were wrong. John

Most of them are. They're largely shills, like you see on CNBC. John

Do the writers grasp that ROH programing is 1-2 hours a week out of: 21 hours of primetime programing 126 hours roughly of overall non-infomercial programing 168 hours of total program It's a drop in the bucket. It would be like NBC buying the WWE and claiming it was going to be the cornerstone of turning their network around. It's still just 4 hours of programing. John

Shows you how out of touch I am with TNA that I'm surprised they're over in the UK. John

The booker makes matches, decides who wins, and if he's looking down the road, sets up the next set of matches. In a sense, that's exactly what traditional old US bookers did. All Japan wasn't Memphis or Dusty or 90s WWF with wild angles and challenges setting up matches. All Japan had few "angles". Did Baba specifically tell Hansen to wack Kawada in the skull with a chair in the 1993 Battle Royal? Unlikely. Did he (or Mrs. Baba or someone else in management) tell Hansen and Kawada to work something hot? Sure. Do you really need at that point to tell Hansen specifically how to work something hot with Kawada? No. When Kawada threw the "punch" at Misawa, did Baba specifically say: "I want to introduce a new element to your feud, so Tosh... punch Misawa right in the head and he'll sell it like you knocked him out. Then keep coming back to that in future matches for a while." I don't think so. Did he say anything and those two came up with it on their own in a vaccum? Possible... but probably not in a vaccum. It's clear in the tag that their partners knew what was up, and the ref knew what was up. They reacted as they should. Beats me if the PBP man knew ahead of time. Baba? May have known in general, and he'd seen enough of them that whenever the two tossed out whatever they were going to do, he knew how to respond to it at the table. So Baba may have told them to "do something" with whatever is his way of saying the "something" is what everyone calls "something shooty" to add some intensity to the rivalry. Could he have been specific? Maybe. Let them figure it out? Maybe. It's not like these two hadn't worked "shooty angles" before. Hell, I just mentioned one above: Kawada taking the chair off the skull from Hansen. Everyone knows Misawa's most famous one. They've all done them, or been in the ring when one happens, or stood outside when one happens. I don't think Baba has the mentality of Vince Russo where he needed to spell everything out, and then remind people later that series: "No don't forget to use a punch spot. We got that over on the TV taping earlier in the series, so everyone will get it if you do it tonight." All Japan wasn't doing any of that "Make It Good" stuff like Dusty. The wasn't the James Gang where were we suppose to play along with the fun that it was really Dusty & Maggie. Overall, it was pretty simply "booking". Christ... we often complained about how stale the booking got. John

and add Baba to it. Do you really think that the workers worked out all that out by themselves with no input from Baba? If Baba's only job was deciding who went over, he can't have had a difficult time of it considering how conservative his booking was. Look at the items: * the knee would be a storyline in the match Kawada legit blew out his knee early in the series. It slowed him down, limited him, and due to it became one of the various storylines of the tag league. No one has to tell these four workers to incorporate the knee into the match: it's the All Japan way, and these guys know it. * Kawada would work the long final stretch This is a common All Japan match trope / cliche / deep & rich element. * the knee eventually would prevent him from tagging out to Taue This is a common All Japan element: being worn down, unable to make the tag especially when your opponent gets taken out (as happens to Taue at Misawa's hands at the end). * Kawada would eventually get worn down and pinned Of course that's Baba making the call: Kobashi gets to pin Kawada for the first time in this match. The rest is obvious. Again, these are collectively smart workers who'd spent their entire careers in All Japan training, watching, listening to how you're suppose to work. Your point at the start of this tangent is that Baba's decline led to the decline in AJPW's style. My point is that what we see as the decline in AJPW's style was already well sown before Baba got sick and died. It's almost all there in the 7/95 TC match. I'm a bit loathed to watch more from that era because I suspect I'll see it all over the place. Misawa-Kobashi at Carny in 1996 had plenty of the future in it... as did their draw in the Carny Final in 1997. The 10/97 and 10/98 Misawa-Kobashi matches were dripping with it. AJPW's style didn't decline because Baba declined and died. It declined because he *allowed* Misawa and Kobashi to push the style further and further down a certain road. I'm pretty sure he liked it, or he would have reeled them back in. John

Kawada's knee was something that was regularly shown as a "weak point" starting in the 1993 Tag League when he blew it out. It was a logical thing to do since it was a real injury and explained why he wasn't working up to his normal method/way. It was commonly gone after in any number of matches in the first half of 1994: you see it often in his matches prior to 6/3/94. No one needs to tell AJPW workers to do that in specific matches: it's part of the All Japan way. Even we as fans talked about it back then. If someone has a "real" injury, it ends up being a target. The fans knew it, so it never really was a surprise. No one needed to tell Kawada to go after the back/neck in that match: everyone knew to play off Misawa's injury from Carny. You can believe that Baba rounded everyone up in the locker room and said, "for the next six months I want everyone to go after Misawa's neck"... but that isn't needed. It's simply the AJPW way. Kroffat comes back from the knee injury... of course Fuchi is going to go after it in a match. Hell, they do it *within* matches when injuries happen. Kobashi breaks the nose? Of course the heels are going to go after it. Misawa in that very same match where Kawada's knee is worked over and Misawa's neck/back are worked over has his ear injured in such a way that it juices. Kawada notices, and works it over as well. It's the AJPW way. It wouldn't be "realistic" not to attack it. It's extremely rare that they don't. One exception that comes to mind of a mid-match injury where they don't is when Kawada breaks Misawa's orbital bones and knocked him completely for a loop. Kawada really doesn't go nutty on the eye in *that* match, probably because it was a bit to dangerous in not knowing just how bad it was. But you pretty quickly see it become a "target" for people: two days after the injury (if I'm recalling the dates correctly) it pops up as a used injury in the match with Jun, and of course Taue plays on it in the Final. It became something of a "weak point" for Misawa for a while... because it was *obvious*. It's not really something anyone needs to discuss. In turn, Misawa doesn't need to be told to sell it: he's working in All Japan since the early 80s. By 1994, he knows how to sell the All Japan way. Does anyone think that Baba needed to tell Kobashi to "work over Stan's lariat arm" in the 9/96 TC match? People had been working over Stan's lariat arm for ages to the point that it was a freaking cliche, and by the mid-90s it was boring at times. Why did it work so well in the 9/96 match? I don't really know... it just clicked that night. But if you pop in Will's Hansen set, you're going to see so many examples of "Work Stan's Lariat Arm" that it's not funny. Kobashi grew up watching that. He broke into wrestling watching others do that. As a young wrestler when Hansen started giving him parts of matches, Kobashi himself did that. He didn't need Baba to tell him to work the arm: it's part of working matches with Hansen in All Japan. Was there a six month long storyline that Hansen's left arm was getting weaker, and that now was the right time to attack it? No... it's Stan's lariat arm. You attack it to keep him from chopping your head off. Baba's storylines were typically Who Beat Who, especially the big ones. That was the funny part about the Selfish Booker Misawa stuff. Misawa booked he routine stuff. Baba booked who held the two big titles, who faced them, and who won. He booked who he wanted to win the Carny and who he wanted to win the Tag League, and who worked the Final / Final Night of each. Other people handled most of the details. He wasn't even making most of the matches in his last several years. Others did. He was big picture. He did have influence on the style worked in All Japan, what it liked and what he didn't like, and what he moved away from. It's pretty clear that younger Baba didn't have a problem with juice. There was plenty of juice in All Japan from the start, including Baba juicing. His key gaijin ofter were juice junkies. But at some point, Baba decided it should go. He allowed Abby a little bit of slack longer than most, but even there it seemed like there came a time when he asked Abby to knock it off. That's an overall, big picture decision he made. Perhaps people are seeing things at two extremes: * Flair Style a/k/a Wing It In There * Patterson/DDP Style a/k/a We Block The Whole Damn Thing Out And try to fit AJPW into one or the other of the extremes. I don't think Kawada and Misawa sat down with Pat Babason and blocked 6/3/94 out. Neither in DDP level detail, or really even in general. Kawada's knee had been worked over for six months... they knew they could fill space with that if they wanted to. Misawa's neck injury was fresher, and an obvious thing to work out. They typically knew they wanted to open "intense" before settling down, and may even have talked about some things they wanted to do. Then again... they'd worked together for more than a decade, and spent the last year again opposite of each other in at least 50+ matches. They knew the spots they could do, and even reversals of spots, and reversals of the reversals. It's a bit like Flair laying in the headlock with Steamer: he knows he can grab the trunks, roll over, and have Steamboat in a pinning position which Steamer rolls back out of to control the headlock. They've done it a hundred times, they know what to do. That doesn't mean that they were totally winging it in there. They probably knew the general time. They knew who was going over. Baba may have said, "Do something different" at the finish, or that may have just been them: it was pretty common for wrestlers to pass through the old things that finished someone off, and have to come up with a new away to do it. It wasn't just the TD '91: I don't recall Misawa putting Kawada previously with the finisher of the 7/95 match. The finishing sequence of the 7/93 match was relatively fresh, and kind of got over the released German Suplex as one of Kawada's achilles heels for a while... but does anyone really think Baba came up with that? And then, when laying out 12/93 like Patterson that he paused while going over the finishing run, looked at Misawa and said: "And right here, you hit Kawada with the released German and he sells it like to killed him dead. It will be great because everyone in the building will remember back in July where you killed him dead with them." Again, I don't buy that. I don't even buy that he instructed them in July to use it, with the added note that he would like to see Kawada sell the released german like a king for the next year to get it over. Despite the general sense that Misawa eventually lost his working mind, these were two reasonably smart workers in 1993 and 1994. They knew what they were doing... they faced each other all the time, in settings where they could pick and chose their spots with each other, develop and refine them, and by the time of their big matches have a lot of their shit down pat. John

That's the one I recall as being born in 1980ish, and being surprised that you were a Torch reader so young. John

I assume Dave was joking. John Considering his follow up was "is the weather bad?" I would say he wasn't. That would tend to indicate that he was joking. No way that he's been a friend of Alverez for more than a a decade and fails to know the weather sucks. John

I love Ray Parlour popping up in the piece. Plus... Charlie Webster is hot. John

I assume Dave was joking. John

I'm 45. I'm sure there are some older than me. Dean doesn't post here, but he had me beat by a few *days*. John

They're wrestling fans: they want to believe. John

There's someone else on these boards who was born in 1980ish that always surprised me since I thought he'd been around forever. Hoback was subbing to the WON and buying tapes from Dave in 1983 at around the age of 12/13, which always blows my mind. John

Damn, Bix... you've been around forever. Could have sworn you were on rsp-w in 1996, which is 15 years ago. You were 11? I thought you were high school when I first ran into you, so assumed early 30s now. John

I am amazed by how quickly people in this thread "got it". Within a half on hour of the post, people were pointing out how limited the clearance is, and that Sinclair is a goofy company. I do wonder what Cary got out of the deal in terms of net. John