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What's kind of interesting is that Misawa & Jun *did* have epics against other teams. Loss has hit the Top 30 on his list and still have three Misawa & Akiyama vs Doc & Ace matches to go. From his "As Of Novermber" list: #21 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (AJPW 09/05/96) #23 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (AJPW 06/07/96) #25 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (AJPW 11/16/96) Those are above the two Tenryu-Takada matches, which he loved. Above the Doc-Taue Carny Final, which he loved and frankly is something of an "epic" considering it was a Carny Final that didn't have Misawa, Kawada or Kobashi in it. That 06/07/96 match finished rather high up on the WON MOTY Award list for that year. They kind of get trumped because he has three Misawa & Jun vs Kawada & Taue matches above *all* of them. But think of that: 20% of Loss' Top 30 is made up of Misawa & Jun tags, with a seventh at in his Top 30. That's while being a "team" just from May to December 1996. They were on the back burner in 1997 as it seemed pretty clear that after the overkill of Misawa & Jun vs Kawada & Taue that it was being saved for the Tag League Final. So there isn't a ton of stuff such at tag title matches to judge the team on. But... 08/06/97 World Tag: Williams & Albright vs Misawa & Akiyama ****1/4 11/23/97 Tag League: Misawa & Akiyama vs Kobashi & Ace ****1/2 11/27/97 Tag League: Misawa & Akiyama vs. Hayabusa & Shinzaki ****3/4 11/28/97 Tag League: Misawa & Akiyama vs Kawada & Taue 12/05/97 Tag League: Misawa & Akiyama vs Kawada & Taue (Final) ***** Those would be Dave's ratings off the NTV version of the matches. Full versions of all of those should be either on Sammy and/or commercial... he never saw the 11/28/97 match. No vouching for his ratings, but just tossing them out. Off Sammy there are other "regular" series tags and six men, though I don't recall any of them being pimped back in the day: going through the motions was the word of the say on those. Though some of them were opposite Kobashi & Co., and Kenta didn't exactly know how to go through the motions so there might be some decent ones out there. Anyway, the 1997 Yearbook probably should include all of those (along with most of the rest of the big tags). Suspect Misawa & Jun will come off looking okay. My point earlier, and I think someone else echoed it, was that from a roles standpoint Misawa & Jun seemed to fit better together than Kenta & Jun. Jun's role with Kobashi wasn't terribly interesting, and while Jun got to be the junior-partner workhorse with Misawa, Kenta tended to be so overwhelming back then that no one really was the workhorse when he was involved. It's hard to top Misawa & Kobashi "just because", but Misawa & Jun were quite a good team. They got a little lost perhaps because of (i) the decrease in TV time on NTV, (ii) the death of the classic AJPW six-man tag tv taping main event, and (iii) their second year together got eaten up by a focus on Misawa's reafirming himself as The Man. John

I feel a little sorry for Loss now having to make a placeholder post for every thing on the disk... which looks like 650+ by my count. John

Back then, I thought it was pretty clearly Misawa & Kobashi. Their roles were just right as well. Always thought the lateral move of Jun from being Misawa's sidekick to being Kobashi's sidekick was a blockhead move, and Jun sort of hit the wall. Kenta was always going to be Kenta. Misawa worked well in having Kenta go off because Misawa was still The Man. Junior Partners often get to shine in the tags because The Man is over there with the Big Belt(s). For Jun, he moved up to be a regular challenger for the TC... and slid right into being Kenta's little buddy. And happy to see Kenta eat up a ton of the spotlight in the tags. The comps probably would more reasonably be: Misawa & Kawada --> Misawa & Kobashi --> Misawa & Jun --> Kobashi & Jun Misawa & Jun didn't get a ton of spotlight in their second year, but most of that seemed to be in saving Misawa & Jun vs Kawada & Taue for the Tag League because it had been riden a lot in their prior year (5 times). John

My recollection is that Sayama being brought in led to Shinma heading out the door of UWF. The Sayama leaving New Japan has been convoluted over time, but there's always been a theme of "revolt" over the company finances, with those stories of Inoki blowing through money on bad investments while the workers aren't raking in money in record breaking years. Of course that leads back to Shinma since Inoki can't take the blame for anything, so Shinma did... often. I'd love to see Shinma's book translated. John

The effort put into it, and the ramp up of releases/projects, speaks a bit more than a Vince Vanity Project. One a year would do the trick. Releases in 9/10, 10/10, 2/11 and 4/11 looks more like someone is quite engaged in it. They also changed their business model last year from what had been more of a vanity project into something different. Vince checks out of vanity projects pretty fast: boxing, movies the first time around, WBF, XFL, etc. Maybe Dave has covered it, and it's among the many things I skim through in the WON as WWE business reports tend to get repetative and sleepy over the years. It's also such a drop in the bucket of company revenues and costs that it doesn't matter much. Still, some folks in the company seem to have a ying for this. John

They just filed their 10-K for 2010 year end (December). The statement on WWE Studios: Revenue 2009: $7.7M 2010: $19.6 Cost of Revenue 2009: $3.9 2010: $19.2 Operating Income 2009: $2.2 2010: -$1.8 I'm sure that there's someone out there who can figure out the long term plan of WWE Studios. It's always been a bit lost on me, other than the one-time vibe that it was a jerk off part of the company for Shane. I probably was incorrect on that, do it does make you wonder who is keeping it alive. John

I think it's akin to Tenryu vs New Japan in 1992-94. We can try to put it over as WAR vs New Japan, but really it was Tenryu. There were some other short feuds in there (like Muta-Kabuki), while the Liger-Dragon never took off. It's not like Tenryu focused on any one opponnt. We can't even go Tenryu-Hash as it wasn't sustained: it popped up when it needed to pop up, then Tenryu moved on... and game back to it six months later. In a sense, Tenryu was fighting _all_ of New Japan. That's what the nWo was: Hogan & Co. against everyone. One could include Hall & Nash in it, since they played a role. But it really was Hogan driving that steam train. It wasn't even "an" angle. There were a series of angles that ran through the year, in other words a continuing storyline... a feud. I'm the AJPW fan, so I should be arguing for it. But watching the weekly stuff, it just wasn't a feud in the sense of Misawa & Co vs Jumbo & Co or the Four Corners or the Olympians vs the Revolution. John

I'm a fan of the Misawa & Jun vs Kawada & Taue feud, but I'd go with Hogan (and nWo) vs WCW. Match quality wasn't relevant to it, and the angles & mic work might not totally hold up. But it changed the game in US wrestling: WCW became a true rival for #1 via that feud. John

Misawa & Jun then Otani & Takaiwa. Kawada's prime as a tag worker with three really good teams was 1987-2000, though obviously 2000 was a half year due to the split and 1999 had the major injury. Anyway, the winners and runner-ups in that period: Year Winner Runner Up 1987 The Midnight Express (2) Akira Maeda & Nobuhiko Takada 1988 The Midnight Express (3) The Fantastics 1989 The Rockers Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard 1990 Rick & Scott Steiner The Midnight Express 1991 Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada Rick & Scott Steiner 1992 Terry Gordy & Steve Williams The Can-Am Express 1993 The Hollywood Blonds The Heavenly Bodies 1994 Love Machine & Eddy Guerrero Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi 1995 Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi Public Enemy 1996 Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama The Eliminators 1997 Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (2) Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 1998 Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 1999 Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama Matt and Jeff Hardy 2000 Edge & Christian Matt and Jeff Hardy It might not hold up, but I think at the time that Kawada was the best tag worker of the 90s, and rather good in those last three years of the 80s. There's something ironic about the list of winners not really reflecting that, and that someone like Jun looks like the dominant tag worker of the last few years of the decade. That said, I think if we looked at the voting that we'd find Kawada & Taue (and Kawada's teams in general) did "well" in those years. They weren't as loved as various teams with either Misawa or Kobashi. They also fell behind a number of the hot-at-the-moment teams (Blonds, Locos) and the ECW Ballot Stuffing Brigade (PE and Eliminators). But overall... Footloose, Misawa & Kawada and Kawada & Taue drew votes year after year. John

Are you sure it's not Gino Hernandez? John

He wants the cash too much: $1.78M an episode for 22-24 episodes. He had the out at the end of last year, he played hardball and got the big raise. $40M+ a year for two years isn't something to sneeze at. Really, if he wanted out, he simply could have walked away at the end of last season... even told Creative at the start of Season 7 that he would be leaving, allowing them to wrap things up and have a big Final Episode send off with big ratings (which certainly would help him down the road getting another gig). Instead, he played hardball to get that big salary bump. Were it a gimmick is a tough one to pull off. Producers out there will be looking at a guy with long standing coke problems who tanked a high rated show and told one of their own to take a flying fuck. Someone might given him a chance, but at lower $$$ and with less commitment (read: Protect Their Risk) than CBS was willing to take with 2.5 Men as the years went on. Everyone is looking for the next big hit, but the studios and producers are loathed these days to load up costs into the front end of series: anything that becomes a hit means people ask for more $$$. If you start high, costs only go up. Folks might think of a comp to Becker, where Danson came back to TV (after bombing in the movies) for huge money. But Danson didn't have a track record as a coked up superstar who tanked a hit series. He pretty much was a good boy in extending Cheers longer than he had to, getting paid well for it. Danson has expensive, but not a "risk". Cosby was similar in his last show, and CBS wasn't super patient with it: moved off Mondays after three years, which was pretty much a known invitation to die. John

Where did Loss run off to? This and the WOTY were getting really interesting. John

But you're not saying that "Good Tenryu" in the early 80s was > to Flair and Jumbo. *That* would be something new and a revelation. Childs comments earlier in the thread are probably closer to what people thought at the time: "For me, Jumbo was unquestionably better from the beginning of their respective careers until Tenryu turned on him in 1987." -Childs Though in the WON it would be 1985 rather than 1987, and they would have been Shocked! that anyone didn't think Tenryu passed Jumbo by when Choshu jumped rather than after and *opposite* Jumbo. Okay... I'm largely having fun at the momnt as I need to leave work. John

Dylan: the comp to Jumbo was being made during the GWE. People were making it in terms favorable to Tenryu, it nearly exactly the same terms you and others offered them up here. Jumbo won the GWE poll, and it wasn't a terrible surprise. Tenryu being comped favorably to Jumbo, exactly as he is now, was a tacit GOAT argument. A serious one, since he was being favorably comped with The Soon-To-Be New GOAT. That was four years ago. That's not recent: it's the last major GOATage, and frankly the one that "offically" shattered the stranglehold (and yes, I'm being cheeky) GOAT domination of Flair by not only putting Jumbo ahead of him, but a number of others. GWE: 1. Jumbo Tsuruta 2. Toshiaki Kawada 3. Chris Benoit 4. Jushin Liger 5. Kenta Kobashi 6. Eddie Guerrero 7. Mitsuharu Misawa 8. Ric Flair 9. Bret Hart 10. Stan Hansen 11. Terry Funk 12. Harley Race 13. Ricky Steamboat 14. Dynamite Kid 15. Akira Hokuto 16. Steve Austin 17. Vader 18. Aja Kong 19. Nobuhiko Takada 20. El Hijo Del Santo 21. Genichiro Tenryu 22. Rey Mysterio Jr. 23. Jaguar Yokota 24. Shinya Hashimoto 25. The Destroyer 26. Akira Taue 27. Shinjiro Ohtani 28. Barry Windham 29. Manami Toyota 30. Giant Baba 41. Jerry Lawler 58. Tatsumi Fujinami 119. Yoshiaki Fujiwara Look at the Japanese guys ahead of Tenryu: Jumbo. The Four Corners at the very peak of their hardcore love (christ... Taue is at freaking #26, and people think it's "new" to think Taue was a king). Liger before the full backlash against juniors. Hokuto back when people still had Joshi memories. Takada. And not that you're talking about people calling Takada a serious GOAT Candidate, and I'm sure you'd point to this poll and the discussion at the time, as a place where people were pimping him. Tenryu was 2 slots back, with the #1 Luchador of the poll between them. Again, it wasn't even new then. The arguments in support of Tenryu made in the GWE had been made since folks started losing their shit over him in 2003-2005. John

He was a 53 year old who was ranked #4 in two DVDVR Top 500 polls (#1 and #2 in Japan in those two polls) when you were new to the scene. That's "Holy Shit!" stuff: 50+ years old, and The Best In Japan. I don't know about you, but if someone (or in this case a group of people) are pimping to me that someone in their 50s is The Best, it makes me wonder just how off the charts they were when they were at their peak. That was November 2002 and May 2003... Eight Years Ago. I hope that folks aren't trying to claim that it took 8 years for folks to make the leap from "He Might Be The Best In The World At 53" to "That's Some Hell Of A Longevity, He Was Great Before He Got To 53, By God He's One Of The Best All-Time!" #10-12 in the SC poll was extremely high. Everyone above him was Usual Suspects. Recall where The One True GOAT placed. If you had him #10, you didn't have him very far behind where Flair ended up in the final results. Tenryu isn't an out of nowhere worker. He's far from a revelation. Literally the only place that people could point to being "new" as far as Tenryu being thought of as Great~! by someone would be if: * a bunch of his 70s and early 80s stuff came out and people started saying he was better than Jumbo and Flair back then * people start saying he was having high end MOTYC in WAR/SWS in 1990-92 That would be new. What they're pointing to now is what people have pointed to contemporaneously for the last quarter century. It's not even that people are starting to put the pieces together this year or last: they have been for more than a decade, as each year got added onto his birthday. I think people feel the need to either "find" something, or think that they're doing something "new", or that they're hitting undiscovered country... all the time. It's okay to be closer to: "You know, those folks back in 1985-89 who thought Tenryu was great had it right." John

Nah. Lots of Tenryu Luv on the net. This is old stuff that I think folks are forgetting. I don't because Frank was damn near an Anti-Tenryu Island against an ocean of Tenryu Luv, and I was always entertained by his writing on Tenryu. Hell, I took grief for simply not thinking Tenryu-Hash in 1998 was as good as nearly everyone else thought it was. Unlike Jumbo, there weren't many who followed Frank's lead on Tenryu... other than some jokes about his sloppiness, spottiness and the enzugiri (I can't remember if it was Jag or Frank that had a funny name for it). In fact, quite the opposite: folks dug in on Tenryu like the did when Frank was punting Lawler around. It's really old stuff. Would be like saying there's been no love online for Sano. We'd have to go back to 1995 online on rsp-w for a lack of Sano love online, and maybe 1992 before the WAR-NJPW feud for lack of Tenryu love online. I suspect that once he showed up in New Japan and Dave started spinkling the snowflakes for Tenryu again, it was okay to go back to loving him. GOAT is a different beast, and his GOATiness always goes back to the argument made above: longevity rather than peak. That one was already being made when he was in the Top 5 of several DVDVR 500 polls after turning 50. Variations were already being made of it back when he had the well loved match with Hash: "This fucker is 48!?! Was Flair this good at 48!?!?" By the time he was getting ranked Top 5 in the world at the age of *53* by the DVDVR gang, it was a decade since Jumbo had retired... and GOAT was getting touched on because the "longevity" was really kicking in at that point. I would not at all not at all be surprised that if we had access to all of the GWE stuff from SC that Tenryu vs Jumbo was already a fully formed argument at that point. Considering Jumbo won the GWE in that very poll, anyone making a Tenyu vs Jumbo case was effectively making a Tenryu GOAT argument. Similar to the original Jumbo vs Flair discussions: if one get to the point that Jumbo = Flair or Jumbo > Flair, then you're making a case for Jumbo being a Serious GOAT Candidate. Sorry if I'm running this down... it's old, I've heard it before. That's why I predicted Tenryu would be the "revelation" of the set: because he isn't, he hasn't been, Jumbo-Tenryu isn't new, but lots of folks are looking for a revelation so it's the beyond obvious one. Think "90s Shawn Michaels is a revelation" and "I don't know why no one ever said Shawn was better than Bret in the 90s before... how did they miss this?!?!" John

Going in real time: Pre-1984: not much love for Tenryu 1985-89: Tenryu was a newsletter darling 1990-92: Tenryu fell off 1993+: New Japan feud did him well in the newsletters My observation is that he's had a decent level of love each year since 1993. One would have to go back and look at the DVDVR rankings after he returned to All Japan, but I recall by 2002 people were going bonkers for his current work. And before the return to All Japan, people had loved his run in New Japan at the end of the prior decade. So it's not "new" or a "revelation". Even the "rethinking" of his 1985-89 stuff isn't. I believe that at the end of 1988, Dave had him the #1 worker in the world coming out of the Tag League. If not that, it was #2. There was a reason why Dave was pushing for Flair-Tenryu so much. Tenryu > Jumbo is the "old" thinking. A bit like if people think the Bobby Eaton or the MX looking great in the Crockett/Turner poll: it would reaffirm the old. I tend to think that of people want to work themselves up into thinking he's been underappriciated, it's because they haven't really been paying attention. The love has been there longer than anyone here has watched puroresu, and online for more than a decade. Look at the DVDVR 90s poll NJPW. We all admit it was a junior-centric set of results, so we need to look at it in a bit of context. Tenryu was in the #2 heavyweight singles match, and two others in the Top 20 NJPW heavy singles. When you look at the non-junior tags, he's in the first one after the Usual Suspect: a trio of Steiner matches, the 11/01/90 title change, and the Vader/Bigelow vs Hase/Mutoh bleed-o-rama. Then a Tenryu match. He didn't do well in the Japan Indy poll, which is very odd in hindsight since literally the *only* people pimping WAR Lumpy Heavyweights (tm Dean) were the DVDVR Gang. That just might be a timing thing: Junior Love (i.e. MPro) + the peak of DVDVR BattlARTS Love + the peak of DVDVR Big Japan Death Match Love. Perhaps that diverted people who were otherwise Tenryu Fans and had watched all that WAR Lumpy Heavy stuff from getting Tenryu's great stuff outside of New Japan in the 90s onto the Indy ballot. Anyway... I predicted there will be a wave of Tenryu Luv when the 80s AJPW set comes out. I predict there will also be a lot of "No one ever talked about how great Tenryu was" comment, making it a bit of a Bobby Ewing in the Shower moment to ignore the past quarter century of Tenryu Luv. "It's like it never happened." -Arn Andersen John

Don't worry. I already made the prophecy on these boards a while back. John

I would be interested in which NYT Best Selling wrestling books WrestleCrap outsold. Data source as well. Is the book business similar to the box office data where we can go look things up at someplace like BoxOfficeMojo? That would be fab. John

I almost mentioned Stevens because he is catch all pick for a lot of those old timers. I know Heenan in particular always beat the drum for him. The big problem with Stevens is not just footage though - it's that of the matches that are out there we don't even really have anything that we can point to that shows flashes of his greatness. With a guy like Johnny Valentine who was widely touted in certain net circles a decade a go there wasn't much, but there was a taste for what made him so awesome in so many peoples eyes. Stevens looks *good* in some of the AWA stuff from his post-prime but there aren't really the flashes of greatness you would expect from a GOAT. Then again much of that is WAY past his physical prime. You and I have been in some discussions on this over the years, including that "flashes of greatness" point. It's really hard to find them. We're not even looking for him putting on a ****1/2 match. But even a broken down wrestler can have flashes of really smart work in there that you go, "Damn... that's nice." Example: there were people putting over things Lawler has done in his recent stretch. Jerry isn't doing moonsaults. His body isn't what it once was. But he's able to still do things that you go, "Yeah... that's how he could have gotten those Memphis fans going." With Stevens... I'm just not finding them. I guess the contrast would be Patterson, who obviously was younger and less a wreck. But take his match with Inoki. It's not a "great" match, and we've all seen plenty of better Inoki matches. It's not a terribly high tech match, and I could see some who don't care for the style of the era getting bored with it. I find it to be pretty solid for the most part, and there are plenty of flashes where you see that Patterson could do some good things. I think we've talked about it in the past with KHawk. He's been able to say there are some Stevens matches out there that are better than others, but if I recall correctly has agreed that it's hard to flashes where you see the all-time great worker that people are talkin about. I hope I'm not misapplying wht KHawk said, but that's the general recollection. John

And a lot of Kawda-Kobashi... a LOT. On the other hand, it was a pretty incestuous group of int'l fans at the time. Frank and I posted on DVDVR. I posted on A1 and had probably some of my longest puroresu thread of the period there. Lots of the folks at TSM and SC who talked about puroresu were strongly influenced by us and the DVDVR folks, or folks influenced by us/DVDVR. There were subniche's such as joshi, which took off more in where ever Quebrada Mike made his home base... want to say Highspots boards before it became just a store, but something like that. Garbage had a certain love at the DVDVR and also where ever Zach and Bahou made their homes. But All Japan... jesus, we still get *blamed* for opinions we hammered to death back in 1996-2001, even some that predated us in the Newsletters but folks want to throw at us. Jumbo Luv was around for along time. One can go back to DVDVR's before he died and before Legend to see his stuff getting talked about, and Dean putting him over. Again, it's something that for years we got *blamed* for: overpushing Jumbo, Destroyer and later Backlund. Think about it: when there is just a One True GOAT, how does someone else become a GOAT Candidate? By being compared to the OTGOAT, and having the OTGOAT picked apart. Who in that era was going to put over Jumbo while contrasting him with Flair, pointing out where Flair was weaker bit by bit? That's what Frank had a masters degree in. If it was a topic that you happened to agree with, he did it better than anyone else. If you didn't or went in on the other side, well... you remember those. Jumbo was a guy he effectively banged the drum on for about as long as I knew him and he started getting stuff from Lynch. Hell, he was making Terry > Flair and Harley > Flair comments for a long time as well. Did it spread out at some point? Perhaps. But it strikes me a bit like saying something in 2005 elevated the 12/06/96 Tag Final up into discussion of all-time great matches. Then you look at what's being said and it's pretty much what was being said earlier... such as in December of 1996. People even dating the push of that match to the 90's Poll and the Pimping Post would be missing a half decade of it being talked about and pushed, and not just by one person but by a fair number of people in what was still a small circle of fans. When Dylan says "tOA was really the home of the Jumbo Boom", I don't even want to take a share of that. I'd been pushing Grumpy Old Jumbo since coming online, but the getting of stuff from the 70s & 80s and then writing about it and putting over the entire career was Frank. He went there pretty fast. John

There was an old running joke that everything bad in the WWF gets blamed on Kevin Dunn. John

They were dead before that: the finances crushed them. Working with New Japan and then WAR was just a holding patern. Think Borders Books store: it's a dead company walking right now. Takada wasn't exactly protected. Jobbed in his first match. Did go over in the second, was tossed a Koshinaka Bone for a UWFi show, and then put over Hash. Mutoh-Mutoh-Hash were the matches that really matters and it was L-W-L. Tenyru was protected in New Japan W - Kosh set up bone W - Choshu L - Choshu W - Hash W - Hash W - Chono W - Hase L - Fujinami W - Fujinami W - Inoki L - Hash The order of the Choshu W-L made sense: Choshu making Tenryu within New Japan. The order of the Fujinami W-L made sense: Fujinami at that time needed more to get two matches out of it (one in NJ and the rematch win in WAR). Inoki is probably in the Top 5 of matches where I would have loved to be a fly in the wall: how the convinced Inoki to do the job. Hash won on the way out after the two prior losses. Probably have been other people we could find who were better protected in that role, but Tenryu vs New Japan is one of the best. Takada in New Japan is really quite bad in contrast. A lot of money left on the table, but one might argue that New Japan didn't need to chase it that year. John

Other Japan was 2006. That sounds about right. Was there a Fujiwara Of The Day on the old boards, or only on the new ones. I would carve the New Japan set out of it as Fujiwara Luv as that was late 2009 / early 2010, and Fujiwara Is The Best was pretty common by that point. Perhaps it helped hammer the point home for some, but it would be like the AJPW set coming up hammering home the predictable opinion on Jumbo and Tenryu: the house has been built, and all we're talking about is what color to paint it. John