jdw

Since it stopped at the second Tokyo Dome, I assume there will be a "part III" covering NOAH? John

Wait... just looked, stand corrected. John

I didn't think it was out yet. Next week. John

The first would lack understanding of Misawa's career. The second is inconsistent with how the GHC Title, especially title changes, was handled in the piece. I think we can eliminate the second. It would be like a Flair "overview" covering 3/4 of his WWF Title changes, and mention the NWA Title just once, and it being winning back the title from Ronnie Garvin. Not that Kawada is Ronnie Garvin, but the Triple Crown match mentioned really isn't terribly important other than to make the point on Kawada's injury. In Flair's case, the Garvin match isn't terribly important other than to make the point that Starcade was a monsterous bomb that helped JCP on the path to its death. Those *are* points to be made in a bio of either Misawa or Flair. But when you think of Flair as the long term NWA Champion, or Misawa as the long term anchor to All Japan as their Triple Crown Champion, to get to Flair-Garvin and the 1/99 Misawa-Kawada, you sort of need to lay down the foundation of the success first. John

I tossed the Triple Crown point out as being the single most obvious one. In an "overview" that he defended as being solid, the phrase Triple Crown was mentioned once: That's it. Pretty much like doing a Flair overview and mentioning the NWA Title once, in a sentence about the 1993 match with Rick Rude. Or a Hogan overview and you mention the WWF title once, and it's one of the Yokozuna title changes. We can accept that Bryan sent it around to folks who know puroresu and Misawa's career, and not a bunch of idiots who have been watching puroresu for six months or only know about it from skimming the WON. One can only assume that none of the people Bryan sent it to had the heart to give him honest feedback that it wasn't any good as an overview of Misawa's career (setting aside the reporting of the death portion of the story). John

Looking at Graham's site: The HF-Bulldogs feud went into late June. They had occassional matches after that deep into the year, but as a primary feud they moved on. The fits in with the Harts starting a feud again with the Bee's: 06/20/87 Superstars non-title win by the Bees (taped 06/02/87). Graham has three HF vs Can-Am matches: 06/03/87 Challenge taping: HF vs Can-Am dark match 06/24/87 Challenge taping: HF vs Can-Am dark match 06/25/87 first HF vs Can-Am house show match One gets the feeling they were testing it out while going with the reliable HF vs Bees first. The first HF vs Bees house show match of this cycle was 06/28/87 and ended up taped for PTW. 07/09/87 was Zenk last known match with the WWF as he no-showed the Boston Garden on 07/11/87. Don't know if he worked on 7/10 since Graham doesn't have complete results for that day. Bees fueded with the HF into October, but also later in it were transitioned to feuding with Demolition. Rougeau got mixed in there as well, though I'm probably overlooking the angle they had on Superstars or Challenge. The WWF in the era often juggled a couple of storylines going on with the Tag Titles simply because of how they hit market. Don't recall either of those feuds being memorable, but there are tons of matches out there from this stretch. HF vs Strike Force actually ended up being a lesser feud than SF vs Islanders. It's almost like they were saving it, then changed their minds and went with Demolition. John

Daniel/OJ is doing a good job of pulling stuff from the Japanese press reports and posting them to the DVDVR thread. It's a long thread, with Daniel starting items from the press here: http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...8903&st=270 Worth checking out on occassion for other updates he puts in there. John

So if Chris Benoit's parents and/or his surviving children are filing their own suit (wrongful death against Astin and/or WWE for his suicide?), it'll happen within the next two weeks. I would be surprised if GA law trumps the Federal statute of limitations if it's longer. The recently filed lawsuit was in federal court anyway. John

Yeah, sounds like Zenk. My thought would be to watch the title change when Strike Force beat the HF. Place went batshit for it. They were over. John

A few: * Overrated Announcer in his prime * Silent Partner in Bob.com * ECW.com * Rips the WWF until the 180 of them handing him a paycheck, then busting out the kneepads Not that I love the WWF, and the company certainly deserved to be ripped. But Joey was kind of obvious in selling out. Granted, none of that is any different from lots of people in the business being out for themselves, or getting run that somebody disagrees with. Just that Joey is one of those old ECW Folks who was part of the "Us vs Them" mentality of ECW, Paul, their House Organs and their Fans back when I came online and until the promotion dropped dead. I was very much in the "Them" camp of not drinking the Kool Aid. So there is some legacy fun in poking Joey. John

Someone probably could go to Beverly pretending to be a fanboy of his and ask to be able to scan it in. "Lots of guys loved Matwatch. The 1991 Annual is one of the greatest pieces of newsletter writing ever. People need to read this, Steve!" Then OCR the thing. John

It's a laundry list of things. John

Wasn't looking for "conspiracy theories". Was trying to understand why it rated highly. Some of the initial stuff tossed out didn't seem to fly - that a bunch of guys like Phil and Tom voted for it. Didn't make sense as guys like Phil and Tom don't sub to the WON, and it didn't seem likely that Dave takes votes from non-subs (which was confirmed eventually in the thread. That it got a lot of run in the WON at least from a coverage standpoint makes some sense. That Japan is in the crapper without a lot of candidates does as well. That people liked it isn't really the question. It's more the quantity that pushed it that high on the list. Lots of people liked Sabu, and he damn near won Wrestler Of The Year. But if you go back to look at that year, there was more going on than just "people liked him". Dave will chalk it up to conspiracy, and in fact did (even more than he wrote about it in the WON). But that Kawada didn't get ass strong of a vote as some Japanese wrestlers later would. And that the WWF/WCW sort of farted around with having a candidate. And that WON voters were looking for an alternative to WWF/WCW at the time, and ECW filled the niche for some. A lot of things came together that year *in addition to* the Get Out The Vote attempts of the Promotion and/or it's House Organs. John

Not highly at all. But that's not inconsistent with how I regard most of my hobbies. Realtive to family, loved ones and friends, they're not really something to regard highly. Doesn't mean that hobbies can't be a boatload of fun. John

A torn bicep actually sounds like a Wellness issue. John

I feel for Joey, the poor moral Catholic boy who is forced to earn a living against his will in the den of sin that is Pro Wrestling. Oh wait... it just means that Joey is still the whore that we all knew he was. John

That answers that one. That makes a bit of sense. John

No but there are a lot of smarts who take their cues from tom, Phil and to a lesser extent SLL. I would completly agree that they do. But smarts who download online aren't a 1:1 match to Paying WON Subs, nor a 1:1 for WON Voters. Probably not remotely close, though I'm sure a lot read read the WON or read stuff from the WON like the Buddy Rose bio getting passed around. That's what I was trying to figure out with the comment earlier in the thread: how did the match get that high up. John

Segunda Caida is Phil and Tom, unless they've added people. I don't really think there's a "type". Is Jose one of the type? I tend to think of Jose as Jose, a longtime lucha fan who has always been a fab read to get educated from. Are guys like Cook and Daniel of the type? Beats me. I simply used the term because one of the other posters did. I didn't think it made a great deal of sense given the WON, so I bounced it back. I doubt either of Segunda Caida is a paying sub to the WON, but Tom's around and can correct that. I'd be surprised if either voted in the WON Awards, but I'm not even sure if sending Dave a ballot would get it counted. I don't sub to the WON at the moment. I have no idea if Dave would take a WON Awards ballot that I send in. I still get the HOF Ballot, though I confess that I've missed the deadline two out of the last three years. So who knows. John

I would be surprised if any were. How many did I watch or re-watch? I promised myself that I would re-watch/watch at least 35 of the heavily pimped matches on the board. I made it to 50 and tapped out at that point. Ended up being everything from 2003 through early 2008 that made the Top 100, and most that made the Top 101-200. There were a few like a Benoit vs Kane TV match that I saw at the time it aired, didn't have any memory of it doing a thing for me, and passed on it to spend my time watching something else more pimped. How much did I seriously consider? After watching/re-watching them, none. I don't think that should be terribly surprising. Back in 2000-2004 when posting regularly about the WWE and it's TV and PPV's, I wasn't as big of a fan of Benoit and Eddy's work in the WWE as most everyone else. I was off Angle's bandwagon pretty early. I never was as high on Brock as most. What I think of Shawn is pretty well known (it's not like many of his matches in the 80s or 90s made my list - just one that I can recall). I never cared much for Trip. I was more tolerant of Cena's work early on than most. I've never been a big Regal or Finlay mark. Edge always struck me as "solid" rather than "great". I'm trying to remember anything I said positive about Rey's work in the WWE. 2000-2004 was well before my jag on watching 80s WWF in response to the DVDVR poll. Didn't start the WWF 80s thread until the end of 2006, which is also when Will's Backlund set came out. My lack of sporting a woody over "Modern WWF" predates looking at the 80s, especially looking deeper into the 80s than the DVDVR list - didn't start writing about that stuff until 2008, probably 1-2 months before Ray asked me to jump into the SC Poll. But what the heck, fans of the WWF/WWE shouldn't dispare. My favorite promotion is All Japan. The work in the promotion started wearing with me in 1997 and by 1998 it was painful. I haven't thought as highly about much of anything from All Japan or NOAH since then that other pimp to the moon. I think the match I've had the most fun with since then was Kobashi vs Suzuki and that was largely for Suzuki goofing on NOAH-style spots. So if 2003-2009 WWE doesn't float my boat, consider than none of the Kobashi-Misawa, Kobashi-Akiyama and Misawa-Akiyama matches after 1/97 are things that would make my "Top 50 All Japan + NOAH" list. I suspect WWE in the 00's would do better on my list than AJPW+NOAH in the 00s would. John

It would be logically if Dave takes votes from anyone. The problem with that is that "anyone" would include a boatload of WWE fans as well. More than Segunda Caida types. I also suspect there are limits to the number of ballots that Dave would want to count if he opened things up wide open. Anyway... I suspect someone here subs to the WO-4 boards and can ask Dave who the majority of Panther-V voters were. John

My point - how many of the "Segunda Caida types" are paying subs to the one? How many of them voted in the WON Awards? It's entirely possible that Dave now takes ballots from non-subs, in which case I can see a block of non-sub voters pushing it. Sort of like Flair getting a lot of votes online for Time's Man Of The Year Award. The difference is that Time pitched those results as I recall. I also could be entirely wrong about how many of the Segunsa Caida types sub to the WON. John