jdw

"Limo? What's this silly bastard talking about?"

Baba's plans for Misawa as the top guy out of that generation are pretty clear when he moved him out of the junior division after just a year and put him in with the heavyweights. The problem in All Japan is that there's a slow elevation to the very top, and usually only when "shit happens" as I walked though above. Jumbo was 34 in 1985, and only really became the ace of the promotion in the late 1983 through mid-1984 period: just the year before. Misawa was just 23 at the end of 1985, with Tenryu well ahead of him as well, Choshu's army in the promotion, and still a strong gaijin crew. Even getting pushed out of the juniors didn't mean he'd be at the top level for a while.

Taue was part of Misawa's group in Super Power Series (May-Jun) and Summer Action Series (Jul). By the start Summer Action Series II (Aug-Sep), he was over in Jumbo's team. Kawada and Kobashi were part of his group from the start in the Super Power Series, pretty much from the unmasking going forward. Kikuchi evolved over time into the group, largely due to his showings opposite Fuchi in May and the June fan appreciation show. By the start of the Summer Action Series in July, he was firmly the "junior" in the group. Ogawa is a different bird. If I recall correctly, he was out hurt during the transition period. He came back in October, largely preliming. In the Tag League, he was teaming with Fuchi and opposite Kikuchi several times. He farted around in the New Years series, before firmly being in Jumbo's group in the Excite series (Feb-Mar 1991).

Misawa had a good relationship with Baba. I've never seen anything that Taue had a poor one. Kawada's relationship with the Babas wasn't good in 1996. Kawada wasn't passed over. Misawa was always ahead of him, from the start of his career until leaving AJPW.

Terrific writer.

A number of things factoring in: * it was a new push * the hardest of the hardcore AJPW Fans (i.e. Korakuen Hall AJPW Fans) were extremely loyal to the product at this point * they seemed none-to-please with Tenryu & Co jumping * Misawa gave them someone to clearly root for as Not Tenryu in Tenryu's Old Spot * Generational Thing: Misawa & Kawada & Taue & Kobashi opposite Jumbo were all Next Generation * the promotion fed it: Misawa held his own in the Tag / pinned Jumbo at Budokan * Next Generation was the rage: Hash/Mutoh/Chono in NJPW, Takada/Funaki in UWF The stars kind of aligned, Baba didn't screw it up but instead pushed it harder than he could have, Misawa & Co. hit their marks, and Jumbo was off the charts in getting Misawa & Co over. He was also helped by the unmasking being in Tokyo to start the series, then the big angle (Misawa elbowing Jumbo and Jumbo losing his shit) was in Tokyo. The second was at Korakuen, in front of a very hot crowd that was deeply invested in it by that point. The tag was on the last TV show that aired heading into Budokan, priming the fans for the singles match... Budokan = Tokyo... fans were really hot for it. Like I say: stars aligned, no one at all screwed up in the less-than-month from unmasking to Budokan, everyone hit their marks, Jumbo was exceptional, and Baba booked it in a surprisingly strong fashion. "Made Man". John

Kawada wasn't close to jumping to UWFi. That promotion was on it's last legs at the time, passing through a feud with WAR after being used up by NJPW.

Thinking more about this, I'm wondering how many non-splinter promotions there really are among "traditional" promotions. I was flippant about AJPW, but in reality almost everything in Japan was a splinter off of JWP and AJW on some level if we trace it back. EMLL didn't invent Lucha, it just grew into the biggie. Wrestling was in New York, Philly and Boston long before the McMahon. I don't think this is exactly what Daniel meant, but the promotions he referenced kind of lead one back in that direction.

This was New Japan's big feud storyline after Choshu jumped back in 1987. New Leaders = Fujinami & Choshu & Maeda Now Leaders = Inoki & Saito & Sak & Old Farts Big match was the elimination tag in August.

That's a tough one. 1990 would be a tough one because it tends to give you just enough of a taste in both directions to let you know what you're missing: * start of Jumbo & Co vs Misawa & Co * end of Tenryu in All Japan * clearer elevation of the next generation in New Japan * end of the run of the Midnight Express * taste of Flair as NWA Champ * UWF 2.0's last year * dawn of FMW/Garbage * Lucha becoming more available * Joshi transition year to Bull / Aja / Hokuto / Toyota / Kyoko era * Liger-Sano end / Liger-Pegasus start * etc That would be tough.

-1996 over 1996- Too easy as well.

All Japan Pro Wrestling

Weekly or Monthly that can be compiled into a Year End. And not just Good/Great Matches. Sometimes something is Big and needs to be seen, even if it's mediocre.

In Ebert and Siskel's case, they boiled it down to "Should I see this movie? Thumbs up -- yes. Thumbs down -- no." But they had a lot of trouble with the middle ground, since you can't give a 2.5 star movie the thumbs up. That's why Ebert generally rated a 2.5 star movie higher if he thought it was worth seeing, because people react more favourably to a 3 star rating than a 2.5 star one. I read Rogers years ago explaining that, but I found him being rather odd about it... or simply just bad with math. He talked about a 5 star system (actually is was a sitting system rather than star)having a "middle" at 3 , while a 4 star does. The problem is that Roger wasn't paying attention to how he has truly rated movies over the years: Level 1 - 0.0 Level 2 - 0.5 Level 3 - 1.0 Level 4 - 1.5 ------------------- Level 5 - 2.0 ------------------- Level 6 - 2.5 Level 7 - 3.0 Level 8 - 3.5 Level 9 - 4.0 He does have a middle: 2 stars. And yeah... it's his star rating system and he "knows what it means". Except it's not exactly a system he invented, just something that had been around for years before him. The 2.5 rule is more how he and Gene came to understand it. My general thought: it depends on the value one places in the reviewer. You're still going to disagree with them on occasion, unless you have a Borg-like relationship with the reviewer where their opinion becomes yours. Something like that.

Tenryu had just left, the fans were ready for what AJPW was up to next to deal with the departure. Misawa taking off the mask kind hit them. Then when Misawa made it clear that he gunning for Jumbo, the fans were ready for the shit... especially after this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIuacUvRUeo He had the same body as Misawa. There's more to it. Misawa had got away to Mexico in the old form of sending wrestlers away to "grow up" and then return with an increased push. There's a new Tiger Mask, and Misawa wasn't on the card. All Japan didn't have a massive roster of natives at the time, so there are a limited number of people it could be. When you start trying to figure who is under the mask, looking at the body, there weren't many folks it could have been. Same shit that people do here in the US if they didn't read the sheets.

That backstage is depressing to watch.

He jumped in April 1990, Misawa getting the push on opening night of the next series. If Tenryu stayed, would Misawa have taken off the mask at that point and gotten the mega push? No. Tenryu and Jumbo were already in a feud that went back to mid-1987, so there's no trigger to pull there: they were feuding in an unending fashion. Misawa eventually would have gotten pushed, but who knows when, how hard, or opposite who. As a total Wild Ass Guess, he likely would have gotten a push when Jumbo went out with the illness at the end of 1992. Tenryu was an old goat by 1993, but stayed an old goat working forever. Would Jumbo-Tenryu still have been going on in 1992? Who knows. Baba basically got repeatedly lucky: * Choshu's Invasion Gave him Native vs Native that he hadn't done well that decade, at a time when it was increasingly popular. * Choshu leaves In the vacuum, he's forced to turn Tenryu opposite Jumbo... or Tenryu asks to go opposite Jumbo... take your pick. Either way, it wasn't going to happen at that time unless Choshu & Co. left * Tenryu leaves Before Jumbo vs Tenryu got totally stale, Tenryu got the offer to leave. That forced Baba to elevate Misawa, give him a group (which ended up being younger guys), and build a new group around Jumbo (which started off old, then got lucky when Kabuki left and over there went Taue). It worked out extremely well. * Jumbo got sick Sad, and we never got what were likely the last two really interesting parts of it: Jumbo taking the TC back, and Misawa eventually beating Jumbo for the TC for the first time. How long would that have taken? The first would have been 2/93 and the second... good lord, who in the heck knows given how slow Baba was. What we got instead was Kawada over with Taue, Kobashi up higher in Misawa's team, and it was good. But... but... but... That's when the tank ran dry. He did move Jun up to be Misawa's partner, and Kobashi kind of over to the side... but while some things were done well (Jun initially as Misawa's #2), a lot of it was rather poor. Which should give us some pause to consider that a lot of that coolness from 1985-1995 was just plain dumb luck caused by Baba being forced to react to a series of events that would take away one of his top two guys. They pretty much always knew Misawa = Tiger Mask II, just like they knew Yamada = Liger. His Jr. singles matches in 1984-85 are worth seeing to see where he was at. Bit sloppy, really too dangerous trying to live up to the Tiger Mask gimmick. Once he moves up to the heavies in 1986, there isn't really anything that's "must see" specifically for him... as in off the charts stuff. It's mostly checking out where he's at. His Kabuki feud in early 1986 is interesting because it's a quick 180 turn from the juniors, and something of a gateway passage into the heavies. There's the Jumbo singles match that was overrated at the time but is certainly something to see given it's Jumbo and Misawa and a baseline to judge their later matches against. It's Fuyuki & Yatsu in the match. The Footloose broke up with the rest of Revolution in early 1990. Basically Baba splitting people away from Tenryu since he seemed to know Tenryu was a goner.

On the flip side... I don't recall assigning any of my own stars in the Pimping Posts. Certainly not consistently, and more likely in terms of "This got ****1/2 at the time but really was more like ***" The Pimping Posts had some value, thought the Ballots likely had more. It's likely that a number of matches in the Pimping Posts would have gotten more attention if I did sprinkle snowflakes on them. So, you can put something over with just "words", even loads of flippant ones like I tossed around in those posts. You also can put them over with snowflakes, at times more given the crowd.

Pretty clear that I've talked about taking it with a grain of salt - you did see my inclusion of Delta Force among examples of Ebert's 1986 *** movies. I don't think many people treat them as diversions, and instead as references. They're not handed down by God on tablets. Mention Hart vs Hart cage match and you'll find out how quickly people do not take them as the Gospel. On the other hand, that is a decent reference for when making something like the YB: "Hmmm... Dave gave this five. We need to take a look at it to see what's doing." And from there people agree, disagree, and some decent discussion happens. If that same match got **, which is actually close to the *** that I thought of it at the time rather than the *****? That match at ** never would have entered into YB discussion other than checking out the finish. It's been useful in pro wrestling. It's useful in movies. It's useful in a number of things.

I didn't say he "needs" to do it. Just that I would like it. Also, when sifting through prelims and tv cards a year after the fact, a quick reference source would be nice rather than scanning the text of 5 show recaps. Frankly, I'd be happy if Snowden did it and posted an archive somewhere. I simply point to Dave because we have nearly 30 years of wrestling PPV snowflakes to look through, and he's been writing up MMA PPV for 20 years in similar ways to how he's been writing up... with the exception of snowflakes. FWIW, the "entertainment vs sports" argument kind of fails when trying to explain why Dave doesn't snowflake the stuff. He also didn't snowflake UWF-style work after 1984-ish. I'd even have to check to see if he included any UWF 2.0 matches in the 1990 Yearbook's list of Top 65 matches. UWF workers made the Worker List... but matches always were treated differently.

Work: 1993 WCW Return Persona: 1996 Hyper Ric

Bix not sharing with us: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2039453-examining-wwes-tv-deal-talks-after-spike-delays-tna-renewal

Because a reviewer would offer up his opinion on the quality of a fight in a short hand fashion. Yep... that would be bad.

Sorry, but the idea of rating an actual sporting contest is stupid. If somebody won via a KO in ten seconds, does that make it a zero star fight? You're not actually being series, right? http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/30453/the-10-greatest-world-series-games http://www.mensfitness.com/life/sports/10-most-memorable-mlb-world-series-wins http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-10-23/greatest-world-series-yankees-dodgers-reds-red-sox-mets-braves-twins I could literally post another 100 links to people rating the Greatest WS Games of All-Time... without putting much effort into finding those 100. We could do the same with most every major sporting event. In fact, people in the first *two days* of this season's NBA were talking about how many really good games there were. People do it all the time. I'm 100% confident that you "rate" sporting events as well on some level. Of course I do. An exciting football match is easy to spot over a boring match. Basketball, baseball etc. But "excitement" doesn't always correlate to skill. So are we basing on excitement or skill? What is one star and what is five? I'm into chess for example. I can watch a chess match between two great players working each other into a stalemate where nothing of consequence happens, but where both are so good at their game they don't move an inch. Is that good or bad play from the players in terms of being rated? Again, it's up to the reviewer. Do major mainstream reviewers only hand out high snowflakes for movies that are technically exceptional, or do they also give them to ones that are fun to watch? Here's a selection of movies that Ebert gave *** to in 1986: Lightweight comedy: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/back-to-school-1986 Slightly higher concept comedy, and quite a bit more complex technically: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ferris-buellers-day-off-1986 Dumb ass action movie: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-delta-force-1986 Lightweight action movie that at least tries to be more character driven: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/heartbreak-ridge-1986 Something entirely different: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/my-beautiful-laundrette-1986 Five movies, and you tend to get a typical spectrum of Roger. For the life of me, I have no idea how he thought Delta Force was actually a *** movie and had totally blotted it out from my memory. Anyway... that you can apply *** to Comedy, Action, Drama, lightweight or concept, character driven or mindless... it's really not a stretch that one could apply *** to technical fight, stand up fight, grappling contest, strategic/tactical encounter and brawl. I wouldn't rate it ***** unless the rest of the fight was *****. Chael-Silva I had a ***** finish, and certain had a sense of drama across the rounds lead up to it given the ease with which Sonnen was controlling the fight. But would I go ***** for the fight as a whole? Probably not. I also wouldn't be bent if someone did. As a whole, it was something of a spectacle, was dramatic in sensing the Silva's reign was about to go down, and then that finish coming out of left field... "Wait... what just happened? Rewind that!" -Mom Again, it's up to the reviewer. Take the Liverpool-Chelsea game this weekend. It was a stinkfest in the first half because Chelsea parked the bus. Worse, they were stalling and trying to kill the clock from the start which *never* happens at the level the two teams play at (i.e. top contenders in one of the 3-4 best leagues in the sport). Then out of nowhere, Pool screws up right before half, Chelsea scores... and it was rather amazing. Chelsea goes back to parking the bus in the second half, it's largely boring as Pool gets more and more desperate. Pool gets some chances late... and Chelsea busts off another goal at the death. 2-0, and Liverpool's title hopes take a massive knocks. Great match? No. Important? Sure. Drama? Yes. Boring & Disappointing for much of it? Yes. Where would I rate it? Probably **1/2. Above average. I've seen worse games in the season, including among good teams. Ones that didn't have the drama or importance of this, or likely the memorable moment that will be talked about for years of Pool fails to win the title (Stevie G's epic screw up). There was some good quality play here and there... actually more than one would think for a match that was generally "boring", just people not getting on the end of some good plays. I found it a far more intersting match to watch than United's 4-0 win the day before... and I'm a United Fan. So... above average, * for a lot of it, but ****+ for drama and tension and the one truly epic moment. Plus... Mou is a great monster heel. Actually, written words are more the friend of Entertainment, Art and Performance than they are of Sports. I don't really need written words to tell me that this guy is one of the greatest players in baseball history: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mayswi01.shtml It's all there in things that can be reduced numbers. I can't really reduce what I think of 12 Years A Slave to "numbers". It's something you need to write, or discuss, or ponder. Yet... people do reduce that movie to a "number" at the end of their review.