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That one is kind of interesting. From a Yearbook standpoint, "Mutoh" doesn't show up until July. "Muta" is on the Dome in March, neither the top match (Flair-Fujinami) nor the MOTN (the tag)... and you didn't really like Muta's performance in it at all. It's a strange year for him. No IWGP title matches. Fujinami is the champ/challenger in all 5 in the year. Vader gets into 2, doing the turn around early in the year (which are watchable matches). Flair gets the Dome in the Title vs Title. And interestingly enough, Chono gets the other two challenger spots: one before G1, and one off of G1. There are 8 IWGP Tag Title matches, he doesn't pop up in any until the end of the year when they have to come up with a replacement for the Steiners given Scott's injury. Hase is more the constant in the division: 7 of the 8 matches partnering with Sasaki, Chono and Mutoh. It's kind of the Hase Division from 11/90 - 9/92. G1 is G1 of course, but it's a hard one to rank... my feel at the time was: * Three Musketeers up * Old Guard down * Chono wins * Choshu 0-3 Not at all saying Mutoh was an also ran: great match with Vader, great Final. But that's pretty much match with Chono having the great draw with Hash and really could "playoff" re-match with him before also having to work the Final the same night. Chono sort of got treated as it being his year to be the top guy among the Three Musketeers, while Hash had more of the prior year and Mutoh/Muta would get the IWGP the following year. Of the Old Guard, Riki chose to push Fujinami after it was Vader and Riki's turn the prior year and would be Riki's in 1992. The tag was Hase's, and getting over the new great gaijin team. On the flip side, AJPW was Jumbo in 1991. Got the TC back in January and kept it the rest of the year. Won the reborn Carny. Pinned Misawa in the only TC match between the two. Singles matches over Kawada and Kobashi, working vet vs lower ranked wrestler about as well as possible. Big submission job to Misawa, which saved what I recall as his one job of the year to have major impact. A pretty terrific tag between the teams in the Tag League. All those six-men tags during the year, including the epic one in April. Not saying Jumbo "has" to be the WOTY. More in the sense that Mutoh took something of a backseat in his own promotion to Chono.

Sports are real. Wrestling is fake.

I'll watch the Brisco match again. It's possible that my thoughts if it being just "there" are due to what Pete is pointing to: Brisco is Brisco which is good, while Inoki is along for the ride when I was hoping for Inoki to flash some quality work. Been ages since I watched Dory-Inoki, and my recollection is that it was as much of a teeth pulling experience as Dory-Brisco's 60 minute match. And I like long matches in that era. On Billy-Inoki, I never got the sense that Inoki was going to lose: it was the second fall, and of course Inoki was going to win the fall to even things up. Then Billy dicked around in not working on the same page with him down the stretch of it. There's a fair amount of good stuff up to a certain point, then it goes into trainwreck mode. John

Good stuff, Pete.

"Jobbing was bad enough. But jobbing sad and sober, that's too cruel." -Tyrion Race

He has some great stuff, like his second draw with Backlund... though Backlund is quite terrific in it. He has some nicely solid stuff, like one of the widely circulating Johnny Powers matches... though Powers is pretty damn choice in it, including his exceptional Perm-Toupe. He has some stuff that is oddly overrated because people want it to be good, like the Billy Robinson match... which is really something of a mess when you compare it with Billy's well laid out and worked matches. And you have a whole lot of stuff that's just there, or solid in stretches, or solid but could have been better. An example would be his Victor Rivera match, which is really nice as it's going along, showing Victor is far better working holds than anyone might have thought... and then Inoki just takes it home, wham bam thank you mam. I'm not going to say Inoki is the Don Muraco of Japan. But there are chances for him to show a helluva lot more, and they just end up coming up short. I mean... Brisco had better matches with Jumbo and Baba, with the Jumbo one really giving you an idea of how Jack probably worked as NWA Champ when facing a home town hero babyface. The Inoki match is just... there.

Bret = Draw In Europe might be good for being split off into its own thread. It's the type of thing that if folks hash it out would be of useful future reference on it's own rather than being buried in a long thread of other stuff.

Owen dropping dead. And that was because it was pro wrestling, not some wrestler dying outside of the ring via overdose or years of the hard life like Macho. Even Misawa dying in the ring felt like something that had been inevitable... that it would happen to someone, and he was as likely as anyone given his prominent role in dangerous stuff. Owen... that was different. It was also real.

And my thought is that one can care about a "storyline" in wrestling or some other art without it being a big emotional thing. It can as easily be a cerebral thing: I want to see how it turns out. I gave that example of The Wire up above. I know for a lot of people, Wallace getting popped was a big emotional moment of the first season. For me it wasn't: it was clear that when Stringer and Avon were cleaning up "loose ends", and Wallace chose not to "stay away" that he was going to get popped. Just obvious storytelling, to a large degree because it also had a Real Life vibe to it: Stringer & Avon wouldn't give it a second thought, even though Wallace did them right earlier in the season. Kid was a risk, he was disposable, and there were a dozen kids they could replace him with. I know a lot of people also found it emotional because his homies did the deed. Well... that's obvious storytelling as well, and has a Real Life truth to it as well. Folks is this line of work often have been taken out by people close to them, because it's a safety and letting down the guard moment. Folks also make their bones by doing the deed like this, and it's a way of pulling them deeper into their wall of silence that gets erected: they have blood on their hands. So it didn't emotionally blow me away. What blew me away was the cerebral part. The writers had the balls to do it, rather than letting a well liked character stay gone at his grandmas never to be head from again, with us to assume that everything turned out right. No, that "nice" and "troubled" kid was already fucked up, and couldn't leave his life behind. It's a choice a lot of kids make, and some of them end up eating bullets because of it. David Simon & Co weren't pussies about showing it to us. In turn, how they crafted the arc, and how they wrote out and shot that final scene with Wallace, and the after effect (the cops finding him, Dee's reaction, and the long decent of Dee setting himself up to be not trusted by Stringer after that) was all brilliantly done. I don't expect everyone to see it that way. I'm sure that a lot of people were all, "Holy Shit... they killed WALLACE!!!!" over it. Nor do I want to rain on their parade with a big old, "No shit... you have been paying attention, right? Kind of fucking obvious" spot. But in turn, it would be annoying for someone to view my thinking it was brilliant as being all emotional about it. That's my point: people see shit differently. One can enjoy the shit out of Pro Wrestling (and other forms of art and entertainment) without having an emotional connection with every thing they enjoy. Just because one people can't view it like that, and can't remotely conceive it's possible without reducing Pro Wrestling Enjoyment to Math... doesn't mean that their version of wrestling enjoyment is universal. People pushing back at this aren't saying you need to enjoy wrestling in a different way. Just that some of us do, and cut us a little bit of slack that it's a perfectly fine way to enjoy wrestling if that's the way some folks find some of it fun. John

Not sure. No later than the 10/94 tags and then in 1995 when he and Koji carried the native half of the division while Liger was out. He had the earlier Super Juniors match with Benoit, though it was clipped. The Super J Cup match with Delfin, but there was so much on that card that got attention that it's hard to recall Ohtani standing out. Dittos the NJPW vs MPro match earlier in the year. I think it was more than he look like someone who was good without a lot of projecting him forward. Which is why looking at some of that earlier stuff in totality would be interesting: where were the signs earlier? John

Well, Sid always sucked so it's hard to be too critical of Bruce about that.

I always thought Bret's best positives in terms of drawing were: * vs Yoko * vs Lawler * vs Taker & Diesel And those were relative things rather than just a vacuum of listing what they drew. All that said, did anyone ever say Bret was a massive draw? I mean... other than Bret?

Oh... there are people far more obstinate. There's some thread on here that documents Loss and/or Dylan having a conversation with Bryan that tops whatever you'd see here. John

Who brought up math in the thread? If we're not emotionally connected to something we laugh at, it's because we did some math in our head to determine if it was funny? No... the shit was just funny. Is laughter an emotion? Sure. Does that emotion need some deep connection to the story / joke / event to create the laughter? Not really. Richard Pryor. Cheetahs. Gazelles. It's just a funny story. Hansen vs Taue. Hansen selling the ribs from the prior night. Taue getting on board to attack them, while Hansen goes completely one-note in selling the shit out of those ribs. Emotional connection? I don't know... I don't see it with me. Hansen's ribs don't really hurt. Mine don't. I haven't been in a situation like that in sports where I was trying to protect an injury and hoping the opponent wouldn't attack it. Worry about Hansen losing? No, because I've always known he's losing the match. So what works for me? Hansen's singular one-note performance to sell the fuck out of his ribs as the entire storyline of the match standing out in such contrast to where All Japan was headed for the balance of the decade. It's a bit like Ohtani-Samurai for me in showing something that was possible as an alternative. How did I write it up when recommending it? So yeah, it's kind of a cerebral enjoyment. Oddly enough, it was the one match in the entire re-watch that I enjoyed the most. Even though the Final is one of my favorite matches ever.

Probably a number of folks every bit as hardcore.

FWIW, casual fans didn't read 411.com, OnlineOnslaught and shit like that. Hardcore fans did. As hard as the folks around here? Perhaps not. But they're not casual fans.

He does have a nice one. There is someone else in the back of my mind who had something of a Sack Of Potatoes body slam that was nice: it just seemed like the guy was heaving his opponent, not in a stiff way but in a nice visual way.

Bruce is a terrific writer, and has been for 20+ years. He, like all of us, have some soft spots. Ric is one for him.

That was about a year and a half ago. John Was looking through this thread and this post deserves to be bumped. There are some thing I wish I wasn't right on... but that was a pretty obvious one. I would have thought it was obvious more than 20 years ago to everyone close to Ric that he was an alcoholic.

I've spent 17+ years saying Riki was the Jerry West of pro wrestling: top tier hall of famer as both a player/wrestler and as a front office guy. Jerry wasn't the best player of all-time, and one can argue where among the best GM's he would rank... just as with Riki. But they'd both be very high on each list. More than that... you'd probably want them on your side relative to a lot of other folks. John

Even in 2000 it would have been a boondoggle. It focuses on Live Gate, and ignored that Hogan only needed to do 33,333 buys at $30 a pop to get to a $1M revenue number on a PPV... and we know he was doing far bigger PPV buys. Of course Hogan, Bret, and all the US top guys had the PPV advantage that puroresu guys in the hot 90s didn't have. It's more than a bit apples and oranges. John

Probably some point in 1988. Clawmaster's results have them still working territory-ish through the end of 1987, and a bit into 1988 (factoring in missing results as well since they ran increasingly smaller shows). I used to think it was '88 but at some point I read, I think in old WONs, that the AWA had nothing happening betwen TV shoots at times in '87, too. Also, keep in mind that a lot of the smaller shows from '88-on were sold shows promoted outside of the "AWA territory" (like that Pennsylvania show there's a handheld of) by Rob Russen. http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/31198-4.html Knocking out the Memphis stuff, here's Oct/Nov/Dec as far as "known" results: 10/3/87 Chippewa Falls 10/15/87 Salt Lake City, UT @ Salt Palace 10/16/87 Denver, CO 10/18/87 Green Bay, WI 10/23/87 Crystal Lake, IL @ McHenry County College Gym 10/24/87 Milwaukee, WI 10/25/87 Shawano, WI 10/30/87 Whitewater, WI 10/31/87 Sheboygan, WI 11/1/87 Minneapolis, MN 11/4/87 Menomonie, WI 11/5/87 Rice Lake, WI 11/6/87 Wausau, WI 11/7/87 Waukegan, IL 11/11/87 Aberdeen, SD @ Civic Arena 11/14/87 Racine, WI 11/15/87 Neenah, WI 11/21/87 San Francisco, CA 11/26/87 Minneapolis, MN 11/28/87 Las Vegas, NV @ Showboat Sports Pavilion 12/25/87 Minneapolis, MN 12/26/87 Marshfield, WI 12/27/87 Las Vegas, NV @ Showboat Sports Pavilion 12/28/87 Green Bay, WI 12/29/87 Rockford, IL @ Boylan High School Claw is pretty intense about getting everything he can, but I suspect he'd admit there are probably a fair number of others ones out there. Just to toss in the 3rd Qtr: 7/11/87 Las Vegas, NV 7/12/87 Denver, CO @ Auditorium Arena 7/24/87 Milwaukee, WI @ Auditorium 8/1/87 Minneapolis, MN @ Auditorium 8/2/87 Oshkosh, WI 8/21/87 Racine, WI 8/22/87 Rockford, IL @ Boylan High School 8/25/87 Manitowoc, WI 8/29/87 Las Vegas, NV @ Showboat Sports Pavilion 8/30/87 Minneapolis, MN @ Auditorium 9/11/87 Denver, CO 9/18/87 Las Vegas, NV @ The Showboat 9/19/87 Milwaukee, WI @ Auditorium 9/20/87 Green Bay, WI @ Brown County Veteran's Memorial Arena 9/26/87 Wausau, WI It's bleak throughout that. Even factoring in missing results, it's clearly a dying territory. They're trying to keep things going, but it's not good.

Yeah... I think I mentioned that in one of these threads. Dave and the sheets in general are a bit of the spring from which critical thinking on pro wrestling bubbled up. People online are so far removed from it, so many generations down the line, that they don't feel the influence. But it's there, even among folks who get tossed into the revisionist and/or anti-Moves~! movements. They are thinking about what they're watching, and trying to express why they think it's good beyond the old: "Well I liked it." John

When I walk across a neighbor's lawn and accidentally step in something squishy, I have an "emotional connection" to dog poop? Or am I just pissed off that there's shit on my shoes? I laugh at dozens of things a day. Just had one: a angry customer ended up getting transferred to my phone because the customer rep he was trying to get has the same last name as mine and same first initial, causing the operator to send him to the wrong Williams. Said customer was all happy that he got someone in "Legal" rather than customer support to express all the problems he's had with our products and company, yadder, yadder, yadder. I sat there and took it, while gently trying to get his info so I could send him off to someone who could actually help him without giving him the notion of suing the company. When I finally got him on his way, and was describing it to our secretary, we had a good laugh over it. Emotional connection with the angry caller? No. It was just funny that he ended up at the wrong Williams, and hearing "Legal" decided to try to work that angle. Okay... so that had nothing to do with pro wrestling and maybe sails past folks. How about this: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6aqvn_vi...tal-calli_sport I found that funny when it first aired. I didn't have an emotional connection with Stone Cold and Mr. McMahon in it. I didn't fell put upon by my boss, and feel like going after her like Austin went after McMahon with the bed pan and the thingy up the rear. It was just good slapstick humor that fit into their feud. Vince stooged his ass off, something that I don't think he ever got enough credit for at the time. Or something entirely different: I love that Cheetah section. Did the first time I ever heard it, and it's always stuck with me. Emotional connection? I'm not a Cheetah. I haven't been to Africa. I'm not Richard, and there's little about him that I have an emotional connection with. He's just a funny motherfucker.