pantherwagner

No surprise. The "media", which is mostly a bunch of bloggers that meet up and party during the events, are way too scared of Dana. Very few are willing to call Dana on his callousness: it's usually Meltzer, Snowden and people who are on Dana's shitlist for life so they have nothing to lose. Dana was disgusting saying that a concussed GSP owed the fans and the company a rematch. Someday this shit is all going to catch up with him, Don King or Vince McMahon style.

When this thread is bumped I don't think that Ric is dead, but I'm pretty sure that Ric has done something retarded and TMZ reported on it.

They were supposed to be as good as Los Infernales. It was a common contention point in the magazines in the early 80s. I agree with you that they don't look nearly as good but we have little Misioneros footage (and we'll never get a lot of it anyway). It's hard to believe there could ever be any trio as good as the Infernales anyway.

For me it's about strategy. Next year may be the last year or next to last year for very deserving candidates like Cien Caras, Villano III or Blue Panther to get in. Karloff Lagarde will probably get a good push once people realize all the things he did. Adding more strong candidates isn't going to help anyone, I believe. Also, creating a compelling case takes time going through magazines to put together feuds and results. I mean, John, on paper you are absolutely right. It makes no sense to wait. But we are dealing with a number of "lucha qualified voters" who need to be taught about Villano III. I'm not sure why'd anyone vote for Atlantis but not Villano or Cien Caras, but obviously there's some research and case presentation to be done to sway the vote.

Push them. You and Steve should put your heads together to start getting in some of the major Trios. There are at least three that should be considered hard: Misioneros de la Muerte, Dinamitas and Brazos. I mean for fucks sake... if the Freebirds, MX and Road Warriors can get in, and the R'n'R are consistently high on the list, then Lucha trios need to get looked at. I agree and it's a project for the future but not necessarily next year. I have always thought about the Freebirds angle to make people easily understand the influence, only that Misioneros were a better working trio, probably drew bigger numbers and changed an entire industry by turning the card layout from mostly tags to mostly trios.

Steve Sims is working on a book in English.

I just read about the PirateBrowser, which I knew under another name (Tor Browser/Vidalia). It doesn't work in China (at least for MAC OSX), the directory of available proxies seems to be blocked. These guys are smart let me tell you.

I never heard about that browser. I have my own VPN and two other different methods to access blocked sites but they all route through the US, UK or Japan so they are not fast enough for youtube. Every host seems to be different and sometimes solution A doesn't work and you have to try B, which had never worked for you before. It's annoying because other than blogs, porn, file sharing and social media websites the Chinese government seems to block a lot of other websites for no apparent reason.

Taue, Akiyama and Tamura will surely get in at some point. I think two of the three may get in next year. Maybe Suzuki, we will see. It's not like Japanese voters will stop voting altogether in 3 years.

Yes, it's the 1992 match. I am in China so youtube is blocked but I'm pretty sure it's there. Morgan vs Faraon was awesome.

I haven't watched this one since the Smarkschoice poll days but just to throw in a match that probably nobody else is thinking about, MS-1 vs. El Faraon was pretty wild.

No doubt, but the right one is a weak candidate as it was just along for the ride. Don't you dare insult Negro Navarro. By the way it sounds weird today but three decades ago Negro Navarro was considered the 3rd best worker from Los Misioneros de la Muerte. Who, by the way, should be in the WON HOF but I have never pushed for them because I know they have no chance of getting in. Maybe someday but right now it would only dilute the chances for the current crop.

But they got more merch $$$ per head than Hulk and Austin iirc . I don't think the ticket prices in Toreo would make those shows more profitable than AJW. Of course, and I'm not taking anything down from their drawing power. It was a brilliant scheme. However I don't think it's fair to compare Tokyo "economic miracle/bubble" prices with early 80s Mexican economy prices. If you compare dollar amounts at the end of the day Mexican promotions will always fare poorly. At the height of the Mistico drawing power I got two decent Arena Mexico tickets for something like 25 bucks (from a scalper) and that's with a Spanish from Spain accent that I can't obviously hide from a Mexican. I have it somewhere at home but I'm pretty sure the Big Egg Wrestling Universe program was at least that much if not more.

No doubt, but the right one is a weak candidate as it was just along for the ride. Don't you dare insult Negro Navarro.

On Japan being over-represented in the HOF: There are more women wrestlers from the 80s-90s than guys who made their name in Mexico in the 80s-90s. Think about how ridiculous that is. The two iconic Dump vs Chigusa hair matches drew what would be overly disappointing Toreo houses anywhere from 1975 to 1987. El Signo's left nut probably drew more fans than a lot of people who are in the HOF primarily as "draws". (Nothing against Matsumoto or Nagayo... they are true first-ballot no-brainer candidates. if I could only vote for two women to be in, they'd be the top two). AJW: Kong, Nakano, Nagayo, Asuka, Masami, Matsumoto, Sato, Yokota, Toyota, Hokuto (10) Lucha: Aguayo, Canek, Casas, Santo Jr., Dos Caras, Lizmark, Satanico, Konnan, Atlantis (9). If you count Eddy and Rey Jr. as lucha candidates then it's only 1 more lucha candidate than AJW. On the same token, Aguayo and Canek were solid main event stars before 1980, so you could argue they shouldn't be on my list. To me it isn't that Japan is over-represented but other areas such as some territories and Mexico are under-represented.

Jose Azzari drew some great houses but his career was cut short. Mil Mascaras defeating him in the ALLL tournament kind of killed him as a hero, and even though they drew 42,000 (apparently) for the final night and similar numbers for the first two nights of the tournament, the promotion lost tons and tons of money running it and closed shop. I can't imagine how could you lose money if the operation was run like a real business.

With Lucha voters? Why? Add what they've done as a group along with what Universo and Mascara Ano have done to what Cien Caras has done, you'd think it would be a lock. :/ I can't imagine the "lucha voters" that don't get Cien Caras in would get the three brothers in as a group. I'd vote for Cien Caras as a single, Hermanos Dinamita as a trio, and I'd have to think about Universo 2000 as a single.

Basically "well he got in, I saw him live and he was okay, but nothing special a all. His kid is better." Obviously not a direct quote but that was essentially the gist of it That's odd. But I agree that Wagner Jr. has got a better HOF case than his dad. Of course I didn't vote for him as we still have to see if his own stupidity doesn't kill what could be one of the 10 most historical mask vs mask matches in history if he ever faces Park, and if he then wins, he could drop his mask to Santo or somebody else in another mega-match. And to reference to a jdw post from a few pages back: poor Cien Caras but if he was paired with his brothers as a trio I think that it would make it even WORSE for him. Today I spoke to Dr. Lucha and next year we'll tag team to produce some stuff on some of the candidates. Excited about that. The Villano III bio you did needs to be spammed all over the voting universe next year. Curious as to why you see Wagner Jr as being a better candidate than his dad. This interests me for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it is one area where I think there has been a huge division among the really knowledgeable Lucha voters. I need to re-read my own Villano III bio. I was out of the loop for so long that I wouldn't remember most of that stuff anymore. But yeah, we will definitely re-work that one. I want to get some work done on Cien Caras. I think Steve votes for him too and considers him a no-brainer so we should be able to put together something strong. I may be personally biased on Wagner Jr. because he was one of my favourites for a while but except for a short time where Mistico was king, he's been almost consistently the biggest star in the country for more than a decade. Tremendous regional draw: I know "crowds drawn over XX,XXX" is a measurement used often when talking about HOF accomplishments but due to the way that the business in Mexico is set up, a guy that can consistently bring 3,000 people to Puebla, 5,000 to Tijuana or 2,000 in Torreon (I'm just kind of throwing in numbers just to explain my point) week after week is as valuable as anyone to the promotion. But to be completely fair, I haven't really done a lot of actual solid research on him so it's just a gut feeling.

Basically "well he got in, I saw him live and he was okay, but nothing special a all. His kid is better." Obviously not a direct quote but that was essentially the gist of it That's odd. But I agree that Wagner Jr. has got a better HOF case than his dad. Of course I didn't vote for him as we still have to see if his own stupidity doesn't kill what could be one of the 10 most historical mask vs mask matches in history if he ever faces Park, and if he then wins, he could drop his mask to Santo or somebody else in another mega-match. And to reference to a jdw post from a few pages back: poor Cien Caras but if he was paired with his brothers as a trio I think that it would make it even WORSE for him. Today I spoke to Dr. Lucha and next year we'll tag team to produce some stuff on some of the candidates.

I can vouch for you (whatever that means) and push for you to get a ballot and I know others would be willing to do so too. But I doubt Dave is listening to your 4 hr podcasts (and the content of those alone should give you voting rights) and I don't know that "well, he posts cool shit at a message board that you don't read" would be enough for Dave. I believe that you also post at WC so he may be familiar with you so you need that extra step to catch his attention. Plus it would be an awesome read. Same goes for Khawk who I thought had a ballot as a long time Classics poster and all. Dave doesn't read this board so how is he supposed to know that Loss, Will and others are some of the smartest fuckers on the internet? I also believe that anybody on the selection team of the DVDVR 80s voting (not necessarily anybody who votes) should have a vote based on the research undertaken for the project, but we all know what Dave thinks of footage being revisited. To be honest anybody who wants to vote should just mail him local indy results and hope to get noticed.

Dylan, has your Patera case ever been published on the Observer website?

I was going to try and make a point like that but then I realised I hadn't looked up the percentages and I didn't want to look like an idiot making shit up. Might be interesting to see if we get "would never put Daddy in" voters actually voting for him as a strategy to get their candidates in. But this has convinced me to not to vote for Daddy again (at least for the next 11 months anyway ).

I also have no problems with anyone that got in. I'm surprised both Sasaki and Tanahashi got in this year, but I also think they were going to get in at some point anyway. I'm going to reference a Yohe joke from 2005 or 2006 on Wrestling Classics: "It looks like being a WWE main eventer automatically gets you into the WON HOF". Obviously his statement doesn't seem to be true anymore but I wonder if we are having a shift in influence due to the new voters in and Japanese main eventers from the last 15 years will have it easier than ever. Next year will be a good test with Taue and Akiyama on the ballot, but Suzuki should be the most interesting name to follow. Agree that Atlantis going in before the other luchadores is insane, but also think he's done enough to be in. Also I think that it's great that Wagner Sr. got so much support and finally got in, but there are several names I'd put before him, some on the ballot and some not. I think that in a way it's odd how much support Wagner Sr. has gotten (reminds me of Lizmark back in the day) but it's hard to get a lot of people outside of the lucha bubble behind a Mexican guy. I feel bad for Colon but I can't imagine that people voting for him in 2013 won't vote for him next year. The category has hurt him but not as much as I'd have thought, and he's a hard to place guy anyway.

Considering how eager the new age Japanese media is to uncover sports scandals (fighting, kickboxing, and more recently sumo, judo and baseball) we'll know that NJPW has really hit the mainstream when shit hits the fan. If such a thing were to happen, Tanahashi has got all the numbers to be their Hulk Hogan for a number of reasons. Or maybe not! Does this mean Jun Izumida should be on the ballot for writing a tell all book revealing NOAH Director Haruka Eigen's and Ryu Nakata's formal ties to the Yakuza? I'd say Eigen's the one that should be on the ballot. Spits are mainstream.

I liked the Enforcers run. Zbyszko vs Saito is definitely not the match that will make me a fan. At some point early next year I need to catch up with my 80s AWA, though. As to not to derail the thread, here's another name, or rather, two: The Harris Twins.