pantherwagner

Danny the Jobber? Should I ask? I'm also an idiot and I didn't save the L.A. wrestling that jellybeans had. Bix? There was a Perro Aguayo vs Mil Mascaras match from 1980 or so that I never got to watch, I am always interested in seeing early years Perro.

Something perhaps slightly out of topic but it's odd how A LOT of the weird youtube stuff is showing up on the collections of Bear/Gay wrestling fans that watch it to talk about the bodies of the wrestlers and rank matches based on bearhugs and head scissors applied. I mean, you can find a neat Negro Navarro vs Mando Guerrero brawl in a collection next to Billy vs Johnny wrestling in flashy pink thongs in a mat in someones garage, and a Nick Bockwinkel match vs a jobber where he's described as a hairy macho mature hunk (and I'm not taking about Khawk's uploads here). God bless the wrestling fetish community, I mean, how can't you be tolerant when they are bringing THE GOODS. When is the last time that you saw an ultra conservative Christian upload unknown 80s lucha? Phil - you are a star! Thanks.

That is awesome. I have been out of the loop for years so I had no idea. I was shocked that in the era of youtube NOTHING had ever showed up. There's even been a lot of Olympic Auditorium from the 80s in LA and mystery Guadalajara or whatever lucha showing up. The problem of youtube is that if you like something you better download it using jdownloader because it may disappear someday. If somebody's got a copy online I'd be interested in seeing it.

French wrestling looks to be WACKY. There's some sort of mud MEN'S battle royale, and a match where the ring is in the middle of a pool or something and people come into the ring using little boats (eat that Onita).

Hey! Doing some research on something that has got nothing to do with wrestling I came across the webpage for INA (French National Institute of Media). If you go to their webpage http://www.ina.fr and search for "catch" or "catcheur" you can find a few clips, nothing much and no entire matches, but really interesting so I thought I'd share it here with an audience that will appreciate it. Most of you probably have no idea about this, but France is one of the few remaining "treasure trove" collections left anywhere in the world that we have nothing about other than a couple of clips. The French being French, meaning very well organized and protective of their history, keep films of everything ever shown on their national TV stations. I can guarantee that the reels are in perfect storage conditions somewhere in a Sports Institute vault in France (perhaps there is more than one copy, I don't know). I know the catch was restored, cleaned up, timed and catalogued a few years ago. I could be wrong but I believe that France is the only country (other than the UK) that taped wrestling and showed it on TV for decades. I know people who have been chasing this footage for a decade but dealing with the French administration you have to go through a lot of loopholes and once you have charmed a person then it's replaced and you have to start over again. It's not a matter of money either (the people chasing this collection are, without going into specifics, very well off). So we may never really see the full collection of footage anywhere. According to the Spanish wrestling historians I know, the finest technical wrestlers in Europe were the French, second the Spanish, and third the British. This may be a matter of opinion and indeed the footage doesn't show the style to be like World of Sport, but nevertheless it's an interesting piece of history.

Paying a little visit to my good friends at PWO. Hope you are all doing great. I was always creeped out by greasy CMLL mid 90s midcarder supreme Chicago Express. Urban legend (which I was never been able to confirm one way or another) was that he pissed Rayo de Jalisco off, so Rayo set his car on fire, and that was the last time anyone ever saw him. There's also Portuguese indy luchador Iceborg, who I guess doesn't look all that weird for indy wrestling standards, but I can't stop referring to the time when a friend of mine promoted a show in Spain and brought this guy, who went out partying all night with Super Crazy, both got fucked up on cheap alcohol and coke, and Iceborg (who was the more conscious of the two) tried to anally deflower our Mexican ECW hero (who was crying in a corner of his hotel room). My friend's best friend tried to save Crazy by shuttling off to the airport early but on the 15 minute ride Crazy couldn't contain himself and decided to puke and shit all over the poor motherfucker's fancy Mercedes Benz E Class. Pro wrestling is awesome.

I chuckled at the garbage wrestling or black people line. But this induction would be awesome. Also, Abby attacking Dusty with a fork would be great.

Hey, I am not retiring as a fan. I guess I have retired as a SUPERFAN. I guess that the GWE poll at Smarkschoice was a really nice retirement tour. And I need a password for that forum.

To make a long story short - I have had a lot of professional and personal stuff going on in my life (only positive things, though), I have been super busy and the pro wres has been the least of my worries. In fact, it feels like my era of being a SUPERFAN is pretty much finished. The only wrestling I have watched in the last 12 months is Royal Rumble and some of the Guerreros del Ring and AAA that cubfans has sent me (the man is a saint) and some rapidshare downloads I get from Rob Bihari from time to time... but now I feel like I would like to watch some more good lucha. So, what have I missed in the last 12-18 months? I went to DVDVR today and read Todo X Todo, which I need. Also a Santo vs. Espanto Jr. tape, which I presume that I need (I believe that I have already watched one of the two matches, though). What else? I am only planning on getting 5-6 DVDs total, no more than that, so what should I get?

Lynch has got a 6 or 8 DVD "history of RINGS" set. You could use that as a guide for major matches, and fill in the blanks with other opinions. I tried to get into RINGS a few months ago, but somehow, in 2007, somebody not tapping out in seconds to a fully applied cross armbreaker looks faker to me than Joe Lider matches. Something that I just recently did is go through PRIDE 1 to 8, leading to the 2000 GP. While we all agree that Meltzer's "PRIDE and pro wrestling in Japan are the same" line is bullshit, the first few PRIDE events are pretty much "booked" like a Japanese wrestling promotion (sometimes literally as there were several works during those days). You can really see the parallels - even though PRIDE eventually evolved into something different. Sakuraba vs. Carlos Newton and Sakuraba vs. Vernon White from PRIDE 3 and 2 (respectively) are better RINGS matches than anything RINGS ever did. You should watch that stuff.

Man some people have a lot of money to throw around. How much you wanna bet that soon enough we'll see Memphis, SMW, etc. scripts popping up?

A lot of Japanese (not specifically talking about wrestlers) use speed. But, yeah, alcohol is more acceptable than crack. As far as painkillers goes, everybody in Japan and Mexico uses them. I have never seen it, but there's this commercial video of Akira Hokuto in North Korea getting a shot in the knee before her match. I was trying to google for an specific caption to see if I was dreaming it and instead found Tomoko Watanabe's knee. I guess this is from her blog or something.

Yeah. I have friends who write it as pro wres or even proresu. I guess the point is, the literal translation is pro wres or puroresu, but the interpretation is professional wrestling. I guess it's like people translating "lucha libre" as free fight instead of wrestling. And as you said, wrestling in Japan is really dead. The only fans are people who were there in years ago. I have yet to meet anyone younger than 22 that is even a casual fan, like it's just something their older brothers watched but is now a big joke. Wrestling will stay around until the retirement of an entire generation of Mutos and Misawas who wrestle because they can't do anything else in life, and set up a bar or a restaurant or something like all Japanese wrestlers do.

Today I saw Laredo Kid/Super FLAY vs. Super Calo/Gran Apache and damn those were some hot near falls. I'm sure the 2.9999999999999 stuff Spunk refers to is the Super Fire Pro Wrestling finisher style overkill.

"Pro Wres" it's not slang, it and "Puroresu" are two different (and technically valid) romanizations of the same katakana (プロレス) which is a shortened version of professional wrestling. The Japanese make short words for long foreign words they can't pronounce (the funniest one to me is "conbini" for convenience store) but they write in katakana what you hear, not each letter from each word. And then people usually romanize it back using the standard translation rules, which is why for "television" you have "terebi" instead of "televi". The Japanese really struggle with English because they learn how to pronounce them (of course, in Japanese style English) but not how to write them back. I think there was a good thread about this something like 5 years ago in Wrestling Classics.

"Pro wres" caught fire among the OLC Class of 2006 smarky crew as a parody of some (Smarkschoice?) guy who actually used it for real. I imagine most of the usage you'll see here will be parody style. OJ, as you know better than anybody here, the Japanese also have their own retarded words for stuff. It's funny there was this 90s Lorefice myth about Japanese fans being smarter, when it's pretty clear that stupidity among wrestling fans is something universal that has no sexual, racial or religious boundaries. But the worst internet buzzword ever is lucharesu. I am confident that nobody that uses that one regularly is a valuable member of our society. About the show - I have listened to the first hour so far and it's been fun. You should do it once a month.

Think Edge's Impaler instead of Jake Roberts' DDT. Pro wrestling would be better if 80% of the SQUARE+CIRCLE moves in Fire Pro Wrestling were banned.

This is Kevin Cook back in his best shape ever. Bravo, sir. All points and comparisons were brilliant and spot on.

Mah man sek speaks the truth. It's nice to be reminded that there are some fans who aren't complete retards. Then again I think places like DVDVR, Scott Keith's forum, Wrestling Classics, etc. provide a social service keeping these people off the streets. We'll all get over it. It hasn't impacted my viewing habits because I don't feel like watching much of anything lately, but when I'm back watching in a week or a month or whatever is it, it will eventually be OK. In the last 12 months I have enjoyed matches of the guy who OD's at mom's house in Christmas, the guy who missed Survivor Series because he sodomized a little girl and the woman who owns a whorehouse in Tokyo. Last year at Smarkschoice we all were loving matches of the guy who killled the hooker throwing her off the window. If Snuka and Invader #1 didn't suck, we'd love their matches too.

I'm arriving late here, but damn, it's going to take a while until somebody else passes over Benoit as the worst human being to ever compete in a wrestling ring.

I got mine today, but I'll be most of next week in London so I won't be able to watch until next Friday at best.

Loss, excellent way to sum up WWE, mah man. Yep, just like shoot interviews are a chance for wrestlers to get themselves over as cool people and try to "work you" telling you whatever stories they want you to know. The only real shoot interviews were/are the ones with insane and delusional people like Shane Douglas.

Have you ever seen his picture? Every point he ever tries to make is immediately canceled out by his looks.

Not the pinnacle of professional wrestling, but this was really great. If they don't fuck it up, it will be the perfect ending of a great 10 year run where Vince turned the promotion into what he always wanted it to be. It would be totally awkward if Mr McMahon, the character, died at the same time Vince McMahon does. But if they fuck it up, it will be just another moment in wrestlecrap history.

I'd not argue against that, but like every promotional boom ever, no matter where in the world it happens, there are people who create a wave and people who simply ride it and benefit of the exposure for the rest of their life.