pantherwagner

Oh, of course, now I actually know who that guy is.

John - Tanaka, that's it. I thought he was one of Dave's long time sources, but I guess I was wrong. Then again I have no clue who is this Masa Horie you talk about, though I know who are Wally and Koichi. Anyway, I recall reading about Zach following him around online and laughing at him for the stupidest of things. That was Zach. Anyway, going to Japan last year (not to watch any shows, honestly I thought it would be a waste of time) I found out that the distinction is pretty clear. As I said before - MMA and K-1 are cool, and wrestling is completely dead. It's funny because three different people told me "the only way wrestling has to survive in the long run is to turn stupid and bizarre like Hustle". In 10 years, professional wrestling in Japan may not exist outside of really old guys trying to hang on the only thing they can do in life, tiny local promotions like Osaka, or "joshi" jackoff material for the schoolgirl photobook audience.

I know Dave probably takes it to heart since he likely heard it from this guy whose name escapes me, but he's been one of his main Japanese sources for decades and is totally connected. You know... the one Zach used to stalk because he was jealous. I have yet to speak to a Japanese who equates MMA and pro wrestling. In fact, right now, you could go to Japan and it would be pretty absurd to think both things are the same. One is cool and hip, the other one is what your dad used to watch. But after so many years, Dave can't backtrack. When somebody (you?) over at WrestlingClassics argued with him that in "popularity" polls run by newspapers, wrestling and MMA are ranked separatedly, and that UFC was MMA and wasn't promoted like pro wrestling (keep in mind this was said a few years ago), Dave said something like "you can say UFC and pro wrestling are not the same, but you can't deny PRIDE and pro wrestling are".

I thought that's why we are here.

Jake, Snuka, Shawn and Marty if you like to take drugs.

You know the deal. PM sent- Will

My thoughts on Baba are similar to Dan's. His chops work and the crowd loves them, but they don't look good in the AJPW environment like the People's Elbow wouldn't look good in an AJPW environment even if in a WWF Attitude environment it was OK. My favourite Baba attribute is the Lyger-like ability to cover up for shitty missed spots. And he's somebody who would show up for the big matches, but if I had to watch him weekly on TV, even with his faults, I'd probably take Inoki over him.

I got the boxes from Kurt. Steve sent them to Dave (for WON) and Kurt (still doing LLW). I think Rob has bought/will buy all years, and will continue with the recaps when he's back home. But he'll skip to 1994 and do 92-93-90-whatever later on. I still talk to Steve from time to time. I'll tell him you said hello. Oh, I know. I doubt Dave saw a lot of him as Canelo, either. I was more pointing out why Kurt or Steve or the Viva La Lucha guys or myself, used to think he was so awesome.

I also need the Goodhelmet set to judge properly, but I really enjoyed KENTA vs. Danielson, and Villanos/Navarro vs. Solar/Caras Jr./Metal.

John, Dave used Metal during years and years and years, I'd say from 98-04, as the example from the only good thing in AAA. I don't think he was a top 10 worker in AAA during any of those years, and imagine what that entails when talking about 1998 or 1999. People went nuts for Metal partly because of the Casas bloodline, but as Canelo Casas he was excellent, and he was like 20. Forget about the bumping style as Heavy Metal; his matwork and pacing was so good for somebody his age. He was really over at Arena Coliseo. He was a natural. Plus later in AAA he had the excellent matches with Santito (and this was before people had figured out Santito will have a great match with anybody who is a decent hand). I have two boxes of faxes of reports sent by Steve to Dave and Kurt, and there's a great quote from 1990, going something like, "With Chris Benoit, Masakatsu Funaki and Canelo Casas as the new young stars, we are assured for at least 10 more years of excellent wrestling". That's funny, because Dandy never stopped being awesome during all those years. I always got the impression that Dave was not paying attention to EMLL at all. If you haven't seen it, go to DVDVR's lucha board and look for Rob Bihari's write-ups for Dave Meltzer's news in 1991. Rob bought the whole year and did a recap. Some of Dave's thoughts range from laughable to embarrassing. He had not developed his "lucha eyes" yet.

Interesting thread. If you think Meltzer going on reputations for WWE guys is bad, feel sorry for us long time lucha fans. Until 3 years ago, Dave was still going off his AAA 1993 opinions, so Heavy Metal was one of the best workers in Mexico and the only redeeming thing in AAA, and Universo 2000 was an awful worker you wouldn't even want to see.

You could be arguing with somebody that wrestling is not cheap entertainment for ignorant inbreds and yokels and have the thing won, then somebody would show with a video of this song and you'd lose. Or somebody could point to just about every rasslin' message board on the internet for deadly evidence. Fritz Von Erich was a strange man.

I think the problem is that if we started talking about porn or videogames or anime, we'd attract a lot of social retards, DVDVR style. Also, I'm not sure why would anyone want to discuss politics with wrestling fans.

I saw it, but didn't think you were looking for feedback! Good move. Right now on the internet there's not many (if any) good places to talk about wrestling; and instead there are many places where guys claim they are burned out and don't care about it anymore (which is understandable, it happened do me during most of of 2003-04), but spend hours and hours in wrestling boards posting about bullshit. In the meanwhile, those of us who prefer to bullshit around at the Irish pub drinking beer , don't have a place to babble about MS-1 where you don't have the feeling that you are preaching to the choir. When the move is completed you should send an e-mail or private message to anybody who registered months ago and participated in the wrestling forum, to inform about the move to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise know.

I admitedly suck at reviews (after re-reading them I always end up thinking they are empty, but I don't want to do play by plays) but after watching almost nothing for a month, I am catching up, and I intend in taking a few short notes for the most remarkable matches I watch. January for Spaniards is a month where you stay at home - you spent all your money and energy in Christmas! Plus it's cold outside. Which means I will be posting more reviews eventually.

CMLL, 10/15/05 - Atlantis vs. Mistico God Mistico fucking sucked here. CMLL, late 2005 - Universo 2000, Pierroth & co. vs. Perros del Mal feud This feud was the best thing going on TV in late 2005, and those are episodes filled with Santo in his seasonal return to Arena Mexico. Hate filled brawls, really like old Mid South wrestling, with plenty of outside the ring brawling, foreign object shots, and even some pretty great looking dives by guys who are not good at dives (great as in "that hurts" not "that had a lot of flips and great execution"). It's a shame most of the guys in this feud either are too old, or just not good on their own, because these awesome multi-men brawls (that come off great on tape so I can only imagine how incredible they must have been live with the insanely hot 12000+ Arena Mexico crowds) usually build to pretty mediocre singles matches.

AJW, 1981, maybe 1982 - Mimi Hagiwara vs. Nancy Kumi Let's start a Mimi Hagiwara review the same way Manzerman or most creepy fucks would, talking about her bath suit. Does this make me a creepy fuck? Hagiwara usually looks way too skinny in her usual white outfits, and I'm not a fan of the Kate Moss kind of build, but the rainbow outfit makes her look much nicer. Anyway, Kumi is one of the few wrestlers of the Pairs-Era (every tag team but one -Queen Angels- were called Something Pair... she was in the Golden Pair with Victoria Fujimi) and one of female wrestlers from those days with better fundamentals. They worked a mostly technical match, which is always a nice break from the action/brawl AJW style. Actually the pacing for this was sorta like a Mid Atlantic juniors match, with plenty of matwork and some basic, but cool highspots in between (like a sunset flip into a lateral headscissor takedown or something of the like). It helped the crowd was into it. Hagiwara continues to be much better than she has any right to. At this point I have Kumi in an hypothetical workers list somewhere below the top of the era (Yokota, Sato, Ikeshita, Masami, Kai) but better than most other Japanese. Probably just right to Aoyama. I rarely watch the Ginnetty Joshi tapes in order, so I guess I'll have to check more Kumi matches vs. different workers.

AJPW, 12/13/75 - The Destroyer vs. Don Leo Jonathan I know I had seen Jonathan before in MSG film because I remember his spots and being impressed by his agility. This may be the first time I see him in a full match. This was such a basic match (the first half of the match was just headlock and full nelson exchanges) and I imagine this was just all Destroyer, but the way Jonathan's 4-5 great visual "agile giant" spots were inserted into it was just perfect. Also, it shows you Destroyer is a 100 times better comedy wrestler than anybody in the US indies, because he does his subtle spots to get a chuckle the crowd, but doesn't take the crowd away from the competitiveness of the match like "LOLZ!!!!111 hes so funny" workers like Colt Cabana. There are full Jonathan matches vs. Thesz and Gagne out there, so I'm interested in seeing how those compare to this, especially considering Jonathan was 20 years younger.

JWA, 5/16/69 - Antonio Inoki vs. Chris Markoff I actually didn't like the start of the match, and I am going to sound like a ROH tard here, but it was because of the mechanics and execution. Once it got to Inoki getting beaten by brilliant heel Markoff, it was excellent. It was kind of strange to me seeing this Inoki, really different to the Inoki I am used to seeing. The finish and the way the crowd was into the last minutes of the match was just amazing, and like Loss, this left me wanting to see more Markoff.

You need to pick up the Thesz vs. Rogers broadway from me. I'm interested in knowing what do you think about the match. I believe I have already said this somewhere, but Thesz isn't what you expect. I have seen him losing to a foreign object shot by a manager, chasing somebody with a bone in a trios match in the IWA, and selling the Deadly Japanese Chops of Mr. Moto. Still, he was a great worker. Actually, you should watch some Pat O'Connor footage because for what I have seen, he was what you expect Thesz to be.

I have a history of AJW magazine that highlights the biggest matches year by year. That, and the year-in-review shows (that I imagine would be awfully similar) would be a very solid skeleton for a compilation. The problem is that there's so much footage that you need to devote a lot of time to something like this, and frankly, I have zero desire to watch 150+ DVD's of AJW. Of course, I do not have the time either, and let's not forget the money involved in getting everything. But I also agree that downloads are not the way to go. The only matches I'm willing to watch on the computer are matches that I know there's little chance to get on DVD (like rare lucha libre and things like that). Perhaps a 2 or 3 disc sampler wouldn't be a bad start.

That's almost as bad/sad as fiftysomething years old Finlay coming back and automatically becoming one of the top two or three workers in the company, and top 10 in the world. I mean, this guy 10 years ago was nowhere close to top 10 in the world. (By the way, this is not a Finlay diss and I think he fucking rules)

That's going to be a great project. Will, go and watch Atlantis vs. Dandy and make us anxious to get the DVD's.