pantherwagner

I was supposed to post this yesterday: As the story goes, some time ago Dan Ginnetty found a source for "new" 80s AJW TV that nobody else outside Japan has (except a few tapes here and there). At one time I had just being paid a work bonus so I got a few DVD's out of nostalgia - basically because I am a big JB Angels fan and I wanted to see some of their big matches. Well, the stuff ended up being so enjoyable that during the span of 1 year, even after finding buying partners, I ended up spending a ridiculous amount on money on this stuff. In a different thread Loss said everybody should watch some of that stuff and form an opinion on that era, and I completely agree on it. There are so many myths about 80s AJW due to the previous lack of footage, and I think watching the actual TV from the Ginnetty set is much better than AJW Classics because it gives you a bigger picture of the promotion's environment at the time. I already made some of these points months ago in smarkschoice, but as the grounds for future discussion and opinion, here is some of the stuff I have found out after watching many hours of 80s AJW. - Anybody who thinks Lioness Asuka is better than Chigusa Nagayo needs to watch more 80s AJW. This is linked to... - Lioness Asuka is the wrestler who comes off the worst by rewatching all of this stuff. The more Asuka I watch, the less I like her. No matter what the story of the match is, she always needs to get her spots in. Also, her tendency to be in offense is usually irritating, and her selling is not all that great. She's like the best Chris Harris ever or something. Not to take anything away from her, because she was such a hard worker and in the major matches she delivered, but really benefitted out of being Chigusa's tag team partner. - The great hidden worker of the era is Jumbo Hori. She was the tallest Japanese native of the era (ever?) and you'd think that as a babyface she'd be terrible at the role, but her selling was so good that it didn't matter. She was a lot like Devil Masami in laying out matches and was naturally suited to fill in the "mother" for the younger girls role that Masami had, but when she was getting really good... she turned 25. The Dynamite Girls (Omori & Hori) matches vs. Crush Girls and Devil & Tarantula are worth tracking. Even though they are not classics, all the Hori vs. Asuka matches are worth tracking to realize just how good and smart Hori was. - Mimi Hagiwara is, gasp, actually a pretty good worker. For an idol wrestler, she is better than Cuty Suzuki and Takako Inoue (though she didn't have the benefit of the great opponents Takako had). After all the Manzerman kind of guys that touch themselves watching her matches, you'd think she was terrible. But she was a really big bumper who didn't take it easy at all, and a tremendous babyface. Weakness was brawling, as she usually faced much larger opponents and her boxing jabs were ridiculous. Her best work was in tag matches, though she had a good run as an All-Pacific champion. - The Jumping Bomb Angels are awesome. Kind of a W-Inoue (Kyoko & Takako) team that you could count on anytime to bring the workrate. In the WWF you couldn't tell them apart, but in AJW Itsuki Yamazaki and Noriyo Tateno had very different roles. Tateno was the "Ricky Morton" of the team, as the young schoolgirl, who would sell most of the time and take most of the pinfalls. I think the role of Tateno was to make the schoolgirls in the audience think that there's only one Chigusa, but Noriyo is a girl just like you. Yamazaki was more of a Tommy Rogers than a Robert Gibson, as the experienced worker with great offense. During regular TV, it was also usual to see Yamazaki face somebody in a singles match in the semi-main, an Tateno doing the selling/job in a six-women tag with all the stars. Don't look for deep psychology in their matches, but as a pure work team, they were really fun to watch. - The more 80s Bull Nakano I watch, the less impressive 90s Aja Kong seems. - The undercard could be pretty decent. They did not have the depth of interpromotional era 90s AJW but Condor Saito was a good hand; Yumi Ogura was really good in her young star role, and you could see she was somebody who definitely enjoyed being in the ring; Hisako Uno was already worth watching back then, and there were some very good foreigners touring from time to time: Galactica and Lola Gonzalez, Peggy Lee (who used to be great) and the Judy Martin/Leilani Kai team. Martin never did much for me, but Kai was tremendous and her matches with Chigusa Nagayo for the All-Pacific title were surprisingly great. - Jaguar Yokota is not as good as you think she is... she is better. To realize how good she was, you need to put her in her context in the early 80s, and realize how outside of Jackie Sato, there was no other babyface in the roster who was even 1/10th as good as her. Nancy Kumi was technically good, Tomi Aoyama had some nice moves, but they didn't have the energy and dynamism Yokota had. Even when she was just a novice worker getting squashed by more seasoned wrestlers like Chino Sato (who was pretty good, actually), you could see she was 5 or 6 years ahead of everybody else in the roster... which really makes me wonder who were her influences. I don't know what's the best way to move some of this material but it definitely needs to be seen. Cheap comps for the registered users? Uploads? Is anyone even interested? My internet sucks to upload matches, but I'm willing to make comps and distribute them, or send them to somebody willing to cap the matches. As I said in a different thread, watching a lot of of this stuff in one go can be repetitive, but when you need a break, it's a really fresh and enjoyable style of wrestling with super hot crowds. At this point, I am seriously convinced 80s AJW is better than 90s AJW.

I saw your signature a long time ago, visited the place and bookmarked it, and then forgot about it until a couple days ago. Later I'll post about 80s AJW, I have wanted to do that somewhere for a while.

Is this where the pro-wres dorks post now? Loss, you should invite some of the people from the BWE poll from Smarkschoice here. I'm sure many of us would be more encouraged to watch wrestling and be dorks if we had a good place to discuss it. Dusty Rhodes: As a kid I didn't grow with the NWA (I started watching around 90 and it was the supposed start of the new Sting era) so I have no emotional connection to Dusty at all. That being said, I really have no interest in him. His promos are fun (even if they come off as really repetitive to me) but his matches do not interest me unless he's bleeding a lot and he's facing a superworker. I'll continue later but now skip to... Dump Matsumoto: We should bring OJ and Ginnetty here and whoever else watches 80s AJW and get some conversation going because during the last year, random episodes of 80s AJW has been one of my favourite things to watch. It can get repetitive, but if watched in doses, it's really fun stuff to watch. That being said, Dump Matsumoto is awesome. Everybody is aware that she is a fantastic heel, but I think that as an actual worker she is really underrated by people who only have seen her hair matches with Chigusa. She does not have any major offense like a Bull or Aja type would, but her bumping is quite good, her bully psychology is great and she is pretty good at building to the babyface comebacks.