Dylan Waco

You sure? When they reprinted the debut issue several years ago, it looked perfect. I know they have a photo archive of sorts that is pretty solid. Without betraying any confidences I can't say a ton, other than the fact that multiple sources unrelated to each other have told me they don't have a true, working archive of the magazines. Also worth noting that Dave likely has some other non-Apter mag mags in those boxes that would be even harder to come by

You have several gay friends and they all tell you it's a choice they made? That's highly unusual. I've been part of LGBT activism for nearly my entire life and while I have known several people who would refer to their sexuality as a choice, the overwhelming majority believe they were either "born" gay or had no choice in the matter of who they are attracted to.

Not me. Back to the topic, I really wonder if Young coming out will be covered in the pre or post game shows for Summerslam. It seems like something they would end up randomly including in a short segment in that setting.

no one is born that way that's cop out garbage, its VERY much a choice, it's not comparable to your sex or race, those are things your born with, deciding you want to be in a relationship with the same sex is a choice period So you can train your dick to get hard when looking at a man? Deciding to be in any relationship is a choice, unless we are talking about a return to arranged marriages or slavery. Being physically attracted to certain things is much, much, much less likely to be a choice.

I think both of the ECW fancams with the Min Pro guys were considerably better than this

Yes the magazines concern me because supposedly PWI themselves don't have an actual archive

I'm honestly more concerned about the fate of those wrestling magazines in the shed

Someone uploaded an entire New Jack City show from 97, so I watched Reckless Youth v. Ace Darling, American Kickboxer v. Blaze and this Bull Pain v. Ian Rotten barbed wire baseball bat match which was an awesome bloodbath

I admit that I laughed out loud at that reference John

Is anyone else having trouble getting this to open or is it just my POS computer?

I have been high on Young as both a singles and tag guy with Titus for the last couple of years. The guy works hard every time out, is a crazy bumper, and is one of several guys who is lost in the lower mid-card, which is a shame regardless of his sexual orientation.

G1 Climax Tournament Day 8 Captain New Japan/KUSHIDA v. Takashi Iizuka/YOSHI-HASHI I am too lazy to look back and see if I have had this revelation before, but about five seconds into the actual match that started after a few minutes of brawling, it hit me that Captain New Japan is about as pre-BWO Super Nova as a wrestler can possibly be in look. He even sells with the same body language. Maybe it was just more noticeable here because this was sort of worked like an ECW mid-card tag match from a random fancam (a style of match I've seen more of than any person on earth aside from maybe Gabe Sapolsky) but I was actually kind of enjoying the Nova flashback in this setting. This was kept pretty short and had it's fair share of weak looking offense, but it had the right kind of energy you want for an ultimately worthless opener that is nothing more than a placeholder. I have seen far worse matches than this involving far better wrestlers this year, so while I wouldn't endorse it as worth watching, it was perfectly passable stuff. Also, this kind of made me want to see Captain New Japan team with daisy duke wearing Hama (god help me) against P.Y. Chu Hi and Tajiri managed by "Tojo" Tommy Rich. Davey Boy Smith Jr. v. Prince Devitt Someone explain to me what the hell is supposed to be interesting or intriguing about Devitt's newish gimmick? I admit that I have very much enjoyed people falling over themselves to praise a guy who is basically booked and working his matches like 1999 Shane McMahon, but I am actually being completely non-trollish in asking what the deal is with this "character?" I like Harry Smith, but he was put in a tough position here as he is generally better as a bruising heel and this match was all about continuing along with Attitude Era-style match. I did enjoy the way the first half of this was put together, but it quickly devolved into uninteresting interference spots, and your turn, my turn trash. This was too short to be offensive, but it wasn't any good. Karl Anderson v. Yujiri Takahashi I had no expectations at all for this coming in, so it had a very low hurdle to leap over. It still didn't totally clear it because the back end of this was loaded up with really choreographed looking shit and this was a rare case of a NJPW match that would have benefited from completely doing away with any pretense of build and just going straight out nuts with the spots considering the fact they were only getting seven minutes. On the other hand there were a couple of decent looking spots and yet again this was short which kept it from getting silly. Eh match at best. Lance Archer v. Satoshi Kojima This was okay, definitely the best match of the show up to this point, but that's not really saying much. Both of these guys can be decent against the right guy, but I don't really want to see them work each other, so I guess to this end this was as good a match as they were going to have. I actually liked a lot of the Archer control segment on Kojima and I give them credit for working a real heat section, with some comebacks, even though it ended up going right into the standard NJPW back and fourth fest. I get why people enjoy that stuff, but I really have no use for it unless the selling between spot trading is pretty damn good. Here the selling at least existed, though it wasn't anything special. Still the only really embarrassing thing in the match was Archer's selling of Kojima's corner chops and I did really like the finality and impact of Archer's finish, so I'll give these guys some credit. Toru Yano v. Shelton Benjamin This had two big flaws. The first was Shelton Benjamin. He's just awful. All of his offense looks terrible, his bumps don't look impactful or hurty, his body language sucks, he's constantly out of position, he's just complete garbage. Easily one of the worst guys on earth right now. The second flaw was that Yano didn't win. Even with Shelton being Shelton, Yano's schitck was actually really entertaining in this and it seemed like they were building to him being able to steal one. I get that the finish was him trying to go dirty and it working against him, but that seems far less interesting to me than letting him get the duke via bullshit. Oh well, he tried, Shelton is Shelton. Togi Makabe v. Tomohiro Ishii If you love bomb throwing matches, where guys stiff the shit out of each other and almost kill each other with accidental ganso bombs then it's hard not to like this on some level. Yes this lacked the psych I want out of a truly great match, especially because they had the shot at early with Makabe's taped ribs and then later after Ishii got spiked. On the other hand I actually thought this had a more organic feel to it than a lot of these slugfests. In some ways this was my favorite Ishii performance of the year as he not only brought the shoot headbutts, meaty lariats, and fun power spots, but he also was very effective working underneath. There were a few of the no selling staples you expect in these sort of matches, but I didn't find them to be egregious and in fact that were usually just teases before one guy ate another bigger kill shot. I actually ended up really liking a lot of the stretch run, as this was an almost unheard of case of the one counts being believable and adding intrigue because Ishii was still selling on the back end and even when he went for a flurry it ended up with him getting dropped and finished. This is a heavily, heavily flawed style, but I can certainly enjoy matches like this and this was a match I enjoyed more and more as it went along. Good stuff. Minoru Suzuki v. Kota Ibushi This would have been a good match if Ibushi had even thought for a second about selling his leg. It's a shame really because I was impressed with the work he put in against Nakamura and was thinking maybe I should start giving more of his current work a chance and then this just kicked that thought right in the nuts. When Suzuki was on offense this was really good. It really didn't even matter what he was doing on offense either as he looked good making funny faces, working the arm, throwing gut punches, slapping Ibushi in the face, leveling him with a dropkick or working the leg in a senseless attempt to convince Ibushi to sell. I can't call this a bad match because there was a lot I liked and the closing explosion from Suzuki was great, but god did it feel like a real wasted opportunity. Tetsuya Naito v. Shinsuke Nakamura I swear I don't remember Naito looking this bad before the injury, but he really has not impressed in this tournament and this match was no exception. I really loved the Nakamura knee counter to the shoulder tackle attempt but after that this was all downhill. I can get into the idea of cocky Nak working from the top with contempt but he was working that act way to early on and it almost felt like he was out of ideas. Naito has his shit he's going to get to every match and it really feels like he lacks any interest in variation or mixing things up as I think I've watched the same routine a half dozen times in this tourney. This whole thing was really flat and didn't work for me at all. Hiroshi Tanahashi v. Kazuchika Okada I was not looking forward to this at all as one of the better things about this tourney format is that you don't see a lot of matches really reach the point of pushing far into overkill territory because they are limited on time. Here you have two guys I don't care for going broadway on an already extremely underwhelming show, so this really could have pushed the show over a cliff big time. Instead I think this was about as good a match as these two were probably going to have with each other given the circumstances. Not surprisingly that is not me making an argument about this being five stars, or a MOTY, or a great match. But I did think it was pretty good given the limitations of both guys and given the fact that these guys really don't have thirty minutes worth of "stuff" to fill a match. In a way I thought this was basically three matches - the first third which was not good or bad but was just there. This saw most of the weakest looking Tanahashi offense (the armwork really is not something he should ever be doing) and had a real going through the motions feel. The match picked up with the big Tanahashi bumps which I give him credit for as they looked big time and allowed Okada to work a couple of decent looking holds to reasonable dramatic effect. This also included the clip to Okada's knee and most of the general Tanahashi knee work, which also wasn't all that good, but it wasn't awful did add another layer to the match. The final third was really hit or miss. The best moments, like Okada getting his knees up on the splash and then selling them, the cloverleaf spot (which really wasn't well applied but was helped by Okada's generally solid selling) and even the final gasping attempt at a finish I don't like were very strong dramatic spots. The worst spots were holy shit level bad, especially the tombstone being used as a means for Tanahashi and Okada to bridge into a line dancing sequence that evoked memories of that awful Eddie Edwards/Jay Lethal bit from the PWG show I reviewed earlier in the year. As a whole it's hard to get a good line on my thoughts because all the things I hate about NJPW main events were still present (needlessly long, horribly cooperative sequences, bad no selling spots, really bad offense) and yet the match did exceed my admittedly low expectations pretty easily. I will say I liked it better than their last match for whatever that is worth. Overall Thoughts I wanted to watch this because the two shows from G1 that were most heavily pimped were day four and this. Day four really worked for me, so I thought this had a real shot too. Instead this came across like a "preaching to the choir" type of event, where the day four show whether intentionally or not seems like a show that was a bit farther off the NJPW reservation. If you are a big fan of current NJPW Day Eight probably catered to your tastes very well, but I found it to be incredibly tedious, with only one true standout match

Justin Credible might be a better choice then. Credible was a LOT better than STorm

I think it's fair to say the Wise Men were the anchor heels in New York, but they were really different from other top managers in many respects. For one thing there were three of them, whereas the other top managers of the era basically alone as the top mouthpiece role. Also because there were three of them it almost feels wrong to even use the term anchor to describe them because at various points different guys had the challenger. The biggest difference is probably the fact that while the Wise Men can be credited with help establish guys and talk fans to the buildings, barring very rare exceptions there was never going to be any payoff involving them. They weren't taking bumps or being humiliated like Hart, let alone part of the matches with their own money drawing side angles like Heenan (v. Al Hayes, v. Zumhoffe, et). This isn't to say they shouldn't be mentioned in a thread like this, I just think it's really tough to place them, other than noted that they were a core and important institution

Funny side note to this rash of Bob Brown fetishism: The only time Dave and I got intensely negative feedback for a Wrestling Culture show was a commentator on the Maritimes show at Kayfabe Memories who was incensed that Dave, Andrew and myself trashed the great Bob Brown. My troll answer to the question posed by this is Sting. My more serious darkhorse answer might be Lance Storm, though he was never a real main eventer.

I literally just heard this from someone else and it breaks my heart. I'm not going to pretend that Metro Pro was my favorite promotion in the world, but it was one I really enjoyed following for the last year or so and it was one of the few indies that I felt had a nice combination of solid production, varied talent and quality matches. I enjoyed Richards v. Wyatt which I just watched tonight. Look forward to Wyatt v Pearce even if I hate the fact that Metro Pro may be done, while a terrible company like ROH keeps kicking somehow

I really tried to like the last Tanahashi v. Okada match and while I didn't hate it I also didn't think it was good. I have been following the VoW reviews and other reviews and it seems like day 8 is another show I should review in full like I did with day 3. Maybe Tanahashi/Okada will finally get over the hump with me

They've yet to have a match I've even liked.

Will probably do a top 100 matches list, though I find that way harder than rating wrestlers.

I haven't looked at it closely, but in my home town they definitely weren't working the same venue. But again the problem isn't knowing what the venue or venue size is

I don't understand what you mean. With most of the loop arenas I can tell you roughly how big they were and what they sat for wrestling even if I can't tell you what the average show did. The problem is that sometimes bigger cities had smaller arenas than smaller cities. So it's very tough to decipher anything based on market size alone

I've said this before, but my thought is that if you take the best parts of all three of the DDP v. Savage ppv matches you have a great match, but on their own each is no better than very good

G1 Tournament August 4th (Day Four I think) Toru Yano vs. Yujiro Takahashi A pretty good indication that I don't give a fuck about a match is when the one thing that stands out as memorable or interesting is a slingshot spot. Generally I'm not even a fan of sling shot spots but that is the on thing I really remember here. All the stuff around weapon shots and fooling the ref just came across as really stupid to me. I get Yano's schitck, but I don't think it's terribly good or interesting. I didn't hate this, but by no means was it any good. Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. "The Machine Gun" Karl Anderson Man this was way better than I would have thought. Tenzan looked lazy as fuck/uninspired in an earlier match from the tourney I saw v. Suzuki and since I hate Anderson, I figured this could be a contender for worst match of the night. This wasn't incredible or anything, but Tenzan really worked really hard, and Anderson's selling was a ton better than I would have thought. There was a actually a real heat section in this, and while some of Tenzan's offense didn't really hit square, I admired that he brought out the whole arsenal. Really felt like an old guy trying to win the tourney, instead of an old guy showing up to get a paycheck. Also as stupid as I think Anderson's finish looks, it did lead to a couple of cool tease spots for Tenzan and when he hit it it was the finish which felt like the right way to wrap this up. Good under card match, especially considering who was involved. Yuji Nagata vs. Shelton "X" Benjamin Shelton is an example of a guy I don't loathe who I don't ever really want to see wrestle again. He's pretty much exhausted anything interesting he could have possibly done in his career, so at this point if I get anything even decent out of him I'm happy. Nagata is one of the more overrated wrestlers of the last fifteen years and there are few things I find more phony than his facial expressions and "intense" demeanor. But I was still not prepared for how bad some of this was. I kind of like the ambush opening, but once this "settled" in it got really shitty really quick. Goofy Nagata facial expressions, ankle lock spots out the ass, really bad looking transitions, Shelton throwing sub-Tanahashi elbows, an awful kick from Shelton that made me more embarrassed to be a fan than Katie Vick and then it was over. Man everything after the ambush opening was just god awful. Terrible match. Amazingly this was worse than I expected, though it's relative brevity was a nice surprise. Satoshi Kojima vs. Davey Boy Smith, Jr. I like Smith but he has underwhelmed me this year after a 2012 where it looked like he might be on the verge of a breakout. This match wasn't great, but I thought it was pretty decent in large part because Smith worked as a cocky powerhouse heel which I think is one of the better roles for him. Not a lot of moments grabbed me in this but it was well segmented, well developed wrestling. I didn't care for his post nearfall hysterics, but the way Smith sunk in the tiger suplex was pretty cool and I thought this stayed away from the over kill that plagues even the better NJPW matches. I also thought the finish was well done and very convincing. Pretty good match all things considered, though I wouldn't push it as something people should go out of their way to see. Tomohiro Ishii vs. Katsuyori Shibata So I had thought I was a pretty big Ishii mark, but what I am learning through the course of this tourney is that I'm a mere pretender to the throne of others who seem to be arguing that damn near everything Ishii has done over the last month or so is MOTY level or close to it. I enjoyed the Tanahashi match, though I thought the hype for it was way out of proportion, so I was a bit scared coming into this which if anything has gotten even more hype. Phil compared this to your WARish heavyweight battles, where two surly, mid-card, fucks just beat the piss out of each other and I think that is a pretty good way to look at this. I will never get over how much I hate the no sell pop up of head drop suplexes, but at least they sold on the back end of that here, and aside from that I thought this was a really good match. Where the level of level for the Tanahashi match kind of confuses me, this I get. This is the Shibata I have wanted to see for the last year and was easily his best match in NJPW that I've seen. And Ishii is kind of the perfect opponent for him as he doesn't mind getting decked, stretched, punted or dropped on his head. I really thought all of the double knockdown spots in this worked and were really compelling and I also dug the theme of Ishii getting trapped in holds and having to struggle out, while spewing spit all over the place. This was pretty much the perfect length for a match like this, as if it goes to long it gets really absurd and exposes the weaknesses of the style. I also really liked the fact that the brainbuster just barely put Shibata away. I'm not positive I like this as much as Nakamura v. Sakuraba or Akiyama v. Kai but it does stand out in the same way by the standards of 2013 Japanese wrestling. Hirooki Goto vs. Lance Archer These are two guys I would fully expect to bring out the worst in each other. I have seen both guys in matches I really love, but I don't think either guy has particularly good instincts on his own and coming into this had zero confidence in either guy when it came to leading a compelling match. Anyway this ended up being about what I expected in the sense that it was the sort of back and fourth, bomb trading match, that certainly appeals to a lot of NJPW fans, but that I am largely indifferent too. I didn't hate this, as it lacked any annoying moments, or weak looking shots, but I don't know if this was even a top five Lance Archer/Hoyt singles match from this year and he's not a guy I think is a particularly good wrestler. Tetsuya Naito vs. Minoru Suzuki If we are rating Naito on the Suzuki carry job scale, he falls slightly behind Okada, but way behind Tanahashi. Kind of funny because I'd rather watch Naito a little bit more than Okada and way more than Tanahashi. Of course the comparisons aren't entirely fair because those were matches with entirely different goals and weren't part of tourneys. So if we adjust for that I'll just say this was a pretty good Suzuki carry job and the things about Naito that don't work for me weren't on display as much here as they have been in other matches in the tourney. I still think Naito's lack of an intermediary speed is distracting and hurts his comebacks some, but I thought the burst here was a bit more excusable because at least he was still hobbled and it led directly to the finish. I also thought Suzuki really played this pretty well as it had the sense of a match where he targeted a body part effectively, went for his killer choke and his killer finish and neither really panned out so by that point he was totally out of gas and easy prey to death by flurry. One way or the other the match was constructed much better than that last sentence and I liked it a good bit more than any Suzuki match in the tourney before it, and the more I think quite possibly as much or more than the Okada match from earlier in the year. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Prince Devitt Hey look, here's a match I don't want to see. Devitt's character gets rave reviews with the NJPW loyalists and I'm glad they are into it, but I just don't give a fuck. I don't hate him as much as most of my WKO comrades, but I am completely indifferent to the guy and he really didn't do anything to win me over in this match. I will say that the guy has a nice double stomp, but outside of that all I saw was a bit of mediocre, some gratuitous outside interference and use of seconds as transitions (actually this may have been a net plus given who was in the match), and a couple of those truly awful Tanahashi clotheline things. Christ almighty I will never understand how some of the same guys who trash the offense of Cena can exalt Tanahashi as the best guy on Earth. Anyhow in a sense this was not as awful as I feared, largely because of the interference and the fact that it served as a way to temper the wild run of "stuff" this looks to be on paper. I still thought this was pretty trashy, which I'm sure will mark me as a supreme hater in the eyes of some, but hey - at least it wasn't Nagata v. Shelton. Togi Makabe vs. Kazuchika Okada I'm not sure what's up with Okada targeting the kidneys of Makabe in this match, but that was legitimately surprising to me. I assume I missed something from earlier in the tourney involving an injury, and I'm guessing that they are really running with Okada as a heelish pretty boy type, willing to hurt someone badly to win. Okada's method of attack wasn't particularly interesting, but I still thought that was the best part of the match because it was focused and felt like it was building toward something interesting and somewhat outside of the norm for New Japan. Instead this sort of devolved into Makabe proofing how tough he was, with limited-to-no selling of his worked over and taped injury and the bombs falling fast and furious. Sure some of the spots looked cool and the upset finish was neat,but what was the point of the first five minutes of this match, if they were just going to piss it away? I had low expectations for this, but it was still pretty disappointing. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi Wow, this was pretty great. Nakamura is like a .235 power hitter - you know he's going to strike out a ton, but when he hits one deep it's going clear out of the fucking park. This wasn't the spectacle that Shibata v. Ishii was, but it was every bit as good a match, probably better. It's kind of weird for me to look at Nakamura as a defender of the heavyweight honor against some flippy little shit who's come out of the woodwork to take him down a peg or two and yet that's basically what this match is. I am not an Ibushi fan at all, but he really brought it here. All of his big spots looked believable/good and provided a sharp contrast to what Nakamura was doing which is really important if a match like this is going to work. Nak's knee based assaults are a mixed bag - at times they don't look all that great, at other times they are out of this world brutal. Here they were out of this world brutal and then some. I don't want to oversell anything, but some of his shots here looked like they were at or beyond the level of Shibata/Ishii which is saying something. This was well laid out, with Ibushi having to survive the initial onslaught, come back from the dead with his flashy spots (including a great chaotic dive), then Nak basically in survival mode and fighting back with his own bombs, only for Ibushi to have one last huge "fuck you" flurry as a response before going down hard. Loved the anger on Nak's face as he cornered Ibushi, before Ibushi's last big fiery babyface onslaught. Pretty much everything from Ibushi's Flairesque apron splat forward was at least good and big chunks of this were really excellent. I actually want to watch this again already which is really saying something. This is one of the better singles matches I've seen this year. Overall Thoughts Even with some really bad lows, this was still the best NJPW show I've seen this year, or during this "resurgence" at all by a safe margin. Two matches I liked a whole lot, another good Suzuki v. new wave carry job and a couple of pretty good undercard matches that on paper didn't seem like much. Half of the card still ranged from boring/ok-to-terrible, but there were only two matches I really disliked and at least some of the matches I didn't like or was indifferent to had upset finishes. Good show.

I did like Ishii v. Tanahashi well enough, but I have no clue what about that is supposed to be a MOTY and I don't even mean that in a douchey, dismissive way. It really seems an odd match to tout that level and I say that as someone who would probably have it in the top three of NJPW singles matches I've seen this year. I thought I would one of the bigger Ishii fanboys around and loved that he won decisively, but is his underdog story the reason for the hype or something else? Also Tanahashi's offense in that match...holy fuck was it bad.