Dylan Waco

Marked out for Chad's number 9. Great, great show. May comment more later.

Muertes was also great in IWA-PR. Great matches with Sewell, Flannagan, and even Vamp.

So...Megumi Kudo.... I am neither a Peakist or Longevityist. Instead I try to strike a balance between the two and try to take other things into consideration when thinking about how to apply those things in looking at a workers career. That said, in the case of Kudo I feel that she sort of strikes out on both fronts. Yes she has years that we can point to as peak years as anyone does, but they don't feel particularly special to me either within the context of Japanese wrestling, the 1990s, or even Joshi itself. This is made worse by the fact that she really doesn't have a lengthy career, or even a career like a Kandori where we can point to great matches littered across a ten year span even if the gaps aren't heavily documented. I don't think she had a long collection of good-to-great years like a Masami or Satomura, nor do I think her peak years would have ever put her in the top 5 Joshi workers in a given year. That's hard to overcome. What Kudo does have is the odd distinction of being a female ace in a non-Joshi exclusive promotion. By that I don't mean that she was the actual top star in FMW after Onita retired, but she may not have been far off, and she absolutely anchored their women's division to the extent such a thing existed. She did admirable work in that role, especially when you consider the fact that she was often saddled with middling-to-weak opponents, and was working a style that does not immediately lend itself to opportunities for classic matches. I don't know that I absolutely love any of the death matches she worked sans the Kandori stuff, but I do think she was an overachiever on that front and understood the psychology of how to work those matches far better than most. In that respect I do see her as more of an heir to Onita than anyone else in FMW, which I do consider a positive. That said I don't think she's as good a death match worker as the true all timers of the theatrical wing of the genre (Onita, Colon, arguably Goto), nor do I think she can really compete with the crazed brutality of someone like a Necro Butcher. I'm not sure I'd have wanted her to work like Necro (check that - I'm positive I wouldn't), but I do think it's worth noting that Colon was often saddled with opponents that were roughly as limited as Kudo's and delivered much better matches in similar settings. She had good blood feuds and high drama matches which were of great importance, but in a sense I think her stand out match is the Aja Kong match. I tend to agree with what Loss says about the match being especially accessible by Joshi standards, though I'm not sure I'm as prepared as he might be to give the majority of the credit for that to Kudo. In any case it's a great showing from her in a non-gimmicked setting when she was at her absolute physical peak. At minimum it gives us a glimpse of what might have been in if circumstances had been different, and for those inclined to view her uniqueness as a major attribute I could see using the Kong match as a sort of rear guard defense to argue for her inclusion if the forces of "fuck death matches" have you cornered. I do think her selling was generally better than most faces of her sort on the Joshi scene, and like most above average Joshi workers she was very good in tag matches. To modify a Parv-ism, her base skill was strong in many respects, though I think she had the same problems with execution that plague many Joshi workers. If this was a favorite list I would almost certainly include Kudo, because I've always been a fan, and I think her act as the underdog valiant warrior was incredibly easy to get behind. For that reason I like the idea of including Kudo on my ballot, but ultimately I find the idea impossible to defend. Loss always talks about how the WON HOF shouldn't be about righting wrongs and I think he's right. I'm not really sure the GWE should be about righting wrongs either, so I can't rate Kudo.

Because I'm insane I stayed up all night making cuts from my list. I've made some really tough ones. I'm down to 127. Jumbo is still on the list. Still on the fence with what to do with him.

I laughed my ass off for a good ten minutes.

Well. I guess I'm not sleeping tonight.

I loved Kansai when I was a big time Joshi fan fifteen or sixteen years ago. She may have even been my favorite Joshi worker ever when I was first getting into the style. She just came across as such an incredible ass kicker (literally in some cases), with great fire, who was really excellent at building drama with in her matches. I just connected with her almost immediately and it's hard for me to think of Joshi even today and not immediately thing of her. Having said that on re-watch I find myself pretty confused when I come in here and see people talking about having her above Aja Kong and rated higher than any other Joshi workers. I say this not because her stuff doesn't hold up at all, but rather because with 2016 eyes I have a much more tempered opinion of Kansai than I did when I was reacting her as a fanboy teenager. The Hotta comparisons have been done to death in the Hotta thread, but I do want to touch a bit on the structure issue with Kansai. In the Hotta thread Jetlag criticizes Hotta for working strikes, lay on the mat, bombs as a sort of 1-2-3 punch. I think that is overly simplistic, but not completely wrong headed. Having said that watching tons of Kansai recently I came away thinking she was basically doing the same thing, but inverting steps 1 and 2. Given that a lot of Kansai matches have a pretty clear build to big spots and teases of the splash mountain, you could construct a narrative that Kansai was something of a genius deliberately working a slow building style. That said I generally felt like the matches lacked an early hook and as such I often struggled to become fully invested in Kansai singles matches even when they were against strong opponents. I watched several Kansai matches v. Oz and Kong and I was fairly shocked to find that none of them felt like real classics to me anymore. The Kong stuff is great in it's own way, and I think seems better as a whole than it does on an individual level which is hardly a negative. I'm not sure I even like the Oz matches but I do appreciate Kansai's effort in them. I did love the Hotta match, and enjoyed several other singles matches, but that failure to initially grab me out of the gate was jarring. I did end up liking Kansai more and more as I went on, but I think that's because I watched her in tags late. As a tag worker I think she's outstanding. The energy, fire, timing of her big spots, escalation of violence, dramatic flare, et. all seems to max out for her in a tag setting. The series with Oz v. Toyota and Yamada absolutely holds up, but she's really working at near that level in pretty much any tag match she's in. I think the real strength of her candidacy is as a tag worker, with the singles stuff serving more as an add on to the area where I see her as having been especially great. It does bother me that she fell off in 97, because I'm not sure how many years as a high level worker she really had, and volume, consistency, and duration of quality work means more to me than it does for a lot of people. I also wish I could watch her career in a more structured way, but it's too late for that. She has a decent chance of making my ballot, but I can't imagine rating her higher than the bottom 20 or so at best.

I like Satomura a lot. She's one of those wrestlers where I get excited every time one of her matches pops up in the last several years because more often than not I enjoy it at least on some level. As recently as last year I thought she was outstanding, had a really good body of work to her name, and had one of the better singles matches of the year. I could be convinced she was a top ten, or maybe even top five wrestler in the World last year, and I doubt I'd rank her any lower than 15 or 20 at worst myself. All of that said, I don't buy the argument that she's a non-traditional Joshi worker, and I think most of her obvious flaws as a worker are flaws you expect to see out of workers of that style. It's interesting that execution, timing, and selling are mentioned as major positives for Satomura, because while I would agree that she laps most of the Joshi field in those categories, I think where she really stands out is pacing. A Satomura match has the pace of something where certain things are allowed to sink in even if the selling really isn't THAT good (and it often isn't) and the execution often feels a bit off at least in comparison to true elites. I suppose you could argue that the pace is a huge part of what makes Joshi what it is, but to my eyes Satomura is very much a Joshi worker in terms of style, approach, and flaws. I agree that she has great offense and her transitions tend to be vastly better than most Joshi workers. Her offense I think is generally very good period, though I don't always like the way she plugs the spots into matches. Her transitions absolutely stand out in a universe filled with people influenced by two speed Manami Toyota, but I'm skeptical of the notion that they would stand out as particularly great comparing across genres. I am also a bit surprised to see her presence cited here as a major positive, because if I'm being 100% honest with myself I'd argue that is the category where I really find Satomura lacking. It's not really her fault, but aside from the Kong series it is very rare that Satomura match - even if otherwise great - feels like a big deal. While she has an aura of legitimacy about her, she is very much not a Maeda/Choshu/Tenryu/Fujiwara type where there mere existence and charisma makes something feel special. While her presence as a great talent and elder statesman can clearly elevate a match, I don't see her as someone with a real transcendent quality. I tend to think she was good early, where others in this thread seem down on her in the mid 90's period. I wouldn't call her great then, but safely good, and I thought the arm flailing stuff was charming, unique, and oddly honest in a business where a lot of young talent feels phony. It was fun watching her work vets and young talents in this period too, which I also consider a plus. I'm not sure how many excellent matches she has, but she certainly has a lot of good ones, and probably as many singles matches I would call very good or better as an Joshi performer in history. I watched a few of the Kong matches and they hold up as really strong matches, which I do consider a pretty impressive feather in Satomura's cap. She also had a match with Toyota in 2007 that I enjoyed way more than I would have expected going in. I think the Kana matches feel less impressive with time (though the 2010 one is still great), but I do think it's really neat that she sort of serves as the bridge connecting the 90s with the modern era, and has had good matches with pretty much any Joshi worker who was worth a damn over the last fifteen years. One other thing I'd give her credit for is the ability to work long and compelling matches that are probably excessive without feeling excessive. That is admittedly a bizarre thing to say, but Satomura has this ability to throw a ton into her matches, work long, and still keep things compelling. It's rare that I watch a Satomura match and think that it went too long, which is impressive since she's worked some lengthy bouts often against really green or limited talent where spamming "stuff" is almost a requirement to keep her head above water. I'm not sure when her peak really is which makes it a bit tough to think about her in comparison to other Joshi candidates who usually have really strong and clear peaks that can be pointed to. I can't really entertain the idea with a straight face that she has anything as memorable as the best years of a Hokuto or a Kong, though a lot of that has to do with things beyond her control. I'd also note that just because something isn't as memorable, doesn't mean it wasn't as good or even better. The strength of Satomura on the other hand is in her longevity. She's been at minimum a good worker for over twenty years, with at least some years and periods where I would have little problem calling her a great wrestler who was among the top talent on the planet. This is hard to overlook both because it's a long time by any standard, and because it's a really long time by Joshi standards to the point where I'm not sure she has any peers other than maybe Kong who I don't think was as consistent. To my eyes Satomura is like the world's best utility player, who eventually got a chance to become team captain by working hard, staying consistent, and outlasting bigger stars. This sounds like feint praise but it really isn't. In the grand scheme of things she's had a much better career than she should have given where Joshi was when she started and where it has gone during her career. She's one of the few Joshi wrestlers I feel fairly certain I'll have on my ballot.

While I don't really agree with a lot of the particulars in Jetlag's post I do think there is something to his argument that my appraisal of Hotta is related to binge watching her and really a ton of Joshi in a small span of time. I put off Joshi forever and wasn't really sure I'd get to it. It's a style of wrestling I haven't much cared for since at least 2006, even if I have enjoyed the hell out of Satomura, Kana, and at times Hamada in the last decade or so. I basically forced myself to watch it after many aborted attempts and ended up watching a ton of stuff in a short period of time. Because of that the first impression of Hotta may have hit me harder than it otherwise would have if I was watching things in a more linear way and/or if I was watching things slowly as they unfolded. More importantly when thinking about Hotta I have really only compared her to other Joshi wrestlers for the most part, which is why I can't be certain that I'd rate her. I think the selling discussion is especially specific to Joshi and "the willingness to illustrate" line was framed that way for a reason - it's the best you can hope for with Joshi I'm afraid. I actually had the specific Mita match in mind when I used that language and while I might quibble a bit with Jetlag's description it is reasonably accurate. That said, in the well over a hundred Joshi matches I watched in the last two weeks, that is one of a handful of instances where I can recall even getting that much. You can argue it's bad selling relative to the rest of the wrestling universe, and I might even buy that, but when the knock on Hotta is her selling and she's a Joshi worker there is something pretty amusing about the fact that she's one of maybe two or three people I've seen sell long form limb work AT ALL in a Joshi match. Someone like Chigusa Nagayo, who is an exceptionally sympathetic babyface and a strong talent in her own way, couldn't be bothered to even register damage to her leg at all in the vaunted 87 match with Asuka, so dinging Hotta for selling rings hollow to me. I think the general match layout pointed to is funny, because you could literally say the exact same thing of Kansai, though she tends to do the laying in a half crab mat on the front end of her matches not even bothering to do anything to get you interested in the match in the first place. Or at least that is a narrative of her match structure you could easily construct if you wanted to. Anyway Joshi remains tough for me, because I don't believe all styles are created equal, and there are major issues I have with Joshi in general (selling being the number one issue, but transitions would be another), but after watching a ton of it in a short span of time I sort of agree with OJ's implied stance that you can find greatness in it if you really immerse yourself in it. I don't really feel comfortable grading anyone on a curve though and that does create problems for what to do with a lot of people including even someone like Satomura who I know Jetlag likes (as do I) but who I think has a skill set that is wildly exaggerated because of the universe she operates in.

I'm not sure how any of this addresses my point about psychology. Maybe I explained it poorly. More later

If purpose is too unknowable and context dependent to be a primary method to analyze wrestling, what does that say about how we value psychology? There is simple no way I know of to even discuss what is usually thought of as psychology in pro wrestling without seeing some greater purpose at work. I don't speak Japanese, and to my knowledge no one here other than OJ does, and yet the psychological genius of All Japan is widely touted here both explicitly and implicitly. What we actually know about Kawadas actions in a given match is very limited. There is a ton that is unknowable even pertaining to things like selling. Im not as much of a "purposeist" as Matt, but I struggle with the idea that any real wrestling analysis can be done absent some search for purpose at minimum.

I may watch some more things here or there between now and the deadline, but I'm basically finished at this point and will start bumping and commenting in the various threads. Started with Hotta first tonight, hoping to do several more tomorrow.

Not too late at all. I will be watching guys at least until the 28th. I will add this to the watch pile for this week

Over the next few days I'm going to aim to leave substantive comments in all of the threads on Joshi workers sans perhaps a couple I didn't get to. I have decided to start with Hotta both because she has the least discussion surrounding her, and because she is a case where my own views seem to be at odds with people who are much more favorable to Joshi than I have been over the last ten years or so. First things first. I am not certain I will rank Hotta. That said, she is definitely on my "bubble" for consideration, and would safely make a top 150 if this project were extending that deep. More than that, I would rank Hotta above most of her peers, and find her to be considerably better than many of the most cherished Joshi workers. As a result if I end up leaving Hotta off it will also mean the list of Joshi talents to appear on my ballot won't be particularly long. I can't name 10 who I think are better than Hotta, and peak performance v. peak performance, perhaps not even 5. In the last few days I've had conversations about Hotta with a few different people because I have been somewhat mystified as to why she is regarded as a poor worker by some, and seemingly no better than pretty good by many Joshi fans. The criticisms of her seem to boil down to the following: Unprofessionalism - Here it is argued that Hotta was dangerously stiff and uncooperative in the ring. The Plum Mariko match was cited to me twice from two different sources, though it should be noted that one of the people who cited it scoffed at the notion that it was a particularly meaningful incident. Poor selling - This is not unrelated to the first criticism as it seems that many people regard her as someone who not only sold poorly, but also did so as an expression of her unprofessionalism. Terrible post-prime - Here the argument is not only that Hotta was bad past her peak, but that she has stuck around way too long, and thus what limited good she did is negated by a far larger run of being quite bad. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with the first criticism, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter much to me at all one way or the other. I will say that I didn't think the Mariko match was particularly brutal, and I find Kansai and even Kong to be every bit as recklessly stiff as Hotta can be at times. Furthermore I wouldn't necessarily view Maeda's unprofessionalism as a disqualifier, and I don't think I've seen anyone invoke it against Andre's candidacy. I simply haven't seen Hotta matches that ran off the rails because of this alleged trait, I don't find her to be uniquely violent even relative to her peers, and it's not a criticism I can honestly see myself applying to others even if I believed it. So I'm largely unmoved by it. On the selling front, not only do I not think she's bad at it, I think she's better at it than the vast, vast majority of Joshi workers. I'm not going to say she's an all time great seller - she isn't. I'm not sure any Joshi worker is, and the few that I would rank as especially good will almost assuredly make my ballot. But for someone with a gimmick of being badass, kickboxerish, tough woman, she sells over the long haul of a match, and singular shots very well. I think her selling v. Kong, Kansai, and even Hokuto, is better than what I've seen out of most women in high level singles matches from that era. She's also shown more willingness to at least illustrate that a limb has been damaged than virtually any other Joshi worker I can think of outside of Hokuto. I honestly don't see any evidence that she sells poorly, and think it's an especially odd criticism to make of her given the general selling weaknesses that plague the Joshi scene. As for her post-prime, I saw very little of it and she is bad. I can't and won't defend it. But I would say that I think Kansai is a bad worker post-prime as well, and furthermore there aren't very many Joshi workers that have long runs of goodness, let alone greatness. I think everyone that does, sans maybe one, will end up on my ballot. I've alluded to some of what I see as her strengths above, but I do want to get into it a bit more. Here are her key strengths as I see them. Very good tag worker - I actually think a lot of the Joshi talent from her era were stronger tag performers than singles workers, but Hotta is definitely above the mean. Strong in this context both cutting off spots, delivering her own big spots, and even taking a beating when the match called for it. Unique presence - Hotta is Meada-ish not just with the kicks, but also in that she does have the feel of something different than other talents. The obvious comparison is Kansai (and I'll make that later), but she feels distinct to me and the crowd seemed to buy into her as a "business is picking up" type of badass which adds to her matches. Offense - Kicks, forearms, slaps, suplexes, nasty powerbombs, et. She is a dominant offensive force which fits her character and it feels different than what you see from most of the other Joshi workers of the period. Selling - I addressed it above and I see it as a clear positive for her. Very strong singles peak performances - Her bouts v. Nakano, Asuka, Kansai, Hokuto, and Kong were all pretty different from each other, and all pretty damn great. In none of those matches did I feel like she was the lesser performer, and I'd put these five matches up against the best five matches of any other Joshi worker, especially if we are talking a top five against different opponents (not sure I'd rate her at the level of them all, but the point is I don't think they would look unreasonable next to the top fives of other greats). The Yamada match I saw is not quite at the level of those five, but isn't terribly far off, and was another really strong singles match performance.* Above Tim says Kansai is right there as a way of dismissing Hotta. While the stylistic similarity is evident, I don't think it's immediately obvious that Kansai is better than Hotta. I loved Kansai years ago, but rewatching all this footage over the last couple of weeks, it took me longer to get back into it, where Hotta grabbed me immediately. Perhaps this was selection bias, but it's true nonetheless. I think Kansai had a tendency to work slow building singles matches at times which is jarring within the context of Joshi (I'll talk more about this when I get to her thread), whereas Hotta seemed more likely to lead strong, and if she went to the "laying around in holds" spots it came later in the match and felt a bit more purposeful to me at least on the surface. Kansai was a great tag worker, where Hotta was very good maybe borderline great, and I did soften a bit on my initial "holy fuck Hotta rules" the more I watched, whereas my opinion of Kansai went up the more I watched. Still I'd be hard pressed to say that I thought Kansai was a clearly better, even if I might be slightly more inclined to include her than Hotta. I've seen pretty good matches with Hotta as early as 90, and great matches every year from 91-95. From what I saw I thought she was an especially strong worker in 93/94, but it's hard to say how much of that is just what's easily available. We are too late in the process for me to dig into the late 90s and see what's there, and I know that she wasn't any good in recent years when she popped up. That said I do think she was a great wrestler at her peak, and regardless of what others think of her or what her reputation is, I can't easily dismiss her. She's way too good for that. *These were by no means the only singles matches of hers I watched.

I came close to nominating Yamakawa, but honestly didn't think he'd get any support. Del Ray and LuFisto do feel like regrettable oversites, but I say that as someone who never would have voted for either.

I'm really struggling with Maeda. On the one hand he was in a lot of my favorite matches in NJPW in the 80s, and i second Childs thoughts on the Ueda spot in the 3/86 match which is literally one of the five best matches of all time in my view. I even loved the Don Nielson match which was really polarizing as I recall. That said when I was watching the New Japan Set at no point did I think Maeda was at the same level as Fujinami, Fujiwara, or even Choshu. I'm not entirely sure I liked his peak performances as much as the peak performances of Saito, Kimura, or Hoshino. He absolutely does have that presence, that aura, that charisma that people like Choshu, Hashimoto, Fujiwara, and Tenryu have, but unlike them he's not a guy with a large volume of memorable matches that immediately jump to mind, or where I feel his performance was especially gripping. That might change if I watched his UWF run in a linear way as opposed to cherry picking which I've done in the past but I'm not sure of it. He absolutely doesn't stand out in RINGS, and I'm not sure I can really argue against Ditch's point about him not even being a top ten shootstyle worker. Despite my criticisms he feels like someone who should my list, but when I look at some of the people on the bubble I feel a lot more strongly about them than I do Maeda. I'd be open to a late push at this point on his UWF stuff which I haven't watched in ages. If people point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

TJP feels like a real omission and he came up in talking to my brother the other night as well. I wouldn't have voted for him, but I think he's had an interesting career, and depending on how much you value longevity on the indies I think you could make a reasonable case for him as a top 100 guy.

At this point I'm literally unsure of what Parv's original point was.

I don't see any evidence to support the thesis.

I don't want to create controversy with this, but the nomination list and voting has been open for over a week so I think it would be a fun exercise to look at those who came up short and weren't nominated for whatever reason. When talking about this with my brother the other night the names we came up with were D-Lo Brown and Val Venis,but last night I noticed that Takako Inoue wasn't nominated which surprised me a bit. I also echo anarchistxxx's thoughts that it's kind of surprising, and maybe a hair disappointing, that Jack Evans wasn't put through. Who else missed the cut?

I think if you are looking to create a narrative for a favorite you can come up with lots of reasons why they repeat certain things. And in many cases there would be truth in that narrative because I think more often than not formula in wrestling is done for the explicit purposes of establishing a framework from which good psychology can spring. That said given the success rate of that Flair spot, and the very small level of variation within it, I think it's very hard to argue it is a piece of strategic brilliance that the crowd is going to grasp and appreciate. Really it's just Flair wanting to give the crowd an expected spot.

I think it was good for the overall process because it got Parv back into participating in it and possibly provided a framework for others to use. To me it runs completely counter to how I think about wrestling and my base instincts as a humanities person. I honestly tried to keep it at a distance because I didn't want to be critical of something that had brought a friend back into the project. That said it seems as if others at least enjoyed the discussion about the particulars of it which is good.

I'm kind of amazed JVK hadn't really heard that term before now. It's pretty critical to how many people view AJPW

I'm not sure I agree with the way you have a lot of those framed which is fine because it is your own thing. I'm just struggling a bit with it because I'm not sure what wrestlers I have touted who you feel run counter to your likes and are in step with your "nots." I mean I can assume that you think lucha is to cooperative and "dancy" for example. And there is an extent to which I understand and even agree with that criticism. But then I look at a lucha brawl and to my eyes the stiffness, grittiness and authenticity in that setting honestly decimates anything from any other style. I can absolutely say with a straight face that I find a great lucha brawl to be like a great Mid-South brawl but substantially better and far more believable. The area where I could point to the most clear disagreement I think would be your "big selling" v. "mugging for the camera." I don't quite get that. As someone who has gone to a shit ton of live shows in my life, a lot of the better selling performances I've ever seen both of individual moves and total accumulated damage have been built around small moments that can be seen and felt by people up close. Does that translate to someone in the cheapseats? Well on the indie shows there aren't cameras or cheapseats and in that respect I think there is a special skill in small room wrestling, but even on the bigger shows I think it can if the crowd gets up for it. By contrast I don't dislike big selling, in fact I often really love it...and then there are other times where I think it goes way to far and becomes over the top goofy and/or absurd and makes it hard for me to get into a match. It really depends on how the tactic is deployed, I simply don't see these things as universal, and I don't think "mugging for the camera" is the description I would use for non-big selling or whatever. Maybe I'm reading you wrong here. On the offensive front I also don't believe in universals. The 619 debate has been done to death and I get why people dislike it. I will never in a million years understand how someone can have a strong negative reaction to that but not the stock defensive spots of Flair that to my eyes are far less believable and logical within their respective universes, but what can you do? It's just a difference of the way we view things I guess. In any event I think most things in wrestling are context dependent, but my instinct is to say that offense is the most context dependent of all things.

Another great post. I just want to say that of all the people we have smatterings of from their peak runs, Sewell is probably one of the two or three most personally frustrating to me. I was very skeptical of how good he could really be when Boricua mentioned him to me some time back, but he is really an EXCELLENT babyface not just as a character but as a worker. At minimum I would encourage people to watch the Banderas ladder match which I think is great.