Childs

Misawa was always ahead of Kawada, and I don't think just because of age. Baba acquiring the Tiger Mask gimmick and putting the mask on him was also a big, early sign of faith. Misawa's ascent was slowed by injuries, but they treated him as a player way back in '84-'85, a good 3-4 years before Kawada was any kind of presence on TV. Baba saw Misawa as a future star long before 1990.

Fujinami and Choshu actually worked the mat quite a bit in their remarkable '83 series -- not intricate matwork but intense battles for position and leverage that set the tone for their matches. I agree about 1980, which was cool because of the way he worked as a jr. heavyweight ace against a succession of very different opponents.

Some other Japan ones that came to mind: Jumbo in '91, Tenryu in '89 and '93, when he carried the WAR/NJ feud that's among my favorite things in wrestling history, Doc in '94. The '80s lucha set makes a damn good case for Satanico in '84. I wanted to pick a Fujinami or Choshu year but couldn't isolate one for either guy. My favorite Flair year is probably '87, because I grew up on the Windham and Garvin feuds. But it lacked the territorial defenses that made his earlier years so chunky. Eddy in '04 stands right near the top of best years from the '00s.

I think Rey was the best worker in the US for that decade You'd probably put Danielson No. 2 right? Those strike me as the only two who were consistently near the top for most of the decade.

Yeah, it's easy to become numb to their intrinsic wickedness and forget to comment on it.

That's pretty much their ideal, isn't it?

That's a good point. May well be low-risk, low-reward.

Agreed, but PWG has always seemed content to maintain its SoCal audience and sell a little merch to hardcores scattered around the country. I think you can hum along at that level without generating a lot of buzz among the folks here. But if ROH has larger ambitions (which, maybe it doesn't), that seems more problematic.

Does their plan to return to PPV run counter to that SMW vibe? I don't know the answer; genuinely asking.

I was amused to see that in the sub-headline of his piece on Detroit wrestling, they turned the Sheik into the Iron Sheik. That's not Shoemaker's fault. It's just a funny illustration of the lack of wrestling knowledge among the people packaging his stuff.

No, we're representative of people who desperately want to see good wrestling. And if you're not exciting us, your chance of exciting a broader audience seems poor. I mean, the reviews of New Japan here are more mixed than in most places. But it at least generates some discussion. I take your point about the tastes here; I just think that if ROH were a hot product, people on PWO would talk about it more. And with that, I'll drop it.

You don't think it's bad that a company trying to sell PPV to a national audience has few devotees on a hardcore wrestling board? I agree PWO is less indy-focused than other places, but I don't think it's a good sign.

The fact that no one on this board gives a fuck about ROH is probably a bad sign for their viability. It means their product isn't even working for hardcores. I live in Baltimore and it hasn't once occurred to me to go to a taping in recent years. And I say that as someone who was a steady fan of the promotion as recently as 2008.

I certainly understand why people loved/love the idea of that match. The first few minutes were cool with the energy and big spots, but they got really ragged after that and petered out. It wasn't anywhere near the best match in the world that day -- that'd be Sano vs. Shamrock in Japan.

I loved the six-man from May with the Outsiders and Waltman against Flair, Piper and Kevin Greene. Probably my favorite surprise from going through all of 1997.

We're talking one week away for a guy who's been incredibly over for more than a year. I hope people aren't that fickle.

If you don't think Brock is freakishly huge, you've lost all sense of human proportion.

Huh, don't think I ever saw that for whatever reason.

I know some rather 'purist' Puro aficionados who despise most of the guys who came in from MMA and pan their matches for the shoot style elements... ... Seriously, there's people out there like this. They mocked me for rating it as my favorite match of the card. I love the idea of "purists" who have no understanding of New Japan's history or that of Sakuraba.

Beginning of '86. The UWF guys were re-introduced at the beginning of January and the first big NJ vs. UWF matches were in early February as I recall. Edit: There wasn't a "shot fired" in the sense of Choshu turning on Fujinami in '82. They actually started the UWF guys working against each other.

I don't think love for that match is an outsider opinion on this board, however. And Sakuraba is totally a pro wrestler.

I would say that's essentially how Bryan worked as an ace on the indies, though he went through different shadings depending on face/heel status. He's certainly capable if the powers that be aren't bothered by the size thing.

With the Warrior news on top of a historic Mania and the Network subscriber announcement, it seems the universe might be trying to kill Dave.

Yeah, I agree that's a lot of it, although he was on top after the real boom time in the '80s. He actually fell in a bit of a dead zone for me as a fan, though I was still watching pretty regularly in 1989. Was he a major figure in the UK fan boom of the early '90s?