Childs

This was it for their singles matches, and it is a treat, even though both were past their primes.

Well I did give the 5/9/80 Hansen match an A, which is a pretty high rating from me. I was also the high vote on the 12/06/79 Backlund match on the recent Titans show -- and by some margin. But in both cases, it felt like I liked these matches despite Inoki. I'm just wondering if there are matches where the match is good primarily because of Inoki rather than his opponent. Well, you didn't ask: Was Inoki a great wrestler who carried lots of guys to classics? The answer to that would be no. But he was a game participant in a lot of really good matches. Thus, I and a lot of others seem to be saying that "hate" is too strong a reaction to his body of work. I just think that if you disliked him strongly in the Hansen matches and the Backlund match, you're unlikely to find religion on Inoki.

I hated watching every Inoki match that made tape from the '80s, because he mailed in way too many performances. But I like his best stuff too much to say I hate him. Not sure why John felt the Brisco match was just there; I thought it featured lots of hardfought matwork with effective build to the highspots. And Inoki worked hard in it. I think Loss is a fan of that match as well. I also liked the Robinson match, and as Dylan mentioned, I've generally not hated the '70s Inoki I've seen. That was his athletic prime. I genuinely loved that 2/6/86 match against Fujiwara in which Inoki was the lesser guy but held his own. Others have mentioned his willingness to let Vader slaughter him when he was past 50. I feel weird defending Inoki, because I've probably suffered through as much of his worst shit as anyone. But there you have it. JVK, I feel like you're generally not a fan of older-school matwork, so I'm not sure you're ever going to like some of Inoki's better stuff from the '70s. You've already expressed your aversion to the Hansen series, and I thought he was pretty good in those matches. So the gulf might simply be too wide.

I wax and wane on guys as well, and I agree that it's arbitrary. But there are wrestlers who consistently excite me. Matches too. When I see Hashimoto get that look of ferocious determination and start throwing kicks and overhand chops, I always get fired up with him. When I watch Andre and Hansen going at it like rampaging dinosaurs, I always think "Awesome!" Then there are guys I respect but don't react to as strongly. I'm thinking of Negro Casas, Steamboat, Bret Hart, a lot of Terry Funk. With Lawler, his babyface performances in big matches hit me in the gut where I'm more clinically amused by his hide-the-chain heeling. I don't see any profound underlying reason for this. It's the same with songs, movies, whatever. I hear "Ticket to Ride," I get tingles. I hear "Yesterday," I think it's an incredibly tight piece of craft but that's it. I watch "Dazed and Confused," I'm awash in emotions about youth. I watch "Vertigo," I just think it's nifty work. I don't feel the need to examine that alchemy past a certain point. I love talking about how things are crafted, but there's a point where if two works are both great and I react to one more powerfully, it just is.

I understand, believe me. If you really want to go deep on individual years, I'd recommend New Japan '83-'84, '86-'89 and All Japan '89-'93. Though with '80s New Japan, the DVDVR set really does do a lot of the work for you. All Japan was pretty staggering in its week to week quality, especially from '91 to '93. Very few weekly shows without at least one excellent match during those years.

But again, between the 80s sets, the yearbooks and Ditch's download sites, you can piece together a pretty good approximation. Unless you want to watch all the TV from a promotion, that's about as deep as you're going to need or want to go.

I feel like I must be the overall closest to the pin champion for the 80s sets.

But that's primarily because WWF was an international company. Bret might have headlined more big shows, depending on how you define that. But it would be hard to argue that he had the same impact in his own country that Choshu did in Japan in the '80s. He was obviously an important figure in setting up the late '90s wrestling boom, but for a variety of reasons, some not his fault, he never became the guy who made promotions rise and fall.

I think we just forgot about it in making the line-up for the show.

I agree OJ and I think I made that point on the podcast. My problems with Joshi have nothing to do with a lack of athleticism. If anything, the high-end matches sometimes fetishize athleticism to a damaging point. As for the lucha, I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff that we didn't see. As you said, the yearbooks are surveys by nature. But I'm comfortable saying the best stuff from '91 didn't reach the ridiculous heights of the best stuff from '90.

Also, if you're wondering about that ringing sound on Loss' phone, don't worry, it's gone after the first segment.

Hear us try to make sense of our own gender politics and the WWF's take on geo-politics. Yikes. Seriously, though, these yearbook conversations are fun because we get to cover so much ground. No matter what you like, we probably touched on it.

That argument basically penalizes Bock for wrestling in a bigger promotion with more good workers. I have no problem with anyone saying Buddy was better or that he got more out of limited opponents (in fact, I just nominated a match against Tony Borne that illustrates his genius on that front). His creativity and versatility as a performer allowed Portland to put on good television week after week. But he shouldn't win the argument just because he was a shark in a duck pond.

Here's my snapshot 50: 1) Stan Hansen 2) Toshiaki Kawada 3) Yoshiaki Fujiwara 4) Genichiro Tenryu 5) Ric Flair 6) El Dandy 7) Jumbo Tsuruta 8) Mitsuharu Misawa 9) Jerry Lawler 10) Tatsumi Fujinami 11) Rey Mysterio Jr. 12) Riki Choshu 13) Shinya Hashimoto 14) Nick Bockwinkel 15) Buddy Rose 16) Satanico 17) Kenta Kobashi 18) Terry Funk 19) Hijo Del Santo 20) Bryan Danielson 21) Negro Casas 22) Vader 23) Eddy Guerrero 24) Ricky Morton 25) Jushin Liger 26) Volk Han 27) Bill Dundee 28) Steve Regal 29) Ricky Steamboat 30) Finlay 31) Barry Windham 32) Bret Hart 33) Bobby Eaton 34) Randy Savage 35) Naoki Sano 36) Pirata Morgan 37) Kiyoshi Tamura 38) Billy Robinson 39) Akira Taue 40) Blue Panther 41) Yuki Ishikawa 42) Dick Togo 43) Rick Martel 44) Steve Grey 45) Tully Blanchard 46) Arn Anderson 47) Dick Murdoch 48) Greg Valentine 49) Dustin Rhodes 50) Steve Austin

Stray thought. You guys mentioned Inoki aging poorly. That's largely true of '80s Inoki, but I've watched some '70s Inoki lately and that version actually ages well.

Also, this was a great listen. I found myself wanting to jump into the conversation multiple times.

Can't imagine who would do that Will.

Yeah, I didn't mean to diminish Buddy in that respect. I know we've both talked about how nasty his offense was as we've gone through the Portland footage. I guess what I love about Bock is that there was a ruggedness to even the simple stuff he did. And it always suggested to me how tough he was beneath all the heel window dressing. But it's parsing between two guys who'd both me in my top 20 all-time.

I love Nate but didn't think that piece was anything special (nor do I think he intended it to be.)

Magnum is a good comparison in the sense that he's probably a nobody to the current audience but carries that mythic "what could have been" quality for a certain segment of longtime fans. On the other hand, his reputation as a worker hasn't really suffered from people taking second looks. He was solid at worst. There's none of that weird dissonance you get with Brody, who was so admired by Meltzer and others but who looks like shit on tape.

Zach Lowe writes about basketball, and fairly well at that. Grantland has many good contributors. (My favorite is Rany Jazayerli.) This puts the lie to me? Won't dispute that. Have you read Dead Wrestler of the Week? You seemed to be giving Shoemaker a pass because his material is intended for a general audience and not for wrestling crazies such as the posters on this site. My point was that Lowe (along with Rany, Keri, etc.) writes about the NBA for the same general audience, yet is beloved by hardcore basketball people. Are the posters on this board going to be a tough audience for any wrestling writer? Sure. But the folks here are also apt to get excited about a really good wrestling piece. Writing for a general audience needn't make you uninteresting to a more discerning audience. And yes, I agree that Dead Wrestler of the Week was better, both in concept and execution, than his Grantland stuff.

I voted for Bock and suspect the gap might widen if we had more tape of him. I love Buddy. He was maybe the most imaginative wrestler I've ever seen and also a great athlete. But one of my absolute favorite things in wrestling is a tough heel champion -- a guy who might stooge a little and has no regard for rules but when the chips are down, will beat your ass to keep his gold. Bock was as good as anybody I've ever seen at that and with slight tweaks, made the same character into an effective babyface. He just really fit what I want out of my wrestling.

This is nonsense. Zach Lowe puts the lie to what you're saying, writing to the same audience on the same web site. I know from my own journalism experience that experts in many fields appreciate it when their work is explained well to a general audience. Shoemaker's work on Grantland just isn't very good.

I guess Tanahashi isn't the worst candidate. He seems to be the biggest Japanese star of his generation, even if that's a bit of a booby prize. And regardless of what I think, many in the Observer sphere regard him as an all-time great worker. But it highlights the absurdity of putting guys on the ballot when they're still in their prime. Regardless of what any of us think about Tanahashi, this isn't the time to put a period on his career. It just defies common sense. I mean, we could stick LeBron James or Miguel Cabrera or Adrian Peterson in their respective HOFs, but why would it occur to anyone to do so? I get that wrestling is a little different given the never-ending careers. But it ain't that different, and it's unbelievable that this problem was allowed to persist after the Angle vote demonstrated the silliness of the time standards.

Well, it's no secret that there's a pretty big disconnect between the lovers of recent New Japan and a lot of the more frequent posters here. I've yet to see even one Tanahashi-Okada match I'd call a classic, much less a series of them.