Childs

I don't know which role required him to be more self-conscious. But it seems tiresome to point out that it's hard to separate a guy's work from the style of his promotion. I mean, no shit, right? I don't blame Curt for wrestling the way he did in WWF. And yes, it worked for him to a degree. But it's totally fair to say he was on track to have an all-time great in-ring career and fell off that track because he went to a place that de-emphasized a lot of his best tools. To take your Pacino example, wouldn't you have to argue that Al's career is more flawed because he's been a caricature of his own hammiest qualities for most of the last 20 years? Has he really been kind to the legacy he created in his first 20? That doesn't mean the later work invalidates the good stuff. But as fans, we're allowed to be disappointed when a talented performer's career doesn't live up to our best hopes. As for Curt's uniqueness, I think we could say a lot of the same shit about Shawn Michaels.

I'm not sure WWE would want him at this point. Although I guess they could book a good run of him fighting to regain respect against the guys who passed him. Not that they would. I feel bad for Joe. He was a gateway guy who helped me find a lot of the wrestling I like best.

I don't think "lacked adaptability" is the right criticism for Henning. He worked a fiery 10-minute brawl with Hansen and an hour-long technical build with Bockwinkel in the same 12 months, and both are great matches with tremendous performances by him. He got over everywhere he went and did it playing fairly different roles. The Jumbo match from '85 and the Lawler title change aren't anywhere near the best examples of his work, though neither is bad. The criticism of Curt is that once he hit the biggest stage, he bought into one aspect of his work to the exclusion and detriment of a lot of his best tools (well, most of the time ... I really like his '90 matches against Tito.)

The problem with Henning is that his most-seen stuff is also his most disappointing. He was a phenomenal young talent. Based on his Portland and AWA work, you could've convinced me he was headed for a top-20 all-time kind of career. Tremendous babyface, very good heel champion when he made the turn in AWA. In addition to the bumping, he could brawl, work holds, fly, connect emotionally. As Mr. Perfect, he had his moments. But he became overly reliant on showy bumping and went months at a time without quality matches. So in a way, his career was both better and worse than a lot of fans would perceive.

Damnit Loss, if I can't make unfounded assumptions about good ol' J.R., who can I make unfounded assumptions about?

I liked the global warming promo he cut in the middle of this week's Observer. Particularly amusing was the fact that in came in connection with an item about Jim Ross, who strikes me as a likely climate change denier.

The WCW/ECW/WWE piece brought this week's issue to a screeching halt. That, to me, is Dave at his worst -- 7,500 words of regurgitated history without much of a time hook or a cogent argument. He was reacting to Barbed Wire City and some WWE.com piece, but he didn't really explain what he thought of either. Just an awful slog.

I don't understand the point of debating a top four that would include Hansen, largely because of his Japanese work, but would not include Japanese guys. I mean, any reasonable discussion of definitive stars from the '80s would have to include Riki Choshu, wouldn't it?

I think you'll really enjoy that 12/6/91 Hansen/Spivey vs. Jumbo/Taue. It's only about 12 minutes but really intense and focused, especially compared to the MVC stuff that drove you nuts throughout the year.

How did you end up feeling '91 compared to other years we've covered? Probably not the best in terms of top-end matches, but I've found it a very easy year to get through.

Was this made available after it got taken down? Does anybody have it? I hope someone does. I haven't seen it since then but I was talking about it with a friend the other day and it put me in the mood to watch it again. It bugs me that I've never seen the video of this, because we we there live, and I've always wanted to know how well it held up.

Yeah, they did a masterful job of building these guys up as the two rising stars you wanted to see in the final. It's hard to watch this and not make comparisons to the All-Japan peer group. It would take another year for the All-Japan guys to hit this level in a singles match that didn't involve Hansen or Jumbo. But this was the best Chono or Muto ever got. They delivered a ton of action without blowing past the moments that called for selling or kicking out of finishers. I loved the spot where Chono rose to counter Muto's moonsault only for Muto to vault over the counter and retain the advantage. I also liked that Chono, after pulling out so many matches with the STF, had to dig deeper in his bag to win this one. They deserved every bit of applause the crowd poured on them.

They did an excellent job of making the opening matwork seem more important than usual in an NJ juniors match. I particularly liked the way they both fought out of the surfboard, because when it was applied later in the match, that actually felt like a moment. Nogami got to look super-gutsy, fighting through the kind of stuff that put away most Liger opponents. This lacked the nastiness of Liger-Honaga but felt fiercer than most of the Liger-Benoit matches. I'm not sure why Nogami didn't pop at this stage. He seemed to have the right blend of athletic ability and passion to be a more enduring rival for Liger.

The best thing about this was the build from the prettier, more fluid matwork of the first fall, to the violent, desperate action of the third. I agree that it's no Dandy-Azteca, but that's a terribly difficult standard. Except for Atlantis half-botching his dive, the third fall was pretty stirring. I loved that instead of sitting in the ring after he hit his dive, Panther went to the apron to ram his shoulder into Atlantis' back. The Gory Special that followed made for a great nearfall. And then the execution of the actual finish was beautiful. Probably my lucha MOTY to this point, ahead of Santito vs.Brazo de Oro.

I agree that their draw two nights earlier felt bigger and more dramatic. That said, most of the work here was excellent, with Chono mounting a convincing attack on Hash's leg, Hash rallying savagely and Chono finding a way to apply the STF. Hash's selling of the initial leg attack could have been better. But this was a strong trial-by-fire performance from both guys. Chono was hugely and deservedly over by this stage.

I enjoyed the film and am glad they got to finish it. But I agree with those who don't see much potential for an audience beyond wrestling fans. If I had to sum up the arc of their story it's: company builds a passionate cult audience by embracing the most unsettling elements of its craft, ultimately can't sustain itself because of the same people and decisions that made it a phenomenon. That's a workable arc, but to sell it to a wider audience, I think they would need to draw out three or four indelible characters who dramatize the excitement, the hopes and the human cost when it all fell apart. Instead, they went for a broad survey of people involved with ECW. Many of those people said interesting things, but the central story became muddled at times. In comparing it to the World Class doc, they didn't find any hook as ready as the Von Erich family tragedy or any character as haunting as a middle-aged Kevin Von Erich, walking through the ruins of the Sportatorium. And that film didn't find much audience outside wrestling, as far as I know. But that all sounds way too negative. They did a bunch of things well: 1) They used the arena footage to convey how wild the shows were. 2) They captured the atmosphere of mania, deceit and paranoia as the company fell apart. 3) They crafted a good mini-profile of Tony Lewis to show how much the fans cared. 4) They included a lyrical little montage at the end, showing all the key ECW performers who later died. 5) They managed a pretty convincing depiction of Paul E. without talking Paul E. Things I wasn't as hot on: 1) They overused the Extreme Reunion footage. They were smart to use some of it to show the toll ECW took on its performers and the enduring passion of the fans. But the detailed dissection of Extreme Reunion booking served no purpose. And they did nothing to put the Sabu footage in context or explain why it was meaningful. 2) They used too many talking heads. They generally did a clever job of using the journalists in lieu of a narrator. But they would have been better off letting seven or eight strong voices carry the film instead of bringing in a Missy Hyatt here or a Bruce Mitchell there or a Jerry Lynn out of leftfield. 3) The film opened weaker than it needed to with the reunion footage and too much detail about Eddie Gilbert. They would have been better off starting us right in the heart of ECW at its peak and describing the inextricability of its success and doom. Then they could have backtracked to the beginning of the story. Things I wanted to hear more about: 1) How exactly did they decide to go in the more "extreme" direction? Was that all Heyman? 2) What role did drugs play at the peak of the promotion? 3) Others have said this but what about the women and the fans' troubling embrace of violence against them? I've rambled on here. But I would encourage any wrestling fan to watch it. It's one of the better wrestling docs (I'd put it behind World Class and Wrestling with Shadows and in a different category than any of the WWE releases) and attempts to reckon with the truths of ECW in a way Rise and Fall did/could not.

I love the Vader shootstyle matches; I just don't think of them as shootstyle matches. They're Vader matches.

Really, most of the elite All-Japan guys could be in the discussion -- Misawa, Kawada, Jumbo.

Vader's right up there as an offensive wrestler. Others that come to mind: Hansen, Liger, Benoit, Kobashi, Eaton, Danielson, El Dandy, Finlay, Billy Robinson, Dick Togo.

This actually felt like less of a Tenryu-Yatsu tease than the previous tag involving those two. The match was easy to sit through, with a lot of action and hellacious shots. But it never took on the kind of identity that would make it stand out in the memory. Tenryu and Hara struggled to find the timing on their old double-team spots. Haku fit right in, as Loss noted.

I can only add to the praise for this one. The first half of this was your basic athletic guy doing stick and move vs. monster heavy hitter. They executed that part well, with Vader really laying in his shots. But the match took off in the stretch run, with some tremendous counters (Vader catching Muto mid-handspring and throwing him on his head was a highlight) and nearfalls. Muto earned a credible win without making Vader look anything less than beastly. I watched four matches from this show. Chono-Bigelow was surprisingly good. Hash-Choshu was quite a spectacle because Choshu ate a hellacious beating without ever really rallying. But the crowd gave Vader-Muto a whole different level of reaction, which was a testament to how good they were this night.

I drew a reasonable conclusion based on what you wrote. You talked about the general problem of people getting by with "pretend" work because wrestling fans have no standards. And then you used Dave as a specific example. How else would one take that? You're either trolling (a strong possibility given the overall content of your posts) or you're too stupid/devoid of communication skills to have this conversation. Regardless, I'm done. In the words of Lester Freamon, "You ain't even worth the skin off my knuckles, junior."

Don't be taking out sentences to suit your agenda. That changes nothing.

I didn't defend the quality of his writing, and if you read through the thread, you'll notice numerous instances of me criticizing the sloppy presentation in the WON. I have no problem with anyone criticizing the specific stuff Dave produces. But Andrews took it several steps beyond that by suggesting that Dave is "pretending" to be a journalist. I think that's insulting and demonstrates a poor understanding of the field in which I happen to work. It's common for major publications to stomach sloppy writing from reporters who mitigate that flaw with deep knowledge of their beats or great ability to produce scoops. The difference between those publications and the WON is that they have editors who are charged with cleaning up the raw copy from said reporters. Is the lack of decent editing a flaw in the WON? Absolutely. Does it wipe out Dave's value as a reporter and reduce him to the level of an amateur blogger? You yourself have said that you value his content, so I guess not. Dave has worked for highly regarded publications over the years, from The National to Yahoo! Sports. So the suggestion that the "real world" would view him as a joke is, on its surface, incorrect. Actually you've come to your own wrong conclusion there. If you re-read my post I was talking about people (and different fields, to boot) in general before I mentioned Dave not exactly being a candidate for TIME magazine work. Here is what you wrote: "the common thread is people hang around the wrestling business and pretend they do things people do for a living... and fans don't second guess it. There are people who probably think Dave is no different from the editor of TIME." You jumped from a line about people around the wrestling business pretending they do real jobs to a line about fans misperceiving Dave as equivalent to the editor of Time. The reader's natural conclusion is to think you're lumping Dave in with the people who are pretending. If you can't see that, you're a moron.

I didn't defend the quality of his writing, and if you read through the thread, you'll notice numerous instances of me criticizing the sloppy presentation in the WON. I have no problem with anyone criticizing the specific stuff Dave produces. But Andrews took it several steps beyond that by suggesting that Dave is "pretending" to be a journalist. I think that's insulting and demonstrates a poor understanding of the field in which I happen to work. It's common for major publications to stomach sloppy writing from reporters who mitigate that flaw with deep knowledge of their beats or great ability to produce scoops. The difference between those publications and the WON is that they have editors who are charged with cleaning up the raw copy from said reporters. Is the lack of decent editing a flaw in the WON? Absolutely. Does it wipe out Dave's value as a reporter and reduce him to the level of an amateur blogger? You yourself have said that you value his content, so I guess not. Dave has worked for highly regarded publications over the years, from The National to Yahoo! Sports. So the suggestion that the "real world" would view him as a joke is, on its surface, incorrect.