Childs

I've never seen the whole match, but the clip made me want to track it down. They really stiffed the shit out of each other down the stretch.

Curiously heatless for something from this rivalry. Tenryu vs. Mutoh felt like a big deal, but this paled compared to the best NJ vs. WAR tags from '93.

I wasn't as enamored with this as the rest of you guys. It was about what I expected from these teams in the dome, and the finishing stretch was exciting. But I felt I could have wandered away for five minutes at any time during the body of the match and missed very little. Not thatthe work was bad, but one moment didn't build to the next in any meaningful way. That's usually how I feel about the Steiners at this point in my life. I can still see why I loved them as a kid, but they don't much suck me in anymore. As for ranking this against other 1/4 matches, I'd put it well behind Vader/Inoki from '96 and Choshu/Tenryu from '93 and probably behind the Hash matches from '95 and '96.

I'm guessing it's a freelance arrangement; Grantland uses a lot of freelancers. But good for him. Good piece too; shows the value, to Dave, of working with actual editors.

Those musical intros were awful and buzz killing. I don't think this show has been awful match for match, but I kind of hate it.

Johnny Ace's suit might be my favorite thing about the show so far.

It was a fine little match, but no, it didn't feel like anyone cared that much.

I try not to oveereact to things, but if I had been able to get a refund after that opener, I might have. Sometimes, I fucking hate WWE.

Piggybacking on what Loss said, one of the things that confused me about trios matches when I first started watching was the ease with which the second pin often occurs at the end of a fall. I didn't get why they rarely went for the drama of evening a fall at one pin apiece. I don't think twice about it now.

This is unquestionably true, and yet, I have to admit that's how I have joshi classifed in my wrestling brain. So I'm less open to a joshi match that might be good than I would be to pimped matches in most other genres. You almost have to start out by convincing me that the match won't fall into my preconceived notions of what sucks about joshi. That's unlikely to change at this point, but yeah, sexism isn't at the root of my bias. Have you watched Kansai/Kong yet? Main event slugfest with a two-year title chase finally being realized. It's not my favorite Joshi match of the year, but knowing what you like, I think it's the one you are most likely to like. Yeah, I watched it. It's a great match, certainly up my alley stylewise. I've probably overstated my aversion to Joshi a little bit; there are at least 15 or 20 matches I'd unreservedly call great. Hokuto/Kandori, for example, is about as good as it gets. It's just that I have been disappointed by a lot of highly touted '90s Joshi matches, and I've tended to be disappointed for the same reasons. So that colors the way I look at the whole genre and makes me less apt to appreciate the diversity touted by Joshi advocates. Joshi is something I wanted to like, but if the experience doesn't live up to the hope, that's ultimately hard to overcome. Will mentioned the '80s project. I was excited to watch the Joshi discs after reading some of OJ's posts on the unearthed treasures from that decade. But after about 10 discs, I just didn't have any appetite for it. Some of the matches were really good. There was diversity of style. Dump was an indelible character. But I just got sick of it in a way I never did with All Japan or New Japan or early '80s Portland. And ultimately, I don't want my hobby to be an exercise in grim determination.

This is unquestionably true, and yet, I have to admit that's how I have joshi classifed in my wrestling brain. So I'm less open to a joshi match that might be good than I would be to pimped matches in most other genres. You almost have to start out by convincing me that the match won't fall into my preconceived notions of what sucks about joshi. That's unlikely to change at this point, but yeah, sexism isn't at the root of my bias.

Like Will, I have developed an instinctive aversion to women's wrestling. I was actually really excited to dive into joshi a few years back, because I had read so many plaudits for the best workers and matches. But it never clicked for me. The go-go style epitomized by Toyota wears me out in a hurry. And there are a few aesthetic aspects linked to gender -- all the screaming, for example -- that bug me. I don't think of my resistance to joshi in gender terms. I'm just as skeptical of current puro and matches involving Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards, and for many of the same reasons. I still attempt to keep an open mind. In going through the yearbooks, I try to watch the matches that Loss praises with a fresh eye. Usually, they end up striking me as formless overkill, but not always. I have no problem saying that Hokuto, Kong, Jaguar, etc. were great wrestlers and I see no reason at all why they can't be judged against Flair or Jumbo. Any GOAT poll requires cross-genre, cross-era comparisons, and any voter is going to harbor biases for and against certain styles. Aja vs. Flair is no different than Satanico vs. Flair or, I don't know, Vader vs. Jim Breaks.

These arguments invariably become a mess, because it really isn't clear what constitutes a WON Hall-of-Famer. We have some sense that it should take more than work (and the written guidelines say so) but there are clearly inductees who defy that logic. Loss, you talk about Windham not accomplishing enough, but is it clear that he accomplished less than Kurt Angle or Ultimo Dragon? It's a poorly defined honor, so it's easy for people to claim that it means whatever they want it to mean. This is a problem with all HOFs.

Fujiwara vs. Kawada was from All Japan, March 2001. To be fair, it might have been more disappointing than truly awful.

No, that's baseball.

Fujiwara had a match with Kawada. It was bad.

Was he actually suggesting that Edgar was a worse player than Tony Womack? Is that a DH thing? As for the Womack argument, I'd take him over Lenny Harris and Mark Davis. I think he's neck and neck with Bichette. The other guys at least hit higher peaks, though it was, of course, pointless to throw them on the HOF ballot.

I've never cared much about the Ventura debate, in part because Dave has couched it in terms of Jesse's wider fame, about which I couldn't give less of a shit. But I have to say, this discussion has made me consider what drove my love of 1980s WWF. And Jesse was a big part of it. I just loved listening to the guy, to the extent that I cared less about an event if it was called by Heenan and Gorilla. I still like listening to him when I watch 1990s WCW. I have less defined expectations of a wrestling announcer than Loss; I don't think getting over the sporting drama of a match is the only way to skin that cat. Jesse succeeded in creating a character that was, for me, one of the indelible ones from a hugely significant era. So I'd vote for him out of personal preference, though I don't think his case is a commanding one.

Maybe this is simply a cultural difference, because you show zero grasp of the way sport is consumed and talked about in the U.S. The New York Yankees, for example, are clearly viewed by fans across the country as a kind of evil empire that tries to buy championships the way Dibiase tried to buy the WWF title without wrestling. Fans of smaller-market teams talk about it in moral terms all the time. Now, it's true that the Yankees probably don't act out of a desire to make opposing fans view them as evil. But the narrative really isn't all that different, and it isn't a media fabrication. Besides, you're only looking at one aspect of wrestling storytelling. As stated before, there are many matches and angles that aren't based on over-the-top depictions of good and evil. There are underdog stories, stories of longtime rivalry, stories of overcoming injury, stories of matches tarnished by poor officiating -- in other words, stories that are quite common to competitive sport. If you refuse to recognize the overlap, you're just being obtuse. Wrestling borrows these storylines and heightens them because, hey, they work.

Sure, wrestling is generally goofier and more heightened than sport, but I don't think the narratives are as different as you're suggesting. Humble guy shuts up cocky, loquacious guy. Little guy tries to topple big guy. Poorly funded upstart takes on rich, established power. Team fights to get over the hump against a longtime rival. Games undermined by questionable officiating. These are all simple storylines that crop up repeatedly in sport and also lie at the heart of countless memorable wrestling matches and angles. Is wrestling the same as sport? No. As OJ said, it's not precisely like any other entertainment medium. But it certainly borrows durable narratives from sport.

Both capable of enormous douchery, but Inoki's best performances blow Hunter's best stuff out of the water. And frankly, a cultural icon/lunatic with an affinity for dictators is a lot more interesting than a wannabe megalomaniac with delusions of old school credibility.

It's moronic to claim that narrative is unimportant to the way sports are sold and consumed. That narrative might be generated differently in the NBA than it is in wrestling, but there are absolutely strong elements of morality. If you don't think LeBron James was a heel and Dirk Nowitzki a babyface in the 2011 Finals, I'm not sure what to tell you. I can't speak to UK football culture, but in the U.S., there are different layers of sports fandom. There is the level Jerry alluded to on which fans support their local teams through thick and thin. But there's also an enormous pool of general sports fans who are more apt to tune in for big events if there's some sort of melodrama behind them (Red Sox finally win the World Series, LeBron goes down in the Finals, X challenger tries to shut Floyd Mayweather's mouth, etc.) Just because the drama occurs more organically in sports, that does not make it less intrinsic to their appeal. Wrestlers are often trying to recreate the sort of narrative excitement that arises naturally in sports.

Sasuke impressed me by sliding smoothly into the lucha mat sequences. I know it's been said numerous times , but it's amazing that dude can walk, much less wrestle, 17 years later. That dive to nowhere followed by the power bomb to the barely padded floor made for a ridiculous pair of bumps. Caras went over incredibly strong here. I was a little surprised that Sasuke didn't even hint at a comeback, though it was fitting, given the offense he ate. Great addition to the set, because I never would have thought to seek it out.

I watched Mutoh-Hash and this back-to-back, and I preferred this. The first half of Mutoh-Hash was a good version of NJ heavyweight time killing, but it still featured some unengaging groundwork by Mutoh (mitigated by Hash's selling). The match didn't really pick up until Hash started throwing bombs at about the 15-minute mark. The end run was really good, with both guys letting the big moments breath and Mutoh's win coming off as an epic conclusion. But Mutoh's just not a guy I see as a great wrestler, even in his good matches. Misawa-Taue produced a hell of a lot more action, without sacrificing selling or lapsing into overkill. I didn't mind Taue's dual focus. The leg thing almost felt like "found gold." Taue did the initial damage with a nifty counter on the outside, and he kept going back to it more as a way to cut off Misawa's runs than as a way to win the match directly. And Misawa's selling put over the idea that it was a vulnerable target deep into the match. Why wouldn't Taue try to attack Misawa on multiple fronts? He was sort of grasping for a strategy after his big gun failed to bag the elephant in April. The end run was very different; instead of the layered Misawa comeback, we got them going blow-for-blow and staggering one another. I loved Taue's sell of the last Misawa elbow. I guess Mutoh-Hash delivered more of a classic build, but Misawa and Taue started out with the intensity that their NJ counterparts reached mid-match, and they still had something left for the stretch.

Fujiwara and Yatsu were fun in the G-1 , which might not be captured in the WON ratings.