Childs

Wow, this thread was actually productive.

There is that.... I am in no way claiming that there is an objective or logical selective process for potential voters btw. Yeah, I wasn't really trying to rip on Alan, who certainly puts in a ton of effort, even if his tastes strike me as loony. Hell, I'd rather he have a ballot than Alvarez. It just struck me as another indication of how arbitray Dave is in handing out votes.

I know he may have the wrong opinionz from some on here but he has watched more (old) wrestling than even he lets on online. Yes we are e-buddies but regardless of that Ive never known to have a glaring lack of knowledge on wrestling. But what qualifies him as an expert compared to people on this board? He traffics mostly in opinions on recent Japanese wrestling, which is fine. But do we have any evidence that he has nuanced opinions on Dick Murdoch or Gran Hamada or Volk Han? He just seems like a "friend of the WON" voter, which, again, is fine but for the fact that Dave tries to portay his HOF as something definitive.

Without the benefit of careful analysis, I'd say 1988 was a stronger year in Japan than 1998. Less variety maybe, but the big companies were clicking on their way to the pinnacles reached in 1989.

I've watched a shitload of weekly wrestling TV from the '80s over the past few years and a fair amount from the '90s because of the yearbooks. You can certainly pick years (early '80s Portland, All Japan from '89 and '91-'93, New Japan during the UWF invasion, maybe 1992 WCW) that beat what we're getting now. But I have no problem with the idea of modern WWE as an upper middle class TV product. I mean, if you hate the wrestling style, you hate the wrestling style. But they're giving us regular, easy access to strong renditions of said style. And if you can't stand the presentation, current technology makes it easy as hell to zip to the good stuff.

Will, you need to knock out the last section of your Rey comp to demonstrate the sheer weight of his WWE excellence.

Choshu was an excellent tag wrestler, really good at interacting with his partners and creating momentum swings when he was tagged in. Yatsu was really good too, both as the lesser, punishment-eating partner to Jumbo and Choshu and as the occasional senior partner in tandem with someone like Nakano. Tenryu became a great tag wrestler. He was great at playing punk when matched with someone like Baba and then equally great as the ace in those WAR tags. He and the BattlArts guys delivered the nastiest pinfall break-ups I've seen. Fuchi and Kikuchi were both great, Fuchi as a sadist (though he had one great babyface performance from the '80s set) and Kikuchi as Japanese Ricky Morton.

I remember this being really good but not quite as good as their title match from 1994. Have you seen that one Loss?

Anyway, matches to see before you die are too numerous to list, but if I were a nascent hardcore fan, here are some matches I'd want someone to show me... Andre-Hansen 9/23/81 Choshu vs. Fujinami 4/3/83 Buddy Rose vs. Curt Henning - 5/28/83 Lawler vs. Dundee - 6/6/83, 12/30/85 Flair vs. Jumbo - 6/8/83 Satanico vs. Gran Chochisse - 1984 NJ 5-on-5 gauntlet - 4/19/84 Jumbo vs. Kerry - 5/22/84 Fujiwara vs. Sayama - 12/5/84, 9/11/85 Santo vs. Espanto - 8/31/86 Jumbo/Tenryu vs. Choshu/Yatsu - 1/28/86, 2/5/86, 1/24/87, 2/5/87 Flair vs. Windham - 4/11/87 Fujiwara vs. Choshu - 6/9/87 Hansen vs. Tenryu - 3/9/88, 3/27/88, 7/27/88 Jumbo vs. Tenryu - 10/28/88, 6/5/89, 10/11/89 Fujiwara vs. Yamazaki - 7/24/89 Liger vs. Sano - 8/10/89, 1/31/90 Hansen/Tenryu vs. Jumbo/Yatsu - 12/6/89 Jumbo vs. Misawa six-mans from - 10/19/90, 4/20/91, 5/22/92 Sano vs. Shamrock - 5/19/91 Sano vs. Minoru Suzuki - 7/26/91 Vader vs. Sting - 7/12/92, 12/28/92, 2/21/93 Hansen vs. Kawada - 2/28/93 Hansen vs. Kobashi - 7/29/93 Tenryu vs. Hashimoto - 6/17/93, 8/8/93, 2/17/94 plus any interpromotional tag involving these two Misawa vs. Kawada tags - 12/3/93, 6/9/95, 5/23/96, 12/6/96 Misawa vs. Kawada - 6/3/94 Regal vs. Finlay - 3/24/96 Tenryu vs. Takada - 9/11/96, 12/13/96 Han vs. Tamura - 9/25/96, 1/22/97, 9/26/97 Austin vs. Hart - 11/17/96 M-Pro six-man - 12/16/96 Tenryu vs. Fujiwara - 7/24/97 Santo vs. Casas - 9/19/97 Ishikawa vs. Ikeda - 8/29/99, 4/24/05 (date??) Navarro vs. dandy - 11/18/01 Danielson vs. Low-Ki - 6/7/02 Hashimoto vs. Kawada - 2/22/04 Necro vs. Samoa Joe - 6/11/05 Eddy vs. Rey - 6/23/05 Danielson vs. Nigel - 6/9/07 Danielson vs. Morishima 8/25/07 BattlArts 6-man - 7/26/08 Black Terry on YouTube 2010

I dislike technical Dory. I kind of like him when he's fired up because he and his brother are getting their asses kicked by monsters. He just needed someone to beat some urgency into him. It is weird that he's kin to Terry, who ranks among the most charismatic wrestlers of all time. The inevitable comparisons do him no good.

This match could help hasten said death through sheer boredom.

AWA - Good version of Curt Henning + Stan Hansen + Rick Martel + Buddy Rose beating the hell out of Shawn Michaels = a set I should enjoy. Georgia - I'm not sure the matches we have on tape are as good as the workers, by and large. Most of the stars peaked elsewhere. Memphis - Best announcer ever, two of the best wrestlers ever (Lawler and Dundee) at their peaks, concession stand brawls, Shinya Hashimoto brutalizing hick jobbers. My favorite American set that has come out of the '80s project to date, though it's agonizing to know how much great shit we don't have. World Class - My least favorite American set so far, because the good shit got a bit redundant, few matches seemed to reach their full potential and the promotion outright tanked for a few years before a shot of Memphis redeemed it. That said, you definitely want to see the Freebirds vs. the Von Erichs, the Dynamic Duo and Eric Embry among other treasures. Florida - Not enough tape. Mid-South - Big hosses beating on each other, long Dick Murdoch classics, Ernie Ladd street fighting in a golf outfit, hidden treasures from Houston, great Jim Duggan matches. It's hard to argue with Mid-South, though nothing from the set hit the peaks of Lawler-Dundee. WWF - Straight nostalgia that's not quite supported by the quality of the wrestling, though 24/7 has substantially beefed up our supply of good matches in recent years. There's something to be said for popping in a disc and feeling like a kid again. NWA (Crockett) - Probably the chief rival to All Japan for '80s supremacy. Flair's matches with Windham were the first "classics" I saw as a kid, and I still love them. The Midnight Express and the R 'n' R's defined what tag team wrestling should be. I totally bought the Cold War drama of Nikita beating Magnum and then fighting for his fallen rival after the motorcycle accident. Terry Funk's 1989 run is a great cherry on the sundae along with Luger's suprisingly excellent work from that year. In this case, the actual matches live up to the nostalgia. AJPW - Just a ridiculous collection of great matches, most of them involving Jumbo, Tenryu or both. The evolution from native vs. gaijin in the early '80s to Choshu's invasion in 1985 to Jumbo vs. Tenryu at the end kept it from getting too samey. The great matches of 1980-1984 felt a lot different than the great matches of 1987-1989. I'm glad other people seem to be digging the set. NJPW - Fewer great matches than All-Japan but more variety. I loved Choshu vs. Fujinami, the UWF invasion, the 10-man eliminations and pretty much everything the promotion cranked out in 1989 (Sano-Liger, Vader, Hashimoto, Nogami courting death, Russian amateurs, etc.) I loved working on this set, because a lot of the treasures we found came from nowhere, and guys like Hoshino, Sakaguchi and Saito came away with new reps. Portland - Great TV with hot promos bleeding directly into long, smartly worked matches. Buddy Rose held the whole thing together, and for a few years there, he was about as good as anybody. St. Louis - My favorite '80s stuff from St. Louis actually comes from All-Japan broadcasts. You can't beat the unintentional comedy of Hiroshi Wajima hanging out with Neil Lomax. Joshi - Hard to watch in big doses because even in the '80s, the matches ran to overkill. That said, it's hard to deny the heat generated by Dump or the greatness of Jaguar and Devil. Lucha - Damn shame that we don't have more footage, but the best of what we have rivals the best stuff from anywhere. Nobody did seedy, bloody hatred better than the top luchadores. Europe - There was a lack of hate and urgency to a lot of World of Sport. But the best stuff featured mat creativity the likes of which you won't see anywhere else. Steve Grey and Marty Jones could hang with anybody in the world, and every fan should see a little Johnny Saint before death.

Dibiase was a very good all-around performer. But for me, it was instructive to watch him team with Hansen in Japan. From his ring entrance to the way he portrayed his character with every movement in the ring, Stan came off larger than life. Ted, bereft of creative booking or the ability to cut promos, came off as a solid hand, nothing more. I though watching them together, in a foreign setting, it was beyond obvious why one was Top 20 all-time and the other was merely very good. As for the broader question about great matches, it depends what question you're trying to answer. Can someone be an all-time great performer without a bevy of great matches? Sure. I don't think many people would deny that Hogan was an all-time great figure in the business. But if you're debating the merits of guys as in-ring workers, it does matter. I love William Regal. He did all kinds of nifty shit that made me excited to watch his matches, even if they were only 10 minutes each. But I couldn't put him above Flair or Tenryu or Hansen given that they produced dozens of great matches for every one that Regal produced.

Rematch was 4/6/93 and is also on the set.

We're no-selling it in tribute to DK and Sayama no-selling those tombstones on the floor.

WAR I think.

UFC is even more monpolistic than the NFL, MLB etc. because at least in those leagues, you have groups of rich owners driving up salaries by competing with one another. You would need a Dana in charge of each fight camp or something to create an equivalent labor market in MMA. I suspect it will take some time for fighters to cease being grateful that UFC pulled them out of the gutter in terms of earning potential. But if the sport continues to thrive, some attempt at labor organization seems like a down-the-line possibility. It will be interesting to see if it ever gains more traction than it has in pro wrestling. Given the current set-up, I can't see the sport following a boxing model and splintering in a million directions.

I think you'd also want Tenryu vs. Fujiwara from 11/24. It's a dream match-up for a lot of people on this board and was pretty damn good as I recall.

I'm listening to the Observer audio analysis, and I can't believe that Bryan regards this as a long-range plus for the fighters. He should be chained to a wall and forced to study guilded age economics or, hell, the WWF purchase of WCW.

WRONG and Meltzer is totally right. A) They do hold up. 4/21/83 is still one of the best matches of all times and has the privelege of being a match that can't be duplicated While on a rant, a lot of Sayama's backlash and DK's too for that matter is that people always tear down what is obviously the best out there. People always tear down people who are better at something so they can feel and cheat themselves up higher in the totem pole of life. The scary thing is that people don't even conciously know when or why they're doing this. Than they embrace mediocrity or something not quite as good as the best as a way to justify not getting their self esteem by actually going out and doing something .... I have to go but I continue on this rant if i have time. You are comparing 80s matches to other 80s matches from a 2011 brain. I am one of the few who can actually put myself in the 80s. Also, you are comparing 80s to s80s in what you think is good wrestling from your perspective, not what was actually great wrestling than and what is actually great wrestling now. Yeah Will, your mental time travel skills are for shit.

It also seems like Dave fails to understand that looking back at old art using standards which have evolved over time is something that we do constantly as thinking humans. Yes, it's helpful to understand how various works were viewed in the context of their times. But in other fields, it's generally accepted that as modern consumers, we're still allowed to judge them. And I'm not saying Dave is dumb. This is just a real analytical blind spot for him.

Loss, I was curious why you guys chose this one over the Superbrawl match between these two? I haven't watched it yet, so there's no implied criticism there at all. Just curious.

Going more than 15 or 20 minutes in a singles match was certainly not his thing. But I can't think of a ton of matches where that weakness got in the way (the Jumbo broadway is an obvious exception.) In fact, he was pretty damn good at working to his strengths. Most of his peak singles matches were short and intense. He left the epic stuff for tags, where he was tremendous as the guy who would run in to create game-changing moments. I guess I can see the criticisms of his headscissors- and scorpion-centric control segments. But he rarely held them long enough to lose the crowd, so they don't bother me too much. I don't know if he carried people exactly but he brought an intensity to matches that lifted other great performers. Jumbo and Tenryu, for example, both got more interesting when he showed up. Fujinami, another all-time great, had his best matches with Choshu. Some of Hashimoto's earliest great matches were against him. Fujiwara had one of his best matches against him. I guess what it comes down to is that for all of his technical deficiencies compared to other all-time greats, he had a rare ability to make matches feel big and charged. Throughout the New Japan and All Japan reviewing, I never groaned when I saw his name on match list, because I knew his presence promised some sort of excitement. I can't say that about too many guys.

Yeah, Choshu was probably my favorite guy on the New Japan set, though not technically the best. He's like the Jerry Lawler of Japan. If you can get past perceptions of a limited moveset, he was awesome at making pro wrestling feel alive and meaningful.