Childs

But Dirty Rhodes wishes you were.

Just to be clear, and I know it wasn't what you intended, but I wasn't the one tossing "bias". John No, I know.

No one liked the matches from the '84 tourney. I went in expecting to nominate some and just couldn't find any that felt deserving. TOSJ was better but suffered from the fact that we had better versions of a lot of the match-ups. I actively disliked the final, and the Takada-Kosh wasn't nearly as good as the three we nominated. The Owen shit tended to be badly clipped. As for the bias talk, no shit. It's three guys culling through hundreds of hours of footage. But we all have different biases, and actually, we bent over backwards to include junior shit that we didn't love (like the last two DK/Tiger Mask matches.) If we didn't go at it with bias, it would be boring as shit.

The first two weren't bad, but they mostly introduced patterns that would be taken to greater heights in the '83 matches. We decided that we liked the five '83 matches so much that we had to include the whole lot, and the '82 matches (both nominated) were victims of that decision. You should get the '82 and '83 season sets, though. It's fun to watch the whole thing unfold week by week. Overall, I'd say Choshu-Fujinami is well-represented. Tiger Mask fared so well only because they brought in a lot of interesting people to wrestle him.

I confess to really scratching my head over Saito. I wouldn't have a problem with him going in as part of an Ishingundan "group". But I think that anyone who looked at things honestly would find that Terry Gordy is a better stand alone candidate than Saito, and never really got a serious push as a solo candidate. Even within Ishingundan, one would be surprised by how limited his role was because he left for the US: New Wolves Phase 1-7-83 (taped 1-6) 2. Killer Khan/Seiji Sakaguchi d. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 1-14-83 3. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 1-21-83 (taped 1-20) 3. Tatsumi Fujinami/Antonio Inoki/Seiji Sakaguchi d. Killer Khan/Masa Saito/Riki Choshu 1-28-83 2. Rusher Kimura/Isamu Teranishi/Animal Hamaguchi d. Killer Khan/Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 2-4-83 (taped 2-3) 3. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami d. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 3-4-83 1. Tatsumi Fujinami/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 3-11-83 4. Antonio Inoki/Seiji Sakaguchi/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Masa Saito/Riki Choshu/Killer Khan 3-18-83 2. Killer Khan/Masa Saito/Riki Choshu d. Rusher Kimura/Animal Hamaguchi/Isamu Teranishi 3-25-83 (taped 3-24) 2. Masa Saito/Riki Choshu d. Adrian Adonis/Tony P. 4-5-83 (taped 4-3) 4. Kengo Kimura/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Killer Khan/Masa Saito 4-8-83 (taped 4-7) 3. Killer Khan/Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 4-22-83 (taped 4-21) 3. Antonio Inoki d. Masa Saito Saito jobs in a Loser Leaves Town match, and heads to the US Ishin Gundan vs Seiki Gundan Phase Choshu and Khan farted around for a while after Saito left, before they joined hands with Animal Hamaguchi in June to form Ishin Gundan. Their first TV matches together where in July. Yatsu returned to Japan in October after a year abroad "growing up", and got a major push as a member of Ishin Gundan. It was 10 months before Saito appeared on TV with them again: 5/11/84 1. Kengo Kimura/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 5/25/84 3. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu/Masa Saito 6/1/84 2. Kengo Kimura/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Yoshikai Yatsu/Masa Saito 6/8/84 2. Fujiwara/Osamu Kido/Sakaguchi vs. Riki Choshu/Yatsu/Masa Saito 6/15/84 1. Riki Choshu/Yatsu/Masa Saito vs. Patera/Adonis/Murdoch And that's it. In for a series, then out. Choshu & Co. jumped from New Japan on September 21, ran an angle with All Japan on November 1 and debuted on the final night of the Tag League. Their went regular with All Japan on Jan 2, 1985 and started working TV the next day. Saito's TV with All Japan? 2/2/85 (taped 1/24) Jumbo/Tenryu/Ishikawa vs. Choshu/Masa Saito/Khan 2/16/85 (taped 2/5) Jumbo/Tenryu vs. Choshu/Saito That's it. He joined the opening series of the year at the tail end of it, worked a pair of TV tapings, and wouldn't appear again on All Japan TV. I'm not saying that Saito played *no* role in the New Wolves / Ishin Gundan / Choshu's Invasion of All Japan. He did. He played a key early role in the New Wolves. He played a less key early role in the jump to All Japan, as a major focus was placed on Yatsu right out of the gate in All Japan. He did play a role in the jump back to New Japan, but that really wasn't Choshu's Army for long. He frankly only played a "key" role because Choshu was barred from wrestling and working on TV due to lawsuit threats from Baba and NTV. In a sense, Saito was Choshu's stand in for those "big matches" with Inoki. It's kind of sad that Saito goes in on his own as it makes it far less likely that the Ishin Gundan group will go in. Ishin Gundan (Choshu, Saito, Khan, the wildly underrated Kobayashi, Hamaguchi and Yatsu) had a vastly greater impact as a "group" on New Japan and All Japan from 10/82 - 2/87 than the Four Horsemen had on Crockett as a "group" (rather than Flair as a solo with his various singles feuds) from the 1985-88 period covered by Will's set. Ishin Gundan jumped from one national promotion to another, changed the fortunes of a promotional war, crippled the first promotion they left to the point that Choshu was given a piece of the company to come back and impacted the second promotion they left by indirectly forcing the feud that would carry it for the next three years. I love the Midnight Express & Jim Cornette, but it would be a stretch to say that "group" had the impact Ishin Gundan had. I think one of the sad things about the hap-hazzard fashion inwhich things get done. Corny never should have been put in with the original class. 95% of his "case" in 1996 was related to the Midnight Express, and he should always have been bundled with them as "The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette". They were a "group" in every sense of the word, and Hall of Fame Manager Jim Cornette really was little more than his role in the MX group. His stuff in Memphis before the MX may have been enjoyed, but it really had nothing to do with him getting a thumbs up. His stuff in Smokey got props, but again it had next to nothing to do with him getting the thumbs up. It was with Eaton & Condrey/Lane. But once you put in Jim on his own, you're literally cutting of 1/3rd of the aguement for the MX as a "group", and an extremely critical third. Not just as a talker, but also as a worker: Jim was an exceptional working manager at ringside adding a good deal to the quality of the group's matches. I'm rambling... John Yeah, I found Frank's long-ago write-up on Ishin Gundan's HOF case to be very persuasive. Saito was not a better solo candidate than Gordy. He probably wasn't a very strong candidate at all. I just really enjoyed his work in reviewing matches for the NJ 80s project and had an instinctively positive reaction to him making it ... like a Red Sox fan with Jim Rice, I suppose.

I don't think that Bill James would have ever called himself truly a "journalist". He long has preferred "historian", and has been comfortable with forms of "analyst" and "writer" and even coined a term for his field. If one actually reads his writings from the 80s it's pretty clear that he's trying differentiate himself from "journalists" and "media" that cover the sport, and regularly pointed to why he did. I've seen debates/discussions between James and people like Povich. He was part of a weekly radio show during the baseball season for a few years in the late 80s/early 90s. It was a three headed monster. The host was either a local baseball broadcaster or local talk radio guy. One of the years the other person was a noted award winning baseball writer. I'm pretty sure it was Tracy Ringolsby (a J. G. Taylor Spink Award winning in the HOF) rather than Tim Kurkjian (future Spinks winner) or Jayson Stark (future Spinks winner). Anyway... Ringolsby was really quite awful. Pretty much all forms of American Journalism to a large degree such. They're frankly embarassing. Baseball Journalism, as with much of Sports Journalism, is dogshit. Not saying that Wrestling or MMA Journalism is any good. It really isn't all that good relative to what we know as great journalism. But I wouldn't hold up much of any sports journalism as an example to wrestling or MMA journalism. They're pretty similar. Bill definitely does not consider himself a journalist. But he's happy to talk baseball with us lowly folk. He does a fair amount of stuff with Joe Posnanski, who is an excellent combination of traditional writer and guy who grasps statistical analysis. But he has always taken my calls, though he had no particular need to do so. Ringolsby is terrible ... the epitome of a guy who takes pride in being an "old school" writer to the point of willfully ignoring useful information. Murray Chass is another. Despite such examples, John, I have to disagree with your comparison of baseball journalism to MMA/wrestling journalism. There are so many more people covering baseball that even if a small percentage are talented or original, you get a lot more good writing on the subject. There are probably 100 good baseball pieces for every good wrestling article.

I guess Saito's case is that he was the rare Japanese guy who found success in a number of American promotions and that he was a very good worker for a long time. He was also a building block for the initial hot run of Choshu's Army in New Japan, like Arn Anderson to Choshu's Flair but with a mentor vibe. He struck me as a boarderline case, but I was glad to see him go in, because I really enjoyed his stuff from '80s NJ. He worked extremely hard, came off as a credible ass-kicker and bled like a freak until he was pushing 50.

Yeah, the state of wrestling reporting is shitty. It's so shitty that Dave is forced to wear the hats of chief reporter, chief analyst and chief historian. That simply would not happen with baseball or politics or education. Nor should it, because as Dave demonstrates, it's extremely difficult to be good at all three roles. That's not a knock on him. He's a prolific, often excellent reporter and knows a lot of history. But he struggles to communicate analytical ideas. I could say the same thing about many of the highly trained journalists sitting around me in the newsroom right now. The difference is that Dave doesn't have a lot of peers to make up for his weaknesses (actually, this is a growing problem at newspapers as well.) Because Dave is the czar in all these areas, the Hall of Fame almost has to take on his view of the wrestling world. And in the big picture, that's fine, because it's his thing and no one really has a better claim to managing a wrestling HOF. All HOFs are fucked up in one way or another. I mean, I'm a member of the Baseball Writer's Association, and I don't think highly of the body's analytical or historical acumen. The trick is to stop thinking of HOFs as definitive. They're merely sources of entertainment propped up by flawed bodies of opinion makers. Always will be.

I would guess they're also concerned because they saw money in his return, which no one seemed to think would be too far down the road. Now, he could be headed for prison.

Sano probably would've moved to heavy and become a Hase-style secondary figure in that division. He had the size.

Yeah, I cringed when I read that. I also found it strange that the following was listed as an argument against Rey: "His historical significance is higher than most, but in some circles people don’t take that seriously, citing others of his size with great talent haven’t gotten breaks and rather than opening a door, he was just a unique person who got over as a star because of his unique ability, and has maintained star status because most wrestlers love working with him." So he was unique, got over as a star and is held in high esteem by his peers? Yeah, what a shitty package. Fuck that midget.

In addition to being really good, Sano is so damned interesting to follow. You don't capture all of Japanese wrestling from 1989-present by tracing his career, but you sure cut a pretty good swath. I'd take him over every NJ junior from the late '80s except for Liger, and I find him more interesting to watch than Liger.

It's not a stretch at all to call him overrated. There are people who seriously call him one of the 20 greatest of all time, and yet it's a struggle to find great matches involving him (there are a few, don't get me wrong). Dynamite was a good athlete and ahead of his time with the risks he was willing to take. But I could say the same for Fujinami or Gran Hamada and their matches hold up as great total performances to this day. For the purposes of this debate, I don't care that Dynamite was a dick. But I also don't care that he was influential or regarded as "the standard" at some point. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame, just that his actual matches weren't great.

I was amused by the line about Dynamite and Sayama testifying to Rocco's greatness. That's like the perfect circle jerk of overrated 1980s juniors. I wonder if, in some alternate universe, Marty Jones, Kuniaki Kobayashi and Chavo Guerrero are gushing over one another. That would be a world I'd rather live in.

Sting or Cena Cena is a better seller and was better in '07 than Sting has been in any single year. But Sting still takes this because of his larger body of work. On a side note, I bet Cena could've had a pretty great series with Vader as well. Necro or Brody Necro actually sells. One could argue for Brody because he got over as a main eventer in big-time promotions. But fuck that. I hate watching him. He worked a bunch of boring rest holds and made his opponents look like shit by walking through their best offense. And this supposedly great brawler couldn't punch. Hansen or Dr Death Come on. I like Doc in All-Japan but what's the argument for him? Hansen lasted longer, was better on the mat, brawled better, sold better. He had better matches against their mutual opponents (except maybe Misawa.) Doc actually looked pretty lost in his New Japan run and didn't manage exceptional singles matches in All Japan until 1993. He came off as a legit badass and worked very hard, but I never got the sense that he could be the lead guy in a great match. Misawa, Kawada, Gordy etc. were the ones who brought the special quality to Doc's best stuff. Danielson or Dynamite I can't think of anything that Dynamite did better. I mean, maybe he was better at coming across as a guy who'd murder you in a bar brawl. But I'm not giving points for genuine psychosis.

It's not like the Fujiwara thing is a fad. Yes, Phil got super-excited about him a few years ago and the Other Japan set led others down the same road. But if it was merely trendy, that would be over by now. Instead, appreciation for Fujiwara has grown as more and more people have seen more and more of his stuff. You now have folks like OJ and Ditch, who aren't particularly tied to Phil's aesthetic, touting Fujiwara as an all-time great worker. Skepticism is healthy but not an end in itself. If you think the Fujiwara praise is over the top, explain why. If you think Takada still deserves his reputation as the top shootstyle guy, explain that. The fact that it was conventional wisdom for years isn't a good reason.

Lawler peaked in a different era when national or international stardom was reserved for a few guys. But he felt like a top guy in Memphis more than Benoit ever did anywhere. How many great main events did Benoit work in his life? I can't think of more than a handful. By contrast, a relatively small sampling of Lawler's arena work churned out, what, 20 classic main events from the 1980s? If you don't think his punches, his timing, his selling, his bumping and his connection with the crowd were elite, I don't know what to tell you. I agree that it's not an easy choice but not because Lawler falls short of elite. It's hard because he and Benoit had very different strengths. And yes, the U.S. radar for puro greatness really did miss Fujiwara. He just didn't do the things that people were looking for in great puro in the 1990s and early part of this decade. But again, I'm not sure how you can watch his gradual selling of body blows, his punches, his lightning mat counters, the intensity he brought to brawls and say he wasn't elite in those areas. I guess you're just looking for different stuff.

Takada simply does not look as good if you watch large helpings of his work. His best matches, both in UWF and New Japan, were really great. He made a great fired-up babyface when the spirit moved him and often showed beautiful timing on difficult kick spots. But he had an awful tendency to settle into a knee bar and just lie there at inopportune moments. It was like he thought the mere attempt at a hold was the same as working a real submission. Did Takada ever look great on the mat? I can't think of an instance offhand. And as stiff kicking badasses go, I'll take prime Maeda every time. There was a man who made you believe in his desire to cave in skulls and puncture livers. Takada came off as a flashy pretty boy by comparison. I questioned the Takada backlash that arose during the Other Japan voting on DVDVR. But after a huge helping of his New Japan work, I get it.

I currently lack objectivity about Choshu, who is my favorite NJ wrestler from the '80s. I don't think he was the best. Fujinami was more versatile. Fujiwara was a better seller and grappler. But Choshu was a STAR. He just had a way of elevating matches, whether with gestures or well-timed explosions of offense. He didn't waste time with a lot of bullshit. Everything he did made sense and looked good. He was there to fight every moment he was in the ring. His style connected so well with the audience that he changed main event wrestling in Japan. I like Hase, who had some really nifty offense and allowed guys like Vader and Hash to maul him if that's what the match needed. But he didn't have that kind of consistent impact on matches. He was in plenty of stuff that left me cold.

The perception of Danielson as this slow working mat grinder is just weird. Is he good at stretching an opponent? Sure. But he does tons of flashy, high-impact stuff -- many varieties of suplex, flying elbows and knees, dives into the crowd. He's an offensive machine. Even the cattle mutilation is sort of a mat highspot. From the way some people talk, you'd think he was Dory Funk Jr.

Not many... Yoshiaki Fujiwara is one of the 10 greatest Japanese pro wrestlers ever, in my opinion. I can think of only 9 who have possibly been better... Jushin Liger, Akira Hokuto, Jaguar Yokota, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Jumbo Tsuruta, Hiroshi Hase, Genichiro Tenryu, and Kenta Kobashi. Hase? Over Fujinami, Choshu, Maeda, Hashimoto? I just can't see ranking him with the rest of that group, so I'm curious why you like him so much. He was athletic, a strong tag worker and a willing blader, but he rarely added that extra special something to a big match. Anyway, Fujiwara definitely belongs in the top group, though I can't definitively say he was the best. He was better than anyone at making midcard matches stand out through intensity, expressiveness and thoughtful strategic work. He had fewer opportunities to work on top than most of the others listed so that's where the comparison becomes tough. Santo or Casas? I'm no lucha expert, but Casas has always seemed more versatile and more adept at infusing his character into a match. Santo is the more beautiful wrestler. I guess I'd lean to Casas. Windham or Arn? Arn had a remarkable ability to switch from clown to badass in the same match. Not many guys match him in that capacity. Dick Murdoch and Andre the Giant come to mind. But I never cared as much about Arn as I did about Windham, who had me hanging on every moment of his babyface challenges to Flair in '87, then became totally believable as the surly big man in the Horsemen. Windham really had two peaks -- '86 to '89 and '91 to '93. As good as Arn was, does his peak add up to much more than that? Jones or Dynamite? Jones in a walk. I've enjoyed almost every Marty Jones match I've seen. Everything he did looked good. Dynamite was certainly more influential but also actively bad in a lot of matches. From indifferent matwork to nonsensical stringing of spots to rampant no-selling, his wrestling sins were many. Did his daring and athletic ability make up for it? Well, obviously so for fans in the early '80s. But his work (and I've watched a fuckload of it in the last year) hasn't worn well.

The argument that Hansen had to rely on stiffness where Vader did not is, well, strange. Vader's offense was all about stiffness. It was his signature. Sure, he was a good and willing bumper for his size, but when people talk about him, they tend to reference him punching dudes in the face. You referenced the Inoki match. That was all about Vader delivering an unholy beating to a 53-year-old man. I loved it. Don't get me wrong. But there was nothing subtle about it. Conversely, the idea of Hansen as this blind guy getting by on wild haymakers is just wrong. Watch his matches closely. He was almost never out of position. The timing on his important spots (often a lariat from an unusual position) was impeccable. He was actually a pretty terriffic athlete. He was great in slow-build, old school title matches. He was as good as anyone ever in out-of-control brawls. He was just as great as the relentless old gun defending his turf against the young lions. Look at something like his '93 classic with Kawada. It's stiff sure, but the timing of the spots and the selling are what really elevate it. Do I think Hansen could've done what Vader did in UWF-I? Sure. Vader basically let Takada kick him real hard, sold the damage well, and rallied with stiff punches and power moves. Vader was great not because he adapted his style to different settings but because his basic package (brutal offense, showy bumping and a badass aura) was one that could be built around in a lot of different settings. Really, he did the same stuff against Sting as he did against Takada as he did against Misawa. Nothing wrong with that. It worked. But Vader was Vader.

Well, he didn't wrestle in the U.S. very much. He was consistently good in his AWA run, though I wouldn't call any of the individual matches great. He was pretty clearly a great wrestler in New Japan by 1980-81. The Inoki matches were all excellent and his '81 match with Andre will push top 10 on my DVDVR ballot. He transitioned immediately from there to an excellent series with a past-his-prime Baba. I guess he had better and worse years as the '80s rolled on, but his fundamental skills -- great connection between character and work, smart selling and bumping, excellent timing and ring positioning, brutal-looking offense -- never changed. People slag his work with Jumbo, and it's true that they never had a stone classic. But they had some damn good matches -- just two big guys whaling on each other. His '93 stood out because Kawada, Kobashi and Misawa really came into their own as singles workers. I think Stan would have been just as ready to have great matches with them in 1989. It's unfortunate that his physical decline was beginning by the time they reached that level. If you watch Will's Hansen comp, I think it becomes pretty clear that Stan operated at a high level from at least 1980 to 1993. Vader had great matches in various settings but not really by varying what he did. That's not a knock on him. He was the perfect badass monster to pair with a babyface who had some offense. He didn't need to mix it up to have excellent matches. I just see a bit more variety in Stan's high-end performances.

I love Vader but Hansen was better. I can't imagine Vader working old-school, slow-build title matches like Hansen did in his excellent series with Inoki. Hansen was a more nuanced seller who always seemed to grasp how to work within the Japanese hierarchy system. He was at least as good as Vader at playing out-of-control wrecking machine. He just had more tools in his bag. Same argument for Eddy over Rey really. I love Rey's face run in WWE, but Eddy knocked so many different roles out of the park. He could be as spectacular as Rey, but he also thrived as several different shades of heel, fit right into the NJ juniors division and came across as a more credible opponent for big guys (not that Rey hasn't worked fun matches with giants.) I don't get those who say Bret was repetitive but don't nail Shawn with the same criticism. In any big match, you know he's going to start with some "clever" strategy or countering but then forget about it in five minutes. You know he's going to try that awful looking moonsault to the floor. You know he's going to hit the flying forearm into the nip-up and the big elbow. You know the initial superkick will be blocked. You know he'll kick out of a finisher or three. And so much of his execution is so bad. He was better pre-injury and does have a sense of the big stage, but his work is so ... cheesy. I never felt that way about Bret. And KENTA over Marufuji. Aside from those matches against the old greats in '06, I've hated almost everything Marufuji has ever done. His offense and schtick are so self-consciously "look at me." His matches are all about the opponent standing around in odd positions so Marufuji can hit his "clever" spots. I just hate watching the guy. KENTA, at least, can be a lot of fun as the pissy little guy drilling bigger dudes with kicks in a tag match. I've also liked him playing the striker against some of your greater indy workers such as Danielson, Sydal and Nigel. Marufuji, on the other hand, has managed to drag those guys into bad matches.

Yeah, I don't get the Rey thing at all. He's a guy who should go in just for work. And on top of that, Dave has written about how he moved Smackdown TV ratings. I just don't see the argument for keeping him out, when his pure work contemporaries such as Benoit and Eddy are in. I wonder if Edge will get serious support because of his main eventing run and the misguided perception that he's a top worker.