Childs

Who: My best friends in elementary school got pretty excited about the first Wrestlemania and I was swept into the fad. My father always found it ridiculous but was a cool enough parent that he took me to live events and rented WWF videos from the grocery store. What: I started off watching WWF on Saturday mornings and staying up late for Saturday Night's Main Event. My father took me to the Civic Center for my first live show in 1985. The lady in front of us wanted to kill Savage after he beat up SD Jones. The crowd chanted "bullshit, bullshit" after a screwy finish kept the Bulldogs from beating Valentine/Beefcake for the titles. Andre seemed larger than life teaming with Windham and Rotundo against Bundy, Studd and somebody. I loved the whole experience. I tended to take my interests a little further than most of my peers so I started buying the Apter mags at the grocery. They fired my imagination regarding the wider wrestling world. Baltimore was actually a great place to grow up as a wrestling fan, because we got WWF, NWA and UWF on television and both Vince and Crockett hit the Civic Center monthly. My childhood favorites were Savage, Andre, Piper and anybody chasing Flair's belt, especially Windham. I gradually became a pro-NWA snob, though we always went somewhere to watch Wrestlemania on closed circuit. When: I became a fan in 1985, the year I turned nine. My interest faded when I reached high school but rekindled in college when the Monday night wars heated up. I never fell away completely after that, though I didn't become a hardcore, dvd-collecting fan until about five years ago. Where: Baltimore, which was perfect, for reasons already covered. Why: At first, wrestling was something that everyone liked, no different than Transformers or G.I. Joe. I got more deeply into it when I discovered Flair and the more serious, grueling matches of the NWA. The Flair-Windham match from Jan. '87 was transformative, because it was the first one to suck me in as an athletic contest rather than a spectacle. I got to see them live at the Crockett Cup a few months later, still maybe the best match I've watched in person. But I don't know why wrestling has always drawn me back. I tend to research the hell out of my interests, and wrestling fits that proclivity because there's always another company or era to discover. With so much available on tape, I can watch the stuff I only read about as a kid and sort of retroactively experience what it was like to be a fan in 1984 Dallas or 1988 Tokyo or 1995 Philadelphia. Etc. I think I came to hardcore, tape-watching fandom much later than most of you guys. I was aware of the Observer in the '90s but didn't subscribe until probably '05. I read Dave raving about Samoa Joe, which led me to order a few ROH dvds. I had never seen Japanese stuff, so Joe's style really did wow me. I had read about Misawa, Kawada and Kobashi over the years so I decided what the hell, I'd learn a little about those guys as well. That led me to DVDVR and other sites. Five years later, my shelves are cluttered with hundreds of discs, I spend time on sites like this every day and I will happily drive to Delaware to watch Negro Navarro in a banquet hall or to Queens to watch Santito in a dance club. Weird how life unfolds.

AP is calling it a bacterial infection in his intestinal track.

My review ... I've seen this match rated highly elsewhere, and I'm not quite sure why. Adonis did a good job of controlling with attacks on Fujinami's sore ribs and back (though not as good as Hogan and Murdoch in the recent tag match.) Fujinami teased a comeback but missed a dropkick and crashed hard. Adonis quickly followed with a Boston crab. Good sequence. Adonis then went for the elbow off the top. Fujinami countered with a superplex, failing to sell Adonis' bodywork in either the execution or the aftermath. He rolled him up for the pin a few seconds later. I have no problem with Fujinami winning on a quick counter, but why did that counter have to crap on the story of the match? That pushed it out of nomination territory for me.

It was a clipped 10 minutes with a bunch of meh matwork. What was better about it? I just rewatched it and yeah its about the same (alot of the same moves too), but I'd still rate it a bit higher, just seemed more exciting to me for some reason. Perhapes the crowd or commentary (They seemed more excited!). Maybe cause I watched it along time ago and hadn't seen so many Fujinami matches in a row, the matwork seemed more passable to me. Dunno if its clipped but I got the 18 minute version from the The Legend Tiger Mask 5-DVD set. Yeah, saw the full version now that I look at my notes. I thought the monkey flip sequence was cool, and the end run was exciting enough. But there was a lot of dead time, and I thought Hamada was more impressive in the '81 match.

It was a clipped 10 minutes with a bunch of meh matwork. What was better about it?

I think I have them: 9/11/80 4/3/80 2/8/80 4/23/81 5/9/80 The top three will probably all be on the top half of my ballot, but none will push for the upper reaches. Just too much great shit from 1986-89. I would agree with the good not great characterization, but as the promotion's leading heavyweight feud from 1980-81, it holds up well.

I'm glad you enjoyed the Inoki-Hansen. I was surprised how many people shat on it.

I liked that match, but it was really short.

I have always gotten the impression, from Meltzer and others, that Shane doesn't love wrestling down to his bones, that for him, it was just the massively successful family business that gave him a chance to play around with various corporate roles.

Let's take these one by one. 9/23/81 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tatsumi Fujinami vs. El Solitario - Nominated but a few bits of sloppiness and a lack of fight from Solitario at the finish left us thinking it wasn't quite as special as some of the other Fujinami selections. You certainly can't argue that any era of Fujinami is underrepresented on the set. 1/1/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid - I guess you feel that every one of their matches should make the set. This one didn't get much consideration from the panel as it was short and one segment hardly seemed connected to the next. You tell me what was special about it. I didn't see it. 7/23/82 Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid - I liked this one better, especially Bret Hart's work as a second for DK. But some bad no-selling, botched spots and their inability to follow up on body part work left us feeling this wasn't a must, especially with four other versions of the match-up already on. 10/26/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - Will and I liked this, but Phil didn't, and given that the 11/4/82 and 1/6/83 versions were already on, neither of us decided to fight for it. 2/7/83 WWF Jr. Title: Tiger Mask vs. Black Tiger - Some nice displays of athleticism but pulled down by some egregious no-selling of big moves. Their 5/26/82 match was much crisper and we didn't like the match-up enough to go past that one. 6/2/83 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - This was fie but didn't seem to add anything to their top-notch outings from 11/4/82 and 1/6/83. 2/7/84 Kid/Smith/Cobra - I just don't get the love for this. You get a Davey/Cobra match with exactly one cool spot in it (Davey dead lift out of an arm lock), a weirdly paced Davey/DK match that just kind of ends out of nowhere and a Dynamite/Cobra match that starts hot but features lazy working of holds and an incredibly sloppy performance from Cobra. Yes, Dynamite wins the title, but where is the great work? 8/2/84 NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title Match: The Cobra vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - I know it made the Bowdren list, but this was all clipped up. Good highlights but hard to tell about the build or transitions. 9/19/85 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami - This bored the panel to tears. 8/7/86 IWGP Junior: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Kazuo Yamazaki - This had a good finishing stretch, but the first half felt like a waste of time with a bunch of loose, pointless matwork. Too much great UWF invasion stuff for this to make it. 9/16/86 Antonio Inoki vs. Bruiser Brody - An hour of Brody? Really? Here was my review: They made it plain as day that they were going an hour, working with little urgency for the first 35-40 minutes. They basically took their normal match and stretched it over twice as long a period, which led to lots of lying around in holds. Broadway is a tough format but why do it if you're not going to take advantage of it to do something different? If you're asking me for a 60-minute commitment, I want the fucking Thrilla in Manilla, with great swings of emotion and uncertainty about the outcome throughout. The last 20 minutes were OK, with Brody allowing Inoki to look like his nominal superior. But I wouldn't want to watch this again, and I have no desire to inflict it on anyone else. 12/10/86 IWGP Junior: Shiro Koshinaka vs. Kazuo Yamazaki - Another Yamazaki match with a hot finish but a lot of drag in the body. Didn't hate it but again, it didn't stand out in such a well-represented period. 2/15/88 Top of the Super Junior League Match: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Shiro Koshinaka - This was good. We just preferred their other three matches and thought they covered the rivalry sufficiently. 8/8/88 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami - This has been amply covered elsewhere. It's the one match I kind of regret leaving off as it was an epic between the company's two most enduring stars. That said, it fell short because they never quite paid off any of the intriguing ideas they raised. What is the defense for these selections? Are they better compared to the ones I have listed? Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Chavo Guerrero (5/9/80) - The August match you mentioned was in Shea Stadium on a WWF show and therefore, not eligible for this set. I thought this one was better anyway with better matwork and more of a relentless build from the early trading of holds to the hot finish. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura (9/25/80) - This was just an awesome showdown that built from solid mat stuff to unhinged violence. We all saw this as a slam dunk. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Rocco (9/11/80) - Lots of nifty counters and a hot finish in this one. Why include the sixth best Dynamite/Tiger Mask match when you can instead introduce people to the excellent work of Tony Rocco? Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Steve Keirn (11/6/80) - Pretty much signature Fujinami here with your smooth trading of holds building to a fast, hot finish. Tiger Mask vs. Gran Hamada (11/6/81) - Again, why include your fifth best Dynamite match or third best Kobayashi match instead of a beautiful demonstration of wrestling from Gran Hamada? Tiger Mask vs. El Canek (12/8/81) - A lot of the disconnect seems to be that you'd rather see every version of the same three match-ups than watch Tiger Mask work a different kind of match against Canek. I really enjoyed watching Canek smack him around and heel it up. Tiger Mask vs. Steven Wright (4/1/82) - Steve Wright is super cool with his Euro mat stylings. Again, why exclude him in favor of match-ups that are already well covered? Hulk Hogan vs. Abdullah the Butcher (5/26/82) Hulk Hogan vs. Antonio Inoki (IWGP League Final) (6/2/83) Andre the Giant vs. Hulk Hogan (12/9/82) Hulk Hogan vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (2/5/85) - Just to field these as a group, I think we saw a lot of value in watching the most famous American wrestler in history work excellent matches on a different stage. Hogan worked harder and showed a greater variety of offense in Japan, and his matches had great atmosphere. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu (4/21/83) - Why is it stretching to love this match? Hardfought matwork, a dramatic ending and the hottest heavyweight rivalry in the world don't do it for you? Riki Choshu matches in '89 against Vader & Hashimikov, really? - Yes, really. This panel tended to like heavyweight slugfests in front of hot crowds. Sorry if that's not your thing.

Online writers are slowly being admitted to the baseball writers association but I mean sloooowly. The BBWA is ridiculously protective of its "authority." And once admitted, writers still have to wait 10 years before voting on HOF. The thing is, there are so many more more baseball writers (both at newspapers/magazines and online) that it's not an equivalent situation. In wrestling, you're leaving out a larger relative chunk of the intelligent electorate by ignoring online opinion makers.

Which inclusions are you puzzled about and which excluded matches bother you so? I'm not being hostile, just curious.

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.