Childs

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.

I've learned to be suspicious of "great man" narratives when trying to figure out why the world works the way it does. Usually, a company as large and profitable as the WWE will roll right past the death or firing of a CEO. But in Vince's case, he might be so intrinsic to the DNA of the company that his passing would cripple it. He has trained employees to rely on him as the final word for a huge percentage of decisions. Even worse, he seems to have trained them to make decisions based on their perceptions of his taste. The bookers and writers might be able to continue going through the same motions for many years without him as their north star. Right now, for example, I'm not sure he has to do anything terribly smart to keep the company chugging along. But over time, I could see the company losing its discipline and urgency without his manic leadership. The real question is whether Vince has trained the American public to see wrestling as synonymous with WWE to the point that without a strong WWE, the industry would collapse. I'm more skeptical of that idea, because wrestling has worked as entertainment in so many different contexts. If WWE collapsed, I doubt another company would rise to fill its full market share, but I suspect wrestling would still slither into some profitable niches in our entertainment-obsessed culture.

It was in Manila.

This match has inspired a ton of debate from the panel working on the DVDVR New Japan set. Here's my take ... I'm guilty of forcing Phil to watch this when he was still glowing from his third viewing of Takano-Lane. But seriously, I've now watched this match three times in search of what Will loved about it, and my esteem for it has dropped on each viewing. It's not a bad match, because Adonis and Murdoch were pretty reliably entertaining with their cool offense, bumping and heel schtick. But they really didn't give Kimura and Fujinami shit in this match. I'd say they took 95 percent of the offense. The R' n' R' Express comparison doesn't hold up, because when Morton took a beating for 10 minutes, he and Gibson almost always got their payback after the hot tag. In this match, Kimura took a lot of abuse and got to work a few cool comeback teases. But there was no comeback, so the teases were just that ... teases with no payoff. If you had never seen either team and watched this match, you'd come away thinking Adonis and Murdoch were badass and a lot of fun. But would you have any sense that Kimura and Fujinami were great wrestlers? I mean, Fujinami was probably one of the five best guys in the world at this point. Would you have any sense of that or of what he did well based on this? I don't see how.

Will, do you think you'll do a Jericho part 3, focusing on his comeback, at some point? Same question about Mysterio actually.

Yeah, it wasn't very well organized (even by Dave standards) and just kind of petered out. I wonder if he felt he covered NOAH sufficiently in part one? I respect Dave's reporting output enormously, but I often wish he had someone around to help him organize these bigger pieces.

It's a great match, no doubt. The bloodlust between the two feels absolutely real. Even the bad lighting adds to the feeling that you've dropped in on a seedy, back-ally fight to the death. But I'm interested to hear why it might be your favorite match ever, Loss. It didn't engage me at that level, maybe because I don't know a ton about either guy or what led up to the match.

I was kind of distracted when I first watched this and came away thinking it was boring. But I rewatched it and thought it was pretty terrific. You watch a match like this and it's not hard to tell why the shootstyle guys revered Inoki. In spirit, this was a precursor to what they would try to do. Inoki and Brisco didn't work many long control sections or spend any time establishing moral points of view. Instead, every moment was a struggle for control. Some of the mat stuff was a little slow but by and large, they kept it intense and dynamic. I liked Brisco's little punches and knees on the ground. And I really dug his quick reversal of the abdominal stretch to take the first fall. Inoki's equally swift German to take the second fall brought a nice symmetry to their story. They really got across that either guy needed only the smallest opening. I thought it was a little weird that Brisco made no attempt to match Inoki's fire in the third fall. That kept it from being an all-time classic. But it was damn good.

I did find it odd that Martel portrayed Jumbo as out of step with the American style of work. I'd argue that Jumbo worked a more U.S. style than any of the other top AJPW guys. He threw in all kinds of little flourishes to play to the crowd and he built his matches in a way that was fairly typical for main event workers in the 1970s and 1980s. You watch that Flair-Jumbo match that just went out on the PWO disc and hardly get the sense that you're watching guys from radically different traditions. That match could've worked in the U.S. with a few months build to get Jumbo over as a top guy.

This was the first match I watched off the disk and it's definitely the best Flair/Jumbo match I've seen and maybe a top-10 singles for both guys overall. The hour flew by, even though it was a slowish build by today's standards. Both guys were masters of the mat segments that were integral to passing time in long matches of the '70s and early '80. Just watch carefully during the early moments of this match, when Jumbo worked the neck and Flair the arm. Neither guy ever lay still. The guy on top was always wrenching the hold or working toward a more painful move, and the guy on bottom was always working for a counter or actively selling discomfort. I loved Jumbo's quick counter of an attempted arm drag into an abdominal stretch. The ending sequence of the first fall carried a lot of drama, like the end of a full match rather than the end of a segment. And I loved Flair's demeanor heading into the second fall. Jumbo might have been the stronger guy, the better wrestler and the homecourt favorite. But by god, Flair showed he was not a man to be fucked with when he thought the title was really in jeopardy. I think one of the complaints about Flair in general is that the vicious version, the guy we saw against Ronnie Garvin and a few others, didn't come out enough. But he was in full evidence here. Ric is an underrated puncher. I especially liked the shots under Jumbo's armpit. I don't want to spoil the ending for those that haven't seen it, but the entire finishing run, from Flair juicing to Jumbo's big rally to Flair's relentless application of the figure four, was tremendous. I loved the image of Jumbo, rising from the floor, covered in streamers, to surprise Flair with a missile dropkick from the top. I loved him going after Flair's cut like a pure predator. Both guys sold the fatigue and their will to fight through it beautifully. Both came out looking strong and courageous. Great match.

I thought Dave's full obit on Rose was a really strong effort. Worth reading if, like me, you always enjoyed Rose's work but didn't know a ton about him.

I generally agree with Loss' pro-Flair argument. But some of the patented Flair spots annoy me, so I can see the other side. I was watching the Flair-Michaels match from '91 last night and he just crammed in the slam off the top rope and the "take a header" sell without any rhyme or reason. It was like he just had to do those spots, though the match would have been fine, better really, without them. It's a minor criticism relative to his immense body of excellent matches. Flair was good at varying the tone of his matches without necessarily doing different moves or spots. I think that's why, as a kid, I found his title matches compelling long past the time when I had tired of Hogan.