Childs

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.

"Great man" versions of history are always flawed. Vince didn't invent shit. He pulled elements from a lot of places and had the will to build it into something huge. I suppose he saw the potential for a national brand earlier than most of his competitors, but the idea of him as some creative visionary has always seemed silly.

I'll be interested to see whether they interview him at any length or treat him more as a hostile subject.

My guess is that it's scenario No. 2, because there's no great indication of cost cutting. I was surprised when, after all the post-Gabe gloom-and-doom, they announced they're going to Houston for Wrestlemania weekend. They also seem to be returning to most of the new markets they tested in 2008. That suggests to me that the losses haven't been catastrophic and that Cary can afford to keep the company going as long as it amuses him.

You're obviously more of an expert on PWG than I, but my impression is that Danielson has never had as clear a role in the company as the others you mentioned. He more just drops in for a few big matches a year, and those matches tend to draw quite a lot of praise. Can't comment on BOLA yet, but I thought his Necro/Generico doubleshot last year was pretty great, and the Ki title change was good. A lot of PWG fans seemed to love the CIMA matches as well, though CIMA isn't my cup of tea. I guess I'm just saying that he does the indy superstar drop-in role as well as anyone could. But I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts, as I enjoy PWG but don't catch all or even most of the shows.

Because they do it in a dopey way. They don't do a coherent job of presenting themselves as an alternative. Instead, they come off as wistful for the last boom era of a rival company. And they show over and over that they have no idea how to recreate it. They're just really terrible at branding where as Paul E., for all his flaws, was damn sharp about that aspect of the business.

I know it's not very imaginative to say so, but I think Danielson actually is the answer. When I think back over the last three years, no one has come close to producing as many matches that are really impressive and/or really enjoyable. Guys like Cena and Orton have tossed off some great runs of matches, and among the indy guys, Nigel is certainly in Danielson's league. But I always look forward to a Danielson match and rarely go away disappointed. I don't think that's hype.

I don't think it's a "thank god" thing, even though Gabe was far from perfect. Anytime a small company loses the guy who has always been its creative center, there's a danger. I'm not saying they're screwed; just that they seem to be on unsteady ground, between this and the terrible economy. I wonder if it had anything to do with the news about TV negotiations in the latest Observer. It always sounded like Gabe was more conservative on that and PPV whereas Cary Silkin wanted to push more.

As an aside to that debate, I've noticed in watching lots of New Japan from the 80s that it wasn't hugely atypical for guys to use the piledriver on the floor as a mid-match transition spot. The move was built up as a killer in the U.S., but it really wasn't treated with the same reverence in Japan. Maybe Harley did it in the wrong context while working some U.S. promotions, but he wasn't the only one doing it.