Childs

What you're looking for are the tags with Liger on one side and Kikuchi on the other from NOAH 2/17/02 and 4/7/02 and New Japan 8/29/02. Great interpromotional heat for the series with Liger especially being a real dick.

Why start at the end of the feud?

That's all well put and similar to how I view the process.

This goes back to the long debate with Parv. At some point, there is no other line. You have to decide what you like.

It does make sense, and I agree that was a weakness of those matches, especially in the early-mid '80s. But yeah, I think I'm more likely than you to get sucked up in the moment-to-moment intensity and walk away saying, "Well, at least the match had that." I respond to Hansen because most wrestlers, even good ones, aren't particularly adept at creating that sense of just eating up another man's space. It really helps with the verisimilitude. Actually, Bock was good at it when it fit the match. But Hansen probably adopted it as an ethos more than any wrestler ever.

He was making a little joke based on his own struggles to get into Japanese wrestling. Lighten up.

I went back and watched some of the Brody tags, because I couldn't help myself. I see where Matt's coming from, and I wouldn't even try to argue him out of his view. But I still found Hansen compelling to watch, even in matches that didn't amount to much. Stan approached every outing with the philosophy of "If you want an inch from me, you're going to have to take it." When he was in with guys who could deal with that--the Funks, Jumbo, Baba--the matches carried an incredible sense of moment-to-moment competition. Because Hansen would never, ever just lie down and accept a control section. If he sold, it was because his opponent had done something worthy. And his offense was so violent and organic feeling. It was a knife's edge deal, and he did end up guzzling plenty of opponent's and falling into some mindless slugfests. But he was just an awesome storm of a wrestler. Though I agree the older Hansen, who either wouldn't or couldn't eat opponents alive, was better, I remain a fan of the whole show.

It's not a drastically short career, no, but it's short compared to most of the guys who are getting buzz as top 20-30 picks. I just threw it out there as something to think about. How good was he in Southeastern? I've really never seen any of that.

If you're going to pick at Arn as a candidate for the very top ranks, one point would be that he really didn't have a long career. We tend to think of Windham, for example, as having faded out quickly. But Barry was actually around longer and arguably a top worker for just as long or longer.

One of my takeaways from watching the yearbooks was that Hansen's lack of chemistry with Misawa was overstated, perhaps because he fit so absurdly well with Kobashi and Kawada. But he was essential in putting Misawa over as the new ace and did a really professional job of it in their '92 series, even if none of the matches were all-time classics.

Well, Deitsch is a New York media guy and Grantland lover who plays wrestling fan (but probably isn't really). So he's pretty much tailor-made for Shoemaker. I have a few media friends who fit that description and I just bite my tongue if Shoemaker comes up.

Maybe I should concede the point and just watch more Puerto Rico or something. I don't think your line of argument here is crazy or anything. The dull buzzing you described is about what I felt as I watched the Funks vs. Hansen/Brody from 12/8/84 that Dave gave five stars. That whole promotion had been spinning its wheels for a year or more by then, with a few exceptions like the Jumbo-Kerry match.

I agree that his early-mid-80s tag work is some of the least compelling stuff from his career, with Stan leaning into his worst tendencies, reinforced by Brody. I'm not sure I buy that he looked bad and actively made those matches worse. But it's been a good five years since I watched the bulk of that stuff, so I don't feel sharp to make specific arguments. There aren't any perfect candidates, and if I'm dinging Stan, that's definitely a period I'd point to. But as you sort of allude to Matt, some of his flawed tag work felt like a byproduct of a character I find tremendously effective overall. Anyway, I'd never argue that we should just discount it. Not sure that re-analyzing it is where I want to spend my energy at the moment.

I think he's an editor, isn't he, with the wrestling writing supplementing as a part-time gig? He doesn't even write that often.

This is nonsense. There's plenty to criticize about ESPN, but a bunch of great journalists still work there.

Would the parallel here by the upcoming Flair "30 for 30" that supposedly goes into Reid's death, or the E:60 about Scott Hall? (And yes, generally speaking, I agree that it's both weird of ESPN to run an infomercial dressed as a Sportscenter clip, and equally weird of Dave to say that "you're not really covering wrestling" if Billy Gunn taking HGH isn't Scott Van Pelt's top priority.) Yeah, I'd count those things in their favor. I just think it will be interesting to see how/if ESPN reacts when there's a major news story related to WWE. We'll see.

He wasn't off base in criticizing ESPN, though I agree he was unrealistic in some of the details. They're using what's supposed to be a journalistic show--this is according to them--to essentially run promos for WWE. ESPN is such a big company that it has many missions, but one of them is still journalism. So it's not a good look for them to get in bed with WWE in a completely uncritical way. I mean, they're a huge business partner with the NFL, but they still routinely produce unflattering stories about Goodell in the magazine and on Outside the Lines. I agree it's laughable to think they'd cover stories like Bockwinkel or Billy Gunn. But if John Cena dropped dead next week or if clear evidence emerged that Vince obstructed justice in the Snuka case, you'd hope they would actually bite into those stories.

The feud with Fujiwara probably peaked in their last match, so you have plenty to look forward to. But I didn't think his WOS stuff was great at all. He was certainly a sensation because of his athleticism, but I don't recall a lot of meat to his matches. Which performances struck you?

Lowe has a piece up on ESPN.com today. So that's good. Also, belated thanks for reading my Maybin story guys. Hadn't been back to this thread for awhile.

Well Baba always saw him as a future star, and then his hand was pushed by Tenryu's departure. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

I'm with you and also enjoy Albright's squashes in UWFI. I'll always find a place in my heart for a giant, ornery guy with a mullet and a scar on his face who murdered fools with suplexes. I would never put Gary over as a great or even good worker but didn't particularly like the sniggering over him on the podcast; fat or not, he could've ripped Nikita Koloff's spine out and fed it to him.

Rey looked great--like hasn't-lost-a-step great--against Ki last night. He could've easily worked a by-the-numbers 15 minutes and left everyone happy. But he took a lunatic bump to the floor off a missed 619, delivered some really intricate offense and added all kinds of neat little touches (there was one moment when Ki was about to climb up for the double stomp and Rey just grabbed his leg and held on desperately--not a huge thing but the perfect gesture to get over the struggle). Very cool to see an all-timer still working at such a high level in an unassuming rec center in Jersey.

Sure. But when you were making your top 100 lists for the '90s, did you not adjust for the fact that Tamura was going for something different than Toyota who was going for something different than Kawada? You ultimately have to decide what you like best across styles. But don't you need to operate off some understanding of what a worker was attempting/achieving in his/her own context?