Childs

Agree with Loss that this was more focused and better than Ground Zero. The big casket spots all really worked; I especially liked the crotch grab as comeuppance for HBK. I get why they did the Kane stuff, though it wasn't very compelling, even at the time. If they were going to go that way, they shouldn't have run the closing video of Undertaker speaking from The Beyond. Would've been better to leave his fate in question. It was also weird how HBK became such a secondary figure at this point, with Taker more focused on Kane and Austin more focused on Tyson. I guess it worked out though.

I always get a kick out of Tenryu and enjoyed watching him inexplicably take to the sky. Then he brought the requisite viciousness to put down Araya's challenge. I didn't get the washed-up vibe; Tenryu was never graceful or crisp, even at his peak. I can't defend this as a great match, but I enjoyed it more than the Teioh-Funaki from the same day.

I don't agree with the supposition that the M-Pro guys should never branch out stylistically. We've seen them do it quite successfully in other matches. But this did fall a little flat in the end. I liked a lot of the thoughts behind it, and Teioh might have been the best of the M-Pro guys at fundamental work. They just didn't find a way to move from all the limb work to a viscerally compelling stretch run.

Do you also root for Boss Hogg?

The problem is there's not even a sense that he thinks carefully about his own in-the-moment reactions to past stuff. So even granting the difference in approach, the pronouncements come off as half-assed.

I'd rate the '91 G-1 and the '94 Carny as my favorites. Haven't seen any of this year's G-1 so I can't compare. But I agree that pro wrestling history isn't exactly silly with great tournaments. So it's at least possible this could be one of the best (I wouldn't say 2013 reached that level, though I really dug a few of the matches). I don't take Dave's pronouncement seriously because I know it's not based on any serious analysis. But I don't begrudge him his enthusiasm either.

I really enjoyed this as well, possibly because I entered with minimal expectations. Liked the intensity at the beginning and the armwork, thought they incorporated the weapons effectively, loved the finish. Tanaka's not a guy I've ever thought of as a top worker, but his career could make a really fun comp.

I find it hard to watch '90s U.S. indy stuff with any sense of context. It was just so bad compared to almost everything else in the world, which wasn't the case in the aughts. I agree this wasn't the worst of the worst, but it was still full of poorly timed, overly elaborate spots. I'm still hoping to love a match or two from the OMEGA guys. We shall see.

I like a good retirement ceremony as well, but it's hard to watch them with any sense of finality. Choshu, for example, was back in 2000. Still a cool clip.

It was OK but really gave little sense of what Inoki is actually like, how he got to be who he is or how he's really viewed in Japan now. It ended up being a somewhat dry recitation of his weird diplomatic missions (which makes sense given the author is a professor writing a book on Japanese-Middle East relations). If I set out to profile a character as colorful and outsized as Inoki, I wouldn't be satisfied with that as a result.

Thing is there's plenty of repeated match-ups on the set so I don't see why that disqualified those matches when you look at the historical significance factor. The RWTL 1983 Jumbo/Tenryu tag was huge in getting over Tenryu as a top level star and establishing Jumbo/Tenryu as the top native team, while the 1984 RWTL tag was the big rematch following up on Terry's retirement and works to bookend the era before the Choshu/Tenryu feud. Both of those, especially the Jumbo/Tenryu match, also happen to be clear examples of Brody putting over his opponents as bad asses and disprove the idea that he was just a politician who never got anyone over. "Laying around in holds" is pretty much wrestling 101 on how to build heat. Him going in there and working even with old-school technicians like Jumbo and Dory also added to his legitimacy as a main eventer by showing that he wasn't just a one-dimensional brawler. I'll admit that he wasn't exactly doing RINGS level matwork, but then how much of that did you see from Tenryu? I also don't count it against him just because he didn't make too many funny faces while brawling or selling. He might not have been flopping around like a cartoon character in his 4/82 Dory match but looking at the overall layout reveals a smartly worked match that builds to an explosive climax of Brody being forced to expend every bit energy and ring smarts he has to put away Dory while still coming out of the match looking like a monster. Sure, you can rag on his selling in things like the Steamboat/Youngblood match but then you'd be missing the point as you can't have your monster team working every match 50/50 and wrestling a throwaway tag in that way only serves to make it more compelling in those rare moments when he does look hurt. We could go back and forth on this forever and come to no agreement. The purpose of the '80s set was never to include every significant match. We didn't include the ones you mentioned because we didn't think they were great and because we preferred other examples of the same match-up. Your implication that the choices indicated some conspiracy against Brody is ridiculous. If that was the mindset, why would we have included two matches between Brody and Dory? Our intention was to present the best array of matches, plain and simple. You can disagree with the choices, but I don't appreciate you calling us dumb when we worked our asses off to put out what is clearly the best survey of '80s All Japan available anywhere. As for the specifics on Brody's style, I have no problem with him choosing to work holds. I have a problem with the way he did it, which was consistently boring. I don't have a problem with him selling selectively. I have a problem with the fact that when it was time to put over his opponent's offense, he often refused to go down or look hurt. I'm obviously not saying he never did those things. But if you watch him over time, some clear patterns emerge. As John said, the comparison that kills Brody is Hansen, who worked the same role against the same opponents at the same time and did everything much, much better.

I call Brody underrated because it seems the hate for Brody on boards like these has gone beyond just people watching old footage and coming up with different opinions to active attempts at revisionism, like making a set chronicling 80's AJPW and not giving people the opportunity to vote for Brody matches like the tags I mentioned that are not only highly regarded but also very significant to the promotion's history. I think that's just dumb. This is horseshit. We put 10 Brody matches on the set, which was more than voters wanted based on their response to what we included. We didn't pick the Brody/Hansen vs. Funks match you mentioned because there was another version of the same match-up we liked better. We didn't include Jumbo/Tenryu vs. Hansen/Brody because we all viewed it as action-filled but shapeless. However, we included another version of the match-up and a match with Brody/Hansen against Baba/Jumbo. The idea that there was some grand bias against Brody controlling the picks is just asinine. Voters had plenty of chances to weigh in on his All-Japan run. Speaking to JVK's comments, I really had little notion of the backlash against Brody when I first started watching his stuff. I assumed he'd be awesome based on the Apter mags from my youth and everything I'd read about him subsequently. What I actually saw was a guy with an awesome look and ring entrance who didn't seem to be good at anything in the ring. He lay around in holds, he didn't brawl with much fire, he barely sold. I kept looking for the great Brody performances and found few, if any. I don't think he's held to a different standard than Hansen or Jumbo or the the '90s crew. He just wasn't as good, and that's based on lots and lots of empirical observation.

As long as there are people, any people, willing to defend Brody, he'll remain overrated.

I agree Akiyama seems stuck with his reputation as the "not quite pillar" when in fact, he's now been a very good/excellent worker for 20 years, which is pretty unusual. I haven't thought it out, but I suspect he might have the best body of work of any Japanese wrestler from the 2000s.

I always find this an impossible question because it's so dependent on who's doing the rating. Somebody mentioned Lawler, for example, and I think it's entirely possible he's underrated by many hardcore fans. But it would be ludicrous to say he's underrated on this board, where many longtime posters have him in their all-time top 10s. Shawn is probably overrated by casual fans but not on this board, where he's reviled by some and viewed as a mixed bag by most.

Again, the top of my list would look very similar to yours. I actively hated the joshi cage match you have at No. 5--didn't feel like a fight to me at all, more a poorly connected string of stunts. I had similar thoughts about the Funk/Sabu you have at No. 18, where the last few barbed wire spots just seemed slow and overly elaborate. I also thought the Canadian Stampede match was a lot longer on great atmosphere than great wrestling.

But what's short? I'm not clear we're all defining that the same way. In recent years, for example, the WWE has cranked out a bunch of good TV matches in the 15-minute range.

See, I find the Kobashi-Kawada broadways impressive, because those guys really did have enough offense and stamina to cut a hard pace for 60 minutes. But necessary? I'd be hard-pressed to argue that.

Windham-Pillman was also the one that came to mind for me. At 12-15 minutes, that would've been a classic. Both those guys were on a hell of a roll in '91. More recently, I wish Bryan and Regal had gotten 15 minutes to work together on a pay-per-view, though that's not asking for a specific match to go longer.

I couldn't agree more. A match has to be awfully special for me to want more than 25-30 minutes. I know I said this in another thread recently, but "could've used more time" is an overused criticism. Ten or 15 minutes is fine for most matches, even good ones.

I'd say ROH and NOAH were pretty similar in main-event style. I think Gabe saw NOAH as the pinnacle for in-ring work at the time.

I'm the outlier on that lucha match. Charles had a great line about why he loved it when we did the '91 year in review podcast. Can't remember exactly what he said, but it made me wish the match had clicked for me in the same way.