tomk

I would also add that Mero was one of the first wrestlers who had an active web presence. It was a bit before my time (I am a late technology adaptor) but I think he was a guy on the web maybe as early as 94/95. I don't know if he was on RSPW or a pre-RSPW AOL board , but he was a a guy (and probably the only guy) who was willing to intereact with fans over the web (and my sense was pretty open and honest in those interactions). For a while after he stopped, people still had positive feelings as a result. There was a point where there may have been a couple people invested in the whole "hypocrit" wouldn't do an angle with Diamond Gal because of his religous convictions that then went on to do the angles he did in the WWF. But in general between 97-00, he is a guy who people felt good vibes toward. I don't know who is still around from that period who could fill you in more.

"allegedly" abusing drugs?

Completely viral as I've been emailed that and the asian E-40 impersonator several times today. The CZW match is completley made by the Runaways hynotized selling. The thinner Runaway (Harry Curie?) briefly looses the spell to adjust his tights but his partner (Joe Jett? Luther Ford?) is completely commited.

Looking through the results from page Flik put up it looks like your sense is right. The Marafuji pairing (at least in 03) seems to only happen when Misawa is going to be in a tag where he looses and needs someone to eat the pin. And the worst part was the number of NJ fanboys defending it, who weeks before were going gaga over Tenzan's push. Well that's the problem with street team fanboys, but I guess you have to appreciate the enthusiasm they bring, and the number of hours they watch or something.

http://purolove.com/ Thanks this is awesome. I will be wasting lots of time there.

Justifies his opinions means what?

Minton was a Bronze medalist, not gold. His whole heel act was built around him being a selfsih athlete who blamed the rest of the US 4 man team for loosing the gold for him.

Huh? Misawa and Ogawa joined up in summer '98, were tag champs in All Japan and twice in NOAH, and lost the tag titles the second time in early '05. Then Misawa teamed with Suzuki in one match of any note whatsoever (vs Ohtani & Takaiwa in March '05). I doubt the Misawa, Suzuki team did anything of note.. But I'd say starting around 03 when Kobashi wins title your main event six man pairings are Morishima, Rikio, Marafuji ; Akiyama, Saito, Kanemaru ; Misawa, Ogawa, Kotaru Suzuki ; and Kobashi, Kikuchi, Kenta. My sense (which might not be accurate) is that when you ran Rikio/Marafuji or Kobashi/Kenta v Misawa it was Misawa and Suzuki ( I don't remember any real Akiyama, Kanemaru tags). These may have not been of any note but I had the sense of Misawa just moving on from Marafuji to Suzuki. I don't know what else they could've done. Taue I think was normally paired with, Ikeda and whoever they felt like slotting in the third role. While on the one hand that always felt stupid (they never came up with a good way to take full advantage of Taue), maybe doing Misawa, Ogawa, Sano one week and Misawa, Ogawa, Kawabata team the next would have been better than trading Marafuji over and replacing him with Suzuki. I don't know...once in a while, I think about if things would have shaken out differently if NOAH had Mossman/Kea, but for the most part I really try to avoid fantasy booking. Is there somewhere on the web where I can find history of NOAH show matchlists because doing this from memories of what it was that I was writing at the time is a strain on weak memory and I'm sure I'm conflating shit that happened in different years, and talking about results that never happened and making lots of mistakes. If that's the case of what was going on, then yeah that was fucking stupid.

People knew Rikio was going to win coming in. I mean he already had a title challenge a year before and I can't remember what was done in the buildup for which match but he went over Taue in a contender match. Started getting wins over Misawa in tags. He was being built up for the win and people expect it. Ditch says that Saito wasn't being built up as his first challenger and I remember it being obvious in how Saito was being positioned as a Rikio rival in that I remember laying out that as number one challenge before he even won the belt. But Ditch could be right and it is quite possible that I was just a Saito mark and was blindly hoping for things that weren't being clearly laid out. My point was the booking wasn't at fault, but rather the title match, and the reports were that fans turned on the Rikio title run pretty much immdiately after the Kobashi match. Long before first title defense. And I blame the Kobashi match. The only way I can see blaming the booking is if you were going to make the EMLL booking argument. A basic concept in EMLL booking is for a big apuestas match (hair/mask) where a consagrado (guy who is a consecrated legend) is going to loose, you want to book him against a peer. Part of the nature of that type of match is your going to have the legend always look good because he is fighting to hold onto the physical vestige of his legend....and you run the risk of having fans turn on a young wrestler if he wins against a consagrado. The idea here being that "passing the torch" is a myth, beating a legend can do more harm to a young wrestlers career than good. While I think, many times that is true and I think it is part of what went wrong with the Rikio win. I don't think it had to be true here, and I think the booking would have worked if the match had been worked differently. Ok again, I said earlier that I absolutely didn't follow New Japan in any serious way. But they didn't know Nakamura was going to have to vacate the title at the point they gave it to him. My general sense was that New Japan had one peer group that wasn't lighting the world on fire and going to pass over them to the next (who may not have been readied) but weren't as dead as the last one. You sacrifice Hart/Michaels for Rock/Austin. Sacrifice Sting/Luger for Goldberg/Booker T. Yeah it's sad that Luger/Sting or Hart/Michaels never had their long solo time in the spotlight. But you move on.

Nakamura seemed more to have been positioned as the future ace: he had the IWGP already at that point, he seemed to be the more pushed of the two in their tag team, he never was put into a U-30 title match where he'd have to lose to Tanahashi... except the time when Tanahashi dropped the belt to Nakamura. Nakamura had been consistently in the IWGP Title picture since winning the belt, including just coming off the 60:00 draw with Kojima. Tanahashi had just one IWGP challenge by that point. I think the reason it was Tanahashi is because they didn't want to sacrifice Nakamura to Rikio. I will admit that I did not follow New Japan this decade in any serious way. Followed tourneys here and there , but didn’t follow the booking. Plus it was always unclear what was the wants of the US based New Japan fans (who wanted Tanahashi to be future ace) vs what was the wants of the actual New Japan fans (where Nakamura was booked stronger). So all I really know is that your future top guys were Shibata, Nakamura, and Tanahashi and that Shibata was gone. Also worth pointing out that Tanahashi was the guy who teamed with Nagata beat the Double Takeshi’s. Even if not future ace, he was future ace rival and revenge from an earlier loss. This is why I wanted to be very clear that I was not accusing him of sandbagging. I’m not suggesting that Kobashi is HBK or HHH, insecure guy who deliberately tries to expose opponent. None of that is being suggested. I’m not saying that either. I have seen plenty of matches where one guy takes 90% and makes his opponent come out strong. That’s not what is being said here. And this wasn’t a match where Kobashi took 90%. I’m saying structure of match didn’t play to Rikioh’s strengths. The long Rikio control leg work section is something that Rikio doesn’t normally do or do well. Kobashi can have strong matches with heavyhanded bomb guys. Has had good matches with Vader, a good match with Takayama, the crowd popped big for his match with Sasaki, and Rikio had an earlier title challenge with Kobashi where Rikio left the match looking stronger. Kobashi instead plugged Rikio into his “epic match with lower ranked guy” formula, and Rikio came out looking like a lower ranked guy. This is an interesting question. And the only answer I have is “fuck if I know” But if you took a time machine and visited me in 99 and told me that Misawa was going to take the majority of the AJPW roster and form his own fed: I would have said yeah “I can see that happening”. If you then told me that in big title matches in this new fed they’ll do big spots on the ring ramp and from ramp to the floor, and that in 2009 Misawa will die in ring on a back drop as a result of accumulated damage to his spine: I would have said “yeah that all makes sense”. If you then told me “Ok in this new post AJPW fed they are going to really push their junior title and juniors wrestlers. And you know how juniors wrestling never gets any heat in the dome, this post AJPW fed will book their juniors so well that they will actually get loud crowd heat on a dome show”. Or if you told me “ So this fed that Misawa starts out of AJPW will put their title on a skinny guy working chickenshit heel who will hold the belt for almost half a year, he won’t have a lot of title defenses but he will wrestler lots of tags and sixmans getting heel heat for wearing trunks that say “I am cthe Champ” on them and win his matches with an inside cradle. And the audience who has been raised on Four Pillars will for the rest of the decade will pop for an inside cradle as a near fall and potential legit finish”. Or if you showed me Kobashi v Sasaki and told me that the “fans who grew up on AJPW responded to this poor man’s War heavyweight match as though it were MOTY and it is remembered as one of the best matches in the fed first decade” I might think you were pulling my leg. “Sure, sure and tell me again about the US electing a Black president with an Arab middle name, such a jokester” So “would that have been sustainable for a NOAH Ace, whose fans grew up on Misawa and Kobashi over the past decade and a half?”. I don’t know. But weirder things have happened.

Before they did the Rikio/Akiyama team they did do the Rikio/Marafuji one. I wrote a bunch of stuff at the time about while I hated the Rikioh/Marafuji team (because well Marafuji stinks and dragged down the matches), the booking was a neat one in that in effect you took Misawa’s former protégé and by pairing him with Rikioh it elevated Rikioh to role of heavyweight mentor (Slaughter to Terry Daniels). I wish Misawa had done more paired up Ogawa before moving on to Suzuki. I think moving more or less straight to Suzuki exposed the mechanics of “I’m working with juniors until they’re elevated to point where I can team them with heavys.”. Still it was a pairing that for a match quality I didn’t like, while from a booking standpoint was an effective move to elevate Rikio.

Malone tagged with DDP vs Hogan & Rodman. bah! I was thinking Rodman/Hogan v Luger/Giant which didn't do the number that Malone v Rodman tag did but I think it did so well that they decided to do the follow up.

I don't know if the term lucharesu is dead, the style certainly isn't. This is kind of the point I always make about Gan Hamada as a HOF candidate: lucharesu is the most dominant juniors style in Japan today. The puroresu junior style that Lyger, Benoit, Ohtani, El Smaurai or even a luchador like Dr Wagner did in Japan, has been supplanted by the style of the trainees of Hamada's trainees. There always has been some element of the lucharesu IWC fandom that has pimped lucharesu as “lucha done right”; lucha sans the “B.S. of lucha” or “The Mexicans”. Functional equivelant of Clapton fans who like him because he does the blues “right”= without the attention to rhythm, the non-standardized tunings or the colored folk. As lucharesu has become the dominant Japanese juniors style, the "lucha has no psychology" anti-lucha vitiol has become a bigger part of the IWC pro-lucharesu meme. We have banned a couple pro-National Front Dragon's Gate fans from the DVDVR. But I have never heard anyone on the Figure Four website quote Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech or anything, so I won't blame Brits/Western European racism for the increase in vitriol.

Alot of what we are doing at segundacaida, is a result of us looking at the results of the Japanese indies poll and seeing it as being filled with holes. At the start of the 80s project we discussed what we would do if we ever restarted the nineties. I think the thought for US indies was that we should just divide Us indies into geographic regions ( counting ECW as Northeastern indy even if they had matches in Florida). The thought for non-joshi Japanese indies was to split them into Sons of Hamada (lucharesu feds), sons of Tenryu (SWS, WAR and if their was anything that we thought belonged from Pro Wrestling Crusaders type prostyle indies) sons of Fujiwara/Maeda ( shootstyle feds and even here we were concerned as there was only one UWFi and one RINGS match that made the Japanese indies top 20 and perhaps UWFi and RINGS should n't be in same category) and sons of Onita (garbage feds). We've now watched everything from PWFG, and have started into Maeda's UWF, Hamada's UWF, MPRo, and WAR. I think we have the SWS and RINGs on the way. Will has done a PWFG set that people should get, he will be doing a Tenryu set, and a Sano set eventually. Revisiting Japanese indies is something that is being done with some care.

Different lists do different things. My point was the kind of mass aggregated opinion lists (like the WON awards, the DVDVR 90s polls, the Smarkschoice polls) simply reflect back what is already the consensus opinion. If you have a good sense of the IWC opinions you can pretty accurately guess the outcomes. They can be usefull to tell you "Hey this is pretty much what the smark community thought at moment A." But that's pretty much all they tell you. The 90s matches which placed in the Smarkschoice best of WCW poll were different and in different order than the DVDVR 90s poll. WCW 90s is something that has been re-examined and argued on the web abunch between the time the two polls came out. I'm hoping after goodhelmet's WCW b sides projects, there will be another set of revisited thoughts on the 90s. There is alot less difference between the results ofwhere 90s WWF matches landed on the Smarkschoice WWF poll and where they landed on the DVDVR one. 90s WWF isn't something that people have revisited with any real care. But you could have pretty much guessed where everything was going to land on those polls too. You pretty much know what is considered contemporary cannon and that type of poll just reinforces it. Ditch's puro polls (which are the model that was used for the 90s WWF set) are similar but have odd aditional problems (where contentious matches fall and the non contentious and possibly less interesting slip through). I really like goodhelmets 90s set and the polls around them because instead of reflecting cannon back (telling us what we already know) they have the potential for creating cannon. As to the question of wild cards. I think the goodhelmet system makes discussing wildcard matches that didn't make the set easier and not harder. It's pretty easy postset to go "Hey these were the matches that made the top 20 out of 150 on New Japan set. Here is a match that I think is as good as any of those top 20 matches. Lets discuss it's strengths and weaknesses as a match"...It is alot easier to make that argument than to make the argument on a Smarkchoice poll : "Hey this match that nobody but me voted for (watched) didn't get enough love". A lot easier to discuss matches that didn't make the cut ina curated set than it is to argue about matches that didn't get votes in an un-curated set. And there will eventually be an errata set for things that were left off, if Will thinks the discussion those matches raised have merit.Again this is easier to do when it isn't just everyone having a wildcard option.

John Cena- Cena is a guy who sells really well and can do a good walking tall babyface act. At his best he is as good as Bruno, Mid South Hacksaw. or best of Taker. He isn't booked to his strengths particularly well (he should be programmed against monster heels and brawling heels instead given technical tweeners), and really not given the ball at top the way those other three were. I don't know what you do with guy who is best main event worker of modern generation who hasn't been given long runs in main event. Bryan Danielson-he's been working small indies for most of last decade. That said I agree with Childs. While he is I think understood to be the cream of the crop. I'm curious to see how influential he will be. I can't watch WWE wrestling (Randy Orton, Cena, Edge, whoever ) and not see the degree to which Benoit influenced U.S. main event wrestling. If I plop in a Evolve or PWG tape (where Danielson isn't booked) I don't know if I see the same level of influence. The Big Show- I think he drew well opposite Karl Malone and Floyd Mayweather. I assume he will eventually draw a good gate opposite Shaq. That's three big programs over a huge span of time. So as qualified (if not more) for HOF as Konan, and a better worker to boot. Kane-Unless he ends up marrying Stephany then no. Trish Stratus-It's Us women's wrestling. I'd say Sable was probably historically important. But yeah. Maybe 50 years from now wrestling will have completely collapsed and Trish will be embraced by hipster girls of 2060 in amateur shoot wrestling leagues similar to current Roller Derby revival. But otherwise...

Oh shit, are the Desperados finally going to find Stan Hansen?

I do not think this is a rib. And in the end not bizarre. It is pretty standard WWF 80s formula. A good chunk of 80s uppercard WWF stuff is indistinguishable matches where WWF formula heels fly around, get pantsed and stooge for WWF faces. It is worth watching the Bruno Sammartino/Paul Orndorff v. Roddy Piper/Bob Orton match from the same Garden show. It has a really similar heels in role of guy who stooge get pantsed and bump around for the faces. Bruno brought more to the table as face than Morales and it has chairs and stairs getting thrown around which gives it a more out of control feel. On the other hand, on some level the one man Funk show is the more fun stooging bumping heel show. And I just like Funk's singature goofball stoogeing bumps more than Orton or Piper's, but whatever. Still there is a sameness to the two matches because that was a WWF formula. Nothing bizzare or unusual about it. I also think you might emjoy watching the Moondog Spot v Scott Mcghee opener from the same show (which is your formula undercard workrate match) to contrast with the formula main event style.

ICW was "Outlaw" promotion competing in what was CWA territory. ICW was calling out LAwler, Dundee and Valiant to face ICW's Ron Garvin, Bob Orton Jr and Bob Roop. Not quite equivalent of Shane Douglas or Taz constantly calling out WCW/WWF champs. But same kind of idea.

The idea of television killing gates and possibly killing smaller arenas isn't that crazy, and I think it's one that is argued in the US at different points as well. I doubt there is a ton of PRI wrestler union connection outside of the basic PRI being involved in everything on some level. It's worth remembering that the Lutheroth's were involved with lobbying for the creation of your government wrestling commissions. We think in the U.S. of promoters fighting with government commissioners. And so the model of business calling for the creation of regulating bodies (in an effort to help institutionalize their own business and keep out competitors) is foreign (although I wouldn’t be surprised if commissions functioned in the same way in the U.S. to protect the local monopolies during the territory days). It would not surprise me if the Lutheroth’s were also involved with creation of wrestling union. It’s not the way University of Chicago teaches the business model. Creating institutional structures like commissions and unions at one point was the type of thing a smart business did to help create barriers to entry for competitors. It can byte you in the ass but sometimes it's a smart risk worth taking.

Silkin came in third. Dana White is still the promoter of the year from now through foreseeable future. As to substantive influence, wasn't it Silkin's love of bears that led to the expulsion of Sapolsky. And really this guy is a ticket scalper vs this guy is worth millions...is a silly argument. My sense is that Ted Turner was worth more than Vince, Choshu and Baba comibined. Should he have won promoter every year? Honestly, there was far less of the usual Meltzer griping and complaining about voters "getting things wrong."

Monotone? The Miz always comes accross like he's cribbing from Brian Christopher.

I have no idea why the “booking” for Rikioh’s title reign is being blamed for it’s problems. I mean I rarely see people blaming the “booking for the build” to Sting v Hogan as deserving the blame for it’s failure. The blame there is normally firmly laid at the feet of Hogan and Patrick. Rikio was built up toward his GHC title challenge opposite Kobashi as a big bomb throwing ex-sumo. And while it seemed pretty telegraphed that he was going to win that match, it also was pretty telegraphed that his first challenge was going to be the other heavy handed NOAH bomb thrower Saito. I’ve been following Saito since the NJ v karate army days and not sure what is meant by “ “. Not proven as a guy who can deliver a big singles match? Or not proven as a draw? Either way it was pretty clear during the build to Rikio v Kobashi that Saito was the natural next challenger. “ Ignoring who Rikio’s next two challengers were makes it easier to say that he wasn’t helped by NOAH’s bookers. His next challenger was Tanahashi on a show that I think was main evented by Misawa v Kawada ( I could be wrong here, from memory the main was Kawada v Misawa with Misawa winning, but am too lazy to confirm). This is Rikio beating an outsider. Beating the guy who was at that point positioned as the future of New Japan. Future of NOAH putting away the future of New Japan. Yes, Tanahashi sucks something awful. And this wasn’t a good match. I wish it had been Rikio v Shibata or Rikio v Nakamura. But neither Shibata or Nakamura were positioned as future NJ ace in 05 (fuck Shibata was gone at this point). The third title defense was Rikio beating Misawa (who had just came off the win against long time rival Kawada). Rikio’s title defenses were the heavy handed monster v heavy handed monster, future ace of NOAH v future ace of NJ, and v long time ace who had just come off of win against long time rival. I think instead of blaming the booking, the guy who should eat the majority of the blame is Kobashi. In the nineties the criticism of Kobashi was that he was a guy who couldn’t work as “THE MAN”, always worked as crying underdog and couldn’t work from above. Sometime in the early 2000’s Kobashi learned how to work like “THE MAN”. My guess is that he got a hold of a bunch of Flair tapes and realized that the formula for working as THE MAN (on top) is to work like a Flair opponent (make your opponent work like Flair from the bottom). Which meant that he made all of his opponents essentially work like Flair (work over Kobashi’s knee-put Kobashi in figure four only for Kobashi to reverse it, take an apron bump, chop Kobashi in the corner only to have Kobashi no sell the chops and then beat Flair like challenger with chops, etc, etc). It’s a formula that works, gets the crowd to pop, etc. And it’s an excellent formula to work against Ogawa (who essentially is a scummy cheat to win heel who likes to work the leg anyway), Akiyama, ( a guy who does lots of heel stalling shtick), Honda (guy whith good grounding leg work who also has big time underdog v MAN charisma) or Sano( another guy who does really great leg work). But like any formula there are holes in it. It is a formula that turns opponents into interchangeable guys. The Takayama v Kobashi GHC title match felt like a big deal simply because Takayama worked the arm (everyone else is so interchangeable that the slightest deviation from the formula is memorable and feels like a big deal). The whole build to Sano v Kobashi was built around Sano as a deadly striker. So while Sano is a guy who does really good mat work, the match completely ignored the match build/booking. Rikio was built up toward his GHC title as a heavyhanded bomb throwing ex-sumo. Instead of working to Rikio’s strengths, Kobashi plugged Rikio into the Kobashi by numbers formula. And while I have enjoyed some Rikio v Sano interaction over the years, Rikio is not a guy who is particularly interesting working the mat or working a leg. It’s not what he does, not what makes him special/unique. Rikio came into match booked as a monster and instead was the last guy who you should have working a match as nise Flair. At end of match instead of coming off like something special. Rikio came off like just another interchangeable Kobashi opponent, just the one who happened to pull off a win. I don't want to call it sand bagging, as it may not have been deliberate. The reports of the crowd post match were of disappointment, not the HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK heel heat of the Ogawa win, but as though it were a slip on banana peel finish. Crowd turned on Rikio long before the Saito title defense. No matter how sensible the booking, Rikio wasn’t able to recover. But the blame lies at the feet of Kobashi not the booking.

Weren't those pre-taped segments edited into a show? You can say Stephanie is naive and thus blameless. Whoever aired it, less so.

I'm always surprised at the degree to which people miss that about Hashimoto. From a recent Meltzer post on the value (or lack of value) of perceived toughness for wrestler: Too often you read people reduce Hashimoto to toughness and ignore that he main evented dome shows because he was probably the most charismatic wrestler of his generation.