JerryvonKramer

Hitoshi Hase vs. The Great Muta (9/14/90) I much preferred the 92 match to this because I felt it was pretty lacklustre from Muta before the blood, he was lying in holds in the most boring possible way, and Hase was a bit more junior-y in general during that opening stretch. Completely throwaway. Then the blood starts to flow, but I felt that the blood was filling in for real emotion or intensity here and the levels of hatred that mark the 92 match are missing here. Just felt more gimmick orientated in general. It's still a very good match, but it's not the all-time level classic the 92 one is. Mutoh is much more charismatic as "Muta" than as himself. ***3/4 Looks like I need to go to the 91 Yearbook for Hase's match against Liger. Does anyone know which disc it is on? Would save me some time hunting for it.

I fully believe that if Hase had worked his exact same career in NWA / WCW, people would think about him in the same sort of bracket as Barry Windham or Arn Anderson. And with Hase, I actually find it really easy to imagine him in that setting because he works so much in that style and NJPW always sent him over for the tag tournaments.

I need to watch that opening ten mins again cos I can only recall one neck breaker, hit shortly after the stunner.

I feel like you could go through any number of AJPW classics and make these same criticisms Jetlag is making now.

Update (added): ***** 5-on-5 Gauntlet (4/19/84) Ted DiBiase vs. Ric Flair (11/6/85) Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude (6/20/92) Hiroshi Hase vs. Masa Chono (8/6/93) Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (12/06/96) Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi (01/20/97) Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama (07/24/98) ****3/4 Steve Grey vs. Jim Breaks (5/12/81) Terry Taylor vs. Ric Flair (6/1/85) Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) (12/30/85) Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) (7/14/86) Negro Casas vs. Mocho Cota (9/23/94) Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (11/29/96) Jushin Liger vs. Shinjiro Ohtani (2/9/97) Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada (06/12/98)

I'd have to disagree and my review lists many of the different moves Hase used to work over Chono's neck. I recall seeing a piledriver, a stunner, a swinging neckbreaker, a Russian leg sweep, leapfrog body guillotines (aka Bossman's move), various strikes to the back of the neck, a reverse chinlock, various northern lights suplexes including one from the top rope, ura-nages, a German suplex, STF ... were you actually watching the same match? Also, I don't get this talking about about one guy being "frozen" while the other guy is on offense. This is pro wrestling we are talking about right? I don't recall too many people criticising Ricky Morton for not fighting back during a FIP sequence. Do you want everyone to work like Inoki, Dory and Backlund giving only grudgingly and not staying down during the other guy's control sequences? Genuinely interested. Kobashi and Akiyama both routinely "stay down" while being worked over too. This is an unusual criticism to make of a pro wrestling match in my view. It's an absolutely standard trope.

For me there are so many little things I could point to in 5-star AJPW classics that are routinely given a pass, and if I wanted to go into any single one of them and nitpick, I probably could. I think Hase vs. Chono might be the most logically worked match I can remember seeing.

How can you say the work on the neck didn't go anywhere when it played directly into the finish? To me that seems an absurd criticism and you are the second person to make it. That neck work in my view is the total opposite of aimless. Laser focus, his neck had a history of injury, varied offense all targeting it. And it "goes" into a finish where he taps to a hold that targets his neck (AND the legs, which he targets later). Feel pretty strongly about this. It is a real weird criticism to say that stretch is "boring and didn't go anywhere". WTF? It demonstrably did go somewhere.

Or one might say she was just staying true to the Princess Di gimmick.

During a year in which I've watched a lot of the 90s AJPW classics, I'd put Hase's match with Chono from the 1993 G1 up there with any of them. Review in Microscope. Struggling to see why that match is not more heralded. Much superior to the Hash vs Hase bout from the same tournament.

I think the same thing about Hase so I've no doubt I'd give him that extra point if that is true. As it happens I don't think he'd have moved up even if he had it, at most one place. I'm still curious about who the scoffers are that Dylan mentions. Pretty sure it wasn't me or Chad. Although I do think top quartile rather than top 10 seems "more right" for him. I had him above Taue, which is some pretty high praise.

My reviews of those matches:

This was Akiyama's final BIGLAV score: Jun Akiyama Basic (offense, selling, psychology) 2/3 3/3 3/3 = 8 Intangibles 3 Great matches 8 Length of Peak 1996-2015 = 19 years = 10 +1 ability to work heel +1 ability to work tags Ability to work different styles / roles = 2 Variety = 10 41 I'm going to watch some more 00s Akiyama this week. But he can't really improve on this score since I already gave him credit for it with the maxed out L and V ratings, and doubtful he could improve on the G. He got low-balled on the A rating, but so did the four pillars.

Just wanted to mention that I'm 100% pro-Hogan in this whole thing and have been since the story broke.

Probably shouldn't extend this to fictional characters, but Joffrey out of Game of Thrones probably deserves a special mention for being an all-time-massive cunt. I don't use that word very often, but Joffrey is just such a hatable lamentable prick during his entire run on that show.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Masa Chono (12/11/92) Unlike OJ and more like shoe and Winged Eagle in Yearbook comments, I thought this was a very good or even excellent match. I guess with being NWA Champ, Chono had been watching Harley Race matches because he worked as weak as a kitten here, making the finish pretty staggering. This is one of the more one-sided competitive matches you will see for that reason. I like this one because Hase got to show off his offensive arsenal and Chono rag-dolled for him, and Hase is very consistent in keeping his offense targeted on specific bodyparts (a lot of neck damage in this one, and we got to see some pile-drivers, which I'm surprised Chono was willing to give and take after the Austin one). I did not notice anything particularly egregious in Hase's selling. He was on top for most of the match, and did continue selling his leg down the finishing run until his fist pumps which are his version of Hulking up I suppose. Some cool bombs thrown in this one. ***3/4 Hiroshi Hase vs. Masa Chono (8/6/93) I loved Hase's assault on the neck in this match. DR Ackerman described the work as "aimless", what the fuck match was he watching? Sick piledriver worthy of Backlund, stomp and elbow on the back of the neck hit with conviction and authority, Stonecold Stunner (in 1992), swinging neckbreaker, reverse chinlock. How anyone can call that "aimless" is absolutely beyond me and I'll call that out because it's a puzzling criticism that I'd love to hear him explain. It seems simple to me: Hase wants to win a wrestling match, and he wants to do that by hurting his opponent enough to pin him. And with the piledriver he hurt Chono's neck which has a history of being injured since he injured it in September of 1992 after taking a piledriver from Austin. And so where is it going? Basic psychology. Just ABC logic, follow up hurt neck with ... Move that targets neck. And then another one. And then another. Aimless my arse. Forgive the rant, but I'm not having that. And why does it need to go so long? Chono is meant to be a world class wrestler so he's going to take some putting away. I struggle to understand that post by Ackerman, and was absolutely shocked to read that someone wrote that about THIS match. Hase is also NOT repetitive in this match. He pulls out tons of moves you don't typically see him do. He even did the Bossman jump onto the second rope. Chono has much more time on top in this match and I dug his assault on Hase's injured ankle, although the weird goat noises he made throughout are ... Weird and pretty annoying. But sound psychology again, series of leg holds, shinbreaker. It's very solid stuff, although I will note that Chono's execution was sloppy on occasion both here and in the last match. Hase continues to sell that leg during his next offensive portion. And goes right back to that neck with a German before things get more back and forth. It's neck vs. ankle. And this is extenuated when Hase throws his boot off. Hase switches up a bit to work Chono's legs too with a great figure four on the outside. Loved the two of them kicking out each others' legs, and I thought Hase was phenomenal in selling the pain of the injured ankle on the kick, his screams of pain in the figure-four after it were pretty awesome too. Why don't people like Hase more? I don't get it; the dude was just brilliant at pro wrestling. Finishing stretch and near falls were hot as hell and very exciting. Hase still kept selling that leg too. And I popped for the kick out on the bridging Northern lights suplex. And then the work on the neck AND on the legs is paid off with an upside down STF thing in a totally PERFECT pay off that had been built to since literally minute one of the match. This match seems like a real lost classic to me. Just such perfect psychology throughout, consistently excellent work in my book here. And I was surprised not to see higher ratings in the yearbook, because this is a fucking GREAT match. I'd say it is better than matches I have at 4.75 like Arn Anderson vs. Barry Windham from 92 or the Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat from Superbrawl 2. 4-stars, honestly, is low-balling it. Aside from some slight execution issues with Chono -- and we give Taue or Tenryu a pass for that in many a five-star affair -- I cannot think of single issue I have with this match. It is perfectly told, the psychology is perfect, and the match builds to a crescendo that then pays off that psychology in the most logical manner possible. Best Hase match I've seen, best Chono match I've seen. I encourage people to re-watch and re-evaluate because this is just phenomenal stuff here in my book. I'd probably rank this in my top 20 matches of all time, maybe just behind Jumbo vs. Misawa 9/1/90. I can't see what it is losing any stars over at all, and would love someone to explain why this is not a five star match. For me, it is. *****

Re-watched King of Kong for the first time in years earlier on because of this thread. Billy Mitchell really does tick off every aspect of being a great heel in that film. - Delusional levels of arrogance - Harrassment and bullying - Aiming for complete humiliation of his opponent - Dirty tactics - Insane hypocrisy - Outright cheating - Blatant cowardice - Scheming - Supported by corrupt authority figures - Sore loser but made sure he got his heat back just through general douchery The two most outrageously heel moves that stood out to me were 1. When he saunters past Wiebe who says "Hey Billy" even in the middle of going for the world record and then Mitchell says to his wife something like "There are certain people I don't want to spend too much time around". 2. Right near the end when his mate is bigging up Wiebe, and then they turned to a seething Mitchell and he just says "I'm not familiar enough with the situation". LOL All-time great heel.

My solution to this little administrative error is probably going to be just to dump Mil Mascaras, move Garvin there and slot in Rose where he should have been. I think Mil's BIGLAV score was too high in retrospect and is the person I'm altogether least happy with being on my list.

Needs to be some balancing mechanism, let's say one guy has 10+ ballots in 50-60 range and another guy has only two votes at 1 and 2 and the sums come to a tied score, the average for the second guy will be higher but based on only two people. I'd suggest a baseline frequency of 3 or 4 voters and after that average.

Who is the #3?

Come on now. I could accept actual David Mitchell but Mark is pushing it, lol.

Sgt. Slaughter is more like Queen, his greatest hits stretch over two discs and some of his album stuff is under-the-radar good. I feel like Kerry von Erich might be an interesting pick for this, his single-disc greatest hits would be packed with the highest quality. In a world where Slaughter is Queen, I'd compare him to Squeeze. And if you haven't, check out Squeeze's greatest hits, cos they are one of the great "singles" acts that don't really get talked about.

So yeah I figured out what happened. I either forgot to add Rose to the spreadsheet or somehow pasted Dustin's details over his. This seems like it will be too messy to fix now, involving bumping like everyone down one, and I don't know if I can face doing that. So basically I've ended up not voting for Rose. But he should have been there.

Thanks for all the comments. Since recording this, I've been doing some thinking and feel, overwhelmingly, that I cannot in good conscience have Misawa and Kobashi where they are on my list. As the show progressed and as Chad spoke with love and passion about those guys, I just had this increasing feeling of guilt and sense that something was wrong. I don't know if it came across on the show, but it became abundantly clear to me that -- just in their case -- I need to overrule BIGLAV and bump them up. Felt like not only a betrayal of Chad but also of just wrestling itself. So in the interests of full disclosure I'm going to make an edit to my final submitted ballot because there's no way I can leave it with those guys not in the top 5. BIGLAV was helpful for deciding if someone should be 37 as opposed to 83 but I really think that there are special cases up in the top ten that are beyond the system. Can't look in the mirror and say I believe that those two guys aren't in the top five greatest wrestlers ever.

It's about what happened not what might have happened.