NintendoLogic

Let's take this opportunity to celebrate the life and times of this great man.

I'm pretty sure the only people who ever said that were jdw, Ditch, and maybe a handful of folks who mindlessly parroted them. Personally, I don't know that Kawada and Kobashi ever produced a truly great match. It's probably my least favorite singles pairing out of the Pillars.

Why do people call non-Japanese wrestlers working in Japan gaijin? Why not just call them foreigners? I mean, I never see anybody refer to non-Mexicans wrestling in Mexico as gringos.

Update: 125. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue (AJPW, 11/29/91) I find it interesting that the tag matches in the Jumbo/Misawa feud pale in comparison quality-wise to the six-mans when the reverse is true of the Misawa/Kawada feud. The main issue, I think, is that Jumbo's main tag team partner was Taue, who was still a work in progress at that point. He wasn't as terrible as he's sometimes made out to be, but he was a clear step or two behind the other main eventers and had to be protected and hidden somewhat, which is easier to do in six-man matches. Well, it turns out that the last iteration of this particular matchup is the classic I was looking for. One of the things that sets it apart is Taue's marked improvement as a worker. There are moments of awkwardness, like when he hits a facebuster and then tap dances over to his corner to tag out, but he's fully embraced his role as Jumbo's goon and carries himself with noticeable swagger. Also, there's a stronger hook to build a match around in the form of the shiner on Misawa's right eye. Jumbo sets the table at the outset when he tries to sucker punch Misawa in the ropes but is rebuffed. Several minutes later, Jumbo hits a kitchen sink with even more mustard than usual, leading to a stretch of work on Kawada's midsection that he sells brilliantly. The shot of him gasping for air and struggling to hold himself up in the ropes after an elbow to the gut particularly stands out. Misawa has Taue in the facelock with about ten minutes to go, but he leaves himself unable to protect his face in the process, finally giving Jumbo the opportunity he needs to tee off. From there, he channels his inner Bill Dundee as he targets Misawa's eye with punches and rakes his face across the top rope and guardrail. Taue gets into the act as well, inadvertently foreshadowing his strategy in the 1995 Carnival final. As far as I'm concerned, the cardinal sin in wrestling is wasting the viewer's time. Taking 30 minutes or more to tell a story that could just as well be told in 15 is intolerable. In this case, though, while there were some lulls in the action, there was enough urgency and direction throughout that it never seemed as if they were dragging things out to get to the time-limit draw. Rather, it felt like both teams were going for the win and just happened to run out of time. ****1/2

I believe it was Scott Casey.

I actually remember liking Corbin's match against Bull Dempsey at that one Takeover quite a bit. He's not a total write-off, he just needs to be confined to short-ish brawls in the midcard.

Yeah, it was standard practice for the WWF to encourage (or more accurately, force) wrestlers they poached to ditch their former promoters and start up with them immediately. Not only would the dates they were scheduled for and no-showed hurt the promoters' ability to draw in the future, there would be no footage of them doing jobs on the way out that the promoters could use against them. Also, it's been established for decades that championship belts are the intellectual property of the promoter and not the personal property of the champion. Tessa didn't have a leg to stand on unless the $150,000 was for back pay she thought she was owed.

His promo skills would evaporate as soon as the writers sunk their claws into him. The prospect of some backstage interviewer welcoming her guest at this time followed by Kingston threatening to send his opponent to a local medical facility while looking away from the camera is too depressing for words.

Speaking of racial sensitivity, remember that report of Shawn Michaels getting into an argument before In Your House with a producer who insisted there was no systemic racism in America and everyone got treated the same? I think we know who it was.

In other news, the third hour of Raw did the worst 18-49 rating of any hour in the show's history. Nobody could have predicted that the masses weren't clamoring to see Orton vs. Big Show.

I was looking forward to Gang Warz 2.0 with the Forgotten Sons and the Lucha House Party.

Yeah, I can't speak to the veracity of any particular rumor, but a free agent woman wrestler with proven ability to work and get over should have promotions beating down her door. The fact that she has so much trouble getting booked indicates to me that there must be something that makes her more trouble than she's worth.

If 1993 Carlos Colon appeared in next year's Rumble, he really would be a youngster.

Oh, my.

Six years ago this week: That episode of Raw averaged 4.43 million viewers. Last week's episode averaged 1.56 million. They made powerful enemies when they made fun of Mark and his friend.

I'd say Kobashi is the tag GOAT because he excelled in virtually every conceivable role in a tag setting. He was great as the guy at the young up-and-comer at the bottom of the totem pole in the Jumbo/Misawa feud, Misawa's junior partner, the senior member of Burning, and the legend working dream matches and mentoring young boys in NOAH. He's probably the greatest hot tag of all time and one of the top handful of FIPs in history. I guess he never really worked heel, but he could get pretty heelish when working over the likes of Ogawa. I agree with Matt about WWE tag wrestling being broken, but my main issue is the inexplicable insistence on simultaneous tags.

It's a real sign of the times that a babyface losing a grudge match with a brutal stipulation clean after being the one who issued the challenge in the first place is considered so unremarkable as to not even be worth commenting on.

the fuck is this shit

It's worth remembering that Gallows and Anderson had told the Bucks and Omega for six months that they were coming in no matter what and then re-upped with WWE right before they were scheduled to meet with Tony Khan. He understandably felt burned, which is why no AEW offer was forthcoming after WWE released them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Sure, but the idea that Heyman had any kind of final say over personnel decisions when he was a few weeks away from being demoted himself is ludicrous. Do they seriously think that Heyman put his foot down and Vince was powerless to overrule him?

It's really astonishing how many wrestlers fall for the "Vince loved me but so-and-so in the front office screwed me over" canard.

Just wait until Steve Keirn makes a hilarious cameo as Skinner.

Dave has been saying on the F4W board that he's been putting in work but it'll take more time to get to the truth, so he apparently is trying to do a thorough investigation. To that end, he's dropped cryptic hints about emails and messages he's seen that indicate there's more to the story than meets the eye. But the point remains that even if Ospreay is guilty as sin, he doesn't deserve to be driven to suicide by online harassment.

What is your basis for thinking that Ospreay only had to deal with people calling him out and demanding answers?

They did huge business in New Orleans in the early 80s, but Junkyard Dog dropping the North American title to Mr. Wrestling II in early 1984 pretty well killed the town. The big shows at the Superdome still drew well, but the regular shows never recovered. What made it even worse is that II's knee lift missed by a mile but JYD sold it anyway and totally exposed the business. Their biggest town in the mid-80s was most likely Houston. As for TV, they originally taped every other Wednesday at the Irish McNeil Boys Club in Shreveport. The tapings moved to the Tulsa Convention Center in 1986.