NintendoLogic

Considering that it's geared toward mainstream US wrestling fans, the brackets are mostly fine. The only really egregious selection is Ellsworth. From those brackets, my Final Four would be Hansen, Vader, Misawa, and Kobashi.

I thought the selling from both ladies was pretty spotty. Charlotte being on offense like 30 seconds after going through the chair stuck out to me. This complaint seems rather misplaced considering that Charlotte is one of the few on the roster who does get genuine heel heat.

There were way too many table spots on this PPV. The fundamental absurdity of taking five minutes to set up a table when you can just pin someone is bad enough when it happens once, but it's even more egregious when it happens over and over again.

I do think that their relative positions played a big part of it. If you want to see how Hansen worked with a peer, look at his matches with Jumbo, almost all of which were disappointing. It's a lot easier to go all-out every time out when you only work one match a month. Could Tamura have worked his style on an All Japan schedule without taking nights off or getting physically destroyed? I don't begrudge anyone for not liking the lack of matwork or bloody brawls in 90s All Japan. To that extent, it's just arguing over which flavor of ice cream is the best. What I'm arguing is that a lot of the issues with King's Road were exacerbated by the lack of variety in the main event scene, both in terms of the talent involved and the lack of gimmicks/angles. Things would've been fresher for longer with more guys in the mix and/or less conservative booking.

Apparently, the rationale behind the pre-show is that Vince doesn't like the visual of fans filing in and wandering around, so he has one or two matches before the show starts so everyone is seated and paying attention once things kick off.

Lawler and Dundee had gimmick matches and angles to spice things up. I'm sure it would have made things more interesting if Taue had thrown something in Misawa's eyes and partially blinded him shortly before a Triple Crown match with Kawada, but that's not how All Japan operated. The closest equivalent would be "so-and-so has an injured arm/leg/neck/whatever going in." It's no surprise that so many of the great All Japan matches are centered around body part work. Sure, that's a valid criticism. But nobody always had great matches, so that's kind of trivial. And I'm not inclined to penalize anyone for going all-out to give the paying fans their money's worth as opposed to doing as little as they thought they could get away with.

But then the build would consist of the women talking about how excited they are to be making history and thanking Stephanie for starting the Women's Revolution.

I found where Dave talked about Finkel:

I'd say that most of elliott's criticisms of Misawa and King's Road in general are reflections of the fact that it was the same handful of guys wrestling each other over and over again. There's not much you can do to make the tenth iteration of Misawa/Kawada interesting besides turn the volume up. The problem is that the Four Corners were too good for their own good. No style is sustainable in the long run without periodic injections of fresh blood. But King's Road wasn't a style that you could just plug anyone into, and the only wrestler All Japan developed in the 90s who could work at that level was Akiyama. It's no accident that most of the great All Japan matches between 1998 and the split involve Akiyama in some way. It's also no accident that All Japan was stagnant for most of 1997. All the big matchups had pretty much been beaten into the ground at that point, and Akiyama hadn't yet made the leap to top-tier status to freshen things up. I would also dispute the notion that Taue was the smartest of the Corners. I suppose he was smart in that he recognized his physical limitations and knew how to work within them. But it's not like the other three did more than they were physically capable of.

Hogan/Vader drew well, so it evidently didn't hurt his mystique that much.

If a wrestler's offense is strong enough (Vader), no one's selling can ruin it. If a wrestler's offense is weak enough (Raja Lion), no one's selling can save it.

I would say that offense is more important in my evaluation of wrestler, but selling is more important in my evaluation of a match.

I'd go with Rey/Eddy from Halloween Havoc. It has basically everything you want a match to have-good psychology, great athleticism, and strong character work. And it's short enough that a newbie won't be intimidated by the length.

Did Sgt. Slaughter ever do any tours of Japan in the early 80s? You would think that a big ugly brawling American hoss would be tailor-made for Japan. And he was a million times the worker Sheik and Abdullah were.

6/3/94 so I can dance in the stands with that one guy.

I'm not sure WCW was much better than the WWF in 1993, if at all. WCW was a trainwreck that year. But yeah, if I had to pick a single year, I'd go with 1993 with 1989 a close second.

I recall reading that Stu liked Whalen because Stampede's business ups and downs largely coincided with whether he was doing the announcing.

I actually thought that Taue was the star of this match. He was practically a one-man wrecking crew for his team, to the point where Hansen seemed like a weak link. Excellent match overall, especially with how it managed to confound expectations. When you've watched enough All Japan, you become so used to matches ending with one guy being buried under an avalanche of offense that when someone does manage to turn the tide at the last second, it stands out.

Joe/Nakamura at Takeover was a MOTYC.

Then why is Jimmy Lennon in?

Jimmy Lennon was one of the guys Dave put in by fiat, so I doubt that's it.

When did Meltzer say he thought Finkel should be in? I recall him being fairly dismissive of the idea, saying that a HOF-level ring announcer wouldn't have been replaced by Lilian Garcia.

http://www.wwe.com/article/frenchy-martin-passes-away Bonne nuit, doux prince.

Ultimo Dragon belongs on this list before Jericho and Punk.

It all makes sense now. If you don't like big All Japan matches post-6/3/94, that would explain how you could think that All Japan was falling apart in 1998 and 1999. On the other hand, rich man's KENTA is the perfect encapsulation of Danielson's WWE career.