concrete1992

Thank you! Bummed I had to take a little break but happy between WDKW and Q&T Are. I should have a new series launching within the next week which I'm jazzed about. With that though have a new WDKW which I'm pretty happy with

Forgot to post this, but honest to goodness one of my favorite wrestling pods of the year. Daniel Makabe and Dylan Hales join Quentin and Tim to talk about SCI as well as give the Wrestling Genius his flowers https://soundcloud.com/wedontknowwrestling/double-edged-sword

God bless, We Don't Know Wrestling released two episodes yesterday! New WDKW and a new Pretending to Fight from Dave Musgrave and Loss

Figured I would make another post because I have a new Desert Island Comp with Dan Rice. I love these episodes in general and this is no different. Also probably one of the more involved YT videos I have done yet:

I've said it plenty on Twitter but going through a smattering of 82-83, Chavo is the most watchable wrestler out there, plain and simple. I essentially never skip a match he is in beause I am damn near guaranteed that he's going to do something in any given match that tingles my brain. Sometimes that involves having a great match and other times doing an athletic spot that boggles my brain in 2022. Or he will just lay it the heck in. Jetlag points to an Onita match (dead link RIP) but everything they do in 82 is so intense. One of the great pairings of that year where in tag matches they will also scrap it up. I wish I could find the 11/4/82 match easily accessible as the match is great, some of the tightest grappling. I'm left a little cold by the 80s NJPW grappling of folks like Fujinami but this is at a different level. Chavo also has a Jesse Barr match in Houston which is a hoot and hollering good time as well as a fun little time capsule. Seemed to always get some good showcase opportunities in Houston. Still trying to put together the whole picture on Chavo (probably going to be a little bit) but as is, he's trending towards getting a nice solid spot on my list.

WDKW Podcast Network has 3 shows running wild right now. Great vibes. WDKW is going to be a work-in-progress show but so far happy with how the solo show is turning out. I want to turn it slightly into morning sports vibe. The big news, the most important news is Dave Musgrave has a pod! And on the first episode of Pretending to Fight he has none other than Loss! Here's a little taste

Decided to get wacky and weird and do a little reboot of the main WDKW as a solo show for now with a video component. Part of this is to better understand video tools and see where I can go with those. Excited for that. https://linktr.ee/wedontknowwrestling This is the new link tree to sub to whatever pod service you want

Dave Musgrave joins Quentin and Tim. Truly one of my favorite shows of the year. I know how much Quentin loves Wrestling Culture and how that helped changed the way he approached wrestling and Dave has no idea that that's about as good a gift he can give him for his birthday than to do this show. Fuck toxic positivity

I have been doing a bad job of keeping the promotion train going but with every new Desert Island Comp, it seems as good as time as any to drop another mention. I have Jamesie on who has done a lot of shows with POST over the years. It is a great listen if only my microphone didn't act poorly

The way we consume wrestling has changed rather dramatically since even the last run of things. Wrestling is at the same time more easily accessible than ever as well as harder to come by in the same ways. It used to be that YouTube and Daily Motion were the wild west, throw a wrestler in the search bar and you would often be met with dozens upon dozens of worthwhile matches. Those matches are still out there, more likely in walled gardens. Not something I'm opposed to, searching on YouTube would lead to a lot of crap. This is important for Hashimoto because he's S-Tier in regards to RMT (Random Match Theory (tm)). Searching YouTube still works for Hashimoto. Despite all the copyright holders taking stuff offline, you can still dig up a ton of great stuff on Hashimoto. I only say that because anyone on the fence, anyone on this forum probably isn't but if anyone is, Hashimoto is still easy to dig into. His matches are digestible and can be viewed within a bubble to an extent. Hashimoto sells himself like few others. You "get it" when you watch him. Holds himself like a man with dynamite in all four limbs. A man ready to uncork thunder. You can't teach the vibes Hashimoto gives.

Sounds like we are going to have a lot of Chad Campbell content entering the world. Great episode of Desert Island Comp if I say so myself. Give it a listen! .

Not this year. I'm kicking things around for next year. Had a weird year, changed jobs, wife went back to work, lots of moving pieces. Next year I aim to do MORE

Alright, LOTS of good stuff has popped up: Psychology is Dead is back. Quentin and Jamesie talk about the WWE run of the American Dragon We Don't Know Wrestling Society X has finally been able to schedule the finale and it is a hoot Last but certainly not least, Alex is back with BeruBara Tag Boom. Definitely recommend listening to the series up to this point for a more complete history lesson

GCW announcing Hammerstein feels very much like an obvious but still inconceivable event. It will probably sell out. I don’t think GCW is a good promotion but I can’t say it is a bad thing to have an indie that’s grown to this level. For non GCW stuff, love IWTV strapping up Shelley. They haven’t really had an elder statesman run with it and after years without real direction, I think IWTV found something with the Lee reign forward. GCW has the big moments but IWTV has created an infrastructure for promotions of various sizes. These tent pole type events coming back have been a great choice.

I did another episode of Desert Island Comps, this time with someone very familiar to PWO, Grimmas/Steven Graham. Fun episode, running down their journey through pro wrestling

Disagree wholeheartedly with this idea. Will Kingston rate higher than Hero or Danielson? Probably not. Will he rate higher than guys like Nigel, Nick Gage, Kevin Steen, Generico, Mox, and Callihan? Yeah, for sure. If King's technique looks a little iffy at least it typically looks violent. Also he's one of the best leg sellers of the modern era, I think the comparison is weird.

RISING: Brian Kendrick I'm doing a 2005 indie watch right now but in the first half of 2005 Brian is the 2nd best guy in ROH, behind Joe, and probably the 3rd best guy on the indies, behind Joe and Hero. His matches consistently have more structure to them then other matches taking place, you know with actual strategy. And Kendrick wrestles with an urgency that his contemporaries aren't matching. Sometimes the style gets in the was of a lot of the good work he's doing. RISING: 1980s Portland Finally giving it a proper go and Martel looks like a WOTY candidate for 1980, Buddy Rose is a joy, and Piper has this distinct fire. The Sheepherders probably aren't going to rise to being a top team for me and certainly not standing out individually enough to rank but they've been little treats that play well with the babyfaces. FALLING: Homicide Kendrick will run into the issue of probably too many down periods to really make an impact but Homicide I have a lot more overall career to still look at. Halfway through 2005, the Danielson series didn't inspire me and he doesn't seem to work great in more one-off occasions. There are chances that going forward and looking back there will be more beef, but right now he looks like the wrestler that folks decided a decade ago was underrated and was actually just as technically proficient as the top dudes of this period, which seems false based on what I've looked at so far.

AEW followed up their best PPV to date with a hot episode of Dynamite! Love when there is a good wrestling show on TV. Pros: Opener was great! Dustin continues to still have it and I thought Malaki Black pretty darn good for someone I don't usually click with. They made me not mind all that much that we are getting Cody coming back for Arthur Ashe after not all that much time away. It was over a month, that's more than most angles they let someone stay away from on-air Punk versus Team Taz is so good. All the dynamics are great. Starks feels like someone that easily could have been grabbed 5 years ago by WWE and currently be on 205 Live. But he didn't get grabbed and now he gets to be a part of this program with Punk. Really enjoyed the Darby match but disliked the build, this feels like it is going to have a bit more meat on the bones as far as actual tension and not just Punk saying he wants to work with young talent Dante vs Hobbs follows that angle up and you are quickly reminded that AEW has signed some of the biggest names in wrestling but also has these wildly talented young wrestlers that can show out. Can't help but watch a match like this and get excited knowing I'm watching a promotion that I could see being as good in 5 years as they are right now with Dante only going to be 25 and Hobbs being 35 (same age as Moxley right now) during that time Not the biggest Adam Cole fan but he comes across as a bigger star than I've ever seen him in AEW. Even if I want to say that the hot crowd does a lot of the work, that's not something I'm going to call a problem! Let the hot crowd make wrestlers look like big stars. That's cool by me. Lee Moriarty got signed. Okay, that's not a Dynamite thing but a very cool thing Cons: Dan Lambert has one of the worst possible acts in AEW. The promotion doesn't need this type of vessle for a Jim Cornette type character. It gets no one over, takes up TV time, and Ego is openly a huge nerd. If there was a chance that Arloski and JDS were going to step in the ring for a match against Dean Ambrose and Eddie Kingston, sure, maybe I would be more on board. Right now, it is not just a nothing act but a negative one MJF's promo was extremely cringy. I don't want him to get beat up, I just don't want his act to exist. Some people don't care about "cheap heat" but at worst here it was distasteful, at best it was dull. Plus it lead to Pillman coming out which is not going to be something I'll root for I didn't mind when I saw that Suzuki vs Mox might be 10 minutes but they cut off Suzuki's entrance and then did the commercial. That's a sort of inexcusable blunder. Wonder if they can get Suzuki back for Arthur Ashe as a do-over. This negative actually as the undertones of a positive for me though as I will say that there is something nice about a wrestling show feeling like a live television production. We got the Punk debut from the control center which was beautiful and has made me think more and more how it is crazy how it even comes together. WWE is so bad with their editing that I don't particularly care if it is difficult. They make their bad work look easy. AEW ran long, rushed things, but that's live TV bby and I don't hate that

Dropping another episode of We Don't Know Wrestling Society X as we look at probably the biggest match in promotion history. We are closing in on the finale. Thankfully, we have Pitbull

Having seen the spot I can not imagine using any other describer as lame. It puts the whole discussion on a weird footing when we treat that spot in the context of modern deathmatch wrestling as grotesque.

Realizing I have not posted the latest We Don't Know Wrestling Society X (also currently looking for a guest for the next episode if interested)

I've seen a couple of the big AJPW tags but literally just that, one or two. So this feels like my first proper intro to the wrestler.

This obviously my own personal journey but I'm going through the NJPW 80s set and Yatsu is an injection of life into it. He is put in situations where he can be that ball of energy so it feels slightly unfair to give him that nod but as I was starting to lose steam he really carried me. I just watched the '84 Gauntlet for the very first time and I thought he was the star of the show. He had to work against junior Takada and make it interesting, the fact he did that so well is a feat. Now, I don't know where I'll land on Yatsu at the end of the day but if he is this good for any sort of extended period of time I can't imagine not having him on my list somewhere. I am a big fan of wrestlers that deliver Hoots and think Yatsu might end up fitting the bill.

Feels like someone I would have been 100x more sympathetic to the case before they decided to retire in Florida.

Another one for the bump crew. Funaki has had an interesting career that hasn't always led to him having a ton of high-end stuff. As a shoot-style wrestler I have always been fond of him as a much more athletic guy compared to some others. Sure, he's not as good as Otsuka in that vein but not many are. He has managed to transition over the past decade to a fairly good vet. His stuff in AJPW when he was in the Triple Crown mix was pretty great and he's putting on good matches against pretty green wrestlers as recently as the past month with GLEAT. Like a ton of wrestlers he's someone I don't have a complete picture of so I'm going to continue to try and pull together pieces of his career to see if I can stand a little firmer on the Masakatsu Funaki is a top 100 of all time take. Let's get some quick reviews going for the dude. Sorry, I will not sequester myself to the Microscope section: Funaki vs. Bart Vale (PWFG 3/4/91): **3/4 - Don't usually rate things like this quite frankly. Not truly worth your time. A bit long and Bart Vale doesn't exactly hold up his end of the bargain but Funaki makes what could have been a true stinker, something at least passable. And heck, he does it through his selling of Vale's floaty kicks. Keiji Muto & Masakatsu Funaki vs. Masahiro Chono & Minoru Suzuki (AJPW 8/30/09): *** - This is Funaki's return match to wrestling. If you don't consider Pancrase, there was a near 17 year gap. That's what makes him doing a kip-up out of a headscissors work for me. He's a 40+-year-old athletic dude with the expectation is that he'll choke you out but he wants to show off he can do pro wrestling. Suzuki is the obvious choice to bridge that ring rust. The match feels much hotter when those two square off, even if Suzuki is hamming it up about 100% too much for my liking. I think the ancient Muto and Chono aren't putrid in there, and they carry a certain amount of weight. Plus Chono does a Wizard in the corner to Muto which turns into just a solid boot to the jaw. It was sick. The match sort of lives and dies with the shooters though and they do enough to carry things. Funaki also nearly ends his entire return with a dive that ends with his whole noggin' pointing towards the floor. AKIRA & TAJIRI vs. Masakatsu Funaki & Minoru Tanaka (W1 8/23/14): ** - Yeah, don't need to make time for this. A mid-card house show tag match. I think Tanaka, someone I don't particularly love, put on the best performance, doing some decent selling. I may have done Funaki a disservice with this match selection. We have a match where he makes it watchable, a match where he's getting his feet back under him, and a match where he is more or less deemphasized despite coming to the ring with a big belt. It might just come out that Funaki doesn't hold up under Random Match Theory. 2/3 though he sort of makes the matches so maybe he'll be fine. I don't feel like I'm being dumb to explore his case further which is a good first step.