Bierschwale

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/35352-all-japan-pro-wrestling/?p=5771038 I will continuously update that specific post. Konga = Barbarian, since he used that name in Japan before and I'm pedantic as hell about incongruous tag team names. Haku/Konga just sounds better.

He seems to be lost in time and space right now, but he was certainly active when this is taking place, so: AJPW signs Nobutaka Araya.

AJPW signs Katsumi Usuda.

Jun Akiyama. Nobutaka Araya. Satoru Asako. Giant Baba. Black Cat. Black Tiger II (AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Champion). Masanobu Fuchi. Samson Fuyuki (All Asia Tag Team Champion). The Great Kabuki. Haku. Stan Hansen. Norio Honaga. Tamon Honda. Takashi Iizuka. Masao Inoue. Takashi Ishikawa. Jun Izumida. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW World Tag Team Champion). Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. Koki Kitahara (All Asia Tag Team Champion). Kenta Kobashi (AJPW World Tag Team Champion). Konga. Mitsuharu Misawa (Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion). Maunakea Mossman. Osamu Nishimura. Akira Nogami. Yoshinari Ogawa. Takao Omori. Masao Orihara. Miguel Perez, Jr.. Akitoshi Saito. Richard Slinger. Tatsuhito Takaiwa. Akira Taue. Genichiro Tenryu. Tiger Mask IV. Ultimo Dragon. Katsumi Usuda. Yuji Yasuraoka. Negro Casas. Mascara Magica. Alex Wright.

Okay, so my plan is to post every RL TV taping show and at least one event a week. RWTL/CC will get more extensive coverage. Is that sufficient? 2 shows for every three weeks most likely, to make up for the huge gaps between tours.

Okay, I'll try to be as tightly-written as possible.

...Say goodbye to all of that heavy hierarchical booking is all that I'll say. I'll take it. Will try to not screw up.

I have a Can-Am/European MOTY at ***** (Reigns-Styles, 5/1), a Japanese MOTY at ***** (Endo-Takeshita, 9/18), and a Lucha MOTY at ***** (Canis-Trauma, 9/4). I don't think of that as excessive.

Bailey/Togo-Endo/Sasaki is one of the best matches of the year, and I love how even MORE "TV title division" Dick is as a face, like Larry Z in '94 where him being a cheating bastard just makes him even more lovable.

This year's SJC was stupendously dull. Not without some good matches, but still. In some ways, I think that youth is a key component in the original J Cups. Almost everyone is under 30 or just about there and the older guys are more unique. This year, youth was almost a punishment. Just a drabness to everything. Not enough masked guys, not enough promotional diversity, not enough... color.

YAMATO is a Dragon Gate guy. He'd only been active for a few years at that point but was older to debut. He's one of the best post-Toryumon originals in DG, for whatever that is worth.

Togo and Rey Escorpion were the first two to come to mind who hadn't been mentioned.

Not a fan of the Eddyjiri-Team Angle match? I love that match, I think that it's woefully underrated, even if that era was oversaturated with ladder matches. Some brutal spots, a masterful Guerrero performance, and a fantastic finish. I actually have it as GREAT. The Eddyjiri-Team Angle TV matches all easily qualify for this thread.

I think that a lot of people have that closer to GREAT than I do, but I'd totally agree. Awesome match that's just below MOTYC to me. Brother Shoe pointing to Matt Borne's Doink run reminds me of the wonderful Doink-Jannetty 2/3 falls match from 7/93. Jannetty, as the RAW MVP for its first year, is lousy with these level of matches. Awesome title defense against Bigelow, excellent match later in the year against Waltman. The Michaels matches. And then 12 years later he has the minor classic with Angle on SD.

-MX vs. Morton/Rich from Havoc '90. Just such a classic pair of performances from Bobby & Ricky, even if the match itself isn't great. -Enos vs. Jericho from Nitro in 9/96. Impossible to not love this match, and it is infinitely rewatchable. Sub-8 minute match with multiple callback spots and two dudes just sprinting through hoops. Mike Enos deserved so much more. -Pantera vs. TAKA from No Way Out '98. It doesn't have the absurd heat or the sense of distinct super-gifted underdog face/cocky asshole heel dynamic that my BELOVED BC-TAKA match from December '97 has (which is a GREAT match to me), but there's still some great spots and general work, and fantastic babyface selling from TAKA. -Hashimoto/Otsuka vs. Misawa/Ogawa from 21st Century. What a group to just watch interact. I love puro god-and-general tags. -Bryangun vs. The Shield handicap elimination match from RAW in 9/13. Amazing heat, great booking story of babyface camaraderie that can't beat the Shield's incredible teamwork until they have the tables turned on them, just a completely unique match. -Kana vs. Satomura from Kana's show in 2/14. Not a great match, but a completely wonderful one. -HARASHIMA/Ohka vs. Komatsu/Tanahashi from Muscle Mates 2015. I kinda love Heel Tana.

I think of Brock as a gimmick match type at this point. Asking who's had the best "Brock Lesnar match" since his return is like asking "who's had the best WWE ladder match ever?".

Yeah, this match is impossibly awesome and I'm with the "best of the feud" crowd. The heat in the bullrope tugs of war was palpable stuff and goes back to Carlos's immense charisma and Hansen's ability to let just the right amount of vulnerability through to give the babyface that hope. It was also probably the best-reffed and booked four-corners match that I've ever seen since there wasn't any horseshitting around how you get the fall, which meant that there was almost no pause to the action.

With Frye & Mutoh, you could run a BATT angle. Imagine Frye/Hakushi/Hase/Kea/Muta as a WarGames team. That'd be a hell of a thing. And, a quick thought on prospects... Bischoff has said that he wanted to go with SoCal moving forward. Well, when did Cena officially ink his OVW deal? You could say that he was already a WWF guy because he was in UPW, but rules only exist to be broken. You've got HWA guys.

So using the G1 standard over the last few years, if KUSHIDA retains, then BUSHI, KO'R, & Romero all have challenge claims and if Wee Willie wins, it's Beretta, Chase, and TM4. That's some good parity booking,

Hideki Suzuki vs. Masato Tanaka (ZERO1, 1/1): YES. Having rewatched it, the Tanaka "schtick" part doesn't bother me at all, and I'm not sure why it ever did in the first place. I love Tanaka; to me he is the personification of a gladiatorial wrestler. It's not "fighting spirit" with him, it's an absolute refusal to die. If he needs to break out a table to beat the guy who's perhaps the best pure wrestler on the planet, he's gotta break out a table.

Long live the king.

The Northeast is the regional area that least views itself as a region, and to take WWE, it's had a ton of gimmicks for Northeasterners based on being from their areas. Hunter Hearst-Helmsley, the Mean Street Posse, Enzo & Cass, Zack Ryder, Tazz, the Brooklyn Brawler. Cena's heel reinvention. Heyman. There's also SO MANY distinct Northeastern accents/dialects that are considered to sound atrocious. Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Queens, Long Island, it's a long list. Worth noting, and I could be desperately deeply wrong here, but it seems that a lot of guys regularly given time to cut promos from those areas (and others, like Chicago) are ones whose accents weren't really apparent. Angle & Douglas for Pittsburgh, Punk for Chicago, Miz for Cleveland. Oddly, Seth Rollins has one of the strongest accents in the company and it's not even close to being an Iowan accent. He really just sounds like Linda Belcher.

It might have been excessive to have two Miguel Perez hair matches from a four-week span, but Dantes-Perez from 10/13 is an awesome match, and better than the Aniversario main event against Silver King. Perez is one of the most entertaining wrestlers of the decade for me-- he fits well into any situation.

The finish is sudden but it's great and makes perfect sense because the match is all about the escalation of the Atlantida. Atlantis tries to apply it the first time and UG breaks away. Then the fall into the ropes while he's SO close to having it set. They make it into an absolute nuclear bomb.

Great, great, great match. The DQ on Panther for the mask-rip seems like a ridiculously clever move on the fly if I have it figured out. Perrito pouring his water onto the back of his head to "treat" the wound (which he wouldn't have done had Villano not gotten busted open) made it harder for Panther to rip the mask. But the water also makes the mask more porous and easier for Panther to just pull off. You can see him looking at Mistico and telling him that he didn't realize that it would happen; he wanted to work the cut. Makes for a segunda where Villano doesn't have to take a lot of damage and can get the momentum for the tercera. At least I think that's what happened.