fxnj

This match really makes me want to watch more NJPW beyond the 6 star shit. This felt like the apex of the dream match style. Not much story besides it being two big names going at it, but they played it absolutely perfectly. Great selling both guys, no downtime, and plenty of breathtaking sequences. I haven't seen much Ibushi since he was pretty much just an amazing athlete who always did the same high flying spots every match, but he really seems to have become a complete worker as he just did a couple flying spots that were sold like a big deal. Spot of the match for me was when he unloaded on Naito on the ropes with vicious kicks, and when he got Naito down the camera shifted to showing Naito looking on at Ibushi in absolute horror. Pro wrestling as fuck right there. Also loved the spot when Ibushi hit a springboard german suplex on Naito. Didn't even know that was possible. The struggle over Naito's Destino and whatever double underhook move Ibushi was looking for was tremendous stuff. I jumped out of my chair at some of those nearfalls late in the match, but when Naito hit that second Destino I knew that was the end. Maybe the best match I've seen from 2017, even beyond the more pimped Omega/Okada G1 match. ****5/8

Absolute masterclass in storytelling here. I kind of feel like I watched a different match than the people who make this out as nonstop action from the opening bell. If anything, they seemed kind of timid from the start as Kawada just did a few chops before trying to work some holds. I guess the early story was that they were tag partners and both guys wanted to win without hurting the other too much. They start looking for big moves relatively early as well, which makes me think they just want a quick win without killing the other guy. Through all this, though, a theme starts to emerge that Taue really has Kawada scouted, as he repeatedly finds ways to counter Kawada's moves better than anyone seen thus far. As the action starts to escalate, I notice a really nice detail in play in how Taue knows refuses to engage Kawada in striking battle, presumably because he knows he can't win, and always finds some other move to catch Kawada off guard. Of course, it's gonna take more than a few nice counters to take Kawada down, and Taue does turn in a really good sympathetic performance when Kawada gets a chance to unload. Still, Taue just keeps surviving and Kawada starts selling the frustration as he just can't seem to put Taue away. This all leads to an amazing, beautiful moment late in the match when they're both on the ring apron and Kawada is ruthlessly high kicking away at Taue. Kawada is clearly flustered whilst Taue holds the ropes to stop from falling down, but you get this sneaky feeling from when he defiantly hoists himself up that this is exactly where he wants the match to be. And just like that, he catches Kawada with a nodowa off the apron and pretty much has him beat right there. This match would be a classic just for that sequence alone. Anyway, Kawada tries to roll around for a bit to stall, presumably in an attempt to run down the clock, but there's no escape from Taue. Pretty soon thereafter, Taue hits the dynamic bomb for an incredible upset win. Bit of a slow burner, but they definitely paid everything off by the end. I'm not sure if I'd call this clearly better than their 1/91 match as it lacks the same visceral punch, though it's definitely a deeper match from a standpoint of selling and psychology. By no means is this a bad match from an action point-of-view, but it's the cerebral aspects that put it over the top ****1/2

All caught up with my recs. Here's my match for HeadCheese

Kind of funny that they first match ever for an all-female promotion is a dark match featuring a number of relatively big name male wrestlers for the time. The match is basically a parody of Royal Rumble type matches with everyone coming in street clothes and several guys taking their sweet time to get to the ring. I love Claudio taking a nap during the match and later using his pillow as if it were a steel chair. Ending is pretty funny as everyone gets eliminated before Jimmy Jacobs can come in, so he gets declared the winner by default and acts as if he just won an Olympic medal. No rating, but very enjoyable comedy.

Thanks to NintendoLogic for this rec. Apparently it's Red Bastien under the mask. Always a treat to see him in action even this late in his career. I was really caught off-guard by how this match was worked. I expected a competitive squash based on who was in it, but it's actually a pretty evenly fought match where Red continuously gets the better of Inoki through a combination of trickery and underhanded tactics. It's really cool how the aggression in their work progressively picks up as the match goes on. First, they just leisurely trade armlocks, then they're grabbing tights and hair, and then they're punching and headbutting each other. It feels like they run out of ideas a few minutes before the finish, though, as they return to the slow trading of holds until it's time for Inoki to hit a series of big moves for the finish. Really fun mat-based contest that flew by for most of its duration. ***1/2

Thanks to SirEdgar for this rec. I'm not a fan of Kojima as he generally comes across too goofy with his mannerisms for me to take him seriously, but he does he decent job here working as a poor-man's late-career Kobashi. First time watching EVIL and he didn't really do much for me. Both guys look kind of limited as much of the match is slow and mainly built around basic strikes, but they build to some big moves and Kojima ends up giving a pretty good babyface selling performance by the end. Not a classic, but an admirable effort for these guys. ***

I am surprised there aren't more people raving about this. It's two monster gaijin beating the hell out of each other in front of a hot Tokyo Dome crowd, so it's pretty hard to not get into. The shots these guys throw at each other and the ensuing eye injury to Vader are god damn gruesome and really make this match stand out as a brutal one. Besides that, it's nuts how Hansen keeps throwing shots to Vader's eye even when it's clear there's a problem. It's like watching two angry drunks fighting each other and there's a lingering feeling things might go just a little too far and someone could get killed. About the only criticism I have is that the camerawork wasn't that great at capturing shots thrown by these guys at each other. There's a moment where Hansen is on his knees and Vader delivers some stiff as fuck slaps that look like they could knock someone out. Not to be outdone, Hansen later puts his full weight behind some stiff kneedrops straight on Vader's injured eye of all places. The match is worked in such a way that it's clear from the beginning it's only a matter of time until things explode, so by the time the double count-out it feels like nothing else would have worked for the finish. I'd go at least ****1/4, probably higher if I watch a better quality version than what's on Dailymotion and my dog wasn't distracting me. Also, not like anyone was doubting the brutality of this match, but here's Vader talking about how doctors had to cut off and reattach his eye, as well as do facial reconstructive surgery because of this match.

No need to be so confrontational to every ESL member here. It's not a crime that he likes asking questions about things that he's still forming his own opinion on.

Hahaha! Holy shit! WHAT?!?!? Really? You don't think good vs evil was something Shakespeare cared about? You figure Macbeth is painted entirely in shades of grey? You don't think Iago is a true heel character? I mean, sure, it's a more psychological idea of good and evil than in, say, the medieval mind; and characters could be a mixture of good and evil, and could be capable of change. but without the concepts of good and evil and the conflicts between the two, there could be no Shakespeare as we know it. Huckleberry Finn is all about Huck searching for his own moral and ethical authority. He ends up questioning and even rejecting what he's been taught about right and wrong by religion and society and makes morally ambiguous choices along the way... but the whole point of the story, and of so much of what I have read from Twain, is that Huck needs to figure out how to be a "face" in a complicated and changing society. It's about finding our own standards of good and evil, right and wrong... it is in no way "beyond good and evil." Even with Joyce... it's standard first-year University thinking to consider Ulysses Modernist and Relativistic and as such (once again) "beyond good and evil" but that is woefully short-sighted. I'd argue that Joyce, like Twain, wanted to help his readers to think for themselves, to find spiritual liberation. It's certainly not a religious work, but that does not mean it isn't concerned - deeply concerned - with questions of morality. There are lots of other interesting and provocative ideas in your post and in the ones above it and hopefully I'll find time to get around to those eventually... but this part of your post just struck me as extremely unclear thinking. What you call "the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Twain, Joyce, etc." could not exist without the struggle between good and bad, right and wrong... pleasure and pain... What you're saying backs up my point. Those stories don't just spoonfeed you what's right and what's wrong and make it all about the hero trying to topple the villain. They play around with morals and challenge the audience to think for themselves. It's all distant from what was suggested about matches clearly telling you who you should cheer and boo, and it's more in line with WWE's current main event booking strategy. Ever since Reigns failed to catch on as a face, they've just kind of focused on throwing characters out there and letting the audience decide who they want to get behind. That's something a lot of the people who complain about him not fitting into classic wrestling babyface champ don't seem to grasp. He's should be looked at as simply a protagonist whose character involves him acknowledging and subverting a lot of the tropes associated with the babyface champ archetype. At least watching in highlight form the whole run between him, Lesnar, and Strowman has been really compelling stuff to watch unfold.

I will preface by saying that, when I look at matches, I tend to place a lot of emphasis on how guys struggle over moves and control of the match. Struggle is what bridges the "entertainment" side of wrestling with the "sports" side. Without proper struggle, matches just feel like exhibitions to me. The term "exhibition" is common for matches that just feature a bunch of guys doing flashy moves without much substance, but I also find a lot of the 80's US stuff comes across as exhibitions to me as well. I vastly prefer watching guys portray themselves as serious athletes rather than cartoon characters. I've written in the past about how 80's guys come across to me as copying Buddy Rogers and Gorgeous George without really understanding what made those acts work in the first place. The key things were that you didn't have everybody working like them at the time and, when it came time to wrestle, they showed themselves as being able to hang better than most of the 80's crew. George and Rogers stood out when most heels of their era were roughhouse types, but the act loses its effect when everyone is doing the same thing. As mentioned, it gets numbing when every match is about a face playing to the crowd and a heel stooging, stalling, and cheating. You could look at an 80's WWF card and get a pretty good idea of how matches would play out just by looking at the participants. Something like Lawler wrestling Austin Idol and half the match being stalling might get praised by people who are into that thing, but it isn't my bag at all. I'd argue that sort of thing isn't some "lost art" but something that only really worked in a specific time and place. You've got to remember that in the kayfabe era of the 70s and 80s, the attempted audience for wrestling was the lowest common denominator fan who either didn't know or didn't care to learn that what they were watching was preplanned. That sort of good vs. evil dynamic works great in real sports, as you can see from UFC, and it did work great at the time for wrestling, but things change. You can't have guys wrestling the same way when it's a bunch of hardcore fans and everyone knows it's fake. That element of the fanbase shifting from viewing wrestling as a real sport and into some sort of athletic soap opera or theater production makes everything a lot more complicated. Just like in any TV show aimed at an adult audience, you need variety in the stories you tell. Good vs. evil is fine every once in a while, but saying it's all wrestling should be about would be like arguing that English literature never should have evolved beyond Beowulf. Beowulf's good vs. evil thing is great, but if you don't move on to other narrative structures you never get the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Twain, Joyce, etc. The idea that, as far as in-ring character work goes, that it's either guys doing 80's style heel work or guys doing random moves makes as much sense as saying that with movies it's either sappy kids movies or special effects reels. It's entirely possible to combine the best aspects of both genres and create something far beyond either of them. I would even say that wrestling has already done this. The best wrestling ever done in my book is 90's AJPW and RINGS, and both of those abandon traditional heel vs face dynamics. With AJPW, Kawada and Taue might have worked in ways resembling traditional heels (though more the 50's roughhouse variety than the 80's stooging variety) on occasion, but there was such beautiful storytelling underlying it all that they still got cheered on huge when they were destroying an injured Misawa and Kobashi in 6/9/95. RINGS did away entirely with the exaggerated mannerisms associated with pro wrestling and let the conditioning and technical abilities of the participants tell the story, effectively using real techniques to create real emotion. To me, character work is almost an inevitability in any combat sports. Even in MMA, you see in-ring character work in the form of guys' styles and what ways they favor to defeat opponents. There's a reason trainers place so much emphasis on studying tapes rather than just formulating some generic winning strategy for their guys. If you simply expand your definition, you will see that character work is not only continuing to survive, but actively thriving at a level arguably more interesting than it's ever been. I've heard of Daniel Bryan's recent matches involving spots where he does flying maneuvers and stays down just a little longer than normal to play off his history of concussions. That's great character work. As is Brock Lesnar's suplex city deal when you take into account his character as a UFC fighter who just does whatever will win him matches without caring much for entertaining fans. I'd probably be able to come up with a lot more examples if I followed WWE programming. It would be fine to argue that for mid-carders there is a disconnect between what the writers come up with for guys and how the agents lay out matches, but from my watching of the high-end stuff it's on an entirely different level in complexity than anything attempted in the 80's Between indy streaming services, Youtube and Twitter, I would say we are in a golden age of guys getting freedom to develop their characters. I really see truth in the idea that if a guy wants to make it in WWE, it's on them to get themselves over, even if that means quitting for a while and proving themselves in other places. This goes even for international talent. It's no coincidence that the most interesting characters of Japan and Mexico from the last decade are Kana and Black Terry, respectively, who both mostly stayed away from bigger promotions to focus on developing themselves. I also think that the reason behind Vince's often-mocked decision to focus on hiring people with backgrounds in regular TV shows as writers over guys versed in writing wrestling is that he recognizes the need I mentioned earlier for wrestling to go beyond good and evil. Not taking shots at anyone, but it's kind of sad that the years have shown a 70 year old man with billions at stake as being more ambitious and willing to take risks than armchair bookers on the internet.

Still haven't watched my match from last week as I've been traveling without much time to watch stuff, but here's my match for Nintendo Logic

Pretty entertaining anecdote from the first UFC related to this. Jimmerson was a pretty highly ranked boxer at the time who did the tournament to help pay for his house and was terrified of facing Royce Gracie in the first round. https://www.mmamania.com/2013/11/16/5109964/ufc-1-story-art-jimmerson-lone-boxing-glove-mma Seriously, if a pro boxer seems unfamiliar with the practice, it seems it really wasn't all that well known at least up to the point of the first UFC. Given that it was guys working shoot fighting gimmicks who popularized tapping out in ECW and WWF, it seems a fair bet that it was the early UFC's that popularized the practice to American audiences. Just gonna assume the WCW international talents tapping was its own thing and didn't really have much influence outside of cruiserweights. Even today, it is mostly shoot holds that lead to tapouts due to the aforementioned stigma in pro wrestling against giving up. Pretty rare to see guys tap to figure fours or bear hugs.

The more that comes out the more I find myself in the camp that many of the accusations against Moolah are either being exaggerated or are outright lies. At this point, it's like one or two people's word on her being a pimp compared to basically everyone else who ever dealt with her. I doubt something like that would have been so well contained if it were true. About the only thing that seems substantiated is her taking a cut of the pay from the wrestlers she was managing, which is pretty much just a natural thing for an agent to do in exchange for training their client and getting them bookings. Just another sad reflection of modern times that a single sexual assault accusation with no evidence ruins someone's reputation.

I thought this was **** match elevated to the ****1/2 range by a perfect ending. It's these guys at Wrestlemania so it's already worth a few stars before they even lock up, and the beginning of the match is some really nice stuff. Undertaker throws some great punches, Shawn sells well, and there's a couple nice touches of uncooperativeness. The deal with Taker injuring his knee also works great as a hook and his selling of it is excellent. It's the second half where I think it kind of falls off the rails. Firstly, Shawn's submission attempts are kind of weak with the figure four being done on the wrong leg and the ankle lock being a hold that doesn't even target the knee. I also think they got a bit finisher happy and it's always irked me that the tombstone on the floor was just treated as another spot rather than a big turning point like it should have. The moonsault onto the announce table is a cool spot, though I'm inclined to think it's a botch as Taker still had his injured leg up, which led to Shawn hitting the wrong leg again. So, so, great for Taker to seemingly acknowledge his respect gained through their matches and even wanting show mercy only for Shawn to reject it and go out defiantly. Even love the detail of Shawn pulling down Taker's gear to reveal the BSK tattoo as a sort of callback to the rivalry with the Kliq. At the time I remember reading this great allegory of the whole thing on 411mania of it being like an Allied soldier hunting down a nazi sniper who's killed all his buddies and, after finally capturing him, hesitating in a brief moment of respect before promptly slitting his throat. Post-match is also fittingly epic, though a bit surreal watch knowing it really was Shawn's last match as most possible didn't buy into it at all at the time.

Agreed. I haven't followed WWE's weekly shows in close to 10 years, but I can't remember a day during that time I haven't checked out the news and rumors. The truth is more entertaining than fiction. If WWE does do a segment I want to watch I can just look it up on Youtube later without having to subject myself to hours of TV a week or pay for the network.

The Rutten/Funaki classic was what got me interested in Pancrase. Lots of great fights in that Rutten comp besides the Funaki stuff. The ones with Suzuki, Delucia, and Frank Shamrock are must-see. Also, the Ken Shamrock ones aren't all that competitive but a great look at what a dominant fighter Ken was in his prime. In a lot of ways, Pancrase had the best rules. The lack of striking on the ground, rope breaks, and liberal stand-ups encouraged fighters to take risks and do lots of entertaining mat-work. It's a completely different thing from what you see in current UFC with guys just laying on each other.

Great suggestions. I will check them out. PRIDE is actually kind of a blind spot for me beyond the famous stuff like Nog/Sapp and Frye/Takayama. I've always gravitated towards old-school Pancrase with the pro-style ruleset.

Rewatched this after reading it claimed that Taue was the guy holding this together, which surprised me as I always remembered this is Kawada and KENTA having cool exchanges while the old guys dragged this down. On rewatch, I still don't think Taue held this together, but I do think all four contributed something and it wouldn't have had the same effect were it just a KENTA and Kawada singles matches. Though it is still a definite shame that NOAH didn't book KENTA vs. Kawada for Kawada's retirement, I also wouldn't have complained if this tag functioned as Kawada's retirement. Anything would have been better than him going out on some random NJPW six-man. Looking at the line-ups reads like a meditation on the effects of age and injuries can have even on guys once regarded as among the toughest and most talented workers out there. You've got Taue, who went through both many 90's AJPW wars and and a fair amount of tough NOAH matches barely able to move. Akiyama, who wasn't in quite as many AJPW wars but has been through quite a bit in NOAH and clearly very banged up for this match. Kawada, who got out after the NOAH split and is looking in better shape for this than Akiyama and Taue but still definitely past his peak. And KENTA, who is in by far the best physical condition of anyone and in the midst of the best run of his career, though he'd ironically suffer a severe injury a few weeks after this and have to slow down his style afterwards. With that out of the way, the opening of this really stuck with me. Kawada and KENTA lock up for a little and, when they get to a rope break, KENTA delivers a hard slap to Kawada. The thing that makes it is Kawada's selling. It's not some "I can't believe this young punk disrespected me" thing like with Joe slapping Kobashi. The guy slowly goes down to one knee like a tree that got chopped down. He looks like the slap actually rocked him. But, like the commentator described him during the ring introductions, Kawada is the eternal junior. He's that little brother constantly out to prove himself, whether that's trying to trade elbows with Misawa, refusing to attack Kobashi's injured leg, or like here, trying to hang with a prime KENTA. And so, after a moment of staying on the ground and realizing what just happened, he gets right back up and trades blows. KENTA, not one to pass up a chance to disrespect an elder, doubles down on the disrespect by imitating Kawada's signature rapid-fire punts. Kawada no sells it and gets in his own bit of disrespect, getting revenge on the slap from earlier with a bunch of hard slaps of his own. KENTA tries to run the ropes, but gets caught with a hard high kick, which leads to KENTA rushing Kawada into the corner and tagging in Akiyama. Such a beautiful opening segment. Akiyama and Kawada is really cool as well with knowledge of their history together, though not on the level of the opening exchanges. Fittingly for a Misawa tribute show, Akiyama tries to use elbows to get the better of his old rival, but he's not Misawa and ends up falling to a spin kick from Kawada. Taue tags in and does his own spin kick, but it looks like it's at half speed compared to Kawada's. Akiyama takes over off a missed running boot and tags in KENTA. When KENTA is in control, but match looks like its going at 2x speed, but when Taue fights back it's reminiscent of slow-motion comedy wrestling, except this is a serious match. Taue ab stretch before tagging Kawada and it's really nice seeing them working in tandem again, though also a bit sad with how Taue has declined. We get another neat KENTA/Kawada exchange that leads to Kawada working a good half-crab on him until tagging Taue back in. KENTA blocks a power bomb and manages to flip Taue over before the running the ropes at light speed en route to a punt, and then he tags in Akiyama. Though Taue is clearly much larger than KENTA, the sequence works with how old Taue has looked and gets across KENTA as a different level in terms of conditioning than anyone else in the match. A spirited exchange between Taue and Akiyama ends in Akiyama hitting an exploder on Taue, which leads to the big heat section of the match. The stuff earlier with Taue looking washed up on offense was actually a great set-up for the heat section. It feels like I'm seeing an old guy getting mugged when KENTA attacks Taue on the outside. Akiyama settles into spending some time in a face lock that Taue sells well and leads to some great interactions between Kawada and KENTA as they interject themselves in the match. We eventually see Taue pull out a ninja roll to hot tag Kawada and it's great to see him finally get the chance to hit all his signature spots on KENTA. Love the spot of the Misawa portrait looking on while Kawada has KENTA in a stretch plum. KENTA gets in a dragon screw, which is a neat choice for a transition move knowing Kawada's history with knee problems. Tag is made to Akiyama and we are in the stretch run with everyone looking for big moves and counters. KENTA and Akiyama try to take out Taue and go for the kill, but the HDA still has some fight left in them and Kawada fights back to make tag to Taue. Kawada is definitely selling the wear and tear of this match at this, selling like he can barely walk back to apron. Taue can't get the better of Akiyama for long, though, and it's soon back to KENTA and Akiyama looking to finish. KENTA's high speed juniors offense seems to be Taue's kryptonite as he's just got no answer to anything KENTA does. Kawada's makes one last rally to save the match. He manages to get Akiyama on the outside and throws him into the guardrail before coming in and stopping a Go 2 Sleep attempt by KENTA. KENTA has looked like an unstoppable monster so far, so things still don't look too good for Kawada when they get into another strike exchanges. Then, in a great moment, Kawada catches KENTA with a surprise gamengiri during their exchange and knocks him out. From there, Akiyama tries to come back in and gets taken out with a nodowa before Taue gets in a tiger driver on KENTA for a near fall. KENTA and Akiyama get back up, but their comeback is short-lived as Kawada powerbombs KENTA into Akiyama in a great spot. Backdrop/Nodowa combo for a nearfall that probably should have been the finish, but this is NOAH and Taue gets the win the very next move with ORE GA TAUE~! Cathartic is the best word to describe this match. On a Misawa tribute show, we don't get an epic with everyone looking spry but rather a match where everyone except KENTA shows their wear and tear, and that might be the most fitting match for such an occasion. Taken as whole, the match plays very well off the unique atmosphere and the high emotion of it being Kawada coming back for Misawa's tribute show The match does seem sad at points like mentioned, but they use those moments as assets for the story that they tell and they make sure to wrap things up in a feel-good moment. ****1/2

His lawyer released a statement saying Enzo never knew about the accusation until it exploded on social media. Since it's from his lawyer, I'd believe it considering he could get in trouble if it was false. I'd give him a second chance. Dude was a big merch mover and entertaining enough to make people care about 205.

I don't deny that there are things that can be gleaned from watching footage. You can see stuff like a wrestler's physique, what moves they do, their execution, etc. The thing is that these seem more useful for someone scouting out talents than they are for ranking someone's overall ring prowess. What I disagree with is the idea that you can watch enough and somehow bridge the gap from "Stan Hansen seems great at working brawls" to "Stan Hansen is the 3rd best wrestler of all-time" or "Terry Funk is better than Stan Hansen." The former statement involves deducing that someone could succeed in filling a particular role based on what you've seen. The latter statements involve trying to figure out who's better among guys regarded as world-class without really having much of an understanding of what it's like to actually work with any of the guys being discussed. What does better even mean? It's seems kind of ridiculous that we've had so many discussions about who is a better performer while no one agrees about whether it means they had a better prime, had more great matches, or were more versatile, etc.

Gave it more thought and came up with a list. 1. AJPW 2. NJPW 3. WWE 4. NOAH 5. UWF 1 6. RINGS 7. BattlArts 8. BJW 9. ROH 10. Fred Kohler Enterprises List is mostly based on which ones produced the most stuff I dig, while also taking into account how they influenced the business. UWF 1 might seem high as they were only around for a year, but they produced a ton of great matches, had a massive influence on the scene, and I love the atmosphere of their shows so they're one of my favorites. No CMLL because I don't like the style and most of the lucha I like is from other promotions. Kohler is on there for promoting some of the best Golden Age matches we have on tape and because Russ Davis is the man.

I'll start. I'm mainly interested in the 90's and early 2000's stuff when a lot of it was still influenced by pro wrestling. Jason Delucia vs. Takafumi Ito Hideo Tokoro vs. Hidehiko Matsumoto Christea vs. Nakamura Carlos Newton vs. Kazushi Sakuraba http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzpwjt

The Kane and Randy Orton example brought up before is good in getting across that things aren't so simple. These days, great matches in WWE can basically be seen as a storytelling device like any other with agents deliberately laying them out for the purpose of getting guys over. I don't think it's a coincidence that Roman Reigns's in-ring work picked up in a big way right when the company started their rocket push on him. You could say that it's the guys that the company relies on to have the most great matches are naturally the better workers, but that seems a shallow way of looking at things and you still end up with the issue that you're basically just ranking styles. Well, it seems to have been more or less impossible for a 2000's WWE divas match to end up good barring a rare miracle. I think people tend to forget the impact that hiring Sara Del Rey as a trainer had on the division. People might point to WWE's women's revolution thing and the good publicity they want from it, but the quality on the women's side had been steadily picking up for years ever since they hired Del Rey.

I can't get on board with that. You could say there's four distinct audiences that wrestlers have to perform for. You've got the other wrestlers in the ring, the management, the fans supporting the promotion, and then the fans watching on tape from a distance. We are that fourth group, so I understood why we would be included to prioritize that sector, but I also don't think those other three should be discounted as they are really far more important. A lot of workers place great pride in making their stuff look good without actually hurting the other guy. Bret Hart pretty much sees wrestling as being about making it look like you're hurting someone without actually doing it. It seems wrong to just discount that simply because it doesn't have much effect on how much matches entertain us, or because some guys' stuff might look a tad soft at times even though it works fine for the fans at the time. Brody is a weird case and I think we could easily have another thread devoted to him about why is there is such a disconnect between us and those other three audiences, but I do think he is definitely an example of why you need to take into account things besides just taped matches. Taped matches are a piece of the puzzle, but they are far from the only piece and a very blurry one as well. I would argue that great matches are not even a starting point. They're a dead end. When you try to look at a wrestler solely based on their matches all you're doing reviewing a bunch of matches that happen to involve the same guy in extremely vague and generalized terms. It's impossible to escape great match theory when you're restricting yourself to taped matches as the criteria. To me, the GWE and GME projects are basically the same game, with the difference that the ruleset for GME is a lot better. There's people who might not have an issue with using great match theory and even enjoy talking about wrestling in those vague terms, but I think it should be stressed that if you do use great match theory you are merely evaluating matches and not wrestlers. That argument applies to ranking matches, not wrestlers. I actually am on board with the ongoing GME project, so I would agree there. When it comes to ranking wrestlers, though, maybe chefs would be a better comparison than food. If I were to look for a chef to hire, then, I absolutely would want to know that behind the scenes information. Instant noodles are tasty but it doesn't take much skill to make them. You are looking at things a bit rose colored here. You got some people doing some nice work discovering hidden gems and that's cool, but, from what I saw, there really wasn't much real debate going on. Any disagreements basically boiled down to people talking past each other because that's really about all great style theory allows for. I read Shawn Michaels thread hoping to see some of his detractors breaking down his matches and explaining why his post-comeback stuff sucked and didn't even get that. The whole thing basically boiled down to people agreeing that his pre-comeback work was good, and then some saying his post-comeback stuff was great while others said it sucked. The discussion didn't seem to evolve much beyond that in the thread's many pages because, as far as I could tell, the whole thing pretty much boiled down to some people digging his brand of melodrama while others hated it. Some of the big names involved in the project have also said that it had a bad long-term effect on the the board. Stylistic preferences don't seem to be a good vehicle for serious discussion. There definitely were people who took the thing very seriously, otherwise there wouldn't have been so much anger over the results and the project. Secondly, I think there is a big difference when one topic ends in "I like this match but not this match" while the other topics makes actual debate possible. The WON HOF takes everything into account and I find the quality of discussion and research it inspires much more interesting than anything I saw during the GWE. I don't know of any lasting grudges that came out of WON HOF discussion either. In WWE almost every single match does end up what it's supposed to be. When guys make mistakes or veer off script they get in trouble. Look at Cass getting heat for following up a big boot with punches rather than just doing a big boot and walking away for a recent example of how strict WWE is on that. From an athletic perspective, the barrier for entry into WWE is way higher than it's been at any other point in history and I think a big part of that stems from how produced the whole thing is getting and the people charge needing people who they know will be able to accurately translate their vision onto the screen. Notice that people rarely complain about the WWE in-ring product and it's generally the storytelling behind the matches that draws ire.

Did Yoshihasa Yamamoto do any works after the 6/99 Tamura match? If not, that would be my pick. Kenta Kobashi 5/13 retirement tag Yoshiko Tamura 12/10 vs. Kurihara El Santo 9/82 retirement tag