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I do think we are veering away from things, so I will try to put my point into simpler terms: Wrestlers in major league promotions these days have to do quite a bit more than just lay out a good match and perform it well in the ring. To make an impact, there's so much they have to do besides just having good matches. Further, the "lay out a good match" part of that is increasingly slipping out of their hands as the business has shifted to agents laying matches out extensively ahead of time. To rate wrestlers based solely on their perceived in-ring ability is not only an incomplete way of looking at things but also just flat-out incorrect in many cases.

Pretty much agree with all of that. I am not saying that people who use agents are talentless or that we should shift into giving all the credit for great matches onto the agents. I am saying that the way we speak of great wrestlers should evolve just as the business itself has evolved. A guy being able to go out and call a great match with a broomstick hasn't been the primary factor in them useful to a promotion in a long time, and the way we speak of wrestling should reflect. I think it would be better to take a more holistic view in evaluating wrestlers with things like their utility to the company they worked for, their influence on other works, and even how well they promote themselves. It shouldn't just be who has the most matches on tape that. You don't think there's a huge difference of talent between a guy who's able to execute a script and a guy who's able to put his own match together or even call it in the ring ? I think there is a big difference. No matter how talented somebody is at calling things on the fly, you're never gonna see them have a match like Misawa/Kobashi 1/20/97 without some pretty extensive planning beforehand. I also brought up the Gail Kim example to show how agents and trainers can have a big effect on the execution side of things. The more think about it, the more it seems like we have such incomplete information that it just isn't right to try to rank guys based exclusively on in-ring ability when we haven't actually been in the ring with them ourselves. The counter I've seen brought up to this line of thinking in the past is that you don't have to be a chef to know what food tastes, but the way I see it we aren't even tasting the food. What we did with the GWE would be like ranking a bunch of dishes solely based on how delicious they LOOK to us while no one actually had the opportunity to go in and actually try them. For all the criticism that "great match theory" got at the time, I feel like the dominant mode of criticizing wrestlers is basically a variant of that which I like to call "great style theory." All you're really doing with great style theory is ranking styles, putting the guys with a lot of stuff on tape from the style that the voter likes at the top of the list. Guys who don't have a whole lot of conventionally great matches or who don't have much on tape get shafted, even if they were hugely influential and highly regarded by the people they worked with.

This is a topic I've seen brought up before, but never really discussed purely in depth. As more promotions treat streaming as a big source of revenue, I'm finding myself shifting away from thinking of matches as just happening in themselves and shifting into thinking of matches for their overall place in the TV production. Matches have become like movies with wrestlers playing the role of actors. You've got camera crews, production people, screenplay writers/bookers, narrators/commentators, and directors/agents. When a great movie comes out, a director often gets just as much praise for it as the lead actors, so why not think of wrestling in similar terms? The wrestler that really opened my eyes up to this was Gail Kim. In her first TNA run she was great, but when she came back to WWE she was nearly getting herself killed botching things left and right. Then she came back to TNA and was great again. How do you explain something like that without taking into account the role of the agents and trainers in her work? My initial reaction was just to think that she was exposed in her WWE run, but now it's a bit more nuanced than that. You can't just pull some random girl off the street and expect her to have a run like Kim in TNA. She might have needed some help, but she was still a great asset to the company. She was a cog who happened to fit a hell of a lot better in the TNA wheel than the WWE one. The common argument, then, is to say to look at someone in a bunch of different settings and base your evaluation on patterns that you notice. Still, that really only works when looking at the territorial era and doesn't work so well when looking at guys who have the bulk of their work in one or two promotions. It's impossible to completely pin down how much a WWE talent is contributing to their matches versus an agent, but this exactly how it should be when looking it as a TV production. You're supposed to fall in love with the characters and not the people writing the lines. The more I think about it, though, the more preposterous it seems to rate wrestlers solely based on what we see in the ring. When you watch a movie, you can praise the actor's deliver but you don't give them credit for every line they deliver like we seem inclined to do with what happens in the ring. I think this why, when people rate actors, they look at the whole package and their impact on the industry rather than just what happens on-screen. The WWE GWE with the NJPW criteria seems a step in the right direction, but I've heard that encountered some difficulties with people ignoring the criteria and just rating however they'd like.

Bob Orton is a guy who never gets his proper due even among hardcore fans. He didn't deliver epics or anything, but when I was watching a lot of 80's WWF back on WWE 24/7 he was a guy who was incredibly consistent in making the other guy in the ring look good and making sure everything was executed nicely. Speaking generally, I think there is a natural tendency for people into rating wrestlers to focus on the guys who always deliver great matches and not enough on the ones who are just great at filling their role.

I'm currently an English teacher in China. I previously tried to hired in Japan so I could attend AJPW and play Japanese arcade games, but I couldn't get a job so I figured working in China would be close enough. I also trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the side.

*waives hand* Big gamer my whole life. First system was an Atari XE computer/game system, followed shortly by the NES. I was huge on the Nintendo side in the Nintendo/Sega console wars, I even still own my original OG Game Boy system in all its brick-like glory. I kind of fell out of console gaming in the 90s, and got big into PC games. I ended up missing out on the PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast era when it was new and only had an Nintendo 64 for the wrestling games. Most of my time in that era was spent on Doom/Doom II/Quake type games on PC, along with EA sports games that were pretty easily moddable. Got back in to consoles for the GameCube, then full blast with the 360/PS3 era. I've made up for lost time by going back and collecting all the systems and games I missed in the 90s, and with the purchase of my Switch last month I have pretty much every video game system from the Atari 2600 up to current era. Gaming also led to importing, since a lot of games back in the 80s and 90s would never get released outside of Japan or wer stupidly rare/expensive in the US. Collecting wrestling games on N64 led me to discover Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, which in turn opened the door to Japanese wrestling since they had an AJPW license and had tons of other "it's easy to see who this guy is supposed to be, just tweaked enough to not get sued" wrestlers from other promotions. I had tons of classic Misawa-Kawada matches on VPW2 before I knew they had tons of classic matches in real life. I still am big into wrestling games, I recently completed my Fire Pro collection, but I'm also big into fighting games. The pool hall my buddies and I used to hang out at in high school had a Street Fighter II arcade machine along with a Mortal Kombat I unit. Street Fighter was alright, but it's hard to underestimate how mind blowing the first MK game was at the time. The full motion video intros were astounding, and not at all low quality like you'd see on CD based consoles of the time. Good stuff. I was a Nintendo kid in the late 90's playing all the Nintendo 64 classics like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. Kept going like that into the Gamecube era and there were so many amazing games from back then. Melee, F-Zero GX, Thousand Year Door, Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker. I still love watching GX time attack videos and Melee tournament videos to this day. It's been great to have seen the meta for these games grow up with me and I really feel lucky to have grown up with such complex and incredible games. Animal Crossing with the playable NES games ended up as a gateway drug into me checking out older stuff through emulation. NES classics like Super Mario Bros, Adventure of Link, and Punch-Out still hold a special place in my heart. I also dabbled in some PC FPS and RTS games during this period, but I considered Nintendo consoles my home. I remember when the DS came and my 10 year old me was mind blown by the whole touch screen thing and I got pretty deep into some of those early games like Meteos and LostMagic, though I lost interest when the games stop using the touch screen. Wii era started out decently but Nintendo got complacent after the Wii Fit fad made them truckloads of money they lost me when their output declined. The Wii was amazing for modding and emulation, though, so I found myself still playing quite a bit of ROMs on it even as there weren't a whole lot of games developed for the console that interested me. Big turning point for me came when I discovered Dodonpachi on MAME. I instantly fell in love with beautiful aesthetics, non-stop intense action, and brutal difficulty. From there I explored the rest of Cave's arcade output and other games in the bullet hell genre. Finally settled into playing Cave's ports on the Xbox 360 since then. I still play Mushihimesama Futari and have for many years. Lately I've been branching out and playing lots of genres on Steam. Been pretty strongly considering buying a wrestling game as it would sound great to combine my two big hobbies, but not really sure what to play. I have to admit I am way more attracted to the newer games with their shiny high-def graphics, but I've also heard they aren't too fun to play. If I made a top 5 games list it would go something like this for me Mushihimesama Futari Dodonpachi F-Zero GX Super Smash Bros. Melee LostMagic

I personally find much of the 90's AJW stuff too spotty and have generally gravitated more towards the 80's stuff when I'm in the mood to watch some peak joshi. Honestly, people finding the 80's stuff hard to get into is news to me. How can you have a hard time getting into the hottest crowds in wrestling history?

90's AJPW for me. I started out with WWE on TV, but I was a teenager in the Youtube era so I don't really have the connection of growing up with it as the only thing to watch like others. After I discovered ditch's sites, there wasn't much looking back. The 90's AJPW stuff was simply on a different level than anything else done before or since. I've found myself having a much deeper connection to the characters and stories told in the ring than anything else I've seen. Many manly tears have been shed watching the epics. I've seen all the pimped matches at least several times each and I can still pop a random match in and mark out as hard as I did first time watching it. With most other styles, I tend to go through cycles or getting bored with them, but 90's AJPW is the one promotion I never get tired of watching no matter how much I watch. When I want to remind myself how great wrestling can be or even just want to watch something I know I'll dig I always go for 90's AJPW.

I was really impressed by Dick Shikat when I was going through the 20's and 30's footage. Always struck me as weird that he wasn't in the WON HOF.

Anyone else dig videogames? Can't relate much to the TV talk and watching sports besides combat sports but I'm pretty big into gaming.

Rewatched this and it really is a fantastic match. The psychology around the knee and how the match plays off the Kawada match really is tremendous. You can say Akiyama is playing the heel, but that's way too simplified. Kobashi comes in trying to show off doing shit like delayed suplexes and running the ropes doing knee strikes as if he's confident Akiyama will be like Kawada from last month in ignoring the knee. Akiyama isn't Kawada, though. He has no aspirations about proving as the ace and simply wants to send a message. He knows he can't match Kobashi in a straight what with him not being as big, strong, or experienced in big matches so he takes a shortcut in the form of attacking the knee. Don't really have much else to add about the match after it gets going. As mentioned, amazing selling from Kobashi and offense from Akiyama. I stand by what I said about this being the best NOAH match ever. I can't say in good conscience that it's a good idea to have this many head drops and pop up spots in a match for how that stuff destroyed bodies and led to many failed imitators, but this was really as good as that style can get. Everything head drop has loads of meaning behind in getting across Kobashi's urgency to win and Akiyama sells them like a champ. Especially dig the thousand yard stare he has after eating the half nelson on the floor. Great, great detail work as well with stuff like Kobashi wrenching in on the neck during the facelock or Akiyama dropkicking the knee anticipating a pop-up from Kobashi. Both guys looked tougher coming out than they did going in, especially Akiyama who got put over here much better than he did in any of the Misawa matches. If this isn't *****, it's pretty damn close to it. What a crazy year for Kobashi that a match of this level might be only his 3rd best behind the Kawada and Misawa matches.

Surprised there wasn't a thread for this. Really fun throwing sprint where everything feels just a bit more meaninful than it normally would with it being the last pre-split Budokan, one of the the HDA's last matches, and the crowd being completely rabid from the start. The HDA blitzes the other team from the opening bell with Taue doing a nodowa off the apron within the first few minutes and the match doesn't slow down much. It is a bit unfortunate that Ace didn't sell the move more and is in control just a few minutes later, but that's just the direction this style had gone at this point. Taue gets a shoulder injury and they wok over Kawada a bit while he gets it taped up, but it's back to trading big moves once he's back in. Enjoyed the spot where Ace overshot on a moonsault on Kawada and Kawada responded by kicking him. Not the deepest stuff, but you could do much worse than these guys and Ace was actually really good with timing the pin fall attempts so that he got his shoulder up at the last possible moment. ***1/2

SirEdgar Let me know if I'm crazy for thinking Billy Graham had a good match in 1987

Watch the Sapp/Nogueira PRIDE fight and you'll see one of the most talented grapplers in the world getting manhandled for most of the fight by a significantly larger opponent who doesn't really have going for him besides size and strength.The only reason shooters used to be able to get away with messing with big guys is that the fundamentals of fighting, especially the ground game, are very counter-intuitive, which makes it easy for them to have their way with someone who's clueless on such matters regardless of size differences. If you match them with a huge guy with a extremely basic knowledge of how to defend himself though, there's a good chance of the big guy winning. Andre probably never learned the basics of fighting simply because he had little use for them in a time before BJJ exploded. He was pretty infamous for shooting on guys and just his size seemed to be enough to dominate them with little trouble. You can watch his match with the Iron Sheik, who was almost an Olympic level amateur wrestler, for example. Andre doesn't really show anything beyond just stiffing Sheik and sitting on him in a headlock but that's all he needed. Situations like when he got shot on by Gotch and Maeda would have sucked, but those guys were definite outliers.

Destroyer's book has a lot of info on Japan from that era.

I love this review. Very entertaining reading, but AJPW isn't doing THAT bad. I believe they've been on a steady uptrend since 2015 and this year's Champion's Carnival drew pretty well for them.

The discussion is great but there doesn't really seem to be anywhere near the same level of hype GWE got. Maybe we could run some podcasts promoting it?

Pretty sure Dave is just trolling with his ratings now. It was only a matter of time until he became absorbed in his Twitter Dave gimmick that it started bleeding into Newsletter Dave.

Don't jump into the 90's, jump into the 80's first. The Gokuaku Domei vs. Crush Gals feud is must watch. Are the AJW Classics discs worth getting for the 80s content? The AJW Classics episodes jump around a lot. They feature the biggest matches of the Crush Girls era but don't cover the transition period from the 70s Beauty Pair boom to the Crush Girls boom -- the era where Jackie Sato was ace, Jaguar Yokota was the young challenger, Monster Ripper the monster heel, Black Pair the main native heels, and Devil Masami terrorised Mimi Hagiwara. The benefit of All Japan Classics is that the matches air in full whereas on TV they were clipped. I think you should start at a transition point -- either post Jackie Sato or post Crush Girls. If you want to watch the 90s inter-promotional stuff it's a good idea to start with the early 90s shows to see how the young AJW stars grew into their roles (Hokuto, Aja, Toyota, Kyoko, etc.) If you track the growth of each star it gives you more of a feel for the emotional context instead of concentrating only on the in-ring style which people get hung up about at times. Just watch wrestler X or Y is the worst way to watch Joshi. Joshi is a bit like lucha in that it is not one style. There is a certain style that people associate with it but it isn't the only working style. When you see a flaw or something you think is wrong with the style, try to remember that flaw is 100% deliberate. It's not as though dozens upon dozens of Joshi workers went out there and made the same basic mistakes. The girls chose to wrestle the way they did just like other styles evolved in different ways. It's not wrong per se, it's just different. You need to try to adjust to the rhythm of what they're doing. It helps to think about it as a live experience and what you would pop for if you were in the crowd. Good luck. Not sure if I'd even call joshi a style. Joshi really just means Japanese women's wrestling and there's just as much diversity in it as there is in Japanese men's wrestling. AJW seemed to allow their top workers to determine the house style and wasn't much like CMLL in terms of forcing everyone to wrestle a specific way. The handful of Beauty Pair matched I've seen seemed to have been almost entirely old-school mat wrestling. The Crush Girls stuff was still mat-dominated but added in technical striking and high flying elements. Dump, Bull and Aja introduced weapons brawling. It's not until Toyota that the workrate sprint style most people think of as "joshi style" starts to be en vogue. Then you go into the late 90's and you get the aforementioned shooty ARSION stuff. After AJW loses its grip, you see even more diversity with stuff like Yoshiko Tamura wrestling NWA champ hybrid, Meiko Satomura wrestling shoot-style hybrid, and inter-gender matches becoming a thing.

If the issue was his posting style and he's demonstrated a willingness to improve it, I don't see why you guys can't talk something out. There's gotta be a better way to resolve this than him trying to evade his ban.

I want back in.

Yeah, by 2006 NOAH style or Ark Style as I've seen it called was pretty distinct from the stories and layered Kings Road of AJ. That nuanced story and layers of meaning of AJ was never really present in ROH. Perhaps Joe vs Kobashi is the one exception but even then, it's a novelty fantasy. Otherwise, it was the "I'm tougher, I've got a more dangerous move" NOAH style. I think it's really the case where people may want to go back and look at the top 4 or 5 guys per year and see where their influences were...to see if there was a puro company they could have fit into. Not sure if I'd call it a new style if it more or less boils down to marks for 90's AJPW trying and failing to recreate it. The late shodate's "indy road" term seems a good description for the ROH and NOAH stuff.

I've never really had an issue with shodate's grammar and spelling. It was weird at first, but I had no problems understanding what he was trying to say after getting used to it. There's posts from other people on here that I've read several times over and still had no idea what point they were trying to make. That was never the case with shodate. Every post had a clear point and it was usually something interesting, and that's more than enough for me to overlook his idiosyncratic writing style.

Some action really should be taken on the people following him into every topic just to insult him. WAY more annoying than the man himself.

Atifact of the time new Japan did nor change all gaijin were heels all Japan did change the funks and Ace were faces for example in all japan so by that fact all owen's stuff was heel the first Gajin non |Heel in New Japan was Pegasus Never thought of Hogan or Backlund as heels in NJPW based on their work there.