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Only watch wrestling crew checking in

Yeah, I was gonna say I think a huge portion of his rep as an all-time great is derived from how the company positioned him, first as a top tag guy when that division was often carrying the workrate on the cards, and then as a top singles guy when the promotion wanted to distance itself from the Hogan era by pushing a more athletic style. I don't think it would have been a good idea for him to go to WCW at any point as the greater talent pool means a higher chance of getting lost in the shuffle and getting less opportunities for great matches.

You're really underselling Bret's opponents. It's true that he was often the guy called on to make the Papa Shangos and Isaac Yankems of the roster look good, but he was just as often positioned to have epics with guys who could go to the next level, like Flair, Hennig, and Backlund. Before that he also wrestled as a tag guy during the peak of WWF tag wrestling, so I'm not seeing him held back by quality of opponents at any point in his career. On the TV point, the thing to keep in mind is that the WWF's business model then was still to use TV to build to house shows, particularly the monthly MSG shows. The Japan guys are a bad comparison since over there it's the opposite mentality turn it up for TV and take it easy on house shows. The best available representation of Bret as a week-to-week worker in that period isn't the TV squashes but the CHV and house show handhelds, and I'd be interested if they ever got serious look.

Meltzee seems to think it's because of the olympic lifts they have the guys doing. From experience, the bench press is much worse for the shoulder than the oly lifts, and you don't hear much about shoulder problems from someone like Kane with a 500lb raw bench. If they're doing Crossfit style lifts with little regard for form, though, that could definitely compound things as mentioned. I'd argue it's the combination of the training with the wrestling schedule and style that's causing these injuries. I have a bad shoulder and the best I can do is to just listen to my body and try not to push it too hard. With these wrestlers, though, they can't listen to their body since fans expect them to look like these amazing athletes every time out, hence a nagging pain eventually becomes a torn rotator cuff or ACL. It's a hard place for WWE to be in as it's pretty much the result of them finally giving in to favoring the more physical and athletic puro style style that fans have been pressuring them to move towards for a long time now, only without the tour schedule that gives puro guys precious time to recover. I can only see the injuries getting worse and more frequent if things continue as they are now.

I didn't know the Hansen/Bruno match with the neck break was televised. Any reason why it's JIP? The Patera/Bruno match also sounds pretty interesting if it's anywhere near as good as Backlund's Patera match.

I'd go with TNA, while it was still the solid candidate for #2 worldwide, paying its performers peanuts and generally not giving a fuck about their well being as the ultimate example of wrestling scum. On-air example would be them running a concussion angle with Mr. Anderson to make it look like they cared, while at the same time they were pressuring Daphney backstage to do dangerous stunts and refusing to pay the bill when they injured her. I'd say that's much worse than WWE or an old territory running some angle SJW's don't like.

I have seen a large amount of those matches listed, plus some stuff not on there and I am shocked anyone could be let down by it. There's just too much great stuff in the first half of the decade like the 2000 Tenryu match, the Nagata/Iizuka tag, 2002 Mutoh TC, Hashimoto TC, Misawa 2005 etc. for me to see how it could be dismissed and when I watched his 2005 run for Ditch's poll I thought he was still one of the best in the world. By 2006 he slows down a bit but he still looked in great shape relative to the other pillars and his final NOAH made it clear he had plenty left in the tank even that late into his career. If anything, I'd be more interested in the matches that underwhelmed as the idea that Taue was better in the 2000's sounds absurd to me on the surface.

If you look at his Tiger Mask run, there actually is a pretty clear slow build to getting him over as a fan favorite and making people see him as a main event guy. 1984-1985: Debuts as Tiger Mask and Baba brings in a bunch of lucha guys and old Tiger Mask opponents to make him look good 1986: Gives up junior title to move up to heavyweight, Choshu singles match 1987: Wins tag titles with Jumbo, Tenryu singles match 1988: Big Jumbo singles match 1989: NWA title shot before injury 1990: Returns and gets placed in big Choshu/Tenryu tag at dome On the unmasking, I think by then there just wasn't much point in keeping it since he'd been working a heavyweight style for 4 years by that point and didn't need the gimmick to get over. I doubt the unmasking and upsetting Jumbo would have happened as quickly if Tenryu hadn't left, but given the opportunities he'd been getting he definitely seemed on the path to having done both of them by 1991.

Ditch has tons of matches on his site where he praises Taue in his mini reviews, most of which came far before that Daniel video, and he even argued him as a top 10 all-time Japan guy on the old DVDVR board. I've also seen old forum posts from as far back as 2004 where people pimp Taue/Nagata as one of NOAH's best matches, so digging Taue is far from some new thing. That video makes me miss puroresu.tv, by the way.

I stopped watching in early 2010, when there was enough information out there about the harmful effects of concussive blows and even non-concussive blows that it became apparent that Benoit was just the most obvious of many wrestlers who were making harmful and permanent changes to their brain through wrestling, and I felt uncomfortable supporting the industry as a result. Then a year later I popped in Kawada/Kobashi 6/12/98 on a whim and decided, "Fuck it, I can't stop these guys from doing this shit so may as well watch it."

Gave this another watch now that the version from a Misawa DVD is up on YouTube. I had been waiting a while as this was the last Misawa/Kawada TC I hadn't seen in DVD quality. I don't agree at all that this match feels stale. In fact, I think they actually work in a nice sense of progression from their previous bouts as Kawada seems much more confident and more willing to engage in long exchanges with Misawa after having beaten him in their two prior matches. I also think it's refreshing how they put so much emphasis on teases and struggle for moves and the ganso bomb reversal in particular got several rewinds from me. Kawada turning his back on Misawa after one of their exchanges and his expression when Misawa ties him up for a German is pretty cool as well. Kawada does his usual fantastic job of selling frustration and his body giving out down the stretch, but, intentional or not, there's a sense of finality with that finish and seeing Misawa have no problems giving a post-match interview while Kawada lays there knocked out. I agree that we'd already seen the feud climax with Kawada winning at the Dome then debuting the ganso bomb to win again, but this match gives a nice epilogue to their feud with them going at it one more with no surprises or injury excuses to see who was better at the end of the 90's.

My main issue with giving such big weight to drawing power is you have no idea whether the numbers you're working with are bullshit or not. With a lot of current puro promotions, for example, there's a big trend towards inflating the numbers to claim a sell out every time even when that isn't close to being the case, and nobody cares enough to get the real numbers out there. In a way, drawing power is an even more subjective criteria than ring work because whereas there's not much uncertainty about whether you like a match or not, with drawing your basically taking a leap of faith that the numbers aren't fudged and you know the cause behind them.

Shrugged off body part work is pretty standard AJPW. The psychology was always that you could turn a body part into a weak point and attack it to gain the advantage, but just because the guy has a weak arm isn't going to stop Hansen from hitting the lariat or Misawa from hitting the elbow. Jun himself sold leg work the same wayin his Dome match against Hase a few months prior. I'd argue Kobashi's leg selling in that match was actually really good as moments like his leg giving out on a power bomb made it look like he was trying to ignore the pain than that his leg just wasn't hurting at all. That said, I'd agree with your overall point about Akiyama being forced into going along with Kobashi's bad tendencies. He's commonly been put in the same group with Kobashi and Misawa as proponents of the stereotypical head drop and 2.9 heavy NOAH style, but his later work suggests that he was never really entirely on board with wrestling like that. His matches now don't have any head drops at all and seem to put on emphasis on the body of the match to build only to a couple of gripping near falls, as opposed to having a long stretch at the end of nonstop 2.9 counts. And, honestly, after seeing him do King's Road matches that aren't any more damaging the guys' bodies or their finishers than WWE main events, I've started rethink if Kobashi and Misawa were really as smart as I once thought they were, and it's also helped me appreciate Akiyama's own brilliance in his earlier career work.

Had no idea that Kobashi/Shinzaki vs Misawa/Omori match is available in full. All I've seen anywhere is 4 minutes of clips.

This is my pick for best match in WWE history. I agree that it would be wrong to characterize this as only being good for the blade job as I've seen plenty of death matches that had tons of blood while still being shit. Eddie going after JBL early on and then selling JBL's back work is really good stuff but it's his unreal performancr after the blade job that really puts this over top. The epic crimson mask frog splash on JBL in the post-match is such an awesome exclamation point. The closest comparison would be Stan Hansen/Terry Funk in AJPW, but even those matches don't reach the heights of Eddie pounding his chest while standing on the turnbuckle of a ring soaked in his own blood. As you mentioned, the video package and promo was some also great old school storytelling to set up for this sort of match, and I'll add that JBL has claimed he needed to be escorted by security guards during this period for how hot this feud was.

Thought I'd bump the topic for my 2015 WOTY in light of his TC win and the overall amazing run of matches he's had over the past few months. Anybody see him as a potential top 5 guy? The more I watch the smaller the gap between him and Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi starts to seem. Not only did he have a pretty great run in 90's AJ and was possibly the wrestler of the decade in the 2000's, but he continues to have full-on epics long at the same age his peers were crippled. Besides that, I'd argue he has one of the ring IQ's out there both for the depth behind his character work, as mentioned earlier, and for his ability to work such a wide variety of complex lay outs even when most high-end workers in his age group are content to rely on charisma. I can't think of anyone quite like him who's been killing it since he debuted and involved in MOTYCs (while often being the main guy behind their greatness) literally every year for 23 years.

The thing is, at least on paper, with the emphasis on mat work, the springy mat, and the rolling bumps, lucha should be far more conductive to giving guys the chance to go all-out and deliver an exciting match even on small shows than, say, peak AJ and NOAH. And, as you pointed out earlier, lucha trios guys often have the huge advantage of performing against long-term rivals, giving them an endless bag of tricked out counters and call back spots to sprinkle throughout the match. What could stop them being great every time out? To me, that actually was the case with peak IWRG. I haven't followed them in a few years but during that 2009-20111 period Negro Navarro, Solar, and other maestros, most of which were over 50, were tearing shit up almost every time they showed up. But then I'd look at CMLL and see such talentedand athletic young guys being boxed into working by the numbers bullshit. Anyone care to explain why CMLL/AAA is the be-all-end-all of lucha?

"Style guilt" is a pretty poor term to use to describe El-P's argument given that it's entirely possible to have King's Road style matches with no head drops at all if you're just more creative with the big spots and place some emphasis on selling, as Akiyama is showing us by continuing to pump them out at the same age Misawa died at. The CTE thing also isn't that relevant given that Misawa's death had more to due with accumlated damage to his neck, and you don't need cutting edge scientific research to see how head drops might not be good for the neck. I think El-P actually raises an interesting point. It's been argued plenty of times here, including against Misawa's peers, that dangerous spots can be seen as a crutch for smarter work, yet the guy who exhausted that crutch until he could no longer move seems immune to being criticized for it. Not only that, but there had been years of warning signs ignored by him, as we saw with him coming back from the neck scare against Morishima in their 2007 to wrestle the Sano match, where he just let the guy brutalize him for 20 minutes until hitting a couple moves for the comeback win. I really have no idea what to think was going through Misawa's mind those last few years, whether he legit didn't know how to start working safer like Akiyama has or if he was just insecure about doing such and felt he owed that brutality to the fans.

I think the most important thing is the drugs available to these guys. I'd guess almost everyone on WWE's roster is taking something. It is physically impossible to look like John Cena year-round while natural, let alone with the constant travel and stress wrestling entails. The last guy I'm confident wasn't was on gear was CM Punk just for the straight edge thing, and his physique pretty much the same as a random guy on the street with a non-obese BMI. 70s stars like Jack Brisco have a similar physique, so I don't think they were on much either. After Billy Graham, though, the whole thing explodes and the bulky steroid look is basically a requirement to get hired by the WWE. As was mentioned, though, there wasn't much emphasis on being lean with many stars, including Hogan, having noticeable guts. In the 90's, things go backwards a bit as the steroids scandals hit and such a look becomes frowned upon. By the late 90's and early 2000's though, things pick up again with Triple H, Brock, and Batista as pretty much wrestling's answer to the mass monsters that had taken over bodybuilding at the time. This was also when that lean but still muscular look became popular among mid-carders. With Eddie and Benoit's deaths, things slowed down again and now I think we're in an era where the focus is more on juicing for performance than it is just to be huge.

Is JvK really a guy who doesn't get lucha, or is it just the modern CMLL and AAA he doesn't get? The fact that he considers MS-1/Sangre Chicana a ***** match yet can't can't get into more recent matches and can point out specific things about them that he doesn't like tells me it's a problem with the promotional style than something to do with cultural bias like other posters have implied. As I said, there is so much more shit there it doesn't make sense to limit yourself to just the big promotions that have a very vision for how they want their guys working. It's like watching Attitude Era WWE and thinking American wrestling is all about crowd brawling and overbooking.

It annoys me that people talk about "lucha" as if the only thing out there is the style favored by modern CMLL and AAA. I agree that it's bizarre how the response to someone who says they don't like said style is typically to watch more, as if problems like matches lacking struggle and guys feeling interchangeable in tags will magically go away when you've seen enough. Hence, what I'd recommend instead is to check out some of the stuff from the indies. From experience, the stuff from that Reddit post about the bigger promotions favoring a sterile spot-based style to pop the crowds is generally true, but the smaller promotions don't put such limitations on the workers, and thus give them a much better chance to showcase their talent. For some specific matches, I would suggest Black Terry/Dr. Cerebro vs Hijo Del Diablo//Gringo Loco from 1/24/2010 and Rey Hechicero vs. Charles Lucero from 8/4/2013. Black Terry definitely knows how to bring the grittiness and sleaziness that made MS-1/Sangre Chicana so great and I'd argue it's guys like him who are carrying on the legacy from that match far more so than modern CMLL and AAA.

I've only seen Suzuki's defense against Takayama, but based on it I think the reason attendance is down is that even though Suzuki is clearly a hard worker and it's unfair to fault him for letting his opponent wrestle their usual style, the whole invasion context just isn't something the fans want to see from the promotion. A big part of Baba's vision for King's Road was to move away from all the bullshit and create a style that highlights wrestling as a brutal sport. Hence, a world title match where Takayama tried to turn back the clock to 2002 yet couldn't conquer the heel champ with a shitload of interference shenanigans struck me as the promotion telling the stragglers from the days of Misawa and Kobashi that the promotion had moved on. I thought it was a technically really good match but it was also the moment I stopped considering myself a NOAH fan.

Pretty sure by "working out" Bischoff meant going into a gym and training. You're right that the gimmick didn't call for a bulky roid physique, but there's still a fine line between that and being flabby. Besides, he had plenty of free time with him not having to work matches, so him not caring enough to train seriously for his comeback does seem like a pretty big red flag.

Meltz's Sakuraba piece from a few days ago has some really good explanations on how fans saw shoot style at its peak http://www.mmafighting.com/2015/10/18/9494533/long-after-his-prime-sakuraba-is-in-the-position-to-save-japanese-mma I get the impression that the foundations behind Takada being seen as legit were always pretty shaky, with it pretty much being due to to shoot style coming along when fans became skeptical of traditional promotions and buying into it because there wasn't much out there. Things started chipping away by the time MMA came along and the 1994 Yoji Anjoh thing definitely didn't help. I think the NJPW and PRIDE were Takada cashing out on his stardom while it was starting to crumble. Definitely not the same thing as a Brock or even Angle with legit cred.

Yeah, his first round match with Shiozaki was taped but I'm not sure if it's online.