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I've cringed my fair share of times while reading old posts by myself, so I'm definitely not trying to ream anyone for what they thought years ago, but here's goodhelmet with a very different take to show I'm not making stuff up here. That said, if Inoki/Fujinami 1985 wasn't a match that hurt Inoki's rep, what are some specific examples of matches that did? I've gone out of my way to try looking for these "really shitty Inoki matches that didn't make the set" and I haven't found them at all. Instead, watching the series with Fujinami and Choshu as mentioned actually raised my opinion of him a lot, and there's also stuff like the 1983 Inoki/Fujinami vs. Choshu/Saito for him having a great match in a smaller setting.

No idea where the recording came from, but Inoki/Markoff was definitely out there way before 2019. Here's a 2007 thread where Loss has it listed as a match he's seen/rated.

I didn't get the claims put forth by the DVDVR guys of him being some no-selling slug even while the set was going on, so it's especially baffling to me people still seem to buy into that idea and let it color their perceptions. I feel like he's long overdue to get his work re-evaluated and get his due as an all-time great like has happened with Tenryu and Hashimoto. I remmeber the DVDVR guys citing the Fujinami/Inoki 1985 match as one of the dreadful Inoki performances that sunk his rep for them, but all I saw was a fantastic old school vs. new school grappling match and I have to assume the people shitting on it simply didn't understand his character. The 1988 rematch, by the way, builds perfectly off the 1985 match and is a strong contender for best match I've ever seen. This feels weird saying it as 90s AJPW guy, but I'm gonna go against the oft-made claim of Misawa as the GOAT ace and say Inoki deserves that title. By that, I obviously don't mean he had the better matches than Misawa but that as far as looking like a bad-ass, knowing just the right way to play to the crowd, and always coming through with showing he could back up his aura, Inoki is second to none for me. Just watch his 1984 stuff with Choshu and I think it's awe-inspiring just how heated the match feels from the very beginning and how he manages to sustain that heat the whole time even with slower paced grappling. I'm also hoping people are able to look at his matwork with more patient and accepting eyes than he's been given in the past. Since the last poll, there's also been a handful of JWA tags with Baba that have been made more widely available that give a more complete picture of what a beast he was even early on. I'd specifically recommend the tag with Baba against Mil Mascaras and Spiros, featuring one of the most breathtaking matwork exchanges I've seen between him and Mil.

2017 had Lesnar/Styles, 2018 had Lesnar/Bryan, and 2020 had Taker's retirement and Reigns/Mcintyre. I'm with stro that SvS's rep as "the big 4 PPV WWE forgets about" is highly exaggerated.

I don't get why there has to be WWE TV threads every week, honestly.

Yeah, typically in boxing or MMA a crimson mask-style cut creates a situation where a guy can no longer see properly, leading to him taking a ton of unnecessary punishment if the fight doesn't get stopped right there. But there's definitely been a fair amount of cuts in shoots far more gruesome than any blade jobs you'd get in pro wrestling. Was rewatching Lennox Lewis vs. Vitali Klitschko the other day and the sheer amount of blood gives a lot of pro wrestling blade jobs a run for their money, never mind the disgusting gash itself.

I kind of wonder why it is that a lot of the crowd that gives a pass to Sabu's sloppiness for adding to chaotic ECW atmosphere of his matches also dig into TM/DK for sloppiness in their matches. When I go back to watch their series, it feels like a similar principle applies there where even if the matches have been topped endlessly by guys doing more complex moves with more interesting psychology behind them, the sloppiness and botches gives a rawness to the whole thing that you don't really get with newer matches. Not saying they're classics, but they have a car crash appeal knowing how brutal that style was on both guys.

I agree it's unfair to use it on Taker Maniac matches, but I still feel like the term has validity when applied to the 2010's puro cosplay stuff you get on US indies, where you get guys building matches entirely around finisher kick-outs and i-hit-you-you-hit-me strike exchanges out of the idea that that's a guaranteed epic match formula. There's definitely a distinction there between guys working to "earn" those spots in the context of a coherent match and guys building a match entirely around those things with little concern for how to actually sell things. Richards/Elgin 3/2012 and Richards/Edwards 12/2011 are probably the clearest examples out there of that sort of style, far more so than any Taker Mania match. Looking at the thread here for Richards/Elgin, it is interesting how some people seem to actually enjoy the match specifically because of how self-consciously it leans into those "epic" tropes, so I can see the argument for self-conscious epic, rather than an indictment of match's quality in itself, to be more a set of tropes that people enjoy seeing repeatedly in a similar fashion to 80's cartoon heel stooging stuff.

The health consequences aside, there's definitely a perverse novelty for me in seeing jacked up oafs like Muraco and Dino Bravo stumbling around the ring that allows me to forgive some of the shortcomings of their work. I'll still admit, though, that 80's has its fair share of stuff that can be hard to sit through, like those long Ivan Putski matches or the disappointing Rude/Roberts feud.

Always been a fan of 80's WWF. The cool thing about it is you can pop in pretty much any random house show and you'll find an undercard match that surprises you in how good it is, and a lot of the Hogan main events hold up better than you'd expect as mentioned. The diversity in workers and the overall progression of the promotion is awesome with how it starts off as a NE territory with Backlund in the beginning, you have Hogan and big name territory guys in the middle, and then the future 90's stars starting to leave an impact towards the end. 90's has high highs, but most of the high-end stuff is centered around Bret or Shawn, and there's definitely a shift towards guys saving things for the big shows in the latter half of the decade.

Not sure about how AJW did things, but I agree that almost all the references people pick up in AJPW seem intentional things by the workers. For example, in Kobashi's book he talks about adapting the lariat into a finishing move because of how many times he'd taken the move when he was a younger wrestler and how he specifically wanted to beat Hansen with it in their 1996 match to make a statement. It's one thing to just reference a prior big match, but something like that shows they assume people would pick up on these deeper trends and draw connections there as well. As you say, they had a loyal audience and worked their matches in such a way that respected them.

Damn, almost makes it seem like 90's politicking dickhead Shawn was a toned down version of him.

Not sure how the past 18 months could be worse for Triple H between NXT getting stomped by AEW, Vince losing faith in him in favor of Khan, and now him having a heart attack in the midst of NXT getting swept out from under him. Someone mentioned earlier how it seems like his power carefully built through 20 years of politicking has been rapidly crumpling down over this period, and this latest health scare stopping him from even being around for the NXT rebranding feels like it solidifies that. Really starting to feel bad for the guy.

I guess we'll know more when/if her brain gets analyzed, but this really kills me if the mental issues were related to her in-ring work. She had the looks to just get by as a valet, but it seemed she really put her body through a lot to earn people's respect during a time when women were mainly treated as eye candy. Really a sad story.

Not really sure what the big deal was after seeing that. Just seems the 2021 version of Abby stabbing people with forks or Foley using barbed wire baseball bats. It's certainly not unheard of for people to use dangerous weapons to get themselves over as dangerous psychos, and it was properly sold seemingly without any serious injury actually taking place. Nowhere near as nutty as old CZW using weed whackers and taking bumps off buildings.

Any gifs/clips showing the knife spot for those of us who aren't in tune to this sort of this?

Kobashi also talks in his book about Patriot being set to get a big push as Kobashi's tag partner before jumping ship to WWF. Thought he did a pretty good job of stepping up when they tagged together in the 1996 RWTL. Sucks how his career turned out with him having to retire when he was really hitting his stride as a worker and being seen as a potential main event by promotors. Pretty shocked he died so young. Guess the steroids did a number on him.

Great thread going here. Much appreciated.

I'd say there's two things counterbalancing the improvements in training technology 1. The fact that pro wrestling was a lot more popular in the 80's and 90's leading to a much larger talent pool to draw from. 2. The fact that it was much harder to become a pro wrestler and, at least in Japan, and people quickly got filtered by the ridiculously grueling dojo system. I'm not going to use this this argue that US wrestling in the 80's was better than it is now (because I don't think it is), but you can really see this effect in Japan, I think. Just compare how Kobashi and Misawa work a headlock to how Okada and the difference is plain as day how much better trained the 90's AJPW guys were in the basics.

I've done a few rounds around wrestling Twitter, and every time I've come to the conclusion that it's not suited for discussion going beyond hot takes and shit flinging. Baffling to me why Loss would prefer it.

Strictly in terms of matches I was in live in the building for, it'd be Bryan/Lesnar from Survivor Series. However, I got really far away seats and was stuck watching on the big screen, so it was kind of disappointing and I enjoyed it a lot more when I watched the PPV broadcast at home. In terms of matches I enjoyed a lot live, it'd be either Shiozaki/Miyahara vs. Akiyama/Omori for the AJPW tag titles from 8/2015 or Shiozaki/Miyahara vs. Akiyama/Kanemaru from a house show the next month, in what ended up Shiozaki's last AJPW match. I remember thinking the tag titles match was a little better overall, but the atmosphere in the building was incredible for the house show match and Akiyama/Shiozaki really went at it hard in their exchanges. Most I ever marked out live was the finish of Akiyama/Akebono for the Triple Crown, again in 2015. I was living in Japan at the time and decided to travel to the other end of the country to see the match as I had a feeling Akiyama was gonna be winning the title and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to see it live. I was not disappointed.

I'm digging the idea of giving Bret the win. That really seems the way to establish him as a big player in the company after his rocky start, similar to how WWE used the Undertaker's streak to re-establish Lesnar.

God damn, OJ, these reviews are a riot.

G+ has been airing full 90's AJPW/2000's NOAH cards for a while now. Recently they also aired the full 7/93 Budokan, which is the first time we've gotten the Hansen/Kobashi match in good quality and I think also the first time the Destroyer retirement has been shown in full. Here's the listing for what's in the pipeline (includes some repeats of older airings) https://www.ntv.co.jp/G/prowrestling/memories/

Pretty happy for him if it's not a work. His streams seem to be doing decent numbers and he looked the be enjoying himself in the clips I've seen.