drokk

All Access is on Max now. Sign of things to come or just WBD throwing absolutely everything on there?

And of course I get online and see Atlantis put a price on his mask just yesterday - 50 billion dollars. Between that and the commentary they may be hyping the mask up a bit for a potential loss. https://www.record.com.mx/lucha-cmll/atlantis-sobre-el-valor-actual-de-su-mascara-unos-50-mil-millones-de-dolares-no-tiene

Excluding 1. Mil Mascaras and 2. Masks that have already fallen, who would be the most valuable besides Atlantis atm? The only ones I can think of are Santito (who will never lose it) and LA Park (who has lost masks before). Where does someone like Psycho Clown rank historically in kayfabe? On the topic of apuestas, how about valuable cabelleras? I'm still waiting for the Park Vs. Rush match so that's one I'd love to see up for grabs. Sidenote - In looking over a few rosters for this post I was reminded Stuka Jr. lost his mask last year. He's always been one of my favorite guys to watch live and that mask is a beauty (if not slightly questionable). Makes me wish I had offered him a few bucks for a ring worn mask.

Seconded. I've been an extremely sporadic enjoyer of the pro wrestling this past decade and while reliving some of the AJPW classics can be fun, they certainly can be a considerable time investment. As someone who has only checked out the more well known stuff, these write ups are great for when I wanna delve into stuff lower on the card which I feel has been unexplored as a whole.

Now I have to track down that FMW show. I read somewhere (Bahu's site maybe?) that Misawa and Hayabusa were friends going way back and that also helped getting he and Shinzaki the AJPW shots but I may be misremembering.

Very interesting. Thanks. I knew about Kawada's comments re: isolationist Baba and the slump due to staleness but thought that came a year or two later. Were there any other inter-promotional dealings or was this the only one?

So I just randomly searched "UWFi" on YouTube and found a Kawada vs. Takayama match from 1996 in a UWFi ring? How did this end up happening? A comment on the video says this was a try-out for Takayama but if that's the case I'm confused as to why Baba would loan out one of his hottest stars during one of AJPW's hottest periods to UWFi. I left a comment on the video hoping Tabe would reply with any info but does anyone know how this came about?

Also if I have to rewind a few times to check whether Brock bladed or if that was hardway, I gotta give them credit. I'm still not sure either way, but that's part of the magic of wrasslin innit?

I've been lurking DVDVR for almost 20 years and tried to register now but am aware the site is having its problems. DEAN~! would have loved this shit. Rey's Mil Mascaras tiburon mask alone was worth a MILLION BILLION STARS.

Posts like these remind me why I lurk here and nowhere else. Obviously, being fluent in spanish will give me an upper hand digging deeper but these are great starting points. Makes me think I should reach out to my uncle and ask if he remembers any of this stuff.

Wow, thanks guys! Will dig deeper into all of that tonight. Also found something called Titanes del Ring from Chile and watched all just now. The wrestling isn't all that great but the presentation is absolutely fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I795btutTDU

My mom grew up in El Salvador and when I became a fan as a kid, she told me Mil Mascaras would regularly appear at shows in her neighborhood. I got more and more incredulous the older (and "smarter") I got. Eventually during a trip to my grandma's house she produced a photo of her and "Mil Mascaras" who seemed to be a good 100 lbs heavier and 6 inches shorter than the true article. I broke the truth to my mom, aunts, and uncles and surprisingly they weren't bothered - in their young minds they had seen the legendary Mil Mascaras and even the revelation that it was probably the butcher down the street did nothing to tarnish the memories. As an aside - are there any good resources for wrestling info in latin America? Aside from Titanes en el Ring from Argentina and Las Cholitas from Bolivia I haven't seen much online regarding the region. I seem to remember reading about Brazil having a scene in the 70s or 80s.

I'm in a strange position where I absolutely loathe the Paul brothers as personalities but have absolutely zero negative feelings towards Logan as a wrestler. I honestly wish he was absolute garbage in the ring so he could confirm my negative bias, but rehearsed matches or not, he's decently passable from what I have seen. I usually only tune in to WWE around Mania season to see if it's worth keeping up with and this year I jokingly pretended to be excited with my friends about Logan Paul wrestling so much that I legitimately became interested in his match. Kinda odd that I wasn't disappointed. Is this what Hogan meant about working yourself into a shoot?

This is what I figured but not having seen any autopsy reports I was never quite sure. I completely understand why no-one would want to use any of Benoit's "signatures" after the fact and especially that one. Ugh. I feel like scum even discussing the topic. Will try to balance out with a random recommended match from a random PWO poster. I appreciate your input sek.

So... I'm bumping an ancient thread whose last post was over a decade ago to ask an incredibly morbid question that has been on my mind for almost as long as this thread has been active. In Ring of Hell as well as a few other places online it has been claimed as fact that Chris Benoit placed his son in the Crippler Crossface or some variant of the move. My question is - How do we know this? I can only imagine there were signs of strangulation or bruising to the areas usually affected by the move that would indicate it was applied. Is there any concrete evidence proving Benoit used this move on his son? What led anyone to believe this was the manner in which he killed his son? Did Chris Benoit simply strangle his son causing people to imagine some sick(er) scenario where he used his actual "finisher" to kill his son? This is something that always bothered me about the reporting on this case and is something that I am hard pressed to believe can be confirmed. I do not mean this as an indictment of anyone who reported this as fact. I plead the gentle readers of PWO to not take this as a troll post. I have children of my own and even using phrases like "used this move" and "finisher" gross me out considering the context of my post but PWO is probably the most level-headed and informed message board on the net so I figure if I'm going to get an honest answer anywhere, it will be here. Bix, were you at?

That's about what I figured. I wonder how many were actually paying the show any mind as opposed to there just being a ring amongst a crowd of 65,000.

Hi all, Years long lurker and extremely sporadic poster here with a question for those in the know: What's the deal with the listed attendence for Tokyo Pro Wrestling's 23 July 1996 show in Atami? Wikipedia and Chris Harrington both list a figure of 65,000 at the show but this has to be nonsense, right? Based on my very light digging it seems the WrestlingData site is the main source for this. I'm having a hard time accepting this show drew 6,500 or even 650 to be honest. The only guess I can make is that Atami seems to he a tourist destination and some genius counted everyone in the area as an attendee. Does anyone know what the deal is? At this point I'm kinda excited at the prospect of confirming Abdullah the Butcher drew 65k in 1996.

I watched this last night and had the same question. I vaguely remember Shawn Michaels getting the one-off guest referee spot due to FMW giving some of his trainees (Daniel Bryan among them) a couple of matches, but that was about two years after Vader/Shamrock. Looking at Cagematch, Vader worked that match and an AJPW tag (and the Inoki retirement match the same month as his WWF debut) while under WWF contract. For as bad as WWF treated Vader, it's kind of weird that they allowed him two matches for other promotions while he was working for them. I'm sure he didn't have much backstage pull, so it does come off as kind of weird. As an ardent Mexico supporter, I can say that Cheeseburger is now my favorite wrestler ever.

In Spanish, Villanos is pronounced "Vee-ya-nose." I am in no way a linguist and even after years of living and working in Mexico City there are words I mess up but it's totally different hearing someone pronounce that word in a way I'm not used to. What matters is that you're talking about the match and not stupid little stuff like your pronunciation, so don't worry about that! I'm about to watch Hogan/Giant and listen to the pod afterwards. As far as requests - it's kinda strange. Personally, I have a canon of all time terrible matches; Giant Baba Vs. Raja Lion, Tom Magee Vs. Hiroshi Wajima, and The Great Antonio Vs. Antonio Inoki all feel like matches we've all seen and at the same time are so out there that you couldn't necessarily expect a wrestling nerd (at least at the PWO level) to not know about. They're all so short (and HORRIBLE) that there's really not much to say. At the same time, you could say the same about Villanos/Psycho Circus and yet here we are. Point is - I dig the idea of the pod. It feels kinda weird that it took a pod about tremendously bad wrestling to get me to start posting on a board again after so long, but at the same time, it feels so right. There's no point in enjoying something if you can't poke fun at it, right?

Saw the title of this podcast series and immediately decided I needed to get in on the fun. Watched the match before listening to the pod and hoooooly..... A stinker in every sense of the word. It was terribly laid out, terrible executed, and on top of that, felt like it was moving in slow motion. Poor Tropicasas. A few notes: -You guys pronouncing Villano as you do threw me off during the whole pod. That's in no way a knock but after years of reading about and discussing wrestling online as a native Spanish speaker it was kinda weird. -To this day I struggle between Villano III Vs. Atlantis and Villano IV Vs. Blue Panther as my favorite of the two but IV/Panther usually wins just because of the sickening bump Villano IV took into that arm rest. My mom went to a ton of lucha as a kid and every few weeks I'll show her a spot from whatever I'm watching. Everything I show her gets compared to that. -Before the match Villano III explained that even though members of his team had lost their masks, they asked for and got permission from the commission to wrestle with their masks on as long as they took them off after the match. Not too strange of an occurrence as it recently happened at the Arena Coliseo 75th anniversary show with Super Astro and Mascara Año 2000. -As bad as everything was, that triple splash was the neatest thing I've seen in a while. Totally horrible in a Troma kind of way. There's no way that spot would be in a good match, but in a piece of trash like this it's great. -"The style of wrestling that I like, when it's done poorly, or mediocre, equates to things like this" is such a great line and is so true. For as many great Friday Arena Mexico and Saturday Arena Coliseo cards as I've been to there are waaaaay more terri-bad Sunday/Tuesday Mexico and Monday Puebla cards that have been the absolute worse in terms of technically good wrestling that I have still enjoyed just because it's lucha. -My lady and I have been Kate Nash fans since her first album and THAT scene in GLOW definitely had a hand in her gradually starting to seriously get into wrestling with me. -Totally dig that you can spend all that time talking about such a short match. Reminds me of my friends an I spending countless hours discussing a two second social faux-pas. I really need to listen to the rest of the episodes of this pod. For as much as I love I love high-end, nearly "art-house" level stuff like Han Vs. Tamura and Giant Baba Vs. Billy Robinson, I need a match like this every so often to pull me back down to earth and make me enjoy the absurdity of wrestling. Looking forward to catching up and getting future editions of this. Keep it up fellas.

Yes and yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLornQzs26c The last three matches were great fun. For as much doubt as I had that they could somehow hold this over until mid-September, tonight has me thinking they could somehow do it. I rarely have faith in CMLL booking to produce something exciting but this whole angle has me wondering where they're gonna end up with all this.

That's something I can get behind. I've been to all the major shows since late 2016 but if somehow this all leads to the Rush apuestas match, I'd lose my mind.

Friday night's main event is LA Park, Volador Jr, and Rey Fenix Vs. Rush, El Terrible, and Cibernetico. What is going on?

So Park was actually advertised and showed up tonight. Had another great brawl. Is there any chance the CMLL office knew he was going to do the AAA deal and just let him go ahead and do it as long as they get the apuestas match at Aniversario? If that's the case, isn't a little soon to be running three weeks straight of La Familia Real Vs. Ingobernables when the payoff would presumably not be for another three months?

Well that was weird. The vignettes over the course of Nitro to get to the match were typical lame self-indulgent Nash and Hall stuff and that's what I expected the match to be. They delivered in a better way than I expected with a very basic comedy match. Would not be about of place as the opener on a sparsely attended Japanese micro-indy.