dawho5

I think I'll make some room for him though. He'll be on the low side, but I can't imagine he'll be missing.

I would argue that the recommendations are a boon more than anything. I've had far more positive experiences with stuff from the WoS or joshi threads than negative. Looking forward to looking at the multiple lucha threads on the site to find stuff on youtube. Not everything is going to be up my alley, even if it is high end stuff from whatever style.

Tanahashi very likely for me. I tend to like him in the setting of the 2000s wrestling, but when comparing him to other eras I'm not really that high on him. And it's not entirely on Tanahashi, but that's not really the point. I'd have a hard time putting somebody who may not be as impactful or quite as good within their particular style of wrestling as Tanahashi is behind Tanahashi if I really like said wrestling style. At a certain point objectiveness has to take a back seat to my own personal preference.

That's the thing for me. Time is an element of this and if three or four recommended matches for somebody make me want to not watch them again I have to start looking elsewhere. Especially if you look at a low end of something like 20 minutes on a match. For 7 matches that's over 2 hours. Time I could be spending on something like World of Sport (which I love) , lucha (which I haven't seen much of but I have liked the small sampling I have), 70s/80s territories stuff, 80s/early 90s NJPW heavies, etc. There's a lot of ground to cover and I don't watch hours of wrestling daily. I won't say Yokota has no redeeming qualities, but her style just turns me off so far. Nakano I haven't written off yet, she's got some things she did in that match I did watch that I really liked to go along with the stuff I didn't.

Oh how I wish there was a better way to put tone into messages on a board. I'll probably not be the low vote on Kobashi, as he'll very likely make my top 50 pretty easily. I was just having a bit of fun with the fact that somebody made the Kobashi comment before I got to it. As far as this topic goes, Michaels, RVD, Sabu, Dreamer and Angle will be somewhere on my 3-400 or 4-500 lists if I ever get around to making them. But that's not going to be a real outlier as far as most of the board regulars are concerned. Jaguar Yokota will definitely not be on my list after watching three matches. Bull Nakano is threatening to be the same way after one. I think a lot of joshi stuff is going to be hit or miss with me, so that may be an area where I don't include a lot of the big names.

That's a little bit of a different deal as far as Harley's repetitiveness, Parv. He almost had to be formulaic, much like Flair did before the advent of weekly wrestling on TV. He went to a territory for a little while, challenged the top contender in all of the towns and left for the next territory. The fans in those territories paid to see Harley Race do Harley Race spots. They paid to see him use those methods of showing ass to get their guy over while Harley hung onto the title. You have to look at the difference in the audience demands and the expectations of wrestlers as times have changed. Back then, you saw the NWA champ once or twice a year, so you wanted to see all the signature stuff. Now you see wrestlers weekly (or more often) so they have to come up with different ways of working to the same moves or it gets stale fast.

Bah, I can't imagine I won't be the low voter on Kobashi. I have such a hatred of his later career work (that I know is at least somewhat irrational). Get your own irrational hatreds that mar your judgement, damn you!

That 1991 6-man had the female fans in the audience looking very, very dismayed for Kobashi. You really didn't see the kind of visceral reactions Kobashi got from most Japanese crowds at the time. Kitchen sink was used a lot in WCW. I believe it came from the idea of "throwing everything at them except the kitchen sink." Taue was being a complete dick to Kawada in that 1991 match, but not so much to the other two. Great stuff so far, keep up the good work guys! Kikuchi was the "little guy" partner for Kobashi. Kobashi always played the big brother who saved Kikuchi from the bullies. He basically plays Kobashi for Kobashi in tag matches. Also, here's a link to a 1991 Hansen match for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acb3ZFdGF3I You get to see some very awesome character work from Hansen and a pissed off Misawa all in one.

Shibata is great, but he does have a lot of stuff that seems to creep up in every match that bothers me. It seems like he wrestles one out of two matches. Either he's up against a guy who is willing to bang and that's the match or he goes with the matwork on the less strike-oriented guys, then works into his big strikes.

Fujita vs. Tanahashi 6/5/04 Probably my favorite Tanahashi match as he plays a wonderful underdog against the big amateur wrestler/shootstyle Fujita. Tanahashi gets stomped, but shows a great ability to time hope spots and get the crowd behind him. Tanahashi vs. Nakamura 1/4/05 A chance to watch an early version of what would become a staple rivalry. Tanahashi vs. Nakamura 12/10/06 Improvement over the previous year's match. I had some quibbles with it, but it's still really good. Tanahashi vs. Kanemoto 2/18/07 Oddball match with Kanemoto somehow being equal or on top for most of it. Tanahashi vs. Nagata 4/13/07 This is where you really start to see Tanahashi start to develop into what he would. Nagata massacres him and he has to try and weather the storm and come up with a way to defeat an opponent with more weapons than he has (sounds vaguely familiar to most big Tanahashi matches). Tanahashi vs. Nagata 10/8/07 They tack on the standard nearfall-filled ending to a match that didn't support it here. Would have been an improvement with the right finish over the April bout if you ask me. Instead it's a what-if match, but worth watching for the first part. Tanahashi vs. Suwama 4/9/08 I really liked this match. Great matchup between rising stars in their respective promotions. Tanahashi vs. Nakamura 2/15/09 Nakamura's continued no-selling of the leg bothers me. The rest is pretty damn good. Tanahashi vs. Nakanishi 5/6/09 Nakanishi no-sells the leg also. That aside, surprisingly good match. Tanahashi vs. Nakanishi 6/20/09 Tanahashi is better in a worse match. Tanahashi vs. Masato Tanaka 8/15/09 Worst match on this list by far. Fuck Masato Tanaka. That's all from the Best of 2000s stuff I went through earlier this year. I thought Tanahashi was really well represented from early uber-underdog in 04 all the way to being ace in 09. His work with Nagata during the transition was a lot of fun. He even carries a stiff like Nakanishi to a watchable match in 2009, so that says something.

Their match vs. the Malenko brothers in 1989 All Japan was really fun. Great technical showcase, but avoid it if you're looking for really meaningful work.

Taue is an interesting case 04 and beyond as well. He really does some great work, carrying Rikio, Morishima and (surprise of surprises) Marufuji to career matches. And he has a great match in 04 with Kobashi that I think has one of the best finishing runs of the decade. Basically, if Taue is in a big match in the 2000s, he hits a home run. Not taking anything away from Akiyama here, just saying that Taue in his twilight years really adds to his case in a big way.

Early 90s Kobashi is, to me, the best Kobashi. I have 1993 pegged as his best year for being polished and not going overboard with his more annoying tendencies. In 94 and 95 he bad tendencies start getting stronger but he's still really fun to watch. Post 1997, he becomes hit and miss for me. When he's on I absolutely love him, but there are a lot of matches where a few things he does completely take me out of the match. That's not to say I wouldn't have him in my top 30 based on the sheer amount of great things he did in the ring. One thing you'll notice going forward after that 93 RWTL match is when Kobashi and Kawada go at it, somebody is always working a leg. Kobashi attacking Kawada's injured knee in that tag left a lasting impression on Kawada it seems. Kawada was Kobashi's second best opponent (Hansen has to be number 1), and I think one of the best parts of the matchup was the really gritty way they both approached the simple All Japan style matwork in the early parts of the match. That and how neither of them was ever willing to give up an inch that wasn't earned. It seems pretty simple when you think about it. Take Kobashi, easily the best of the AJPW guys at garnering sympathy and making fired-up comebacks and put him against either of the two most uber-violent pricks of the 90s (Kawada and Hansen) and you usually get a really good to amazing match.

For all the larger than life characters I've seen do promos, Sammartino's promos blow most of them out of the water. He comes across as such a working class guy who is really passionate about what he does. Not saying something like Terry Funk freaking out and hitting himself with a chair isn't also great, but I really like the way Bruno goes about it. I especially like how you can see him getting angrier and more fired up the more he talks. Great, great stuff.

Sasaki did great things in this match. Everything he did made Morishima seem like an absolute monster. Morishima's early offense did not always suggest the same, but he came around for the big finish. Sasaki was really, really incredible in this match. I'd say he's one of the bigger surprises of the 2000s as far as how smart he could work and the different stuff (this, Florida Brothers, Kawada AJPW vs. NJPW match, his two matches with Takayama) he put out while still being entertaining. His work in the NOAH 6-man tribute to Misawa was pretty good too. I've really gained a lot of respect for Sasaki over the course of this project.

There was a full 60 minute AJ match with the 4 Pillars, Akiyama and Hase. It was actually really entertaining.

Two words for this thread. Lead Balloon

Would love to see rounds 4,5 and the beginning of 6 of that Haward vs. Cortez bout. Great stuff. Cortez is like Dean Malenko, only he makes all of his smooth/cool mat stuff mean something instead of just doing it. Which makes him pretty damn incredible.

I think those terms are generally used as keywords to give somebody who hasn't seen it an idea of the style the match was worked in. To men, none of those are inherently good or bad, because I've seen both good and bad brawls, technical matches, epics and spotfests. I certainly have my favorite types of matches, and I think a lot of the time when you mix different elements together well (Battlarts was very much a combination of brawling and technical work with some of the flippy highspots thrown in for fun and I loved it) it can be great. But regardless of any of that, whatever "genre" you might put the match under it has to deliver on a certain level for each of us to be considered good or better. So I think the general use of the term "spotfest" as a negative is wrong. But it's use to describe a certain method of working a match is perfectly fine to me. As Loss has stated, the MPro tags (which most of us would agree are spotfests) have a pretty devoted following even here.

Gordy teamed with Hansen before the MVC for a while. I think 89 was part of that.

Haven't you said before that Harley Race was a big bomb throwing kind of guy? If nothing else, he's got to be a link to that period before it became really common. So maybe that's a good starting point to go backwards from, find the influences that pushed Harley in that direction and continue from there.

Yeah, and in those MPro tags, there was certainly a story being told. It may have been basic (Sasuke and his boys vs. those KDX punks with no respect), but it was enough that a lot of the rapid fire stuff worked just fine. And they definitely had a sense of when to let something breathe and/or create a valley. That doesn't mean the matches were not spotfests, but that there is a way to make that style work.

From watching a lot of Toryumon/DG stuff from the 2000s, I can say that "spotfest" can cover lots of ground as a term. And there is certainly a variability in quality within spotfests. The 3-team, 9-man tags from 2002 are okay and have plenty of cool stuff you hadn't seen before in them. Then the 8/30/04 4-team, 12-man match really hit on all cylinders and was one of the best spotfests I've ever seen. There was certainly a story behind the rivalries in each match and the way they played out seemed to come from that. But they were spotfests. Another match that comes to mind is Ibushi vs. Ishimori from DDT on 4/5/2009. For a spotfest (which it was) it had some stuff that did tie all of it together even if it wasn't always strictly adhered to. To me, it's a pretty general term to describe a style of working a match. I don't care for them compared to other working styles, but there are those who do. There is a very large amount of stuff that can fall into that category and to write it off because of that is a mistake.

Finally got around to watching Thatcher vs. Busick from Beyond Wrestling. One thing that's clear is that these guys watched their Japanese wrestling. It's a very Battlarts kind of style, but with less flow between the different genres. And that surfboard battle was reminiscent of Kawada/Kobashi/Misawa uses of the same. Not to mention the finish is a direct Minoru Suzuki ripoff by Busick. None of this was a problem because they did pretty good with it. Busick's selling of the arm was not there for as often as it was targeted. Thatcher had several points where he completely lost control of the arm during his chain wrestling and Busick didn't escape, but seconds later Busick would just pull his arm out of the hold into his counter. In a match worked like this that sort of thing should be avoided. It's not a huge point against the match, but it's something I noticed. The late strike exchange is pure modern Japanese wrestling and one of the aspects of it I hate the most. Not terribly executed, but I dislike the inclusion of it in any match. Busick's selling late is the biggest thing going against the match for me. I did like it, and I'm interested to see if they can iron out the kinks as they develop this style. It definitely has it's merits and I'll have to see more Thatcher for sure.

Alright, why not try approaching this from a completely different angle? Let's say somebody like Ric Flair or (we are on PWO after all) Jerry Lawler were confronted with a crowd reacting with something unwanted during a match during the 80s or 70s respectively. Do they play into said reaction and continually do so, allowing the crowd to condition them? Or do they find a way to get the crowd to do what they want? Is the former a better reaction because it may be better for business? If you give the crowd what they clearly came in looking for there is a much better chance they will come back. But at the same time, wrestlers have been conditioning audiences for years and people kept showing up. So maybe this really comes down to each of our individual reactions to these crowd chants and our perceptions of the motivation behind them. Or maybe there is something to it. But if that's the case, it involves both the wrestlers working in the ring (who have some control over what the crowd does) and the crowd itself. Continuing the way this argument has mostly gone is a dead end. Once an argument reaches that point, it's usually better to dig deeper into the reasons behind whatever is being argued rather than rehash the same points.