dawho5

This was pretty damn good for a juniors trios tag. Arai getting his hand worked over was great. Horiguchi is one of my favorite of the second generation Toryumon guys. The backslide spot was very big. Arai fighting through the hand injury helps make this memorable finishing run even better. Dragon Kid is kept to a minimum as well. Some really nice dives in the middle too. It will probably make my ballot.

That Piper v. Rip Rogers match was all kinds of fun. Portland may be something I get into one day after many, many other things have come to pass.

My opinions on the match are very similar to SS's. I really, really liked KENTA & Hashi's strike exchanges. They moved into different strikes as they progressed and didn't go on forever. Also, what happened between All Japan and NOAH that the entrances got longer with more flashing lights and smoke than the WWE entrances? I know New Japan was doing that kind of stuff, but the level it's reached even by 2003 is ridiculous.

This match was all sorts of crazy. The inclusion of some of the newer Toryumon guys (in 2003) makes it seem a little more fresh.There are a few spots I guarantee will be hard to find outside of this kind of match. As spotty, indy-style matches go, this has got to be the best I've ever seen. A few of the sequences are absolutely breathtaking. The 4-way dive with the rope running timing is so fucking good. I can see this making my top 50.

Last 5 minutes were blow-me-away spectacular. I dozed off for the majority of the rest. Especially anytime Akiyama tagged in Saito or Honda tagged in Kobashi. Kobashi as asskicker supreme in a tag match is not something I ever care to see, so I may be in the minority there. I'd be surprised if this makes my ballot.

Opening stuff was pretty good. had a sense of struggle to everything even if it didn't go anywhere as far as the actual match went. Then we got to the "my cool indy innovative spots vs. yours" stuff and it lost me.

Okay, this is my working #2 match. One extra half nelson keeps it from being number 1. So much awesome here. Honda's takedowns all look absolutely spectacular. Honda's bumping for the big suplexes is ridiculously awesome. The headlock sequence they work about 8 minutes in is all kinds of incredible. This is the kind of match I LOVE out of Kenta Kobashi. He's so damn good at using great matwork to build to his big suplexes and strikes. It's just that he never does it. But against Honda, it only makes sense that Kobashi works that style of match. And damned if it doesn't work out amazingly well. So many small things too. Like the really awesome rolling Olympic hell that put Saito away gets put on Kobashi. He's actively pushing Honda's arms away from his neck and trying to get his arm over the top of Honda's head as he squirms to the ropes. THAT is the Kenta Kobashi I love watching. I've read that Kobashi 'got out of the way" for this match. If you watch enough early 90s Kobashi, you'll see that this sort of thing is right up his alley as far as his skillset goes. It's just something the style moved away from, which is a real shame given Kobashi's penchant for working this style of match.

Lead-in to Kobashi vs. Honda, so it made sense for me to watch it. Honda tries his damnedest to make Saito look good. Doesn't help that Saito is a guy who took all the wrong lessons from All Japan in the 90s. Also, Honda's jumping enzuigiri is better than Saito's, who uses it as a finisher. Bleh.

This was the best Nagata match I've seen so far. Really well-worked, I had this feeling the rings of Saturn Nagatalock would be the finish when Taue fought it off the first time. Nagata was looking pretty not beat up in his post-match reaction to winning, despite taking a massive beating at the hands of Taue. I did think the match put over Nagata's toughness and counter wrestling, which seems to be the purpose of it.

I didn't love this. KENTA as face in peril was great. Murahama and Liger brought everything you could hope for. Marufuji really did not look good besides the headbutts and the massive dive. The KENTA vs. Murahama stuff was fun, but didn't take up enough of the match. Marufuji before the toning down of all the high flying/jumping stuff is not something I like to watch all that much. I get really tired of the leg slapping in place of actually hitting something with your kick.

This was a really, really great opening build. Misawa's early control, the big crash and burn leading to Kobashi's comeback, those are amazing. About the 4th half nelson I start to scale back my opinion of the match. Too many head drops overall, but it actually did work on a storytelling level. Also, Kobashi getting his definitive win over Misawa is huge and awesome moment. I get down on Kobashi a lot, but he worked hard and when he didn't go overboard was an incredible wrestler. This comes in below a lot of stuff for me because of the excessive head drops. I get the downtime late after being dropped on your head that often. This was their best match since 1997 though.

This was really, really good. They start out in standard juniors match style. Then they go to the big legwork that is a huge part of the match until the end. There is some no-selling, but less than you would think. AKIRA is great late, clawing at the ref and leaving him incapacitated long enough to miss the tapout to an anklelock. Ref is back with us and AKIRA BITES KOJI'S KNEE to break an anklelock. Not long after, the big AKIRA splash that has been teased twice hits for a huge nearfall. AKIRA then turns the tables with an ankle lock on Koji. Koji has to dig deep and pulls out the double ankle lock to put away a very game AKIRA. I loved some of the selling in this (Koji selling his face) and the late leg stuff was really, really well done. I'd put this just above the Hashi match that Kanemoto had due to what seemed like some tension between these two in both of their matches I have seen.

Great stuff so far in this post. I for one don't care for the idea that I have to rank and number and organize all the matches and wrestlers into lists of which is the best. I watch the matches to enjoy them at the time. If I do, there's really no point to me in asking myself if this match was more or less enjoyable than some other match or matches I've seen. That being said, there is something to the idea that watching a wrestler over time in different matches and situations gives you a much better idea of their strengths and weaknesses. I'm going to go with the wrestler that popped into my head the instant I read the original question: Kenta Kobashi If you watch his matches from 1993 on, you'll find a lot of different things. For instance, Kobashi is an excellent submission wrestler. He wrenches his holds at intervals, doesn't hang on to one hold in favor of switching to a similar hold and wrenching on that for a bit, then going to another. And Kenta Kobashi working over the ribs and/or back is an absolute joy to watch. His ropes -> knee, ropes -> knee -> Russian legsweep combo is an incredible sequence that I'm shocked nobody I've seen has ripped off. But over time you start to realize that he's not all that great at the when and what of wrestling. If you start looking at his later work, when the Kobashi we all know has emerged, a very clear distinction arises. When he's wrestling Kawada or Taue, his head drops are used when and as often as a head drop ought to be. His no-selling is contained. Then you watch a match with Misawa, who either had no interest in reeling Kobashi in or trusted him enough to not go overboard pretty often. And Kobashi is throwing big stuff out for midmatch nearfalls that don't make a whole lot of sense. You can go even farther to a match with Akiyama. I can remember at least one of those where Kobashi felt the need to hit Akiyama with 3 half nelsons, one of which was used as a near-fall. There is just no need for Akiyama to go through that kind of punishment in order for Kobashi to put him away. It just seems like because Kobashi was the "youngest" of the Four Pillars, he very rarely got to have much say in what went on early in his career. Not only that, but he didn't seem to pick up on the why as the junior member of the match. And later, when it came to be his turn to direct the match that hurt him quite a bit. Without watching years worth of matches from AJPW I wouldn't have seen everything necessary to come to the conclusions that I did. I wouldn't have the perspective of looking back at his days as just a spunky youngster who had to fight his way through everybody's abuse (which was a very entertaining portion of his career). So while I'm not overly interested in codifying exactly where I would put Kobashi or his matches in the grand order of things, I feel very comfortable being able to look at him as a wrestler, see his strengths and weaknesses and know why I found a match of his to be really entertaining or not. It seems like the answer to this question is pretty similar to the answer to the "drawing power as an important aspect of a wrestler" question. You determine it by watching their work (not just in-ring in the case of American workers) over time and seeing how they change, what their strengths and weaknesses are, how they work with varying opponents, how they work from underneath, how they work from above, and any number of other factors that matter to you. The answer is going to be different for all of us, but I think it's important to at least do a good cross-section of their career (thorough research is important) before coming to any major conclusions.

I thought the finish of this helped put over the elbow even more than Jumbo already had. Everybody knew Hansen was a tough dude who liked to brawl. So when you put him away with an elbow, it means something. Also, I thought it drew the line between Misawa putting away somebody who wasn't really a challenge (early Kawada, Kobashi matches) with suplexes and tigerdrivers and how Misawa had to put away somebody who simply wasn't going to let him get his preferred finishers on them.

Yes, let's see a sketch about teeth. That is the title of this episode isn't it? I haven't seen a single thing about teeth yet.

Didn't Monty Python do a similar idea with soccer many years ago?

You also have to look at the way Vince handled a lot of the wrestlers who got big in the territories before he got ahold of them. Martel, JYD, etc. were all made into jokes when they finally came over to the WWF side for the money. I don't know exactly why, but Vince seemed to have a thing for trashing big acts that he didn't personally make into stars.

I tend to take the RF viewpoint when I watch wrestling. I could care less if it made money, do I enjoy it? And were I to make a GOAT list, Toshiaki Kawada would be number 1 without any question at all. But I can completely understand somebody putting drawing power as a very important aspect of being GOAT. I can also see it if you were to look at a wrestler's career and try to judge how successful they were. If they were put in a position to draw a lot of money and didn't, I perfectly understand holding that against their wrestling career. It's the reason the promoter put them out there. So yes, in some cases, it is an important metric. However, as Matt D and Dylan Waco have suggested, there are a lot of factors underlying the amount of money wrestlers drew as well as different circumstances involved in each scenario. If you're going to include that as part of your criteria, it's got to be something you look into and try to understand better. Because like all metrics, drawing power can very easily be misused by not truly understanding what the numbers mean in their own context. Or even worse, purposefully misused to support a conclusion that you wanted to reach in the first place.

I think you guys are sleeping on Ogawa vs. Takayama from 02. Ogawa plays a damn good scrappy underdog. And the best part is he doesn't do any flippy style junior stuff and still manages some big nearfalls on Takayama. Otherwise I am in agreement on most of it. Not a Saito fan thus far. Maybe he will change my mind.

No, no. WE'RE the Judean People's Front. It's the People's Judean Front. Splitters.

I think one thing missing from this discussion is the separation of what you or I, the fan, enjoys in the ring or on the mic from the reason this question seems to have been asked. If I'm looking at this, this isn't a question of somebody watching (we'll stick with this example) a Sting match or a few of them and then saying to themselves, "I really liked those matches, but he wasn't ever a big draw so I'm not so big on them now." This is more from a career restrospective or comparison of wrestlers way of looking at things. More like, did Hogan or Sting have a better career? And, like most here, I would want to say Sting because I personally enjoyed watching Sting a lot more than I ever enjoyed watching Hogan. But if I looked at it objectively, I'd have to go with Hogan because he made whatever company he was working for at the time far and away more money than Sting ever did. And that is the entire reason the business exists. Sure other factors come into that sort of discussion, but drawing is a pretty huge part of it given the importance of how much money a wrestler brings in to A. the wrestler and B. the company. Talking about the matches and wrestlers I personally like, however, I could more or less give a shit about how much they drew. I just know I enjoy them for what they were. But I don't think that is what is being discussed here.

Since when did people start defending Scott Keith here?

From reading through this it seems like a lot of it is very sentimental in terms of how people are viewing this. not a criticism, just seems like that reading it. Might be that it's difficult to address this topic without that coming up.

Pretty good match. For whatever reason, Kanemoto plays the (not really a face, but) face-in-peril for the only heat segment of the match. And it works to a degree. When Liger comes in and starts beating on Kikuchi to the point where you know a tag can be made the boos are LOUD. Otherwise, very chaotic, hate-filled brawl. The finish builds on top of the tag match in NJPW from August 2002. Might make somewhere between 50 and 75. Might not. There's better Liger vs. Kikuchi matches in 02.

Not near as good as the other NJPW vs. NOAH tags. Gedo has an awesome frog splash though.