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Chances that the CMLL office even knows who Daniel Bryan is?

Daisuke Nakamura had a couple matches this year (vs. Hikaru Sato and Tatsuo Nakano) that were very good as far as 2017 shoot style goes.

The Fujiwara/Takuya Wada vs. Koji Iwamoto/Tadashi Matsumoto match from Hard Hit this year is worth checking out.

Kaz Hayashi is one you never hear anyone talk about.

It's definitely true that the journey feels more like an academic exercise of point-manipulation than an unfolding story. I'm not saying they should book to the analytical fans, but I wonder if even casual fans at this point see a guy going on a hot streak early and don't realise that means he's just going to lose a bunch at the end. I appreciate that keeping things unpredictable until the final days while also making any given mid-tournament match feel like it actually matters is a difficult balance to strike, but I wish they would turn the dial a little more towards the latter. G1 "upsets" have become so de rigeur as to be meaningless, because we know it's not really about the guy who won but about block math.

Capture International is still around in some capacity. They run these weird quasi-shoot style shows with MMA gloves and no ring in a basement. None of it makes tape.

Maybe the whole star rating thing was never intended to be taken as seriously as people ended up doing.

I think you guys are putting more thought into this than Dave has.

I didn't see it in real time, but to me Rikio felt like a midcarder right up until he won the belt. I don't think they did a good job building him at all.

I've heard from video game historians that there's very much an attitude that what happens behind closed doors stays that way in Japanese business culture. With how secretive a business wrestling is anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if its even worse there. There have been some exposés written though, e.g. Sayama's and 80s NJPW head ref/sometime booker Mr. Takahashi's.

You're right. Thanks to Akiyama as booker/promoter and Kento Miyahara as the top star, AJPW has grown from their absolute nadir in late 2015/early 2016 to being a pretty solid indie-level group now. Conversely, Bushiroad's involvement in NOAH, while it may have been the only thing keeping them in business, resulted in the installation of Jado as booker and the interminable Suzukigun invasion angle that completely tanked interest in the promotion. They sold themselves to another company and are trying to rebuild with Katsuhiko Nakajima as the top guy, but it doesn't seem to be taking. All of this is laughably small potatoes compared to the period being discussed in this thread, of course.

I haven't seen the Kyohei Wada match in question, but he definitely seemed to overstep his bounds at times. At the same time, he adds a sense of authority and seriousness to the procedings that few others can. He's taking a few months off right now and his presence on those AJPW shows is definitely missed. Mr. Takahashi (buff 80s NJPW ref) was great too, for much the same reasons as Wada. Wrote a book exposing the business in 2000(!) which seems to be quite famous among Japanese fans.

It's fascinating to me that the 90s saw not only Japanese wrestling's artistic peak, but also, seemingly, its business peak (in terms of total number of fans drawn across all promotions), in spite of a major downturn in mainstream popularity.

NJPW President said he is running shows in LA, because WWE ran shows in Japan. War is on! Plus, the WWE has some deal with EVOLVE, yet is now saying people can't be on WWE and on FloSlam. Yet... FloSlam is EVOLVE's main streaming service. Shit is going down. None of this seems like a really huge deal to me. This is like McDonald's going after the local burger joint or Walmart tackling a really small chain of pharmacies. It's a huge deal if you care about indie wrestling.

I mean, a guy in Bryan's position probably shouldn't be doing a PR fluff interview with HHH.

Oh yeah, Parv, you should watch the NOAH vs. NJPW 8 man from last year for maybe the peak of Shibata badassery. Think it's from 8/14:

Totally agreed on that point.

I'm not sure it really matters what moves are 'big enough' to win a fall, so long as there is still a hierarchy. Complaining about specific moves not being viable finishes anymore always comes off more to me as clamouring for the wrestling of one's youth than anything else. What constitutes a viable finish has been escalating for at least 70 years, it's hardly a recent thing.

There's far higher percentage of major-league wrestlers who were wrestling nerds growing up in this generation compared to previous, I'd say.

You should try watching the Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Shuji Ishikawa & Kohei Sato matches. I don't have dates.

Always thought Shibata's gimmick was more "80s throwback shooter" than "shoot style". With a touch of "I am Inoki reborn" mixed in. He was doing the manjigatame for a moment there.

That Friday night show was pretty great. Found it instructive to see both Cavernario/Cometa and Volador/Mephisto on the same show, as it really showed the difference between a well-worked back-and-forth spot-centric match like the former and a lazy my-turn-your-turn bore like most every Volador Jr. singles match.

I think it's unfortunate that there isn't a prominent critical voice operating under a different philosophy to Dave's re: what constitutes 'good wrestling', but it's not Dave's fault.

I agree with much of Matt's post, too. I praised Joe's post mostly for its accurate breakdown of the different ways people enjoy wrestling. I'm not entirely sure I'm down with the "all ways of appreciating are created equal" idea. This is absolutely not saying that people who enjoy wrestling in a certain way are less intelligent or less deserving of respect, of course. But the tepid "well, this is my opinion and that's your opinion and they're both great!" attitude I see from some does grate on me. If you're passionate about this stuff, and about the beauty in it, and you see the way someone else approaches the same material as reducing it to something ugly, simplistic, and/or base, shouldn't you have a little more fire about it?

I take your overall point, but when was the last time anyone bought a near-fall on a clothesline or body slam?