pol

Trying to headlock Riki Choshu

There's a chart of this year's Korakuen attendance floating around Twitter that would seem to indicate it has had a negative effect on business.

Not about differing tastes so much as allowing a guy to look good doing his style on his home turf. The whole point of this angle is to get NOAH out of its current malaise, which is a difficult proposition for a heel booked to come in and dominate the entire roster for close to a year. The least he can do is let Sugiura have a Sugiura match in front of a crowd of Sugiura fans.

I agree on the criticisms of the match, and find the number of people that use the word "fight" to refer to guys taking turns allowing the other guy to hit them bizarre, but you're way off base saying there was no heat. That was easily the hottest NOAH crowd in recent memory, they were eating the shit up. I think Suzuki has very consciously allowed his opponents to work their kind of match when possible in this run, which is probably the right thing for an invader champion to do. The problem for me is that Marufuji and Sugiura's respective match styles are pretty shitty. It's telling that I enjoyed his matches vs. Taniguchi and Takayama, far more limited guys where Suzuki had to do most of the heavy lifting, far more than the Marufuji and Sugiura matches. That said, I think the way he worked the Marufuji and Sugiura matches could be seen as a point in his favor, even if it actually resulted in worse matches for my taste than if he'd just taken control and slotted them into a Suzuki Match. You have to consider what the goal of this run is and the audience he's playing for.

The Lawler line really exposes what this is really about, I think. Parv knows nothing about what Joe's process entails, only that he's arriving at conclusions that Parv finds disagreeable. Parv would prefer a poll where only those with correct opinions need apply. Some dissent is acceptable, but not too much. Of course, dissent that happens to align with Parv's personal tastes is more acceptable than dissent that doesn't. (Since this sounds a little mean, I just want to be clear that for as much as I suspect we fundamentally disagree philosphically, and for as stuffy and tedious as he can be at times, I still think Parv is one of the most valuable contributors on these boards, and, at least in podcast form, seems like a genuinely nice bloke. I also understand that it can't be pleasant being piled on from all sides like this and it must be pretty overwhelming trying to respond to all the criticisms. That said, I still think he's way off base on this.)

I reject the idea that there's some kind of self-evident Greatness in Flair, The Beatles or Citizen Kane that transcends personal taste, and that anyone could see if only they make the effort. I think the assumption of such has far more to do with narratives constructed and perpetuated by powerful critical and cultural voices than anything intrinsic to the works themselves. As an academic I know this view can't be alien to you Parv, even though you clearly don't agree with it personally. Your standard operating procedure in this discussion seems to be: 1. Vaguely refer to opinions you see as self-evidently ludicrous. 2. Support that judgment with appeals to authority/consensus/"common sense". 3. Use said opinions as evidence of the supposed spuriousness of certain contributors' processes (while of course painting any dissenting opinions of your own as the end result of a tremendously involved process), thus invalidating the project as a whole. Points 1 and 2 are covered by the philosophical difference I outlined above. As for point 3, I'm not following the leap from "people disagree with authority/consensus/'common sense'" to "these people aren't putting any thought into it beyond 'who is my favorite/who do I want to watch right now?'" It just seems incredibly arrogant.

As someone who finds the concept of The Canon quasi-fascist at best I'm pretty happy with the idea of the project being a snapshot of contemporary consensus rather than an attempt to be authoritative. Doesn't mean people shouldn't put in legwork, of course.

I thought Nia Jax looked good in her squash and I'm excited about the prospect of bringing in a monster to work with Bayley, but that gear and music has got to go.

Well, it's not QUITE the same but there is a Nobuhiko Takada vs Abdullah match on the aforementioned 10/8/96 Tokyo Pro show. It's as awful as you might imagine and ends with oh my god http://vk.com/video14563695_165426560

That's a great one.

Cagematch lists a Shinobu Tamura instead of Kiyoshi, but he has no profile of his own: http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=48275 Looks like this is just a mistake on the part of the WrestlingData folks.　Sorry for the absurd false alarm

Yeah I did a spit take. I'm wondering if this is some kind of mistake in the database because that seems more believable to me than that those matches actually happened, hah.

I had a list of these for a while which I wish I had kept around now. A whole bunch of last year's En Busca would surely qualify. I don't really even remember specific matches because there were so many good ones. is the playlist of all the matches Phil Schneider ranked Must See. I always enjoyed these: Akiyama vs. Kea (07/18/98) Blue Panther vs. Virus (05/12/13):

Was just looking through WrestlingData and found out about Tamura's stay in TPW after he left UWFi and overlapping by several months with his start in RINGS. He had some matches there against opponents you would never expect: TPW @ Atami 1996/07/23 @ Atami, Shizuoka (Japan) Brazo de Oro and Brazo de Plata defeated Kiyoshi Tamura and Shocker TPW @ Maebashi 1996/07/27 @ City Gymnasium in Maebashi, Gunma (Japan) Sabu defeated Kiyoshi Tamura TPW @ Niigata 1996/09/19 @ City Gymnasium in Niigata, Niigata (Japan) Abdullah the Butcher defeated Kiyoshi Tamura Here is the full list. I assume there's no footage available of any of this stuff? Seems bizarre that he'd leave UWFi purportedly over not wanting to work with NJPW, then go do the job for guys like Sabu and Abdullah. Is this the only time in his career that he worked pro style?

A sub-3 million hour is coming.

Gedo has done well by the company for a few years, but it feels like all his faults as a booker were on display on that show - repetition of matchups, minimal attention paid to Juniors and tag division, overuse of foreigners, etc. Was the first time an IWGP Heavyweight title match didn't sell out since the disastrous AJ vs. Okada Yokohama show last year too. Korakuen attendance has been down also. Will be interesting to see how this trend develops from here.

I thought it was a very meh show. Okada/AJ I thought was maybe the worst of their matches, though everyone else is going nuts for it and their matches do tend to grow on me on rewatch so I might be out to lunch on that one. Tanahashi/Naito was underwhelming. This gimmick is such an improvement for Naito, but I'm not sure he's really figured out how to work it in a way that produces entertaining matches yet. The angle was very fun though. Neither of the junior title matches did anything for me. I would rather have seen reDragon/RPG Vice work a spotfest sprint because I don't get the impression either team can work a regular match in a way that is particularly compelling. The heat segment was zzzz. As for the singles title match, Kenny Omega in this gimmick is absolutely wretched. Sydal did some cool moves. Crowd was DEAD for both matches. The constant gaijin vs. gaijin matches are killing interest in the division. Makes the decision to take the belt off KUSHIDA even more puzzling.

Thoughts on KOPW?

Wasn't the eye work playing off of the Kawada vs. Misawa CC match (which you guys didn't watch) where Kawada breaks Misawa's orbital bone with a kick like 30 seconds in and they proceed to wrestle a 30 minute draw? Very painful match to watch with that knowledge. MORE IMPORTANTLY, what is the Parv's Points music on this one? So familiar!

Sounds like pro wrestling promoting

Might not have wanted to drop the mask. edit: not so according to Rob Viper

He seems to waver between below average and pretty damn good. The guy never had a chance in that gimmick though.

That would be incredibly short-sighted even for CMLL... so I guess it's not outside the realm of possibility.

It's crazy how 2015 was supposed to be AAA's year and in many ways it's just been horrible for them, although I think their business is still good/growing despite all that. Anything that gets CMLL out of its current malaise is a good thing. Those couple weeks with Park and Wagner were electrifying. That said, it's yet another short-term fix (and who knows how long it lasts until he storms out of CMLL too) for a promotion with fundamental problems that will likely continue to go unaddressed, but at least we will probably get some fun shows out of it. A Rush/Mistico program would be nice. Will be interesting to see who AAA promotes to the top rudo spot now.

Welcome to most "nerd" media post-Scream. A little self awareness is fine but going overboard with it is just an excuse for shit writing/booking/performing/etc. I think the real problem is that wrestling has never truly come to terms with how to deal with narrative consistency and the suspension of disbelief in the post-kayfabe era. The guys running the show are hardly connoisseurs of fiction, after all. The conceit that everything was real was what kept them in check.