joeg

Had I gotten the 7 matches we got and an hour of filler and an hour preshow that hyped every match properly, I think I'd be ok with it. But that's not what we got. We got a rambling preshow that didn't explain anything other than a 6'10" 400 pound former strongman had been the victim of bullying somehow. Then we got 40 minutes of delays which were entertaining for the wrong reasons. Then got 7 matches with two hours of filler. Its just too much down time, too much stalling. Too much time where no story is being told, where no action is happening, where nothing is being explained or set up. Too much waiting around for something to happen.

4 hours and 40 minutes minutes later. 40 minutes of good wrestling. An hour of bad wrestling. And 3 hours of filler, stalling, and preshow. They do realize that there is a big chunk of the audience only tunes in for the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania right? Just as there's people who only watch the Super Bowl or the World Series, there are people who only watch wrestling a couple of times a year, and back to back bad 5 hour shows isn't going to help change that. Lita and 4 random people are talking it up like was the greatest show ever. They need to stop cramming the entire 100 man roster into Wrestlemania. Give us 5 or 6 big matches with heat and get us out of here in under four hours.

What I love about your posts is that if I just read them they make no sense. But then when I read them with Crocodile Dundee's voice in my head, they make total sense and are absolutely awesome. It's like you write in a thick Aussie accent. You up or down at the track?

This! Exactly!

So if I follow your post correctly, you place bets at the dog track based on which dog has a wrestling related name?

@William Bologna His 2005 G1 run is where I'd start. that whole tournament is a blast. Its Chono's last win and Kawada, MiSu, Nakamura, Tanahashi, and Fujinami are all in there. Also his IWGP title defenses against Shibata, Tanahashi and Nagata. The one against Shibata especially. Some of his work from 2015 to 2019 ish against the BJW crew. There were a bunch of tags in 98 and 99 prior to going into MMA and becoming a part timer where he's green but shows a lot of promise.

I started arguing with @El-P about Kaz Fujita. Rather than continue to derail the RWTL thread I thought I'd start a new thread in the microscope. Fujita was a hell of a talent who was booked horribly. New Japan had several talented amateur wrestlers/shooters in the late 90s and early 2000s which I consider to be a good thing. Having legit badasses on a wrestling roster is a good thing. Ogawa, Nakanishi, Fujita, Kendo Kashin, Nagata, Don Frye, Shibata, Nakamura, etc. A few of these guys could actually work and had some charisma and personality too. Possibly my favorite of the legit basdasses in NJPW from that era was Kaz Fujita. He could work. He had an aura, a natural dickish heel charisma. His stuff looked reckless yet he never hurt anybody in the ring. In a lot of ways his in ring work was like Brock Lesnar. A scary legit fighter who looked and acted like he could kill somebody with his bare hands and whose work was perfectly safe yet looked incredibly violent and reckless. Any complaints about Fujita aren't his fault. Those complaints rest solely on Inoki and Inoki-ism. Most people think of Inoki-ism as blending MMA and pro wrestling. But its more that. Its blending MMA with terrible pro wrestling booking. Its Russo style shoot angles and frequent title changes. Its legit Brawl for All type tournaments with second rate fighters on a pro wrestling card. Its Dusty style hot shotting of programs. Its fucking top workers around on payoffs. Its pro wrestlers jumping into MMA fights without a proper training camp, and then getting fucked around on their payoff for the MMA fight. Its not Fujita's fault that he was Inoki's hand chosen poster boy for this shit show style of booking and promoting. Even though Inoki was incapable of booking and promoting anybody but himself, he was able to recognize talent. Fujita was a hell of a talent and should have been an absolute monster. He should have been the top guy in NJPW for the early-mid 2000s as he was head and shoulders better than Nagata, Tenzan, Kojima, etc. Again not Fujita's fault his title reigns were booked so poorly.

Oh and one more thing @El-P Kaz Fujita could have been great as a top guy. He was a blue chip athlete with personality who could sell and who's work was believable. That the title only got defended once every 4 months and vacated 4 times in 5 years isn't on Fujita. That's on Inoki. If Inoki hadn't run off Hashimoto without him really passing the torch; and if Fujita had gone back to NJPW full time when his MMA record was 8-1 had a traditional title chase followed by a traditional lengthy title run, with a passing of the torch from Hash to Fujita or Hash to Sasaki to Fujita I doubt NJPW's business would have dipped. But that didn't happen.

I don't know if "crisis" is the right word. Chaos maybe. NJPW, AJPW and Zero One were drawing well until 2004ish. NOAH and Hustle were drawing well until 2006ish. BJW, Toryumon/Dragon Gate, DDT, Osaka Pro, etc were all profitable on a smaller scale until 2012ish. People point at the exodus and Inoki's dabbling in MMA as why Japanese wrestling tanked, but that's over simplifying it. The warning signs were there in the 90s when TV networks moved wrestling out of primetime. Then the exodus. Then Inoki dabbling in MMA hurt wrestling's legitimacy. Then the yakuza got their hooks into FMW, Zero One, and NJPW. Then Hashimoto died. Then Inoki's hot shot booking killed the IWGP title. Then Mutoh, Tenryu, Chono, and Kobashi all started to have serious health issues and work a reduced schedule. Then Misawa died. Then there was nobody to really take the place of Mutoh, Kobashi, Tenryu, Hashimoto, Misawa, etc. because none of the 3rd generation wrestlers that debuted in the mid/late 90s and were pushed in the early 2000s really ever got over because all of their TV matches either happened after midnight or on channels buried deep in a satellite subscription. To me it was 15 years of everything that could go wrong going wrong that lead to puroresu falling on hard times not just Misawa bolting from AJPW and CroCop murdering Nagata.

Kevin Nash would make sitting on a stool for 5 minutes far more entertaining than anything Aries has done in a ring that he didn't share with Samoa Joe, Daniel Bryan, Nigel, or Punk.

@JerryvonKramer I don't think Scott was wrong at all emphasizing singles over tags. Athletic, charismatic, heavyweight singles workers usually are the top draws in every promotion, ever. What I don't get why Sting, Luger, and Muta weren't more heavily featured given they were the type of worker Scott pushed in the 70s and during his WWF run. Is there any reason?

Wow interesting. Thanks. I love how I'm always learning from this board.

Yeah Queensberry rules were first adapted in 1865-67, but London bare knuckle rules were still a thing until well into the 1890s. A lot of the what we see in modern boxing and MMA comes from Queensberry rules- referee stoppages, 3 judges scoring decisions on a 10 point system, standing 8 count to check for injuries after a knockdown, a maximum number of rounds, a ringside doctor, gloved fists, disqualification for eye gouging, low blows, biting and fish hooking, 3 knockdown rule, etc. Under London bare knuckle rules there was no scoring system, no regulation ring, no DQs, and the fight had endless 3 minute rounds until the corner threw in the towel or somebody was knocked out. Think the fight scenes in the movie Snatch. Very barbaric.

I dunno about that. I watched no gi grappling like Metamoris and ADCC back when those were around, like 80% of big fights end up in a time limit draw that looked like it had no chance of a finish anytime soon. Early NHB in the 90s it happened frequently as well. So if they were fighting with no time limit, no strikes and certain joint manipulations banned, I could see a fight between world class grapplers taking a fairly long time.

@Superstar Sleeze I thought Scott had always placed an emphasis on high workrate singles workers in the main event. Its why in 74 when he took over Crockett, he moved the established main event tag teams to the mid card and brought in Wahoo, Valentine and Super Destroyer as his new top guys. It took months for them to get over and for the houses to bounce back but eventually it worked. In the late 70s Flair, Piper, Snuka, Steamboat, Orndorff, Greg Valentine etc. were all guys that Scott built up. I can only think of one time he had tag teams on top and that was in 1980 when Steamboat and Youngblood traded the tag titles back and forth with Valentine and Ray Stevens. I might be wrong about this. I just thought it was his belief that tag teams were a mid card attraction to launch singles careers rather than a main event that would draw money. I may be wrong. Somebody from the Carolinas who was alive in the 70s feel free to correct me. @Loss I had always thought Scott booked from the time Dusty left until the end of the year. But learning from this thread that in 7 or 8 months they went from Dusty to Jim Crocket Jr. to George Scott to Jim Ross and Eddie Gilbert to the booking committee headed by Flair explains a lot. It now makes sense why they were struggling despite the high quality of in ring work after Dusty left.

Yeah. I was never on DVDR but I was on puroresufan, crazymax, and puroresu.tv and couple of others. When those places went down, everybody from there sort of migrated here. I feel like this is the last surviving public forum of informed wrestling discussion thanks to Charles.

Isn't Korakuen operating at 50% capacity right now? I assumed that's why the attendance numbers were so low across the board, not just for NJPW.

I fear its going to be like WCW. Jungle Boy, Hobbs, Starks, Guevara, MJF, Darby, etc spend the next several years cutting their teeth in AEW but never get above the upper midcard and end up jumping to WWE ala Jericho, Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko, Saturn, etc. did.

Yeah my point was more that wasn't a card that required a stadium. And they were running a show simply to counter program Wrestlemania which means they are expecting to lose money on it, but with the hope Vince loses more. So wouldn't it have been wise to run it at a smaller, more established venue like the Omni, Richmond Coliseum, Patriot Center, or Greensboro Coliseum. I.e. somewhere in tradition Crockett/Georgia territory. That way they draw twice the people but with half the overhead. That was kind of my point. Basically who's idea was it to run a show that may operate at a loss and who's idea was it to run that show in the Superdome ensuring that they'd lose money. Anybody responsible for one of the late 80s stadium shows that never stood a chance of drawing 10,000 people in an 80,000 seat stadium can't be given credit for good booking/promoting during that era.

Yeah, I haven't watched WWE regularly in the long time because my tolerance for crap is low... I really pick and choose what WWE I watch. I've found this board to be very useful when it comes to sifting through the dozen hours plus of WWE programing a week to find that one hour that's worth watching.

Question, who's idea was it to run the Clash at the Superdome on the same day as Wrestlemania? It seems like a terrible idea running a stadium show with a weak undercard simply to counter program Wrestlemania... no wonder they only drew 5,000 fans and did a 4.0 rating back at a time when there were only 25 cable channels.

In a vacuum not regarding what happened in previous weeks, The Christian debut was good and the Cody vs Marshall match/angle was really good. The Pinnacle/ Inner Circle backstage brawl was awesome and the whole feud so far has been great. Everything else sucked. The Matt Hardy stuff has gotten old. The Dark Order is awful and always has been. The Young Bucks melodrama is awful, always is, and even managed to taint what should have been a great 6 man. The main event didn't make any sense, this whole angle has been terrible from the beginning, but at least it's consistent which is rare in AEW. I'm going to keep watching because the highs are so high in AEW, but the show is so inconsistent and the lows are so low.

So Scott only had the book from when Dusty left in late January/early February until early April?

He was only booker from February 89 to until December 89 or so right? The biggest knock is that they didn't draw well in the those 11 months. But they hadn't drawn well in the previous 2 years either so you couldn't blame him for that. And they didn't draw well in the 4 years that followed. So I don't know if he can be blamed for that. Also he didn't really have the book long enough to have any sort of real impact, positive or negative. Sure there were missteps during his short tenure, starting with bringing back Steamboat as a boring family man against the uber cool Flair. Also keeping Sting and Luger in the mid card for most of the year. Not utilizing Midnight Express, which I saw as part of a larger problem with not utilizing tag teams in general. Muta losing 3 times in one night when he was red hot. Starcade being a tournament rather than a culmination of a feud. All of those are valid critiques. But at the same time, Scott's tenure produced some of the greatest matches ever. Every major event had at least one all time classic match that was worth your money. That can't be disputed. I think it would have been interesting where it would have gone had he stayed another year or two coming off the tournament which attempted to elevate Luger and Sting.

Yeah, Kenny Omega isn't exactly oozing charm and cool. Omega is much more Rick Moranis than Steve McQueen. Jungle Boy, Adam Page, Sammy Guevarra, Cody, etc. all got that cool factor. Omega not so much, its why I never got him as a babyface.