SPS

I think Bix summed it up best in the old "Greatest Con" megathread over a decade ago when talking about Gabe running ROH in Japan, "...it's considered this magical land full of five star matches, subservient women who want our big American penises, the most innovative video games, violent art films, and robot dogs. It's a mindset that has reverberated through the geekier aspects of popular culture for the last 15 years or so, getting worse and worse over time. " A lot of online fans from outside Japan rate their matches higher strictly because it's from Japan. Even Meltzer who denies it still is guilty of this again at the end of the day it's only peoples opinion.

In this short video Harry shares some more details around Davey almost going to UWFi in 1992/1993 and also some figures he was offered and paid in Japan. Davey was offered apparently $6,200 a match for UWFi and actually got $12,000 a week for SWS. I wish Davey would've went to UWFi and did a couple squashes of Tamura and Anjoh then had a big title match with Takada, would've been cool to see if he could adapt to the style.

These were yours? Nice work, I really enjoyed these when I watched them a while back.

I think sometimes his manner and his way of speaking can get lost over a medium like Twitter. From what he said I interpret it as him saying how Brain was a guy he never really got to know as their paths to the day didn't cross when both were coming and going and again the opposite way years later. Lance from my personal experience always takes wrestlers early and tragic deaths (no joke) seriously. Every training camp he does at SWA he does a day dedicated to covering all the premature deaths in the business since he started in it and he reads every single name which was over 60 when I was there. He may have some opinions on wrestling that people don't agree with or others might not like his work but when it comes to his true feelings on the people involved in the business he is very against people developing drug addiction and/or dying young due to circumstances that can lead to people meeting their end like how this happened with Brian.

RIP to Brian. Such a sad end that nobody deserves no matter their problems or demons. I also find it a bit hollow how many people online months ago who were making fun of him and shitting on him after the recent beating he got from Chase Stevens and when he got busted for that credit card fraud at that hotel a few months back now acting like they were always such big fans and how sad it is. Certainly being bombarded as a laughingstock and disgrace to his family name probably didn't help him when he got arrested again this time and was being left in jail and possibly going away for a long time. Most casual and even some hardcore fans don't care about wrestlers unless they're tearing it up on the screen or after they've met an unfortunate end.

RIP to Nikolai, always enjoyed whenever he sat down and did a shoot interview as he always just seemed like a really decent man. He had such an interesting background as a strapping guy from the Ukraine who was trained by Stu Hart and eventually turned into probably the most famous evil Russian character ever due to him facing Hogan on MTV during the ascent of the WWF boom. While I never considered him one of my favorite workers I respected his background and who he was behind the character and I did always pop for that spinning back kick he threw.

Awesome, love to hear this one. Great shows you guys keep it up.

Still waiting for mine in the mail as I prefer to read the physical copy over a digital one although I have that one sitting on my laptop.

I think it comes with the problem of when the viewer really likes a talent or that talent has achieved some highly rated matches and is seen as someone who delivers them on a regular basis, then sometimes people watching feel to give them a low rating that is probably warranted for a mediocre or bland effort somehow makes them less great which is far from the truth. Every great can have a bad night or a bland performance and it's just that, a bad night. If people weren't so caught up with star ratings being the main judgment in explaining how good a talent is then you probably would see less of this.

I think they're needs to be a smaller tier below NXT for straight out of the gate new workers like an OVW. If they do decide to go full territory and have smaller NXT territories around the world that they can send folks around to for seasoning then use the PC and main NXT program and the finishing school like others mentioned then you'd probably see more homegrown stars come out of it instead of just the notable exceptions like Alexa, Braun or Bianca Belair being another one coming up.

I remember reading this exact list in a book I got from my local library called "The Buzz on Pro Wrestling" that had Goldberg on the cover. Made sense to 10 year old me and still does all these years later.

Well after hearing all the hype and seeing it get ***** I went and checked this out and man am I mixed. Overall a great match with Trent Seven doing such a great job selling the knee and holding on in agony refusing to give in before the finish but man did some holes in this bring this down for me. My main gripe was the Undisputed Era throughout the match blatantly ignores the rules and runs in and out as they please without any real reprimand from the referee, notably during one point where U.E. is camping out in the ring double team attacking Bate and the ref counts 1 for the 5 count to get the illegal man out of the ring then just gives up and lets them keep on. WTF? The when Bate makes 1 save the referee warns him that if he does it again M.M. will be presumably DQ'd. So Bate stands on the apron like a goof while Seven sells his ass off struggling to escape the inverted heel hook when if there was any kind of consistency in the officiating he should've just ran in and booted Kyle in the face to break it up since the ref gave 0 fucks about the U.E. doing it all match. It would've made the story that much more clear cut and heated if the referee had been on top this nonsense and been more of an authority from the start constantly warning and threatening disqualification on U.E. for their disregard for the rules gaining them the upper hand in an otherwise match up of two evenly matched pairings. That gives some sympathy for M.M. as not only are they having one member risk serious knee injury due to U.E. bending the rules to get the chance to inflict such damage to Seven but also that U.E. are that much more hateable because they are seemingly talented enough to beat down M.M. but due to their cowardice and greed to regain the titles by any means necessary they resort to underhanded tactics to assure not just regaining the titles but also possibly eliminating a rivals career. That gives the referee more logical justification when Bate makes that one save to say 'alright that's the only one I'm gonna allow in retaliation, if you do it again I'll have to DQ you, I have to enforce the rules for both teams'. That way Bate wouldn't look so foolish standing on the apron helpless after all the shit U.E. pulled and the referee doesn't look so incompetent or biased when seemingly brining the hammer down on the faces for a single offense after letting the heels run amok earlier on. Aside from that my other nitpicks were Bate's selling was weak as his facials were him either being just dead or when he'd get stuck with a kick or likewise just would have have a worried look on his face and would rub his head? like a toddler or pet had popped him with a blow rather than a pro athlete in a combat situation. And my only minor criticism on Trent was his kicks while in the heel hook looked weak as hell and Kyle oversold them by acting rocked by them when they looked more like grazing swatting kicks rather than hammering blows. Other than that overall it was still a great match and the crowd was super hot so that helped give it an extra gear but I'd go **** due to the structure of the whole thing suffering due to the shit refereeing not allowing the heels to be shown as cheating bastards in turn leaving the faces looking like nervous to retaliate goofs rather than good guys who took all they could until they could take no more.

Missed that tweet and can't seem to find it, do you have the link?

I'm familiar with the others but what did Lufisto do/say to lump her in with the people mentioned?

RIP Masa Saito, Mr. Torture was a treat to watch in his AWA stuff which was where I first saw his stuff online then his epic stuff in NJPW in the 80's against Inoki. He was so believable and legitimate looking and just looked like a bad mofo. Funny side note the one match I've never seen of Saito which never popped up anywhere despite various handheld versions showing up online was from the World Wrestling Peace Festival he where he wrestled Lex Luger. I know it probably wasn't the best match but it's literally the only match on the card I've never seen and I'd love to see Saito locking horns with Luger.

Also didn't help him that turned up fat and out of shape either. Not denying the culture shock and backstage BS he went through but the fact he didn't even take himself seriously enough to look the part like he did in TNA must've put a target on his back.

In the internet and social media age now more than ever most of the infamous wrestling shoots have been shared and discussed. Matches like Rikidozan/Kimura, Kitao/Earthquake, Brody/Luger and others have become well known. I have learned about a ton of them over the years but there are always ones that seem to pop up that are forgotten, not well known or not talked about much. I was just wondering what are some of the ones members on this board know that aren't as mentioned or brought up? My two that I'll throw out there are both from Japan, the first from the same company (SWS) that held the card where the infamous Kitao/Tenta shoot took place again had a lesser known shoot break out on between PWFG's Minoru Suzki and Apollo Sugawara. I've never heard the story on this but it seemed Suzuki was doing his thing and Apollo didn't care for the shoot stuff and it broke down from there. The second is from JWP between Shinobu Kandori and Jackie Sato. This one I was reminded of today from the Observer Rewind over on Reddit and apparently it was due to some backstage disputes over the shooter ladies of JWP and the performer stars like Sato who was seen as arrogant by some and it broke down here with Kandori just beating the hell out of Sato and running her out of the promotion and wrestling.

It was front page on squaredcircle the same week after on WOR Dave told the story of Pillman raving about it to him then just got reposted after Vader passed. Here was the original thread I saw from 4 months ago.

I was catching up on the WOR from over the weekend and hearing Dave talk about Nick Jackson's weight gain since moving up to the heavyweight tags. He talked about it as a possible future detriment since it could possibly make Nick look slower/not as graceful doing his signature spots and how when heavier guys do those kind of spots it makes you think how it's cool big guys can do the moves but they probably shouldn't . I found this assessment pretty funny since Dave is the one who raved and went on and on about Keith Lee vs Dijak from PWG that he gave ***** where those two did tons of flying and highspots that looked sloppy as hell due to them being so big trying to do the things Jr. sized guys do so flawlessly. Stuff like this is one thing I will say Dave is bad for as he was steadfast defending the Lee/Dijak stuff as it was so impressive and unbelievable what these 2 big guys were doing and then goes on to say how because Nick Jackson gained 20 lbs and may gain more he's hurting himself in the long run because if he's bigger then his moves won't be as fast and crisp(which we haven't even seen as the case yet).

Very sad to hear, he was a guy that got dealt such a bad hand twice in life and never let it make him hateful or bitter but used it to inspire others and let how good a person he was shine through. RIP to Matt.

Holy shit you're right, I just looked up and found their last match and Ellering was there with them, How did they end up back together in storyline? I don't really remember anything about LOD in WWF after Hawk fell off the Titan Tron.

Here BAHU explains it in his History of FMW podcast, Skip to 16:36 Basically WWF was willing to let WWF stars go work for Japan simply for the booking fee they'd get which was a lot of money. Undertaker worked Michinoku Pro the same year and it cost them like $25,000 to book Undertaker. The rumored cost for FMW as BAHU states in the video was $100,000 which is a bit high but I'd believe it probably cost them around $20-25,000 each for Vader and Shamrock and WWf probably got at least $10-15,000 for their booking fee.