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What's the last great Misawa match?

Was there any specific reason why Baba never had Jumbo get a win over him, even as Jumbo was very clearly the ace as early as like 1980-1982?

I don't think this was particularly good. In fact, I'd say it completely falls apart in the second half, with frequently blown spots and miscommunications. Just real ugly, which sometimes can be great and work to a match's benefit, but I don't believe it did in this match. I'm also annoyed that, much like the Killer Khan match, the build up that seemed like it would be involved in the match is nowhere to be found. In the Khan match, it was Khan spending an entire month literally trying to hang Choshu with a noose on every show and then they have a death match where the noose doesn't make an appearance at all. In the case of this match, Choshu's ribs are all busted up because Tenryu beat the shit out of him with a chair a few days prior, and for it to end in a DQ and have a post match angle but no chair from Choshu bugged me. I would recommend it in that it's a pretty interesting spectacle match in a way that not many other matches are on AJPW at the time, but it's not even close to the best singles match either guy had in 1986. It's also not the best match they had against each other, either in a singles or tag. It's not even the best match they had against each other in 1986.

There's some real interesting discussion back in 2015 about who viewed who as heel or face in the 90s and it is pretty baffling to me. I've never even seen discussion that Misawa was a heel, or Kawada was a face. Granted, I did not have much puro exposure in the 90s as all this stuff was actually happening. However I did know most big names from video games and a handful of tapes in the early 00s before it became much easier to see stuff online. But even then I knew Misawa was the super face and Kawada (and Taue) was a real dick head, grumpy heel. But just because a wrestler is a heel doesn't mean they can't have a chase and have fans think it is cool when they achieve their goal. Particularly in puro, where heel wrestlers generally aren't cartoonishly evil guys like they were in American wrestling for so long. Kawada finally being Misawa is a lot different than say, the Million Dollar Man buying the WWF Championship. Tiger Misawa mostly sucks, tbh. Starts off pretty hot with some lucha dudes to make him look great, then he goes on a years stretch of mostly bland boring shit with the occasional burst of someone pissing him off and getting some fire out of him. As he bulks up to heavyweight, he's even slower and more bland for quite a while. There's no way anyone watching Tiger Mask Misawa could see that guy and think future GOAT. Except Baba, I guess.

I have trouble watching Tana these days because he's so hobbly and broken down, but Jay White-O has been a revelation in the past year after everything finally started to click for him. However, it also feels like there's been 200 Tana/White matches in the past 2-3 years. I bet Shingo/Ospreay was a lot of fun.

My thought was more there wouldn't be a Val Venis because Rick Rude would have been doing that gimmick and role.

Wow this mf really gonna talk about The Juice like that? Phil ain't juicy.

He's so good in 1992 that it's really hard to figure out why he could never fully pull it together before or after. Not that he was bad by any means. Even in his early Memphis days where he was so young his voice would still occasionally crack during promos, he was obviously very talented and had a ton of potential, but it never really fully came together as "oh shit this guy is fucking amazing" type performances until that period in WCW. If I had to guess, it was probably because he was able to rely on the gimmick and schtick more than having to worry about the ring work, and the WWF just simply wasn't doing the type of matches he would be doing in WCW in the Watts era. Even by 1993 he's not a shell of himself, but he's definitely not the same worker he was in 1992. I guess it was probably the first neck injury that kept him out of action from the end of December 92 through March or so 1993? I do wonder what could have been had his career not ended when it did. Gotta feel like he would have had a real strong run in the Attitude Era as ultra raunchy version of his established character. Basically the ECW Rick Rude if he could still work. I do really enjoy his matches with Steamboat and Jake in the WWF, though. Although the Jake ones are really completely because of Jake, and the Steamboat matches are very very different to the WCW matches, the iron man which is maybe the most perfect encapsulation of what American pro wrestling is. An absolute master class in what a heel is, what a face is, what selling is, what psychology is, what selling is. Anyone in the industry should study it, anyone wanting to explain wrestling to a non fan should show it.

He's been better the past 5-6 years than previous 15, imo. Really fucking hated that super long Okada match, though.

Regal was always a delight his entire WCW run. Didn't matter if it was 10-15 minute TV draws, 20 minute PPV matches, or 2-3 minute matches on Nitro. Even his not so healthy period in WCW is still a treat to watch him in nothing matches against nothing talents. I wish there was more of a premium on good TV matches in WWE during his time, as there was a good 5 year chunk where he was featured constantly but rarely got more than 5 minutes in the ring when the roster was so incredibly stacked and it's a real bummer. So many classics he could have had. It's really not until he gets moved to Smackdown in 2005/2006 that he's able to start really having some quality matches again, most of them all also involving Benoit or Finlay. I'm also still baffled at a Bluebloods reunion on Smackdown in 2006/2007.

Lol that match would have sucked. Maeda almost assuredly would have sandbagged Jumbo the whole match.

The real interesting thing about King to me, promo wise, is how completely different his face and heel promos were. Most of the big names when you think of top promo guys generally kept the same energy as heels or faces (thinking of the Hogans, Flairs, Savages, Pipers, Austins, Rocks), but Lawler's heel and face promos are so far apart in both energy and tone that it might as well be two different guys. The only others I can think of that can really flip the switch so drastically are Foley and Terry Funk, who depending on if they were heel or face could be either a shrieking insane person or kindly friendly grandpa type who wouldn't hurt a fly. King's heel promos were ultimate cheap heat corny as hell almost whiny shitbag, but his face promos were just normal guy casually talking like a regular human.

Jumbo has his best matches with Flair, Harley, Bock, Hansen/Brody (singles and tags), as well as some classics with Kerry, Martel, and the Funks during the 1981-1984 period. Anyone thinking that was a stale or boring time for Jumbo or AJ is a stupid shit. He has more classics in that period than he does during the Choshu period.

I just found out there was a Terry Funk vs Lou Thesz match from 1975 that I desperately wish existed on tape somewhere

It really is absolutely nuts how many all timers and promotions he worked. Almost every major champion from every major company from the mid 60s up to the late 90s and a few guys who who would be come champions into the mid 00s or even up to this year. He worked with or against every NWA Champion from Kinski through the end of the WCW/NWA relationship (and also Lou Thesz and Pat O'Connor, as well as a number of the post WCW and TNA era guys) He worked with or against every WWE Champion from Bruno through DiBiase, as well as Bret/Sid/Foley/Austin/Taker/Nash/Rock/HHH/Bradshaw/Eddie/Benoit/Punk/Edge, as well as a battle royal with Show/Mark Henry/Lashley/Kurt Angle. He worked with literally almost every single AWA Champion besides Verne, Mr. Saito, and Larry Z. He worked with nearly every ECW Champion besides Mikey Whipwreck. He worked with or against every Triple Crown holder from Jumbo all the way through Muta in 2002 with Hashimoto being the first guy to hold the Triple Crown that he didn't work at some point. Despite very rarely working NJPW, he still worked with or against nearly all the people who would hold the title from 1987 to 2000. The only handful of guys he never seemed to match up with at some point were Randy Savage (although he did face both Angelo and Lanny), Rick Rude, HBK, Hashimoto, and AJ Styles. Terry Funk seriously has matches that range from Lou Thesz to Steve Austin to CM Punk to Tomohiro Ishii. There's probably never been a guy in wrestling that has worked with as many father/son duos in the history of pro wrestling. He worked all 3 generations of Ortons. Dusty and Dustin. Gory and Chavo/Mando/Eddie Guerrero. Larry and Curt Hennig. Eddie and Mike Graham. Fritz and Kerry/David/Kevin. Blackjack Mulligan and Barry Windham. Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson, and The Rock. The entire Armstrong clan. Johnny and Greg Valentine. Tommy, Eddie, and Doug Gilbert. Jerry Lawler and Brian Christopher. Boris Malenko and Dean/Joe. Mike and Ted DiBiase.

I feel like there being defined sections of his career where he's working very different styles at a very high level in various stages of his career should be a plus, not a negative. Not just for him, but for anyone, really.

I'm genuinely surprised a much, much, much larger chunk of the wrestling community in the US isn't all in on Q, antivax, Trumpism stuff. That it's really only like a dozen people showing their asses is pretty shocking considering the cesspool the wrestling industry has traditionally been.

I've never once considered Jumbo to be stoic and it's weird to me to see so much discussion on that topic.

I definitely do not believe fans were more into Choshu or Tenryu than Jumbo at any stage during Jumbo's active career. Maybe into the 90s when Jumbo's health made him fade away while the other two grew into legend status, but not while Jumbo was active and not in the same ring as them.

Not going back to watch TNA AJ stuff is a mistake, that dude was putting in the highest quality work from the weekly PPV era all the way to his end with the company, no matter how stupid or shitty he was booked or what spot on the card he was on. You can basically just go look at cagematch and if you see a match with a name that interests you between 2002-2013 and it's a match with AJ, you can be sure it's at least going to be decent. This dude was getting solid matches out of guys like Mike Sanders, Raven, Larry Zbyszko, Dusty Rhodes in 2002-2003 just a couple of years into his career while also having the best junior stuff in the US at the time with the Lynn/Low Ki/Red types at the same time.

Well then the Undertaker is a super worker talk makes even less sense

I might put Bull in the top 100 just for the cage match with Aja

Undertaker was a super worker specifically in 2002-2003, though. I don't know when there was a point outside of 2000-the quad tear in 2001 that anyone would have ever had something like that to say about HHH, though.

There's a lot of discussion about Vader over bumping earlier a page/6 years ago (lol) and the only time I think his bumping is silly is the matches with Flair, and only because it's Ric Flair. And even then, it certainly worked for the crowd(s) it was in front of, so can you really count it as a negative? Part of what made Brock so awesome in his first run was he was this massive freak of nature bumping like a cruiserweight on Nitro.

I hope so for Sammy's sake, because taking him off TV for months just to bring him back sheepishly trying to get back in the good graces of the group that kicked his ass to the curb made him look like a putz and killed any momentum he had (which wasn't much at that point, coming off the Hardy feud). In general, the whole Pinnacle/Inner Circle feud seems very very rushed because TK still desperately wanted to run a War Games match but the Elite/Inner Circle thing had completely fallen off. I think this will be only the 2nd interaction between the groups in a wrestling ring, the other being Dax vs Jericho.