PeteF3

Stan Hansen, Kenta Kobashi, & Jun Akiyama vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Johnny Ace, & Takao Omori, 4/15/95 Omori is wearing the single ghastliest set of trunks I have ever, ever seen. That includes Jay Strongbow's '70s-couch-cushion pattern. They can barely be described as anything besides "psychedelic leopardskin." Or psychedelic sponge. This is a solid 6-man tag that's hurt by a meandering opening half. It picks up when Kobashi gets caught in the ropes and Kawada starts taking his knee apart, but the Kobashi-in-peril segment doesn't last too long and we quickly go to the hot tag and big 6-man bomb-throwing after that. Fun closing stretch but this isn't at the levels of the classic 6-mans of '91-'93. Omori seems to be in a state of arrested development since showing up in '94, as he still doesn't offer much besides the ability to take a beating. And the teams are more haphazard than the clearer alliances of the Jumbo's Army/Super Generation Army days. That said, it's still fun seeing fresh blood and fresh teams in this setting.

The next "unpredictable" thing I see Brody do will be the first. That is if you don't count the World Class matches where he actually sells.

I love that O'Connor match. None of the opening work with holds bothered me at all. Wrong thread for it but Pat seems like he should be a top 25 guy. Hard to evaluate the Golden Age folks because footage is so limited, but '50s Pat looks better than Thesz and '70s Pat was still tearing it up.

Influence was a huge part of Kid's candidacy. However you feel about the matches, the Tiger Mask series get credit for setting the template for the acclaimed junior style to come in both Japan and the U.S. Actually influence probably would apply to Benoit as well. If I'm missing something, I'm missing something, but I can't see Hase at that influential level.

Benoit was still a main event guy, and IIRC Raw ratings were higher when he was champ than when Orton was. I have to agree--I really don't think he gets in without those token runs. Is Hase the most purely work-driven HOFer? He had one IWGP title shot in his career and a quick turnaround with the NWA title when it meant something in Japan and nothing in the U.S. I don't think his drawing power is as strong as Benoit's, and as much of a fan as I am I don't think he was a deserving inductee.

I wasn't nearly as high on that Roadies match, but it does feature the absolute BEST performance of a spot I despise--the pop-up dueling piledrivers. Terry hits Hawk with one and Hawk no-sells--no surprise, that's a standard Hawk spot. Then Hawk drops Terry with one, and Terry attempts to do the same thing. He pops up, but is CLEARLY quivering in agony and only vainly attempting to put on the air of having shrugged it off. It's a fabulous bit from Terry, and Dory calmly tagging himself in to save Terry from himself pretty much encapsulated the Funks dynamic at its best. Yes, I'm gushing about Terry in a Dory thread, what's it to you?

Yes, I forgot about that one. I also like the SNME Savage match (the second one from '92), but the Dustin bout is the best post-heel turn Jake match.

The two best Jake matches I've seen are the Steamboat match from the Boston Garden and the Flair match from Mid-South. And the Steamboat match is decidedly a "Jake match," with pretty awesome psychology at work. The heel-heel Savage SNME bout is really fun as well.

I'm going to vote for Dory, too. I think the Funks are a top-5 all-time team and he's had the "overrated" tag for so long that he's become underrated. At the very least I would put Dory on my list as a mere strategic pick, since I don't think he'll get a lot of love from many others. Dory was the MVP of the '75 Open League in All-Japan, a tournament that also had Jumbo, Destroyer, Baba, Harley Race, Dick Murdoch, and Horst Hoffman--plus older stalwarts with high reps like Mr. Wrestling and Don Leo Jonathan and Pat O'Connor. He had the best match of the tour with Horst which was pure wrestling, the best Baron Von Raschke match I've seen, the remains of what looks like a terrific bomb-throwing match with Jumbo, and a fun bloody brawl with Abdullah.

One of the more noticeable pops I ever heard on Nitro was Benoit taking some guy down in the crossface during some random match. Part of it was the surprise of hearing it, but that crowd went NUTS. Sadly I couldn't tell you when it was or even who he was wrestling. But he was connecting then. He connected when wrestling Kevin Sullivan for sure. I think I would have to put Benoit on the list somewhere, but I'm not going to struggle too hard with it. Probably in the 25-30 range, whereas 10 years ago he'd be in the top 5 if not top 3. His flaws are far more apparent now and the emotional attachment is gone.

I was born in '82 and watched wrestling for pretty much literally my whole life, becoming a fan like my dad. I can honestly say I consumed far, far more wrestling from '96-'00 than I did in the '80s, yes. Now between then you had the Dark Ages, and there's no question that period was worse. Actually early '90s WWF I found far worse at the time, which is what led to me becoming a full-fledged WCW viewer. But I still kept tabs on things, thanks to discovering the Apter mags in '91 and discussion on Prodigy in early '93, opening up a whole new world even as the business was decaying.

I do think there was something that separated the negative reaction for Taue from the negative reactions to Jumbo and Fuchi and Ogawa, though. Jumbo got booed for heel tactics, too--but he didn't get booed for everything he did. That only happened to Taue (for awhile) and to Fuyuki. I couldn't tell you what that something was, but Taue was far less popular than his stablemates.

I think Bam Bam has had the underachiever label for so long that he's become underrated. He was more than capable as Vader's tag partner in New Japan and had a very good, consistent run in general from 1992 until the moment the referee's hand hit 3 at WM11. Not that this would be enough for me to vote for him, I don't think. As Dylan alluded to, the GREAT matches aren't there, just a lot of good ones, with the ones coming closest to great being New Japan tags with 3 other good workers. As far as big fat guys I'd put him behind the Big Boss Man, at least. I do think he was better than One Man Gang or Tenta, though.

I want to see more of the Heenan that we saw against Buck Zumhoffe, working on top and dropping offensive bombs. Bobby actually looked like a complete wrestler from what we saw of that match.

I agree. I'm never going to go out of my way to seek out Benoit gems, but I can at least watch his matches now. And I get more enjoyment (to a degree) when I see Benoit doing character work than doing STRONG STYLEtm stuff. He's a guy that Heyman and his booking actually made better in ECW.

No, these people genuinely and viscerally disliked Taue. Jumbo would always get cheers during his intro, and as you mentioned for the "OH!" Taue would get booed just for standing there being announced. Only other guy, native or otherwise, to get a similar reaction around this time was Fuyuki, for whatever reason. Jumbo & co. would generally get booed for their tactics, and sometimes crowds would turn on Misawa & friends for reciprocating. Taue was definitely getting booed just for who he was. I don't recall when it died off, but I'm pretty sure the negative reactions slowed down before Jumbo went out (barring things like dropping Kikuchi on the ropes or breaking up holds from the outside).

And I'm not even saying Taue is a "no," per se. Though I will say that there's no way I could fit him on my ballot this year if I had one. I guess I'm trying to take as balanced a view of the guy as I can.

This sounds dangerously close to the position posited by some people--either implied or explicit--that subjectivity with regard to the Observer HOF is inherently "bad." ("You can't deny Big Daddy's place in the Hall because you don't like his workrate--that's subjective!" Near-verbatim quote from a discussion I had on Classics some years ago). If that's the case, then we should dispense with voting and balloting altogether. Whoever meets the pre-chosen criteria gets in, whoever doesn't doesn't.

I'm not sold as Taue on a HOFer but I'm not sold that he's behind all 10 guys listed, either. Gordy - I'm far more down on Gordy than I've ever been. Not every Taue performance is a classic but he hasn't bored me to death nearly as many times as Bam Bam has. Furnas - Fantastic natural athlete who can keep up with any tag worker you care to name, but Kroffat was clearly the leader of the team holding the matches together on their side. There are a number of great Kroffat singles matches. I can't think of one notable singles match Furnas ever had. Hell, I can barely think of any that All-Japan even bothered to air. Kikuchi - He's great, but he's also pretty one-note for me to consider him really better than Taue. He may be a better Ricky Morton than Ricky Morton, but even Ricky is a more well-rounded worker. Yatsu - If we're going by this timeframe as the post implies...by the time Taue was getting a serious push, Yoshiaki was pretty fat and terrible. (There are lots of great fat guys, but Yatsu looked like he was ready to keel over at any time, and generally wrestled as such.) Doc - This one's a lot closer, and I think Doc was the top man in the wrestling world in '94...but outside of a great year and a half run he's awfully comparable to Gordy, and maybe not even as good in singles. Not sure it's just happenstance that Doc's best post-arrest performance comes against Taue. Fuchi - Also close, but he's also kind of a one-note guy, at least in this time frame. I'm not even going to portray Taue as Mr. Versatility the way Kobashi was, but he excelled as a nasty brawler, a tag worker, and as a native babyface against Hansen and Doc. I will say that, going back a few years, Fuchi's brawl with Kobayashi is very comparable to the famous 1/91 Kawada/Taue brawl. That said...I called him the #4 guy in AJPW from a combination talent/work standpoint, but he really should probably be 5th, since there's no reason not to count Hansen in that group. And if you count Jumbo, he'd be 6th. On the Joe vs. the World podcast the comparison was made to Foley in the Attitude Era...I can see the argument, but #3 > #5 or 6, and Taue didn't write a bestselling book that completely changed the wrestling literature world in a way that's still being felt today. Have a Nice Day in my mind is a huge, huge part of Foley's candidacy.

"I mean, they rate fake wrestling matches on a star system. The matches are fake! They are not real!” So only "real" things should be rated on a star system. Has anyone here ever rated a football, soccer, or baseball game, or boxing match on a star ratings scale? Has anyone NOT gone by a rating system for movies to at least some degree?

He's the Adam Dunn of pro wrestling, then. (For the 75% of you who don't get that, just trust me).

I'm going to say no, but not vehemently. In fact, Calhoun was so prolific at that bump (I'm guessing Haystacks has more countout losses than anyone in the history of wrestling, and definitely the highest countout-to-pinfall ratio) that I wouldn't be surprised if he knew a technique for yanking the ropes out with him.

I think he was referring to the ropes breaking when Calhoun tumbled to the floor, and whether that was gimmicked.

What a war. Regal grinds his forearm over Hash's nose, which bloodies him up, and Hash pays him back with some awesome stand-up kick-and-forearm shots. It's odd because he's so known for his forearms and uppercuts, but I don't think of Regal as being a standout in doing back-and-forth strike exchanges. But you sure wouldn't think that watching this. Both guys push each other into something pretty special here. Fun fact: Regal got this title shot (and payday) as a reward for putting Inoki over at the Clash the previous year.

I miss Liger and desperately want to see him mix it up with these guys, but this was pretty good. Lots of hate and personal animosity and personality on display here, which separates it from the more indie-riffic juniors wrestling we've seen earlier in the year.