elliott

Oh I totally agree that Han couldn't have had the Vader match. Han's one of the few guys in wrestling I could come up with that I think is great that I just can't imagine meshing with Vader. I don't think that makes Volk less great at what he did, but I do think that it is something that separates Tamura from Han. I'm going to start a Volk Han Complete and Accurate soon and one thing I've been thinking about lately is Volk being a high spot based wrestler or a guy who excels in spotfests. Tamura was really great at milking drama and building to big moments and pacing his matches so there is a sense of escalation. I'm not sure Han is on his level in that regard so it is something I'll be on the lookout for. I know people always point to Han/Tamura as the best "pure shootstyle" but I really think Tamura vs Kohsaka is. Volk feels like the Billy Robinson to Tamura's Jack Brisco. Like when Fujiwara and Friends were creating shoot style and developing all the workers, someone like Tamura at his absolute peak would be the best they could hope for. Volk Han is awesome, but he was doing wacky shit that the Shoot-Style Founding Fathers weren't thinking of. I haven't really worked it out quite yet, but I've been thinking about it because I want to go back and give the Han Trilogy and Kohsaka match real reviews in my C&A and I'm thinking it might be best to talk about them all together and compare/contrast and that Billy Robinson to Jack Brisco line has been floating around in my head.

I ranked both and had Tamura quite a bit higher. But figured I'd answer. It really depends on how you feel about Tamura vs Vader. You and I are going to be on the high end of loving it and going nuts over it but people could call that a 3 1/2 star match and I'd get it. Han has some terrific stuff against Kohsaka, Yamamoto & Kopylov that could definitely be considered "better" than Vader/Tamura. I'm not actually sure that Vader match is a top 10 Tamura match and it is one of my all time favorite matches. Its closer to Tamura's 10th best than his best believe it or not.

I have a ton of shoot style stuff on VHS in a box in my crawl space, covered in dust. I've got UWF, UWF-I, Pancrase, KINGDOM and even the first bunch of U-Style shows in there. Problem is, I don't own a VCR and don't have the equipment or knowledge needed to transfer them over to DVD-R or avi or whatever. Or the time. That means if I want to watch any of my old shoot style stuff, I either have to buy a VCR and hook it up to my home theater just for that purpose, or put in all the time and effort and cost to convert all that stuff, or buy it all again which I can't afford. That's why if it's not posted online somewhere, I likely wasn't able to check it out for this project. I have so much wrestling on VHS it's ridiculous, I'm glad technology advanced, but it really hurt my wrestling viewing. Youtube has a shit ton of UWF & UWFi complete shows. There are far more complete UWF/UWFi shows online than not online.

It's kinda funny because thinking about the absolute top tier Tamura matches, they all go longer than 15 minutes. I'm stoked he got a #2 vote. That's great. Literally my only criticism is the sheer lack of total matches. He wrestled fewer matches in 15 years than a lot of guys did in 6 months. I kinda felt like I had to penalize him for that in the grand scheme of things but at his absolute best I'm not sure anyone was better. I wish we got a run of him in New Japan at some point or something like that. He would have adapted so so so easily to pro-style and could have acted as a gateway for non-shoot style fans. Tamura is one of those guys like Liger, Fujinami or Danielson that I think would have been an all time great even if he worked a different style or was born in a different time and place even.

Where would someone rank if they had 5 matches, and only 5 matches. But a case could be made that they were all in the top 10 of best matches ever? At the very least in the top 10 of a single decade... James Dean could be another case for the same argument. Cazale was a supporting player in all five films, Dean was star in all three of his films. And he was Oscar nominated for two and would have been nominated for all three if it was possible (East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause competed in the same year, and actors can only be nominated once per category per year). Both were among the greats though. I was coming in here to say John Cazale was Volk Han and James Dean was Kiyoshi Tamura because those guys didn't have a lot of matches but are all time greats. I actually was going to say Tamura was Cazale but then I saw the post about James Dean and I decided to pair up the two weird looking guys and the two impossibly handsome guys.

Honestly, I'm pretty pleased Tamura made it as high as he did considering how many people don't like shoot style.

Oh shit! I actually just got that Volk Han comp (complete and accurate coming soon) and I was thinking I wanted to have one made for Tamura. Fantastic! I ranked Tamura 12th overall, but regret not getting him into the top 10. He was the best at the hardest style to master.

So the terms of the poll weren't exactly fair were they. It should have been "Flair's Chop vs Lawler's Right Hook". Or what I actually suggested: Flair's chop vs. Misawa's elbow. Which is a much closer comparison. I mean Flair uses a shit ton of other spots: rabbit punches, open handed slap, punch to the gut, etc. etc., we aren't factoring those because we're not talking about an entire arsenal of offense, just one spot. Right. We're factoring in "Lawler's Punch vs Flair's Chop." "Lawler's Punch" can be more things and do more things than "Flair's chop" and therefore is going to get my vote in a poll like this. If the poll is wack, then who gives a shit? Both things are awesome anyway. Also, I think Misawa's elbows are probably closer to Lawler's punches for the simple fact that Misawa won matches with his elbow and would use it in more ways than Flair's chop (Misawa would dive through the ropes for an elbow, come off the top, do the rolling elbow, get a running start, etc.).

You can easily argue that Lawler uses his punches to do all of those same things as well though. Literally all of those same things. Plus he can use a punch to finish a match which Flair never did with his chops. Lawler could also use literally no offense other than his punches and craft a great match which I never saw Flair do with his chops. I get your argument about Flair's chop being one specific spot whereas "Lawler's Punch" cover a variety of different things: jabs, haymakers, uppercuts, etc. But that's exactly why I voted Lawler's punch. It could be a ton of different things. Flairs chop is Flairs chop. He could use it in a variety of ways, sure. But it was still Flair's chop. If the question if "FLair's Chop vs Lawler's Right Hook" I'd laugh and roll my eyes. But the question is Flair's Chop vs Lawler's Punch. Well, I know what FLair's chop is. But Lawler does a lot of different punches and uses them in a ton of different ways depending on opponent, setting, etc. So sure, Flair might be able to use his chop for a bunch different reasons and that's impressive. But Lawler did more with his punch than Flair did with his chop. Way more. Lawler wins for me in a cakewalk. (And I love Flair chopping the shit out of dudes for the record.)

The real question is Sangre Chicana's Punch vs Shinya Hashimoto's Chop.

Its the Kurt Angle thing that is starting to worry me. edit: Unless the people voting for him are giving him credit for Sharknado 2. Which I would understand.

You should change those votes to La Park

I just have to say how much I love that Grimmas outed ALL of the HHH voters. Well played.

Very cool!

There was a point in that game where Kobe shot 4 consecutive airballs and I laughed soooooooo hard. I've never seen anything like that game. It was ridiculous. I am already mad that I have to spend the rest of my life listening about how Kobe played "One of the greatest games ever" on that night.

I actually totally agree with that high rating for Perro vs Konnan. I've always loved that match. Meltzer's ratings were: 4 stars for the minis 4 stars for Rey Jr match 3 1/2 for the Scorpio/Santana etc match 5 for the big tag of course 3 1/2 for Perro/Konnan So he liked it. But I agree it was pretty easily the 2nd best match on the card last time I watched the show and if you gave me the option to rewatch only one match from this show it might actually be that one since I feel like I could close my eyes and watch the entire tag match from memory I've seen it so many times. I encourage watching the show mostly for Tenay's explanations of the differences in rules, psychology, tradition, etc between Lucha and US wrestling. I used to think it was the best PPV ever way back when. I don't really think that anymore and if I were to watch it and rate it my ratings would probably be much closer to JVK's than to Meltzer's. But it is definitely an important show to watch for people who want an introduction to lucha. Even though the undercard matches are single falls trios matches instead of 2/3 falls, Tenay gives the viewer all of the background information on how the style is worked that if you pay attention to the commentary and think about it when seeking out other lucha, it will help the viewer understand what they're seeing better. Not saying "If you watch this and absorb the commentary, you will definitely be a fan of lucha afterwards." But it answered a ton of questions I would have had if I had gone from "WCW Nitro Lucha Matches" to Real Lucha Matches without seeing that show before anything else.

So Kobe's final Laker Game was definitely Pro Wrestling. It felt like watching a WrestleMania. And a shitty one. LIke Mania IX or 32 or something like that. I'm sure live it was awesome, but fuck was it brutal to watch. Kobe was definitely HHH Roy Hibbert was probaby Chris Jericho? Deangelo Russell is AJ Styles maybe? Anyway, that game was preposterous and was more pro-wrestling than most pro-wrestling.

I think I went from 4 to 14 soldiers down. I do think Yatsu has probably been part of more all-time great matches than any other guy who has fallen and he's the one that came out of nowhere for me as the names were coming out. Like him ranking below Hase (for example) is a surprise to me. Maybe I'm just super-duper high on Yatsu but he soared heights that most guys, even those who will likely finish top 20 overall, can only dream of. I view Yatsu as basically the Japanese Bobby Eaton. About as great of a tag worker in that setting as you're going to get. Incredibly explosive offensive wrestler. I was shocked watching the AJ set how good Yatsu was through the end of the decade because the book on him used to be that he fell off pretty quickly after 86. The book was wrong! I loved the Jumbo team and the team with Choshu did really well on my tag ballot. 83-89 as a really great worker is nothing to sneeze at. I wonder where Yatsu might have ended up with just a few really blow away singles matches other than the Takada segment of the gauntlet. Personal sidenote, I went through about a 7-8ish year period where I wasn't following wrestling at all. Wasn't going to message boards, watching footage etc. But a few times a year I'd be in a drunken/stoned stupor/haze and want to watch some wrestling. The two matches I ALWAYS watched during this time were the famous Choshu/Yatsu vs Jumbo/Tenryu tag and the Queendom tag with Hokuto/Kandori vs Bull/Aja. Those were the two matches when I was furthest away from my wrestling fandom that were always able to pull me back. Also...I was pretty surprised to see him on 30 ballots. Thats awesome. He was on my rough draft of "locks to make my list" from the start so we're probably higher on him than most.

My biggest regret thus far was not ranking MS-1 like 25 spots higher. This was a huge day of guys falling off my list: MS-1, Gran Hamada, Mocho Cota, Kazuo Yamazaki, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Michael Hayes, La Fiera, and Fuerza. I had only lost 5 until today. Way harsh guys. Way harsh.

Brock vs Regal "Best of 50 Match Series" Edit: Brock vs LA Park in Mexico in a bloodbath. That's the obvious pick.

Somebody please explain the Osamu Nishimura picture to me. Is Osamu Nishimura my favorite wrestler and no one ever told me? aka the Why the Fuck is there a giant squid costume? i need to see all of that. edit: I see now that this was covered. Thank you, world.

Exactly! That's why i find it weird when people talk about lucha in general being confusing and trios specifically being confusing. If people actually watch matches, they should be able to pick up on the patterns pretty quickly. Its not rocket science.

Other than knowing ahead of time who the captain of each team is. And having to learn that referees don't enforce legal men and make the others stand on the apron. Also if the two legal wrestlers leave the ring, two new wrestlers can come in without tagging and become the legal men. I forgot to mention that. Of course during finishing stretches all 6 guys will often be in the ring. The rules about tagging out not really being enforced is often used by rudos to initiate double/triple teams. I view it more as bending the rules than breaking them. It is a definite style quirk that is another differentiator from other styles around the world. But this goes back to OJ's comment about doing the legwork. I don't find any of it confusing and I really never did. Again I credit Tenay.

Honestly, that Goldberg picture I think finally tops the Abdullah Kobayashi picture from day 1. Well done.