ohtani's jacket

Remember that time that Maekawa turned on Watanabe and nobody gave a shit? This was a horribly executed turn. The commentators were far too "on the nose" about it and it wasn't built to in a meaningful way whatsoever. LCO may be the most tired act of 2000 which doesn't really help matters but Maekawa and Watanabe couldn't sell their way out of a paper bag when it comes to executing a dramatic angle. Watanabe did her usual bladejob and was whimpering on the way to the back and that was about as much emotion as we got. Pretty lame.

Growing up it was the WWF but I don't have any sentimental feelings towards it. My mate who I grew up watching wrestling with likes to listen to podcasts about old WWF shows (what's that popular one by the Irish guys?) He's forever encouraging me to listen to them but I have zero interest.

I've been watching some footage of Dick Shikat. What a wrestling specimen he was. I've said it before but he really was like a 1920s Horst Hoffman. There are outtakes of a grappling exhibition he did for some newsreel that showcase his beautiful technique. His matches seemed heated as well so it appears that he had a good sense of how to work the crowd. A fine wrestler if ever I saw one.

This was the opening night of the Tag League the Best tournament. Pretty standard round robin stuff. The Toyota vs. Ito rivalry has been one of my favourite things in Joshi but aside from one hellacious hiptoss from Ito they didn't do anything special. Toyota and Wakizawa had been the TLTB winners the year prior and watching them troll each other here was pretty cringeworthy. Wakizawa is kind of annoying in general. I like her Gap Band outfits even if they're twenty years out of date but she doesn't have enough charisma to oull off her jokey persona. At least not for me. I do like her headscissors spot, though. Noumi, on the other hand, is a bit bland. Neither of them look like the future and both of them dragged this down, but it was the round robin. I was looking forward to a bit more with Toyota and Ito on opposite sides, but a match with a couple of dives at the end was about as good as you could expect.

God, this was weak. New trunks don't disguise the fact that Kobashi is practically immobile. Watching him shuffle instead of walk is one of the more uncomfortable sights of the year. I suppose NOAH deserves some credit for changing their booking so that they weren't simply AJPW Redux but this was super weak compared to that AJPW vs. NJPW tag which also featured a broken down performer in the form of Masahiro Chono. You've got work to do NOAH if you're going to change my opinion by December.

Fun match. I wasn't expecting much but they kept it simple with bruising action. This New Japan feud sure has lit a fire under Kawada's ass.

Actually, the Regal match against Singh isn't bad. The one from Sun City in 1988.

Regal's best match before joining WCW was a 1990 handheld against Robbie Brookside. Finlay has the Young David match and a host of other great matches up until his gimmick takes over. He definitely has the advantage over Regal. I have Grey's last great ITV match pinned as the Brooks match in '86. At some point, I should watch his 00s stuff. I'm sure that if we had footage from the fault that a ton of British wrestlers would make the cut.

This is a fun thread that I didn't realise existed. I go through cycles with my hobbies but here's what I've been into lately: Films Lately, I've only been watching genre pictures. I delved into Blaxploitation for the first time and was surprised by how well made a lot of the films were. I was expecting them to all be like Dolemite. I also began watching a lot of early Richard Harrison films because my mate showed me his Godfrey Ho films on YouTube and I was curious about his career. I've watched a few Shaw Brothers films too in recent weeks. Music I started exploring Japanese rock music after I found a couple of different lists of the best Japanese rock albums. I started with the Happy End and then got super into X Japan. My co-workers are amused by this since X Japan were big in the 90s. I traced some of their influences are started getting into Charged G.H.B and the UK82 scene, which led to exploring Crossover Thrash. Sports I'm following the NBA playoffs at present. I'm a Warriors and Celtics fan so I have a vested interest in both conferences. The All Blacks will play their first rugby tests of the year in June so I am looking forward to that, and I am a huge Roger Federer fan so I am looking forward to seeing him make his return on grass. Comics A mate of mine got me the Japanese manga Berserk a few months ago. It's a dark fantasy manga that is pretty mindblowing at times. I haven't read a ton of manga but I was into Berserk enough to read some 350 chapters within a month.

I am an old man and don't know who Sam Adonis is.

It had to have been a mindfuck for Kawada to wrestle both Sasaki and Tenryu in the same month after he'd been in the doghouse for arguing that All Japan should encourage interpromotional feuds. Then again, Kawada being Kawada he probably just shrugged it off. My perspective on this was a little different from the "Best of Japan" voters in that I wasn't really concerned with how this compared to the rest of the decade. My initial thoughts were how it compared to the other matches I've seen from October, then how it compared to the rest of 2000, and finally how it compared to other Tenryu matches. Tenryu is a great worker but he's not a guy who has a lot of MOTYCs let alone MOTD contenders. He has great matches but they're great Tenryu matches not MOTYCs. This was a great Tenryu match. It was much better than the work in the Tenryu/Hansen vs. Kawada/Williams tag. The focal point was Kawada and Tenryu laying into each other. If you don't like watching two workers whale on each other then you'd probably find this overrated but for fans of both men, it was exactly what you'd want. The criticism of the legwork was meaningless to me especially when Kawada sold the finish like death. The strikes in this match were almost at an Ikeda vs. Ishikawa level. Tenryu's punches were beautiful. Sasaki vs. Kawada was the better spectacle because of the heat but this was the better match workwise. My favorite All Japan match of the year.

Don't forget about Blue Panther. Blue Panther -- 21 years vs. Atlantis (1991) vs. Casas (2012) He may have had a great match lately. I haven't been paying attention.

Devil Masami was a good worker from the late 70s through to the late 90s and even her 2000 stuff hasn't been as bad as I expected. I'm sure she passes the 25-year benchmark. Jaguar, Chigusa, Lioness, and Aja would also be contenders. Apparently, I need to watch Chihiro Hashimoto matches. The one that I strongly agreed with was Fujinami.

There are entire seasons of TV available but the matches are clipped. The Classes matches are in full but they didn't release them in any sort of linear fashion like they did with All Japan Classics and New Japan Classics. And they didn't air many episodes. Perhaps you can pick up the shows and do a deep dive if you really like the era. They have some good stuff on them like the Chigusa vs. Leilani Kai matches that never get talked about.

Don't jump into the 90's, jump into the 80's first. The Gokuaku Domei vs. Crush Gals feud is must watch. Are the AJW Classics discs worth getting for the 80s content? The AJW Classics episodes jump around a lot. They feature the biggest matches of the Crush Girls era but don't cover the transition period from the 70s Beauty Pair boom to the Crush Girls boom -- the era where Jackie Sato was ace, Jaguar Yokota was the young challenger, Monster Ripper the monster heel, Black Pair the main native heels, and Devil Masami terrorised Mimi Hagiwara. The benefit of All Japan Classics is that the matches air in full whereas on TV they were clipped. I think you should start at a transition point -- either post Jackie Sato or post Crush Girls. If you want to watch the 90s inter-promotional stuff it's a good idea to start with the early 90s shows to see how the young AJW stars grew into their roles (Hokuto, Aja, Toyota, Kyoko, etc.) If you track the growth of each star it gives you more of a feel for the emotional context instead of concentrating only on the in-ring style which people get hung up about at times. Just watch wrestler X or Y is the worst way to watch Joshi. Joshi is a bit like lucha in that it is not one style. There is a certain style that people associate with it but it isn't the only working style. When you see a flaw or something you think is wrong with the style, try to remember that flaw is 100% deliberate. It's not as though dozens upon dozens of Joshi workers went out there and made the same basic mistakes. The girls chose to wrestle the way they did just like other styles evolved in different ways. It's not wrong per se, it's just different. You need to try to adjust to the rhythm of what they're doing. It helps to think about it as a live experience and what you would pop for if you were in the crowd. Good luck. Not sure if I'd even call joshi a style. Joshi really just means Japanese women's wrestling and there's just as much diversity in it as there is in Japanese men's wrestling. AJW seemed to allow their top workers to determine the house style and wasn't much like CMLL in terms of forcing everyone to wrestle a specific way. The handful of Beauty Pair matched I've seen seemed to have been almost entirely old-school mat wrestling. The Crush Girls stuff was still mat-dominated but added in technical striking and high flying elements. Dump, Bull and Aja introduced weapons brawling. It's not until Toyota that the workrate sprint style most people think of as "joshi style" starts to be en vogue. Then you go into the late 90's and you get the aforementioned shooty ARSION stuff. After AJW loses its grip, you see even more diversity with stuff like Yoshiko Tamura wrestling NWA champ hybrid, Meiko Satomura wrestling shoot-style hybrid, and inter-gender matches becoming a thing. The style that people think is synonymous with Toyota began in the 70s and continued through the 80s until Toyota and weapons brawling existed in the early 80s with Black Pair and Devil Masami using weapons before Dump's Army. In Japan, the trainers have a lot to say about the promotion's wrestling style as well as the promoters.

Don't jump into the 90's, jump into the 80's first. The Gokuaku Domei vs. Crush Gals feud is must watch. Are the AJW Classics discs worth getting for the 80s content? The AJW Classics episodes jump around a lot. They feature the biggest matches of the Crush Girls era but don't cover the transition period from the 70s Beauty Pair boom to the Crush Girls boom -- the era where Jackie Sato was ace, Jaguar Yokota was the young challenger, Monster Ripper the monster heel, Black Pair the main native heels, and Devil Masami terrorised Mimi Hagiwara. The benefit of All Japan Classics is that the matches air in full whereas on TV they were clipped. I think you should start at a transition point -- either post Jackie Sato or post Crush Girls. If you want to watch the 90s inter-promotional stuff it's a good idea to start with the early 90s shows to see how the young AJW stars grew into their roles (Hokuto, Aja, Toyota, Kyoko, etc.) If you track the growth of each star it gives you more of a feel for the emotional context instead of concentrating only on the in-ring style which people get hung up about at times. Just watch wrestler X or Y is the worst way to watch Joshi. Joshi is a bit like lucha in that it is not one style. There is a certain style that people associate with it but it isn't the only working style. When you see a flaw or something you think is wrong with the style, try to remember that flaw is 100% deliberate. It's not as though dozens upon dozens of Joshi workers went out there and made the same basic mistakes. The girls chose to wrestle the way they did just like other styles evolved in different ways. It's not wrong per se, it's just different. You need to try to adjust to the rhythm of what they're doing. It helps to think about it as a live experience and what you would pop for if you were in the crowd. Good luck.

This was a great final that could have gone either way. I was never much of a Hamada fan but she won me over here ｗith a relentless and honest performance. She could have easily been eclipsed by the talent of Yoshida but she more than held her own. I've seen better matches in October but no two wrestlers have fought like the result mattered as much. Yoshida had better matches in '99 but her '00 matches still pack a wallop.

This was awesome while it lasted. It's a shame they never had the classic they were capable of during their careers. In a sense, this feels like the high spots from a longer match, but another way of looking at it is that they were too hellbent on beating each other to have a slower bout. The problem is that Yoshida beating Kong should feel like something earth shattering but it doesn't. The submission hold is amazing since frankly, it would have to be... but the bout doesn't have say half the drama that Hokuto beating Aja at Big Egg did despite being a superior bout. Still, if you concentrate on the work then this is two of the best going at it.

This was a decent match as M2K appear to have settled into a groove but it was mainly about M2K vs. Stalker and Taru. The CIMA vs. Mochizuki rivalry wasn't featured as prominently as in other matches although they did have one fling toward the end. Not as good as the past few Crazy Max vs. M2K trios matches but then again it was a house show in Chiba so you can't expect too much. For what it's worth, this match took place on 9/29/00.

Backlund wasn't exactly Tiger Jeet Singh but I watched the 6/79 Inoki match the other day and he was throwing tantrums at the crowd.

Murakami vs. Ishikawa is the greatest shit ever. Those highlights of the September match were so great. Murakami is such a punk it's unreal. And on the other side, you have a wrestling god In Ishikawa who looks like a guy in a Japanese beer commercial whenever he cracks a joke. In fact, I wish I had more of an effort to go to one of the drinking parties he used to organize after BattleARTS shows. He looks like a fun guy. But he's also a wrestling god so behind the smiles is a serious motherfucker. Nagai looks like he couldn't give a fuck about what's going on until he kicks the shit out of Malenko. And man, Malenko's frenzied counter struggle against the beatdown was intense. It struck me at the time that you could make a case for Malenko being the third best American worker in the world behind Triple H and Benoit albeit with limited footage. This threatened to settle into a normal bout until Nagai fought back and tagged in Murakami who went batshit insane and knocked out Malenko. Then he attacked Ishikawa and they had another off the chain post-match brawl. I think it's fair to say that Murakami wasn't invited to the post-match drinking party. I need to see Murakami vs. Ishikawa yesterday. October has been a great month for wrestling so far.

Excellent long-form BattlARTS tag. Just what the doctor ordered in terms of what I want to see from BattlARTS as it was predominantly mat-based aside from a few Sano spots (and they were cool spots.) Sano was outstanding here. It was easily the best he's looked in BattlARTS and to be perfectly honest I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it was one of his better career performances. He looked fantastic working with Usuda and also with Ken. The commentators were marking out for him and I can't say I blame him as his timing was exquisite in this match. As they mentioned, the throws that he did looked incredibly powerful. And I found myself digging his throwback juniors spots as well, which is something I don't always appreciate about Sano in the shoot style feds. Even though this match was veteran and junior vs. veteran and junior, I thought Taira and Ken did a good job of working against each other. When you have two juniors scrapping like that the match becomes far more dynamic than simply waiting for the seniors to square off. Really good work by all four men. BattlARTS has picked up the past couple of months, which I'm pleased about.