ohtani's jacket

This was supposed to be a fast paced match with plenty of flying but the action was middling. The dives were all right but the bout could have done with more classic lucha exchanges to set up the dive trains. The rudos didn't show much character and no-one stood out from the tecnico side. There was a large contingent of tecnico fans in attendance but if this showcase was for them then it fell kind of flat.

What an entrance by Valentin Mayo. He sure saw himself as a star even if the crowd didn't know who he was. This was a bare bones apuesta match. Don't expect too much from it and you won't be disappointed. The most notable about it was Brazo's cut. There was some decent action in the third caida but it's hard to get a feel for the rhythm of a bout with some much left on the cutting room floor. Brazo looked distinctly un-maestrolike, I thought, but the crowd was behind him. Might have meant more to us if we'd seen the build up.

Ramona TeSelle vs. Sharon Lass was a fairly generic 50s match with the heel cheating until she won. Russ was depressed by the result but hoped we liked it. Oh yeah, Russ, we're pumped. Billy Darnell vs. Hans Hermann was another match with endless cheating. Matches like these never get started. The heel cheats, the face retaliates and you get the occasional flash of offense. Darnell looked like a decent worker but they were taking it pretty easy. Dick Afflis vs. Ivan Rasputin was apparently Afflis' debut in the territory as Davis knew nothing about him. Afflis was a mean bugger but the only time his work is compelling is when there's an extra edge to it like in the Gomez fight. Rasputin continues to be a fun worker. If you have an appreciation for journeymen you'll dig Rasputin. Great Yamato vs. Len Rossi was long but somehow Yamato manages to work decent matches with very little wrestling involved. That takes a fair amount of skill, I guess. It helps that he's a short, stocky guy who hits hard and like Rasputin looks like he has a strong center of gravity. Both of them look immovable which is a cool trait for a wrestler to have. Tom Thumb vs. Little Beaver was a neat midgets match. Little Beaver looked like a minis version of Chief Don Eagle and knew how to work a hold. Competitive bout with both men working hard, There was a lot of niggle in the clinch as there often is in 50s wrestling but it was gritty and tough. The midgets represented.

Damn. That is cool.

Violet Viann vs. June Byers was a decent match. Viann was this sassy, diminutive worker who kept chewing gum the entire bout and Byers, while lacking in charisma, looked better than in any of her other bouts. I think it was because she was working in favour of her size advantage instead of just looking to brawl and draw heat. Apparently, some of the modern WWE women watched this match and borrowed one of Byers' signature moves. Mechanically, she was strong in this. Next up was the Zaharias Brothers vs. Rudy Kay & Al Williams. This was a short brawl between four barroom brawler types. FIne while it lasted. Vittorio Apollo vs. Miquel Torres was a short squash match designed to introduce Chicago to the latest Argentinian sensation. Apollo worked just like Rocca and bounced all over the show. One Rocca is probably enough for my money. Also on the short side were Johnny Gilbert vs. Jack Terry and Bearcat Wright vs. Big Moose Cholak. Terry was an old campaigner with a busted nose and cauliflower ears that kept giving his opponent judo "licks" while Gilbert was a younger, flashier opponent who liked putting Terry in a head-scissors and smashing his face into the canvas. Wright wasn't a great worker and Cholak was a huge lug who drew good heat but their bout was interesting enough for the time it last.

I had this uncle who was the black sheep of the family. He was living in Australia and nobody had seen or heard from him in 15 years. One day he decided to reconnect with his family and came over to New Zealand to stay for a few weeks. We were all sitting around my grandmother's living room and my uncle suddenly said he wanted to watch WWF Superstars. I had just gotten into comics at the time and was massively into X-Men. My first memory of wrestling was that it was like a comic book come to life. The wrestlers looked like real life superheroes and I was fascinated from the get-go. The episode of Superstars we watched had an Andre vs. Duggan match where Duggan hit the Giant with his 2x4. That was my baptism into wrestling. But the angle that really got me hooked was Outlaw Ron Bass raking Beefcake's face with his spurs. That blew my mind. I remember asking my uncle whether Beefcake could sue. WWF took off at school around this time and was all we would talk about. People would bring the magazines to school and trade the bubblegum cards. I remember sticking some nails in a piece of wood, wrapping some rubber bands around them and having PPV after PPV with my GI-Joes. I started watching during the lead-in to SummerSlam '88. Hogan was off making a movie at the time and the angles mainly involved Savage, DiBiase and Andre. I can still remember the first time I saw Hulk Hogan and watching SummerSlam on TV then over and over again on tape. Wrestling remained huge until WM 6 though the peak was definitely WM 5. After that, we shifted our attention to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was the craze that ended the wrestling boom. I still enjoy wrestling but I'll never recapture those times where it was larger than life. Summer of '88 to Spring 1990. RIP, Uncle Kev.

Some more details have emerged: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/first-picture-ex-pro-wrestler-10727578

Whoah.

This was a straightforward, old-school apuesta match. Angel Mortal did a great job of roughing Sevilla up throughout the match and looked every bit the classic rudo journeyman. Sevilla was a bit ungainly at times but they did a great job of making him look tough, which isn't always easy to do with a pretty boy tecnico. Not only did he produce a strong comeback after Mortal had bust him open, he took it upon himself to force Mortal back in the ring to have his head shaved when Mortal was fighting with security. That made him look tougher than say, Tarzan Boy. There was some bullshit with the seconds and the ref but on the whole it was a solid match. Mortal getting his head shaved was quite the sight and capping it off with a half-shaven beatdown on Sevilla was a fine way to cap the evening. Good stuff.

It's Strong Kobayashi. Some more pics from the match -- https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/hk08300830/30573256.html

More wrestling from Chicago: Mr. Moto vs. Ivan Rasputin had all the makings of a terrible match but it wasn't that bad actually. It was fought in the clinch like most of the Moto and Togo matches and there were some nice looking blows throughout. Ivan was a big Russian bear who threw a commanding forearm smash. He reminded me a bit of the British wrestler John Elijah in terms of being a robust power guy. Some of the commentary was inane but the match itself was worlds better than I expected. Jim Dobie vs. Lou Britton was a great match. This was right up my alley. It was a technical match with cheating so you got the best of both worlds, heel/face stuff for the crowd and mat wrestling. Lou Britton was completely awesome. A great wrestler and fine technician with a wonder Mexican moustache that was perfect for his role as role as the wrestler looking to take short cuts. I have no doubt he would be one of the finds of the 50s if there were more footage of him. Dobie was good too but Britton stole the show. Definitely a guy I won't be forgetting in a hurry. Fuzzy Cupid was a great dwarf heel. He had a bit of a Lord James Blears gimmick going on and amazingly fuzzy hair. He took on an Ethiopian dwarf named Haile Selassie, who was really some guy from Philly. Quite a good match. The crowd were really into it and showed their support for the wrestlers. It was nice to see the midgets taken seriously as entertainers. Definitely the best midget bout so far. Carl Engstrom looked like a decent young talent but he was stymied by having to work with Matt D's boy, The Mighty Atlas. Some nice holds here and there but too much of Atlas' strongman shtick grinding everything to a halt. I enjoyed the short Bozo Brown vs. Jim Graham match more. Brown was a fat boy wrestler with solid brawling skills and worked a good match before succumbing to a soft count out. Hope to see more of him in the future. All in all, quite good variety in these Chicago Archives. You really get a sense of how Fred Kohler promoted his cards from top to bottom. Valuable stuff. It's just a shame they ran out of money and didn't convert the rest of the collection.

Fun house show match in front of a noisy Tijuana crowd. We got some nice work between Santo and Wagner, some great comedy from Porky and Wagner and Cien Caras being Cien Caras. Wagner was fantastic in this. What a great worker he was at this point in time. He had the Lucha world on a string. And what more can be said about Porky? It's like watching Laurel and Hardy or an old Warner Brothers cartoon. It just never gets old. I liked the physicality as well. That's an element of lucha libre that often gets overlooked. Fantastic angle during the crowd brawling as well. I loved that shot with the guy wearing the cowboy hat and the image of Santo's mask holes poking through the throng of onlookers. Match ended abruptly with a Felino run-in which was a shame. We did see a more vicious Felino than the one we're used to but the apuesta challenges were pretty hollow and I didn't make it to the end.

I'm gonna take the opportunity to continue familiarizing myself like guys like Low Ki. He was a lot looser here than I was expecting and a bit more flippy than my image of him. Some of his stuff looked a bit shitty, to be honest. Mayhem was solid, The big knock on indy bouts like this is that they pinch stuff like the Fujiwara armbar and use the hold for no reason other than to name drop it. There were elements of that here but were pretty forthright about working a counter based offensive bout and stuck to their guns whether they were on the mat or the top rope. Not bad but didn't bowl me over. The finish was spectacular but bordered on overkill. The commentary sounded like it was done by a message board poster. I swear I heard him thumbing through the Big, Big Book of Moves. Retro.

This was a great appetizer for the Aja/Satomura rematch. Satomura was so babyfaced here and prone to shouting "bakayaro" and hurling herself at opponents but she rose to the challenge of facing Kong and remains one of Aja's best opponents. I thought Yamada did a bang-up job in the role she was called upon to play. She was almost unrecognizable with her Escape from New York look but took her lumps and dished out a few of her own in a perfect foil to the attrition that Aja and Satomura served up. Kaoru was a bit of an odd fit but it didn't really matter once Aja lashed out. This was good. On par with just about any match we saw in the lead-in to Villano/Atlantis or Satanico/Tarzan Boy.

This was a fun match. Ogawa isn't cut from the same cloth as wrestlers I typically like but he does a good job using the tools at his disposal. He made a pest of himself throughout and brought something different to the table with his rule-bending. I liked the part where they got into an elbow exchange and Ogawa got a reminder of who's boss. The finish was a little anti-climatic but the match was good. Post prime Misawa continues to fascinate.

This morning I was reading a story about a woman who stole babies and sold them to rich families. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11880172 It says that Ric Flair was one of the babies she abducted. Is this a true story?

This was all right. Won't make you forget Bret vs. Waltman in a hurry. Decent TV segment but the match was unspectacular and was basically storyline progression. Nothing special.

Here's a suitable match for Father's Day. I liked how this started out as a fun exhibition with Hamada getting cheeky taking on Mary, which Ayako scolded him for afterward, then turned serious as they ratcheted up the exchanges. Interesting dynamic between the fathers and daughters too with Mary constantly worried about her papa and Ayako bossing hers around. The Apaches looked like they were well immersed in the family business. Gran Apache was a great worker and I was sorry to hear about his recent passing. QEPD.

I'm not terribly fond of three-way matches so you can imagine what I thought of a garbage three-way. A lot of blood spilled over nothing in this match. The angle att the end was poorly done. Sandman's "shock" appearances are some of the worst I've seen. His music is too slow and he takes too long to make his way to the ring. Watching him labor his way to the ring like a drunken Sting and cane the shit out of everybody is hard to swallow. The Network outnumbers him and has an eternity to prepare for his arrival. They should beat the shit out of him every time. Van Dam's entrance was even worse. You're in a hardcore promotion and you come to the ring on your friends' shoulders like a buddy moment in a B-grade action flick? Whoever was doing the music forgot to turn it off when Callis began cutting his promo. Way too much of a WCW vs. NWO feel to this angle. I guess no-one told Hayman that angle was hot in '96-97, or maybe Heyman has always carried a torch for The Dangerous Alliance. The only original thing about the Network angle is that Rhino is allowed to swear. It's pro-wrestling the way you've never heard it. I kind of like Rhino in this setting. He looks like a man-beast and his finisher is appropriately named. You can tell he'll be neutered in the WWF but he works well in this setting.

This was more of the same from Crazy Max. That's not necessarily a bad thing mind you, but the babyfaces didn't mount any challenge whatsoever. Dragon Kid needed to shine for this to be anything special but he was largely anonymous. Hopefully, they address the heel/face balance soon.

Thanks for the heads up on this. Technically not a great match but it was fascinating to see that the tenets of pro-wrestling that Funk demonstrated so well in the 80s were something he had developed years before. Probably the most interesting moment to me was when he led the crowd in a hand clap when he tried his alternate finisher. That was proto-sports entertainment right there.

This was a nice match. Shame about the venue though. It looked like they were wrestling in the Japanese version of a Vegas banquet hall instead of in front of a proper wrestling crowd. Ran Ran Yu was a talented pro. She excellent in JWP as a youngster (before the name change) and was able to kick on as a worker despite plying her trade in some lean years for Joshi puroresu. Mad respect for her forging out an 18-year career in the business, especially the years spent freelancing.I liked her armwork in this and the stiff shots she gave Tsubasa. Definitely one to follow in the coming months.

Fun match between two underrated Joshi pros. Yagi's career was littered with three-star matches like this. She had a spectacular all round game and demonstrated it again here. Asari rising from the ashes of Joshi's late 90s fall is impressive. She's managed to make herself seem relevant in a down period for Joshi puroresu. Full credit to Chapparita Asari.

This was all right. It was set up by the commentators as a contrast in styles between the more orthodox Sano and the flashier CIMA. Sano, the 16-year vet, was portrayed as being from the Showa generation while CIMA was presented as the younger generation Heisei wrestler. And that was pretty much how they wrestled. But there wasn't a lot of passion in it from Sano and the match was lopsided when it came to who wanted it more. The fact that it was a young upstart heel wanting it more than the vet was an interesting twist but there wasn't enough fight from Sano to make this terribly compelling. And it was even less interesting outside of the tournament context. I think Sano went from being underrated to a tad bit overrated in our circle.

According to SuperLuchas, they tagged together in Guadalajara -- 3/7/65 El Santo & Lou Thesz vs. Benny Gallant & Karloff Lagarde. Thesz had two more matches on the same tour: Black Shadow & Lou Thesz vs. Benny Gallant & Rene Guajardo, 3/5/65 Blue Demon & Lou Thesz vs. Espanto I & Espanto II, 3/12/65 He also defended the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in Guadalajara on 5/23/54. The challenger was Gori Guerrero.