ohtani's jacket

Saying a match is five stars is not substantially the same as Dylan saying a match is awesome. That's about as plain as the nose on your face. Are you really trying to tell me that you, Parv, do not place any sort of importance in five star ratings? The Parv that meticulously compiles star rating lists, used them for BIGLAV, once argued that Bob Dylan was the greatest musician to ever live because he had more five star albums than anyone else? I don't wanna start coming across as the Star Ratings Nazi since I hardly ever use the things. My point of view is from the perspective of people who use star ratings as a guide for what to watch.

If your star ratings only matter to you personally then why share them with other people? If you think some random ass match is the greatest thing you've ever seen just tell people it's the greatest thing you've ever seen. Anybody who's been around wrestling forums for any length of time will know that if something gets a five star rating people are going to check it out. You only have to look at that Omega/Okada match from the other day. There are people watching that match who know they're not going to like it simply on the basis of the five and six star ratings it's getting. If someone says Lupus vs. Trauma is five stars it means a hell of a lot more than saying "oh this was a great match. I gave it four stars." We know this. Personally, I think it's a bit weird if a person enjoys *** 1/4 matches more than matches they rate *****, but I can certainly see why they might have been in the mood for that *** 1\4 match or really loved it. But God knows how someone can't be comfortable saying this was a really great *** star bout but I know it's not really a ***** bout. Just pimp the fuck out of it being a really great *** match. If people did that more often it would avoid a ton of backlash.

Mile Zrno vs. Salvatore Bellomo (Austria 1990) The streak of beautiful matches is over, but what did you expect from Salvatore Bellomo? (Yes, that Salvatore Bellomo.) The match is mostly built around Bellomo's shtick. Mile sells Bellomo's shit like a champ and tries his damnedest to get folks into it but Bellomo can't even muster a halfway decent piece of action. Skippable, as they say.

#291 I wanted to like this, I really did, but with no Mid South Coliseum and no Lance Russell it was tough going. I like Gilbert's heel work, but I don't think Lawler's face work translates well outside of Memphis, and this felt like one angle after another from Terry Funk's contract signing through to Cactus Jack hitting Gilbert by mistake and Eddie beating up his second.

#296 Pretty simple match this one. Hotta and Inoue show up in a JWP ring and make an example out of Fukuoka. She refuses to lay down, the JWP girls fight back a bit, but All Japan take first blood in the interpromotional feud. Never did get the high star rating on this one. Literally nothing happens that is any different from what you'd expect. It's a nice appetizer for the 1/93 tag, as well as Thunder Queen, but it never felt like I was digging into a full meal. Not enough meat and veggies like my old man would say.

#295 I could only find the television version of this. It cuts straight to the chase, but the match looks pretty good. Maybe the rest of the bout will find its way online someday.

I'm not saying that you can't argue against a five star match. Wrestling forums have a long history of debating whether a match is truly five stars or not. I just think that to avoid overrating things it pays to step back and consider what it really means to declare a match five stars. It may be one of the best matches you've ever seen, and your star ratings may reflect that, but once you put your ratings out there they're no longer just for you. They create expectations in the people who read them, and like it or not, I can't imagine a person who reads about a five star rating and doesn't go into the match anticipating great things (unless, of course, they're skeptical.) Of course, this is true of any new match that gets rated five stars, but I think you have to be careful to remove the personal element from the equation and see if you're left with something that's really as good as matches that have been argued about ad nauseam but which still make most people's lists of the greatest matches of all-time. Obviously, that's not happening when every year has a new slew of five star matches, but it's the cautious, conservative approach I'd take if I were handing out star ratings.

Didn't think Casas vs. Hechicero was much more than *** match, tbh. The first fall was good but once they veered away from the submission stuff they lost my interest.

Negro Casas vs. Rey Hechicero (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 4/24/16) This was a decent match, but would have to have been a hell of a lot more dramatic to be in the running for Match of the Year contention. The match peaked with the primera caida, which isn't a great place for a two-out-of-three falls match to peak. The idea of Casas working holds with Hechicero appealed to me. Casas isn't a great mat worker, but he knows how to hang in there, and I thought the flow of the matwork and Casas' selling made for an excellent first fall. Unfortunately, they moved away from the submission-based stuff right after Hechicero's dead weight lift of Casas and from there on out worked a match that was neither here nor there. It wasn't the small, maestro style match that you'd expect from a indie date like this nor was it a traditional Monterrey style brawl. Hechicero tried a bit too hard to get the crowd into the match by imploring them to make more noise while Casas did stuff like posing for the camera while he had Hechicero in a hold. Something he would have never done in his prime, but which seems to amuse him these days. The end result was that the match wasn't quite gritty enough for its surroundings and a bit too exhibition-y. It was mano a mano, which usually has a smaller arc than matches where the stakes are higher, but it wasn't a blood feud mano a mano and there weren't enough dramatic near-falls or near-submissions in the third fall to make it better than your standard Lucha Memes or Chilanga Mask match. If they'd upped the ante from the opening fall it would have been a different story, but the intensity level wasn't there. Not something I'll remember as fondly as Terry/Aeroboy or Lupus/Trauma even if it's an unfair comparison.

Reading this thread, it's clear to me that my idea of a **** match is different from the norm, probably closer to what most people consider a **** 1/2 match. The idea that a **** match can be anything less than great seems odd to me. I've always viewed **** as the cutoff point between good and great. It's useful to know, though, as I'm sometimes bemused by liberal **** ratings. One thing I don't really agree with is giving ***** ratings to matches you personally loved or matches that blew you away. I'm old and graying, but I came through an era where ***** matches were generally decided by consensus and folks debated whether they were truly five stars or not. To me the star system is broken if people don't step back from their personal favourites and objectively think whether they really compare to matches that have stood the test of time. But that's just me. Disagree if you wish.

I decided to watch Bobo Brazil vs. Fritz Von Erich again. This was different from a lot of the Fritz we have on tape. Usually, he's the one in control of the bout, bending the rules and abusing his opponent, but Bobo beat him from pillar to post and he had to sell a lot. I'm not sure if that's because Bobo was a bigger star than Fritz in the Buffalo territory or because Bobo knew which side his bread was buttered on (i.e. offense, attack.) I also rewatched the Millers/Kangaroos tag, partially because I'm more familiar with the Kangaroos now, but also because the guy who runs the channel says it's one of his all-time favourite tag matches. I liked the match, and thought it was one of the better Southern-style tags from its era, but it's not a style of wrestling that I gravitate toward. Fans of the Southern style would most likely enjoy this early example of the style done right. Bob Orton Sr. vs. Adrien Baillargeon was Orton's debut in the Buffalo territory and put over his technical brawler style nicely. Next up was Lord Leslie Carlton vs. Juan Zepeda from Los Angeles. Carlton played an arrogant aristocrat similar to Lord James Blears and mixed technical wrestling with brawling and rule-bending, making him an outstanding prototype of Lord Steven Regal. But even better than Sir William was his second -- a man-servant from Calcutta named Singh. By time Regal came along, the Empire had well and truly crumpled, but Carlton's gimmick still had some bite to it. This entire segment was tremendous, beginning with a fun TV match and continuing in the locker room with a wickedly entertaining interview. Carlton and Singh do a poor job with their accents, but if you can excuse that the adlib they do throughout is brilliant. The segment tells this brilliant little story of what Lord Carlton thinks of American wrestlers and American wrestling crowds and why he's come to the United States. Carlton fires off some of the best lines I've heard in a long time. Superb character work. Really clever stuff. Definitely one of the the best things I've seen from the 50s: Coming off that high was an action-packed and entertaining six-man match between Dory Dixon, Art Thomas and Bobo Brazil vs. Buddy Rogers, Magnificent Maurice and Johnny Barend. Dixon is a guy I'm interested in since he was a notable figure in lucha. He was a real live wire in this and had an interview afterward where he claimed Rogers was running scared. Some nice action in this.

#298 This was a match-up between two of the bigger indie stars on Loss' list thus far. I was amped for this but it ended up being painfully average. If didn't help that the commentary was so bad, but the commentators didn't have a whole lot to work with. Pretty much my equivalent of a dud.

This is all fine and good, but the more you keep dropping five stars on modern matches, the more it seems the qualities you are looking for in wrestling are there in abundance if you keep plugging away. if you watched the amount of modern wrestling that Chad does, or Soup, or Dylan, perhaps you would find even more matches that defy the Kevin Owens mould and appeal to your sensibilities. That won't solve the presentation issue but it might kill the idea that modern wrestling is more than just athleticism over psychology (an argument you could have st any point of wrestling history post catch-as-catch-can, IMO.)

The ultimate irony in Parv discovering God is that Shibata works a shoot style gimmick.

What I want to know is how you can complain so much about modern wrestling and yet hand out five star ratings to upper mid-card bouts.

Hashimoto vs. Victor Zangiev.

I don't think you can compare live streaming to the tape trading days. If this were 1997, we'd be reading about this match for months trying to figure out how to get hold of a copy then waiting weeks for it to be dubbed and sent out. It's like comparing Spotify to record hunting or Netflix to not having cable. When I was a kid and you wanted to build up your comic book collection you went through the back issues bin. Now you can get enitre back catalogs available for a few dollars a month. If you want to go back further than that, many of us grew up watching syndicated wrestling programs that had brief recaps of he major angles from shows we never got to see. When I was a kid, you lived from one PPV to the next. We're talking months not monthly shows. So, I kind of understand why it's so transient. And it's not just limited to the Twitter-sphere either. Look at the Last Battle of Atlanta. People waited decades to see that match and stopped talking about it after a month.

I actually quite like 80s music. 80s cinema is interesting too. You have to dig a little deeper than in other decades but in many ways that's more rewarding. I'm also a big fan of 80s sports and the comic books and toys carry a lot of nostalgia for me since it was the era I grew up in. By and large I feel the 80s get a bad rap in pop culture. As for the topic at hand, let the young people have their modern day wrestling. There's plenty of older stuff for us old farts to sink our teeth into.

Mine are pretty simple: 1. Finish going through Loss' top 500. 2. Continue watching Golden Age stuff until I run out of footage. 3. Keep up-to-date with modern lucha as it happens.

Thanks to the poster, Seabs, I got to see the Thesz vs. Silverstein bout that WWE put a copyright claim on. Steve Yohe wrote a long and fascinating post on this match once on Wrestling Classics about whether Thesz was deliberately trying to make Silverstein look bad -- http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=004421;p=0 For the uninitiated, it looked like Thesz was playing the role of heel champ with his baiting and deliberate cheap shots. Whether he was stiffing Silverstein is something I'll have to watch out for when I view it again. It wasn't one of Thesz' better bouts but if read Yohe's account that may have been Thesz' intention. Another viewing is in order me thinks.

Here's the next batch of matches: Skull Murphy & Brute Bernard vs. The Bavarian Boys, Rudi Jacobs and Harry Wenzel was two gimmicked tag teams well before the days of The Killer Bees and the Bolsheviks, and so on. The match was deathly dull despite the fact that the Bavarians were German wrestlers and anybody who knows me knows that Euro wrestlers pique my interest. It's not really a knock on the wrestlers as such, it's just that matches where the heels are overtly cheating is not high on my list of what I want to see from Golden Era pro-wrestling. Nick Lutze vs. Pio Pico from 1937 is a wrestler vs, boxer match long before the Japanese ever thought of it. Proof positive that there's nothing new under the sun. Ali Baba vs. Dick Lever was amusing since the footage was sped up and the voice over narrator had to try and follow the action as best he could. Moose Cholak & The Mighty Atlas vs. The Fabulous Kangaroos, Roy Heffernan & Al Costello, was interesting. It was another wild brawl but Cholak made it memorable by working the Navy boys in the crowd and doing this weird spot where he tried to make a moose sound and charge at his opponent. The Gallagher Brothers vs. Bobo Brazil and Billy Red Lyons was more of the same with cheating heels and the babyfaces suffering injustice after injustice. No doubt it was what the paying customer wanted to see, but it means very little to me today. Bronco Nagurski vs. Vincent Lopez from 1937 was the most excited I was during this footage. Nagurski looks like he was a fine wrestler. I read a piece by Steve Yohe recently that said that Lopez couldn't really wrestle and perhaps that was the case here. He hung on for dear life during the hook-ups but Nagurski ended up knocking him silly. I don't know how much Lopez was selling as they carried him away, but if it was acting there hasn't been a better sell job on a TKO since 1937. Next was some film of Don Evans vs. Jim Corbett and Primo Carnera vs. Laverne Baxter. I didn't like the smart ass narrator on this newsreel. In the first match he shat all over kayfabe by explaining the psychology behind wrestling and in the second he shat all over Carnera's boxing career. Whether Carnera's boxing career is something that deserves to be shat over, I couldn't say. but Carnera was tried pretty poorly here and it definitely wasn't a star turning number from anyone involved. Sweet Daddy Siki & Sailor Art Thomas vs. Lou Albano and Jack Owens was the first time I have seen Captain Lou Albano wrestle. I guess I can tick that off mybucket list. He wasn't too bad actually, but this bout was all about Sweet Daddy Aki looking like a Sweet Daddy. Afterward, he had a medallion on and was presented with a gift from the official Sweet Daddy fan club. It was a personalized Sweet Daddy shirt that the members had chipped into have made. Siki cut an awkward response and suddenly the Kangaroos showed up to take a look at the jersey and tear it into shreds. Sweet Daddy couldn't string together a coherent promo after his shirt was torn but it was an awesome segment nonetheless. More clips from the 30s and 40s. The most interesting clip was a compilation of newsreel stories about wrestling from France, the US, Germany and Australia. Early French wrestling was interesting to say the least. Following that was a match between Pat O'Connor and Jack Wilson. I'd seen this before, but O'Connor is a New Zealander like myself and a pretty wrestler to watch. The best thing about it was the promo the commentator cut between falls about the NWA World Heavyweight belt. That was awesome. Howard Martin vs. Angelo Poffo wasn't notable for Poffo as such as it was for his manager Bronco Lubich. Yeah, that same Bronco Lubich who was a ref in Wiorld Class. He had a black suit and bow toe and tried interfering with his cane ala Sir William. Almost surreal if you've watched any amount of World Class.

I finally finished matches #350-301. I thought I'd never get out of this section of the list as there was so many things I watched to watch and revisit. This list really does show how broad Loss' taste in wrestling is, though there was a bit too much All Japan this time round Tomoaki Honma Big Japan matches are officially the most difficult thing to find on the internet. Forget lucha, Big Japan death matches are what's truly underrepresented. As always, the matches I enjoyed most: 344. Rey Misterio Jr. vs Psicosis (ECW TV 10/17/95) 343. Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masa Fuchi (AJPW New Years Giant Series 01/24/92) 337. Cactus Jack vs Sabu (NWC 10/30/94, Falls Count Anywhere) 316. Shinobu Kandori & Utazo Hozumi vs Bull Nakano & Takako Inoue (LLPW 11/09/93) 314. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada vs Megumi Kudo & Combat Toyoda (FMW Origin 05/05/93) 311. Keiji Muto vs Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW G-1 Climax 08/15/95) 307. Lightning Kid vs Jerry Lynn (PWA 04/18/91, No DQ)

I'm back again. How can Misawa/Taue compete? The answer is that it can't. Misawa's selling is beautiful and everything is very orderly. The build progresses logically and all the little boxes are ticked, but the bout is hurt by Taue not hitting his chokeslam cleanly. All of the early work and the heat segment on Misawa is building to Taue hitting the chokeslam and he barely gets a hold of him. A Triple Crown match where Taue doesn't fire his best shot? There's no way that Taue misfiring is as dramatic as the G1 Final. Misawa's pop up on the german was not cool. And his superman punches were too much. We've all seen Misawa make comebacks where the natural order is restored and it's business as usual just like Jumbo before him but knocking Taue out like that sucked. Your elbows aren't that bloody strong, Misawa.

#311 Is there anything more spine-tingling in wrestling than Hashimoto's entrance? I absolutely love this match. There was some debate in the Misawa/Taue thread over which was the better match, but I thought this was the better match by several lengths. The drama, the selling, the missed moves from the top -- wonderful. The cagey beginning, Hashimoto's kicks, the great man urging Mutoh to get back up, Mutoh reopening the cut, the Sergio Leone standoff before the finish (an old Chris Coey line I'm stealing here) -- all of added to a Finals atmosphere and an epic G1 climax. You could pick holes in it if you like. I'm not the biggest fan of Keiji Mutoh's offense and the finish was iffy, but the rest of this was a slam dunk. I'm off to watch the Misawa/Taue match again to see how it can possibly compete.

#312 Give the Kliq their due. They may have been pricks backstage, but they knew how to work a good old Southern tag and make each other look good. I was also surprised by how good Nash looked in this. Makes you wonder if a super motivated Nash could have been closer to someone like Roman Reigns than Big Daddy Cool w/ apologies to people who think Big Daddy Cool was better than Roman Reigns. I mostly agree with everyone else's comments -- there was no excess here and no ego. Even the "Shawn accidentally superkicks his partner" storyline wasn't too overplayed. With this and the Kevin Greene six-man, Loss' list has been a win for the Kliq thus far.