ohtani's jacket

Mile Zrno vs. Mad Bull Buster (Vienna, 8/10/93) Here's something a bit different -- Zrno in a chain match. The match was all right but could have used some blood. Rip Rogers weighs in with some comments: "I was there in Germany at this time -buster was one of the pit bills from the USA - he died of a drug overdose a few years later. Mille didn't like to sell and always wanted to get his shit in / Fit Finlay would eat him up !!!" Some Mile Zrno criticism, how about that? What do you make of that, Jetlag? A match like this doesn't really play to Zrno's strengths, but could he have sold more?

Next up was an Ilio DiPablo marathon of sorts. It's basically Ilio kicking ass and taking names in the Buffalo territory. There's some fun stuff against the Miller Brothers, Dan and Ed, that I believe sets up the Bill Miller match that was discussed earlier in the thread (or possibly another match between them.) Marvel as Ilio puts big Man Mountain Cannon in his airplane spin and watch 'im knock "em dead as he out slugs ex-prize fighter. Killer Joe Christie. See, I'm getting into the spirit of the some of the corny voice over commentary on these 50s shorts. Like the Lou Klein vs. Gene Dubuque bout where the commentator tells more jokes than a stand-up comic. Don't let it get in the way of a solid look at both men, though, especially Dubuque, who went on to become The Magnificent Maurice. Klein would later team up with Red Bastien in a successful run as half-brothers. Also in this batch of the footage was a look at an early all-in tornado tag team match. I'm glad wrestling shifted away from this sort of tag wrestling as it was pretty much organized mayhem. Lastly, was my first ever look at Mildred Burke in her prime from the Lipstick and Dynamite short. The match that's shown is Mildred Burke vs. Mae Weston from 3/20/47; a nice mix of brawling and technical wrestling. Burke has the most incredible physique of any female wrestler I've seen. There's your legit women's champ right there. Worth watching if you've never seen Burke. Definitely the real deal.

#289 This was so far removed from what I like BattlARTS that it may as well have been worked in a New Japan ring. But Ikeda is still a great wrestler and entertaining to watch even when he veers into juniors territory. Otsuka's a guy I've always thought had more holes in his game than swiss cheese and sure enough he was awkward in this. I can see how others liked it, but even if you prefer hybrid shoot style to, I dunno, Kohsaka vs. Tamura, they didn't really knock one out of the park here. I'm not a huge fan of their '97 match but it feels substantially better. BattlARTS seemed at a crossroads here stylistically. It's interesting that the same thing befell ARSION. I guess my beloved shoot style never was that sustainable.

#288 A cheese grater? A table on fire? Probably my least favourite type of wrestling imaginable. At least they didn't claim it was a wrestling match. .

Yeah, that was a $1 million gate.

Off the top of my head, I think you would have to consider Medico Asesino vs. Gardenia Davis from 1952 because of the crowd it drew at Plaza de Toro (45,000+) And Cien Caras vs. Konnan from Triplemania I, which still holds the record for the biggest crowd in lucha history. I'm not sure how famous either of those matches are, though.

I wouldn't say you were being too liberal giving Eddie/JBL that rating, especially if you were to mount an impassioned argument for it. But if people weren't really agreeing with you then it would be hard for me to see it as a five star match. I used to argue that Bret vs. Owen from SummerSlam '94 was a five star match, which fell mostly on deaf ears. Every now and again there would be a person who'd agree with me, but many people considered it the least deserving match to ever be awarded five stars in the Wrestling Observer. So, I know what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. Somewhere along the way I gave up and accepted that five star matches are what people say they are and acknowledge them as such. I've never rated a Tanahashi/Okada match five stars. but in this era a lot of their matches get rated five stars similar to Misawa vs. Kobashi and Misawa vs. Kawada in the 90s and I can accept the consensus rule. Just as I can respect that Eddie/JBL is a five star match for you personally. I suppose you could say I've divorced my feelings from the entire process.

#290 This wasn't vintage shoot style but it was still a hard-fought contest. Anjoh honestly seems better suited to pro-style. It's not that he's a bad grappler per se. He's just nowhere near as slick as the best shoot style workers and can be cumbersome at times. More to the point, it's his pro-style screaming and hollering that makes this click. Sano looked good here, but never scaled the heights of PWFG in his UWF-i run, and his dry retching noises were gross! Wouldn't put this as high as Tamura/Yamazaki, which still leads the way for UWF-i matches on the list, IMO.

The best place to search for older views on Joshi Puroresu is Mike Lorefice's site. On Hokuto vs. Kandori: "Must see. Arguably the best women's singles match ever and the best example of a wrestler making a match an all-time classic on their own." "No female was ever better than the 1993 version of Hokuto, and you could make a strong case that no male was either. She was the real total package – psychology, selling, drama, intensity, ability to elevate any opponent, work, charisma, etc. She could have found a way to have an excellent match with Kandori, who rarely if ever had excellent matches, because Hokuto was just that good at this time." "Kandori deserves credit for her selling as well. With Kandori, everything comes down to her respect for her opponent. If you are a nobody, you’ll be treated as such, but if you are also a star she’ll find ways to put you over. She might not necessarily sell often, but her selling instills into the audience the feeling of an accomplishment on her opponent’s part. Kandori isn’t the world’s greatest actor, but she always remembered to stay down long enough, and didn’t pull that sudden rejuvenation stemming from the opportunity to do a move crap we get from Super Koji and friends." "This allowed Kandori to be on offense most of the match, which she believes is her divine right anyway." And that's just one match.

This is exactly why you share star ratings, to encourage people. Why else do we say anything on here. This is my point about the grammar of a star rating having this weird undercurrent of objectivity that just falls apart the moment you recognize there are lots of ways to have great matches and there are lots of valid perspectives on wrestling (NOT that EVERY perspective is created equal, but that there is more than one way to skin a cat). How is telling people its the greatest thing you have ever seen and giving it five to implicitly encourage someone to check it out substantially different. The only real difference is if we treat star ratings as something more objective than they even are in practice or debate. Meltzer's rating of Okada/Omega is indeed a perfect example. People take Meltzer's ratings way too seriously and him giving that match 6 ruined the watching experience for a lot of people and has sparked a disproportionate amount of conversation. It is precisely because people treat the star rating as something it isn't and can't be. I simply vouch for ratings as a way of quantifying ones own standards and analysis. My point isn't that standards should be thrown out the window, but rather that standards should be carefully considered, outlined, and subsequently considered when reading ratings. My point has always been that people should rate matches responsibly, but they shouldn't hold back on giving something 5 or 4 or whatever because it isn't conventional wisdom. At the same time they shouldn't ape everyone who throws five at something just because they throw five. Your ratings should mean something first and foremost to you if you do them. Not something sentimental, but they should have some purpose if you are going to bother doing them. The most important thing remains the relationship between your justification and your rating; you should be able to analyze why you think something is 5 and then let someone else decide. I agree with what you're saying here, but let's pretend there's match that is generally considered five stars -- like Ms-1 vs. Sangre Chicana, for argument's sake. And I come along and I want to say that Tony Salazar vs. Herodes is also five stars. It doesn't matter what I write about Salazar.Herodes or how true it is; people are going to watch that match and think: "well, that wasn't five stars. What was he thinking?" I'd gain much more traction if I said, "here's a four star lucha match" or "here's a great match from the 80s." For starters it's more realistic, and if people really like it they're going to boost the star rating up anyway. As soon as you say it's five stars, people have MS-1/Chicana in the back of their minds. It's extremely difficult to escape the baggage of star ratings. They've been around for nearly four decades now, and if you're from my generation, you were raised to believe that a five star match was the pinnacle of wrestling. That's why I don't think **** is substantially the same as saying something is great. Saying something is the greatest thing you've ever seen can be more readily taken as a personal statement, but as soon as you affix those star ratings you create something that is meant to be as good, or better, than the best matches the viewer has seen. It would have to be a pretty tight knit community for folks to think, "oh, that's one of Jimmy Redman's five star matches or that's one of those matches Parv rated five stars" as though star ratings are merely personal reflections of each person's viewing habits. As for taking Meltzer's star ratings seriously, I don't have a problem with people taking them seriously as I don't have a problem with people taking Ebert seriously or Robert Christgau. I don't see what's wrong with taking star ratings seriously. I don't RYM ratings seriously, as well as All Movie Guide; why should wrestling be any different just because it's wrestling?

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.