ohtani's jacket

#307 This was great. Indie wrestling from 1991. Looked a bit like Fight Club. Would have loved to have seen Pillman work in this setting in 1991. That would have been mind blowing.

#302 Try as I may, I just can't get into Onita. Perhaps I'll come around to him in the end similar to the way I resisted Tenryu for so long. This was a good little match. though. If you can call a match with a double blade job and a piledriver through a table "a good little match."

#333 This was much better than I remembered it being. I was really into Bret Hart around this time so I got a kick out of his entrance. I always dug his "best there is" pose when he stepped through the ropes. They did a good job here of playing up Bret's desire for revenge against both Backlund and Owen. I thought Owen was awesome at putting the heat on Bret instead of stealing the show with his comic antics. Bret's selling was tremendous, but I agree that the heat segment could have used a few more hope spots. I wasn't enamored with Davey Boy's hot tag, either, and I couldn't understand why the ref didn't overturn the result when Bret refused to let go of the sharpshooter. To me that would have made sense with Bret being too irate to care about the win. I'd say the first half of the bout was better than the second, but it didn't take anyway from an outstanding WWF television bout. Ross was in his element and it felt closer to a Worldwide bout than your typical WWF fare. Even Todd "Didya get your free gift? Pettengill couldn't drag Ross down. Ross gets a lot of shit for prattling on about football and grade point averages, but when he's calling a match that he's into there are few better. Unfortunately, this match was the end of the road for the great Hart family feud that felt more like an old-school territory feud than the stuff the WWF usually put out. They went down the wrong path with the Bret vs. Backlund rematch at Wrestlemania XI. Bret would go into a funk after that, and while the Yokozuna/Owen team was fun at first, that too would ultimately see Owen lost in the mire. At the same time, I'm not sure if an Owen vs. Bret blowoff at Mania would have excited folks since they wrestled so many times in '94. Still, it was good to see a quality match from a year that almost killed off my interest in wrestling completely.

My memory isn't what it used to be, but I remember liking Yoshida's IBUKI stuff for the most part. It wasn't on par with her ARSION stuff, but if you're a Yoshida fan then I think her match with Emoto is worth checking out. I watched a couple of matches from first Queen Bee show. AKINO vs. Kimura was decent, as far as I recall.

#331 This was a recommended match back in the day, but it did come across as lightweight. At least it was breezy. EDIT: How does Misawa/Taue compete with the Hashimoto/Mutoh G1 Final? 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.

#338 This was a solid bout. In fact, it may have been the most solid bout in the countdown thus far. Taue had a game plan here and stuck to it, chipping away at Kobashi until he was able to put him away. I liked how the early stalemate led to heated sumo slaps and the general burliness of the first 15 minutes. Taue was still a bit blue-collar here, but Kobashi added plenty of pep to the bout. He did a great job of selling his destruction, which made it seem even more thorough than it was. I liked his theatrical selling of the choke slam struggle and the final lights out moment. Vintage All Japan, a notch or two below the best stuff.

#335 This was a good match. I have vague memories of downloading it on Hotline back in the day. IIRC, it took me three days to download it on my dodgy dial up connection. What made this entertaining was that Ohtani had transitioned into a surly juniors vet. He still did some of his signature selling, but he'd moved on from the lovable loser that he played in '96 and '97 and was beyond that now. I remember people thinking that Takaiwa was fairly bland outside of his signature power moves, but I think he's the perfect partner for Ohtani to take under his wing. Anyone above Ohtani's station wouldn't feel right. Kanemoto was fun in this as a poor man's Ikeda and his heat with Ohtani made it better than the average juniors' bout. Tanaka looked like he belonged in the New Japan Juniors division far more than in BattlARTS and his flash added to the bout. Good shit all-round.

#329 Decent big man contest. Taue does most of the work for his team, understandably, with Jumbo only working in brief flurries (one of which injures Gordy.) Nothing you haven't seen in a hundred All Japan tags (many of them involving Jumbo Tsuruta), but perhaps a fitting and familiar way for Tsuruta to end his competitive career.

I'm not sure I would put Satanico vs. Gran Cochisse on the level of Flair vs. Steamboat or Dory vs. Brisco. We don't have enough footage to judge how good it truly is. It's the best of the Satanico footage we have from '84, but for all we know he may have had better title matches with other people, or there may have been better title matches between different workers. What we do know for sure is that it was nowhere near as important as those NWA title feuds. All I can really say is that it's a wonderful match; one of the best from the limited footage we have. I'm not sure what star rating I would give it, but even if I agreed with you that it wasn't much higher than four stars, I would still consider it one of the all-time great lucha matches. I think I've said it before, but to me if a match is four stars it's in a pantheon along with every other match I've considered four stars or above. I honestly wouldn't give a match four stars if I had as many criticisms of it that you did of the bout. I had forgotten that Dylan thought so highly of it. I think it finished 6th in the DVDVR voting ahead of Perro Aguyao vs. Sangre Chicana, which is another of my all-time favourite lucha bouts.

I personally didn't have a problem with anything that happened during the "Puro vs. Lucha" thread, but I think it would be a good idea to draw up some guidelines. There's a lot more discussion about politics and social issues than there used to be, and while there was a call for the MIS forum, it's been under-utilized to date. So, I think you need to make a call on political you want the site to be since as we all know politics and message forums don't mix well.

A few things happened between Baba founding All Japan, becoming an NWA member in February '73, and Brisco's first tour in January of '74. After Baba left JWA to form All Japan, the Momota family presented him with Rikidozan's old NWA International Heavyweight belt, which he used o create a World Heavyweight title for his new promotion. On All Japan's second night (10/22/72), the World Heavyweight Championship Series began; a series of 10 matches which lasted through to 2/27/73 when Baba defeated Bobo Brazil and was awarded the World title. At that stage, the title didn't have a name yet so Baba came up with the idea of a sanctioning body with his old buddy, Blears. Baba was officially recognised by the Pacific Wrestling Federation as PWF World Heavyweight Champion on 3/16/73, the day before the first Champion Carnival series. Baba defended it as a World title throughout the rest of 1973, but after his double title match with Jack Brisco on 1/23/74, the title was reduced to the PWF Heavyweight title as per the NWA's demands that no promotion under its umbrella have their own World Championship titles. . So, basically the idea at first was for All Japan's top title to be a sanctioned World Heavyweight Championship and the plan changed slightly after Baba started bringing the NWA Champion in.

Gran Cochise vs. Satanico may be my all-time favourite lucha match. Either that or Blue Panther vs. Atlantis from '91. Let me dig up my review of it. I wrote this back in 2008 and might a different view point on these days.

#334 Jumbo vs. Kawada feels like a match-up I should enjoy more as some kind of gritty alternative to Jumbo/Misawa. I do like a lot of their exchanges in tag matches and six man tags where Kawada is doing his best impersonation of a lumberjack trying to chop down a redwood, but their singles matches have never clicked for me. I watched this twice and couldn't find the hook. Jumbo slapping Kawada was great, but he wrestled within himself for the rest of the bout. I was going to write something about how he looked like he was already past his best here in his grumpy old man phase, but that could just be me writing my own narrative for the bout. In many respects, this reminded me of Kawada's work with Hansen in '92. I also found that to be slightly lacking, and if I were to put my finger on it, I'd probably say there's a gulf between how good Kawada was in '91 and '92 compared to his peak years of '94 and '95. Misawa and Kobashi too. People used to talk about how much Taue improved in those years, but I think it's true of all four of them. I tried to view this as something smaller and look for a hook -- maybe some great matwork, some awesome strike exchanges, or a bear with a sore head performance from Jumbo -- but it felt more like Jumbo being pushed a bit in a bout he was expected to win and there was nothing about it that really seemed like a breakthrough for Kawada. It's probably unfair to call it a competitive squash but it sure was fashioned that way.

I believe so. I've seen a few thousand WoS bouts so I'm a bit foggy on the details, but they would occasionally have a surprise victory late in the final round when a draw seemed inevitable. Perhaps the reason you see so many falls happen early in the round is to shorten the length of the bout. The standard length of a TV (at least in the 70s) was four rounds. I saw so many of those that I ended up calling them "four rounders." My guess is that they were shaving time, though most of the bouts were joined in progress on the actual WoS broadcast and picked up where the scoring began. Later on, when wrestling was a standalone show, they would edit out entire rounds. You' skip from the 2nd round to the 5th and then you'd have a pinfall or a submission without seeing what happened in the 3rd or 4th round. That always bugs me.

For a moment I almost felt like I was back on the old DVDVR green board. Did you ever seen Yoshida vs. Megumi Fujii? That was a beautiful bout.

Your point about Mascaras is pure conjecture and not borne out by the fact that many luchadores worked Japan at the same time that Mil did, which was a big payday if you were a luchador. Lucha kept being promoted in California long after LaBelle folded by both Mexican and American promoters. Southern territories had Mexican workers and luchadores. I'm pretty sure the Houston footage folks have been watching has matches from Gran Markus and El Halcon. Japanese promotions may have had strong ties to the NWA, but can you name any particularly special appearance by a Japanese worker in the States post Rikidozan? Arguably, the most famous event involving a Japanese wrestler from an American point of view was Inoki vs. Ali and that was at Budokan. Most of the Japanese heels post-WW II were Hawaiian born Japanese, so if you're going to discount Jose Lothario or the Guerreros as luchadores then I don't see how Mr. Mojo or the Great Togo can be considered a Japanese wrestler. You're also ignoring the fact that when the internet first began it coincided with Mysterio Jr. and other AAA luchadores being booked in ECW and then being part of WCW, which reached millions of more viewers than Mike LaBelle's promotion ever did. And cruiserweights were popular even if strictly speaking it was a hybrid style. Japanese wrestling had similar exposure through Muta and Liger, but I don't think it had as large a presence as you're making out. The fact that American wrestlers toured Japan far more than they toured Mexico is what made Japan seem important, and as I said before that boils down to the strength of the peso vs. the strength of the yen. Mexico did draw American talent during UWA's peak years, but by the mid-to-late 80s that had dried up and even during the TV boom and AAA's hot run, there wasn't much foreign talent working in Mexico and definitely no headliners.

WWE is available on cable and satellite TV in Japan. It's covered in the magazines and you can find just as many WWE DVDs at the major DVD rental chains as you can domestic releases. And, of course, the WWE run houseshows. That in itself is not so different from most countries with the WWE being a global company available on cable and satellite in a large number of markets. Pay TV penetration is extremely low in Japan, but the WWE must do well enough to tour on a consistent basis. I used to know a guy who did freelance work changing the English used on WWE shows to something more easily translatable. The speciality stores obviously have a lot more memorabilia and so forth. I've met Japanese fans of WWE before. I used to know a guy who was a big Triple H fan and another guy who was a huge wrestling and MMA fan who was pretty clued up about US wrestling and loved the Attitude era stuff. One comment I would to make is that there is nothing art house about mainstream lucha libre. Art house lucha, if there is such a thing, is the indie promotions and the YouTube handheld videos shot with someone's phone. The match Grimmas keeps mentioning as a MOTYC candidate is comparable to an art house film but a CMLL match shouldn't be.

I watched 30 seconds in the middle of this match and gave up. Unbelievably terrible. Matches worked slower than a training demonstration? I'll pass. I don't think anybody should watch maestro matches for the execution. You watch maestro matches because it's long time pros working the same sort of style you might have seen in Monterrey in 1992. You shouldn't expect their timing to be as good as it was 25 years ago. It's the thought behind what they're doing that counts. But if you're not enamored with the old style of lucha libre, and you're not dissatisfied with the modern style, then there's no real reason to watch what old men are doing on the independent circuit. It was kind of a poor sampling from W2BTD, though. Lucero is a fabulous worker and Terry is a legend, but not even Terry fans were pimping that much so strongly.

I disagree that you can't judge a style by its high end matches. The majority of all wrestling is average at best, so why would you judge styles on what was the least average? High end matches represent the best a style can be. When I think of lucha I think of the high end matches. I don't think of the average stuff. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I always thought us fans were on the look out for great matches. I can't imagine waking up one day and thinking, "boy I sure feel like watching an average All Japan match," or watching said match and thinking "man, that was good. Another average All Japan match." It's not like we're talking about matches that are outliers and make a worker seem like they were great when really they weren't. We're talking about the best matches from an entire style and what the style is fully capable of. The problem here is that people can't stop comparing lucha to what they think is good/great. They're imposing a standard on it instead of appreciating when it's done well. Not only that but there hasn't been any real consensus about what lucha is from the people who say it's not for them. It's not clear whether they mean the kind of comedy tropes that were adopted by the Michinoku pro guys ,the Memphis style brawling, the trios matches, the dive trains, or the tricked out matwork. It seems people are talking past each other when it comes to what they actual mean by "lucha." If we could all agree what lucha is considered particularly bad then that would be a starting point for guiding folks toward lucha that is considerably better and perhaps closer to their tastes.

I like this. The conversation appears to be spinning its wheels here. I am sure this is available somewhere here, but can I ask where you have a few matches that I am pretty sure you have seen and reviewed? Chicana vs MS-1 - 9/23/1983 Satanico vs Cochise - 9/14/1984 Santo vs Espanto Jr - 8/31/1986 Dandy vs Azteca - 6/1/1990 Dandy vs Satanico - 12/14/1990 Santo vs Casas vs Dandy - 12/6/1996 Atlantis vs Vilano III - 3/17/2000 Trauma I vs Lupus - 9/4/1016 Not to pry for full reviews of them all, but I am curious as to where you have them. Those are all matches I have at *****. They aren't the only lucha matches I have there, but they are matches I think are fantastic and are sure fire classics. I just went and had a look through all my lucha ratings (reviews mainly in 80s catch-up or microscope threads). Picked out notables:MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana (9/23/83) ***** Atlantis y El Hijo del Santo vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Lobo Rubio (11/25/83) ****4/3 Atlantis vs. El Satanico (1984) **** Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (1/27/84) ****4/3 Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (2/3/84) **** Atlantis y Lizmark vs. El Egipcio y El Faraon (2/17/84) **** El Faraon, Herodes y Mocho Cota vs. Lizmark, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar (2/24/84) ****4/3 El Dandy vs. Angel Azteca (6/1/90) **1/2 El Dandy vs. Satanico (12/14/90) **** El Dandy vs. Negro Casas (7/3/92) ***** Negro Casas vs. La Fiera (1/10/93) **** Negro Casas vs. Mocho Cota (9/23/94) ****3/4 How can you say a style mostly sucks and give that many four star ratings? It doesn't make any sense. I can tell you Backlund era WWF mostly sucks too but could also provide a list of four+ star matches from the stuff I've seen. Why doesn't 70s/early 80s WWF get more attention? It's the same answer. A style can't be judged only by its best stuff, you have to look at the average and not very good stuff too. Average JCP or average AJPW feel better to me than average AWA, average WWF, or average lucha. I lack the knowledge to be able to differentiate between CMLL and AAA. I can distinguish between technical matches (title), brawls (hair / mask), trios, and tags. I don't like the mat-work style, dive trains, or the 2/3 fall structure in the brawls, all these are reasons why I watch Lucha less than other styles. WWWF did get some attention around the time that the DVDVR crew released their first WWF set and jdw began working on his 100 nights of WWF project. Longtime posters will remember the Backlund revival that originated as a result of ToA challenging the accepted wisdom on Backlund and how that led to a Backlund boom of sorts. Then came the call for a revised DVDVR set, the Smarkschoice best of the WWF poll, and so forth. I don't think anyone cared whether that era sucked or not. They just wanted to see the great matches. As far as I'm aware, you've only written about the lucha you've seen on the DVDVR set or the yearbooks. Perhaps a few more matches you sought out on YouTube. All of those matches, whether they were chosen for the DVDVR sets or the yearbooks, were seen to be "above average" by the people who suggested them. That makes me wonder when exactly you've seen the "average lucha match." No doubt about it, most lucha is distinctly average and some of it down right bad, but how would you know if you're basing your opinion on selected trios matches that are actually better than the standard fare? Average JCP and average AJPW may be better than the average match from other styles, but who cares? Are there people who set out to watch as many average matches as they can? The fact that you agree that the best of the 80s matches are fairly good should be an end to any discussion about whether lucha sucks. You say you don't like title matches but you rated some of them highly. You say you don't like the three fall structure in brawls, but you agree that most of the top ranked brawls are good. I have no idea why you don't think there could be other lucha matches out there that are in line with the matches you enjoyed. How many four star matches does a star need to have before it stops sucking?

Mile Zrno vs. Ashura Hara (5/6/79) Mile looks so young here. Hara is wearing a ridiculous get-up that makes him look like a Joshi pro-wrestler with a moustache. This is a beautiful wrestling match. Absolutely beautiful. They work this hybrid style that takes parts of the European style and blends them with strong style elements. It's a juniors match that's wrestled almost entirely on the mat and has no real "flying" to speak of, and it's just perfect. Very similar to the Fujinami vs. Ryuma Go series but with more groundwork. It's a toss-up as to which I like better, but please, somebody tell me Fujnami vs. Zrno is a match that happened. Zrno was sublime in this. I'm not somebody who goes around making a big deal about arm work, but Zrno made arm work seem fresh again with the angles he was able to work. The hits keep coming with these uploads. If he keeps this up there's no way he's not slipping into my top 5 Euro guys of all-time, and who knew Hara could wrestle this well? He's some immobile in his WAR days that you almost owe it to yourself to watch him when he could move. His haircut makes him look like Jackie Sato, and he wears this weird feather headset at the end made out of aluminium of something. Hell, he even has a cheer group ala Jackie. But when he gets down to grappling, he uses his strength well and has some nice counters to Zrno's holds. A few neat takedowns too and a bit of rugby technique to his shoulder blocks. Just a great match. I'm really excited to have seen it and it's the kind of match that I know will be rewarding on a re-watch as well. Jetlag rules and Zrno rules.

#327 Bless Michinoku Pro for being something fun and different in Japanese pro-wrestling. This was mostly a bunch of spots they had learnt from watching the Mexican guys in Hamada's promotion, but like the best trios matches there were plenty of fun exchanges and always something going on. .

I like this. The conversation appears to be spinning its wheels here. I am sure this is available somewhere here, but can I ask where you have a few matches that I am pretty sure you have seen and reviewed? Chicana vs MS-1 - 9/23/1983 Satanico vs Cochise - 9/14/1984 Santo vs Espanto Jr - 8/31/1986 Dandy vs Azteca - 6/1/1990 Dandy vs Satanico - 12/14/1990 Santo vs Casas vs Dandy - 12/6/1996 Atlantis vs Vilano III - 3/17/2000 Trauma I vs Lupus - 9/4/1016 Not to pry for full reviews of them all, but I am curious as to where you have them. Those are all matches I have at *****. They aren't the only lucha matches I have there, but they are matches I think are fantastic and are sure fire classics. I just went and had a look through all my lucha ratings (reviews mainly in 80s catch-up or microscope threads). Picked out notables: MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana (9/23/83) ***** Atlantis y El Hijo del Santo vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Lobo Rubio (11/25/83) ****4/3 Atlantis vs. El Satanico (1984) **** Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (1/27/84) ****4/3 Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (2/3/84) **** Atlantis y Lizmark vs. El Egipcio y El Faraon (2/17/84) **** El Faraon, Herodes y Mocho Cota vs. Lizmark, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar (2/24/84) ****4/3 El Dandy vs. Angel Azteca (6/1/90) **1/2 El Dandy vs. Satanico (12/14/90) **** El Dandy vs. Negro Casas (7/3/92) ***** Negro Casas vs. La Fiera (1/10/93) **** Negro Casas vs. Mocho Cota (9/23/94) ****3/4 How can you say a style mostly sucks and give that many four star ratings? It doesn't make any sense.

#342 This was a bit of a slow burner until Williams hit a pair of backdrop drivers on Misawa and Kobashi and the match kicked into another gear. Nothing they did really blew me away. It was more "predictably great" than anything else. Sometimes with these All Japan matches it's clear that they're being laid out to be great instead of getting there of their own accord. That may have been more pronounced with Ace involved, but it pretty much looked like everyone was sticking to the script. Misawa's selling was excellent as usual. He really was a beautiful seller around this time. Even when he was being rocked by big moves, you knew he was capable of a comeback that only the Man and company ace can deliver. This wasn't his most memorable comeback ever, but it was a solid tag and everyone worked hard to do their bit.

There have been more Mexican workers wrestle in the US than Japanese. The difference is the lack of cross-cultural exchange with fewer Americans working in Mexico compared to Japan, but that boils down to the strength of the peso vs. the strength of the yen.