ohtani's jacket

Mile Zrno vs. Steve Wright (Vienna, 1987) I've always had an irrational dislike for Steve Wright mostly due to the fact that I see him as a supremely talented guy who rarely ever brings it. If there were some sort of shtick over skill meter, Wright would set off alarm bells. The best match I've seen him as was as "Bull Blitzer", wrestling Marty Jones for the World Mid Heavyweight title in 1986. I saw this match against Zrno many years ago and for some reason it didn't leave much of an impression. This time I thought it was excellent. It was clipped, of course. which interrupted the flow at times, but the bulk of the action was Wright and Zrno trading the sort of holds the ol' noodle expects them to work. Competitive, skilled, mat-based; Wright lived up to his billing here. And Zrno was, well, Zrno. More matches like this, please.

It's time to get stuck into Loss' 500. 500 is a big number. I can't imagine ranking the top 500 of anything. I'm just going to give a straight take on this stuff. This struck me as nothing special. Ross spent the entire match shilling shit. The pay off to the finish was meant to be the Freebirds tagging in Badstreet but Badstreet didn't tag in with the Freebirds in peril or drive home the Freebirds' advantage and get in a quick cheap shot. Instead, Badstreet seemed to hold his own and then some, which begs the question of why Garvin and Hayes sheltered him from the tag. This would have been better as a house show match without Ross having to recap and re-advertise the Clash every five seconds but even then you've got to buy that the stalling and the slow burn payoff is any more than a stock standard TV match.

Mile Zrno vs. Bobby "Power" Stahlhauer (IWW, Hannover 1/17/98) The German summer tournaments may have been held under a tent in a camping ground while the wrestlers lived out of caravans but at least they had some prestige to them. This German indie venue looks like something straight out of an early BattlARTS show. It's fair to say that Zrno didn't always face the most skilled of opponents during his illustrious career, but here he was in 1998 still trying to make a young guy look like. Tremendous commitment to his craft and as fine a veteran performance as I can remember seeing from a Euro guy in 90s. This a few years before "maestro wrestling" became a thing. Makes me wonder if I should take 00s Euro maestro work seriously. The answer to that is that I probably should.

Thanks for the correction. It's a wonderful channel and I hope you continue updating it. Vic Hill vs. Jack Gacek was awesome. I've always loved 30s cinema and judging by this I'll love 30s graps too. The Miller Brothers vs. Fabulous Kangaroos featured two legendary tag teams but was a bit generic for my liking. Stuff like cutting off the man and face in peril segments. Others might see that as vintage tag wrestling, tho. Jose Sevilla vs K.O. Koverley was a bit looser than Hill/Gacek but they did some really cool mat spots. Jules Strongbow vs. Hardy Kruskamp was especially intriguing after watching Strongbow do the ring-announcing at the Hollywood Legion Stadium, as well as commentating and the backstage interviews. He was a big guy and a power wrestler cum slugger, but I was impressed by his intensity. He really stuck to his man and gave him no leeway. Vincent Lopez vs. Man Mountain Dean was pretty much classic pro-wrestling in that it was basically a slug fest. The footage may have been slightly speed up in the transfer but there's no denying the intensity of the performers. The first thing that stood out to me about Ali Baba vs Red Brannigan was how Brannigan really did look like an Irishman and Baba, even if he wasn't really Turkish, fit the bill. It never ceases to amaze me how much more global wrestling was in the early days when people really did seem like they were coming from all over the world to compete in overseas territories. It makes professional wrestling seem like a sport with a global reach. Baba seems like an interesting story. Watching him bodyslam a guy into "submission" is a finish that probably wouldn't work these days but is an awesome way to get over one of wrestling's most basic moves.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 57 Haven't done one of these in a while. Billy Joe Beck vs. Ringo Rigby (11/20/84) Rigby was never that great after returning from the States, but this was a solid enough television debut for Beck. It's a "Waltonism" if ever there was one, but he called Beck a "boy" despite the wrestler being grey and middle-aged. Beck was from Belfast but his style didn't really resemble FInlay or Moran unfortunately. Mel Stuart vs. Caswell Martin (1/9/79) Stuart was a seventh rate Dick Murdoch in his prime and he was already past his best here. You know you're on the slide when you're tinkering with your gimmick and here he was trying to do some "Pretty Boy" character that was going nowhere fast. Martin made this watchable but Walton had a bee in his bonnet about how Martin was giving Stuart too much "leeway" and would just not let it go. All-time great he may be, but he could sure be irritating at times and didn't he have his moods? Crusher Brannigan vs. Giant Haystacks (9/1/83) Wrestling Haystacks was an exercise in futility. Brannigan was a loud American heel who was the latest to suffer the indignity. I can't say he put much effort into it, but he did gig which was banned on TV so I guess he thought he'd make it colourful. Caswell Martin vs. Giant Haystacks (1/25/84) One of the dumber things about Dale Martin & Joint Promotions is that they'd fed Haystacks quality wrestlers like Caswell Martin, Marty Jones or Johnny Wilson for no good reason. And it's not like they get a fall against him or look like they have any chance of scoring an upset. They just get squashed, which is stupid. And they wonder why wrestling's popularity slipped. Steve Logan vs. Tiger Dalbir Singh (5/21/86) This was a good match, especially the first few rounds where the local lad Logan was looking to score the upset. Singh eventually took over and slowed the pace a bit, but he finished Logan off with some cool leg submission work instead of a bullshit injury finish or some other generic shit. Lacked a bit of meat in the middle but clearly the match of the day. Eddie Riley vs. Alan Gregg (6/8/88) Riley was one of the smallest men in the history of World of Sport and this was a quick "little" match against a newcomer to television. Mostly just falls. Inoffensive.

Mile Zrno & Abdullah Tamba vs. Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino (New Japan, 3/4/83) Zrno vs. Hoshino = rad. Zrno was junior-rific here and it was stellar. Zrno could have a long and prosperous career as a junior in Japan if the Japanese brass had been paying attention. It's too bad his singles match with Tiger Mask was clipped to a handful of Tiger Mask's offensive moves. New Japan didn't know what they bloody had. New holy grail -- Zrno's series of matches with Fujiwara on the same tour that Inoki wrestled Bock. Tamba was alright in this, too. Imagine Abdullah the Butcher crossed with a Head Hunter and you have Tamba. Of course it was 1983 and that meant Tiger Mask kicked everyone's ass, but it's Zrno in Japan true believers.

Well, I saw Carpentier sell for Killer Kowalski, so I guess that shows you how big a deal Kowalski was in this era. But Kowalski... I just don't know... I've never seen him look any better than wooden. Alberto & Ramon Torres vs. Art Mahalick & Mike Sharpe is from the mid-60s but a hot bout with some great action. The Torres brothers are perhaps a little bit too dominant down the stretch, but if you like the Guerrero brothers then the entire Torres family are worth checking out. I'm not a fan of Dick the Bruiser, but I can take him in small doses. Five minutes of him vs. The Beast was some rowdy old fun. I think the next thing I'm going to do is go through the wrestlingfilms channel in chronological order. That will include a lot of 30s and 40s wrestling, but I think I'll keep everything together in this thread.

Mile Zrno vs. Jimmy Ocean (2/29/92) This was very cool. It was a German indie match wrestled inside a tiny ring in a Berlin hotel. In the previous matches, Zrno did a lot of dropkicks and head scissors and other flashy babyface moves but here he showed his full array of talent. Ocean is a guy I've only known as a two-bit comedy worker, but he too showed me a lot. Some of the short range stuff they were doing was awesome. Short arm lariats and standing dropkicks that were some of the most "in your face" stuff I've seen in ages, probably due to the size of the ring. Zrno brought every aspect of his game including a fair bit of his mat skill. This was the Zrno I was talking about when I said he was underrated. As for Ocean, either the guy could really work or Zrno was making him look good. Either way, I'd go as far as calling this my favourite European match from the 90s it was that cool.

Great pun.

I think that's a false dilemma. It's possible for it to be a combination. And it's the combination that makes the firing fair enough to me. I also bristle a bit at the suggestion from some it's gotta be about offensiveness. I'm not personally offended by the joke, but it's still way out of line for what I think are clear, obvious reasons, which Bix and others have highlighted. When someone deliberately disobeys their boss, does it in a flaunting, throw it in their face for all to see way, and not only disobeys by making a political joke, but also a joke where the punchline is that someone would get sexually assaulted bcs they're attractive...that's a confluence of a lot of bad stuff in the context of "disobeying the boss." 'm not sure it matters, but the joke didn't get over either. I'm just saying that if it was a different milder political joke no one would give a shit. Also, the more people weep about not getting called pussies, the more other people will want to CALL THEM pussies. Just basic psychology. Tell a kid they can't do something and their impulse is to do it, forbidden fruit. Trump was the guy who no one was meant to vote for. Turns out lots of Americans don't really like being told what to do. So they got in the booth and did their own personal little Stone Cold moment. Basic facts. I'd talked about which hills to die on before, picking and choosing battles. I've said before where all this leads. Now literally Donald Trump is the fucking president and Britain is leaving the EU. And there are still people saying "hey, don't use the word pussy" in earnest like that's the important thing going on. How about waking up and smelling the coffee and confronting exactly what that behaviour does and where it leads. I mean for fuck's sake, look at the year we've had and here people are arguing about the word "pussy". Jesus Christ, can't take it anymore. Also, I want to be clear. This is not a "meltdown", I'm not losing it. I'm angry at the extent to which sensible discussion in every realm has been hijacked by SJW-ism. Make no mistake, blindly dogmatic PC policing is part of the confluence of problems I blame for the present situation. And I get angry about it because it comes from people who are meant to be on my team, meant to be clever, meant to represent, broadly speaking, the left. Get your heads out of your arses for five minutes to see what where that method of approaching the problem gets you. I'm not apologising for this post. Someone has to say it. And at the same time, fuck Joey Styles. This type of thing is nothing. It's about words and their meaning. It's about definitions and usage. It's about connotations and baggage and history. You wait until there's a crisis and there are lives on the line. When there's no pressure people are free to talk big but when the shit hits the fan you know what the reality is like. I always thought of myself as left leaning; always supported leftist groups. But in a time of crisis they were of no help to me. So, since then a moderate approach has seemed like the only approach to take. If you can't trust the left and you can't trust the right then you have to forge your own path.

Just a heads up -- the date on Fuerza/Octagon is 2/1/91.

Because the Silver Hurricane deserves his own thread. Quite possibly one of the most underrated talents of all-time. Mile Zrno vs. Dave Morgan (Hannover 10/27/85) Morgan was a British dynamo who preferred to work abroad than traverse the U.K halls. This was clipped (in true German handheld fashion) and mostly a Morgan showcase, but you could tell it was a crowd-pleaser. Early on, they worked some comedy sequences with referee Mick McMichael but later they got serious and were pissed at one another. Zrno was mainly typecast here as the good looking babyface like some kind of glorified Tom Zenk, but the German tournaments are nothing if not nightly house shows and they gave the paying customers an enjoyable mid card whirl. Mile Zrno vs. Rambo (Heumarkt, Vienna 1988) Rambo is not the awesome UWA luchador who had a decades long blood feud with Villano III, but the significantly less awesome Canadian wrestler who made a name for himself in Europe and was later part of the Truth Commission. This is a good showcase for Zrno's ability to make his opponent look good but not a great showcase for his full range of talents.

As predicted, Enrique Torres vs. Ted Christy was more shtick than mat wizardry. One thing I've noticed so far about 50s wrestling is that champion caliber wrestlers like Torres are booked to look exceptionally strong. They hardly ever sell for the heels and rarely go off their feet. Instead, they spent most their time making the heels look like buffoons. Christy was a fun buffoon, though. He reminded me of Mick McManus' tag partner, Steve Logan. He even did the same wet hair trick his slicked back sides. Torres didn't really break a sweat here, but it was entertaining enough. Also fun was getting to see Joe Blanchard in a swift 15 minute time limit draw with Pierre LaSalle of Rougeau family fame. The only thing I'd seen from Blanchard previously as snippets of his awesome feud with Fritz Von Erich. He looked solid against LaSalle even if they didn't really hit the mat as hard as I'd like. It was more dancing about playing heel vs. face, but they made a go of it. I'm still trying to crack Edouard Carpentier. In theory, he's a wrestler I should like since he wrestles like a masked tecnico, but there's something that's not quite clicking. I still can't put my finger on it. I did like the match I watched against a thick set Mike Gallagher, but again it was a heavy offensive showcase with Carpentier barely putting over Gallagher's stuff. Carpentier was definitely one of the more dynamic and striking workers of his time but just how good he was remains elusive.

I finally got the chance to see the Inoki/Bock match from Stuttgart. It's a match that would bore the beejesus out of most folks, but I thought it was an absorbing contest and another addition to my list of Inoki classics; matches which may not be classics in the true sense of the word but certainly are in Inoki's case. What made it so interesting is that while it was clearly a work, Bock was about as uncooperative as anyone I've seen in a pro-wrestling bout. He no sold practically every thing Inoki threw at him and gave him precious little on the mat. And the strange thing about it was that Inoki seemed reluctant to do anything about it. Not that I blame him, as when the tension started to mount Bock appeared down right murderous. Now you might say that Bock being uncooperative is unprofessional and the very definition of a dangerous and poorly worked match. And you might be right if Bock hadn't been an absolute beast with vicious strikes and almighty dead lift suplexes, i.e. one badass motherfucker. His behavior gives the match even more of a shoot style feel than they intended, and while Inoki is made to look bad at times, it's as close to true Gotch style "professional wrestling" as I've seen. More so than any shoot style bout, to be honest, because it's non-cooperative. I think a few people here would appreciate it so check it out you guys.

The best match I've seen the 50s has been Thesz/Gagne. The Thesz/Schmidt and Thesz/Rogers matches are MOTYC level. Maybe Gagne vs. Carpentier too.

I forgot to mention that they loved a tournament. Any excuse for a tournament. And so many replays in the finals. I swear someone in Dale Martin thought FA Cup replays were the pinnacle of sports booking. Lots of team events too. Kind of like mini Davis Cup ties.

A bit. Guys who were working programs together and who had several of their matches featured on TV would generally have matches that advanced a storyline. The most common storyline revolved around wrestler A earning s title shot against wrestler B. The angles were pretty simple -- Wayne Bridges turning heel against Pete Roberts, for example, or Dennison seconding Young David sparking a Breaks/Dennison feud. A lot of the angles and storylines happened on top with Big Daddy. Their success at Wembly was build around Big Daddy storylines with John Quinn and Giant Haystacks. Nagasaki was involved in a fair bit of stuff too like his famous unmasking. It was a bit like lucha in that they'd film a house show where sometimes there would be matches with guys feuding but it wasn't really episodic. One storyline they did really well was young guy vs. vet. They also handled title feuds well. But guys almost never made dramatic heel or face turns. They'd just start acting differently, displaying a new attitude. When Dixon started All-Star, he focused on angles that ran from show to show and I believe Paul Lincoln did the same thing in the 60s.

Are you listing the matches by air date or taping date? Most of the dates on tellemyort's channel are air dates. You need to be careful about the difference between the American and British dating systems as well. The first match you have listed for '71 (Steele vs. Mulligan) actually aired in December. ITV wrestling is a good site to use. You sometimes need to cross check it, though, by doing a way back machine search for the old British wrestling archive site. I have a list of every WoS match I've seen includibg taping dates. That ought to cover most of the missing dates. If you'd like a copy PM me.

Wild Red Berry is a fun wrestler to watch. He's a comedy heel worker who has enough wrestling ability to remain credible in the ring. He's quite the character really, and wouldn't look out of place in a 50s television sitcom or a Frank Tashlin film. Wild Bull Curry, on the other hand, didn't impress much. He seemed like the living embodiment of a stereotypical kick-punch wrestler. He was pretty much a caricature of every guy who's ever gotten into the ring with limited ability and kick-punched their way to fame. Some might argue that makes him a success, and no doubt he was, but he's not exactly Perro Aguayo in the ring. The match he has with Johnny Valentine is reasonably compelling but far from great. Perhaps the fault lies with my expectations as I was expecting something much edgier. There's a new Enrique Torres match online, which pleases me greatly. Unfortunately, it's against a rule breaking heel instead of a technical marvel, but it takes all types to put on a wrestling show and we'll see how Torres deals with a rule breaker.

Parv, if you found the Thesz/Gagne match dull then I'm not sure there's much point walking through the bouts. I'm not sure how you can ignore the narrative running through that match and conclude it was two guys in black trunks doing standard spots for 50 minutes. This seems like it's going to go nowhere like Dandy/Aztecs and Bossman/DiBisse. I will say this, though -- a year ago I would have claimed that Thesz and Gagne were boring too. So keep an open mind about their stuff.

It depends on the style. I don't like the German rounds system because I find it confusing and difficult to follow. Portland threw me off because I wasn't used to such a long break between falls. French catch was also strange at first because all of the falls are of equal length and they're all long. WoS is the simplest and most straight forward to me. You know exactly how long the break between rounds will be and how much talking time Walton will have. Lucha is easy to follow once you're familiar with the different match patterns and the way they play around with the fall lengths. What's weird is when you have straight single fall matches in styles that are usually segmented.

I just bought a house and haven't gotten an Internet connection yet so I can't compare those matches. The Jumbo match seems like a bit of an outlier when it comes to a typical Flair match unless you're trying to say that Flair as a fish out of water is as good or better than Thesz/Gagne, which I have a hard time believing because I can't think of any Flair bout I'd say was unequivocally better than Thesz/Gagne. Even if people are generalising, Thesz generally had a strategy to work a particular body part or parts and would work those holds for longer than Flair. More often than not, the holds would factor into at lest one of the falls Thesz won whereas the early matwork in Flair matches rarely factors into a typical Flair finish. Fxnj already cited the importance of the headlock in Thesz/Gagne. The closest comparison I can think of to that is the importance of the chicken wing in the Steamboat Clash match.

The Golden Era greats were overlooked during the GWE voting. It's an era that people haven't watched a lot from for fairly obvious reasons. I hadn't watched much from it until recently and am still busy exploring it. So far it's been full of good workers I've barely even heard of much like WoS when I first began exploring that. Anyway, Flair was an okay mat worker. I don't think he'd make a list of the top 100 mat workers ever, but he was ok. I don't think he compares to Thesz in any way, shape or form on the mat. When I think of Flair, the first thing that comes to mind is the arc in his matches where he'd go from being the Nature Boy to his hair being a mess, the crimson mask, that deranged look in his eyes and the screaming ("Noooo!") When I think of Thesz, I think of those shots he'd fire, sometimes provoked and sometimes unprovoked. There's an edge to Thesz that Flair couldn't ever hope to replicate. Thesz was a dangerous man. Thesz could hurt you. Does anyone believe that Flair could shoot on a guy or hook them? Irrespective of that, I agree that the work Thesz did on the mat led somewhere whereas for Flair it was filler. That's what happens when a match is built around working holds vs. working spots. If you look at 50s workers, Flair is much closer to a Gorgeous George or a Baron Michele Leone than he is Thesz. He's more talented than those guys but he worked in the same fashion. I don't think it's s big deal. It's s different way to work and if it works for some wrestlers than so be it. Just don't peddle that Flair was the perfect all-round wrestler. The perfect performer maybe but not the complete wrestler.

The babyfaces in the 50s were obviously a llot more wholesome than later on, but I'm not sure that Thesz represented the ideal. Thesz seemed more like son of immigrant parents ideal for past generations whereas a an All American like Wilbur Synder was more of a new generation type. The promoters had plenty of gimmick workers to line up against their All American babyfaces. There were Japanese heels and German heels, exoticis, and everything in between. Wrestling crowds inherently love to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy. If 50s wrestling had been X guy in black trunks vs. Y guy in black trunks, it would have appeased graps fans like me but it's really closer to classic pro-wrestling than shoot style. Regarding rhe Abby/Bruiser thing, I'm not s big fan of the Brruiser but he was several degrees removed from Abby. And when he was younger, he was actually a pretty good performer.

I've gotta say I much prefer 50s babyface Blassie to 60s heel Blassie. Blassie was never a great worker in terms of his wrestling ability, but as a babyface he'd work a few holds, do that backwards shuffle on the mat whenever he got in trouble, and had a Terry Funk wild man quality to him. As a heel, he was about as boring a kick/punch/bite/scratch worker as you can imagine and only a good promo if you can excuse the frequent stammering.