ohtani's jacket

People wanted a great night out in the 50s as well. You think the folks at the Hollywood Legion Stadium aren't looking to be entertained? There is a touchstone for the workers you mentioned of wrestling as real sport, that's true. But the Golden Era product was ready made for TV. It's full of larger than life gimmicks, but much like French catch or WoS, it manages to strike a balance between sport and entertainment. And for what it's worth, the serious sporting wrestlers did drop titles to the gimmick workers. Just not the big prize. I don't think you can blame Flair or Race for speeding things up. That was the evolutionary path of wrestling everywhere, and to be honest it wasn't even that quick by the standards set by other late 70s workers. The difference between Flair and other NWA champions is that Flair made the bouts about him and not the championship. The precursor to that was clearly Buddy Rogers, but he didn't have a dynastic run. Harley is interesting because he had some pretty strong ideas about what he thought was good wrestling but didn't quite have the personality that Flair had. I wonder whom Harley would have wished to be like.

I personally don't make a distinction between character work and selling. It's all part and parcel of performing as far as I'm concerned. If you're good at one and not the other then you're not a great performer. Jack Brisco was a great wrestler, but I don't think you'd compare him to a Jim Breaks or a Negro Casas when it comes to performing. But, hey, sometimes being a great wrestler is enough. Not everyone has to be a Fujiwara or a Satanico. Look st s guy like Marty Jones. I wouldn't say he was great at character work but he had a discernible character and was charismatic partially because of how good a wrestler he was. Thesz is a guy who has grown on me tremendously because of the way he wrestled. But that's me. I have a lot of respect for wrestlers who can actually wrestle. To draw this back to the original question, if all you can do is sell or do interesting character work then you better be pretty damn good at it. If all you have going for you is offense then I hope you can wrestle. If you can do both you have my patronage. If you can only do one I hope you're a great wrestler. So while I value selling over offense if you can only do one or the other I hope you're s wrestling machine like a Keith Haward.

I don't think I've seen a Misawa vs. Ace singles bout, but I have a hard time believing it could be significantly worse than Tamura vs. Burton or Scott, especially since they're UWF-I bouts. And Misawa did have some acclaimed tag matches against Williams and Ace. The All Japan style has its flaws for sure. I'm glad you pointed out the guard rail stuff. I hate that part of All Japan matches. I don't agree that the psychology is as simple as you made out. The psychology between Misawa and Kawada is as rich as any other match up in wrestling history. I don't go as ga ga for it as I once did just like I don't go ga ga for the psychology in Akira Hokuto matches anymore, but I can't think of any match ups that out and out surpass Misawa and Kawada in terms of psychology or narrative. Regarding the mat work -- with the amateur backgrounds a lot of the guys had, I think they could have been better at matwork if it had been part of the house style, but it seems to have been a pretty deliberate and conscious choice not to make it part of the style. I liked Kawada's gritty submission work against Nakamura, which had shades of the Albright match. I'm personally not a big fan of the inter promotional stuff in Japan. Was there any promotion that came out of inter promotional feuds stronger than when they began? Maybe New Japan a couple of times. They remind me of those summer crossovers they'd do in comic books when I was a kid. Sales would spike during the crossovers and afterward they'd drop as a large chunk of folks had no interest in the regular ongoing stories. Even if Baba had cashed in, the company still would have floundered post-event. The biggest problem with All Japsn in the late 90s is that they had one new guy instead of four or five. One guy can't form the next generation. As for why they only had one guy, we can only speculate.

The Wrestling Heritage site is a good place to visit to get a sense of what wrestling was like in the halls. And the old British Wrestling Archive site. There's a lot of stuff that WOS didn't capture. Most of the title switches were untapped, for example, and even the title matches that did air were heavily clipped since the bouts would go anywhere between 12-15 rounds. Then there's the gimmick matches and blood they couldn't air on television. The famous mask matches, etc. WOS mostly aired Dale Martin shows and occasionally shows from the other Joint Promotions members, so there was stuff going on all the time within Joint that didn't make tape not to mention Paul Lincoln Promotions and the other independents. . I imagine a lot of the stuff in the halls was like your typical house show fare in the States (the house show footage I've seen certainly has been), but there was likely a lot of great stuff too. Heritage members often share memories about the best matches they saw live.

I'd want to go back to England in the 60s to see some of the British legends we don't have on tape. Or Mexico City in the early 80s.

That other match I saw of theirs was good although not on the same level.

You should also check out Billy Torontos.

You already explained that it's human nature to look for the narrative in everything (even dreams) so it doesn't matter whether the narrative is intended or not, humans will look for it. Therefore, it doesn't really matter if it is scripted or not. The difference between sport and wrestling is that sport is tribal. This weekend the All Blacks play the Wallabies in a match where the All Blacks could break the record for the most consecutive wins by a top tier rugby nation (18 wins in a row.) If you're an All Blacks fan you love the All Blacks and loathe the Wallabies. If you're a Wallabies fan you hate the All Blacks and support your boys. Obviously, that's a generality, but the basic idea is that on any given weekend two tribes go to war. In classic US pro-wrestling you're taught to hate the heel and root for the baby face. That only works in supports if the babyface comes from your country or city. The closest thing we have in wrestling to the tribal mentality is the rudo and tecnico fans at Arena Mexico and even then the rudo fans are a small percentage of the overall audience.

The answer is Eddie, but I kind of expected Tim to say Jamie Noble. I totally recommend the Rey/Jericho feud in WWE. I honestly thought that was one of the highwater marks of Rey's WWE run and I generally have a low opinion of Chris Jericho.

I chop and change a lot on wrestlers but the two I'd say I soured on the most were Bret Hart and Mick Foley given how much I cared about them when I was a teenager. I might as well have been Canadian given how big a hero Bret was for me, and I kind of jumped on the Mic Foley bandwagon in 1998 but I was still deeply passionate about his push to the WWF title. I wouldn't say I soured on their in-ring talents, though I can see the flaws in their work that I couldn't when I hero-worshiped them, but something has sure as hell changed as I could go the rest of my life without seeing either of them wrestle again. Having said that, I no longer have heroes the likes of Bret Hart and Mick Foley, so to a certain extent I have fond memories of that time of my life.

I love what I've seen wrestling wise of Stampede, but the TV is hard to watch with matches always being JIP and Ed Whalen being the worst commentator ever. I remember some Stampede fans thinking highly of Johnny Smith. I never thought he was that great, but again I haven't watched any of his matches in forever. I may need to go back and watch some of his stuff to see. Also there's no way Ed Whalen is worse than the WOS commentator who was on the verge of an orgasm every time Sayama did a faint spin kick or something along that line. Kent Walton is worse than Ed Whalen? Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Have you seen Dynamite Kid vs. Marty Jones? Still my favourite Dynamite Kid bout.

I don't think Fujiwara did anything of importance until the 2/84 attack on Choshu. For those of you who don't know the story, his Purowiki entry recaps it like thus: "The biggest break in his career came on 1984/2/3 in Sapporo. Fujinami was scheduled to wrestle Chōshū Riki for the WWF International Heavyweight Championship. During Chōshū's entrance, Fujiwara attacked him on the aisle and left him in a bloody mess. The match was "no contest", and Fujiwara joined New Japan's regular force in a on-going feud against Chōshū's Ishin Gundan. With his unique wrestling style and look which was easy to be remembered, Fujiwara was now on TV Asahi's New Japan television program almost every week." That attacked earned him the nickname "Terrorist." Prior to that angle he was was most known for being Inoki's bodyguard when Inoki fought overseas. He was definitely a hardcore favourite as I've had many a chat about Fujiwara with older blokes. He appeared a lot on late night TV, especially the comedy shows. You can see some of the videos on YouTube like the one where he's directing a porno while drinking a bottle of whiskey. He was in a couple of crappy straight to VHS films as well. A minor talent for sure, but during his heyday he was reasonably well known.

At this point, I find pretty much everything about Jumbo boring. To me, the criticism of Jumbo is just as boring as the exuberant praise. The wrinkle here is that a wrestler usually becomes boring after they've been dissected to death (think Ric Flair or Bret Hart), but in Jumbo's case the discourse usually boils down to whether he was lazy or not. And the praise for him is often just a walk through of the various stages of his career. It's not really anyone's fault since we don't have access to the type of info that would fuel a truly engaging and enlightening debate on Jumbo's worth, but it does make the discussion pretty limited for a guy who's essentially a top 10 pick.

To be honest, I think it's in the eye of the beholder. If you're into a match, and you're biting on the nearfalls, then you can't call that excessive. But if you're not into it, or they lose you somehow, then you're probably going to find it too much. I'm a big believer that the rhythm of a match is important when it comes to different styles, especially faster styles with a lot of non-stop action. It's hard to be in sync with that rhythm if you're coming in cold. In general, though, I think most wrestling promotions were guilty of trying to outdo themselves from the mid-90s onward. Look at Japanese wrestling, particularly the reoccurring match-ups in different promotions. They fought each other so many times that all they could do was wrestle bigger and bigger matches with an ever-increasing number of kickouts and nearfalls. That's not really unusual. It happens in movie sequels and many other forms of entertainment, and most people reach a point where they've had enough of watching something even a favourite TV show. (How many times do you start watching a TV series that you never finish?) For me it became excessive, and I can't think of many late period match ups between workers that I like as much as their middle period work. For a lot of people, though, especially those who jumped on at a later point, the matches became more exciting. That's why I say it's in the eye of the beholder.

This was like choosing between your kids. In the end, I went with shoot style because it was the most evolved style, involved the highest amount of skill and included a lot of the basics of catch and other styles I like. To me these matwork styles are almost like different genres with different genre expectations. I don't like it when lucha matwork gets too "shooty," for example. Grittier stuff like Dandy vs. Llanes is cool, but it bothered me when they started doing cross armbreakers in the mid-90s. British matwork depends entirely upon the weight class. I enjoy the heavyweight stuff as much as the lightweight work but I don't think you can really lump them together. NWA matwork and Strong Style are another level down. I can appreciate NWA matwork when Thesz does it, but the further away from Thesz you get the more distilled it is. Strong style can be exciting depending on the worker but it's pretty much a poor man's shoot style.

Hey elliott, The TV Tropes page for Tamura has some interesting tidbits -- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura Lorefice's old news page has some good info about the dying days of RINGS (probably cribbed straight from the Observer) -- http://www.quebrada.net/news/NewsRINGS1.html

A few British ones: The White Angel vs. Dr. Death, 1962 (famous mask match from Paul Lincoln Promotions, probably not taped) Mick McManus vs .Jackie Pallo, 5/25/63 (McManus vs. Pallo II, said to be better than their first match) Kendo Nagasaki vs. Count Bartelli, 3/5/66 (famous mask match, probably not taped) Mick McManus vs. Peter Preston, 1/14/67 (Preston shoots on McManus, famous double cross finish)

I've spent the past few weeks watching as many Gorgeous George matches as I could find. There's nothing that original about the stuff George does since it's been copied so many times over the years. Though I did like some of his more elaborate shtick like having his servant provide pure "Florida air" for him to breathe between rounds. Not a great mechanic, but he could work. His matches followed the same formula regardless of whom he was wrestling. They'd take the toughest bloke they could find and stick him in the ring with the Orchid. George would stall and refuse to engage. They'd scrap and George would have his hair ruffled. He'd cheat and beg off, but show just enough toughness to prove he belonged in the fight game. His offensive repertoire was limited but he was a pretty good seller. If you watch the lengthy Frankie Talabar match it's not that dissimilar from a Ric Flair match. The Talabar bout is probably the best example of George's work, though Russ Davis got on my nerves after a while. I much prefer Los Angeles commentator Dick Lane when it comes to that type of commentary. Another match worth watching is the Don Eagle one where the crowd gets quite violent and someone strikes George on his way out of the arena. Fun worker but he reminded me more of a Jackie Pallo than a Mick McManus in terms of ability. Incredible cultural figure considering he influenced guys like Ali and Bob Dylan. The missing piece from this fan's perspective is a bout against a really top shelf wrestler like Thesz. I'd be fascinated in seeing how George changed up his shtick in a big time title fight.

Steve Sims' HOF bio for Konnan is a good place to start. You should be able to find that with a simple google search. There's a couple of lucha books on Google Books with info about the era as well. When I researched about 80s and early 90s for the DVDVR Lucha discs there were endless discrepancies with facts. There is no way to get a completely accurate take on the period. For example, different sources will give you different dates on when EMLL first began airing on terrestrial television in Mexico City, and so on. But basically there was a television boom in the era you're researching about fueled by the ban on televised wrestling being lifted in Mexico City and the booking ideas of Antonio Pena who came up with gimmicks like Konnan and Octagon. Pena's ideas were pretty modern for the time even if they did hark back to the way lucha magazines were responsible for creating gimmicks in the past. Pena's modern thinking butt shoulders with co-booker Juan Herrera's old-school leanings and for a while the "old meets new" blend made for a potent product. The UWA was really late to get TV. They didn't have a show until November of '91 by which time the TV boom had based them by. Monterrey and the other territories really suffered in this era too. It wasn't exactly death of the territories, but pretty close. I mean if you compare how well the territories were doing in the 80s (post TV boom) to 1991, it's pretty sad. That follows a global pattern, though, so I guess it's the nature of the beast. The 1990-91 period is not really complete without researching the wrestlers' strike and the start-up AAA promotion, IMO. That was a direct result of the TV boom and I'd include it in whatever endeavor you're doing.

Choshu was a rebel. What you might call a "cool heel." When New Japan was super hot in the early 80s they went head-to-head with this police drama on Friday nights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qSGmoYw0qk Looks a bit like the Sabotage video, huh? Somebody else thought so and did a mash-up: The police chief was played by Yujiro Ishihara, who was the ultimate tough guy actor of the era. You think Yujiro Ishihara played by the rules? You bet your ass he didn't. Ishihara was macho. Choshu was macho. I can't emphasize enough how cool Choshu was. When I first watched Choshu I thought he was boring as shit but over the years I've come to understand why he was so popular. You need to understand that the majority of wrestling fans at the time were either young men or middle aged salary men. Japan working culture is based on a hierarchical system where promotions and pay increases are based on age not on performance. Choshu threw a middle finger to the establishment. He was coarse and rough. He had long hair but was every bit as macho as Ishihara. He was a heel but it resonated with young guys who wished they could stick a middle finger to their boss too. With Misawa it was the same except he was a face. To an extent, Misawa & Co. vs. Jumbo & Co. was a battle of ideologies. The wrinkle was that it wasn't like all the young guys supported Misawa and all the older fans supported Jumbo. Both Jumbo and Misawa were charismatic to the audience just as both Jumbo and Tenryu had been. No matter how much of an asshole Jumbo was, the crowd would still cheer for his "Oohs!" His partners did a lot of the dirty work for him, but Jumbo still transcended heel/face divides. Kawada and Taue did plenty of heel work in their matches, though when it was Misawa vs. Kawada in singles they played up the senpai vs. kohai aspects a lot. Senpai vs. kohai is again a hierarchical divide and I'm sure there were plenty of fans in the audience who knew what it was like to feel inferior to their senpai. That led to a certain amount of sympathy for Kawada, I'm sure, and when he was positioned against gaijins he was pushed as a native and therefore fan favourite. It was against Misawa and Kobashi that things were more complex. It's a tricky one because on commentary they would sometimes lambaste Kawada's tactics but at the same time they booked the classic babyface chase against Misawa and Misawa & Kobashi, which gave Kawada certain anti-hero qualities. You weren't supposed to hate Kawada, but you weren't meant to respect him more than Misawa or Kobashi. Despite that, he had recognizable fighting qualities. Jumbo was Jumbo and hugely popular. Kawada, I think, was more nuanced.

The OED says: "2 An object or undertaking that is unpleasant or badly made or carried out. Example sentences: ‘He didn't bring up one single argument in respect to the abortion of a budget that was tabled this year.’ ‘My introduction to advertising came to consist of thinking up such abortions as banana creme topping.’"

If If I like a worker, I generally want to see more of their work even if I've already formed an opinion on them. If I don't like a worker then I'm less inclined to watch more of their stuff. The former leads to diminishing returns at times. The latter doesn't really give you a chance to change your mind or have some sort of a breakthrough. But to me, the entire process is about finding stuff I like. I'd say I need far less than 100 matches to make up my mind about someone. A half dozen matches is enough for me. If I like you after a half dozen matches, I'm going to watch more of your stuff. If I'm not feeling it then I'll stop. Things might change in 2-3 years as my tastes are always shifting, but I'm a low volume watcher so I don't really have time to burn.

Don Arnold vs. Ali Pasha is full of all sorts of interesting on screen facts about Don Arnold. Did you know that Don Arnold is currently residing in a nudist camp? Or that he wrote a book called "Basic Nudism"? Not as sordid as the YouTube comments. Arnold has a haircut that Kirk Douglas would have admired. Pasha is so good at playing a foreign heel. Miles better than any of the Japanese heels and arguably better than the Germans. He has a way of stooping about the ring that looks totally oriental and the way he works a hold seems exotic and strange. Primo Carnera vs. Jim Londos is notable for how much history there is in the ring. Carnera was a former boxing champ turned wrestler, and the ref was Max Baer, who had beaten Carnera for the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in 1934 and an interesting character in his own right (lover of Greta Garbo, father of Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies.) I had no idea Londos was so small. I mean Carnera was a giant, but Londos was as short as Carnera was tall. Londos came out of retirement for this bout, which was a pretty ordinary affair. More noteworthy for the history intersecting in the ring than the bout itself. Lord James Blears vs. Leo Garibaldi was interesting. Blears was a complete prototype for Lord Stephen Regal. He even had a manager, Captain Leslie Holmes, who bore a striking resemblance to Sir William. Hell, the Blears and Lord Layton team could have easily been the Blue Bloods if Bobby Eaton had been 8 feet tall. Seriously, Layton was massive. Pretty entertaining match against Joe Pasandak & Mr. Moto, though, which is saying something because those guys weren't great workers by any means. There's a clip of Blears vs. Leone that I would have liked to have seen more from, but he definitely looked like a guy who made rough and tumble look good. Leone vs. Pasha is everything you'd expect it to be. I could pretty much book that match in my head in this point, but it was still fun to see. I'd love to know if Leone worked the same way against Thesz.

Think this is unfair to Panther. The mask vs mask with Love Machine drew a turnaway crowd to Arena Mexico, and that was for masked tecnico Art Barr. The people weren't there to see whether Love Machine kept his mask, they were there cheering on Panther. Barr's charisma didn't explode until he became a rudo. Also I think this overlooks that part of what got Love Machine over was that he was competitive against someone as good and as popular as Blue Panther. You really think substituting for Panther with somebody like Bestia Salvaje would have had the same result? It's possible. Might not have drawn as much as it wouldn't have been mask vs. mask but Pena had already created a string of successful gimmicks using the same formula. It depends on how popular the Love Machine gimmick was with the public. I don't think you can claim they drew a turn away crowd simply because he was programmed with Panther. If that were the case then surely Panther would have been booked in far more apuesta matches over the years. The Panther/Love Machine program was certainly successful. It drew in two different promotions and Panther certainly deserves some of the credit for that regardless of how hot Pena's booking was at the time. But it's offset by the fact that there were clear headliners like Caras, Aguayo and Konnan pulling the crowds. Panther/Love Machine is not that different from an IC title feud drawing during Hulkamania. None of Panther's other programs came close to touching it, and it doesn't really help that the matches are among his worst. I'm not saying that Panther mask matches automatically generated sellout crowds. It was a hot feud in a hot period for the company, but not every Arena Mexico show sold out. Bestia Salvaje vs Huracan Sevilla drew what was reported as a below average crowd (for the time--I'm sure it was better than some of the crowds later in the year). That was what happened when genuine midcarders headlined at Arena Mexico in early 1992. Panther vs Machine headlined what I believe was the biggest and most anticipated CMLL card that year. And Machine wasn't popular at all with the crowd. Despite being a well-meaning tecnico who'd been with the company for less than half a year, he had a packed house hoping he lost. Okay, he was an American going up against a Mexican, but for that to happen you still need a rudo the fans want to get behind. I don't think it follows that if Panther was primarily responsible for that crowd then he'd have been booked in more apuestas matches. For one thing he has as many to his name as Rayo Jr, Cien Caras, and Atlantis, and he didn't have much of an opportunity for them from 1995-97 because of the way he was hopping between promotions. As for the matches sucking, I don't see what that has to do with who was driving the feud. It's a shame that Bestia vs. Sevilla didn't draw more as that was a sweet little feud and an underrated hair match but it's not really surprising. I can only find a handful of instances of Sevilla working Arena Mexico in 1991 and most of those were in the opening bout. Bestia vs. Sevilla was more of an Arena Coliseo level feud. I do think it's worth mentioning that Panther vs. Love Machine headlined the Arena Mexico Anniversary Show and was a fairly stacked card with Atlantis vs. Fiera and Konnan/Aguayo/Rayo vs. Los Hermanos Dinamita as the semi-mains. It's been a while since I watched the build-up to the match but wasn't Love Machine acting more and more like a rudo heading into the match? From memory, he more or less wrestles like one in the bout and the crowd are chanting "Mexico" from the start. That seemed to be an element in terms of it being a match that people wanted to see. To be honest, I think Rayo, Caras and even Atlantis' apuesta records up until that point clearly outweighed Panther. The two biggest drawing gates of '89 and '90 were Rayo mask matches, and I believe that was in all of Mexico. The match quality doesn't have anything to do with Panther's drawing power, that's true.