ohtani's jacket

Bobby Eaton is another guy who I don't have any strong attachment to. Every time I see him, I think he's an excellent worker, and I get sucked into Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express any time I go down that particular viewing path. Loved the Enforcers and the Dangerous Alliance. Could quite happily watch random Bobby Eaton TV matches even on a sunny day. But I won't go to my grave telling the grand kids that I saw Bobby Eaton on a computer. This is a bit of a good worker vs. singles worker dilemma, and maybe it shouldn't matter, but I just don't think he was good enough at the singles stuff to rub shoulders with the folks he is. The same argument can be made about Ricky Morton and Arn for that matter. To me there's a clear dividing line between the likes of Eaton, Morton and Anderson and a guy like Tully, who was the architect of at least two all-time great singles matches. I suppose Eaton could come back swinging with all of his tag stuff, but it takes four to tag, two to tango and one to lead. Every guy in the top 30 should be a leading man, and Bobby wasn't the type to naturally lead. Still, he was an excellent worker so no harm, no foul. Haven't watched his veteran stuff, which is supposedly great. I'm skeptical that I'd personally enjoy it since I've never really enjoyed anything Akiyama's done. Didn't really enjoy him as rookie, didn't really enjoy him playing Robin to Misawa's Batman, and didn't really enjoy him as an overrated singles worker in the late 90s. That's the point where I jump off usually. The prospect of watching him in NOAH is something I turn my nose up at, and if I can't dig that scene I wonder how much I'd enjoy him in the later Japanese scene. Unfair? My loss? Probably. I do find the discussions about him interesting since there is rift between people who've left the tape watching scene (can I call it that any more?), folks who continued and others who started fresh with the NOAH stuff and beyond. Akiyama's never been as universally beloved as the All Japan Big 3, but I almost see it as a badge of honour for folks who have persevered with the Japanese scene that he finished this strongly. I should probably give him a fair shake and watch some of his '10s stuff, but I have such a prejudice against him. If I were to sum it up, I'd say he was more Hiroshi Hase than Kiyoshi Tamura and that's damning for no-one bar me. Lovable oaf. Everybody who gets into Taue ends up thinking they're the first person to recognise how great and underrated he is. I don't mean for that to sound snide. On the contrary, it's almost become a rite of passage. I went through it myself as did many others. Pompadour Taue is great! Taue was the best guy in XX/XX/XX tag! It's like a kid trying to prove he has better taste in music than his old man. It's fine, addictive, and a hell of a trip. But it also contributes to an endless cycle of Taue being underrated, overrated, and everything in between. Has there ever been another wrestler where the pendulum swung so wildly? I suppose it stems from the unique position he was put in, but here's the thing: there wouldn't be so much debate if there wasn't a kernel of truth to both sides. He's not so bad that another guy taking his place would have made his matches better, but he's not the best of the Fab Four just because he brought something different to the table. He's Taue. He somehow wandered into this debate over how good he is without even staking a claim. To me the debate over his merits is bigger than the things he accomplished. People are having these arguments over what's really important in wrestling while Taue's trying to co-ordinate that large frame of his and hit his spots cleanly. That shit seems miles apart. I would have had him on my list. Maybe a little lower since I have my doubts over how great he wanted to be. Maybe a little higher since it's easy to get on a Taue kick.

I enjoyed the shorter of the Buddy Rogers matches. I think it's the one from Wrigley Field. It was clearly an important fight and there was a step up in intensity from Thesz. I've noticed that his matwork isn't the showy type where he does a lot of cool holds. It's far more subtle. You need to pay attention to where he's positioning say his wrist or forearm to pick up on the details. I was quite taken with Rogers in this bout and ended up watching an interview with him from a 1981 episode of Jim Barniak's Sports Scrapbook where he never once broke kayfabe. It was beautiful to watch -- an old-time wrestler with a glint of bullshit in his eye. I've always thought of Rogers as an all-action type -- bumping, stooging, flying about (back when flying about meant running the ropes) -- but he showed just enough toughness here and just enough credibility on the mat to hang with Thesz as a star if nothing else. I'd love to start a Rogers vs. Flair thread, but I don't know if the board's frayed nerves could handle it. Thesz vs. Matt Jewel (Bearcat Brown) is a fun squash and the highlights of the Rocca match from Buffalo had some nice action.

Giant Baba vs. Bruno Sammartino (3/2/67) This by contrast was a 15 minute draw. We got to see them beat the shit out of each other a lot more. Baba caused plenty of mayhem with his chops, which is probably why Bruno went after the arm so much in the July bout. Bruno inflicted major damage with his bear hug and bully boy tactics. Weak finish. Bruno cut a heel promo afterward claiming Baba was running scared.

I agree that Tenryu's execution problems are overstated. More often than not his execution is fine, it's just that his gaffes come at the most inopportune of times and stick out like a sore thumb. For that reason, people tend to remember them happening more often than they actually did. I'm talking about powerbomb botches here and not his general execution of the enzuigiri. He was such a great seller that he could cover for an ugly looking enzuigiri, but to claim it as "character work" is implying that it was intentional. You can rationalise it as Tenryu going for a move that he's not athletically capable of because he's Tenryu and there's no holding him back, and that's fine, but I think it's a clear example of giving the guy a free ride because you like him. You can learn to love the enzuigiri because it's Tenryu, and I'm sure everyone does similar things with workers they like, but Jerome is right that it's a double standard *provided* you adhere to that standard with other workers. If you don't care about execution in general and never hold anybody up for it then obviously there is no double standard.

JWP was such a small promotion with such a thin roster that all the girls wound up being rivals who sometimes tagged, sometimes beat the living shit out of each other. The original JWP had a deeper roster and was more faction based. Once they split and Kansai was positioned as the "ace" of JWP Project (if such a promotion can have an ace), she needed challengers and Devil, Ozaki and Cuty became their main rivals as they looked to build Fukuoka up as the heir apparent. The Ozaki/Kansai feud began in earnest prior to Dream Rush with two singles matches in I think May and July of '92 and grew from there. Even when they were tagging together against AJW, they were feuding in their home promotion. During the window between the first Dream Rush tag and the Dream Slam rematch, Ozaki and Cuty fought with Devil and Kansai over the JWP tag belts. Later on when JWP got a few more young girls there was less shuffling about and more Kansai & young partner vs. Ozaki & young partner type stuff.

I never much cared for the Kansai vs. Ozaki street fights, but after watching the GAEA main event I thought I'd check them out again. The 3/95 one has some good moments, but it's incredibly violent and I wasn't cool with the horrific blade job Kansai did. I know there's no relation but all I could think about was how she got sick a few years later. Don't think I needed to see that shit. Haven't watched the second fight yet.

The second Kansai/Ozaki street fight is the less violent, less grotesque of the two. Crowd brawling is never gonna be my thing, and some of the transitions weren't the flashest, but there was a lot of cool shit in the bout like Kansai's chained fist shots and an awesome submission counter from Ozaki. The finish was fairly inventive even if Ozaki's offense wasn't that great and I liked a lot of the nearfalls despite an aversion to table spots. It's funny the things you tolerate. I didn't mind the chain, or Ozaki using the broken top rope to strangle Kansai, but other props just annoy me. I wonder what started the push toward street fights in '95. If it was something as simple as the success of Onita in FMW or a push away from the increasing over-exposed women's style. Whatever the case may be, they positioned Ozaki strongly as Queen of the Street Fights and could have done a lot more, a lot sooner with FMW and Kudo.

The second Kansai/Ozaki street fight is the less violent, less grotesque of the two. Crowd brawling is never gonna be my thing, and some of the transitions weren't the flashest, but there was a lot of cool shit in the bout like Kansai's chained fist shots and an awesome submission counter from Ozaki. The finish was fairly inventive even if Ozaki's offense wasn't that great and I liked a lot of the nearfalls despite an aversion to table spots. It's funny the things you tolerate. I didn't mind the chain, or Ozaki using the broken top rope to strangle Kansai, but other props just annoy me. I wonder what started the push toward street fights in '95. If it was something as simple as the success of Onita in FMW or a push away from the increasing over-exposed women's style. Whatever the case may be, they positioned Ozaki strongly as Queen of the Street Fights and could have done a lot more, a lot sooner with FMW and Kudo.

So, is Thesz the Godfather? The Granddaddy of them all? I started watching matches to find out. The Don Leo Jonathan match from Chicago was a decent watch. DLJ was a fun big man and not really spoken about enough as we all know. I loved the way he pinched Thesz' cauliflower ears during the ref's explanation. That set the tone for a World of Sport style bout where there's plenty of needle and finally they start with the forearm smashes. That's been my favourite style of Thesz match so far. I don't find his matwork super impressive, but I do love the way he retaliates to inside moves. I think the crux of it is that because he's a hooker he knows dirtier moves than the heels and more ways to hurt people. DLJ was spry for a big man, but I don't think that matwork was truly his game. Still, he gave it a decent shake. Next up was Thesz vs. The Mighty Atlas. Atlas had this neat little moustache and gave a much better all-round performance than in the Snyder bout. It was all shtick, but effective shtick for the era he worked in. Thesz didn't appear to have any misgivings about working this style of bout despite his grumblings in later years. Interspersed between longer bouts are the numerous shorter clips of Thesz from YouTube. Highlights against Rocca, Gene Kiniski and Mr. Moto. There's not much to be gained from watching these unless you've seen a lot of Thesz and know what you're looking for. To me it was just a blur of holds. I did enjoy the short Vic Christy bout from Los Angeles where he gave Christy quite a bit of offence for what was essentially a squash. The Moto bout was filmed like a movie and had plenty of unusual angles for a filmed match.

Giant Baba vs. Bruno Sammartino (JWA, 3/7/67) Bruno Sammartino isn't the best place to start for an in-depth look at early Baba but their matches are some of the longer JWA stuff we have on tape. There were a lot of simple holds in this. The kind of holds you'd expect from a guy the size and strength of Sammartino trying to wear down a bigger man in Baba. A lot of bear hugs and strength holds, and plenty of arm work from Bruno to try to render Baba's chop useless. Stuff that made sense from a psychology standpoint even if it didn't produce a timeless classic. Baba's selling was good but his execution was sloppy at times and that's accounting for fatigue. They went to the well way too many times on the double knockout spot and in fact drew on it too early. That said something to me of their limitations, but it could have been a much more boring bout whereas this was more than passable. You know what you're getting from Bruno Sammartino and you get it in spades here. Let's call this okay to decent.

It seems there are just as many second generation female wrestlers in the business now than there were second generation males at any point after the death of the territories.

Man, Snyder's 70s work is disappointing. I was expecting him to be either a hard-nosed veteran or a wrestling maestro. Instead, he was sluggish and out of shape. He worked the holds from his youth but with none of the athleticism. There was a match against Robinson where he looked inspired however the rest of his stuff was pretty bad. His matches from his WWA territory were particularly bad. To make matters worse, he was billed as "The World's Most Scientific Wrestler." I actually read up on why he was so bad in the 1970s and the consensus seems to be that he was more interested in his family and business interests than in breaking his neck wrestling each night. That's fair enough, but it makes him a difficult wrestler to place. We have these matches of his where he looks like a great young wrestler but nothing from his prime and none of his really important matches. Then we have these 70s matches where he's pudgy and smoking two packs a day, allegedly. It seems Snyder is a bit of a mystery. Unless some more Chicago footage is unearthed we may never know how truly good he was.

Nah, I'm also kid focused like going to Disneyland and such. My daughter will be 6 in October, which is hard to believe.

Wilbur Snyder vs. Mr. Moto (Los Angeles) Mr. Moto came to the ring wearing a gorgeous hakama complete with tabi (divided-toe socks) and wooden geta shoes. He had these round-rimmed spectacles and fu manchu beard that made him look like something out of the Meiji Period after Japan had reopened its borders to the West, but to Californian audiences no doubt looked like something out of a 1930s pulp mag. He also had with him a little servant named Fuji who helped undress his robes and wrap them carefully in a gorgeous silk cloth. Beneath his robes was his garish ring attire: scarlet red trunks and canary yellow tights. We were told he was a master of jiu jitsu, sumo and catch-as-can, which I naively thought for a second meant we'd see some cool holds until he tried going through the pre-match sumo ritual and was interrupted by the crowd. From there it was clear that he was a typical Japanese heel: sly, cunning and devious. Snyder monstered him in the ring and it was notable how short Moto's legs were whenever the pair locked up. America and Japan weren't far enough removed from the war for the commentator to not make cracks about it. He joked that Moto wanted a peace treaty after he begged off. The first fall saw Moto working Snyder over with inside moves before taking the fall with the sleeper, which we were told was a topic of much debate at the time. Snyder spent the entire second fall working Moto over in a side headlock and it became clear that this was going to be the sort of bout where they strap on a hold and work it to death. The third followed suit, and there were probably three or four holds used in the entire bout. Despite the commentator trying to put over the strength it took to keep those holds applied, it was the most dull of the early Snyder bouts. To my great surprise he coughed up the deciding fall and suffered his first loss in Los Angeles. I guess that means that Moto was a heel of some note. It's too bad he didn't have a couple of Fujiwara-like holds to go with his sneaky Pearl Habour attacks. I did like his judo chop counter that felled Snyder. He caught Snyder coming off the ropes with his running football tackle and split him in half. Possibly the only good thing he did.

Mary didn't have a surname, though. She may have been referred to as Mary daughter of Joachim, but surnames themselves weren't used until the Middle Ages.

Are you still going to shows? Dick the Bruiser & the Lisowski Brothers vs Verne Gagne, Wilbur Snyder & Argentina Rocca (Chicago) Six man action time. This was worked corner to corner. When a face was in the heel corner he took a pummeling an when a heel was in the face corner he received his just deserts. The rest of the time was spent fighting in and out of the neutral corners. The faces were animated and worked an even faster pace than in tags and the Lisowski Brothers bumped and stooged with aplomb, but I wasn't as into it as the previous tag. Dick the Bruiser has barely registered a blip with his ring work thus far, and despite some nice snap to his holds, I prefer Snyder in singles action.

Some of these names kind of grow on you with time. I remember thinking The BIg Show was a ridiculous re-branding of the Giant in '99 but who doesn't think of him as Show these days?

Reggie & Stan Lisowski vs. Verne Gagne & Wilbur Snyder (Chicago) Now this was a fun bout. The Lisowski brothers, Reggie and Stan, resembled a classic heel team more closely than any pairing I've seen from the 1950s. They were still no match for the super team of Gagne and Snyder, who were too strong for any mortal tag team, but they way they bumped and stooged and worked together to cut the ring off was tonic for the lack of an identifiable face-in-peril structure. The bout was full of "instances" -- small moments that moved from event to the next. They were connected on a moment-to-moment basis, but there was no over-arching structure, no through line to tie all of the events together. There were examples of mini-FIP segments where Snyder would take a battering and tag out, but they weren't drawn out segments, there was no real peril to speak of, and for as sprightly and animated as Gagne was in these tag bouts, he wasn't exactly a house on fire when he tagged in. These roles didn't seem to exist in 1950s tag wrestling at least not as a well-worn convention. I'd be interested in learning how they were popularised. Even without that structure to fall back on, the bout was still engaging. The Crusher was a great over-the-top wrestling character and his kayfabe brother Stan was the perfect partner for him; a really solid heel worker who bumped and stooged exceptionally well without drawing any of the heat away from The Crusher. I loved their celebration after the first fall where they flexed their muscles and posed for the crowd and their reaction to the finish was priceless. The finish itself was extremely clever. Stan Lisowski had Gagne in the same airplane spin he'd won the first fall with and thought he had him pinned, but missed Verne tagging out mid-flight. Snyder hit a pair of dropkicks and took the bout with a body press, and The Crusher was livid. He tried ripping the top rope out and fell arse over backwards. It was beautiful to watch. It was even better than it sounds as the top rope had come undone again in a Gagne/Snyder bout and the ring crew had scrambled to fix it during the second fall and here was The Crusher trying to rip it out again as if that would somehow make the result null and void. The Crusher really was great fun. I'd watch the Lisowski brothers again in a flash. Snyder was obviously the more junior member of the super team, but it was notable how much of a backseat he took to an almost carny-eque Verne Gagne. Gagne cheated like a motherfucker in this bout. It was all in the spirit of retaliation and giving the heels a taste of their own medicine, but it was still bloody cheating. You wouldn't think this was the same Verne Gagne from those long bouts with the likes of Thesz whereas Snyder was clearly still the not quite rookie sensation. There doesn't seem to be any 60s Snyder on YouTube. It jumps the 50s to the 70s and that's quite the missing link when it comes to appraising a guy who's very prime may have been in the 1960s. But there's still a few matches to go until we come to that gaping hole.

Forgot to mention the finish to the Singh/Casey bout, which was referee Jeff Kaye taking a bump to the outside and selling it like he'd knocked himself out. The second ref Dave Rees refused to take over the contest and the bout was ruled a no-contest. No idea why they booked that finish.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 56 Dave George vs. Flyer Gibbs (WAW circa 1990) Sweet Euro trash, how I've neglected you. George looks like Terry Rudge if Terry Rudge were your untrained father. He plods about barefooted against a truly awful worker named Flyer Gibbs. Pallo Sr. gets involved at ringside setting up that big Pallo/George match you all want to see. Scrubber Daly vs. Flesh Gordon (Eurosport circa 1991) It's that dipshit Gordon. Scrubber Daly in his prime was like a mini version of Giant Haystacks only mobile and a lot more giving. He wasn't a bad worker for a big man, but was morbidly obese by the time the 90s rolled round. Gordon spent most of the bout making fun of Daly's obesity, the dick. Even morbidly obese he was still a better worker than Gordon. Joe Cruz vs. Rambo (Eurosport circa 1991) I have no idea why this made TV other than a chance for Orig Williams to gloat about how an American found European wrestling tougher than he expected. "Like all Americans, [Cruz] has a lot to say for himself." Feels like Military Industrial Suplex fodder for how American wrestlers are perceived in overseas countries. Kendo Nagasaki vs. Giant Haystacks (Croydon, 10/91) This took forever to get started. Nagasaki's manager, Lloyd Ryan, didn't want Pat Roach to ref the bout and MC Paul Chalmers spent an eternity relaying messages between Roach and the Nagasaki camp. Instead of whetting folks' appetites it just made them restless. Finally, team Nagasaki agreed to Steve Grey as ref. Haystacks and Nagasaki fucked about for a bit and the Croydon crowd grew fairly rabid as they were wont to do. Haystacks bled, Nagasaki did his Kamikaze Crash finisher on Grey, and Stax unmasked Kendo. Nagasaki refused to return to the ring because he was maskless and the belt they were fighting over changed hands on a technicality. Further explanations were needed and Chalmers spent more time gabbing than Haystacks and Nagasaki had done wrestling. Just a shitty piece of business. Tiger Dalbir Singh vs. Steve Casey (6/15/88) This was during Singh's disappointing run as the Joint Promotions version of the British Heavyweight Champion. But it was 1988 and the wheels had fallen off the wagon years earlier. Still the kind of thing that holds Singh back a bit in my eyes.

I've enjoyed the games I've watched so far. The Cavs may sweep the East, but the Warriors/Blazers and Spurs/Thunder series have been good.

Verne Gagne & Wilbur Snyder vs. Dick The Bruiser & Karl Karlsson (Chicago, 7/17/59) This was a wilder, more chaotic affair than the Los Angeles tags. The faces gave the heels an absolute pasting. If you think heels-in-peril was a new thing in 80s WWF you should see this. What interested me was how animated Gagne was. He leapt about throwing himself into everything. Definitely seemed like he was trying to put on a spectacle. Differentiating the tag gimmick from the more serious minded singles fare.

I don't see a problem with Nakamura losing his first name. How often do people refer to Misawa as Mitsuharu Misawa, etc? Japanese wrestlers are commonly refereed to by their family names. Also Shinsuke is tough to pronounce.

Hey, long time no see. I haven't noticed anything special about his bumping so far, but the footage I've been watching is mostly from his first year as a pro. He did take a bump to the outside with Gagne in their fight. It was such a stock standard finish to a pro-wrestling bout that I didn't think twice about it, but I'm not sure how common it was in the 1950s. Wilbur Snyder & Sandor Szabo vs. Joe Pazandak & Jack McDonald (Los Angeles, 1st fall only) Wilbur Snyder & Sandor Szabo vs. Jack "Sockeye" McDonald and "Dangerous" Danny Savich (Los Angeles) Tag wrestling in Los Angeles was contested under "Australian Rules" -- four 15 minute rounds, best two out of three falls, with a 3 minute rest period between rounds. It's a different beast from your typical Southern style tag. The heels cheat from time to time, but they don't cut the ring off and work the face over. There's no clear face-in-peril segments. Nobody's playing Ricky Morton, and as for the hot tag, it's tepid at best. Despite the length of the bouts, you don't get the double FIP segments you'd see in Don Owen's Portland territory. Instead, it's closer to French catch from the 1960s albeit slightly less rowdy as the Parisian crowds seemed to have had a few more drinks. Other territories in the 50s may have had smoother, more cohesive tag matches, but these Los Angeles bouts (or rather the second one, the first one appears to have been the victim of some copyright claim along the way) are almost like three self-contained falls that add up to give you a two out of three fall score. Snyder wrestles exactly the way he would in a singles bout instead of being the young sensation in peril or even a "blowjob" babyface to the extent that such a role existed in the 1950s. It may have been that Snyder was green, which I discovered Steve Yohe was quite adamant about when he damned the McDonald singles match I enjoyed so much. In any event, the bout was solid, but a little bit formless for those of you who like to sink your teeth into match structure. Szabo was a Hungarian wrestler and a former world champion in the 1940. I was hoping he'd be my next Tibor Szacaks, but it wasn't to be. He wasn't bad as such, but he wrestled a lot softer than I was hoping for. McDonald didn't reach the heights of his singles match with Snyder and both of his partners veered toward the solid more than the spectacular. Snyder kept doing his thing with shoulder tackles and leg work, but whether it's the influence of Yohe or not, his limitations did begin to appear. More so in character work than mechanics. But I think the majority of this Los Angles stuff is from the same month (May, 1954), so it's not really fair to judge him on such a small and compressed sample from his rookie year.

Is there a version of this match that doesn't have the dubbed over fan commentary? Because that ruined it for me.