ohtani's jacket

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 52 53 (Screwed up the numbering of these.) Catweazle vs. Shane Stevens (11/25/86) Short Catweazle squash. I was never much of a Catweazle fan unless he was wrestling McManus and Stevens hasn't shown me much thus far. Instantly forgettable. Greg Valentine vs. Ted Heath (10/15/86) Heath was an old school submission brawler who worked in the Amarillo territory for a number of years. He probably could have torn Valentine apart if he'd wanted, but instead was a total pro and got some nice heat for comedy spots like crotching himself on a posting. Fun little performance. Jimmy Ocean & Doc Dean vs. Danny Boy Collins & John Harvey (Eurosport circa 1991) These guys worked hard but it really was the new wave of European wrestling and not the kind of stuff that first attracted me to the British style. I can't recall seeing Harvey before. He pinched Steamboat's fire breathing entrance, which was another bit of WWF aping. I guess that's to be expected since the WWF boom came later in the UK. Match set up a singles bout between Ocean and Collins, which was another sign the bookers had one eye on the WWF. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jimmy Ocean (Eurosport circa 1991) This had the potential to be kind of neat, but like a lot of Collins matches from this era it was nothing special. Collins was obviously a talented guy but something's not clicking when I watch his stuff. Andy Robin vs. "Ripper" John Raven (5/7/87) I can't say I'm much of a Robin fan, and I get sick of hearing about Hercules the Bear every time he's on, but he was a real throwback to the way wrestlers used to be on ITV. He was clearly a hard nut off screen who pranced about and acted eccentric in the ring. And he was unpredictable in the ring. He tossed the ref about in this particular bout for no particular reason despite being a blue eye and gave Raven the fingers a couple of times. He reminded me a bit of Billy Torontos the way he moved about the ring and that gruff Mike Marino look to him. If he'd worked some cool holds I'd probably like him, but outside of the power lock he didn't have much. Raven had even less and certainly wasn't doing any ripping. Pretty average.

Looks like Bennett was wrestling in the halls for Joint in the early 80s so perhaps that's when his heel run started. Man, I would have liked to have seen some of these bouts -- Bennett vs. Grey, Bennett vs. Haward, Bennett vs. Cortez.

Mike Bennett vs. Steve Logan (3/4/86) This was the final of the 1986 Grand Prix Belt tournament, and my what an ugly belt. I've said it before, but Joint Promotions had the ugliest belts in wrestling. This was a good little bout, but a bit low key for a tournament final. I was impressed with Logan's counters and thought he did a good job working the mat. Bennett brought his usual bag of tricks and was flirting with a public warning the entire time. The ref was Jeff Kaye (remember him?) Every time he'd threaten to give Bennett a warning, Bennett would take him by the arm and gently guide him to the opposite corner. It was a neat tactic, but of course there was no mention of their history. That felt like another of those never-ending missed opportunities that the bookers never seemed to cash in on. One thing that was coming along nicely was Bennett's heel act. He was starting to find his character in the ring and his heel work in '86 was stronger than in '85. He won the Grand Prix Belt and got a winner's medal to go along with it. He seemed poised to win even more silverware in the Golden Grappler Trophy tournament when suddenly he was gone. He defeated Brooks in the quarters yet somehow it was Brooks who wrestled in the semis. There's a copy of the semi out there, but I don't have it so I'm not sure how Walton explained the situation. They probably disguised it as an injury withdraw. I'm not sure what happened to Bennett, but by the end of April he was off Joint Promotion cards. He may have jumped to All-Star. It seems very strange that they'd book him to win a major tournament and then severe ties with him. It's a shame too because he could have produced more (at least in '86 when the TV was stronger relative to '87 and '88.) Mike Bennett vs. Kid Chocolate (2/27/86) This was the semis for the Grand Prix Belt. Bennett deserves credit for making Kid Chocolate seem more interesting than usual. The crowd got right behind Chocolate during the opening fall and so did Walton. You won't hear Chocolate get too many bigger pops than the one he got for pinning Bennett. Bennett's tricks are almost always the same in each bout, but he makes his opponents look so good and he was excellent at tournament bouts (and let's face it, Joint's television tournaments weren't much better than the ones in the U.S.) Mike Bennett vs. Alan Dennison (4/23/79) This was some choppy footage that survived from the late 70s. I'd seen it before but had no memory of it. Bennett was wrestling as a blue eye here, so unless he did his heel act on the indy circuit, I think the Heritage guys had their wires crossed about when he turned heel. The footage is too clipped to make much of an impression and I'm not a big Dennison fan in the first place. Closing out the comp are some local news stories about a chain smoking granny named Blanche Lecrass who was threatened with a ban if she didn't stop attacking the heels and a council's dilemma about whether to replace wrestling with opera. Here's a newspaper article about Blanche: https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=n-8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT36&lpg=PT36&dq=wrestling+bristol+granny+ban&source=bl&ots=jjR7eYmNJ1&sig=1BO1nQr9oPWibtn2D1Aili4ZOTM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwishbjLl8LKAhXmFqYKHUBxBfAQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=wrestling%20bristol%20granny%20ban&f=false

Now there's music to my ears.

Blasphemy.

Did Fujiwara really *do* a porn, all I know is he directed one for a variety TV show. That Fujiwara segment is pretty funny. It's from a late night comedy show starring the famous owarai duo Utchan Nanchan. It's kind of surreal watching Fujiwara drink a bottle of booze while directing a porn scene, but what makes it even more surreal is that Rumi Kazama and Shinobu Kandori are watching it on a monitor along with Nanchan. I found the covers for the two Fujiwara tapes. I think Champion might have been involved in distributing the second one, Thunder Ecstasy. They used to have some dodgy homemade uncensored porn in their shop.

I meant with overseas fans who've only seen him work in Japan, but I don't think he's an overwhelming favourite of the Heritage guys either since most of them had stopped watching by the 80s.

I don't like Atlantis' selling in his early days ,but you should check out the El Faraon match from '85 if you liked that Satanico bout.

When people talk about Fujinami being an ace are they talking about his juniors days or his IWGP Heavyweight run? I don't see the argument for him being a better ace than Tsuruta. He absolutely blows Jumbo away on the mat. There is no way Jumbo should be a 10 with matwork figured in. FWIW, I don't think getting a great match out of Dynamite Kid should be figured into Fujinami's case. Dynamite Kid was a good worker.

How much WoS would you need to watch to adequately judge Breaks, or anyone else for that matter? I've been doing my European wrestling thread on WKO since 2009 and have chopped and changed my opinions on guys countless times. And even though I've watched hundreds of WoS matches that doesn't mean people are going to agree with my opinions. Take Boscik for example. He's a guy it took me forever to come around on and yet most people seem to dig him straight away. The joy of watching WoS is that it's an untapped goldmine of new wrestlers to discover. I could understand telling people you gotta watch more WoS if I thought Breaks was overrated, but he's not.

I don't think that list is all that dissimilar from the workers the rest of us enjoy. And the things you like about lucha are the same things we enjoy. I also wasn't a fan of lucha brawling at first and generally prefer title matches and trios bouts. I agree that you have to accept the conventions for what they are, but after a while you start to see which workers excelled at working with those conventions. You have to do the same thing with European wrestling, but for some reason people aren't so put off by it. I wonder if it's because Walton is there to explain it all while lucha is confusing as hell at the best of times.

This really is a peculiar hang up you have with lucha, Parv. Surely, you're not that uncomfortable with people voting for luchadores. alex, I think guys like Lizmark are hurt by the way folks view footage. There's a difference between folks who watch whatever they can find online and folks who comb through tape lists looking for stuff they're never heard anybody talk about. Unless you're the type of person who watches whatever lucha they can find online, you're probably looking for that one really good Lizmark that convinces you he's worth pursuing with, and not going to bother with a really good Lizmark performance in an otherwise average trios. Experienced lucha viewers know what matches look interesting on paper, but it's tougher if you don't know the cast of characters, and really us hardcores haven't done much of the legwork to single out the under the radar stuff. Getting whole TV episodes of lucha and seeing the neat stuff like Lizmark's return run in CMLL is a whole different level of lucha connoisseur. But it also seems that guys aren't that high on classic lucha tecnicos. I've always appreciated guys like Lizmark because it's tougher to find a good tecnico than a rudo. There's also footage issues and the fact that lucha isn't an inherently great singles match style. Plus the Satanico matches are disappointing.

And never a more overrated player was ever put on their back.

Well, I just went down a rabbit hole in Japanese there's no escaping from, but the Toyota flick is softer than the softest shit they'd show on HBO late night on a Friday or Saturday when I was a kid. Amusingly enough, it gets one star ratings on the website I checked. It also stars Cuty Suzuki fwiw.

A lot of the matches on that Juarez channel are the tercera caida only. I'm curious about Casas' shaved hair in the Eddy match. It's always been assumed that Eddy took Casas' hair sometime in the late 80s, but the tag seems to be from the early 90s.

I only just found out recently that Colt had a match for Joint Promotions that was deemed too violent for TV. Then he was fired after the Crabtrees didn't appreciate his antics during a Royal Albert Hall show. Apparently, he was pretty wasted during a Big Daddy tag where he'd been accompanied to the ring by Joe Cocker. Brian Dixon swooped in and started billing him as the man too bad for TV and he had a nice run with All-Star.

There are also some matches from when he first began his 00s reinvention such as the 2001 El Dandy match and the 2002 Solar bout.

This thread has become anti-workrate.

Mike Bennett vs. Jackie Turpin (6/5/85) This was a neat bout between Bennett and Turpin. Bennett was closer to Pete Roberts than Jim Breaks when it came to charisma, but he was an excellent wrestler who was just as good at getting his opponent over as he was at drawing his own heat. This was a catchweight contest with Bennett being the heavier man. He could have easily brushed Turpin aside since Jackie was a forgotten man at this point, but instead he crafted a bout where Turpin looked feisty and competitive. Turpin being a former boxer often got disqualified in his early days for punching and they did a nice job of weaving that boxing background into match tapestry. Bennett smothered Turpin on the mat as he had done with Collins in their first meeting. Turpin reacted with a slap and from there the bout deteriorated into Bennett using moves and Turpin retaliating with punches. Szakacs almost threw the bout out but decided to let them continue and Bennett made the most of his opportunity. It was a bout he was always going to win, but he did a nice job of making Turpin seem like more than a JTTS and turning into a neat little scrap. And he even showed some swagger by walking over to Turpin's corner and showing him the towel with "Marvellous" written on it. Mike Bennett vs. Clive Myers (9/3/85) Myers was fired up for this and looked to open a can of whoop ass on Bennett. It was a lot more showy than Bennett's bouts with Collins and Brooks. If you saw this before Bennett's other fights you'd think he was more of a classic stooging type. It was fun watching Bennett evade Myers' kicks, but Clive's aggression overshadowed the bout too much for my liking. There was no way he was going to go over Bennett clean either, so they ended it on a DQ. I'm not sure why Szakacs was always given the unenviable task of stopping a bout, but he seemed to do it more than any other referee. Mind you, crowds were always hollering for refs to throw heels out, so I guess it didn't make him unpopular. Disappointing bout if you're expecting a classic. Fun watch if you want something to kick back to.

The problem with minis is that their runs never last that long. The mini division in 1997 was amazing and then it fell apart when Virus won promotion to the heavier ranks. The AAA minis you like were primarily on the scene in '94. Recent minis probably have stronger cases. Demus and Pierrothito have been around for a lot longer than Espectrito, for example.

If Atlantis' matches against the likes of Fiera and Emilio Charles Jr were just a bit better he'd be a slum dunk pick. It's weird that he has a rep as an apuesta worker now as he was never that great at them in his prime. The Mano Negra bout in particular is a real disappointment since Negra was a good worker. Another thing that hurts Atlantis from a singles match perspective is that he was overly fond of shock falls where he'd score a pinfall or submission in seconds. I'd take him over Villano III, though, who doesn't often meet my expectations.

Matt, Psycho uploaded the Breaks/Saint match from '78, which you'll probably be interested in.

Are you sure it wasn't Felino? I keep debating whether to buy a best of Caras comp just to get that Panther match.

I'm not sure if he's a top 100 guy, but Fiera's case is helped by how good he looks as a secondary guy in early 90s trios matches. I always got the impression that he was washed up and broken down in the 90s, which to an extent he was, but he's really good in those trios in his rudo role and a bright spot both pre-split and post-split. The Casas match is a classic as well. Black Terry looks solid in his younger days but not significantly better than a lot of swell lucha journeymen. Old man Black Terry is a lucha great, IMO. Early Navarro is way more questionable to me than early Terry. I also think it's kind of unfair to separate Navarro from Solar. They're like a great songwriting pair. Virus at this stage is possibly more deserving of a top 100 placing than either Terry or Navarro, but I say that a few years removed from watching Terry and Navarro regularly.

I like Malenko in short TV matches like Sat Night or The Pro, not so much in longer singles matches, but I respect the talent and skill it takes to wrestle like that more than a limited guy using his tools to tell stories in the ring. Earthquake's not a great example since he had a fair bit of skill to begin with, but I don't believe for a second that Earthquake told great stories in the ring. Earthquake was a guy doing his thing like most other workers. He worked to a standard that most workers should attain and generally do. All of the things you could possibly praise Earthquake for, such as this who my character is, this is how I'm going to portray it in the ring, these are the moves I'm going to do, this is the way I'm going to move, seem like basic pro-wrestling to me. If he knew how to work a good little match on top of that, great, but it's not that smart to me. I mean compare him to Vader. I'm not even that big a Vader fan, but I think most people would gravitate toward him over Tenta if they really had to make a choice. Malenko had structural issues just as many workers do (even great ones), but I don't think his skill should be downplayed. I know not everyone goes in for matwork, but I mostly wanted to post because I think it's wrong to say that everyone has moved away from workrate. Skill level is still the most important determining factor for me when judging a worker.