ohtani's jacket

I'm having a hard time deciding whether big wrestling that's over the top is worse than detail work that is boring.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 13 Tony St Clair vs. Drew McDonald (Denbigh, taped 1988) The jury's still out on McDonald. He has the size and the tools to be a bruiser, but I haven't seen him put it all together yet. Given that Tony St. Clair in 1988 was a more than capable foil, this has to rate as a chance gone begging. Ray Crawley vs. Jacques Le Jacques (10/31/85) This was interesting to say the least. Jacques Le Jacques was this French guy they brought over to face Danny Collins. He looked like a relic from the 70s and wouldn't have looked out of place in the cast of Hair. Even more curiously, he kept going for the same leg attack, which had to have driven Walton bonkers. Arthur Psycho had a pretty good description of Crawley in the video: "In one corner, Ray Crawley, who would later wrestle under a mask as Spiderman. Here, he is a pasty man with a sensible haircut and moustache who looks like an insurance salesman. In fact I thought he'd wandered into the ring by mistake on his way to the toilet." Just one of those extraordinarily ordinary looking British wrestlers who don't seem like athletes at all. Both guys were pretty quick and the bout wasn't bad. Walton did his usual shtick of insisting that a foreigner can't speak a word of English, and this time when Brian Crabtree shoved the mic in JLJ's gob, Kent was spared the embarrassment of the guy being fluent in English. Pete and Danny Collins vs. Robbie Brookside/Steve Regal (1/5/88) This may as well have been a handicap match given how little Pete Collins was in the ring. Fairly standard action between these guys. Regal was still learning the ropes. Marty Jones vs. Tony St Clair (Llantrissant, taped 2/6/91) This was a lot better than I remembered it being. Jones had slowed down and put on a fair bit of weight, but he could still throw a vicious forearm and beat the shit out of St. Clair whenever St. Clair got in close. St. Clair was looking for takedowns and a more ground based approach and the result was a tasty contest between the two veterans. Probably one of those matches that works depending on your mood, but I liked this a lot. Johnny Saint vs. Chic Cullen (Llantrissant, taped 2/6/91) This was also good, and from the same show no less. This was much different from your standard Johnny Saint bout as Reslo by this stage had moved away from the Euro style and was employing a more universal wrestling style not dissimilar to the US style. So instead of dressing and undressing holds, Cullen dished out a methodical beating. Not used to that sort of style, Saint's selling was inconsistent and he kept instinctively going back to escape holds, but that made for an interesting contrast and a change from the usual Saint sleight of hand.

Psicosis vs. Santo's rep has fallen in recent years. MJH took it apart in a fairly convincing manner. I certainly don't think Casas was successful in every match, but the potential was there to deliver something like the Fiera match, which I think is above and beyond the standard Santo match. I can see the argument for Santo's consistency, though. I like a lot of the stuff from Santo's heel run particularly the summer feud with Felino in '97 where he wrestles somewhat differently from standard tecnico Santo. There was a bit of a Japan influence to his work at that time, or so it seemed.

Genichiro Tenryu/Shiro Koshinaka vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Junji Hirata (6/1/98) We fast forward a few years to see Tenryu reignite his feud with Hashimoto. It's a bit jarring how much older Tenryu has become, and takes some getting used to, though the lightning certainly didn't help. The match looked scuzzy in general, especially compared with those shows from the summer of '93 and their bumper crowds. You can always tell when you're watching post 90s peak Japan as it has a distinct look to it -- the workers are older or have filled out, the arenas are smaller or darkened, the crowds have shrunk, the action feels rehashed, and even the costumes seem less bright than before. You can probably chart the decline in Japanese wrestling by its visual look. Hashimoto and Tenryu were in full Wahoo McDaniel/Johnny Valentine mode here. It was cool, but not a patch on the WAR years. Wouldn't classify this as worth anyone's time.

a1wrestling was 13-15 years ago I would buy the shit out of a Sano comp. Williams loves bringing up that thread despite arguing in circles about a really stupid point -- that Sano "won" the 1989-90 Liger feud. The entire analogy about Sano being a ronin after the feud disn't make a lick of sense then and doesn't now, but if it's morphed into a metaphor for Sano being journeyman I guess that's fitting.

Regarding the above, PWFG was initially bankrolled by Hachiro Tanaka and the reason Funaki, Suzuki and Fuke quit was because Fujiwara wanted to send his wrestlers out to shows promoted by SWS, W*ING and Hamada's UWF. Once they lost Tanaka's backing, even Fujiwara himself was basically freelancing. I'm guessing that's why a few of his guys did RINGS dates.

Fujiwara and Maeda also had a match in '96. From memory, Maeda had a falling out with the UWF front office and was suspended for publicly criticising them. The other wrestlers initially took Maeda's side, but the plan to start a third version of UWF fell through. I don't think it was overly acrimonious. In fact, here are the prowrestlinghistory.com cliff notes (presumably from the Observer)

I see where you're coming from, and perhaps there's some truth to what you say, but in every style I follow there's a promotion I don't like. I'm pretty set in my ways about what good shoot style should be, and unfortunately the argument that it still works as pro-wrestling doesn't do much to sway me considering shoot style is meant to be an alternative to traditional pro-wrestling. Others may see it as an offshoot of traditional pro-wrestling, but I've always enjoyed it precisely because it's not conventional pro-wrestling. The way I see it, not enjoying shoot style because it's different from traditional graps and enjoying shoot-style lite because it works as pro-wrestling are two sides of the same coin. By the same token, I understand why UWF-i existed as an alternative to RINGS commercially, and why some people may enjoy it as an alternative to out and out shoot style, but it's hard for me to label it as good.

Don't always have to be different. With the right brawl they can be very similar. But Lucha can give the vibe of being a drunk cirque du soleil, whereas PR feels more like a drunk alley fight. Massive generalization? Yes, no question. Just the vibe that each gives off at times. The only real difference I can think of is that they bleed more in PR and do more gimmick matches. The styles seem like cousins to me. When they do the brawling I get it. But lucha has more to it than that. Haven't seen much else out of PR so can't comment there. Sticking with the brawling then, since "lucha" is the name for professional wrestling in Mexico and in fact made up of various different styles, I can't really understand how anybody who enjoyed Hansen/Colon so much, or thinks Colon is a guy worth investing more time in, would overlook or ignore the great lucha brawlers.

Don't always have to be different. With the right brawl they can be very similar. But Lucha can give the vibe of being a drunk cirque du soleil, whereas PR feels more like a drunk alley fight. Massive generalization? Yes, no question. Just the vibe that each gives off at times. The only real difference I can think of is that they bleed more in PR and do more gimmick matches. The styles seem like cousins to me.

What's the difference between Hansen/Colon and a lucha apuesta feud? Heck, what's the difference between Puerto Rico and lucha in general?

It did get a lot of praise in the Yearbook thread. But it needs wider acknowledgement.

Here we go, the end of the road as far as it goes with Ditch's hosting. I kicked back and enjoyed this with a beer. Why don't people talk about this more? Everyone talks about the 8/93 bout, but you never hear anything about this. The commentator made a big deal out of it being a special non-title match at first, which was kind of annoying, but everything from the stomach kick onward was amazing. Tenryu going into the tsupari attack and drawing a little blood hard way and Hashimoto countering with the enzuigiri over the top of Tiger Hattori's head was amazing. The crowd picked up on the lift in intensity and responded with a huge chant. From that point on, the match was on a knife's edge. When Hashimoto countered with that gut wrench suplex, I may as well have been there in the building in 1994. I'm so glad I watched this so close to the anniversary of Hashimoto's death. Even if this was non-title, after two losses to Tenryu it validated Hashimoto's claim to the ace position and the emotion was palpable after the pin and during the post-match promo. The stretch run was the stuff of dreams and the selling was sublime. Nearfalls and delayed selling can be manipulative when you don't bite on them and there's nothing at stake for you, but with a bit of lubricant and the desire to be drawn in they are as fresh as the day this was wrestled. Maybe I'd feel different about this if I wasn't half-cut, but I can't understand why this isn't talked about more in terms of blowoffs.

Here we go, the end of the road as far as it goes with Ditch's hosting. I kicked back and enjoyed this with a beer. Why don't people talk about this more? Everyone talks about the 8/93 bout, but you never hear anything about this. The commentator made a big deal out of it being a special non-title match at first, which was kind of annoying, but everything from the stomach kick onward was amazing. Tenryu going into the tsupari attack and drawing a little blood hard way and Hashimoto countering with the enzuigiri over the top of Tiger Hattori's head was amazing. The crowd picked up on the lift in intensity and responded with a huge chant. From that point on, the match was on a knife's edge. When Hashimoto countered with that gut wrench suplex, I may as well have been there in the building in 1994. I'm so glad I watched this so close to the anniversary of Hashimoto's death. Even if this was non-title, after two losses to Tenryu it validated Hashimoto's claim to the ace position and the emotion was palpable after the pin and during the post-match promo. The stretch run was the stuff of dreams and the selling was sublime. Nearfalls and delayed selling can be manipulative when you don't bite on them and there's nothing at stake for you, but with a bit of lubricant and the desire to be drawn in they are as fresh as the day this was wrestled. Maybe I'd feel different about this if I wasn't half-cut, but I can't understand why this isn't talked about more in terms of blowoffs.

This was probably the weakest of the matches I've watched so far. It wasn't terrible or anything, but if ever there was a match where guys where trying to hit each other as hard as possible without trying to hurt one another than this was it. Kind of pointless to see them fight after watching them go to war~! so often.

I don't get where this higher highs thing is coming from. Feuding with Casas was arguably the high point of Santo's career. Santo was formulaic -- his trios match performances were almost always the same, his apuesta matches were almost always the same and his title matches were almost always the same. His execution was exquisite, and a lot of his signature stuff is breathtaking no matter how many times you've seen it, but with a guy like Santo the highs people are talking about depend a lot on his opponent. Santo is the constant, but the highs come from Brazo de Oro being in there or Espanto Jr. Casas, in his prime, had a hell of rivalry with Ultimo Dragon, and we know how maligned Ultimo is around here. Casas was more creative and the better performer. Santo wrestled behind a mask while Casas was a brilliant actor and highly expressive, so I won't compare their selling other to say that Santo sold extremely well for a masked wrestler. Santo was the better brawler and bleeder. They're about even on the mat (neither are hugely impressive in that regard, IMO.) Casas was legitimately the best guy in Mexico in '92-93 in a promotion that was falling apart whereas there's no period where Santo is clearly the best guy in the country. I have long suspected that Santo's best work was his early 90s UWA stuff, but we only have a small sampling of it. What Casas was doing in CMLL was more impressive to me because the UWA and later AAA were stacked with talent. For longevity, Casas has had the longer TV career and adapted over time to avoid being culled. Santo often looks good when he shows up on tape, but it's the same formula from the past thirty years. I'd take Casas because you know you're getting a more exciting, outrageous performance that could peak at the level of genius whereas with Santo it's more predictable.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 12 Big Daddy & Scott Valentine vs. Dau Dihiryn (Count Von Zuppi & Dr Death) (Newcastle Emlyn, taped 2/5/92) This is the sort of match I ought to skipping, but I felt like I had to watch Daddy weasel his way up North for his one and only appearance on Reslo TV. Rather amazingly, he was 62 years old here. 62 years old! He brought along one of his brother's kids to tag with him and tried to do the whole BD entrance, but it felt flat without "We Shall Not Be Moved" and a fair amount of the crowd thought he was a tosser. Jimmy Ocean vs. Gary Clwyd (Merthyr, taped 2/4/92) Jimmy Ocean is the kind of guy whom I think a lot of folks around here would like. He didn't have a ton of skill, but that didn't stop him from trying to squeeze every last drop out of his gimmick. A weedy little guy, he kind of took Bobby Barnes' post-peroxide blonde gimmick of garish mismatched colours and a Rick Rude moustache and turned it into the story of an ostentatious little man who thinks he's a much better wrestler than he truly is. He had a female valet here and they did a low rent version of Paula and FInlay that was better than Paula and Finlay. ButchReedMark's mate, Glywd, looked a bit green at times and was out of position a lot, but it didn't take away from the fun of Ocean and his skinny valet. Giant Haystacks/King Kong Kirk vs. Marty Jones/Steve Logan (6/24/87) Haystacks matches are generally better than Daddy matches. We established that a long time ago. They could be fairly underwhelming, though. This never really took any shape and the best thing about it was how feral Haystacks was looking. He got on the mic at the end and screamed for them to bring him men not babies. Skull Murphy & Dave Taylor vs. Boston Blackie & Orig Williams (Pontardawe, taped 4/4/89) Orig Williams & Gary Clwyd vs. Skull Murphy & Robbie Hagan (Llantrissant, taped 2/6/91) A couple of Orig Williams tags. I haven't watched that much Williams. As the promoter/focus of the promotion, you desperately want him to be a capable worker in the Colon mold, but I'm not seeing it. I dunno what his rep was like when he was younger, but his brawling wasn't up to scratch here.

Remy Bayle/Dan Abriot vs. Victor Castilla/Pancho Zapata (11/28/65) This followed the pattern of most of the 60s foreign heels vs. French babies tag matches; and while 40 minutes of the heels beating down the babyfaces and the babyfaces retaliating and being beat down again may wear on some, Castilla and Zapata were really effing good at beating people up. Castilla was the same guy who worked as Quasimodo though apparently he was playing himself here. I guess there's no clear timeline on this stuff. That deformity, or whatever it was on the back of his skull, was truly disgusting/awesome. Zapata was fucking awesome. He had really short legs and came across like a mdiget Terry Rudge. I thought he was spectacular in this. Match kind of petered out because of the length, but so much great brawling in this. I really want to see more Zapata.

This was decent enough. Hashimoto vs. Tenryu is such a natural rivalry that you want to watch every match where they square off and their interactions here didn't disappoint. The match was mostly about Chono taking a massive amount of punishment and then submitting to the WAR Special to further put that submission over. I don't know if it's because of the matches Ditch chose to host, but my real gripe at this point is that the New Japan feud has no direction. Other than that, it's impossible to get sick of Tenryu punting people in the face. This was a good match that became electric once Fujinami bladed. Like I said, it's impossible to get sick of those kicks Tenryu does to the face and head area. They're almost like little jabs, and they bust Fujinami open here in glorious style. The match gets red hot after that. Kido is awesome as the old guy with a killer arm bar, and the part where he lashes out at Tenryu and does it from the apron is one of several brilliant moments. Mostly this match is about Fujinami unleashing his rage though. The finish is terribly flat, but we're left with an image of a bleeding Dragon screaming into the night. With a better finish this would have been an easy four stars. Hara continues to resemble one of Tenryu's ex-marine buddies. I'm surprised they didn't work a match where he goes full-on FIP, tells Tenryu to leave him behind, and Tenryu goes all platoon on everybody.

The Tiger Dalibar Singh match from South Africa, the Terry Rudge match and the first Brookside fancam are worth watching. His '93-94 WCW work is largely better.

Alain Lesage vs. Batistou I don't know if the well has run dry on French catch uploads, but this was certainly the worst one yet. It was wrestled in the provinces and had a bunch of women in traditional garb performing some sort of folk dance. Lesage was doing some sort of woodcutter gimmick. That might have been cool if this had been burly, but it was mostly bullshit. The ref was overly theatrical and the match broke down into terrible ref spots at the end. Batistou looked like he might be fun in a more rough and tumble bout, but Lesage couldn't do shit, and the folks in the country deserved better I thought.

Beefcake was pretty good during that run. Easily the peak of his career.

There's not a lot about Hase that I like. I don't really like his look, I don't like his selling and mannerisms, and I don't like his moveset. He's not a guy whom I actively dislike, but he's not exactly an ideal opponent for Tenryu and I think that came through at times during this bout. Having said that, as a professional wrestler you can't always spend your time wrestling guys you match up well with. Sometimes you've got to take on opponents outside your bubble. I liked pretty much everything Tenryu did here on defence and attack, although after commenting on how easy it is to ignore his execution, he went ahead and did one of the worst sunset flip attempts on record. God it was bad. The bout in general was a mix of good looking stuff and questionable offensive choices. I'm still not sure what that running body press thing was that Hase did and why he didn't just do a baseball slide, and the counter to his Golden Arm Bomber was a flat moment. On the plus side, the Scorpion Deathlock was great and the Golden Arm Bomber he hit was a fantastic moment. The punch drunk selling and refusing to stay down is the kind of thing that would get shat on if it happened in a New Japan ring today, and you could say the same thing about the chop exchanges no matter how hard they were. The finish was unique. It's the kind of finish you wish you'd see more of because it was a different point of attack from the usual finishers, but at the same time the crowd didn't get it, which makes it clear why workers use signature finishers in the first place. Still, as a hardcore it was cool.

There's not a lot about Hase that I like. I don't really like his look, I don't like his selling and mannerisms, and I don't like his moveset. He's not a guy whom I actively dislike, but he's not exactly an ideal opponent for Tenryu, and I think that came through at times during this bout. Having said that, as a professional wrestler you can't always spend your time wrestling guys you match up well with; sometimes you've got to take on opponents outside your bubble. I liked pretty much everything Tenryu did here on defence and attack; although after commenting on how easy it is to ignore his execution, he went ahead and did one of the worst sunset flip attempts on record. God, it was bad. The bout in general was a mix of good looking stuff and questionable offensive choices. I'm still not sure what that running body press thing was that Hase did and why he didn't just do a baseball slide, and the counter to his Golden Arm Bomber was a flat moment as well. On the plus side, the Scorpion Deathlock was great and the Golden Arm Bomber he hit was a fantastic moment. The punch drunk selling and refusing to stay down is the kind of thing that would get shat on if it happened in a New Japan ring today, and you could say the same thing about the chop exchanges no matter how hard they were. The finish was unique. It's the kind of finish you wish we'd see more of because it was a different point of attack from the usual finishers, but at the same time the crowd didn't get it, which makes it clear why workers use signature finishers in the first place. Still, as a hardcore it was cool.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 11 Robbie Brookside vs. Danny Collins (Corwen, taped 4/5/89) These two were the great workrate hopes of the late 80s and I'm happy to say that they delivered a bout here to quell even the most cynical of viewers. Anybody who's followed me in these threads know that I come pretty close to despising Danny Boy Collins, but he was excellent here. The best he's looked outside of the match he had as a teenager where Breaks carried him to a legit masterpiece. Brookside was cursed with not really having the look to succeed. He didn't have the frame to pack on muscle like his buddy Regal and he had kind of an angular face, but he was a good worker. I've seen enough of him now to be confident in saying that. This impressed me a lot as I was predisposed towards thinking this would be weak, but both guys looked great. Pete LaPaque & Tommy Lorne vs. Ritchie Brooks & Jeff Kerry (7/31/85) Blondie Barratt & Tally Ho Kaye vs. Danny Collins & Greg Valentine (7/31/85) Danny Collins & Greg Valentine vs. Pete LaPaque & Tommy Lorne (7/31/85) The Rockers team of Peter LaPaque and Tommy Lorne were so cool. Give them a full 20 minutes and I'm sure they would have been able to put on a classic during this time frame. Tommy Lorne, in particular, was the closest thing British wrestling had to a proper US territorial heel in 1985. This was a tag tournament, which usually isn't the greatest TV, but in this case was super fun because of Lorne and LaPaque. Barratt and Tally Ho Kaye also played their part in a match where Collins and Valentine looked fantastic as the hot young babyface team hitting high impact moves against the gobby heel team. Collins again looked great, which isn't something you'll hear me say a lot about Danny Boy Collins, and the miscommunication between Kaye and Barratt was highly amusing. The finale was building to a great crescendo when they went with a cheap finish where the heels walked out on the match, but at least we heard some of their complaining about having a rematch with a fair ref. All told, this was a winning episode of TV. Johnny South vs. Fuji Yamada (Denbigh, taped 3/15/89) This was slightly better than Yamada's other Reslo bouts, but still nothing special. Johnny was calling himself Shaun South here for some reason. The crowd thought more of Yamada/Liger than I did. Robbie Brookside vs. Lee Thomas (Merthyr, taped 2/4/92) I thought Lee Thomas was going to be the Scottish wrestler from Dundee, but it was some young guy using the same name. Match was neither here nor there, which if you know me means not worth watching.