ohtani's jacket

God, Masa Chono is the worst. Who's worse between Chono, Mutoh and Koshinaka? That should be the subject of a podcast. One of the best things about the WAR vs. New Japan feud (and man do I refuse to call it W-A-R and not War) is that you get to see Tenryu belittle these substandard New Japan musketeers. He was at his dickish best here. I loved the flick of the sweat off his pecs. Chono's selling was goofy as shit, but man did Tenryu lay those chops in, and his lariats were pretty brutal too. Of course with Chono selling so much, New Japan were bound to take this, but Fujinami dialed back to the clock with the tope to take Tenryu out and the flying knee out of nowhere to knock Hara's block off. Not one of the better entries in the feud because of Chono, but Tenryu was awesome once again.

A lot of people seem to like Tamura/Yamamoto. Volk/Kohsaka was a good series, as was Volk/Yamamoto. Tamura/Kohsaka and Kohsaka/Yamamoto were notable series, but only really produced one great singles match (two in the case of Tamura/Kohsaka depending on your how view the U-Style bout.) You should check out the three Tamura/Sakuraba fights in UWF-i, which was a rarely case of the promotion actually doing shoot style. Also you need to watch Carl Greco against anybody and everybody. Another notable series was Shamrock/Funaki, but their fights were a tad boring IMO.

Something about Duncan being better than Bird doesn't sit right with me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what Pops and Duncan have built since Timmy was drafted, and last year's Spurs were sublime in terms of ball movement and team basketball, but Game 7, who would you rather have, Duncan or Bird? Even in Duncan's prime where he was capable of putting up a quadruple double in a Finals game, it didn't seem like he could dominate a game like Shaq. jdw mentioned that 2003 side, but Duncan only carried them in terms of being the lead scorer. He needed help winning that title. He's a great, great player, but I don't think you could put as much on his back as you could Bird. Bird just seems so much more competitive to me even though Duncan is obvious competitive in his own stoic way, but Bird was at a Jordan level of competitiveness. The list of guys who were as competitive as Bird during Bird's prime NBA years (and even in his post-prime) would be a fairly short list. I get the longevity argument, though.

A match where the work they do is more important than the narrative presented. Or, in some cases, where there is no narrative present.

I thought Mysterio continued to work to a high personal standard in 2011 but the quality of his opponents took a nosedive. The Alberto Del Rio bout was the best I saw them have and a pretty good TV bout up until the cheap finish, though I guess it gave us the age old image of the manager being beaten up in place of the heel. Elimination Chamber matches are gimmick stunt fests and a poor man's Wargames, so boo to that. The Rhodes "Phantom of the Opera" shit was more cheesy than a day time soap. Rhodes did his best to get it over and the match itself was tolerable for a falls count anywhere bout, though he did keep running away from Rey when Rey was setting up spots he wanted to do off the barricade and down the stairs. I thought Rhodes took the 619 really well, fwiw. The CM Punk match was a boring attempt at having a straight match wrestling match between the two and kind of highlighted how spot reliant the modern WWE style is in that they can't really build a traditional match in such a replay heavy era. The tag was completely unremarkable and I can only imagine it's memorable because the Miz and that Riley guy have few other memorable bouts. I really didn't see how Rey carried the bout in any way. He contributed an equal share to the other workers and oftentimes wasn't even in the ring. The Cena match was good. Very good actually. I can't state how much better JR is on commentary than the current crew. Even when he has to say stock phrases like "the WWE Universe" it's a thousand times more tolerable than Michael Cole. Lawler is a million times better with Ross than he is with Cole and JBL and together they make everything so much more tolerable. Really good TV match that was super competitive without the need to go epic. Cena looked really good in this and the nearfalls, finishers and kick outs were all logical, well build and far more memorable than the spamming in other bouts. I'll probably watch a few more bouts here and there, but I'll close by saying that I can understand why people think Mysterio is a great worker. He's extremely consistent and almost always delivers a good performance in spite of injuries, booking and the general repetitiveness of his character and wrestling style. Like most wrestlers, I think he's only had a handful of truly great matches, but he's had very few lows and that was something that impressed me over the 10 years I watched. If I were going to watch any of this stuff again, my preference would be for the Smackdown Six era, 2009 and 2006 in that order. His best opponent in terms of peak matches was Eddie, but his best feud was with Jericho. I think top 10 is too high, but if I were voting I would definitely consider him for the top 30.

Never presume -- Miquel Perez Jr and the Little Prince would give him a contest.

I have a hard time believing that a promotion with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer can have such rich psychology; and even if it does, I the question the logic in using narratives that fly over the head of most viewers. There's enough context provided from the pre-match video packages and from the commentators that even if you can't appreciate the hidden layers you should still be able to enjoy the narrative on a surface level, but I can't because I think it's poorly executed. I do want to take back what I said about him not being able to work workrate matches as I just watched his bout with Rey Mysterio Jr again, which is a perfectly good workrate bout.

John Cena vs. Kevin Owens (6/14/15) This was in all likelihood worse than the first match. I say "likelihood" because I'm not sure it's worth comparing. I don't recommend Parv watch this match at all. The two criticisms coming out of the MITB show thread that I strongly agree with are that if any other wrestler had this match they'd be criticised for it and that it was finisher spam. I thought Owens' character work was good before and after the match; it was everything between bells that was a problem. I'm not sure why people claim that Cena is good at workrate matches when it's clear that he's not. His transitions are so unbelievably poor, especially his counters into the STF, and his missed punch/clothesline choreographed spin arounds are the most choreographed thing you will see in a day's wrestling viewing. How many different finishers did Owens burn through here? He used Jericho's finisher and Michaels' to name two. I thought the WWE was a bit more protective about things like that. And man do they go to the finishers/nearfalls early. A couple of shoulder tackles and you're hitting finishers on each other? Some of the finishers looked good in isolation (i.e. on replay), but it's tough to care about the ebb and flow of it if you're an outsider looking in. The big storyline of Cena claiming to the ref (Cena never does this! Wow!) ought to be more ammo for the Bret vs. Cena thread since Bret was a million times better at losing it with an official, and isn't Cena's over-acting when he couldn't get a three count the kind of thing we criticise Orton and Edge for? As for pulling out new moves, it would help if they looked good. Or if it wasn't video game button mashing. The Code Red was stupid and doesn't fit Cena's character. He already has an ugly enough moveset without adding that sort of thing to it. And why is he working a Wrestlemania type epic in an upper midcard feud anyway? Doesn't he have any sense of scale vis a vis card placement? I'll stop now. Match was around **

Can't say I think much of Suzuki's early work. To me he's like a Negro Navarro or a Black Terry in that he completely reinvented himself as something better in his later years.

I hate ladder matches with a passion. Why is there a ladder in the ring? It's stupid. A ladder doesn't belong in a wrestling ring. A cage match makes sense to me conceptually but a ladder match is fundamentally wrong. And falls count anywhere matches; god I loath falls count anywhere matches.

What did you think of Cena in the match?

Except that most people would correctly identify sport as theatre and side shows as spectacle. You can't really escape the fact that pro-wrestling is trying to elicit the same response as work we generally refer to art. The package just isn't as appealing in the same way that the soaps are just TV and the top twenty is disposable. It's low brow when it fancies us and transcendent when we want to write a glowing review. So our own treatment of it is inconsistent.

But again that's true of any form of entertainment. Just replace "money drawn" with "records sold" or "box office." Do you really think producers in Hollywood look down with envy at some indie film with a shoe-string budget that did well at film festivals? Are record executives satisfied with critically acclaimed albums that don't sell? You're right that wrestlers are preoccupied with ticket gates and the houses they drew, especially when reminiscing about their careers, and that they seem more focused on the business than talking about their craft, but I don't think that's conclusive evidence that their craft isn't an art. Since wrestlers at least put some thought into what they do, what would you equate it to if not an art? I mean they actually do have to think about what they're doing to some degree rather than obsessing over ticket stubs all the time. What do you call the learned skill that is pro-wrestling?

What about Santo?

elliott, to answer your questions simply, the original UWF was meant to be NJPW mark II but turned into NJPW-lite when guys wouldn't jump (especially Inoki) and they couldn't get a TV deal. Sayama came on board, who had been staunchly in the anti-Shinma/Inoki camp during the coup of '83 and Shinma was given the bum's rush. Then Sayama and the Gotch boys took over and introduced the idea of a promotion build around real pro-wrestling (as in the catch-as-can style that Gotch had been taught at Riley's gym in Wigan.) Fujiwara was Gotch's star pupil, if you like, and responsible for both training guys and implementing much of the stylistic changes. Sayama came from a different martial arts background and was pushing his shooto philosophies and therefore there was always an underlying tension between Sayama's MMA leanings and Gotch's hooking background. Shoot style the first time round was a work in progress and a lot of the guys still did pro-style moves like tombstone piledrivers and other crap. They struggled with cashflow and couldn't get a TV deal because they didn't run enough shows on a monthly basis, and the straight up pro-style guys like Rusher Kimura balked and quit almost straight away so they had a tiny roster outside of the touring Brits. They shut up shop after the backstage problems between Sayama and the Gotch boys boiled over to shoot incidents in the ring. This was the death knell right here: Maeda was suspended and later fired, despite being the ace, and Sayama walked out and started Shooto, which as Tim Cooke and Eduardo will agree, would latter put on some of the most exciting MMA fights in Japan. The Gotch boys headed back to New Japan and feuded with Inoki and the NJPW guys. That lasted a couple of years and then there was another famous shoot incident between Maeda and Choshu where Maeda was suspended and fired (again.) That led to the formation of what we usually called UWF II, but is more commonly known as Newborn UWF in Japan (with the old UWF being the casual name for the first promotion.) Maeda was the baddest motherfucker on the planet at this point, aside from maybe Mike Tyson, and was a massive draw. The Newborn UWF was initially a tremendous success headlined by a rivalry between Maeda and Takada. Their monthly shows sold out in minutes, they were the first Japanese promotion to run the Tokyo Dome, etc., etc. and they did it all without TV. They also ushered in clean finishes and all the other talking points people used to make about UWF II. More importantly for us, the God of shoot style, Yoshiaki Fujiwara wrangled his way out of his New Japan contract, took his two prodigies Suzuki and Funaki with him, jumped to the new UWF promotion, took shoot style to the next level, ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Lord. Funaki became the big story in 1990 when he returned from injury and started beating everyone leading to a big fight against the top ace Maeda. And it would have been fascinating to have seen what came next, but egos and mismanagement and poor book keeping led to a splintering of the three main power brokers, Maeda, Takada and Fujiwara, which was somewhat amicable and perhaps inevitable but hugely political and tremendously ego-driven. Loss already outlined the difference in the splinter promotions, but basically Maeda gave us RINGS which is like Mozart or Beethoven, Fujiwara gave us PWFG, which was like Thelonious Monk, and Takada gave us UWF-i, which was like Liberace. PWFG pushed the form the most through Funaki and Shamrock, but was a rinky dink indy promotion and increasingly needed to co-promote with other promotions to survive (especially in the era of interpromotional co-operation and cross promotion feuds.) Funaki and Suzuki were completely against that so split off and formed Pancrase, which was quasi-MMA promotion that was a bit liberal with its worked aspects but developed over time into a stylistic form that greatly influenced RINGS at its peak. PWFG eventually folded and out of the ashes was born the hybrid promotion BattlARTS run by Yuki Ishikawa. UWF-i was a farce, but it had two hugely important young guys named Sakuraba and Tamura, the first of which would go on to achieve fame in PRIDE and the second who flirted with jumping to Pancrase but eventually joined RINGS and together with Volk Han, Kohsaka and Yamamoto created bouts which are generally regarded as the highwater mark of shoot style. UWF-i eventually went out of business, briefly reopened as Kingdom and then morphed into PRIDE. PRIDE was a phenomenally entertaining MMA promotion that was the hottest thing in Japan in the early to mid 00s and hurt traditional Japanese pro-wrestling completely and literally killed off shoot style, but was easily the best thing about the Japanese scene in the 2000s and had fights that were better than any worked bouts during that decade. RINGS more or less resorted to MMA in order to survive, but Maeda was basically leaning in that direction anyone and would later promote a second MMA promotion Heroes. Tamura's short lived U-Style promotion was the last real attempt at promoting a shoot style fed aside from maybe shows under the Futen/BattlARTS/Big Mouth Loud banners barring whatever recent feds I'm unfamilar with. Shoot style still exists as a stylistic feature in matches, but there's no promotion committed to it as far as I'm aware, and MMA itself has had its day in Japan. That was extremely rough and dirty, but at least it's a starting point.

Here is my list of great shoot style bouts. These are my personal picks and may not reflect matches which are actually good, though this was an attempt at reaching consensus and I included some matches that rated well from the Other Japan set. UWF Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (9/7/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Nobuhiko Takada (10/22/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (12/5/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (1/16/85 handheld) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Akira Maeda (3/2/85) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (7/17/85) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (9/11/85) UWF 2 Nobuhiko Takada vs Akira Maeda (11/10/88) Nobuhiko Takada vs Bob Backlund (12/22/88) Yoji Anjoh vs Masakatsu Funaki (6/14/89) Masakatsu Funaki vs Tatsuo Nakano (7/24/89) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Kazuo Yamazaki (7/24/89) Akira Maeda vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara (8/13/89) Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (2/9/90) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Kazuo Yamazaki (4/15/90) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Masakatsu Funaki (9/13/90) Nobuhiko Takada vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara (10/25/90) Akira Maeda vs. Masakatsu Funaki (10/25/90) UWF-i Naoki Sano vs. Nobuhiko Takada (12/20/92) Naoki Sano vs. Nobuhiko Takada (10/14/94) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Kazushi Sakuraba (5/27/96) PWFG Naoki Sano vs. Wayne Shamrock (5/19/91) Naoki Sano vs. Minoru Suzuki (7/26/91) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Masakatsu Funaki (7/26/91) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Yusuke Fuke (2/24/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Bart Vale (6/25/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Wayne Shamrock (12/5/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Joe Malenko (6/1/93) Kingdom RINGS Volk Han vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (6/15/95) Volk Han vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (8/24/96) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (9/25/96) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (1/22/97) Tsuyoshi Kosaka vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (4/4/97) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (4/22/97) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Nikolai Zouev (6/21/97) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (9/27/97) Volk Han vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (5/29/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (6/27/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (9/21/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (6/24/99) BattlArts/Big Mouth Loud/Fu-ten/Misc Daisuke Ikeda vs. Carl Greco (2/20/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Alexander Otsuka (2/28/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (4/15/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (5/27/98) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (8/29/99) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Carl Greco (6/9/08) Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono vs. Manabu Suruga/Takahiro Oba (4/9/09) Takeshi Ono & Takahiro Oba vs. Manabu Suruga & Kengo Mashimo (5/30/10) U-Style Kiyoshi Tamura vs Dokonjonosuke Mishima (8/7/04) Hiroyuki Ito vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (8/18/04) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Hiroyuki Ito (10/9/04) Other Promotions (New Japan, etc.) Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (NJPW 1/10/86) Shinya Hashimoto vs. Victor Zangiev (NJPW 4/24/89) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW 6/1/94)

Long, rambling, overwrought, nit-picky, non-proof read review here -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-463-vintage-negro-casas-of-the-day-18/

Negro Casas vs. Mocho Cota, hair vs. hair, CMLL 9/23/94 This was the main event from the first weekend of Anniversary celebrations in 1994. A show which only drew 4,000 people; a shockingly poor number for a CMLL Anniversary Show. For some reason, the promotion decided to make it an una caida one fall, presumably because of the glut of apuesta matches they ran over the Anniversary Show weekends. I may as well get my first bias out of the way and confess that, outside of tournament lucha, una caida lucha is something I'd usually turn my nose up at. And an una caida apuesta match is just wrong. It changes the entire psychology. The old Ventura talking point of being up a fall and having the leverage to drop one is thrown out the door, so you have guys refusing to give in to holds they'd ordinarily submit to, which stretches out the match and disrupts the rhythm. Luchadores are so used to working two out of three falls that an una caida match presents a unique challenge. The glass half full perspective would be that it changes the complexion of the match and that it's interesting to see how the workers adapt, but to me an apuesta should be a crowning moment and not an experiment. Casas, playing a pure babyface this year, borrowed Dandy's old trick of being beat up while still wearing a jacket. He wore this stonewashed denim jacket with a picture of a tiger on the back, which was a strange fashion choice for Negro Casas but typified how everything about the bout was a little bit off. He bled immediately, and would have lost the primera caida straight away if this had been an ordinary apuesta bout; but instead there was a prolonged beat down which revolved around Casas injuring his leg on the apron and his ankle buckling when he did a back flip off the top turnbuckle. Cota naturally smelt blood in the water and began stomping on the leg before twisting and contorting it into all sorts of unnatural positions. Cota had been pretty good up until this point, dragging Casas about by the hair and giving him these short knees to the head. Casas was a bit patchy. His selling was okay from a distance, but up close his acting wasn't that flash and the cut didn't look so nasty. I didn't like his attempted comeback either. He was pandering to the crowd with a guillotine move to send that fuzz of Cota hair flying, but it wasn't angry enough. If a guy's beating the crap out of you, it's probably better to strike back instead of playing to the gallery. Call me picky, but it was like watching the shine in a comedy match. (I think that's the first time I've ever used the term "shine." Matt D is rubbing off on me.) Next, Casas loosened the laces on his boot, possibly because his ankle was swelling up and he wanted the doctor to take a look at; it was hard to tell because they cut to commercial then replayed the injury. Suddenly, Casas' boot was off and he was hobbling about with one boot on and an extremely exposed sock. Cota went after it well; kicking at the exposed limb while Casas winced in the corner. He never failed to remind Casas or any of the folks watching that it was a hair match as he grabbed Casas by those greasy locks any time he transitioned from stomping on Negro's foot to putting him in a submission hold. There was a nice touch of Negro struggling to get his footing even when Cota pulled him up by the hair, and to Casas' credit he struggled well while in those holds. Casas was looking for a time out in the corner after taking another mangling in the ropes, and when he slipped out onto the floor, Cota flung his boot into the air. Thus began the mystery of what happened to Casas' shoe, which I became preoccupied with the first time I watched the bout. I liked Cota's strikes in the corner and the knees, and Casas' ineffective attempt at a lariat escape out of the corner, which Cota was able to shrug off and keep on his man. All of this was good stuff albeit utterly dominant from Cota and aching for a payoff. Watching it a second time, I really couldn't fault anything that Cota did in the beat down phase. The issue was with how stretched out the fall was. If you're a fan of limbwork -- and they're out there those limbwork fans -- the consistency with which he targeted the leg and focused his attack on it, while still pulling Casas about by the hair, was impressive heel work. As I said, Casas' selling was good from a distance but looked too much like whining close up. There were times when it looked good and times when it didn't, but it was a difficult proposition for Casas as he was forced into prolonged selling in a situation where he should have submitted a million times over. After a while, it went from being heroic to plain stupid as the beat down wore on for far too long and became something quite unnatural in a lucha libre context. I can appreciate the quality of the work in the passage where Casas threw a punch and Cota shook it off and stomped the crap out of the leg again (and man are his boots cool -- check out the rad hand design), but even Jesus didn't suffer that much on the cross. There's just no way that Casas should have been able to withstand all that. Even if you use the rationale that luchadores usually submit because they have a fall in hand (meaning it doesn't make sense to sustain any further damage) and that in fact they're capable of enduring far more pain if the rules are different, which in this case they were, it was still too bloody long! And do you really want prolonged limbwork in your apuesta matches? Hell no! You want a babyface comeback that's just as violent as the rudo's attack. Apuesta matches are part survival, part revenge, and there simply wasn't enough vengeance in this bout. Anybody who's ever watched a pro-wrestling match knows that Casas is going to win after taking such a beating. It wouldn't be just for him to lose or make much sense in the context of this worked sport. The key then is how satisfying it is. This is where they began to err as instead of Cota getting his comeuppance he continued to take too much of the bout. Even when Casas pulled his old rudo trick of a low blow, and smiled to himself in the ropes, Cota sold it ever so briefly and went after the leg again. There was no breathing space on that at all, and he went to the well again on the pin attempts. Cota was an excellent worker -- even the broken down version you see here. He was a weird looking dude, and that was off putting for people at the time, but the shit he does is cool, like that diving stomp from the second turnbuckle, which is the antithesis of top rope moves during the height of the mid-90s workrate phenomenon. Even so, he wore out his welcome here. The idea behind the finishing stretch appeared to be that Cota had been so utterly dominant that each of Casas' attempts at a counter were brushed aside. And Casas seemed to be playing with the idea that he was badly injured and had taken so much punishment in the bout that a flash pin or a submission out of nowhere was the only way that he was going to realistically win the bout. But Bret Hart playing possum he wasn't and the finish was shit. That's what I'm going to call it -- shit. I put some thought into that and I'm sticking with my choice -- shit. You win on back suplex (into a side slam or whatever it is you call that) when the guy was able to fight the waistlock? And he kicked out right after the three. I mean I hate to sound like Monsoon, but he didn't even hook the leg. How could Casas possibly have held Cota down for a three count on that move? It doesn't make any sense. Cota's brushing aside everything because he hasn't been worn down enough and a back suplex and lateral press is enough? Una caida lucha -- not my thing. Sustained selling and limbwork in lucha -- not my thing. Apuesta matches that are light on blood and don't have great selling -- not my thing. Lopsided bouts that end with ridiculous pinfalls -- not my thing. Cota's limbwork was outstanding if you value that sort of thing, and his rudo performance was more than solid. Casas wasn't at his world beating best, but I don't expect people to be quite as finicky about his performance as I was. It wasn't a great bout, and suffered I thought from an unnatural psychology that greatly hindered what you'd usually expect from a lucha apuestas bout; but it was worth watching for no other reason that it's overlooked Cota, and Cota is a guy where we can basically digest everything we have on tape. The mystery of Casas' missing boot was resolved when an old guy tried to give it to him at the end of the bout. At first I thought he was a member of the public who picked it up and kept it safe until the end of the bout, but then I noticed that he took Casas' jacket from a guy in the front row who helped Negro remove it early in the bout. I guess he was the props guy. Come to think of it, I don't recall either guy having a second, which was odd. My eternal thanks to alexoblivion for providing the bout. I'm sorry it wasn't my cup of tea. I imagine there are plenty of people who would enjoy it more than me particularly if they don't care so much about traditional conventions of lucha libre or they're not so picky about whether Negro Casas is making adequate facial expressions or not. Still, 4,000 for the show. What a disaster.

Here is a picture of the original company name on a Japanese VHS tape:

It was originally called the UWF then it changed its name to Universal Pro-Wrestling Co. Ltd. The company generally referred to itself as Universal.

Here is some info about the original UWF -- http://www.prowrestlinghistory.com/shoot/uwf/uwfabout.html It was born out of the 1983 New Japan coup described here -- http://wiki.puroresu.com/Universal_Wrestling_Federation Basically, it was originally envisioned to be a new version of New Japan broadcast on rival station Fuji TV and that's why it was similar to New Japan in both presentation and roster prior to Gotch's students taking over. Hamada's UWF was actually covered the other day -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31220-hamadas-uwf/

I thought this was extremely good for what they set out to achieve. It was a much more minimalist, stripped back style than the wrestling that was in vogue at the time, and the beginning was largely masochistic with both wrestlers challenging each other to hit them as hard as they could. That might not be to everyone's tastes and was a precursor of a lot of the modern forearm exchange spots, but Tenryu and Hashimoto tend to be a lot more violent. The complexion of the match changed when Tenryu became injured. I thought the commentators did a good job of foreshadowing the knee injury and Tenryu sold it pretty well except for the spot where he was struggling to reach the ropes. Not really a natural spot for Japanese wrestlers that. The crowd was super hot for his comeback which made for a fantastic atmosphere and though some of the stagger selling was weak, this was a much better example of how to do a Cena/Owens match well. Hashimoto was even using Tenryu's moves ala Owens. I really liked how Hashimoto bled from Tenryu's tsuppari attack, and even though in isolation Tenryu's big spots are ugly as sin, with that crowd behind him, the knee injury to overcome and the difficulty in keeping that fat man down you couldn't help but root for him.,

I thought this was extremely good for what they set out to achieve. It was a much more minimalist, stripped back style than the wrestling that was in vogue at the time, and the beginning was largely masochistic with both wrestlers challenging each other to hit them as hard as they could. That might not be to everyone's tastes and was a precursor of a lot of the modern forearm exchange spots, but Tenryu and Hashimoto tend to be a lot more violent. The complexion of the match changed when Tenryu became injured. I thought the commentators did a good job of foreshadowing the knee injury and Tenryu sold it pretty well except for the spot where he was struggling to reach the ropes. Not really a natural spot for Japanese wrestlers that. The crowd was super hot for his comeback which made for a fantastic atmosphere and though some of the stagger selling was weak, this was a much better example of how to do a Cena/Owens match well. Hashimoto was even using Tenryu's moves ala Owens. I really liked how Hashimoto bled from Tenryu's tsuppari attack, and even though in isolation Tenryu's big spots are ugly as sin, with that crowd behind him, the knee injury to overcome and the difficulty in keeping that fat man down you couldn't help but root for him.,

I'm in the dark on Psicosis, someone mentioned him for his AAA ork and I asked Zellner who said people spoke highly of his pre-AAA work as well. I guess you could argue that he was great right out of the gate in AAA since there isn't any Baja footage (at least not that I know of.) There is a 1992 Psicosis match on YouTube I might check out if I have time. If we're allowing for unseen footage, Jaguar Yokota was pretty great at an early age and Dynamite Kid was by far the best teenage wrestler I've seen in British wrestling.

That sounds a whole lot like forcing yourself to eat your greens. I can't think of many things worse than watching something I hate so that I can form an objective opinion on it. Having said that, the more I watch a guy I don't like the more I tend to soften on him and in some cases come around on them. I just watched a decent batch of Danny Boy Collins, which amazed me. You do lose that possibility if you succumb to your frustration.