ohtani's jacket

I'm sorry Jingus, but the idea of Jaquar Yokota watching an ECW tape is preposterous. I doubt she knew everything that was going on in the Japanese scene let alone the States. i dunno how you'd go about getting an ECW tape at the time. Maybe rent one from Champion. Can't see that happening. I don't think Nitro was ever on Japanese TV. WWE has been on satellite since I moved here, but I don't know about the 90s. I'd venture to say the majority of Japanese wrestlers exposure to American wrestlers was through Americans wrestling in Japan. There may be some exposure through magazines, but even then the women were probably more interested in Lady's Gong. The language barrier makes reading the Observer impossible. The magazine writers were probably more in tune with what was happening in the States. Don't forget, Joshi girls lived in a bubble of training, dorming, training, dorming, wrestling, training, dorming. When everyone was watching wrestling on terrestrial TV, they were out traveling and performing.

What about Savage and Hogan?

When I was a kid just about everyone in the midcard had a foreign object, along with most of the managers. There were even live animals. It was as though Vince was looking to make money in toy accessories, but they swerved another purpose in that week after week kids like me watched Superstars to see Dibiase stick a hundred dollar bill down some jobber's throat or Beefcake give someone a haircut. And then there was always the anticipation of what would happen if they came against one of the main guys on the roster. Vince liked to use the intercontinental title as a stepping stone for the World title. He also liked injury angles and having long time friends or partners fall out with each other. One thing he was really good at were the turns, which were almost always memorable. And he was generally pretty good at repackaging the guy who'd turned heel. I hated the way he phased out each vanquished Hogan opponent, but a few of them rebounded okay like Savage, Andre and Piper. How about trying to rub shoulders with musicians, Hollywood actors and sports stars? He tried that a fair bit in the early Wrestlemanias. A bit of glamour to differentiate themselves from the rest of wrestling. Hogan constantly being portrayed as the best athlete in sports. A fair bit of jingoistic, red white and blue storytelling to go along with his right wing politics. Original theme music, colorful outfits, and recognisable looks for everyone with only slight variations in the tights or trunks people wore. Strong emphasis on finishers. Sleeper holds where the victim raises their hand the third time. Heels in peril tag structure. Escape rules cage matches.

How in the hell would Jaguar Yokota know who the Sandman was? Do you really think Yokota in the midst of training all of the late 80s/early 90s girls, making her comeback and starting her own promotion, had any idea what was happening in the US? There is zero chance that Yokota knew who the Sandman was for the simple reason that there was zero chance that the majority of workers outside the Michinoku Pro guys knew who he was

1995 WWF was the worst. I swear if Bret hadn't beaten Diesel at Survivor Series I wouldn't be watching wrestling today. The two biggest mark out moments of my life were Bret winning at Survivor Series and Rey beating Eddy at Halloween Havoc '97. The first was pre-internet connection for me and the second was based on intermittent access to the internet and some Al Issacs type info about Rey losing his mask. 1995 WCW didn't offer much when we did the Smarkschoice poll, especially with Pillman vs. Badd disappointing. Dylan discovered a good Vader tag with the Patriot, though. I was watching Worldwide at the time, so I wasn't as invested in the shittiness as I was with WWF.

It would take a ton of research to come up with a theory as to why New Japan was more popular than All Japan. I do know that Inoki got some huge television ratings for his worked shoots in the 70s and then New Japan had that hot run on Friday nights with Tiger Mask and Choshu vs. Fujinami in a far better time slot than All Japan ever had. New Japan seemed to have a better deal with Asahi than All Japan had with NTV, which may have been crucial. but whether that was because Inoki was better in the boardroom than Baba is something we don't know a lot about. Given Inoki's rap sheet, you'd have to assume he was better at bullshitting his way through boardroom meetings than Baba, but Baba may have been a shrewd customer himself. No prizes for guessing who blew through their money and who had a reputation for being stingy.

North American tournaments are overwhelmingly disappointing and almost never good, whereas Japanese tournaments are taken seriously and usually produce a handful of great matches if not a MOYTC. I don't think their reputation is unfounded.

Baba typically finished the Angles he started, because frankly he ran very few angles. What Baba didn't do was finish "storylines" that he started. He really didn't think in those terms. Yeah, that was more what I was getting at. But again, it's not like the majority of bookers are any better.

Because I like sports, movies and comic books I guess. Initially, I think it was an offspring of comic books because I got into them around the same time. Wrestlers and super heroes are far more colourful when you're 9 years old.

I'm not sure. It's not something that's been properly explored.

I don't see how you can expect this to be best meeting best when it's not interpromotional.

I enjoy a match every now and again when I think the match was good. I can't understand people who claim to enjoy everything they watch.

I'd just expect to see them later in the match.

The problem I see with that is that New Japan were bigger and made more money than All Japan.

Don't forget that Onita was flat bloke and labouring/doing delivery work to pay the bills until JWP gave him a salesman job. I dunno what it was with FMW, but it's kind of similar to Megumi Kudo working at a kindergarten/daycare between wrestling gigs. Return to civilian life then bleed for everyone's entertainment.

This is silly. In no way, shape or form is English considered "evil" in Japan.

Does that make Jumbo any less, I dunno, Kurt Angle-ish, during that stretch?

Are you kidding me? Djokovic is nowhere near as beloved as the great babyface champions like Bruno. There was an element of the fanbase that was delighted to see Wawrinka go over. History be damned.

I don't think Flair was physically dominant enough to be Serena. Serena doesn't really have the showmanship/charisma side to her to be Flair, either. If anything she's the Brock Lesnar of women's tennis if Brock Lesnar had won the world championship multiple times. Likewise, I can't see how Graf was Kawada. In Japanese wrestling terms, Graf was an ace, which would automatically make her Misawa to Seles' Kawada. My favourite women's player in recent times was Henin, who reminds me of Mayumi Ozaki. Both were short in stature, incredibly skilled and prone to flippant behaviour. My favourite player growing up was Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, but I can't think of a good comp for her.

In fairness to Baba, I'm not sure the perfect booker exists. They all tend to be reactionary, and when they stumble upon a good idea they milk it for every last cent. If they were able to prevent their product from stagnating, the business wouldn't be quite so cyclical. Even the Matsunagas, who deliberately retired their stars to prevent them from becoming stagnant, couldn't transition smoothly from one era to the next. Pro-wrestling is in essence show business, and certainly in Japan was competing with other forms of show biz for TV time. In any form of show biz it takes time for the next big thing to come along, and everything stagnates with time whether it's your favourite TV show, comic book run, sports team, musician or film director. Most pro-wrestling is shoddily booked, which makes Baba better than most, and I also think he has longevity in his favour as he was able to book a number of hot runs over 25 years. There were certain elements of his *promoting* that kept All Japan a solid number two, and he was certainly conservative, but so are "serious and stable" CMLL and they've survived longer than anybody, so is that inherently a bad thing? Another possible criticism of Baba as a booker was that he wasn't great at finishing angles he started, but again that's true of most bookers who don't have an end goal in sight. I wonder if ticket gates and nightly houses don't play a part in this. It's easy to apply film or literary criticism to wrestling and critique the lack of narrative structure, but unlike a film or a play, the booker is making it up as he goes along and not fretting over his story ideas until he's ready to show it to the public. Sure, it would be great if they had some idea of the bigger picture, but their deadline is tighter than any creative type with a nightly show to produce. I doubt many bookers in wrestling history have thought more than a few months ahead, and certainly none of them have had a final destination in mind.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 25 Mike Jordan vs. Spider-Man Ray Crawley (7/15/86) So, we've seen Dave Larsen wrestling as Batman in 60s French catch and now we have Ray Crawley doing a Spider-Man gimmick. As you can imagine, it's a homemade outfit with a spider drawn on it. I love the trunks as they're clearly wrestling trunks and have three white stripes on them. For some reason he's not wearing his mask this time, and yes he did wrestle one time on TV with a Spidey mask on. The cape makes him look like Superman, but other than that he wouldn't look amiss at Pavillón Azteca alongside Batman and Robin and all the other kids gimmicks. The gimmick was short-lived, at least on television, but the match itself wasn't half bad. They wrestled it as a straight up light heavyweight contest w/ Crawley wrestling like any other wrestler. Jordan looked sharp here and a lot of the stuff they did as fluid. After halfway through, it looked like there might be an injury finish when Crawley mistimed a move and landed on his shoulder (real or worked, I couldn't tell), but he kept wrestling and they finished the bout. Fans of the more kitsch side of wrestling may be disappointed that the gimmick didn't come into play more, but on the other hand it was fun watching a guy work the WoS style seriously in a Spider-Man getup. Scrubber Daly vs. Steve Logan (7/3/86) This went for longer than I was expecting and Daly brought I suppose what could be considered his "working boots." He was better than he looked in Daddy tags, but then Daddy tags have a way of dragging down everyone in them. Like many a brain-dead heel, he got himself stupidly disqualified in the finish, but this was surprisingly okay for a bout that could have been like pulling teeth. Bearcat Wright vs. Pete Collins (7/3/86) Pete Collins was another in a long line of useless brothers. I shouldn't be so mean, but there were a lot of average brothers in British wrestling. Walton was trying to pass Bernie Wright off as Canadian, but at least his Mad Max like beard and shaven head made him look completely unrecognisable from his former self. I think they were desperate for television heels as this point having lost many of their best ones to All-Star. It's too bad that Bernie Wright belonged to the useless brother category himself. "Bearcat" was a cool look, but not really a gimmick and he didn't have a character to speak of, and it was a waste of time pushing him on TV without those two things . King Ben vs. Ian McGregor (11/13/86) It's a bit weird seeing King Ben wrestle teenage wrestlers when they kept pushing that his own son was a teenage wrestler. Then again they had him wrestle his boy, which was even weirder. This was one of those bonus matches they tacked on at the end when there was time to fill. Utterly skippable. Keith Martinelli vs. Boston Blackie (Denbigh, taped 1988) Keith Martinelli was a great worker at one stage, but he'd faded by '88. Kind of sad to watch.

Well then, I'm not wrong. Jumbo could have taken the first two falls with any of those moves.

That Baba vs. Fritz match from '75 may be the most minimalist bout I've seen. It's built entirely around Baba's chop vs. Fritz' claw, and features two refs at ringside doing synchronized counting, one in red and the other in blue, which is odd enough in itself. But it's a pretty good bout, especially due to Fritz' cut, which leads to a lot of blood smeared chops. Fritz took a fair old beating. I wasn't expecting him to actually stay down, but he did, and Baba was declared the winner. Or outlasted him, as the case may be. Would have liked to have seen the stomach claw applied on Baba during the bout instead of post-match. That would have made for the one dramatic note the bout needed to make it less conceptual, but it was an interesting bout nonetheless.

He's more kinetic than anyone in the era he worked. He wrestles like he's on speed. The thing is, it's not entirely a work. Apparently, he was a terror to work with. Regal talks about thumbs to the eye and all sorts of accidental injuries from working Rocco's breakneck style.

Fritz vs. Baba was a fun match, but I don't think any of Fritz' kids had the look and build to be a heel the way Fritz was, and it as far easier to get over as a German heel in the 60s than it was the 80s. The exception was David, who was the overly aggressive as a babyface and would have made a great heel. Incidentally, does Fritz have the most gravelly voice ever? It sounds like he swallowed a cement mixer. I swear they used after effects on it.