ohtani's jacket

This was underwhelming, and I say that as a fan of both women. If it had been on one of those 1993 inter-promotional shows it might have been okay, but as a title match it was both unremarkable and unworthy. The finishing stretch couldn't have been any more predictable if they'd tried,and Toyota winning wasn't realistic given the limited damage Kansai had taken. Nowhere near special enough for what should have been a major match, and poorly booked all round.

Mick McManus vs. Alan Dennison (10/7/81) These two had met on television numerous times over the years, though Walton did nothing to play up their history. Quite a clash of the egos with no quarter given in that respect. In 1981 this was never going to be a great match, but Walton could have done more to put it over as two perennial television powerhouses squaring off. The fact that he didn't is a sign that *someone* thought this sort of match-up should be put out to pasture. Two things stick out about McManus in the early 80s, one being how weak his tricks look compared to the mid-70s (which wasn't even his pomp) and the other being how bad his hair looked. The whole McManus image wasn't really there anymore. Johnny Saint vs. Jan Curtis (2/17/82) This was horrendous. Who booked this for the Albert Hall? It lasted one round, saw Curtis take a fall to the outside twice, and ended with Curtis unable to continue. He looked pensive throughout and nothing like the worker I saw take on Cooper. This was an absolute dud and by default the worst Johnny Saint match on tape. Sid Cooper & Bobby Barnes vs. Pat Patton & Steve Logan (5/11/82) Barnes and Cooper make for a great tag team. This was another decent tag match. It seems that British tag wrestling improved immensely in the early 80s. This even had a FIP feel to it with the heels working over both Patton and Logan. Of course they don't go all the way with it like a Southern tag would, but it was nice to have some structure to a WoS tag and Barnes vs. Patton is one of the more under-the-radar match-ups. After praising the structure, the finish was unnatural to me as a long time wrestling fan as Logan stood on the apron doing nothing while Barnes scored the winning fall. It's just weird not seeing a save in that situation. I think it was this match where all the kids ran to ringside at the end and gave the heels the fingers. You could hear them shouting "ya fuckin' wankers!" as Walton signed off. A night out for the entire family. John Naylor vs. King Ben (11/3/82) Only a few minutes of this aired, which I'm guess was the way it was edited for television as it seems to happen an awful lot with Naylor footage. What was shown was excellent. Along with the Kilby bout, this was another example of Ben looking good, which not surprisingly coincides with him taking his wrestling seriously instead of all the tomfoolery. It may have also been another example of a wrestler whom Ben didn't get along with as it a bit frosty at times, but that frostiness added another layer of tension to the bout and gave it an edge that the lighter weight matches seldom have. Sid Cooper vs. Pat Patton (8/11/82) Disappointing. The TV lights went off at the start and they wrestled the match with partial lighting until the technicians were able to get the lights back on. That seemed to put them off (naturally), but when the lights came back on and everyone in the hall could see again, they quickly went to the injury finish instead of giving folks something to cheer about. I was hoping for much more from this. Ray Steele vs. Kwik Kick Lee (8/11/82) This was okay. Maeda was obviously a whole lot better at working Japanese style holds than he was Lord Mountevans rules, but he gave it a go. He was quite a bit heavier than Steele and sweated heavily under the television lights so it wasn't the smoothest match you'll see between heavyweights, but the stand-up parts were good. Walton was frustrated that there wasn't enough action, but this was all right despite its awkwardness. Jim Breaks vs. Tom Thumb (8/11/82) You can probably guess why Neil Evans was called "Tom Thumb." He was billed at 5′ 0″ and 9 st, but was a tough little blighter. This was his television debut and he was lucky enough to be up against Jim Breaks, who almost always put over new talent. This wasn't exactly a Breaks classic, but his facial expressions were fantastic and it was a fun bout while it lasted. Breaks was one of the smallest guys around, but Thumb looked tiny even in comparison to Jimmy. He was constantly on the move though, trying to gain an advantage with his speed and quickness. Very fun gimmick. He couldn't escape the Jim Breaks Special though. No siree. Vic Faulkner vs. Mick McMichael (10/11/82) This was pure comedy with Faulkner and McMichael pulling out a gag on each and every hold. For the life of me, I can't remember Mick McMichael ever doing comedy to quite this extent. Maybe he should have worked this way all the time as it was a step up from his usual nondescript bouts. Another thing they did here was mic the ring so you could clearly hear every word the wrestlers and the ref were saying. That made a big difference compared to say those Conneely matches. After a boatload of comedy the bout ended on a serious note as McMichael gravely injured his larynx. Faulkner didn't want to take the decision and all I could think was "no-one gives a shit whether you take the decision Faulkner." Not my favourite workers these two.

If you were into Rey's WWE stuff more perhaps you'd feel the same way about the 619 that you do the People's Elbow. I actually think there are other things Rey does that are less plausible like when he head scissors a guy into the steel corner post, but that would probably work a treat if it were Psicosis in AAA where the conventions are different.

To me it's nowhere near as bad as the Five Knuckle Shuffle, the People's Elbiw, the Worm or the Stinkface as he doesn't have to stop to signal if. As a move, it's better than the Bronco buster.

Really? Ross wouldn't play off Ventura at all. I much prefered Tony and Jesse.

The 619 takes up about 5 seconds of a Rey match. It's usually the set-up for the West Coast Pop. I don't see how it's the focal point of his matches.

I actually find the set-up for the 619 is pretty good most of the time. It only looks bad when the opponent doesn't fall into the ropes well. Of course, you've got to ignore the fact it happens in every match, but that's not hard to do.

It's a shame we don't have more footage of Albert "Rocky" Wall or Gwyn Davies, who were the two dominant heel British Heavyweight Champions of the era. We don't even have that much heel Pat Roach. I guess I would take Jumbo over the likes of Wayne Bridges and Tony St. Clair, and probably Ray Steele though it pains me to say it. Tibor and Veidor I personally like more. In the lighter weights, you'd have to consider Sid Cooper, Bobby Barnes, Steve Wright, Bert Royal, Vic Faulkner, Mike Marino, Bobby Ryan, Jeff Kaye, Pete Roberts, Brian Maxine, and guys like Peter Szacaks, Adrian Street, Abe Ginsberg and Peter Preston if we had more footage. It's crazy how many good workers there were. Add to that the huge amount of depth in Mexico and even a Joshi worker like Yumi Ikeshita and it's a lot less cut and dry that Jumbo is an automatic lock for the top 10. It's hard to imagine that El Faraon, Perro Aguayo, Fishman, Sangre Chicana, Ray Mendoza, etc. weren't great in the mid to late 70s.

I would have to watch more 70s Jumbo to get a fix on how good I think he is, but when comparing him to WoS workers the fairest comparison is first and foremost with heavyweights. The lightweights through to the middleweights leave him for dead in terms of skill, and he's nowhere near as technically skilled as the best British heavyweights as he works a more basic style of matwork. We don't have a lot of their title matches in tape though compared to the Jumbo title matches we have. I'm sure there ate things he is better at than the British heavyweights though. I will rewatch some of his stuff.

Parv is going to hate most of those matches. Getting him to watch Tamura vs. Kohsaka is like trying to convince him that A Love Supreme is one of the greatest lps ever recorded. Take my advice, Parv. Watch this match -- http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xb8085_volk-han-vs-yoshihisa-yamamoto-ring_sport If that does nothing for you, nothing will.

I found my 2006 run through of all the UWF shows, including each of the Suzuki matches -- http://web.archive.org/web/20070319060803/www.smarkschoice.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=144244&sid=68cda17fb5ed6375519d93d96c244584

This fell apart for me in the third fall. The first two falls I thought were good and I couldn't understand why this had been so divisive, but the third fall as a spluttering mess. Those table spots were the worst. Absolute crap. I didn't feel there was anything terrible about the first two falls, but the opening fall was clearly front heavy with two many nearfalls they'd have been better off putting into the final caida. I also would have liked to have seen Manami submit to end the second fall, but nobody ever submits in Joshi. Aside from the shitty finish, I liked the contributions Hasegawa and Takako made. I'm happy to see that Takako is still a wrestler I can get into after all these years.

That would be good. John mentioned some 60-70 matches. Like most people, I've probably only seen a quarter of that. There's other kinds of stuff out there too. There's the Portland stuff, around 400 British matches. There's even conclusions you can probably make about lucha workers. I suppose with all those things considered he would probably be in many people's top 10, but I can't escape the feeling when I watch his matches that he's a second or third year guy and so on. I have a tough time rating him against seasoned pros.

Bert Royal vs. Steve Taylor (10/22/75) Steve Taylor is the older brother of Dave Taylor and the oldest son of legendary Heavy Middleweight Eric Taylor. This is the only footage we have of him from his prime. There are a few more matches from Reslo in the early 80s and a couple of tag matches from the late 80s, but that’s it. He was a capable grappler as you can imagine from his lineage, but this was a four round Bert Royal exhibition similar to the Tibor Szacaks and Mike Marino bouts I’m always talking about. It’s easy to forget how long Royal had been around. He was already in his mid-40s here and had been wrestling on television for twenty years. Perhaps that’s why Dale Martin was struggling so badly in the early 70s. As much as I love this 70s stuff, and as decent a bout as this was, there were guys on top who appeared in the first television broadcast in 1955. That’s an extraordinarily long time to push the same wrestlers. Forgetting all that, there was some neat grappling in this, Taylor looked good, and Royal was rocking his mid-70s moustache. John Naylor vs. Bill Ross (2/25/76) This was a neat opportunity to see one of the top Scottish lightweights of the day, Bill Ross. The Northern guys didn’t appear on television all that often since most of the tapings were from areas where Dale Martin promoted, and a lot of the Northerners had business interests which kept them from venturing too far from Scotland and the North of England, hence why people only ever read about George Kidd’s World Lightweight Title defences instead of getting to see them, so this was a neat chance to see a guy who along with Kidd and Jim McKenzie was considered one of the best of the Northern guys. Naylor was his usual mixed bag, but Ross was a lot of fun and it was cool seeing his specialties. It’s always good to put a match to a face, so all in all we’re lucky to have this on tape. Kendo Nagasaki vs. Roy St Clair (5/25/76) If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about British historians it’s that they tend to have an over-inflated opinion of Kendo Nagasaki’s working ability. Maybe it’s nostalgia or looking at things through rose coloured glasses, or perhaps he was better in the 60s when he was working the halls and kept off television, but at any rate there’s nothing on tape to support the idea that he was an elite worker. Mind you, neither was McManus so I suppose it doesn’t really matter. This was a competitive squash with a lot of public warnings and crowd heat and even a bit of blood from Roy St. Clair’s lip. If there’s one thing I like about Nagasaki it’s his finisher. Along with Roach’s finisher it was one of the nastier moves of the era and looked like a knockout blow every time. Romany Riley vs. Rex Strong (4/6/76) Strong was brought into the business by the legendary Prince of Darkness, Dirty Dominic Pye, in the Blackpool area, and was more than proficient in the dark arts of rule-bending. He also spent time in Bill Riley’s gym, not that you’d be able to guess judging by his technical ability. If you want to see a big, bad, bald heavyweight who looks like he could be a henchman in every B-film ever made then Strong is the guy for you. He cheats the entire bout long and the grannies get pissed. Bread and butter stuff, but everyone gets their money’s worth. Mick McManus vs. Catweazle (5/5/82) This was McManus’ final ever bout. I’m not sure why Catzweale was chosen as his opponent, but both men but in a considerably earnest attempt at wrestling a good match. McManus fights the clock at the end to force a result, but can’t quite make it and the bell goes to draw time on his career. A ten bell salute follows and a backstage interview with some World of Sport guy where they drink beer together and toast McManus’ career. Unfortunately, the sound quality is terrible and it’s difficult to make out what McManus is saying, but he seems to take a sort of retrospective and philosophical look back on his career even the cheating. The beer is a nice touch.

These are all matches against NWA World Heavyweight Champions. What was he like against other opposition? I'll admit that part of my questioning stems from a dislike for "best in the world" hyperbole (even though I sometimes use it myself), but Jumbo being one of the best workers from the 70s is an old line from when there was far less footage circulating and something that needs reexamining.

All right. I still think it's cheating though!

What matches does Jumbo have in the 70s where he looks like a top 10 worker in the world? In the Brisco matches you reviewed he was inferior to Inoki and Baba.

Kick, kick, kick, single leg Boston... this was a match that highlighted the crappiness of Yumiko Hotta. Manami tried her best to make this memorable but unfortunately that meant her lying around selling a lot while Hotta bored the crap out of me. Fairly standard stretch run, and a botched finish which Hotta clearly affected by raising her shoulders off the mat. Really poor compared to the Kandori bout.

I don't think Santo and Blue Panther were rivals to the extent that Santo and Casas were. Espanto Jr and Black Shadow Jr were Santo's two biggest rivals in the UWA outside of Casas. Black Terry and Fuerza probably have more of a claim to being Santo career rivals than Panther. Santo vs. Casas definitely peaked with their '97 hair vs. mask match. With Dandy/Satanico we're missing their two hair matches from '88. Casas vs. Dandy is another obvious pick. Sangre Chicana vs. Perro and Villano III deserve a mention as well. My favourite Panther rivalry was with Atlantis. I also love Atlantis vs. Emilio.

This belongs back in the Rey thread.

For the record, I didn't watch the 9/25 Mysterio vs. Tajiri match. That's definitely the best of the three matches they had around that time, though the circumstances surrounding the finish kind of reduce it to another chapter in their feud rather than a stand alone good-to-great match.

We have the exact same pick for the exact same reason. My first thought is Misawa/Jumbo but the fact that it never had a true conclusion the way Jumbo/Tenryu did and kinda just kept going after the climax of it on 6/8/90 makes me lean towards Tenryu/Jumbo as my true favorite Feud. 6/8/90 wasn't meant to be the climax. It was more like the first act turning point in a screenplay.

But they had two more matches on 10/11/89 and 4/19/90 and would have no doubt had more if Tenryu hadn't left.

It's a bit redundant at this stage, but the 6/23 Sasuke/Delphin vs. Togo/Teioh/Shiryu handicap match is another fun M-Pro match. I actually thought the beatdown Kaientai put on Sasuke and Delphin was the best heel beatdown during the feud. There's a neat split screen of Togo ripping the shit out of Delphin's mask while Teioh and Shiryu put Sasuke through a table. I'd like to see a good M-Pro singles match though. The 8/3 Naniwa vs. Shiryu match was all kinds of disappointing.

This was a match I never really liked in the past, possibly because I was always more of a Hokuto fan and this isn't a match where she asserts a lot of control over the bout, but I liked it more this time round. It doesn't break a lot of new ground, which is probably its biggest flaw, but it's not a spotfest. They spend more time selling during the stretch run than they do hitting spots, and Toyota no-selling the finish is patently false. I get the feeling that if the workers are uninteresting to people that they kind of gloss over what's happening and don't pay a lot of attention. There was far too much detail in this to call it a spotfest and way too much selling. Toyota gets such a bad rap.