ohtani's jacket

Watched the 6/17 LCO vs. Toyota & Yamada tag. Not an essential bout, but it's something seeing the once great Toyota and Yamada team jobbed to LCO complete with Toyota bladejob.

I've always spelled it as "Hiromi" so I can't think of why I would have done that. In Japanese her katakana is ひろみ which is Hiromi.

In this case, can you make sure you use Hiromi Yagi in your e-book? A million thank yous.

SELLING BODY PARTS Cena vs Shawn Michaels - Wrestlemania 23 I liked this a lot. The early stuff didn't bother me at all. They chose a story and stuck with it. I disagree that there was no flow or psychology to it. I thought it was psychologically sound and fairly straight forward. You could certainly argue that the psych-outs and pensive looks were lame, but I appreciate that they stuck to their guns, and importantly (for me) I was pleased that Michaels made an effort to make the momentum shift significant by blading from the shoulder-into-the-corner post transition. That made Cena's rush of adrenaline more tolerable than usual and I didn't even mind the five knuckle shuffle in that context. The bridge from the early psych-out work to the finishing stretch wasn't so smooth; Michaels was worn too a little too quickly for my liking, but the finishing stretch itself I thought was excellent. I actually thought it was an example of finishing trading done well as opposed to the more video game looking stuff. There were enough variations on the set-up for each finisher to keep me interested and the nearfalls were great. I especially liked the superkick where Cena was caught off guard by arguing with the ref. In fact, Cena's acting during that stretch deserves some praise considering how harsh I've been on a lot of his selling/acting throughout this thread. The match wasn't an all-time classic or anything, but they exceeded my expectations and delivered a strong main event match. I liked it better than the RAW rematch. I'll give it ****

This style of Joshi tag wrestling is not something I'm really into at the moment, but if you can get into the narrative of the underdog team of Watanabe and Maekawa pulling off the upset against Shimoda and Toyota you might enjoy it on a different level from the classic Joshi tag style. The first two falls are short with the third fall making up the bulk of the match. They go quite deep into their movesets without being overly repetitive and it's certainly competitive. If I had the inclination to watch it again, I could probably figure out how Toyota and Shimoda lost. I don't really feel like watching it again, but I'm sure that narrative is in there somehow. Worth watching for the upset at any rate.

Santo turned technico during the 9/11 Atlantis/Fiera/Casas vs. Santo/Fuerza/Villano III trios.

They say styles make fights but Toyota is one of the last people you'd think would match up well with Kandori. A little bit of attitude goes a long way I suppose. I thought Kandori did a superb job of putting over Toyota's dropkick/springboard counter offence as lethal. To my mind that gave Toyota a ton of credibility against an opponent who could have eaten her alive on the mat. Even the spots that Manami blew or mistimed worked out okay because it came across as Manami over-extending herself and Kandori was able to immediately counter with a submission. There was one botch that ended up with Toyota kneeing Kandori in the head. Kandori hung in there for a submission counter and I thought "this match is rocking." The other great thing Kandori did was let Toyota fight through the first couple of submission attempts. Toyota having a defensive game, even if it wasn't the prettiest, meant that she had a chance of surviving Kandori's ground game. I loved how it became increasingly difficult for Toyota to fight through the holds and how Kandori took the momentum with her strikes. This really was one of the best Joshi matches of the 90s. Manami's missile dropkick to the outside was stupendous.

Their 3/23 Wrestling Queendom match is also good. Ito injures Toyota's ankle and after some running repairs Manami is forced to work on a bad wheel. She does a good job of selling the injury and the action is straightforward and compelling as opposed to being melodramatic and drawn out.

Malenko wasn't a bad mat worker. He was bad at the selling and transitions that go along with mat work, but his stuff looked good. His best opponent in WCW was Ultimo Dragon in my opinion.

I don't know if it's possible to have a visceral response to every match you watch. The matches that hit you in the gut tend to be the ones you mark out for and lavish praise on. And to be honest, it's possible to feel that way from an analytical point of view if you feel that the match keeps getting better and better. It doesn't have to be a purely emotional response to excite you. Personally, I care about the scope of a match, how big the narrative arc is and how far they've come since the beginning. Those are the things that satisfy me. I don't really need to have an emotional response to enjoy wrestling. It sometimes happens and it's fine when it does, but pretty rare.

A friend of mine once told me there was a backstage skit where Angle said to Boss Man "you don't like the Big Show, right?" and Boss Man replied: "Are you kidding me? I dragged his daddy down the highway at high speed!"

This was really good. I liked how Ito thwarted the typical Toyota opening. She didn't put up with her bullshit with the test of strength either. Somewhere between '96 and this bout she morphed into a 1997 version of Yukari Omori. Not only did her foot stomps look vicious but the rest of her offence was badass as well. Looks like a revisit of 1997 Ito is in order. This was another minimalist Toyota bout which worked for me. I thought it was a fantastic league bout with an excellent finishing stretch. Ito's submission attempts ruled. I often liked Toyota's JGP bouts which were smaller matches with less bullshit. I'd rather watch her in this type of setting that her big match run from '94-96.

I envy you somehow.

I got a big batch of stuff from your source the other day and will be in British wrestling heaven once I get through all this 2000s puro. But you really have done a great service laying the groundwork with your reviews. What kind of stuff did you get?

This was an old formula AJW liked to use where a pair of younger workers would take on a more established pair. You kind of need to suspend disbelief that the younger workers would trouble the veterans so much, though Yoshida and Ito were certainly growing in stature around this time. I personally prefer the JWP style where you'd have senior/junior vs. senior/junior as it strikes me as more balanced, but I might have gotten into this if it had been more of a trial by fire for the young workers and not so even. Shimoda and Toyota took over towards the end as you'd expect, but I couldn't really get into the rhythm of what they were doing. I did like the sassy attitude Shimoda showed, but I wished they'd slowed it down at times instead of working the entire match in top gear. Maybe a bit of heat on the youngsters, a well timed comeback, that sort of thing.

This was an erratic performance from Toyota what with headbutting the ring post and throwing a near tantrum on the mat.A scatty performance even without the blown spots. At least it was short I guess.

This was probably the weakest of the six mans from this era, but at minimum a good match. Things picked up in the stretch run and I found myself willing the technicos on since if they weren't winning in Hamada's anniversary match they were never gonna win. The way they put Kaientai away was badass, which is all you can hope for from faces.

Didn't Destroyer also show signs of decline in the late 70s?

I got a comp made of Tarzan Johnny Wilson matches, but since I'm probably the only guy who cares about Wilson I thought I'd stick my thoughts here rather than in the Microscope. Johnny Wilson vs. John Elijah (7/11/84) These are two of my guys, but even I have to admit that watching a 35 minute 8 round bout is tough going. It was everything I'd want out of John Elijah vs. Johnny Wilson in terms of strength holds and powering out of moves, but very much a one pace bout. And it went to a draw, which ain't much of a return on your investment. Johnny Wilson vs. Barry Douglas (9/11/84) This close to the end of my World of Sport viewing and I'm still getting suckered into watching Barry Douglas bouts. I'm sure it's because the Heritage guys compared him to Terry Rudge, but they clearly don't share the same opinion of Rudge that we do around here. This wasn't that bad actually, but I'm not sure if Douglas could have been any more bland. He came from the family of one of the Joint Promotions promoters, but even that didn't help him rise above his station. I guess he deserves respect as a long time pro, though. Professor Adi Wasser vs. Johnny Wilson (5/12/81) Professor Adi Wasser was a masked French star who worked on British cards in the 60s and 70s and was evidently having another run here. I couldn't find any information about him other than the fact he was billed as a jiu jitsu expert. His gimmick was that he had a devastating sleeper hold ala Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie during his run in England. No prizes for guessing what Johnny's role was on this particular night, but I liked the way they treated the sleeper like death. Tom Tyrone vs. Johnny Wilson (9/3/85) Wilson wrestled this defensively and didn't attack as much as he usually did, and Walton would not stop going on about how there was something wrong with him and how he was terribly out of form. Personally, I was enjoying some of the defensive work but Walton wouldn't stop harping on about it. He could be really annoying when he got his bee in a bonnet over something. Johnny Wilson vs. Lee Sharron (7/27/81) Sharron was this ancient rule-bending heel. He may have been good in his prime, but he looked so washed up here he was a castaway. Johnny Wilson vs. Bully Boy Muir (5/11/82) Bully Boy Ian Muir was another fun 20-stoner in the vein of King Kong Mal Kirk. He was a rampant cheater and you could see the inevitable DQ coming a mile off, but there was some fun big man vs, smaller man psychology along the way and Wilson got to show off his strength by lifting a guy who was 21 and a half stone. Skull Murphy vs. Johnny Wilson (12/19/84) This was the final of the 1984 Grand Prix Belt tournament. Not quite as good or as heated as it could have been as Murphy wrestled a mostly clean bout (with Walton even trying to get sympathy for him over the recent death of his father Roy Bull Davis.) Murphy's bruising style really lent itself to rule-bending so this was a bit dry at times, but the psychology was excellent with Wilson's neck gradually being weakened in anticipation for Murphy's gator submission. Because this aired on the final WoS show of 1984 a winner had to be decided so they worked a sudden death overtime session and Murphy got the win with an awesome looking clothesline by British wrestling standards. Kind of a strange guy to put over in these circumstances, but I'm happy to say that Murphy has cemented himself in my thoughts as a key player from the 80s when I had initially bagged him. Dave Finlay vs. Johnny Wilson (8/21/84) What I saw of this was deliciously enticing, but the first three rounds were missing. They got up in each other's grills just as you'd hope and there were plenty of forearms traded. The fact that Dave got the win decisively over a heavier bigger man kind of tells you Tarzan Johnny Wilson's lot in the grand scheme of things, but he kept getting a cheque through to the end of the ITV run so they obviously saw some value in him. Tom Tyrone vs. Johnny Wilson (12/17/86) This aired in '87 as part of the 1987 Grand Prix tournament, which was opened to heavyweights, Knockout tournaments aren't my favourite aspect of the television, but this tournament was some of the better TV from 1987. Tyrone was clearly higher on the totem pole than Wilson for whatever reason, but Johnny was a pro and they worked a decent bout. Johnny Wilson vs. Bruno Elrington (1/31/79) This was a fun bout. Elrington was a limited big man, but he had a strong grasp of psychology and it's possible that his execution was better in his heyday. I enjoyed watching the strategies that Wilson implemented here and he got to show a lot of raw strength with these unique throws/takedowns he'd do where Elrington was literally held in a vertical position before being taken over. Elrington basically looked like a giant from the Highlands, and while he tried to remain a sportsman he would lose his cool at the drop of a hat and fire up by slamming his hands on the mat, letting out a primitive growl, eye gouging his opponent, or threatening to box the ref. It was entertaining stuff. They went with a typical booking pattern here of having the younger guy up a fall before succumbing to injury (in this case Wilson's knee buckling as he tried to lift the 20 stone Elrington.) The St. John's men came out and Wilson did a full stretcher job. Pretty good selling, I thought. John Elijah & Dave Bond vs. Peter & Johnny Wilson (6/28/83) This was a very good tag in the John Elijah/Johnny Wilson heavyweight style. By far and away the best Peter Wilson match I've seen. I had no idea how big he was until I saw him work comparatively shorter heavyweights in Bond and Elijah. One thing I'll say for the 80s is that the tag matches were generally better than they were in the 70s. The Bond vs. Wilson sections here were awesome and amongst the best stuff on the entire comp. Ray Steele vs. Johnny Wilson (5/4/88) This was part of a knockout tournament for some Community Shield. The shield had this blue ribbon on it that someone had marked "1st" with a black marker pen. No expense spared by the Crabtrees. I actually think the heavyweight work holds up the best of the late 80s work, a bit like how the tortoise won the race. If we had this in full instead of the three rounds they generally aired there might be more late 80s stuff worth pimping. Walton still told the same story about Steele's third professional fight that he was talking about in 1970. I don't know how many gin and tonics he was having to get through these broadcasts but he sounds almost depressed at times.

Hey, the fat guy I mentioned was even worse than that. He couldn't get in the ring by himself. He was actually a decent bloke by all accounts, who got treated like shit by the boys in the business and eventually got out of it, lost the weight, got married and started some new endeavour. But as a wrestler he was so bad that his only television bout wasn't televised and he was subsequently ignored by the promoter after spending all his money on a new leotard. Poor blighter.

You could probably argue that Kurt Angle was a disappointment for a lot of folks since he was meant to be the second coming of every great territorial wrestler ever. I'd put him in the same category as a Barry Windham or an Akiyama. My pick for lucha would be Angel Azteca, who I felt could have been a Lizmark/Atlantis/Solar type and wasn't.

The stuff I know is only really a drop in the bucket. I'm still learning things all the time. Sadly, I have one final order of British wrestling coming and that's it for me aside from the dregs and the rewatches. I started watching this stuff seriously sometime around 2008 and the finishing line is in sight.

Where are the best places to read about British wrestling history? That Heritage site? Wrestling Heritage is a good place to get info. The old Britishwrestlingarchive.co.uk message board posts are helpful as well. i usually just google "Bob Kirkwood wrestler" and see what comes up.

More of the same from the M-Pro crew. Watching them today they come across as indie rock legends as though they were at the forefront of a new style of work. I didn't care for Sasuke and Togo brawling around the gymnasium, but it was soon forgotten as the rest of the crew worked some cracking exchanges. Hamada was more involved here than in other bouts, and this was another stiffer 6-man compared to their more famous multi-man spotfests. I really liked the mural in the background too on what looked like the curtain for a stage. The only negative I'll say is I don't know why the faces couldn't have won more of these bouts. This was a bout they could have totally taken out and Kaientai wouldn't have suffered at all. It's not big a deal, but I felt the momentum was with the faces here and the pop for them scoring the pin would have been nice.

Man, the Fiera/Dandy feud is sky rocketing in my estimation and I haven't even rewatched the hair match yet -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-435-the-fiera-vs-dandy-feud-1/