ohtani's jacket

Was Murdoch really a household name in Japan? I find that hard to believe. He's never a name that's immediately brought up when people reminisce about Showa era wrestling and Meltzer's obit goes on to say he was at the level of Adrian Adonis and The Masked Superstar not a Hogan or Andre. And as for being able to work shoot style just because he could do an armbar, really?

I've never really gotten to the bottom of why EMLL talent could work at El Toreo. Jose told me the reason wrestlers moved freely between the UWA and EMLL was because Flores didn't have contracts with anyone, but there are times when it seemed like the promotions were co-operating. Fishman seems like another potential candidate.

If there's to be a HOF going forward that inducts new modern candidates and not just historical ones then Tanahashi unequivocally belongs in the hall. He didn't have to go in so soon, but he belongs there for certain.

No, I don't think that's a bad read. He's the type of worker who would purposefully entertain with his holds, work in jokes and throw little winks to the audience. Then when it was time to get serious he'd roll the sleeves up and cut out the jokes. He had a really nasty piledriver that sticks out like a sore thumb compared with the rest of his antics. I also love how he's the Terry Funk of WoS, always retiring then coming back. MJH mentioned the other day that he finds a lot of the face vs. face WoS stuff too exhibition-y. I think there's a place for all styles whether it's fast paced lightweight stuff, the slower heavyweight bouts, the comedy stuff, or the heated blue-eye vs. villain bouts. I like how you can have all those different styles in the same promotion. I'm not sure it would have worked without Walton. The way he could call a Pallo match or a Kellet or Kevin Conneally match, where they'd stop and tell a joke in the middle of the match, as though they were deliberate pranksters taking the mickey out of their opponents is some of the best straddling of kayfabe you'll ever hear.

Maybe. I do find his non-Steve Grey 70s work more interesting than the majority of his Iron Fist run. But it's more the case that as 'Iron Fist' he fails to deliver even against top talent. If he'd had better matches outside of the 80s Grey bouts and the Haward draw, I would rate him a tier above.

Note: I decided to do away with the Annoying as Fuck category as I found it obnoxious. There were minor changes here and there, but Ray Steele, Marc Rocco, Zolton Boscik and Mal Sanders were the big movers.

I realised that I haven't updated this in a year, so here we go... Ranking the European workers v. 3 (Oct 2014) All-Time Greats Jim Breaks, Mick McManus, Alan Sarjeant, Jon Cortez, Marty Jones, Steve Grey Great Workers Terry Rudge, Tibor Szacaks, Mike Marino, Ken Joyce Excellent Workers Bobby Barnes, Robby Baron, Franz van Buyten, Clive Myers, Steve Veidor, Sid Cooper, Alan Kilby, Pat Roach, Pete Roberts, Caswell Martin Strong Hands Johnny Czeslaw, John Elijah, Tiger Dalibar Singh, Keith Haward, Tom Tyrone, Brian Maxine, Steve Logan (Snr), Les Kellett, Romany Riley, Alan Wood, Axl Dieter, Bobby Ryan, Dave Finlay, Ray Steele, Marc Rocco, Zolton Boscik Decent Hands Tony St. Clair, Jim Moser, Chic Cullen, Peter La Paque, Colin Joynson, Ray Robinson, Johnny Kincaid, Vic Faulkner, Tony Costas, Bert Royal, Roy St. Clair, John Kowalski, Johnny South, Ringo Rigby, Rocky Moran, Jeff Kaye, Johnny Kidd, Young David, Otto Wanz, John Quinn, Tony Walsh, Rene Lasartesse, Dynamite Kid, Steve Regal, Clay Thomson, Johnny Kwango, Bob Kirkwood, Prince Kumali, Dave Bond, Tarzan Johnny Wilson, Lenny Hurst, René Ben Chemoul, Gilbert Cesca, Bob Plantin, Mal Sanders, Tally Ho Kaye, Indio Guajaro, Klaus Wallas, Jackie Turpin, Klaus Kauroff, Count Vladimir, Pat Patton, Little Prince Average Kung Fu, Alan Dennison, Tony Charles, Mick McMichael, Count Baretlli, Lee Bronson, Honey Boy Zimba, Kendo Nagasaki, Skull Murphy, Johnny England, Mike Jordan, Kid Chocolate, Dave Taylor, Ivan Penzekoff, Billy Torontos, Colonel Brody, Bernie Wright, Peter Wilson, King Ben, Bruno Elrington, Black Jack Mulligan Overrated Johnny Saint, Steve Wright, Eddie Capelli, Wayne Bridges, John Naylor, Danny Collins, Chris Adams

One of my personal favourites, John 'The Bear' Elijah. A rock solid power wrestler, who never had a truly great match but was consistently excellent. My choice of match may seem odd, but it's the only time I've seen Big Daddy bother to have a proper singles match (or a proper match or any sort really.) Terry Rudge, not actually held in as high esteem among British fans as in our circle, presumably because he spent most of his time overseas, but truly a God among workers. Here he is in one of the finest WoS bouts to make tape:

The 'Polish Eagle' Johnny Czeslaw, tough as nails with a cracking sense of humour. British wrestling had a lot of performers like this. Guys who could do comedy but also wrestle. The playing to the gallery can be a bit offsetting at first, but if you like you like British comedy you soon get the swing of it. Here he is against a very underrated wrestler, Romany Riley: This is a bit of a cheat as we don't have much of him on tape, but I thought people might appreciate the stylings of the positively unknown Alan Wood.

I used to be very negative about Rocco, but his work from '76-79 is excellent. He wasn't the best wrestler in the UK at the time, but he was the complete package when it came to a television personality and heel act. Marty Jones reigned him in well, but even in bouts where he takes center stage, he was an exciting act during that time. He's especially good in catchweight bouts where he wrestles a lot more instead of just pinballing about. His early 80s work isn't quite as good but there's still some highlights. Just avoid the Dynamite Kid stuff for the most part. I still don't like him in All-Star, and especially New Japan where he's pretty terrible. He might make it onto my list for those peak years.

Breaks and Collins had one blockbuster match and the rest were average to middling. Breaks was generally good at working with the teenagers. He has an impressive trilogy of matches with Young David (Davey Boy Smith) and the aforementioned Collins match. His match with Dynamite Kid is a short one fall catchweight bout and nothing special, but as for Collins I'm not really interested in watching him against anyone else for the rest of the television run, so for me there series was a definite carry job from Breaks. It was pretty much the last thing he did of note on ITV. Aside from their one great match, it just doesn't really compare with the best of Jim Breaks, that's all. But if you liked it then that's promising.

I think it was just Dave's way of highlighting that Taue wasn't as big a star as the other three or the New Japan guys, which he wasn't. I don't think anything pertaining to the retirement ceremony itself will play a factor in Japanese voters' decisions.

Somebody asked me recently if Sangre Chicana belongs in the HOF. Is there a reason why he's never been on the ballot?

At the risk of getting upset with Parv again about jazz, I think it's silly to force yourself to be that objective that you try to consider or represent styles you don't even like. I'm all for people broadening their horizons but there are limits. Let the fans of that particular style or worker push their case.

He's been around since '97, but he became Pequeño Damián 666 in 2005. His best singles opponent was Bam Bam, IMO.

I guess Caras is a stronger candidate than Murdoch based on the record gates he drew, though I'm not sure why a higher degree of research should go into Murdoch than it's seemingly necessary for Casas or the Misioneros, but Hamada? Murdoch seems like a bigger deal than Gran Hamada ever was.

I'd sooner vote for Demus 3:16 than any of these guys if we're being honest. The IWRG workers are all cool guys, but IWRG footage comes and goes too much for them to have a proper candidacy and they're not top 20-30 luchadores all time. With the CMLL guys, I could see people voting for some of those names. I wouldn't, but I don't think it's unreasonable.

I've seen so many disappointing Blue Panther matches that I sometimes wonder if he's overrated or if my expectations for him are simply too high. I don't think he's a great singles match worker, which would be my big knock on him.

Myers and Grey had a whole series of matches. I recommend checking out their other 70s bouts as well as their 3/5/84 and 3/20/85 bouts. It always impressed me how they had one of the bouts of the decade in the 70s and again in the 80s.

1) It's not something I've noticed to any great degree. There are dozens of throwaway Arena Coliseo matches where you wish he would have taken center stage, but this match was a little different because Cruz' match was the following week and his brother's match the week after. The post match was dominated by Casas and Felino on the mic. I really think they should have separated the two upcoming matches into two separate trios matches. 2) I had to look up receptacle and still don't get what you mean. Are you talking about Plato or something? 3) I think that's a fair summation. There is a flipside at times where matches are better than they should be because of the formulaic trios structures. For example, Super Muneco should drag that AAA trios down, but he actually adds to it.

One of the long time WoS wrestlers as both a heel and face, strongman Alan Dennison. I personally think he's a smart arse, but he was a perennial presence on British screens up until his sudden and untimely death. Another favourite of mine, the hard working Tom Tyrone. Not a flashy wrestler by any means but put him in the ring against a Terry Rudge or Pat Roach and the sparks would fly. This is a great bout that introduced a fair few people to Rudge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxIvWPPcUGc

Rather annoyingly, I have a clip of the finish to a match where he upsets the heavier Albert "Rocky" Wall, who I think was the reigning British and European heavyweight champion at the time. That's the sort of hot match that would tell us more about Marino, but we don't have it. One of the better wrestlers to debut in the 80s, the Scottish all-action star Chic Cullen in an excellent title match against Finlay's buddy Rocky Moran: Canadian wrestler Mighty John Quinn, who had one of the best runs of any foreign wrestler in British rings. His matches weren't the greatest, but he got plenty of heat for his anti-British shtick.

1) I thought it was odd, but I didn't want to speculate on the reason. I just think it was poor booking to have Casas as the third guy on his team when it's clear that a guy with his personality is going to command center stage. Cruz should have been more assertive as there are plenty of other rudos that never took a back seat to anyone, but I suppose you could criticise Casas for not toning down his involvement in the match. 2) CMLL needs to be booked well if it wants to make any money. The hot periods have generally coincided with strong feuds and better booking. 3) The matches where the story is there account for less than 5% of the total matches. I agree about the potential, but if it never lives up to the potential that means that the people involved aren't very good at it, which in turn means that in general it's not very well done. Do you get my point?

If there was ever a guy who deserved a complete and accurate it's Carl Greco.

I haven't decided which Euro wrestlers I'm voting for, but the number of matches we have on tape will be a factor as it has been for the lucha candidates thus far. I probably won't vote for a guy who only has a half dozen matches on tape. The only locks so far are Breaks and Grey. Grey has a better output than Tito and Breaks was a better performer, so I don't have any qualms over that. Satanico has better output and is a better performer to boot so I'm even less bothered about that. To answer your question, if those years represent Tito's peak, then no, I don't think they're enough for him to be a lock for my list. My comment was really suggesting that he didn't have enough good matches during his peak to compete against a stacked field. Obviously, if people think he had all-time great feuds against both Valentine and Savage they're probably going to need less convincing, but as much as I liked those feuds, I'd probably take one match from each above the others and therefore when I run through the matches he had in my head those feuds' representation is probably smaller than in other people's minds. I could easily be swayed if I find a handful of Tito matches I've never seen before and like (matches like the Bass one, for example.) I should also point out that among US guys there are only a few who are locks and a large number of famous workers whom I haven't decided about yet, but that's just my thought process. If I were making a list of the top 10 US guys in the 80s, I'm not sure Tito would make it. I'm not even sure about top 15. If he can't crack that sort of list, I wonder about his chances of making a top 100 that includes workers from all around the world and throughout history.