ohtani's jacket

Someone needs to twist Jose's arm into making his podcast debut so there can actually be some lucha discussion that's comprehensive.

I don't mind Jimmy Smith's Back at the Chicken Shack, I suppose. And Birdland by Weather Report. But in general I detest most jazz I've listened to -- well over a 100 albums, which is the point at which I give up. So you don't like vocal jazz, jazz-funk or soul jazz? You don't even like jazz in hip hop? I wonder.

The Rocco/Jones bout I think we may already have. The Masambula bout is from '72 and would be a nice addition to the footage that's out there as he was one of the biggest TV stars of the day and we only have one singles bout of his. Alan Kilby vs. Johnny Wilson (12/7/81) This would be a main event any night of the week as far as I'm concerned. Love these guys and was pleased to see this. World of Sport joined it late, but it was every bit as good as an Al Kilby/Johnny Wilson match possibly could be. There was never going to be a winner in this one as it didn't serve either guy to lose, but unfortunately they went the injury route with a no contest. Kilby did sell his wrist tremendously well. What a fantastic worker he was. I can't think of anyone better who debut in the 80s. That decade would be sorely lacking if he'd never taken up the sport. Alan Kilby vs. Black Jack Mulligan (3/17/1981) This was supposed to be a return bout between Kilby and Mike Marino, but Marino was injured and Mulligan was the stand by. Unfortunately for Mulligan that meant another squash. I swear I remember Mulligan getting treated better than this at some point. Pat Roach vs. Dave Bond (4/23/86) This wasn't too bad for a match so late in the piece. It was actually on the same episode as the great Marty Jones vs. Bull Blitzer (Steve Wright) bout, which is arguably the last truly great WoS bout. They cut out an entire fall which truncated it a bit, but what was shown was good. The size difference was interesting. I generally think of Bond as a pretty big guy at least when he's in the ring with lighter men, but Roach made him look small. It's easy to forget just how big Roach was at times especially because of how agile he was. Interesting finish here as Roach knocked Bond out with a big boot, which wouldn't ordinarily knock someone out you'd think, but was a cool finish here with a nice sell from the soul man Bond. Dave Bond vs. Ray Steele (1/19/1983) Okay bout. Joined too late to really get a feel for it.

Loathing jazz with a passion is stupid because jazz is so broad that within the style there's bound to be something you like if you'd only bother to listen to it. Wrestling styles are the same. Even if you don't like joshi or lucha there is bound to be one or two workers that are the exception. For non-Joshi fans that used to be Aja Kong. You don't have to watch every highly pimped Joshi match ever to discover whether you like Aja Kong. With the advent of You Tube we shouldn't even be having these discussions. Back in 2005 there was practically NOTHING on You Tube. As far as I'm concerned, you read the pimping threads, you check something out, and if you don't like it that's fine but at least you gave it a shot.

If you're going to participate in a project of this scope you should be prepared to do some leg work. If it's just a 100 workers we like, we can submit the ballots this week.

I just can't agree. To me that's like arguing something like Tully vs. Terry Taylor is better than Flair/Steamboat.

Pete Roberts vs. Dave Bond (5/2/84) This was a nice bout between two guys I really like, but unfortunately it only lasted two and a half rounds. Since it was a one fall bout that's a realistic amount of time for one wrestler to score a fall, but I would have liked at four rounds. What we did get was enjoyable with Bond shelving the heel tactics and bringing his working boots. The body checks were solid, that's for sure. Pat Roach vs. Magnificent Maurice (3/21/83) This aired in full on The Wrestling Channel but my man send me the original broadcast version. I can't say I'm in any great hurry to rectify that, but this wasn't too bad. Maurice was basically doing his Colonel Brody shtick under his old exotico name. Brody wasn't the best wrestler around and Roach had plenty of better matches, but it was solid. The narrative was a fairly common one in that Maurice gave Brody more trouble than he was expecting (Walton loved to play on this riff), and the big man finally prevailed while getting his latest movie plugged. Pat Roach vs. Tarzan Johnny Wilson (3/5/84) Johnny Wilson is a guy I've really come to appreciate. He was a bit of a nondescript guy -- just a great body and a pair of leopard skin trunks -- but like John Elijah he was always reliable and everything I watch him I end up thinking: "yeah, that was a good bout." This was a no rounds, 20 minute time limit bout that ended up getting pretty chippy. Roach was like a bear with a sore head when he couldn't put Wilson away. The only thing I disliked about it was Roach couldn't lift Wilson properly for the Brumagen Bump and it seemed like the match was teetering towards a draw then Wilson tried an attack off the ropes and was countered for a pinfall with four seconds remaining. That tells you a bit about Johnny Wilson's station in life. Bobby Ryan vs. Steve Grey (1/13/81) This was a tournament match so it was always going to be short, but three and a half minutes? Wildly disappointing. Marty Jones vs. Bernie Wright (8/19/87) This was all right, I suppose. There was something wrong with the top rope in the opening round and they had to stop the bout for a while. Jones was either legitimately hurt or tried covering for the mishap by working an injury; either way he favoured his side for the remainder of the bout. He was slightly past his prime here and was beginning to pack on a few extra pounds. Bernie Wright has always been a guy who's missing something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. They actually called off the first round here, which I thought was odd. Marty Jones vs. Black Jack Mulligan (6/28/84) Man, Blackjack Mulligan was a jobber to the stars here. I was surprised by how much of a squash this was. Jones looked sensational as he was still one of the best in the world here, but it's rare that a guy will dominate like this even in a catch weight contest. Walton likened it to a cat playing with a mouse, but I've got to say Mulligan earned my respect for doing the job like that. I think they were trying to build Jones back up for a rematch with Finlay. Walton was amusingly biased towards Jones. Jones gave Blackjack a forearm after the bell and Walton was making up all sorts of excuses like the bell being difficult to hear. Ventura would have had a field day with those sort of comments. Marty Jones vs. Caswell Martin (10/28/87) Marty Jones' World Mid-Heavyweight title defence streak became a minor deal in the latter years of wrestling on ITV and they'd try to add all this pomp and circumstance to the defences on the terribly revamped stand alone show. It was really depressing and small time compared to the natural buzz around a title match in the 70s and even the early 80s. More annoying for us, they strung together only bits and pieces of what was an 8 round match between two of the best wrestlers still on television for Joint Promotions. Even TWC didn't seem to obtain the full bout. Frustrating.

Negro Casas, Babe Face y Rambo vs. Villano I, Villano IV y Villano V, UWA 3/6/92 This was a blast. I know I've said this a thousand times but these 1991-92 UWA television matches were so much fun. This was clipped, but even the sped up version was great with exchanges so good they're like candy. Casas started off by wrestling Villano IV. If you're cut from the same cloth I am, you're going to want to watch this when you hear they wrestled. It was rad. Casas was rocking this black trunks/black boots combo with "UWA" written on the boots and was all business. It wasn't a long exchange, but it's got to be one of the highlights of vintage Negro Casas thus far. Babe Face surprised me here. I expected him to be washed up, which he was, but he could still take a nice bump off an arm drag and he had some really fun punch exchanges with the Villanos that led some outrageous punch drunk selling. Rambo didn't do a hell of a lot in ring, but his enthusiasm was infectious and he seemed to drive the match from the apron and with his interjections. There was a great moment where Casas had Villano IV in a headlock and Rambo was pulling on his own arm to encourage Casas to torque the hold a bit more. Aside from Babe Face's wobbly legs, other motifs included miscommunication spots between the rudos and repeat use of the low blow. Rambo was brilliant at both, interjecting himself only to fuck up and delivering one of my all-time favourite fouls. The low blow in lucha can either attain heights it never does in any other form of wrestling or be the absolute nadir of professional lucha libre. Here the rudos won with a low blow thanks to a heel ref, but you won't believe what happened next as those shitty websites keep telling me every day. I didn't catch which Villano was clutching the Mendoza jewels, but Rambo was helping to stretch out his legs when suddenly he dropped a knee to the nether regions. The rudos' reaction was priceless. They bolted faster than I've ever seen a trio exit. Villanos IV and V chased them, but they were like rats up a drain pipe. It's moments like that which make it all worth while. Villanos IV and V did most of the wrestling for their side and they were largely excellent. I love the twisting, wristy arm drags they do, and at one point one of them had Rambo on the outside and did kind of a wristlock shoulder throw for a nice Rambo bump. Quinto also had a nice matador type spot where he kept making Babe Face look like Humpty Dumpty with a spinning back kick. Casas was class through all of this and worth watching the match twice for to pick up on all the nuances. I love his finger wag when selling a bulldog and the look on his face when he mistimed a move on top of Rambo. I also loved the way he shouted at his corner when he came off second best in the first exchange to fire himself up for the reset. Really fun bout.

I would take a lot of things over Steamboat/Savage too, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're better than Savage/Steamboat. I can't see how anyone would think Regal/Ohno was a better match than Steamboat/Savage all things considered.

I don't see how anyone's going to force you to watch someone you don't want to, but if there's a pimping thread with a lot of activity and you've never seen that wrestler then you should probably check out a few of their matches.

Michel Allary vs. Johnny Stein (1960) Johnny Stein was a big, strong shaven headed German who bore an uncanny resemblance to Triple H. Michel Allary was the promising young heavyweight from the Lassartesse match whose career was cut short by injury. The first ten minutes of this was an enjoyable heavyweight contest. It was mostly strength holds, but it was tough, physical looking stuff that was well sold, and Stein was a beast. After a while, he began roughing Allary up and the bout became a bit shapeless, though it did succeed in drawing the ire of the crowd. Allary made various comeback attempts during the bout and dished out some retaliation before the big German was disqualified for repeatedly stomping Allary in the ropes. Allary lashed out after the bell choking Stein with a towel, which drew a healthy bloodlust from the crowd. A couple of policemen from 'Allo 'Allo! had to make sure things didn't get out of hand, and Stein must have been pleased with how the night went as he made his way back to the locker room. Personally, I would have liked to have seen more of that initial hard fought heavyweight contest, but the heat mongering was a decent enough spectacle.

I hope it gets a fair shake, and I say that as someone who wouldn't have Joshi workers as high this time round.

Kobashi is a terrible promo for what it's worth.

I'd be interested so long as people are committed to the project.

Rey Mysterio Jr and Eddie Guerrero weren't put in a position to have a big important match and they still managed it at Halloween Havoc. I agree that Regal never had an opportunity to have a match like Steamboat/Savage, but I think the argument should centre around whether he was capable.

Midcard workers can still have big matches. Regal had an opportunity on monthly PPVs to have big matches. Some people might argue that he accomplished that with Arn and Steamboat and Johnny B. Badd, but that's not my recollection from when we did the WCW poll.

El Dandy/Piloto Suicida/El Brazo vs. Negro Casas/Loverboy/Kung Fu (Los Angeles, CA 9/19/92) Vintage Casas of the Day gets requests! This WWA handheld was a request from Pro Wrestling Only poster Gregor. Gregor doesn't post much, but I've always admired his taste in lucha and his penchant for seeking out the hidden gems like we do on the Great Lucha blog, so I was rapt to get a message from him. Lucha house show matches are no different from other promotion's house shows. They're basically a stripped down version of what you see on TV. You get a bit of shtick, a few exchanges, a rudo beatdown segment and a couple of dives at the end, but they're generally more heat orientated and less physically demanding. This match was hurt by the fact that apart from Casas and Dandy none of the other participants were very good, including El Brazo who mailed his performance in from Mexico City. I was a bit disappointed that El Brazo wasn't that third good worker a trios match needs, like Mano Negra in that recent Dandy vs. Llanes trios match I reviewed, but I was probably confusing him with Brazo de Oro as El Brazo was always the least of the brothers. Though to be fair, Dandy wasn't up for much in this bout. He seemed more interested in emulating the fighting stance of whatever third or fourth generation UWF bootlegs he was getting and throwing open handed palm strikes. The match was meant to be a bit of fun so I don't want to be too critical, but it would have been better if they'd built it around the Casas vs. Dandy rivalry. Instead, it was an opportunity for the technicos to shine with some build for Lover Boy vs. Piloto Suicida tacked on at the end. They ended up having a mask vs. mask match at some point where Lover Boy was castrated, but it was quite literally an afterthought here. What I did like about this is that we got to see on a house show just how amazingly charismatic Casas was in his prime. The guy simply exuded charisma in a way few wrestlers do. And he was constantly busy working in small details and riffs. I'm now convinced that he was better than Dandy during this time period. What set him apart here were the bumps he was prepared to take on an LA house show. They weren't huge bumps but they raised the level of the match and the standard of the performances. Plus it's fun to hear a tape trader from '92 gushing over how good he is. So it's definitely vintage Casas of the day.

The Ultimate Warrior was not a big match worker. A "big match worker" in my parlance is a worker capable of creating a match that reaches a certain size or scale where you feel like you're watching something big. It doesn't have to be a big long epic. You could accomplish the same thing in 15 or 20 minutes if you're good enough. Regal seldom worked this way. The Larry Z match was an example of him putting on a really exciting big time television match, but most of his output was smaller, more detailed, more intimate work.

Being a big match worker takes skill and a certain level of ability. The fact that not every worker can do it means it's an attribute. How much you value that attribute is up to you, but I think it's a brilliant skill to have. Who doesn't love a big time match?

No, but it might exemplify wider reasons for why Savage was so far ahead of Steamboat in terms of drawing power. While Steamer was possibly stuck in his own bubble (as evidenced by his distaste for the WM match), Savage may have been more open to different possibilities and ways of doing things. Also, Savage clearly put a lot more thought and care into his character and presentation, while Ricky was sort of all over the place with that (from a scientific, no-frills family man to a kung-fu warrior to The Dragon with the fire, etc.). Of course, part of that is probably because of the power each wrestler wielded - Savage clearly had more say-so over his character than Steamboat would have. I love Steamboat as much as anyone else here, but I think it's healthy to analyze the shortcomings of some of these "sacred cow" wrestlers instead of pretending everything they did was perfect and above reproach. I don't believe in sacred cows either, but I suspect the way Savage presented himself had a lot to do with his intensity. I can't say that Steamboat didn't care as much, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was something Savage obsessed over. It seems to me that the reason why Steamboat didn't enjoy working with Savage as much as say Flair was because Savage took planning things out to an extreme. It wasn't so much that they wrestled the match a bunch of times on house shows. They had notebooks where each spot was numbered. The pair of them memorised the match to the point where they could call out a number and the other guy would recite the rest of the match. That's so far removed from how wrestlers usually work that obviously Steamboat had more issues with it than he's ever revealed in public, certainly for Austin and Regal to react so strongly to their private conversations with Ricky. I like both workers, but I would take Steamboat's body of work over Savages because of Dangerous Alliance era WCW. The fact that people have to come up with smallish Regal bouts kind of proves the point that he never had a match like Savage/Steamboat. He was essentially a TV worker. A great one, but a TV worker nonetheless. I think my favourite bout of his was the Larry Z one.

This was an enjoyable listen with the time really flying by. A couple of points: 1) Surely, you didn't know anything about what was going on in the 80s outside of the Apter mags because you were too young to subscribe to the Observer or to be aware of the dirt sheets. 2) Wasn't Shawn calling himself the Showstopper and Mr. Wrestlemania prior to his first retirement? Shawn was always divisive, but he was considered a GOAT candidate amongst North American wrestlers prior to his comeback if for no other reason that he was a candidate for best wrestler of the 90s. 3) Modern NJPW is overrated, but so is modern WWE and CMLL. It seems to me there's an inconsistency going on here.

Regal was never positioned to be in a match as important as Steamboat/Savage and WCW never had a show anywhere near as big as Wrestlemania III. I don't think Regal was a big match worker, but take away the setting and Steamboat/Savage isn't held in quite so high regard.

I adore Regal, but has he EVER had a match as good as Savage/Steamboat? Steamboat himself was down on the match for years because it was pre-planned, which really comes across as one of those dumb things wrestlers value that don't actually enhance the product in any way. Might explain why Savage drew a boatload of money and Steamer never really did. I very much doubt that Savage drawing more than Steamboat had anything to do with their working styles. Of course wrestlers who care about their craft are going to respect the ability to work on the fly the same way musicians respect other musicians' ability to improvise and method actors contrasted from the star factory types who memorized their lines and hit their marks. Steamboat obviously didn't enjoy working that way. It's no different to watching a film you think is great only to find the people involved didn't enjoy working with each other. Obviously, it shouldn't matter to fans of the match, but I can understand the wrestlers' POV.

I don't think it's ever been clearly established whether Walton was an ITV employee or an independent contractor. Nevertheless, Walton could bury a match with the best of them. It's actually quite fun listening for Waltonisms, but I think it's bollocks that he got into the WON HOF without so much as a single bit of critical appraisal.

WON readers really liked Mr. Fuji.