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ohtani's jacket

DVDVR 80s Project
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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket

  1. Colin Bennett vs. Tony Caine (11/7/74) This was Tony Caine's television debut for Joint Promotions. He was doing a Hell's Angels knockoff with the peroxide blonde hair and effeminate mannerisms, but didn't have the flamboyance to go all the way with it. I don't know why they bothered giving him this gimmick as he was tattooed and nowhere near as pretty as Barnes or Street. In fact, he was so committed to either his amateur club or pro-wrestling tuition that he had a tattoo of two wrestlers grappling inked on his chest. Anyway, after some weak Hell's Angels shtick he got himself DQ'ed. Not an auspicious debut, but perhaps not deserving of the panning Walton gave it. Caine appears to have never wrestled on television again while Bennett would take his fireman background to ridiculous extremes with a gimmick straight out of Postman Pat. Bobby Graham vs. Bob Abbott (11/7/74) Walton was still on the Bob Abbott bandwagon here, but what an odd match. It was largely dominated by the heel Bobby Graham with a few brief flurries from Abbott. It's rare that you see a heel initiate the action the whole way through, and with Walton trying to paint Graham out to be a wrestler better suited to tags it was baffling when that dominance turned into an easy one fall victory. So much for Abbott and his potential. Ivan Penzekoff vs. John Cox (11/7/74) This was the main event of a pretty crappy Leamington Spa taping. John Cox was a real lump of a man and Walton didn't give Penzekoff much of a chance by going up a weight to face him. Penzekoff started off with a bit of light comedy, but then took over the bout to the point where Walton was complaining about how Cox was wrestling. Cox was pretty awkward looking, but he did hit some nice body checks and a headbutt during his comeback. Walton didn't like this bout at all and even called it slow. It ended with Penzekoff getting himself disqualified Peter Rann style. The second disqualification of the taping. The fans walked out as soon as it was over. I wonder if they put Penzekoff on last because there was a bar tab in Leamington like there was in Bristol and Croydon.
  2. What do you think of Kent Walton? Because in the last three WoS matches I watched he rubbished one guy's television debut, outright said a tag wrestler wasn't a good singles competitor, gave a smaller man no hope going up a weight, and criticised a big man for not wrestling the bout properly. And that's from a Hall of Famer.
  3. I imagine the big one is how light a wrestler works.
  4. I watched this a while back. It looks like I didn't like it as much as their '97 bout, but here's what I wrote: "Very cool bout that was somewhere between their pure shoot style work and a longer juniors style bout. Greco is one of my all-time favourite mat workers and Ishikawa is the grittiest fighter in the history of pro graps. Loved the Greco strikes in this, especially the shoot style dropkick in the corner."
  5. Pirata Morgan, Hombre Bala y Verdugo vs. Atlantis, Angel Azteca y Ringo Mendoza (3/88) This marks the first appearance on the set of Angel Azteca, who would go on to play a prominent role in EMLL's booking during 1989 and 1990. Azteca, whose real name was Juan Manuel Zuniga, began his career in 1980 under the ring name of El Charro and later Charro de Jalisco, a gimmick he would later recreate in AAA when Pena went through a phase of repackaging everyone. He was from the Durango region of the Comarca Lagunera area and was an "El luchador lagunero" the same as Blue Panther and many others. In fact, Panther and Azteca shared a common maestro in Hector Lopez. Like most luchadores, he started out on the independent scene claiming regional titles such as the Laguna Lightweight Title and the Arena Victoria Tag Team Titles. He rose through the ranks and took the Mexican National Cruiserweight Title in 1986 as Charro de Jalisco, a championship which was created in 1983 as the national equivalent of the overseas junior heavyweight titles, but which petered out for some unknown reason. At some point in the mid to late 80s (I hesitate to guess at the timeline), Zuniga adopted the Angel Azteca persona, a gimmick which brought him tremendous success in the short term. I'm not sure when he began working for CMLL full time, but it looks to have been sometime in 1987. In 1988 they began pairing him with Atlantis and he received the "Mogur push" racing straight up the card. On March 6th, Atlantis and Azteca won the Mexican National Tag Team Championship from Los Infernales MS-1 and Masakre. On February 26, 1989 Ángel Azteca became a double champion when he defeated Bestia Salvaje for the Mexican National Welterweight Championship. Two months later he became a triple champion when he defeated Emilio Charles, Jr. to win the NWA World Middleweight Championship. One can only assume the booker behind this was Juan Herrera as "Angel Azteca" wasn't a Pena style gimmick and Zuniga had more in common with the Velasco trained wrestlers that Herrera preferred to push than the talent Pena advocated. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, Pena would end up repackaging Azteca in the short lived Los Folkloricos trio; a decision which Solar agonised over as it meant they couldn't return to their existing gimmicks in AAA if the trio failed. We'll have plenty more to say about Azteca before the set is over, but sadly he is no longer with us. He died in 2007 of a sudden heart attack shortly after competing in the main event of a small show in Campeche, leaving behind a wife and five children. Verdugo, Spanish for executioner, was the real life brother of Morgan and Bala and stepped into the Los Bucaneros when Jerry Estrada broke off to reinvent himself as the Jerry Estrada we know today. Verdugo's run with his brothers was unarguably the highlight of his career and like Bala he slipped into a journeyman role once the Los Infernales were reformed with Morgan, though he was a worth scalp for wrestlers they were trying to milk something out of like Mogur or Huracán Sevilla, and a lot of fun as Troglodita.
  6. I do 180s on wrestlers all time. I should probably learn not to be such a judgmental prick in the first place, but it's fun changing your mind. In Euro wrestling, I've done a slight 180 on charisma-less heavyweights like Pete Roberts and Ray Steele who I now enjoy for their wrestling skills and workers like Bobby Ryan and Zoltan Boscik, whom I completely dismissed at first. I've warmed up to Rocco over the years, did a complete 180 on my impression of my first impressions of Brian Maxine and gave Skull Murphy, Bob Anthony and just about everyone else a second chance. All that remains is for me to change my tune on my hated triumvirate of Naylor, Sanders and Collins. In lucha, lately I've changed my mind about foreigners in lucha. I'd still rather watch Mexican workers, but Ultimo had some great stints there and Norman Smiley was a ton of fun. Ultimo is a guy who I think was better in Mexico than he was in Japan though that may have been entirely due to Negro Casas. I used to think he was really weak in his first CMLL stint and didn't look good until 1997, but I've really enjoyed his 1993 run while doing the Vintage Negro Casas of the Day series. Give me some 180s.
  7. El Dandy y Negro Casas vs. Corazon De Leon y Ultimo Dragon, CMLL 7/16/93 Whose bright idea was it to give this 40 minutes? People often complain about how short and meaningless the first two falls in lucha are, but three falls of equal length makes for really dull matches. When Jericho was in it was wrestled like an American match. When Ultimo was in it was wrestled like a Japanese match. Dandy was a technico and Casas a rudo, but the match wasn't remotely story driven. It was a workrate match through and through despite Felino giving Casas stick for teaming with a technico in the segment which Raging Noodles translated. When it was over, the crowd threw money in the ring to show their appreciation. Being a tightwad, I probably wouldn't have thrown any money, but I can see why the crowd did as the bout was different from what they were used to. (Actually, I probably would have gotten into it live as I generally don't care how good the matches are during live wrestling.) Jericho couldn't mat wrestle to save his life so he and Dandy went with a side headlock. It was cool, but can you imagine Doobie in your funk? Casas attacked the leg and looked like he was imitating his hero Choshu. He was really at his athletic peak here. Ultimo showed phenomenal speed between the ropes and Casas almost matched it with his running dropkick. It was a shame he entered CMLL just as the Televisa shit was about to go down with Pena. Can you imagine what he could have contributed in 1990? Then again, someone else may have missed out like Azteca or Satanico or Emilio. Plus he was able to rule the roost a bit with everyone defecting to AAA. Casas managed to make Jericho's strikes halfway decent, which was the only good thing Jericho contributed, and Dandy was slightly disappointing against Ultimo, so I'd have to say Casas looked better than his rival here. It did help that he had natural charisma with Ultimo, but Dandy was going through a pudgy stage where his work began to suffer. Aside from the match not really being lucha, the two other problems I had with it were that the finishes to each fall were weak and there were too many submissions that felt like restholds. If you're going to wrestle long falls, you better make the finish to each spectacular so that the momentum carries through to the next caida, but they fell short of that here. There was no intrinsic reason for it go go long; it just did. In fairness, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and in the 1993 CMLL landscape it probably stands out as one of the better bouts, or at least one of the more ambitious ones. But I'd rather watch lucha.
  8. Dynamite Kid vs. Tally Ho Kaye (1/12/77) No matter what people think of the Dynamite Kid these days, there's no denying he was a talented teenage wrestler. Dynamite's biggest strength was his execution -- an attribute he was already showing at age 17. He just had so much more poise than other workers his own age, and I wonder what might have become of him had he stayed in England and spent his career there. If you've ever seen Tally Ho Kaye, you'll know his matches had a paucity of wrestling, but he was a heat magnet and like Breaks vs. a youngster it gave Dynamite the chance to really get the crowd behind him. I'm not sure how good Dynamite was at mat wrestling at this stage, but his throws were outstanding and Kaye milked the heat opportunities for all they were worth. Not a great bout from a technical standpoint, but an entertaining enough excursion. Dick Conlon vs. Jackie Pallo Jr (3/14/74) Pallo Jr was better than I would have expected, though wasn't as talkative or lippy as his old man. Conlon was how you would imagine a jobber to the stars if they had a slight heel push (in this case a Mexican bandito moustache.) All told it was a decent bout, but what surprised me was that Walton gave a kayfabe reason for the Pallos starting their own promotion and more or less said they wouldn't be on television anymore. Afterwards, Pallo leaned down to ask Walton if his performance had been alright. Walton congratulated him and the pair shook hands. Not sure if that was a goodbye or if Walton was just tight with the Pallos, but it was against the norm. This was wrestled at Gravesend and that little old lady who was always in the same front row seat sure loved her "Jack." She was incredibly vocal the whole match long to the point where the crowd teased her about it, but you should hear her give Max Ward an earful. Classic stuff. Barry Douglas vs. Johnny Peters (2/25/76) I discovered in this match that there were moves which were banned in Sheffield by the local watch committee. These included the back elbow, the arm leveler over the shoulder joint and the headbutt. I asked the folks over at Wrestling Heritage whether these regulations were enforced or not and apparently it was serious business. The local council would send people to the hall and if any of the moves were performed they had the authority to shut the place down. This was a lot more interesting than the match, which was technically okay but had no heat whatsoever and Walton brought up Douglas' connections to the local promoters too much which gave it a kind of nepotistic feel that it probably didn't deserve. One thing is for sure, he wasn't the Southern Terry Rudge as his Wrestling Heritage profile used to claim. Young David (Davey Boy Smith) vs. Bernie Wright (8/2/78) This was billed as a special "teenage match." You can imagine the response I'd get if I posted it on YouTube. Davey Boy was 15 here and Wright 17. It was possibly the skinniest pro-wrestling match I've ever seen. It's weird seeing Davey Boy as a skinny 15 year old without a hint of a single anabolic steroid. You wonder what was going through his mind at the time. Also knowing the type of person he became, you begin to wonder whether the child was father to the man. At any rate, neither kid knew many holds so this was largely bumping and throwing. Bernie Wright had a neat little stomach throw that Walton was fascinated with. No real surprises here. Chris Adams vs. Ringo Rigby (11/9/78) I was curious to see this as Ringo and Adams went off to North America together. The footage didn't capture all of it, but it didn't really matter as it was a shitty tournament bout with this stupid rule that after the first fall they would both put on their gi and have a special judo throws challenge. Pretty crappy.
  9. Tibor Szakacs vs. Big Bruno Elrington (12/4/74) This was a surprisingly good match. Bruno Elrington was this really big cumbersome guy who couldn't even making his clubbing strikes look good, but Szakacs worked a fantastic match from underneath and there was a huge amount of tension around whether he could beat the larger man. He had a bit of trouble applying his usual leg scissor holds against Elrington and so he changed his strategy towards leg locks and grounding Bruno. Bruno got frustrated with this and began bending the rules, which upset the grandma brigade. At one stage, Elrington and Szakacs were tangled up in the ropes and a woman at ringside began slapping Elrington. As you can imagine, the heat was tremendous, and when Szakacs finally landed his back handed chop both Walton and the crowd exploded. After so much work on his leg, Elrington was beginning to limp and looked slightly gassed. The crowd was on edge over whether Szakacs could beat him and that sort of tension was rare during television bouts. If Bruno had been a marginally better worker I would have listed this for sure. Tibor Szakacs vs.Gargantua (5/8/74) This was a real come down after the last match. Gargantua was Big Jim Moran, who sometimes went by the alias of Man Mountain Moran, so this was another match with Szakacs vs. a big man, but was largely shtick looking to a DQ. Les Kellett vs. Tug Holton (2/13/75) Not the best Kellett match available in large part because his opponent didn't offer much, but there were a couple of funny moments involving Kellett standing on Max Ward's foot and the usual antics of Kellett pretending not to hear the bell. And again, he looked like the hardest bastard in all of professional wrestling. Steve Veidor vs. Gordon Corbett (11/16/76) I was excited to see a nice face on the small screen only to discover that Corbett only appeared once (at least as himself; he appeared a couple of times under a mask doing a heel exorcist gimmick.) Veidor worked this one as though Corbett was a handful and did this really cool extended arm leveler attack. Good bout.
  10. I just spent twenty seconds quelling a tirade against UWF-i.
  11. Pierre Lagache/René Cabellec vs. René Ben Chemoul/Bob Plantin (1978) In one of the versions of this bob ALPRA uploaded he said it was Chemoul's final bout. Personally, I found it kind of lacklustre. The heels were nowhere near as interesting as most of the pairings we've seen so far and the action was average. Once again the video cut out after the first fall. To me this was skippable. Marc Mercier vs. Alex Sanniez (1978) Mercier was a young French talent who appeared on WoS once facing Marty Jones. He had a car accident in 1989 that forced him to retire and later became a promoter reactivating the defunct FFCP promotion in 2006. Here he was a skinny second year man, and if you're familiar with Euro wrestling you'll know that skinny means skinny. This was quite a decent bout and I thought Sanniez did a great job of keeping it tight. But again there was no finish, perhaps deliberately so to only upload part of the footage.
  12. Thanks to Raging Noodles for translating the interview. It's actually pretty funny.
  13. Negro Casas/El Felino/Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Dandy/La Fiera/Corazon de Leon, CMLL 7/23/93 This was the epitome of a nothing match. It began with some sort of sit down talk between Casas and Felino with heel commentator Arturo Rivera serving as mediator. They seemed engaged in a philosophical debate over whether Casas was still a rudo, which I'm sure is riveting if you understand a word of Spanish, but perplexing if you don't. How could Casas and Felino remain on the same side when Casas threw in the towel to cost Felino his welterweight title? That's the sort of contradiction that makes it difficult for people to get into lucha. One minute Casas doesn't want to be a rudo anymore and is trying to buddy with Dandy; the next minute he's turning on his brother in what most of us have been preconditioned to believe is a face turn for Felino. Either this is an incredibly sophisticated angle which I can't understand or there's no continuity. It's as though they teased a Casas brothers feud through the summer only to drop it for something else. As best I can tell, Felino accuses Casas of being envious, but the theme for Casas' entire 1993 seems to be a crisis of faith. Seriously, if you can understand Spanish and you care enough, drop me a line and let me know what's going on. The confusion wouldn't have been so bad if the match had been any good, but it was the opposite of a fun Arena Coliseo match. I usually watch these matches two or three times while writing them up, but this wasn't a match I'd want to sit through again. Felino and Casas almost came to blows during Rivera's intervention yet there was no pay off in the match. The vignette was probably shot separately to the match so I can understand there being no connection, but why book this way if you can't really produce a television show? Casas was still avoiding wrestling Dandy the way he did in 1992, Wagner was greener than Espectro's mask, Jericho was fucking awful in Mexico, and the match-up I was most looking forward to seeing, Dandy vs. Felino, was slow and ponderous. The entire match was long and drawn out. The only guy who provided a spark was Fiera, which if you've seen the condition he was in during 1993 was a little depressing. Enough about this one.
  14. Tony St. Clair vs. Bob Abbott (3/14/73) This was a fine sporting contest without a lot of heat. Abbott was making his television debut but despite Walton's best efforts to question why the promoters hadn't put him on television before, and put him over as a local Nottingham boy, he didn't have quite the charisma or confidence of his opponent. A couple of Walton's pet peeves were on display here, one being the director getting Abbott's name wrong (listing him as "Bud" Abbott of Abbott and Costello), the other being a plead for people to not write in correcting him over where St. Clair was billed from. The on screen text may have been a rib; the letters I can imagine ITV received dozens per week correcting Walton over something. What did surprise me was that Walton referred to a St. Clair vs. Steele match from a few weeks earlier that he called one of the best matches he'd ever seen. I was aware of which wrestlers Walton rated, but I'd never heard him talk about a match that way. This was good and Abbott had some nice counters, but he needed to be less reserved as St. Clair looked more natural getting toweled off in the corner than Abbott did all match long. Steve Veidor vs. Bob Abbott (3/27/74) A year later and Walton was still pushing for Abbott to be on television more. I've often wondered what the politics of that sort of thing were. And was Walton shooting from the hip or was it just commentator-speak? As it was, Abbott had a half dozen appearances or so over three years and was never seen again. Not a bad wrestler, but like a lot of guys he was missing that spark that separated a guy like Veidor from the rest of the pack. Britain was full of heavyweights in this era, but Veidor was head and shoulders above most as a master stylist and a hugely charismatic individual. But even he could never pry the title from either Albert "Rocky" Wall or Gwynn Davies, as interesting Joint Promotions preferred to have a heel on top. Some lovely wrestling here from both men and Abbott again contributed a lot of nice holds, but the kind of match for a lazy summer's afternoon and not the kind of barn burner Veidor usually had against heels. I could watch him any time, though. Such a beautiful stylist.
  15. 90% of it is your voice. Gorilla had a good voice. Michael Cole doesn't.
  16. Jean Rabut vs. Venta Costella (1/22/60) Costella was a real Spanish wrestler not like the supposed Modesto Aledo video. About 10 minutes of this aired. Decent lightweight match with the pin attempts being pretty sensational. Angelito vs. Albert Sanniez (1977) This was a fun match with a lot of neat holds in the maestros style. A bit exhibition-y, but fluid. If this were a classic lucha match, I'd be over the moon with the discovery. I'm starting to think Euro wrestling delivers more than lucha when it comes to the matwork and exchanges. Fred Magnier vs. Bob Plantin Magnier was a fun heel. A tubby little guy with an ugly mug. Plantin did all sorts of Euro style escapes here, including an awesome spin out on his head, but this was a mauling and Plantin's corner finally threw in the towel. Referee/promoter Roger Delaporte had trouble separating Magnier from Plantin and finally the pair came to blows. Somewhat amusing considering Delaporte was one of the biggest heels of his day. Kind of reminded me of McManus playing the elder statesman after retiring.
  17. I seem to remember Heenan and Monsoon on commentary being a highlight of Royal Rumble '92 and Wrestlemania VIII.
  18. That was another part I disliked. Why did Casas have to play the underdog? All feud long they've been unleashing on each other and then in the hair match he's outmatched? And what a dumb story to run if he was meant to lose.
  19. Actually, I thought it was okay up until the finish to the second fall, but it was a dog's breakfast after that. The final fall was crap and the finish was awful. They should have pulled the trigger on it sooner, but it was never going to be violent enough in the modern day Arena Mexico.
  20. Yeah, that was tremendously average.
  21. Ignoring the Andre thing completely: At this point, I'm kind of okay with a "standards are transitory and good wrestling is timeless and not in the very least tied to them." mindset, if it'll make this argument go away? "Standards" to me simply means a measure, norm or model for comparative evaluations. I don't think it necessarily refers to the level of quality, though it can do. I'm not so sure that I agree that good wrestling is timeless. There are fundamental aspects of wrestling that are timeless, but wrestling is so tied up in presentation that you can't escape the fact that it's ever changing. Think about the AAA you've been enjoying. That was a different style from CMLL or the UWA. The fundamentals were similar but the style was markedly different. When AAA got over, the standard for trios wrestling changed. CMLL looked old and obsolete at both the level of the work and the gimmicks. We can come along and cherry pick what we think is good wrestling, but that ignores the reality of what was happening at the time.
  22. I liked the Busick/Thatcher Beyond Wrestling match for the most part, but I don't see how it relates to 50s wrestling. To me it was completely post-modern. And overly aggressive. It's more aggressive, but the style Thatcher/Busick/Gulak are working is essentially a stripped down modern style that hearkens back to the 1950s. It's not about building up to a big move, or even working over a specific body part, but rather using mat work and wrestling control to work over your opponent, essentially grind him to a finish. In a lot of ways it's very catch-as-catch can on a base level, and when watching a lot of older catch stuff I can very much see the matches this trio of guys are having fitting into that time frame. Really, because I just see them borrowing elements from everywhere, not really working from a catch-as-can base. They never really ground that hard in catch. It was more about dressing and undressing holds. These guys were overly aggressive w/ a focus on stiffness and much nastier throws. The influences seemed to be shoot style and British heavyweight workers as opposed to the really great catch workers. The people in the room were really annoying as well. "Please don't tap" may have overtaken "this is awesome" as the worst chant conceivable.
  23. Is there really a type of wrestler PWO likes? We have pretty diverse tastes.
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