ohtani's jacket

Aja Kong/Bull Nakano vs. Dream Orca (Mita/Yamada), 4/27/89 The future continued to look bright here for AJW, but every match was a learning curve and unless you really like watching rookies get a bit of seasoning and in-ring experience there isn't much to enjoy about this one. Bull held off and didn't participate as much as she could have, and really gave the reigns to Aja, who was still really green here. The Dream Orca bumped and sold, bumped and sold, bumped and sold, and never mounted any sustained offence. With the action so one-sided, my mind started to wander a bit and I couldn't help but wonder if Bull really needed to gain all that weight and become a monster. They were clearly trying to replicate Dump Matsumoto and Monster Ripper with the hope that one of their young girl pairings would take off, but the company ended up going in a much different direction that Bull probably could have stayed lean. As far as the yearbook goes, I can't see the need for much AJW footage past the last major Crush Girls matches, the retirement ceremonies and then a handful of matches to represent the promise that the late 80s classes had.

I've only been to two live shows in my life, but I really dug the Crush Girls vs. Nagashima/Sato match I saw. Japanese wrestling with all of the nearfalls and escalating moves strikes me as something that's better live than on television.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tomoaki Honma, 7/21/14 * This is the first time I've seen Honma. He's not a guy I know a whole lot about except that the Wrestling KO guys are high on him. He sure is an excitable fella. I was impressed with how much better he made Tanahashi's strikes look by having a slightly more exaggerated or theatrical style of selling that drew your attention toward the sell and away from the impact. He did no-sell a fair bit, including on a suplex late in the match, but his charisma makes it forgivable. * Tanahashi's lock-ups have really improved and his opening exchanges are much better these days. A small shift maybe, but it starts things off on the right note and makes me receptive to the match. Tanahashi wisely gave Honma much of the early going and I liked the way that Honma's direct style forced more physicality from Tanahashi than finesse. * Match had no real flaws and was a solid G1 league bout. They weren't going for an epic and instead produced a tidy bout. I'd peg it at around *** 1/2.

All right, time to wrap up this Big Daddy/Haystacks feud: Big Daddy/Alan Kilby/Pat Patton vs. Giant Haystacks/Scrubber Daly/Lucky Gordon (11/1/83) This was just the pits. Fuck knows what Al Kilby or Pat Patton were thinking. Up until the Wembley bout there was at least some novelty to Daddy vs. Haystacks, but in '83 it was time to move on. Haystacks managed to scrounge Scrubber Daly and Lucky Gordon up from somewhere and looked to have an advantage over Daddy when Patton was unable to continue, but Daddy was in such bad shape that there wasn't even a FIP segment on Kilby. I've never seen a match where the faces are in such dire straits and there's no heat segment. This was a "fall out of bed" kind of match and they couldn't do it. Just awful. Giant Haystacks/Bully Boy Muir vs. Big Daddy/Tony St. Clair (4/19/78) Haystacks was rocking an amazing afro in this match. That's about all he was rocking though as he was disqualified straight away for attacking Tony St. Clair before the bell. That left Big Daddy one-on-one with Muir while St. Clair was laid out on the apron doing his best impersonation of an All Japan tag match. Muir got a decent cheap shot in on St. Clair when he was whipped into the corner and stuck a leg through the ropes, but this was one way traffic and God knows what the public thought of it as Cup Final Day fare. The finish was an absolute mess with nobody but the ref realising that one fall and one disqualification was enough to end the match. Hell, even Walton didn't know it was over and thought Muir had decided to quit. It's staggering how poorly executed a lot of these main events were. Big Daddy/Tony St. Clair vs. Giant Haystacks/Albert Hillbilly Hell-On (1/25/78) This was weird. Albert Hillbilly Hell-On was billed as being from Tennessee and literally all he did was look confused and eat the pinfalls. St. Clair shouldered the load here and had rope burn and a bloody nose to show for it. St. Clair was one of the lighter heavyweights at the time, but he looked like a twig next to Haysacks. Daddy looked remarkably thin by his standards and even had a specialty move (a kind of back body drop thing with a pin.) It was early days with his face turn and he was still fleshing things out. Dunno who Albert Hillbilly Hell-On was. It was all a bit baffling really. Big Daddy/Ritchie Brooks/Roy Regal vs. Giant Haystacks/Sid Cooper/Charlie McGhee (11/13/86) What can a person say? Daddy had a full on marching band here. At one point, I was a bit worried about one of the kid's drums with all these fat men flying around, but thank heavens no instruments were harmed. Regal and Brooks must have thought they'd made it making it onto ITV television. In the halls, they could have probably tore the place down. Sid Cooper was still plowing away in '86 and tried his best to work some decent exchanges with Brooks. I can't recall too much else about this other than Daddy inexplicably got a pinfall over Haystacks, and he had a marching band. Big Daddy/Jim Moser vs. Giant Haystacks/Big Bill Bromley (10/11/82) I've liked Moser in other stuff he's done, but Moser vs. Bromley was never going to be enough to hold my interest in this one. They teased a battle royal spot in this match where both Haystacks and Daddy looked like they might fall onto Walton's commentary desk, which quite frankly would have been brilliant, and it was amazing how gassed Daddy was after trying to lift Haystacks. He was hunched over in his corner and I was worried about his ticker for a second. Moser was taken out like so many before him and again there was no heat segment on Daddy. He even scored another pinfall over Haystacks. Is there no stopping this man? Apparently not when he's running into people. Big Daddy vs. Giant Haystacks (6/18/81) And finally here it is, Wembley Arena 1981. The Wrestlemania III of British wrestling. A no rounds, no falls, fight to the finish that could only be won on a knock out. Two referees, the Reverend Michael Brooks in Big Daddy's corner and Anaconda and Banger Tony Walsh in Haystacks' corner. Two minutes and fifty seconds of the most amazing wrestling you'll ever see. Two giants going at it hammer and tongs. Each showing the other no mercy. Haystacks came agonisingly close on the splash, but by some miracle Daddy rolled out of the way. On and on they battled with no end in sight until finally the fates intervened. A little sweat on the canvas? We'll never know, but Haystacks slid, then stumbled, and fell... fell over the top rope and down into the bowels of the earth. Unable to mobilise his gigantic frame, this lionheart was counted out. And to be bloody fair, it's not easy to move an ass that big in only 10 seconds. For a match that was four years in the making you'd think they might have actually teased Daddy losing, but at least it wasn't boring.

Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto, CMLL Women's World Title (7/15/92) I forgot there was a third match to this series. That's poor on my part as this is the match where Shimoda joins up with Hokuto. There's a pledging angle at the beginning that's not very well done then a sluggish match that's more of an angle than a title bout. Hokuto is injured as usual... Normally, it was the knee or sometimes the back or neck. This time it was the ribs. She takes a bunch of nasty shots to the mid section throughout the match w/ the coup de grace being Bull getting her knees up on a Hokuto splash attempt. From there, she manages to kick out of Bull's top rope guillotine leg drop, but when Bull heads back up for the moonsault, Mita and Shimoda panic and rush into the ring. The ringside doc checks if Hokuto is okay and calls for a stoppage, and the post-match is Hokuto crying and Bull cutting a promo on her. FLIK thought this was their second best match, but to me they were just progressing the storyline and the payoff was the cage match.

Okay, let's try this again... El Dandy, Magico y Super Astro vs. Gran Cochise, Javier Cruz y Javier Rocca (11/11/87) -- Take 2 'Magico', or Mascara Sagrada as we know him, began his wrestling career in the city of Texcoco about 25 km northeast of Mexico City. Originally known as Hecatombe, his professional debut came in September 1978 and from there he began working as a preliminarista in the local area. Rookie of the Year honours soon followed and with them a title match victory over Mando Amezcua for the Texcoco Welterweight Title and a first hair win against Impala. This was enough to get him noticed by promoter Raul Reyes, who owned a few arenas on the outskirts of the Federal District, the so-called "Kings circuit' made up of the Azteca, Xochimilco, Apatlaco, and Puente Negro arenas. Sagrada worked the circuit from 1980-82 and it was during this time that he first met Antonio Pena. Pena was doing his Kahoz gimmick at the time, a type of horror act where he'd invoke dark spirits and bite the heads off live pigeons, smearing fake blood over himself and his opponent. The two became friends and it was this friendship which would play a pivotal role in Sagrada's national break through. In 1983, Sagrada began wrestling at Arena Naucalpan where he continued to have success taking the masks of some of the local talent and defeating Villano IV for the Naucalpan Middleweight Title. Over the next few years, he worked in the smaller arenas around the Federal District such as Arena Naucalpan, Arena Neza, Pista Arena Revolucion and Plaza de Toros el Cortijo. He may or may not have worked for EMLL during this time, but not in any major capacity. It was after a lengthy stint in Ciudad Juarez that Sagrada returned to Mexico City somewhat frustrated with how his career was progressing and fed up with how promoters like Marco Moreno were treating him. Pena had been forced to retire by this point and was working as an assistant in the EMLL programming department thanks to an old friendship with EMLL treasurer Juan Herrera. It was a minor office role, but it allowed Pena to channel his passion for lucha libre into coming up with new character ideas. Pena and Sagrada got together in the summer of '88 and began working on a new character for Hecatombe. That character became "Magico" and made its debut at Arena Coliseo de Guadalajara on 10/22/88 in the trios match I mentioned. From there, the rest of the story I told is accurate. It simply happened in a shorter time frame than I would've had you believe. After the Monterrey wrestler claimed the rights to the name, there was apparently a contest among the public to "name the nameless fighter," and Mascara Sagrada was chosen from the entries. When Paco was shown the character sketches which Paco had drawn for Octagon and Mascara Sagrada, he promoted him to director of programming and public relations. This upset the established hierarchy and eventually led to Pena making a secret deal with Televisa to start his own promotion. Sagrada followed Pena to AAA, but the two had a messy falling out when Sagrada discovered that Televisa were receiving royalties for merchandise bearing his likeness. Sagrada was ineligible for royalty payments as Pena had signed away the rights to the gimmick, and this along with other payments Pena was withholding from wrestlers (such as Japanese broadcasting rights) led to Sagrada quitting. AAA quickly put another wrestler in the costume and claimed that the original Sagrada had no rights to the name. The issue went through the courts and was finally settled in Sagrada's favour in 2005, but by then it had taken a decent chunk out of his later earning years. As for the state of Dandy's hair, it does appear that Dandy and Satanico began feuding at the end of '87, but their first hair match was on 4/8/88 and the return hair match was on 10/21/88. Satanico lost the first match and Dandy the second, which places this match some time after Magico's debut and the second Dandy/Satanico hair match. My apologies for the confusion. The clues were there, but I was working with a series of bad dates which I tried to make work. My thanks to the poster Gregor for providing the catalyst for the re-check. Much appreciated.

I don't recall when they began calling her Dangerous Queen, but the summer of '92 was when she adopted the look, dying her hair and changing her make-up. IIRC, she toured Mexico with Mita in April, and the changes happened shortly after that with Hokuto turning heel and forming LCO. In the March TV match she has her old Marine Wolves look.

The Bull/Hokuto stuff is worth checking out on YouTube.

Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto (3/15/92 TV) Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto, cage match (7/30/92) Man, these take me back. They totally remind me of the old Todd Yates and the old A1 board and how much we loved the Dangerous Queen. And now through the wonders of the internet, I can see them again. The first match is from before Hokuto's transformation into the Dangerous Queen, but she shows the same sort of spirit. It's an excellent TV match particularly after watching the disappointing Bull/Nishiwaki match. Hokuto shows plenty of guts and determination simply to hang with Bull, and while she often has trouble lifting her, she manages to nail the Northern Lights Bomb, which gives Bull a fright. Bull's selling was so good. It's where I think she had it all over Aja. Aja could sell, but not in a compelling way. Bull is outstanding. The second match is after Hokuto adopted the Dangerous Queen image and is a real watershed moment for her. Again, she's all guts and determination (and blood), but this time she won't be vanquished and fights tooth and nail to not only stay in the match, but win it. Both girls go beyond the level of danger you'd expect from a television cage match and in many ways it's a shame this wasn't done on a bigger stage, but nonetheless both girls try moves off the top of the cage and the finish is memorable. 1992 was a very good year for AJW and these are nice little additions to what was happening on the big shows as well as being important points on the Dangerous Queen's journey from promising youth to all-time great.

Kader Hassouni/Jean Corne vs. Albert Sanniez/Jacky Richard (9/3/83) This was in colour and most likely from the 70s. Hassouni and Richard I've see on WoS while Corne was a regular competitor in England during the 1960s and appeared on several Royal Albert Hall shows along with a few TV appearances. He looked pretty old here, which is why I'm guessing this was from the 70s. Richard was apparently a major heel on French TV and he certainly upset the ringside fans in this one. This was another excellent French tag that unfortunately cut out before the finish. The heel work was pretty fantastic with Sanniez applying this really obnoxious looking submission where he kept pulling the face's hair. This upset an old woman at ringside and some snot nosed kids, who were lucky they didn't receive a hiding. Needed the finish, but a solid all round match.

Well, as soon as I typed that I confirmed the dates. Their first hair match was on 4/8/88 and their second hair match was on 10/21/88. I now suspect that Magico made his debut in October of '88 and that this match is from the same year. That makes much more sense given that Cubsfan has match listings for Sagrada under his old gimmick Hecatombe through October of '87 and into November. I need to re-write that last match write-up. Thanks for the prompting.

There are clips of the 4/88 Satanico/Dandy hair match. I'm not sure where they come from. Possibly World Pro Wrestling? Dandy and Satanico met in five hair matches from the late 80s through to the early 90s. It's possible that the listings the Dandy Luchawiki has now are accurate and that this match is actually from after the 10/21/88 Dandy vs. Satanico hair match, though I haven't been able to confirm that date.

Lioness Asuka vs. Madusa Micelli, WWWA title (5/6/89) This was one of the few efforts AJW made in 1989 at putting on a big match. The premise behind the bout was ridiculously convoluted with the promoters claiming that it was a "unification bout" to determine the global women's wrestling champion despite the fact that Madusa didn't hold a title of any sort. Bockwinkel was on hand to both ref the match and serve as a witness for the "eight American promotions" w/ the idea being that the recognition of "global women's champion" would be absorbed into the WWWA title somehow. I'd have to go back and watch it again to make more sense of it than that. The match itself was fairly mediocre. They went through all the steps in working an epic, but I couldn't find an "in" and the action just seemed to plod along. Madusa wasn't a good enough worker to work within this framework and Asuka wasn't about to carry her. From beginning to end, it didn't seem like a good idea staging the match.

Ian Gilmour/Jeff Kaye vs. Johnny Saint/Steve Best (aired 12/2/72) This was the best British tag match I can remember seeing. British tag wrestling had this strange convention where the teams had nicknames (in this case the Barons and the Elite, and not the "Elites" as Walton nitpicked over when the onscreen graphic appeared), but there were no tag belts or anything of consequence to the bouts. This was a spectacle, but it had a narrative to it as well. The match turned on a crisscross spot where Gilmour and Best were running the ropes, Best dropped to the canvas in a press-up position and Gilmour did a Giant Haystacks style splash onto Best's back, injuring him in the process. Gilmour went for the pinfall, but Best caught him in a body scissors and was able to pry Gilmour off him. That has to be one of the coolest defensive spots I've seen in a wrestling match. After that, Best's back was a weakness and Saint had to do a lot of wrestling for his side. The action went back and forth and there were a tremendous number of nearfalls and exciting pinfall attempts. Saint and Kaye in particular shone, as you'd expect from wrestlers of their calibre. Really exciting match. Big Daddy/Mal Sanders vs. Giant Haystacks/Mark Rocco (11/13/79) Rocco and Haystacks were a great combination. You can just imagine them backstage hatching their plans to take down Daddy. Much of the action here was centred around champion vs. champion with Rocco being the British Heavy-Middleweight champ and Sanders being the European Middleweight champion at the time, but it wasn't long before Rocco was bumping like a maniac for Daddy taking high back body drops and bouncing around the ring. Sanders was also a brave man, taking the full weight of Haystacks' splash right across his mid-section. That was Sanders done for the night, and Rocco followed shortly after with a disqualification leaving Haystacks and Daddy alone together. Daddy began shunting Haystacks around like he was a freight car, so Haystacks bailed and the public would once again have to wait. It's a shame we didn't get to see more of Haystacks and Rocco as I really liked the spot they did where Rocco whipped Sanders into the corner and Haystacks clobbered him with a giant forearm. Haystacks then pleaded with the ref over the public warning while Rocco beat the crap out of Sanders illegally. Beautiful stuff. Big Daddy/Giant Haystacks vs. Steve Veidor/Tibor Szakacs (4/6/76) This was these teams' first match from Croydon, which was Veidor's hometown. I think Daddy missed his true calling as he was a natural prick and should have stayed a heel. Perhaps in the 80s when business began to struggle they could have turned Daddy heel to shake things up. This was another fun bout. I liked the return match more because of how fired up Veidor and Szakacs were, but this was the catalyst for that performance. There wasn't much in the way of wrestling, but Veidor hit the most gorgeous dropkicks. He really was some athlete. Big Daddy/Gary Wensor vs. Giant Haystacks/Big Bruno Elrington (9/26/78) Daddy carrying a toddler to ringside was slimier than the slimiest politician, and he looked just as crooked during the ring intros. Brian was beaming too, in case you had any doubt that the Crabtrees had taken over. Poor Gary Wensor had the ignominy of being Daddy's worst ever partner here. He was replacing Dave Armstrong, who failed to make it to the building, and was instantly a whipping boy for Big Bruno Elrington. Haystacks managed to distract Daddy and the ref with a faked walk out and then Elrington finished off the meek Wensor. Haystacks then took over, and since the babyfaces never broke up the pinfall attempts in WoS, the unthinkable happened and the heels actually got a victory over Daddy. Apparently, this was the last time that Daddy lost on television, which is ridiculous given the amount of tags he worked.

Bull Nakano vs. Mitsuko Nishiwaki (1/4/90) Another anti-climatic match from this era of All Japan Women. You'd think a match to decide the vacant WWWA title would have a bit more drama than this, especially after they spent the past year building Nishiwaki up as the Grand Prix and Tag League champion, but in the end it was a pretty straightforward win for Bull, who hid her emotions during the title presentation. Nishiwaki bled, but it was pretty meaningless, and it looked to me like they screwed up the finish as Bull didn't hit her powerbomb cleanly and Nishiwaki had to balance herself for the three count. Bull was clearly The Woman at this point with all of the retirements and a few of the older girls jumping to JWP, but this was a disappointing effort from her and I expected more. Nishiwaki retired by the end of the year and made good on the talent circuit before marring the famous sumo wrestler Kaio, but what an odd little push she got around this time.

It was too stiff. I don't need to see them punch each other when they're such great mat workers. I get that they were trying to do something different from how they'd worked previously, but some of the blows were sickening.

El Dandy, Magico y Super Astro vs. Gran Cochise, Javier Cruz y Javier Rocca (11/11/87) The first thing you'll notice about this match is Dandy's buzz cut. It took me an age to figure out that Dandy had lost his hair to El Satanico because of an edit on Luchawiki that changed a 10/87 Satanico win into a 4/88 Dandy win. Dandy and Satanico were tag partners for a good part of the '87 season, but at some point in October they had the type of falling out that's typical between rudos and began fighting with one another. This turned Dandy face and the match we have here is technicos contra technicos. Gran Cochisse also turned technico around this time, but I don't have any details about the wheres and whys. Dandy didn't just lose his hair in October of '87. He also lost the NWA World Middleweight title to Kung Fu, albeit not on a major show. According to Box y Lucha, Jerry Estrada was meant to be Dandy's challenger, but Kung Fu replaced him and won the belt. This match also features the first appearance on the set of Mascara Sagrada, an Antonio Pena creation and relatively well known wrestler from the 90s. He had been kicking around the independent circuit for about a decade before returning to Mexico City for another crack at the big time. Pena had retired from wrestling in '86 due to injuries and was working in EMLL's PR department when he came up with the "Magico" gimmick for his friend Sagrada. Sagrada made his debut as Magico on 10/22, tagging with Atlantis and Rayo de Jalisco Jr. against Los Hermanos Dinamita, however it was soon discovered that there was already a character by that name in Monterrey and that the wrestler who played him held all rights to the name. For a while, Sagrada was forced to wrestle as "El Hombre sin Nombre" (The Man With No Name) before Pena came up with a new gimmick for him in June of '89 -- Mascara Sagrada or "Sacred Mask." The gimmick was a play on the sanctity of masks in lucha libre, and it was this incarnation of the Sagrada gimmick coupled with the television boom that catapulted him to stardom. The height of his fame being the movie he made with Octagon in 1992, Octagón y Máscara Sagrada, lucha a muerte. Incidentally, watching this it may seem that Magico has two horrific botches in this bout, but the last time I spoke with Jose Fernandez about the bout he assured me that the spots weren't botched and that Magico's finisher was supposed to look like that. Go figure.

Manami Toyota/Toshiyo Yamada vs. Madusa Miceli/Mitsuko Nishiwaki (10/8/89) Not the most memorable or dramatic TLTB Final, but AJW was going through a real transition phase in late '89 with the retirements of both Crush Girls. Why they chose to push Nishiwaki so hard is something that's probably worth researching/considering when it comes time for an '89 Yearbook, as she also won the 1989 JGP (defeating Madusa in the process.) She wasn't a bad worker, but it's not as though she was a stand out. Madusa wasn't as bad as I thought she might be and actually had a fairly decent stand up exchange with Yamada, whose kicks were again a little soft. The rest was your usual FIP stuff where they don't make an effort to go the whole hog with FIP. Bull Nakano vs. Yumi Ogura/Noriyo Tateno vs. Itsuki Yamazaki (5/6/89) Two matches going on at the same time in two different rings. This sounded like a bad idea on paper and was even worse in practice. The director tried his best and there were a couple of neat cuts between matches, but mostly it was a mess. Most Joshi matches in this era (or in general really) open with the action spilling to the outside and one of the wrestlers struggling to make the count while the other poses in the ring. You can imagine how bad that looks on a wide angle shot with the action taking place outside both rings. Bull/Ogura had a lot more action, so the director tended to stay on them a lot. Often when they cut to the JBA, they were laying around in holds, and the two matches just didn't seem to gel in a way that made it easy to cut between them. At one point, the JBA even seemed to look at Bull and Ogura and figured they ought to do something more interesting. There was also some bullshit with the ref in the Bull/Ogura match that wasn't worked very well, and the whole thing seemed like a failed experiment to me.

Dan Aubriot vs. Pierre Bernaert (9/11/62) I'm not sure where Phil got the date from on this one, but I'll roll with it. This was similar to the British style bouts that would disintegrate into forearm smash contests, which the crowd loved but Walton would lambaste. Aubroit seemed the more skilled of the two, or at least was getting the most purchase in the early exchanges, and Bernaert was known for his short temper, so they stirred this one until it was simmering then uncorked the forearm smashes. I like that style of working, so I thought this was a good watch, but it wasn't quite as memorable as some of the other French catch. There were plenty of novel spots, though. The spinning toehold that sparked Bernaert's frustration was a thing of beauty and the strikes were great, though not really Tibor Szakacs great it's fair to say.

I like Futen and late period BattlARTS, but the 2005 Ishikawa/Ikeda match was disturbing. Their late 90s work is a lot better.

Giant Haystacks vs. Johnny & Peter Wilson (4/23/85) This was supposed to be a handicap match for Haystacks, but having Peter Wilson in there made it more of a handicap for Johnny than Stax. The Wilson brothers went after Haystacks with the fiercest body blows they could muster, but were no chance against a ballooning Stax. Big Daddy/Drew McDonald vs. Giant Haystacks/Fit Finlay (5/2/84) So here we go, Daddy vs. Haystacks. I've been putting off watching these matches for years. On one hand, this was a shitty main event for a Cup Final Day. On the other hand, it wasn't the worst professional wrestling I've seen. Finlay, who was growing his hair out here and had a bit of an odd look, was the pinball for Daddy and was pretty decent. The thing you always hear about these matches is that Daddy stayed on the apron while his smaller, more talented partner did all the work, but I think that's a bit of a fallacy. Finlay vs. McDonald made up the bulk of the match, but Daddy tagged in more than he's given credit for during the HOF voting season. Most of the time, Haystacks avoiding facing Daddy, which was the way they built heat for their singles match(es), but on this occasion they squared off, and it's hard not to get a kick out of two extremely fat men colliding with one another. The problem with the bouts is the shitty finishes. The DQ was their out every single time. The payoff was meant to be that Daddy would get Haystacks one-on-one in a fight to the finish, but you had to be there I suppose. Big Daddy/Alan Kilby vs. Giant Haystacks/Wild Angus (4/29/81) We got to see the entire Big Daddy entrance here -- kissing babies, pushing a kid in a wheelchair, showing respect to the elderly. The whole bit. Shit was faker than the in-ring action and best avoided, unless you want to go around whistling "We Shall Not Be Moved" for the rest of the day. This was Cup Final Day once more, and they took advantage of the larger than usual TV audience to promote the Wembley Arena showdown between Haystacks and Daddy by basically having the heels re-injure poor Al Kilby (who had cartilage damage) and leave Daddy fuming. Match was a non-event, but a decent promotional tool.

Do you know if the 16mm prints of Rocco/Jones and Masambula vs. Leon Arras ever converted to DVD?

How many millionaire British wrestling fans do we know?

I would say it mattered less to me before I came online. As a kid I would watch the entire card with some notion of who my favourite performers were, but I was mostly into the storylines. Match quality never really crossed my mind. When I got back into it as a teenager I started judging matches and workers and looking at it from a performance aspect, but when you come online and there are so many voices saying this guy is great and this guy sucks, it's bound to have an influence of some sort even if it's merely reaffirming or strengthening your existing position. I imagine a lot of people, myself included, felt they should be a much bigger Benoit fan after spending a couple of months online.

You lost me at the mythical 1968 smart fan part. How do you know there weren't smart fans in 1968? Just because you imagine there weren't doesn't mean it's true. I could just as easily convince myself that there were smart fans in 1968 simply by stating so. Find me the evidence. There is quite a lot of evidence of fans not being smart -- riots, death threats, and so on. 20,000 people at MSG who'd throw a fit if Pedro lost, etc. etc. You find me the evidence to suggest that a significent proportion of them were "smart". The onus is not on me. I'm peddling the line of what is known. The onus is on those people claiming that there were smart fans discussing wrestling like the IWC in 1998 back in the 60s or even the fucking 1930s. They are the one making the claim, it is up to them to prove it. If you think that they're a myth then the onus goes right back on you. You've had the argument put to you that the media has always tried to expose pro-wrestling as fake (as far back as the 1870s or before) and that there was very little difference between how people viewed pro-wrestling then and now, i.e. the media thought it was fake, the public thought it was fake, and the fans didn't care. Of those fans, you don't think there were people capable of viewing it as a performance? In the 1960s? Does it really matter if they didn't use the same terminology or that there was no internet? I get your general point that people were unlikely to have been talking about wrestling the same way that we do in the 1930s, but what does it matter if they appreciated it the same way? There is huge world of difference between stories exposing the business and reporting it like it's some major scoop and "smart fans". As I said, everyone knows it's a trick, but how is the trick done? The burden of proof does not lie with me. The terminology matters less than the entire way they think about and engage with the product. And to be clear, I'm talking about fans in the 1960s or the 30s or whenever talking about booking decisions as fans now talk about booking decisions. "I think Wrestler X should have won and it was a mistake for that promoter to make Wrestler Y win". That sort of thing, doesn't matter what words they were using. How many shoot interviews have we all seen and heard from guys who got into the business in the 50s, 60s and 70s? How many times do you hear guys talk about being "smartened up"? And this is people into wrestling enough to, y'know, actually become a wrestler. How many times do you hear those same types of guys talk about being part of "smart communities" of fans? The answer is zero is so far. Zero. We're not talking about the distant past here, this isn't the stone age before men and women could write things down, it's not the even the medieval age, it's the 20th century. Evidence shouldn't be hard to come by. Fuck, let's go to Kayfabe Memories and get some of those 70-year olds to explain what their fandom was like in the 1950s. of I literally have no idea why so many people here are not willing to admit something as painfully obvious as the seismic shift in fandom that happened post-internet. In my experience, the first thing people discover about pro-wrestling is that the outcomes are predetermined. From there, they come to the realisation that the wrestlers are co-operating with one another and that the moves are assisted. Most of us here came to that realisation on our own before newsletters and before the internet. I remember reading in the tabloids that the guy I thought was the announcer was in fact the owner of the company and that the whole thing was rigged. I didn't know how they rigged it and frankly I didn't care. Did I learn a lot when I logged onto the internet? Sure. Did it change the way I thought about wrestling? Not really. I was already thinking about booking and pushes as a teenager. Was I the first person to do so? Unlikely. The internet collected a lot of information in the same place and allowed for communication across the country (and indeed the world) where previously the only form of communication had been through fan clubs or at live shows, but honestly if we were talking about movies or comic books or music or any of our other hobbies we wouldn't be talking about seismic shifts (and there is insider knowledge in all those fields.) Why should I trust what workers are saying in shoots? Are you really going to have a shoot where a wrestler says they guessed it was fake before they began training? It's not going to happen. Believing what wrestlers say in shoots leads to a pretty romanticised view of pro-wrestling. Steve Yohe watched wrestling in the 60s. He seems pretty smart.