ohtani's jacket

Johnny Saint vs. Terry Jowett (12/11/74) I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, but my records say I haven't so I gave it a watch. Not a bad match, really. Jowett didn't have a ton of charisma, but he was clearly a good worker. He took Saint by surprise by pushing the action in the early going, using the type of fast paced moves you'd usually expect from Saint. Johnny had to work his way into this one, which was good because it meant less schtick. Walton mentioned that Jowett had been touring Mexico, which made him seem immediately cooler, and things were going along nicely until the exceedingly lame finish. It wasn't an injury finish or anything like -- in fact, it was clean -- but it was one of those shitty 70s finishes where they drop all the matwork to go the ropes and win off a weak exchange. Hate that shit. Mike Marino vs. Man Mountain Moran (9/11/75) True to his name, Man Mountain Moran was a large man and kind of moved around like the British version of Baba. This was a Super Heavyweight knock out tournament that somehow involved a middleweight. Ours is not to question why. Moran threw Marino into the ropes to start and the top rope came undone. After a short delay the match resumed, and it was basically a whole bunch of cheating from Moran and a mix of retaliation and guile from Marino. But it was entertaining enough. Ray Steele vs. Giant Haystacks (11/18/81) How would my boy Ray Steele fair against Haystacks? Oooh, Haystacks got himself DQ'ed. Way to go, Steele! Giant Haystacks vs. Kwik Kick Lee (1/19/83) Kick him in the head, Maeda! Maeda must have loved this. You could almost see the germ of the UWF idea in his dazed look as Haystacks splashes the absolute fuck out of him. Giant Haystacks vs. Jamaica George (5/7/87) Y'know, for a 1987 match I thought this was pretty damn good. Not guilty pleasure good, but legitimately good. It was a competitive squash, but a really good one. George tried to take the big man to the pay window, which is all you can hope for from tonight's lucky jobber, but it was tight and he sold Stax' elbow drop like a champ. I also got a kick out of Haystacks legit pulling the finger on TV.

There was an NWA affiliated promotion when I was a small and a start-up promotion when wrestling was big in '88-89, but I never went to any shows. My parents did. They saw pretty much all of the touring stars from the late 70s and early 80s. The WWF tours we got during the boom were WWF E shows. They were headlined by the Bushwhackers and just awful.

Are you sure you're not influenced by being an "international fan," so to speak? When I first came online, I lived at the bottom of the world. I had a buddy who watched wrestling with me and we followed it PPV to PPV (sometimes skipping the IYHs.) The only TV we had access to was Worldwide. Later we got WCW Pro and finally one hour versions of RAW and Nitro and slightly edited versions of the PPVs, but we were months behind and our only real connection to the States was through the magazines. The whole reason I came online in the first place was to check for PPV spoilers. That's massively different from people in the US who went to shows or who could watch things live. I don't think everyone who came online was starting from the same place.

Right, by "everything" I was really referring to everything from the big two. I don't know about other countries but in New Zealand you could only rent NWA tapes from the late 80s and nothing from WCW, not even a single commercial tape. It wasn't until they started showing delayed free-to-air coverage of the 1997 WCW PPVs that we saw WCW events. So, I definitely remember Keith being a source for past WCW PPV info, and of course his FAQ was influential.

Jerry, Regarding the casual smart fan, the first thing that most people discovered through dial up was the news sites. Suddenly, they had access to all sorts of gossip, rumours and backstage news, but the extent to which it effected them was that they probably thought Yokozuna was going to show up on RAW on Monday. If they ventured onto the message boards, they would have been exposed to WCW vs. WWF fans and the WWF death riding that took place after Pillman's death and then Montreal. Learning about workers and star ratings, and everything like that, would come later if the person was interested and decided to hang around. Many people weren't interested in 'work.' A lot of people only cared about the top of the card, which wrestlers were leaving for which promotion, and who won the ratings on Monday night. Generally, people became interested in 'work' either through one or two posters piquing their interest, or through discovering a pocket of the internet where people cared about it more than on the boards they first encountered. People who cared about workers and matches more than the WCW vs. WWF war were often labeled as purists or elitists, particularly if they believed that Japanese wrestling was better than American wrestling, and there wasn't that many reviews of past wrestling shows because tapes were expensive. One of the reasons why Keith had a presence back then was that he reviewed (seemingly) everything in an era where it wasn't easy to get stuff and where the 'canon', for want of a better word, was WON star ratings and maybe the old rspw awards.

It's almost as amusing as "Manami Toyota was a lesbian because she wasn't interested in me backstage."

People are taking this community stuff to literally. It was just a term to describe a collection of message boards and websites created with the express purpose of talking about wrestling. It's meant to be analogous to a physical community with different neighbourhoods, not a community ethos where people share the same beliefs. When people mention "what the IWC thought at the time" it's just a generationalisation to establish what the consensus was at the time among the majority. Since there were all sorts of fans online -- old timers, lapsed fans, new fans, casual fans, hardcores, 'purists' or 'elitists' (as people were often called), people trying to make money off wrestling, people trolling -- it's easier to lump them all under the IWC banner than stumble about trying to find the perfect terminology to describe all of the contributors. Even something like message board posters is clunky.

And here I was thinking it was the most unintentionally ironic statement ever written.

I also have fond memories of the WWF magazine. My father used to buy it for me each month along with the weekly tabloid and TV guide that had two page wrestling spreads. Try as you may, you can never recreate that sort of magic. I remember a slightly unpopular girl at school bringing a copy of the magazine to school to garner attention from the boys. Went well until someone brought a ninja turtle figure.

But that's essentially all you're doing -- telling people there's a chorus. A wrestler starting out on fire and cleaning house is "shine," but so is a wrestler out for blood in a grudge match, or a techico outwrestling a rudo in a title match. The fact that it's the shine isn't really important. It's not even the wrestling equivalent of the hook.

And wrestling fans writing for other wrestling fans need to do that? First you said the length of the shine sequence was the important factor. Now you're saying it clues the reader into the fact that they started with a shine sequence. But why should anybody care that there was a shine sequence? It's like saying "the second caida was longer than usual" as though that information alone means anything. It's almost as though you have in mind a particular image when you think of "shine". Some utterly hot beginning that the word implies for you or some particular rhythm to the action instead of the generic babyfaces start out on offence vibe I get from it.

This is telling you in fewer words than you'd use without "shine" that the babyfaces spend a longer amount than is usually the case dominating the match at the beginning. It's shorthand, and you know exactly what it means straight away. What's the difference between that and: "Quite a long sequence to start during which Rich and Dundee work over Idol with headlocks, snapmares and armdrags. Spot where Idol is caught in the wrong corner and gets the ping-pong punches." The word "shine" alone doesn't tell you why it matters that the beginning was longer than usual.

It's unnecessary usage of an insider term and I don't see what the practical application is. Besides, this is a thread about terms that annoy you. I don't think it needs to be rational.

Short ones.

I think they have real applications and are very useful shorthand. It's not rocket science really. Shine is the bit when the babyface gets some offense in at the start of the match to pop the crowd. 96% of WWF matches ever worked on TV start this way. Some people like Vader or Hansen "jump" the shine and accelerate the match. Heat is when the heel takes over and generates sympathy for the babyface and puts heat on himself. Comeback is the comeback which everyone knows. I don't understand the objections to these perfectly descriptive terms. Explaining what it is just makes it worse. The first ten minutes of any film are crucial, but you don't see film reviewers talking about beats, turning points, negatively and positively charged scenes, entering and exiting early or late, and the placement of the first act hook. Surely, the performance of the babyface is more important than the fact they're doing a shine segment. What do you need that word for? They went too long/short on the shine? Stan Frazier sure was great in the shine?

More dislikes -- shine and heat. Nobody used to use these terms.

Agreed. Alternative expressions are cumbersome and it's self-explicit in its meaning. But everybody has their likes and dislikes. I cringe when people talk about Kings Road/Four Pillars/Four Kings of Heaven.

Maybe legally but marijuana technically is not a narcotic. I'm pretty sure that US federal law classifies a narcotic as any drug which is prohibited. Paraphernalia could mean anything from a pipe to the bag it was in. Having said that, I'm sure Bobby did coke at some point.

I wouldn't call 15 mins short. When I think of short matches, I'm thinking sub-10 minute matches.

What do you mean?

Silver Star vs. Charles Lucero, UWA World Middleweight Championship, 6/22/14 This was a beautiful match. The type of match you could easily imagine Lucero having in his prime. Really authentic lucha maestros wrestling; the type of title match wrestling you don't see much of these days. To be fair, it probably wouldn't go over too well at Arena Mexico, but it's great to see two practitioners carrying on the art form as there aren't too many connections to old school Monterrey left anymore. The first fall was a classic lucha fall with all of the takedowns, reversals and castigos you'd expect from a title match. Lucero's work wasn't all that smooth, and he mistimed a couple of spots like the finish to the second caida, which he almost failed to hook, but like the momentum in a great title fight, I thought his missteps added to the drama. Silver Star has slowed down a lot over the years, but he wrestled a smart fight here. I would have given it to him on points if he hadn't forced a result. I actually thought it was a much more assured performance from Star than their previous fight. The only negative thing I'll say about these two is that they don't make much contact on their topes. It's fair enough that they're protecting themselves, but they don't look good and I have a hard time rationalising them as part of the narrative. Silver Star vs. Charles Lucero, Terraza Elma, Monterrey, 6/29/14 This was a mano a mano bout from an afternoon LLN spot show. Later on, they worked an evening show where they tagged against each other. The smaller venue meant they wrestled a tighter match with a lot of close quarters action. Lucero's execution was better in this match, but a mano a mano this isn't really comparable with the to's and fro's of a title match. It was a nice companion piece, but I'll take an old school title match over this. Arkángel de la Muerte vs. Gallo, FULL World Championship, CMLL 6/21/14 Arkangel de la Muerte is a favourite of the Segunda Caida boys so they were pretty excited about this one. I don't have any special attachment to Arkangel, so my reaction was a bit more subdued. In fact, with Gallo being a Guadalajara local doing a rooster gimmick and the pair feuding over some belt from a Chilean promotion, it struck me as more of a novelty that the match-up made it all the way to Mexico City than a great singles opportunity for a lucha maestro. I appreciate that Arkangel is a great base for young flyers, but I'm not that a fan of his style. He reminds me of more of a 'puro' worker than a classic luchador. That's useful in this day and age, and probably the reason why he works so well with the up and comers, but I like my lucha to be distinctly "lucha" and not a homogenized form of borderless indy wrestling. I don't want to say that Arkangel is the antithesis of Charlie Lucero, but if you enjoy the modern style you'll get more out of this than I did. Arkangel has great execution as well as being a real details guy, and there were some cool spots like the the slingshot Tapitia the Segunda guys talked about. Dragon Lee vs. Hechicero, CMLL 5/20/14 This started off pretty well with Hechicero using his wrestling skills to ground Dragon Lee, but soon unraveled when Lee was given too much leeway on offence. Three times was too many for the story they were telling. Tensions were supposed to be boiling over. Hechicero almost connected on a soccer kick, which Lee took exception to, but they needed to do a better job with the niggly aspects. The pull apart at the end was far from convincing and should have been built to better. The dives should have been cut and Lee left frustrated that he couldn't hit one. That's how I would have played it, but as critical as I'm being it's hard not to be in awe of Lee's dives. He may be the most exciting guy since Freelance. Dragon Lee vs. Cavernario, CMLL 4/29/14 This didn't have the highs of the Hechicero/Lee match, but it was a good example of how much better Cavernario is at building his matches. Really simple stuff with Cavernario controlling the early going before Lee makes a comeback and the two start trading nearfalls, but it's straightforward and easy to follow and the kind of coaxing rhythm that's familiar to long time lucha fans. It could have done with a few highs from the Hechicero match to top it off, and I wish Cavernario would think of a better way to set-up his finisher, but I definitely came out of this tournament with a higher opinion of Cavernario than Hechicero.

I'm not a fan of short matches. I don't like lightning matches in lucha and I was never a big fan of Nitro era matches or the Saturday Night stuff. Matches where the bouts end early because of an injury angle or a run-in/outside interference are obviously worse (unless it's some sort of spectacular angle.) If you're looking for an example of a match that could have been longer, I think a longer Pillman/Windham match in '91 may have been remembered as a classic.

To me, 25 minutes is ideal for a lengthy wrestling match. Obviously, there have been great matches which have gone longer than that, but as a rule I don't enjoy broadways. I always thought 60 minutes was too long for those All Japan draws, for example, especially for a tag match.

Mogur vs. As Charro (Mask vs. Mask) (9/18/87) When you get to this point in the discs, you're probably thinking "who is Mogur?" Mogur was a young wrestler from Jalisco named José de Jesús Pantoja Flores. He'd only been wrestling for a few years when he caught someone's eye enough to be repackaged as the masked gimmick, Mogur, 'El Gato Egipcio' (The Egyptian Cat.) EMLL's interest in Mogur didn't end there, though. Coming out of the 1986 Anniversary Show, the promotion decided it was time to push a hot young star. The company's modus operandi has always been to push a new young star every few years, either by debuting them on top or giving them a fast promotion to the top of the card. They did it with Atlantis in '84 and again with Mogur in '87. There were a number of parallels between the two pushes with veterans Talisman and Satanico being used to give both wrestlers credibility, and both wrestlers winning masks on the company's Anniversary Show. Unfortunately for Mogur, Charro wasn't the biggest of names at this point. A journeyman from the 70s with a Valente Perez gimmick, Charro's body was completely broken down by '87. In his prime, he had apparently been a big bumper, and created his own signature kick, the 'Patada Charra.' His gimmick, like most of Perez' creations, was a fun one, and his rough style had earned him the nickname of 'El Regional Rudo' after he made it to Mexico City. As fun as these photo shoots are, Charro looking for a last big payday didn't give much of a rub to Mogur. Certainly not as much as taking the masks of Talisman and Hombre Bala had done for Atlantis. Thirty years later and Atlantis is a legendary gimmick while Mogur is a guy who most people don't know despite the fact he worked for CMLL for another 20 years. Charro lasted a couple of more years for the promotion, lost his hair to a green Konnan and feuded on and off again with Pirata Morgan on the indie scene. Not bad for a washed up character gimmick.

It probably just means a pipe or bong.