ohtani's jacket

Taue was part of Misawa's group in Super Power Series (May-Jun) and Summer Action Series (Jul). By the start Summer Action Series II (Aug-Sep), he was over in Jumbo's team. Kawada and Kobashi were part of his group from the start in the Super Power Series, pretty much from the unmasking going forward. Kikuchi evolved over time into the group, largely due to his showings opposite Fuchi in May and the June fan appreciation show. By the start of the Summer Action Series in July, he was firmly the "junior" in the group. Ogawa is a different bird. If I recall correctly, he was out hurt during the transition period. He came back in October, largely preliming. In the Tag League, he was teaming with Fuchi and opposite Kikuchi several times. He farted around in the New Years series, before firmly being in Jumbo's group in the Excite series (Feb-Mar 1991). Weekly Pro Wrestling says they became a group at a training camp held in Chiba in August 1990. I think Asako, who was still a trainee at the time, was the sixth member and not Ogawa. According to WPW, the purpose of the camp was to strengthen the unity of the remaining young wrestlers after the defections.

Kawada was Misawa's junior. If he'd been his senior, it's possible the roles would have been reversed. Smack2k, throughout the 80s there was a theme of guys rebelling against the system or the establishment. Choshu did it and so did Maeda. The hardcore fan base was mainly made up of "salarymen" (white collar workers) who worked for very hierarchical companies and presumably got a kick out of the rebellious attitudes. In the August training camp in 1990, Misawa & Co formed their own group called Cho Sedai gun, which means Super Generation Army or something similar. Originally, I think it was Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Kobashi, Kikuchi and Ogawa, but Jumbo asked Taue to join his army after Yatsu left. They disbanded in 1998, if I'm not mistaken.

Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig (5/2/87) This was a sweet bout. It took me a while to switch into "US wrestling mode" and appreciate the base they were working from before they put it all on the line, and the crowd didn't help much, but the final third where the wear and tear took its toll was some class A professional wrestling. The heel turn probably works better for people who watched it in the context of the times or even the AWA set, but I was more worried about the match and it delivered in spades. I don't know how highly I rate pre-WWF Curt Hennig, but as far as young studs go I can't think of too many better.

I also liked this, but I agree it falls short of being great. In many ways the pre-match/post-match stuff seemed more significant than the bout itself.

CMLL 11/22/91.

You've got the wrong date here. This is the final of the tournament to crown the new CMLL World Trios champions. The match with Emilio Charles Jr was the WWA bout.

Is bizarre British English?

It occurred to me recently that I really don't like splinter promotions. Maybe I'm a bit conservative in the sense that I prefer more established, traditional promotions over new start ups, but I really can't stand promotions like UWF-i, AAA and All-Star Wrestling, both stylistically and in terms of what they did with the talent they took. Of course there exceptions. RINGS eventually became something great, PWFG and BattlARTS produced their share of good matches, and UWF was an offshoot to begin with. I also liked JWP after the split. UWA I'm not sure about. It may have been great or it may have been the 1970s AAA for me. Does anybody have a favourite or best splinter promotion?

Lucha has always been the poor cousin of Japanese and American wrestling. Actually, the reason I call my lucha blog the rather dull and unimaginative name of "Great Lucha" is that some guy on DVDVR once said lucha can never be great. It's always had a stigma attached to it, but on the positive side it's a lot more accessible than it used to be. You can now find a lot of the greatest matches online whereas only a few years ago lucha had very little presence on the internet.

I don't think anything's really changed in the past ten years. The most visible wrestlers are the ones who make it onto the variety shows, and successful talent like Hokuto and Sasaki are almost more famous for being TV talent now than professional wrestlers. Wrestling is more or less a niche hobby.

Ray Steele vs. Pete Roberts (10/2/85) This was the title shot that Pete Roberts earned by beating Steele in their last bout. The story here was that Roberts had always had a bit of hard luck whenever he challenged for a title and there was a surprising amount of focus on him as the challenger. In fact, Steele was presented as somewhat weak for a guy who had just claimed the heavyweight crown. The action wasn't bad -- it couldn't be really with these two -- but the booking left a bit to be desired. The finish was a double knockout after Roberts had been leading by a fall and it was obvious he would have won on points. Ray Steele vs. Tiger Dalibar Singh (12/11/85) Pat Roach vs. Tiger Dalibar Singh (12/11/85) This was another in Joint Promotions' endless series of knock out tournaments. Singh/Steele went to a points decision and was pretty typical one night only tournament wrestling. Roach/Singh ended surprisingly quickly, just to maintain the veneer that anything could happen on any given night. None of this was offensive, but not too memorable either. Ray Steele vs. Pat Roach (3/18/86) Steele not being booked as a strong heavyweight champion culminated with this rather unnecessary title loss to Pat Roach. It wasn't a bad bout as these two could still wrestle well despite the fact they were getting on in years, but again the booking was a mystery. I will say it was definitely one of the lesser bouts in their long series, but there was still the same dynamic of Steele trying to chop down a large tree. Mick McManus was the special guest referee here, and I got a kick out of him telling both wrestlers he wanted a good, clean bout. Mick was a small man, and he really made Roach and Steele seem like giants. Some of their exchanges where like watching the Hulk fight Thor in a Jack Kirby splash page. Ray Steele vs. Caswell Martin (5/14/86) So, as with all champions, Steele had the right to a rematch within 90 days of losing his title. You'd think they'd use the time between to put Ray over. That's what most promotions would do. But then Joint never really followed any rhyme or reason. This went to a draw, and again while it wasn't a bad bout, it was hard to see where it fit into the overall picture. Ray Steele vs. Dave Taylor (8/27/86) This was joined close to the end, right before the scoring... It wasn't possible to get a feel for how the bout was over all. Taylor looked awfully young. Roach vacated the British heavyweight title almost as soon as he won it, and they stretched out a tournament to decide the vacant belt with a draw here and a draw in the final, both pending rematches. Singh went on to win the title as poor old Steele got shafted again. Really, this disc could have been anything, but it ended up being rock solid. Steele wasn't booked great when he finally because the British Heavyweight champ, but my admiration for him as a worker has grown exponentially, and I doubt I'll ever hesitate to watch him work again.

Japanese wrestling fans who are indeed Japanese who live in Japan have no real reason to watch WWE, and the last guy I met who had the most casual of interests in the WWE said his favourite wrestler was Triple H. So there you go.

Pre-1990?

Yeah, that sounds like Hebner was reacting appropriately.

Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig (5/14/83) This was a one fall match with about ten minutes of TV time remaining and was a good piece of TV. Sandy Barr was laid out after taking a bump and Rose took full advantage by busting Hennig open. Pretty cool for what it was. Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig (7/3/82) This was more along the lines of your classic grudge match with both guys looking to take the other guy out. There was a lot of knee work since that was the injury and attack that ignited the feud, but they dragged it out a bit, and the break between falls remains a real momentum killer for me.

I love me some Tony Schiavone, but when did he start developing a rapport with Bobby? When Bobby first jumped they were unbearable together.

These Tiger Mask matches made the DVDVR set: Tiger Mask vs. La Fiera (8/26/84) Kuniaki Kobayashi vs. Tiger Mask (6/21/85) Jumbo Tsuruta, Genichiro Tenryu & Tiger Mask vs. Shunji Takano, Hiro Saito & Strong Machine (4/6/86) Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Giant Baba & Tiger Mask (11/28/86) Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Tiger Mask (6/11/87) Stan Hansen & Ted Dibiase vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Tiger Mask (7/11/87) Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu & Tiger Mask (1/23/88) Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Tiger Mask (3/9/88) Tiger Mask & Isao Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada (7/16/88)

Not at all. We go off on tangents like this that start off as Dave-related. It's 4400 posts long. I started all this and I really didn't even have a horse in this race. I just thought it was weird that you'd start professional coverage of a sporting event with a Thumbs Up/Down poll from your readers. MMA involves a certain degree of match making and there are performance incentives designed to produce a more exciting card, so I think there is merit in the thumbs up/thumbs down system.

In Ebert and Siskel's case, they boiled it down to "Should I see this movie? Thumbs up -- yes. Thumbs down -- no." But they had a lot of trouble with the middle ground, since you can't give a 2.5 star movie the thumbs up. That's why Ebert generally rated a 2.5 star movie higher if he thought it was worth seeing, because people react more favourably to a 3 star rating than a 2.5 star one. If you know that Ebert generally rates higher and that he will give an action movie a positive review if it meets his genre expectations then I think the star system is useful. I certainly refer to ratings whenever I'm researching films or music albums. I think they're an invaluable research tool if you trust the reviewer's opinion. In the case of someone like Robert Christgau, I usually check his ratings to see how far apart we are. For MMA, it would be great to have a better resource for recommended fights instead of having to skim through google results. I don't think it necessarily needs to be star ratings, but more definitive lists would help.

I don't think Han carried the promotion not with natives like Tamura, Kohsaka and even Yamamoto.

I've often tracked down MMA fights/shows based on reviews or recommendations. It's a different kettle of fish from most sports, possibly because they're fights, though I have watched my share of classic sports.

El Dandy/La Fiera/Ultimo Dragon vs. Negro Casas/Black Magic/Jaque Mate (5/17/94) This was just a 15 minute, straight falls win for the technicos, with a bit of dissension among the rudos, but man were the Casas/Dandy exchanges good. They had an opening mat exchange that was very reminiscent of their work from '92; where the purpose of each hold was to show who's boss. Casas would take Dandy down face first to canvas and slap him in the back of the head or pull his hair, and Dandy would use his athleticism to escape, flaunting his machismo while slowly getting ticked off. I often mention how Dandy lost a lot of his athleticism after '91, but he was trimmer here than in a lot of his post-prime work and moving extremely well. Eventually he got frustrated with Casas, and they had a slapping contest that let to some feisty headlock take downs; but when everyone flooded the ring, Dandy shook Casas' hand to calm things down, showing that their rivalry was built on mutual respect as much as contempt. Then as an added bonus, we got a surprisingly good mat exchange between Norman Smiley and Ultimo Dragon with a lot of quick movement and jockeying for position before the necessities of the story line took over. It's a shame Casas and Dandy didn't have more singles matches together as they were clearly one of the best pairings of all-time, but kudos to the guy who found and uploaded this as it was one of the better lucha exchanges I've seen in a while. Tony Arce/Vulcano/Bestia Salvaje vs. Apolo Dantes/Cesar Dantes/El Antifaz (3/29/91) This started off a bit low key, but picked up as they did more crowd pleasing spots. It was during a somewhat aimless period for Los Destructores where they were without a regular partner and had a different rudo fill in most nights. Bestia was the man here and was having a whale of a time, bumping like a fool and letting out huge cackles. He was a fantastic wrestler at this point and in the prime of his life. The form on his flog splash was beautiful. Cesar Dantes also impressed me here. He's not a guy I've seen a lot of, but he was a compact sort of worker who brought some neat offensive touches to the match, kind of like Javier Cruz. Lizmark vs. La Parka, National Light Heavyweight Championship match (9/9/94) As a title match, this was a joke: Lizmark spent more time fighting La Parka's second, Vulcano, than Parka, Parka won two falls with fouls, and most of what they did wouldn't fly in an apuesta match let alone a title bout. As a spectacle, it was worth watching just to see how far they would go. There were a couple of amusing moments, like someone in the crowd putting their hat on Lizmark while he sold a beat down and Parka gyrating with the belt around his waist, but in the main they just shat on lucha title match wrestling; which is a real kick in the balls, Parka style, as I was pumped to discover there was a trilogy of these matches. El Satanico/MS-1/Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy/Konnan/Octagon (11/15/91) Short semi-final for the World Trios title tournament that was neither here nor there. Konnan was terrible, but Dandy and Octagon spared their side any blushes by having some awesome ring-clearing exchanges with the Infernales. None of the rudos were at their best, though, which made this a bit more uneventful than it could have been. El Dandy/El Satanico/El Texano vs. Angel Azteca/Atlantis/Xavier Cruz (4/13/90) 1990 may be my favourite year in lucha, but I haven't watched much of the Azteca stuff in a while. This was a rare case of all six guys in the match being good, so what we got was a spotfest of sorts where the rudos tried to show their technique was superior or equal to the technicos. Folks looking for swings in momentum or any sort of storytelling will be disappointed, but for rapid fire exchanges this one is tough to beat. As per usual, it's the singles matches that could have come out of this that was the most enticing part. Texano was amazingly athletic in this and his exchanges with Azteca made him look like a much better dance partner for Angel than Emilio was, and the Dandy/Atlantis exchange at the end is so beautiful and intricate that they were surely the best possible match-up of 1990, making it a damn shame that their only recorded bout wasn't a proper match. Perro Aguayo vs. Sangre Chicana, cage match (Monterrey 1991) This had the usual amount of blood and violence from Chicana vs. Aguayo, but there was too much bullshit with the ref for it to be considered good and it was painfully slow at times. The crowd got a kick out of the ref being stripped to his underwear, but even though Aguayo used the ref's shirt sleeve to choke the life out of Chicana, shit like that did nothing to spark my enthusiasm. The best thing about this was a television ad where a pizza guy hopped into the ring and delivered right to the apron. That had a lot more action than the endless low blows and wandering about.

So, I decided to get a disc of Ray Steele matches made. Steele is an unlikely choice for a comp, and even though I chose plenty of matches against guys I like, it was either going to be a tremendous surprise or a complete waste of money. But boy has it been fun. Ray Steele vs. John Elijah (7/22/82) I loved this. I've always had a soft spot for John "the Bear" Elijah, the paleontologist and zoologist, and one time owner of a bear. He was a power wrestler and did a lot of strength holds, including the bear hug of course, and while he wasn't a complete grappler he always gave 100% just like his opponent and had a few neat tricks like Arn Anderson style comedic expressions. Steele, of course, was no showmanship just straight up wrestling, but what I've discovered was that he was a better worker than I gave him credit for in the past. This was a battle of strength holds and a Larry Z game of human chess, and as I've said recently it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the perspiration and effort that went into this for a pair of big men was terrific to see. Tom Tyrone vs. Ray Steele (4/11/84) I was a bit worried when this was joined in round four, but they ended up showing half of an eight round bout so we got to see plenty of wrestling. Tom Tyrone was a promising young heavyweight who had the misfortune to come along at a time when the business was dying. I've seen him have great matches against Terry Rudge and Pat Roach. This wasn't on the level of those bouts, but it was very satisfying for what it was. Steele treated the kid like he did everyone and gave the best he had that night and the wrestling was very good. Pat Roach vs. Ray Steele (12/19/84) These two matched up countless times over the years and their fights were always good. This was only a 10 minute bout as it was one of those one night knock out tournament deals, this time featuring super big men, but it was great while it lasted. I love how Steele approaches these bouts against Roach, as though he has to chop Roach down to size. They always have really bruising encounters where they uppercuts and knees at each other. Roach usually overpowers Steele in the end, but it's always entertaining. Ray Steele vs. Pete Roberts (9/3/85) This was from the first stand alone episode of wrestling the week after World of Sport ended, and what a great bout to start the new format. This was some serious wrestling. Eight five minute rounds, and the result was an epic contest. Steele had just won the British Heavyweight Championship defeating Roberts in the final of a tournament to decide the vacant title (at least that's what Walton said, the title history I'm looking at says otherwise), and this was a return bout with Roberts trying to earn a title shot. Great feeling out period, great strikes, tremendous game of human chess. Roberts really had a fantastic 1985. I'd have to think about it, but he may have been the best guy on TV that year.

Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig (3/26/83) This was good stuff. Hennig was impressive for a guy with his level of experience, had a great physique and looked fluid working holds. This was a grudge match for an injury Rose had inflicted on Hennig months before, but instead of a brawl or the heated sort of performance Martel gave a few years earlier, they went the "fired up babyface tries to out wrestle, pin and humiliate his nemesis" route. The match ended with an angle and was just an appetizer, but a pretty tasty one. Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig (5/28/83) This was really great, perhaps the best Buddy Rose I've seen. He was in really great shape here and they worked the first Portland match I've seen where I could get a rhythm for the falls and the way they overlap and build jeopardy. The first fall was really fun with some great athletic spots and a cool finish. The second fall was the meat of the match and a tremendous tussle and the third fall capped things off with a desperate finishing stretch and a screwy but ultimately satisfying ending. Rose was awesome in this.

This feud is so awesome. It may be my favourite stuff from Memphis.