ohtani's jacket

Cont. Jackie Sato vs. Mami Kumano, 1980 Same old match-up. Face in peril may be a tried and true match structure, but watching the same face in peril over and over again when they could just as easily be wrestling gets old pretty quickly. I zoned out so much during this that I started noticing how long limbed Sato was. Chino Sato vs. Mimi Hagiwara, 1980 Mimi handled this really well, taking enough of the strike to remind folks she was the senior worker while still giving Sato the chance to shine. Yumi Ikeshita vs. Lucy Kayama, 2/21/80 This was a bout for the vacant All Pacific title and shock horror it started off with mat wrestling. It was great to finally be able to see Ikeshita work some holds as she was such a terrific worker. Eventually, she started working Kayama over with a foreign object, but it wasn't too jarring in the context of the match. Both girls worked hard and there was less clipping than usual. They even did a couple of lucha dives to show they really meant business. Very good match in contrast to the usual brawls.

Took a look at some 1980 stuff since Loss has been tackling that year lately. Chino Sato vs. Devil Masami, Guam 1980 Typical Masami match from this period with plenty of cheating and heeling. Nothing outstanding as she hadn't reached that level yet where she was putting awesome details into her matches. Sato was a decent rag doll. Chino Sato vs. Rimi Yokota, 1/4/80 They tried really hard to make this junior title match a big deal with Sato playing the heel and both women upping their intensity, but the bout went too long and Sato in particular started to run out of ideas. Still, you have to admire the effort on some level. Devil Masami vs. Rimi Yokota, 1980 Black Gundam, or whatever they were called this week, spent most of the early portion of the match beating Yokota up, which worked okay in this context as she was a junior being piled on. Then there was a big skirmish on the outside as the good ring girls forcefully escorted Kumano & Co to the back, and from there it was the same Masami act as the Sato bout complete with the old lemon to the eyes trick. These bouts could really do with some wrestling.

If the best match is only three stars, then I would say there hasn't been a MOTYC so far. I guess I prescribe to the old-school mentality that MOTYC means 4 1/2 stars or better. I couldn't see a three star match contending for MOTY no matter how novel it may be, though I'm sure I could convince myself otherwise if I really liked the match. I didn't have a problem with the dynamic of the match, it just didn't meet my expectations based on the praise it was receiving, because when I hear MOTY being thrown around I immediately think it's going to be better than a whole bunch of matches. The question in my mind is whether it was a great TV match and I'm not sure about that. Hashimoto vs. Fujiwara was pared back to an almost shoot like quality and a different kind of match. Cena vs. Cesaro might be better than Rude vs. Rhodes, but it was given a bigger platform. Cena/Cesaro was halfway between a PPV match and a regular TV bout, kind of an odd place made possible by the three hour RAW. Perhaps a direct comparison is that Punk/Cena match from RAW last year. Then again, I'm slow to the party and people seemed to have moved on and are calling Shield/Wyatts their MOTY, so perhaps my criticisms are pointless now.

Titan did some cringe worthy stuff in that match like the cartwheel shit, but his big dives were pretty. Zayn's spots are absurd like that running diving tornado DDT through the turnbuckle post thing he did. Wrestlers do a lot of creative stuff these days, but adding extra rotations to moves or diving through parts of the ring that don't need to be dived through bug me.

That's one thing about Cesaro's stuff. He builds off of previous matches in a way that sort of breaks the MOYTC formula. It means people who have been watching will appreciate things more than people who jump in and out. That's absolutely the case for the Zayn 2/3 falls match. That may be the case, but the Zayn match had such awful spots I have no desire to see them wrestle again.

You often ask why people care about certain things. So I'm going to ask in this case why you care about big match WWE psychology and why you think the lack of it detracts from the match. It was a TV match between a main eventer and a midcarder, not a pay-per-view main event. Doesn't the fact that it steps outside of that formula and gives us something that only these two wrestlers are capable of doing make the match more unique and appealing? And how can you not even comment on Cesaro's feats of strength? I think a MOTYC needs to have a bigger arc with a layout that has a wider scope in terms of the drama it achieves, otherwise it's just a good to very good TV match. WWE has a specific type of big match psychology as seen in matches like the Cena vs. Punk MITB match. Cesaro vs. Cena didn't come anywhere close to achieving that sort of drama. Cesaro is an impressive athlete and I thought the suplexes were impressive feats of strength, but I don't think this was a big time Cena match and I don't see how only these two wrestlers are capable of having this particular match. I'm not sure I entirely agree about the bout being limited because it was a television bout. They choose to work the scale they did. The match was limited because Cesaro is limited in certain areas like acting and selling and so forth. Again, he's a very good wrestler, but they were clearly going for main event formula with the counters at the end and I don't think he has that down pat yet. I assume most people are saying this is the best match they've seen so far this year, but to me MOTYC is a set standard and doesn't evolve from one match to the next.

Antonio Cesaro vs. John Cena, 2/17/14 This has been crazily overrated as I don't see how it's anywhere near MOTY level. As far as TV bouts go, it was all fine and good, but there was nothing about the early heat segment on Cena or any of his comebacks that cried "great match." It doesn't help that WWE commentating is abysmal and that they couldn't flesh out a story if they tried, but I'm not sure Cesaro has his big match WWE psychology down pat yet. His spots look good, especially his suplexes, but he can't really do the whole epic drama thing yet. The finishing stretch was a bit too counter-rific and overall I don't think either Cena or Cesaro were at their best. This was good, but to my mind Bryan/Wyatt has set a bar for this year's WWE and this was well below their match. Sheamus/Christian vs. Real Americans, 2/10/14 Workrate sprint. Fun match, I guess, but still a workrate sprint. Probably more rewarding for weekly viewers or people who sit through RAW for the prospect of matches like this.

Perro Aguayo vs. Sangre Chicana vs. El Faraón vs. Villano III (Elimination Match) (10/84) Skip all the stuff at the beginning and head straight to the Chicana tope on Villano III. That has to be one of the best topes I've seen. An absolute bullet that was made even better by the camera being fixed on Villano III on the outside, and Chicana rocketing into frame at a million miles an hour. For a guy who's mostly known for brawling and selling, Chicana had an awesome tope and the big gamble on a tope suicida is something that really fit his character. This was a four way elimination match featuring Perro Aguayo against three of his biggest rivals at the time. It came down to Perro vs. Chicana, one of the best match-ups in lucha history if not all of wrestling. Watching these two work is fantastic, even in a match like this where they're essentially holding back. I love the theatrical spin they put on every bump and every bit of selling.They get so much mileage out of the kick-punch style that typifies 80s lucha brawling. The nuts and bolts of what they're doing couldn't be simpler, in fact it's very Memphis-like the way they're able to weave a compelling narrative around knocking each other to canvas. I also love how the highspots are missed or teased more often than they're hit. The message is clear on the big tope bailout and the DQ finish: nothing's settled here, but if the crowd's lucky they'll get that hair match sooner or later.

This might be blasphemy, but I find myself increasingly not a fan of the Wargames concept. The fact that the match can't end before everyone is in the cage makes it difficult for me to get invested in anything that happens before The Match Beyond. Plus, even the better Wargames matches are driven more by the booking and gimmick than the individual talents of the wrestlers. What do you expect? It's a gimmick match. And why would you care about the match not being able to finish until the Match Beyond? That's a strange quirk. The whole point of the match is that there are uneven odds up until the Match Beyond, so you have two on one, three on two and so forth.

Philip Seymour Hoffman would have made a good Buddy Rose.

Charles Bronson Mexicano Either a professional impersonator or the occupation that is Charles Bronson.

Americo Rocca vs. El Talisman (3/29/85) On 9/21/84 at EMLL’s 51st Anniversary show, El Talisman lost to Atlantis in a mask vs. mask match, revealing his identity to the lucha public for the first time. Talisman unmasked as Arturo Beristain, a 13 year vet from Mexico City who had been trained by Pedro Nieves, Rolando Vera and Rafael Salamanca, maestros who had trained some of the biggest names in the business. Photo: Talisman after his unmasking in 1984. For much of the 70s, Talisman had been a lower card worker, wrestling in either the first or second match on the card, but with the right physique and a mask the fans liked, he began winning luchas de apuestas matches at smaller venues such as Pista Arena Revolución and Arena Coliseo. In 1978, he won his first professional wrestling title when he defeated Mario Valenzuela to win the Mexican National Lightweight Championship, and the lucha magazine El Halcon declared him the best opening match worker in the country. By the early 80s, he had moved into the welterweight ranks where he feuded with both Mocho Cota and Americo Rocca over the Mexican National Welterweight championship and gained even more of a national spotlight. It was in the middle of his feud with Rocca that he dropped his mask to Atlantis. A month before his unmasking, Talisman had defeated Rocca for the vacant National Welterweight title, thus ensuring that even though he lost his mask he was still the holder of one of the most important titles in the country. Talisman was lucky that like Faraon and MS-1 before him, he was a handsome guy with a great physique, and the magazines immediately began running photo shoots and cover stories with him after the unmasking. He also got his heat back immediately by taking Rocca’s hair on the 10/26 Arena Mexico show. This match from March of ’85 was the culmination of a six month effort by Rocca to win back the National Welterweight crown and gain revenge for his hair loss. It was also the high water mark for the Talisman character. Beristain spent the remainder of the year working in a trio with Fuerza Guerrera and El Dandy. The threesome made for a good pairing, but with the trios scene so stacked they were never serious contenders for the newly established trios titles, and after a series of hair match losses, the Talisman character found its way to the gimmick graveyard in 1987. Beristain enjoyed a lengthy second career as the masked man El Hijo Del Gladiador, even enjoying a CMLL World Trios title run with a modern incarnation of La Ola Blanca in ‘94/95. Beristain unmasked for a second time in 2000, losing to a young luchador by the name of Rencor Latino, better known as El Averno. He retired in 2005 and began a trainer at CMLL’s wrestling school in Mexico City, where he’s had a hand in training many of the undercard workers we see today. Talisman would go on to have one last title run from here as the Mexican National Middleweight champion before putting over new young star, Mogur. Rocca, similarly, would feud with El Dandy to continue his ascendancy, but this feud was their glory years when both men were at the top of the welterweight world.

All of this stuff is from YouTube.

Jaguar Yokota vs. Judy Martin, 1/82 I was starting to get into this as one of the better native vs. foreigner match-ups of the era when all of a sudden it ended. It's odd how many of these Moolah girls matches lack a traditional finishing stretch. Judy Martin vs. Chigusa Nagayo, 10/82 Martin put up her All Pacific title here so Chigusa was as gung-ho as you'd imagine. That girl was bursting at the seams every chance she got to wrestle. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Judy Martin, 1981 Similar to the Yokota match with the same abrupt finish. I always thought of Mimi as an excellent seller, but she was extremely inconsistent. Mimi Hagiwara vs. Jaguar Yokota, Guam 1980 The neat thing about this was that it was worked almost entirely in the ring with none of the outside brawling spots that mar so many of these bouts. Jaguar was supposed to be a junior here and entered the ring with that costume ball mask they used to make her wear, but wrestled like a ten year veteran and just brutalised Mimi. Mimi to her credit put Yokota over big time. Mimi was really from the generation above Yokota and didn't need to job this hard, but she did. Jaguar Yokota vs. Monster Ripper, 5/82 This was good stuff. Much better than their '83 bout. Monster looked more like the monster heel I remember from the Sato matches and was much better on top. The outside brawling spots didn't bother me with Ripper being in such good form and Yokota was solid in her role, though this time round I feel she lacks that spark in charisma that Chigusa and even Jackie had. She was a very serious wrestler and in amazing shape, but stoic like a Maeda or Misawa.

You thought it was bullshit yet you suspended your disbelief enough to enjoy the film.... ? Since when did suspension of belief mean you can't enjoy a film because of minor details or in Matt's case structure? So tell me the points at which I suspended my disbelief in the movie. I mean... obviously you sat there with me and my girlfriend and observed what I enjoyed, and slid inside my head to know what I was popping for and why. The floor is yours, Daniel... share your knowledge of exactly how I viewed and enjoyed the movie. You had to suspend your disbelief to enjoy the movie otherwise you would have thought the whole thing was bullshit. You said so yourself.

There was an interview where Kawada mentioned having trouble with his vision due to damage to his orbital bones. I don't think he ever officially retired. He just says he's resting his body. From all accounts, he lost his passion for wrestling after Misawa died.

You thought it was bullshit yet you suspended your disbelief enough to enjoy the film.... ? Since when did suspension of belief mean you can't enjoy a film because of minor details or in Matt's case structure?

It depends on the wrestling, or in some cases my mood or how tired I am. I think what people are trying to describe is that feeling you get when you're so engrossed in a match that you start pulling for a guy to win even though you may know the result or have seen the match before. It's hard to describe what causes that feeling, but I think that's where the divide between suspension of disbelief is coming.

This is because you've suspended your disbelief. A willingness to suspend disbelief doesn't mean that you stop believing you're reading a comic book.

It means when I read Tomb of Dracula, I don't get hung up on the fact that vampires aren't real. I enjoy Tomb of Dracula for the artwork and the story not because it makes me believe that vampires are real. If you don't care that wrestling's a work then you've already suspended your disbelief.

The confusion lies in people not understanding what suspension of disbelief means. Suspension of disbelief is an involuntary response that allows you to enjoy a cartoon where a duck is talking to a rabbit. It doesn't mean that you believe the duck is really talking to the rabbit or that you have to believe the duck is talking to the rabbit to enjoy it.

Perhaps you should be lambasted Parv for not knowing that a New Zealander was the first to split the atom or climb Mt. Everest.

I don't recall knowing any of this stuff when I came out of high school. I think schools do a bad job of macro overview. They seem wedded to modular "bitty" teaching so all the bits don't join up and any bits left out and simply that: left out. What country did you go to school in OJ? I can never work out where exactly you are from. I wouldn't expect kids from anywhere other than Britain to know the Restoration or kids from outside of Europe to know the Romantics. I went to school in New Zealand. I'm a Kiwi, but I've lived in Japan for the past eight years.

I don't recall knowing any of this stuff when I came out of high school.

It sounds like you're frustrated that they're not familiar with your DVD collection. It also seems like you're not making a distinction between the hobbyist and the average person. We were having a discussion about movies in my office the other day between a younger guy in his mid-20s who had only started taking movies seriously recently (a fairly common phenomenon that I think you're discounting), a guy who's the same age as me (34) who has fairly established tastes in film, and me who only watches older films. To say I was not on their wavelength is putting it mildly. I can't remember the last time I watched a new film at the cinema and I don't even own a TV. I have only the vaguest sense of what's going on in modern pop culture. At the moment I'm reading comics from the 70s. I'm out of touch with modern pop culture, but surely if you put together a montage of things that were culturally important from the last five years or so it would resonate more with these kids.