ohtani's jacket

Listened to this over the past few days and thought it was a blast. Colon would totally be my number one bleeder after watching that match against Ayala where you can't even see his face anymore. It would have been hard to decide on a lucha guy but Aguayo and Villano III have really ugly forehead scars. Bill Dundee and Arn Anderson are too guys I like as promos. Arn was like of like Jake Roberts in that his promos just seemed so much more intelligent and articulate than most wrestlers. Tag teams in the US, I really loved Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes, Barry Windham and Brian Pillman and Dustin Rhodes and Ricky Steamboat despite their short runs. As for fat guys, last night I saw prime Super Porky do the most amazingly athletic kip-up. That guy was a freak of nature.

Nice topic. -- Finish the Lucha History Lessons for all hundred matches. -- Finish watching all the available WoS footage, including revisits of workers like Zoltan Boscik who I've been unfairly harsh on in the past. -- Keep more up to date with the pimped modern stuff as it's happening. -- Buy those lucha DVDs I've been eyeing for a while. -- Find a youtube channel or something to watch regularly like Matt does with Portland.

Mark Rocco is the single most polarising guy for me in British wrestling. Mostly everyone's a big fan of him except for me, but I'll give the devil his due if he entertains me. For the sake of this thread, I'm going to rate these matches Rocco Love, Rocco Hate or Rocco Indifference. Mark Rocco vs. Lee Bronson (5/11/77) Lee Bronson was a top young heavyweight prospect in the late 70s, who if British wrestling had continued on its merry way, may have ended up being in the Tony St. Clair/Wayne Bridges position come the late 80s. As it was, he never got that chance and never went that far. There were a lot of promising young heavyweights over the years and not many of them amounted to much, but Bronson looked pretty decent. I don't know if he would have ended up a star or become another Ray Steele type guy, but the window of opportunity was lost when Bridges and St. Clair jumped to All-Star promotions and the Crabtrees were left without a top heavyweight. I think Bronson too ended up in All-Star. Anyway, this was a strong catchweight bout. I've always argued that Rocco was at his best working catchweight contests as the catchweight bouts were where you got to see him actually wrestle. This was a six round draw that had my full attention without Rocco having to be a pinball. He really was a skilled wrestler when he stuck to wrestling. Now I sound like Kent Walton. Plus, I think Rocco was generally a better worker in the 70s than 80s. This gets Rocco Love from me. Mark Rocco vs. Kung Fu (11/7/77) Man, it's embarrassing when Walton starts talking about Kung Fu's Chinese self-defence clothes. Walton was a great commentator, but after you've listened to him hundreds of times the Waltonisms start to annoy you at times. Kung Fu had unmasked by this stage and wasn't exactly the most expressive worker around. I can tolerate kung fu gimmicks in small doses and like some of his kicks, especially the one he did off the top rope in this match, but it's not really the Euro style and the Euro style is what I watch this stuff for. This wasn't bad, though. Rocco deserves credit for being able to work different paces in matches from the same calendar year. 1977 was a good year for him. I thought the finish here was really good despite being a DKO. Kung Fu did a plancha to the outside that knocked both men out, a pretty spectacular highspot for a British town hall in 1977. It also helped that they cut to the ringside camera on the dive, which made it seem like Kung Fu was diving headlong into the camera and that the impact was coming down on the viewer's head. Very cool. Still, this was one of those aborted bouts that ended when it could've continued and so it gets the Rocco Indifference rating.

Thanks, FLIK. Better enjoy that account before Fuji TV get wind of it. If they care about it.

Some stuff i'd reccomend that you haven't covered AJW 9/1980 (2 out of 3 Falls) Jackie Sato & Nancy Kumi vs Leilani Kai & Mami Kumano Is this on youtube? I can't find it.

It's the Zoltan Boscik hour: Vic Faulkner vs. Zoltan Boscik (5/26/76) Faulkner is a guy who's star power I probably underrate. The Wrestling Heritage guys had him #3 on their list of the top 200 television stars with 130 appearances on television during the ITV years. His enduring popularity was down to the fact that he was a pretty good looking guy who had a type of boyish charm. He liked playing tricks on his opponents and was usually all smiles, but he didn't stand for any shit and would get fired up if you pushed him too far. Some people didn't like his wholesome image, and I think he's a bit of a smartarse at times with his shit eating grin, but he was extremely popular, especially when he tagged with his brother, Bert Royal. The pair of them were like the Beatles of 1960s tag wrestling, or at least the Rock 'n' Roll Express. Faulkner was lightning quick and usually did pretty snazzy sequences. This was a match from one of Joint Promotion's Royal Albert Hall shows (the one with the great Veidor/Davies match.) Joint ran the Albert Hall around four or five times a year. They were always big shows, but not used for television tapings that often. Since it was an Albert Hall show, both guys upped their workrate and the opening fall in particular as pretty spectacular. Walton put the bout over as former champion vs. former champion (British welterweight and lightweight titles), which made the match-up seem that much better. It was a catchweight bout with one fall to decide the winner and the fall came a bit too early in the round that it was scored otherwise I would have put this on my list of great matches. The opening fall was really, really good. Zoltan Boscik vs. Steve Grey (aired 5/8/76) This was an excellent match. The first couple of falls had some of the best mat work I can remember seeing in a WoS bout. Boscik finally looked like the European mat wizard that he's meant to be and Grey was outstanding as usual. It shouldn't come as any surprise at this point that the best Zoltan Boscik match I've seen was against Grey. Steve Grey had great matches with everybody. I swear it's ridiculous that this guy isn't more widely known. He was still young and early into his career here and he's having one of the best WoS matches on tape. When they moved from the mat to trying to win the bout, I was surprised at how awesome Boscik's bumping was. That's something I never really noticed before. He took a whip out of the ring where he nearly decapitated himself on the ropes and then almost crashed into the television camera. Awesome stuff. Really great match. My opinion of Boscik has sky rocketed. Sid Cooper vs. Zoltan Boscik (6/1/77) This was fine for what it was. Sid Cooper has definitely had more exciting matches, but I liked this fine. Interestingly enough, Boscik was playing this almost babyface like role where he'd sometimes get riled up but mostly keep his cool. In the next match he was a fully fledged heel. Steve Grey vs. Zoltan Boscik (1/31/79) This was another great Grey vs. Boscik match. These two had fantastic chemistry together. If it hadn't been joined in progress I would have listed it without hesitation. Zoltan was a full on heel here and his bumping was out of this world when Grey would retaliate to his heel tricks. The Reading crowd were hot for this and Boscik really gave them plenty to cheer about. What a great showing from the Hungarian. Zoltan Boscik you are now more than all right by me.

Jerry Estrada vs. Ultraman (3/2/84) This was a match for Ultraman's Mexican National Middleweight Championship, which he won in a match against Aguila Solitaria after Lizmark had won the NWA World Middleweight Championship and vacated the national title. Aguila Solitaria's not a guy who features on the set, but he was one of the most promising newcomers of the early 80s and worked a gimmick where he brought an eagle to the ring and let it fly around the arena before his matches. According to Luchawiki: "Obviously this led to some wacky situations where the eagle would refuse to return to his master or would actually attack various fans or his opponents." I believe this is also the first match on the set from Arena Coliseo, which is CMLL's secondary arena in Mexico City. Ultraman was a guy who came up through the Guanajuato area. Like a lot of luchadores, he made his start in boxing before crossing over into wrestling. Most of his polishing came under Alejandro de Alba, who was an experienced exponent of Greco-Roman wrestling and helped Ultraman earn his professional license in 1968. He was quite good in his rookie years as Milo Ventura. Good enough to sometimes get a rub by having El Solitario work as his second. I spoke earlier about the accident that almost cost Ultraman his career. During a Dick Angelo y Bruno Victoria vs. Milo Ventura y Javier Llanes tag match on 5/28/74, Ventura hit his head on the canvas while attempting a hurracarana on Angelo and fell unconscious. The accident left him unable to walk for a time and he was bed ridden for several months before making his recovery. While training for his in-ring return, he found the inspiration for his new gimmick on television. As mentioned before, the Ultraman gimmick became a tremendous success with Ultraman taking a string of masks from '75 to '83, my favourite being that of Ismael Rodriguez whose gimmick was "The Charles Bronson of Mexico." It also led to tours of Japan where the idea that someone was working an Ultraman gimmick led to quite a sensation. Apparently, UWA were booking to a four way mask match with Los Enfermeros and regular ally Kung Fu when Ultraman had another setback in the form of a serious car accident on route to Monterrey (or possibly Queretaro, I'm not quite sure.) Ultraman recovered, but it seems that he was never really the same afterwards. He got the win over Aguila Solitaria that I mentioned at the outset on 8/12/83 and had several title defences, but was moved into trios and never really featured in any title picture afterward, at a time when titles were important and had a strong correlation to a wrestler's push. After the Space Cadets ran their course, Ventura fell on hard times and ended up losing his mask three times on a tour of the North in September '87. The first was officially vs. Brazo de Oro in the Auditorium of Tijuana, B. C. (Thursday Sept 3 ), then against Cinta de Oro in the Municipal Auditorium of Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua (Wednesday Sept 9 ) and to close with Sangre Chicana in Arena Nuevo Laredo, in Nuevo Laredo (Monday Sept 14.) DJ Spectro, who did a five part write-up on Ultraman on his Facebook page this month, claims he also had further mask matches against Brazo de Oro (in Los Angeles), Halcon de Oro (Reynosa), another with Chicana (Torreon) and against Estrada and Atlantis (in Monterrey), which is pretty wild if true. As Ventura, he wrestled hair matches against Jerry Estrada, exotico Babe Sharon and Perro Aguayo in 1988 before getting involved in some sort of local politics where he'd campaign with his mask on. I believe he tried to make a comeback as Ultraman in 1990 complete with mask, but it fizzled out. Later he returned on the indy circuit where we still see him today at the age of 66, still wearing his mask. If anyone is interested in Ultraman, I recommend DJ Spectro's series, which obviously goes into more detail than I'm capable of. Jerry Estrada made his start in Monclova, in the northern state of Coahuila. He was trained by ex-luchador, Alberto Mora, who trained Volador/Super Parka and the legendary L.A. Park among others, and sadly passed away last year. Herodes, who was a Coahuila native, used to promote cards in the North with Chicana and it was him who brought Estrada to Mexico City along with Guerrero Negro in 1982. Guerrero Negro couldn't handle working in Mexico City, but Estrada survived the initial hardship and by this time ('84) was already enjoying the fruits of his labour. I believe he'd been part of the tournament to decide the vacant Mexican National Middleweight title, so he'd been there or thereabouts in '83. After taking the title, he got a few title defences under his belt before putting over Atlantis, but he really made a name for himself when he changed his look and took on the nickname of "El Puma" Jerry Estrada, but we'll get to that later.

Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, lightning match, 12/13/13 Looks like Casas is starting to shrink in his old age, and man did that close-up of him at the start look bad. They should have struck while the iron was hot and had the Rush/Casas hair match in the summer when things were at a fever pitch. Now things have cooled off and we've got shit like lightning matches and other shortened bouts. I hate lightning matches even when they're between great workers. There's nothing satisfying about watching workers you like in Nitro length bouts. The opening mat-work was fine. Nothing life changing, but it served its purpose. I still maintain that Casas isn't an elite mat-worker; he knows how to grab an arm, but the early portions would have been better if Panther had been in control. Still, the point of the mat-work was to provide a stalemate and the work flowed nicely into the Casas dive and the various pin attempts. I'm not sure the Santo head-scissors was as pretty as it could've been, but it kind of worked in the context of two greying adversaries battling it out. Panther's tope was a bit like that. The first time I saw it, I thought it was awful. On repeat viewings, I thought it suited an aging maestro. Not to harp on about them getting old, but I can't be the only one worried about these guys aging. I remember watching this match-up in 2008. That was five years ago. In another five years both these guys will be 60. They can't keep working at this level forever and when they fall there's going to be a pretty big void to fill. To their credit, what they've done since they began feuding in earnest has been better than what they did in 2008, but it's a worry. I suppose I should enjoy the match more if that's the case, huh? But remember we're always looking for great matches on this blog. The finish was a finish for the sake of having a finish to a lightning match, which is a bit of an odd thing to say about lucha as you can make the same argument about the finish to most falls, but I still thought it was a bit of a token fall. I do applaud the effort they made to craft a logical lightning match that worked as a self-contained bout rather than an exhibition of lucha, but Casas vs. Panther aside it wasn't anything to get excited over. Blue Panther vs. Averno, Arena Puebla 12/9/13 This was... a match. It had a really shitty beginning and end, both worked around a Fujiwara armbar, which is an insult to the Fujiwara armbar. In between that we got Panther working a company match. Averno tries hard, but he's extremely limited and thus there were a lot of repetitive exchanges. There was a long stalemate on the mat through the middle portion of the match, which featured some cool punches from Panther, but it didn't make much sense given the instant submissions that permeate the company style. Match wasn't really an improvement on their Anniversary Show bout.

Antonio Cesaro vs. William Regal, NXT 11/21/13 This was another excellent performance from Regal. I still find the intensity of his selling a bit unnerving at times, but at least he didn't turn purple this time. The early matwork was good by modern standards, in a year where I felt a lot of the great older mat workers started to slow down a bit. Cesaro had some nice offence, but I thought some of his legwork was a bit too "look at my psychology." The first half of the match was stronger than the second, which dragged this down a bit, and I wasn't into Cesaro selling both of his arms or the dramatic facial expressions he was making in the over wrought finish, but definitely a strong television bout.

Yumiko Hotta & Hisako Uno (Akira Hokuto) vs. Lelani Kai & Judy Martin, 4/15/87 This was a long 2/3 falls match for the vacant WWWA Tag Team Titles from right in the middle of Lelani's prime, so I was hoping to get more of a showcase from her than in the six-woman tags, but this was the Judy Martin show. The opening falls weren't bad, but you kind of wish Martin and Kai were wrestling more experienced opponents than Hotta and Uno, who were game but didn't have much of an identity at this point. Kai sold an arm injury in the third fall which left Martin facing Hotta and Uno two on one. In typically chaotic 80s AJW action, Dump Matsumoto, who had vacated the titles with Bull Nakano for some reason, attacked the shit out of Yumiko Hotta without any sort of DQ. Hotta bled like a stuck pig, but Uno and Hotta managed to pull off the upset victory, which was a big win for them at this stage of their career. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka & Yukari Omori vs. Devil Masami & Leilani Kai & Despina Montegas, 7/84 This was a decent TV main event. It had plenty of Devil vs. Crush Girls, which is what you want from this era. Devil is quickly reminding me of why I was such a mark for her back in the day. Devil Masami was to Joshi what Satanico was to lucha and Fujiwara to Japan in the 80s. Despina Montegas was a Greek born American women's wrestler who fell in love with Tarzan Goto at first sight and married him. It was a bit hard to tell Montegas and Kai apart as they were wearing matching costumes and Kai was rocking a perm, but this was a typically good 80s match that ended in a ringside brawl and count out finish in a major surprise, not. So, you tube isn't exactly a mecca for Leilani Kai matches and there's a lot of interesting singles matches in particular that aren't on there, but I might check out some of her American work in the future.

Enrique Vera vs. Dos Caras (2/26/84) Enrique Vera, known as the Lion of the West, was one of the favourite students of legendary trainer, Diablo Velazco. A Guadalajara native, he came up through the territory, wrestling at Arena Coliseo Guadalajara and the surrounding Jalisco area before making the move to the Federal District. He may not have been a legit six-footer, but he was close enough by Mexican standards, and at around 220 lbs his wrestler's build made him one of the top young heavyweight prospects at a time when most of the existing stars were aging. His first taste of success came when he defeated Indio Jeronimo for the Occidente Light Heavyweight Championship, which was one of the state championships of the Guadalajara box y lucha libre commission and a reasonably important regional title at the time. After moving to Mexico City, he had a surprising title victory for the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship over Raul Mata (some sources say this was on 6/18/72, some say 12/23/72.) He eventually lost the title to Dr. Wagner on 3/16/73 at Arena Mexico in a match that greatly enhanced the reputation of both men. Vera would then score the biggest upset of his career to date when he defeated Angel Blanco for the Mexican National Heavyweight Championship on 10/26/73. EMLL continued to groom Vera with a long championship run, as well as keeping him strong with hair match wins over the likes of Indio Jeronimo, El Nazi and Alfonso Dantes. His biggest loss during this time was at the 1974 Anniversary Show where the team of Dr. Wagner and Angel Blanco took the hair of Enrique Vera and the mask of a worker named Super Star. By the time the 80s rolled round, Vera was the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship holder and had left EMLL for the independents. The biggest victory of his career came when he won the UWA World Heavyweight Title, which is the belt that Vera defends in this match. There seems to be some confusion over how Vera came to win the title, particularly at luchawiki where it's claimed that Vera was an unofficial champion for a week and that the belt was held up. What happened was that on 10/23/83 there was a triangular de apuestas match between Vera, Canek and Dos Caras where Vera put up his hair, Caras his mask and Canek his title. Vera emerged victorious with the title and this match was a straight title shot after Caras defeated Canek in a number one contender match on the New Year's Day show for 1984. Vera went on to wrestle right up until last year where he had a retirement show in September. True to form, he wrestled a few matches after that, much like Satanico and others have, but for the most part he remains retired. Dos Caras I'm sure you're all familiar with as the younger brother of Mil Mascaras and father of Alberto Del Rio. Caras was the number one native rival for Canek and arguably would have been in Canek's position if he hadn't spent so much time working lucrative All Japan tours with his brother. Most people's first exposure to Caras came with the Michinoku Pro Mask Tournament World League 95 commercial tapes, where Caras worked a considerably different style from his heavyweight days at El Toreo. The Michinoku Pro matches are closer to the maestro version of Caras who even now continues to work the indies. In his prime, he worked a mixed style, blending elements of lucha libre with a mat style more customary to both US and Japanese style wrestling. This version of Caras would occasionally work a lucha style hold at the end of a fall, but nothing like the exhibitions he put on in Michinoku Pro. Nevertheless, or rather because of this, he was regarded as one of the very best heavyweights in Mexico.

Solar, Ultraman y Super Astro vs. Sergio El Hermoso, Bello Greco y Rudy Reyna (2/26/84) This match pit the high flying Los Cadetes del Espacio against the exoticos team of La Ola Lila. We'll have the opportunity to talk about each member of the Space Cadets in more detail later in the set, so for now I'll give you a general rundown of the trio. The Space Cadets were part of the trios boom that occurred in Mexico after the Misioneros made it big. The Misioneros changed the landscape in Mexico from cards that were primarily made up of singles matches and tag matches to cards which were mostly made up of trios matches. This shift saw not only a rise in the number of trios matches, but also the number of gimmick groups. Now banking one of the hottest acts in Mexico, Francisco Flores tried to replicate the success of the Misioneros by packaging other lightweight talents together, most notably Los Fantásticos (Kung Fu, Kato Kung Lee y Black Man) and the Space Cadets. Ultraman was the oldest of the Space Cadets and the most established at the time of their formation. He had debut in the mid 60s with a superhero gimmick modeled on Robin from the 1960s Batman television show. For a time he partnered with a guy doing a Superman gimmick, before taking the name Milo Ventura, which was a play on his real name and the famous French actor Lino Ventura. In 1974, during a tag match, Ventura took a bump from a hurricanrana that left him unable to move. At first it was feared that he might die or lose the use of his legs, and in fact he spent the first several months in bed during his recovery. After rehabilitation, he returned to the ring with a new gimmick based on the Japanese tokusatsu television show, Ultraman. The gimmick was a success and Ventura was regularly booked in mask matches where he was like a real life superhero vanquishing the likes of Dr. Z and Alfa Centauris. Solar was also an established worker by the time the Space Cadets were formed. The idea for the Cadets came about when Flores brought in a young wrestler from Tijuana who'd had trouble with promoters but managed to create a successful masked gimmick for himself as Super Astro. Flores gave Astro a shot at working Mexico City and packaged the Cadets together as a trio with a sort of cosmic theme, the idea being that the high flying moves they did made them seem like meteorites or comets shooting across the sky. The trio was formed some time around 1984 and lasted through to about '87. Sometime around 2003, they reformed on the indy circuit despite the fact that both Ultraman and Astro had dropped their masks for cash. They still wrestle together as a trio every once and a while. Los Cadetes del Espacio had two big matches in '84, a match against Los Fantásticos on 3/18 to decide the first UWA World Trios champions, which they lost, and a six-way hair match against Los Temerarios (Black Terry, Jose Luis Feliciano y Lobo Rubio) on 7/8, which they won. The rudos here are all famous exoticos. The first really famous exotico was Sterling "Gardenia" Davis, a Texan wrestler who was brought to Mexico by EMLL promoter Salvador Lutteroth in the 1940s and was apparently an influence on Gorgeous George. Davis would hand out gardenias to women on the way to the ring and wouldn't dream of stepping into the ring without help from his personal assistant. He inspired the next wave of exoticos such as Adorable Rubi and Bello Greco, men who were such good workers that they rose above the stigma of exoticios being sideshow freaks and became legitimate main eventers. In the mid-70s, Rene Guajardo came up with the idea of pairing Greco with younger exotico, Sergio El Hermoso, in his Monterrey territory. Together they became known as La Ola Lila, "The Lilac Wave" in English. This was a play on the famous La Ola Blanco tag team of Angel Blanco and Dr. Wagner, The White Wave. They belonged to a higher aristocratic class and could afford eau-de-Cologne, and would regularly condemn wrestlers who would get into the ring without bathing or putting on perfume. The pair became extremely popular, winning Tag Team of the Year in the 1978 El Halcon magazine awards after finishing runner-up the year before. This success led to them working in Japan in 1979, which was a big deal for any luchador at the time let alone a pair of exoticos. Greco and El Hermoso would eventually drift away from the UWA and wind up feuding in Super Muneco's AWWA promotion, where they had a hair match in Tijuana. Greco worked the Karis La Momia monster gimmick in AAA at the end of his career and helped set-up his son Super Calo's career. Rudy Reyna was a newcomer on the scene when La Ola Lila were taking off, though he'd been in the business for a while. Along with Baby Sharon he was one of the first openly gay exoticos. The rudos here weren't an official trios, rather Greco and El Hermoso occasionally teamed with other exoticos in trios matches. For everybody's benefit, the first pairing in the match is Super Astro vs. Reyna (pink trunks), followed by Solar vs. Greco (yellow singlet) and Ultraman vs. El Hermoso (purple trunks and sideburns.)

El Faraón, Herodes y Mocho Cota vs. Lizmark, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar (2/24/84) This is an example of the type of brawling trios that would be used to set-up revenge matches during the 80s, in this case the Herodes vs. Tony Salazar mano a mano grudge match that features later on this set. Tony Salazar was an older wrestler who had made his debut in the mid-60s after getting a try out on the recommendation of influential lucha magazine editor, Valente Pérez. He was best known in his early days as a rudo and earned the nickname "The Jackal of Tlatilco" for his rudo behaviour. According to older lucha fans, Salazar modeled his style on René Guajardo, but because he didn't have the same technical ability as Guajardo his technico push never really took off. Still, he received a solid enough push, particularly in the wake of so many workers leaving for the UWA. He had two significant feuds for the NWA World Middleweight title with Ringo Mendoza in the late 70s and Sangre Chicana in the early 80s, and the peak of his career was a year long run with the NWA World Light Heavyweight Title when he defeated Alfonso Dantés for the belt in 1981. Oddly enough, Salazar would drop the belt to British journeyman Dave Morgan, who had feuded with El Solitario for the same title a decade before and lost a hair match over it. Salazar himself was no stranger to hair matches, having fought them both as a rudo and a technico. His biggest apuestas match was on the 1982 Anniversary Show against Perro Aguayo, and after moving out of the title picture he spent a busy '83 having three hair matches, including two in a matter of weeks against Herodes and Coloso Colosetti. Much like Americo Rocca and Talisman, he enjoyed a mid card vet spot through to the mid-80s, and even featured in the '86 Anniversary Show main event in the Los Misioneros hair match, before donning a mask and becoming a rudo character called Ulises. As Ulises, he formed a short lived trio, Los Renegados, with another vet turned enmascarado, Gran Markus Jr (Tony Bennetto), and young breakout star Pierroth Jr. These days Salazar is an official with CMLL and is rumoured to have some sort of role in putting together CMLL's Sunday night Arena Coliseo shows.

Jim Breaks vs. Jackie Turpin (11/30/81) This was another good Turpin/Breaks match. It was the final of the knockout tournament that had poor sound quality for the Dennison/Breaks fight. The sound was also low on this, but the video was watchable. Turpin surprised Breaks with a folding press 13 seconds into the match and the rest of the match was pretty much a non-stop affair with Turpin notching another surprise win over Breaks. Not as exciting as their number one contender bout, but a good match all the same. All right, so I enjoyed the Dennison/Breaks feud more than I thought I would. The challenge now is to see what Breaks could do in his last major feud on British TV and that was against 16 year-old Danny Boy Collins. I don't like the boy apprentices much and I've got no love for Collins, so this is a hell of a tester for Breaks. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jim Breaks (11/2/83) This was Collins television debut. Breaks was actually meant to wrestle John Naylor, but Collins replaced the billed Naylor for whatever reason. Breaks carried Collins to something decent, but it wasn't as exciting as one of his normal bouts. The big talking point for Collins was that he took a fall off Breaks. The promoters must have been impressed, because they carried this over into '84 in a big way. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jim Breaks (2/2/84) The video crapped out a few minutes into this and skipped to the next match, so I assume this was a problem with the original tape. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jim Breaks (2/29/84) The finish to the previous match seemed to be a fall to Collins followed by a DQ win. In this return match, Breaks put up 500 pounds that Collins couldn't take another fall from him. Only three minutes of this exists and the highlight is seeing Collins win the 500 pounds. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jim Breaks (4/4/84) So, in a rather big shock, Danny Boy Collins, who'd only been a pro for less than a year and wasn't even born when Breaks started wrestling, took the British Welterweight Championship from Breaks at the 3/21 Royal Albert Hall Show at the age of 17. Breaks had a 90 day clause to receive a return match and this was it. The action was pretty decent, but the ref bump finish had some pretty comical acting from Peter Szakacs, who was a pretty shitty actor. Collins hit a nice looking dropkick on Breaks, but collided with Szakacs as he was attempting his next move. Breaks got a Boston crab on Collins while Szakacs was stumbling about and thought he'd won his title back, but the ref called it a non contest as Collins was being carried out. Breaks threw a tantrum about Szakacs' decision and his complaining led to a rematch of the rematch. Danny Boy Collins vs. Jim Breaks (4/26/84) A masterpiece. This was one of the most brilliant performances I've seen from Breaks and one of his very best matches. It's also his last great match before leaving Joint Promotions and shows he was still at the top of his game in '84. It started off slowly and began to warm up when Breaks started stretching Collins. The crowd were really behind the young welterweight champion and in a hostile mood towards Breaks. One guy gave him the fingers while another tried to pick a fight with him from something like the third row back. What's more, Walton got angry at Breaks saying "I'm tired of that man's yapping all the time" then defending himself for not being impartial. Even the ref, Ken Joyce, seemed against Breaks as he kept trying to find ways to avoid counting Collins on pin attempts. It was almost as though there was this perfect storm brewing. Breaks then went after Collins' face and kept raking at his forehead until Collins bled hardway. He was relentless and kept going until he got a submission. The crowd were fuming by this point and there was a hilarious moment where a woman threw in this pink balloon dummy that she'd made and Breaks kicked it which immediately made it pop. The thing looked more like a sex toy than a pacifier. The way Breaks kept working on the kid almost seemed like he was brutalising the poor boy and even I was starting to pull for him. To be fair, Collins' selling was picture perfect. I won't give away the finish, instead I'll just reconfirm that Jim Breaks was a master.

A few more details courtesy of Wrestling Heritage. According to their research, Jim Breaks was most prominent on TV from the years 1973 to 1984. Here are his rankings among the top ten workers to appear on TV during those years. 1973-76, 4= 1977-80, 4 1981-84, 2= The second equal ranking from '81 to '84 probably reflects the amount of talent that Joint Promotions lost to All-Star Wrestling in that period, whereas his success from '73-80 is probably attributable to the phasing out of the older television stars particularly as ratings began to drop. Wrestling Heritage also notes that Breaks defeating Mel Riss at the Royal Albert Hall to take the British lightweight title was one of the big surprises of 1963 and represented a changing of the guards of sorts as Breaks as "the slow, masterful technicians were being overtaken by the energetic, colourful newcomers who combined showmanship, acrobatics and wrestling skill," so perhaps early Breaks was more influential and innovative than I gave him credit for.

Since Breaks only got 16% of the vote in the WON HOF voting, I thought I'd put together a rough as guts Gordy List for him. I didn't put a ton of research into this, but I thought we could use it as a starting point for the one or two Jim Breaks fans on this board. 1. Was he ever regarded as the best draw in the world? Was he ever regarded as the best draw in his country or his promotion? No, he was never regarded as the best draw in the world or in his country. As with most wrestling promotions, lightweight wrestlers were never put in a position to draw. 2. Was he an international draw, national draw and/or regional draw? It's next to impossible to get attendance figures for British shows and television ratings are also difficult to come by. The figures that we do have are in scraps. What we do know about Breaks is that he was considered one of the greatest post-war lightweights and enjoyed around two decades of success as both a lightweight and welterweight champion. During that time he became a television fixture, appearing on television upwards of ten times a year between 1970 and 1984, which was a lot for any given wrestler and a testament to his enduring popularity. He was featured on Cup Final Day four times and worked on two of the Wembley Arena shows, which were some of the biggest drawing shows in British wrestling history. He also featured prominently on Royal Albert Hall cards, fixtures which were among the biggest shows that Joint Promotions ran each year. Whether this translates into drawing power is debatable. The Joint Promotions business model meant that the wrestlers worked in crews, usually putting on three to four shows a day in different towns. This meant that the main events tended to differ depending on which workers were working which show. There was continuity between the shows in the same town and the wrestlers often did a circuit of the halls which mirrored what they were doing on TV, but for the most part the main events tended to be random match-ups similar to the majority of the TV tapings. Lightweights generally didn't feature in the main event unless it was a title match, which meant Breaks was rarely top of the bill. He enjoyed a tremendously long career and even in '84 there were no signs that his act had grown stale, but amongst wrestling fans from the 60s and 70s it's fair to say he wasn't regarded as the same level of draw as Mick McManus, Steve Logan, Jackie Pallo, Masambula and Les Kellett, who were the big five bill topping names of the pre-Daddy years, and was probably several notches below other household names as well. Therefore, realistically he probably belongs in the second tier of national draws, but again there's no evidence to prove that one way or another. 3. How many years did he have as a top draw? If we go by his television popularity, then he was a star from around 1970 until 1984. Television results from the 60s are slightly sketchier than from the 70s onward. He made his television debut around 1960 and was crowned British Lightweight champion for the first time at the end of 1963, so he would have been a known wrestler through the 60s, however the 70s was when the larger than life personalities really began to dominate television. In 1984 he jumped ship to Brian Dixon's All-Star Wrestling, but wasn't used as prominently as he had been for Joint Promotions. 4. Was he ever regarded as the best worker in the world? Was he ever regarded as the best worker in his country or in his promotion? Jim Breaks wasn't a known entity among overseas wrestling fans until old episodes of World of Sport began airing on The Wrestling Channel in 2004. This was largely because he never worked in Japan or North America. Whether that was because he didn't have a name or wasn't the type of worker promoters were looking for is unknown. Wrestlers his size generally didn't leave Europe, though there were opportunities to work in Germany, South Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and India. Breaks traveled abroad, but not extensively. He may have been satisfied running his pub or there may have simply not been any interest in him. It's notable that neither of his contemporaries Steve Grey or Johnny Saint were big travelers either, at least not during the television years. The middleweight and heavy-middleweights were much more in demand internationally. Breaks was considered one of the greatest post-war lightweights along with the likes of George Kidd, Johnny Saint and Steve Grey, therefore it's likely that he was considered one of the best wrestlers in the Britain during his peak years, but probably not the best. 5. Was he ever the best worker in his class (sex or weight)? Was he ever one of the top workers in his class? Johnny Saint was generally considered the best worker in the lightweight class after Kidd retired. This was partially down to booking. Faces were generally presented on television as superior workers to heels with the likes of Saint, Mike Marino, Bert Royal and others receiving superlative after superlative from Kent Walton. Heels like Breaks who could obvious wrestle were often lamented as being superb technicians if they could just stick to wrestling. Despite this, Breaks and Grey were considered along with Johnny Saint to be the top lightweights of their day. 6. How many years did he have as a top worker? We don't know when he became a top worker per se, but from the footage we have he looks like a top worker from '72 to '84 with the actual period probably being longer than that. 7. Was he a good worker before his prime? Was he a good worker after his prime? We only have footage of his post prime and he was decent enough. 8. Did he have a large body of excellent matches? Did he have a excellent matches against a variety of opponents? The answer to both is yes. Along with Steve Grey, he has one of the best resumes of matches from the existing World of Sport footage. In part this is because lightweights were expected to put on excellent matches and were given the latitude to, but also because they were outstanding workers. He had excellent matches against a variety of opponents including catch weight matches against workers from heavier weight classes. He also excelled at carrying the young "boy apprentices" that Joint would try to push. 9. Did he ever anchor his promotion(s)? Not his promotion. He anchored his weight class on numerous occasions and he was a regular television fixture, but he was never the anchor for the entire promotion. 10. Was he effective when pushed at the top of cards? Yes, he was extremely effective. He generated a tremendous amount of heat for his matches and was consistently one of the most over performers on the cards they ran, and he did this for more than a decade despite largely using the same schtick. Many workers and television gimmicks came and went during this period so his staying power is worth noting. 11. Was he valuable to his promotion before his prime? Was he still valuable to his promotion after his prime? It's unlikely that he had any more worth to his promotion pre-prime than any number of amateurs turned pro. Early on it appears that he was a babyface and in the five years following his first British Lightweight title victory he earned draws with top welterweights like Jack Dempsey and Jackie Pallo and wins over the likes of George Kidd and Mick McManus, so he must have of been of some worth. He was still useful to Joint Promotions in 1984, but when he jumped to All-Star Promotions for whatever reason they didn't use him as much as they might have and he rarely featured on television in the final years of wrestling on ITV. He did feature a few times on satellite television, but the show had a different format to ITV wrestling and Mark Rocco was the lead heel. 12. Did he have an impact on a number of strong promotional runs? Not directly. He was part and parcel of "the wrestling" It was the bigger stars that had an impact on promotional runs. 13. Was he involved in a number of memorable rivalries, feuds or storylines? Yes, he had numerous memorable rivalries. Wrestlers he feuded with on tape include Jon Cortez, Vic Faulkner, Dynamite Kid, Bobby Ryan, Alan Dennison, Johnny Saint, Steve Grey, Danny Boy Collins and Young David (Davey Boy Smith), but this is only the tip of the iceberg from what is available. 14. Was he effective working on the mic, working storylines or working angles? Wrestlers didn't cut promos on television until right near the end. He was effective on the house mic and at taunting Kent Walton and the crowd. He was also effective at working storylines and angles. The storylines usually revolved around title shots, which generally involved a three match format of two non-title matches and a title shot, and working gimmick matches with stipulations such as a hundred pounds for every round a young worker could stay with him. Angles usually involved either injuries or disputed finishes. Breaks was effective at putting them over. 15. Did he play his role(s) effectively during his career? Yes, he was an excellent heel. His gimmick was that he was a crybaby who would throw a tantrum whenever things didn't go his way. The crowds loved to hate him and would chant things to irritate him or throw dummies (pacifiers) into the ring to rile him. He often jawed with ringsiders and occasionally the odd overzealous fan would threaten him at ringside. He drew a tremendous amount of heat, especially when wrestlers beat him, and of the heels that regularly appeared on TV only Mick McManus and Sid Cooper got the same reactions with the same longevity. 16. What titles and tournaments did he win? What was the importance of the reigns? Breaks won the British and European Lightweight titles and the British Welterweight title. He never won the World Lightweight title, though he challenged for it numerous times. The importance of the reigns was the sheer number of times he won titles from 1963 through to 1988. He probably won a number of knockout tournaments as well as tournaments for vacant titles, but there wasn't any particularly important tournament for lightweights like there was for heavyweights. 17. Did he win many honors and awards? It's possible that he won awards from the wrestling magazines like The Wrestler, but I'm not aware of any. 18. Did he get mainstream exposure due to his wrestling fame? Did he get a heavily featured by the wrestling media? As far as I'm aware, he was featured in wrestling media and wrestling's TV exposure most likely made him a household name. He didn't enjoy the same mainstream exposure as Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks or Kendo Nagasaki, but among wrestling viewers he would have been extremely well known. 19. Was he a top tag team wrestler? No, he wrestled in tag matches occasionally but was predominantly a singles wrestler. 20. Was he innovative? Not as much as Grey or Saint. He basically used the same schtick for more than a decade and worked a style of match that many heels followed. 21. Was he influential? Not really. He was off regular television for four years before wrestling went off the air and had no real influence on the indy wrestling that followed. He didn't have any influence on All-Star promotions and he didn't help to shape international junior heavyweight wrestling like Mark Rocco and Dynamite Kid did. He may have influenced some of the heels that followed him in the 70s but not in any obvious way. There may be wrestlers these days who quote him as an influence, but I haven't heard of any. 22. Did he make the people and workers around him better? Absolutely. He carried young workers like Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith and Danny Collins to important bouts early in their career and very rarely had bad matches with people. 23. Did he do what was best for the promotion? Did he show a commitment to wrestling? Yes, he did jobs on numerous occasions. His losses almost always meant something and benefitted his opponent. He showed enough commitment to wrestling that he wrestled for some thirty years, including a huge amount of travel which he didn't particularly enjoy. 24. Is there any reason to believe that he was better or worse than he appeared? We don't have any footage of him from the 60s and what we do have from the 70s and 80s is limited. With more footage, his standing as a worker would probably be enhanced. More research is required from wrestling magazines in the 60s and early 70s to get a better picture of how important Breaks was prior to appearing more frequently on television.

I don't think it's a matter of pimped matches but consistently good week to week TV matches.

That would probably make sense if it didn't follow directly after said low point.

99 WWF/E was a cesspool. You can literally take any year in the history of the company and compare it favorably to that year. You can literally take the Smackdown Six era and compare it favourably to just about any other era in the company.

Atlantis y Lizmark vs. El Egipcio y El Faraón (2/17/84) This next match features two guys who’ve been mentioned quite a bit already, El Faraon and Lizmark. El Faraon means “The Pharaoh” in Spanish, and as you can imagine he used to come to the ring adorned in Egyptian imagery, mostly notably the Anubis on the side of his mask, back in the era where lucha masks were truly beautiful. In 1975, he became embroiled in a “una grande rivalidad” with the rudo Fishman, where the only way to determine who was the best was a mask match. Both masks were coveted at the time, El Faraon’s beautiful emerald mask and Fishman’s distinctive green and yellow mask. El Faraon entered the mask match as the favourite, as he’d had a long string of undefeated matches and Fishman had just added the NWA World Welterweight Championship to his Mexican National Welterweight crown, which in lucha booking suggests the rudo is going to lose his mask while still being protected as a champion, but what the public didn’t realize was that El Faraon had movie star looks, and so on 4/23/76 Fishman unmasked the Pharaoh to the dismay of the fans. Fishman went on to become an even bigger star and El Faraon immediately got his heat back by taking Perro Aguayo’s hair, as well as defeating him for the NWA World Middleweight Championship in the Autumn of ‘76. Faraon would often team with fellow technico, Ringo Mendoza, in apuestas matches where they took a number of big scalps. The pair would also meet as rivals in the middleweight division. In 1980, Faraon was instrumental in cementing Satanico as a championship caliber wrestler after Satanico had defeated Sayama for the NWA World Middleweight title on 3/28 and successfully defended it against Ringo Mendoza on 4/9 in Acapulo. Some older lucha fans claim that while Satanico showed a lot of ambition in his early career he wasn’t a particularly good technical wrestler and was favoured by the EMLL office given his rise to stardom was quicker than others. Whether that’s just perception or there’s any truth to it I’m not sure, but Faraon, Mendoza, Americo Rocca, Halcon, Benetto, Dantes and Tony Salazar were considered better technical workers. On 4/11, they ran a trios between El Halcón Ortiz, Faraón y El Fantasma vs. Alfonso Dantés, Satánico y Sangre Chicana that set-up a challenge from Satanico for either his NWA World Middleweight title or Mexican National Heavyweight title, both of which Satanico held at the time. The end result was Faraon challenging Satanico for his NWA title on the 4/18 Arena Mexico show, which saw the return of El Santo to Arena Mexico and EMLL. The match was said to be a classic and Satanico earned plenty of admiration through his performance. At some point around 1981, Faraon turned on Ringo Mendoza and became a rudo. This tag match is from that period. Some time around late ’85-early ’86 he would turn technico again and feud extensively with Sangre Chicana and Perro Aguayo. He then enjoyed a veteran midcard spot with EMLL up until his retirement from injuries in 1992. He is best known to 90s viewers for his bloody hair match against Pirata Morgan from 1990. Lizmark was probably the most pure athlete in the promotion. Before getting into wrestling, he was a swimming champion, cliff diver, boxer and body builder. Fortunately, for us he also became one of the premier young flyers in lucha libre, as well as an excellent mat worker. He was particularly notable for bringing new moves to lucha libre that were state-of-the-art at the time like the flying dropkick and the powerbomb. For a long time he was criminally underrated in wrestling circles, possibly because he didn’t get over in Japan, but at this time he was arguably the best technico worker in EMLL or at least the best masked one. A good intro match for Lizmark is his title match against El Enfermero Jr., which didn’t make the set but which you should be able to find online easily enough. Around this time, Lizmark had just come off a run of being dual NWA World Middleweight and Mexican National Middleweight champion in a feud with Satanico, and would spend the next few years in title limbo before moving up to the light heavyweight ranks. Later on, he jumped to AAA where he produced some of his best work against rudos like Jerry Estrada and La Parka despite being in his mid 40s. Faraon’s partner in this match El Egipcio also had an Egyptian gimmick where he wore a type of Pharaoh’s headdress (if they’d found a third guy, they could have made a trios out of it.) His claim to fame was losing his mask to Rayo de Jalisco Jr. on the last Arena Mexico show of ’83 in a Relevos suicidas bout which also involved Hombre Bala and Masakre. The week before this tag Lizmark and Faraon had fought in a mano a mano bout, which may have been testing the waters for a future hair vs. mask match. That match never occurred, which makes this match more significant for the Atlantis and Lizmark pairing, which would go on to be a lasting combination that won both tag and trios titles.

He had a great build for a wrestler and was a machine. He was like a superior version of a young Scott Steiner. The kind of guy you'd hope someone with amateur cred would be. Dude doesn't have to be the greatest of all time to appreciate that he had a motor.

All I've got to say about this is that in '99 there were people hoping that a 3 minute Brood vs. Hardy Boys match would contain workrate.

Devil Masami, Yukari Omori and Jaguar Yokota vs. Bull Nakano, Leilani Kai and Velvet McIntyre, 6/25/85 Devil Masami had crossed over to the face side by this point and Bull Nakano had peroxide blond hair not blue. This looked like it was clipped to shit, but there were still some cool moments. There were a couple of times when Devil squared off with Bull that really made me want to see a singles match from this time period and Devil vs. Leilani would have been welcomed too. Leilani didn't get to do much here, but she bumped pretty well. Jackie Sato, Rimi Yokota and Mimi Hagiwara vs. Mami Kumano, Yumi Ikeshita and Leilani Kai, 1/4/81 This had the almighty shit clipped out of it, but what aired was chaotic and fun. Leilani got a bigger role this time around, getting on the house mic to start with and taunting the shit out of Sato. The usual mix of brawling and non stop running between the ropes. Yumi Ikeshita was so fucking cool. Man, I love that girl. The rudo side was fantastic in general. Yokota, as she usually did, looked great in her early years. Dump Matsumoto, Bull Nakano, Condor Saito and Leilani Kai vs. Chigusa Nagayo, Yumi Ogura, Kazue Nagahori and Yumiko Hotta, 8/23/86 This was from American TV and was a bit of a hatchet job, though I'm sure the original broadcast version was the same. The parts where Leilani fought Chigusa were awesome, especially the ending where she kept taunting Chigusa about having taken her belt. As you can imagine, it came down to three on one with Chigusa not having much of a fighting chance. Ogura and Nagahori showed their usual spunk.

Alan Dennison vs. Jim Breaks (8/23/83) This was the finals of a knockout tournament to present some sort of charity shield. Joint Promotions used to run tournaments like these several times a year and usually had the town mayor or some other dignitary present the trophy to the winner. I suppose it was done to book something different on TV every once in a while. Since it was a tournament final, the match was a special no-rounds 15 minute bout. Breaks and Dennison showed their usual working chemistry, but the most entertaining thing about this was the Swadlincote crowd. They were really hot and kept chanting "mardy" at Breaks, which Walton was told by his crew at ringside meant "yella" in the local dialect but wikipedia says it means soft or crybaby. Someone threw a dummy (pacifier) at Breaks as well, which the crowds used to do to rile Breaks up. The bout itself was pretty good, though the fall that breaks won was confusing as the bell rang without anybody really knowing what had happened. After that, the match went to a draw and the ref declared Dennison the winner since he'd received less public warnings. Breaks threw a tantrum and the Swadlincote crowd got their night's entertainment. Jim Breaks vs. Little Prince (11/8/80) This was fun while it lasted. It was nothing outstanding, but I didn't really expect it to be being the heats of yet another tournament. The Prince was sans moustache and looked much different. Some fun exchanges mostly in the final fall. Jackie Turpin vs. Jim Breaks (6/15/82) This was really good. According to Walton, the winner became the number one contender to take on Steve Grey for his British Lightweight title. Turpin came from a famous boxing family and had been a boxer himself from the late 60s through to mid-70s. His uncle Randolph Turpin was famous for defeating Sugar Ray Robinson for his World Middleweight title in 1951 (a victory that later had tragic consequences for his uncle who committed suicide some years later.) For a guy who wasn't a natural wrestler, he was pretty good. He had a bit of a strange physique for the sport, but he made up for whatever shortcomings he may have had with plenty of enthusiasm and this was a nice mix of Breaks' schtick and actual wrestling. Turpin had some nice high spots and the booking was really good. Breaks wound up jobbing for Turpin and when Breaks jobbed it always meant something. Now I really want to see Turpin's match with Steve Grey.

Don't forget about the Mendozas. Pirata Morgan has produced quite a brood as well. There's also the Masacaras/Dos Caras family.