ohtani's jacket

In early '86, she was on the cover of Time, Life magazine and Seventeen. She wasn't that marginal a figure, her fame was simply fleeting in large part because she turned down some pretty big roles like Pretty Woman and Ghost.

All right, I take your points. I don't think you're giving the WWF credit for how popular it was in the 80s and Hogan for how well known a celebrity he was, but if your argument is that he wasn't Elvis or Marilyn Monroe then I think we can all agree with that.

The trouble is that if you want to argue that pop culture iconography requires a greater level of recognition than simply knowing who someone is, you should probably use a better example than Molly Ringwald. Molly Ringwald was more famous for being a member of the Brat Pack and a teen queen who looked like the girl next door than any of her movie roles. Loss' argument appears to be that wrestlers can never be as famous as actors/actresses because movies are more popular than wrestler, ergo Andre the Giant is more famous for being in The Princess Bride than for being a wrestler, despite the fact that The Princess Bride much like Ringwald's movies is a cult classic that became more well known over time through VHS rentals and repeated screenings on TV. Loss may be right that we're overstating how mainstream Hogan was in the 80s, but likewise Ringwald was really only famous between '84 and '86. As for the point about comic book characters and television and film, I didn't get it. Hogan wouldn't have been famous without television and movies and neither would Ringwald, so what's the point?

Pat O'Connor/Ken Mantell vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akihisa Takachiho Fairly decent match and a good opportunity to see O'Connor and Jumbo have some quality ring-time together. Takachiho is the Great Kabuki.

Says who? You're acting like people don't know what pro-wrestling is. The average person knows what pro-wrestling is and likely knows a few names synonymous with it. Hogan and Andre are more synonymous with pro-wrestling than Molly Ringwald is with movies. On your greater point, just because there were many bigger stars than Hogan in the 80s doesn't mean he wasn't part of the cultural landscape. I don't really see how he was any less culturally significant than the Goonies or Gremlins. You could lump them all together as far as children were concerned.

Neither would Hogan.

Comics are a niche subculture yet Batman, Superman and Spider Man are household names. Hogan's the same.

Tanahashi vs. Okada, 4/13/13 * This ticked all the right boxes in terms of neck and arm work for those people who feel psychology=body work, but what I liked was that both guys added to their repertoire in this match and did a lot of new spots (or at least spots that felt new to me.) Okada did a few DDT spots and a couple of lucha looking submissions that somehow managed to work and Tanahashi had a couple of new ways of working the arm. * I'm not sure that Okada is technically that good, but he comes across as likeable to me and it seems like he's always trying to improve as a worker. I love his dropkick. It's so lanky, but I love it. He went to the well a couple of times for spots like that neck spot he likes to do with the guard rail, but for the most part they mixed things up. * Tanahashi was solid with both his selling and intensity. He even managed to pose with a fair degree of meaning. The match layout was strong and the pacing was excellent. I wholeheartedly agree with W2BTD's comments in this regard. I get bored easily during wrestling and when I see that all their matches are around the 30 minute mark I get a bit antsy, but this flew by much like their second Osaka match. * Finishing stretch was great. Big moves, dramatic nearfalls, strong selling... Real main event wrestling. I first got into Japanese wrestling around the time that we were originally able to download stuff, which from memory was late '98 to early '99 with those thumbnail sized real media files. The puroresu that was available to us then was not as good as this, so I can buy the hype from the kids that watch this today. Whether their series is better than Flair/Steamboat or Misawa/Kobashi or anything else doesn't interest me, but I'd peg this as a strong MOTYC.

I'm kind of torn on Dave's comments. On one hand, I don't believe that revisionism belongs in hall of fame discussions. If you were to examine the case for Sayama, for example, I think you'd need to take into account how he was viewed from '81-83 among Japanese fans to get a proper historical account of him. I don't think it makes a shred of difference what tape watchers think of him thirty years later. I was reading some bios on Walt Bellamy after he died the other day and you could give numerous reasons for why his early numbers was so good through re-evaluating the era, but to me that's a side issue and misses the point of a Hall of Fame. A Hall of Fame surely most enshrine those players who best represented their era regardless of critical appraisal. For many Japanese fans, that early 80s era is best represented by Choshu and Sayama and just because there's been a positive rethink on Choshu lately and negative criticism towards Sayama doesn't make one less of a Hall of Famer than the other. On the other hand, Dave doesn't give enough credit towards positive revisionism. There's any number of films or albums or even wrestlers who wouldn't enjoy the same level of popularity today if we only took into account how they were viewed upon release or at the time they worked. Revisionism can be a positive and a negative, but I kind of think the judging of work is a sticky area. I would hope that voters are fair minded about that, but who knows.

Axel Dieter vs. Klaus Wallas (CWA 9/16/86) Dieter continues his fun brawling run at this tournament. I'm not sure whether he was supposed to be a heel or not, but it looked that way. Axel Dieter vs. Tony St Clair (10/26/86) Klaus Kauroff vs. Vader (10/26/86) All this 80s stuff is clipped to the equivalent of 8mm reels, but it's fun to watch none the less. St. Clair was still pretty good in '86 and worked some neat exchanges with Dieter, and in the final Vader brutalises Kauroff. Kauroff was this short, stocky guy who tried to dish out some punishment with worked pro-wrestling style strikes and Vader just potatoed him. It was fun watching two in shape fat men pummel it out, but Kauroff was out classed. It's really hard to get a decent grasp on how good Germany was in the 80s because of the footage issues, but England had gone pear shaped around this time and Germany was much more interesting through to the end of the decade. How we're going to represent that on the Europe set I'm not sure, because you can only really rate and compare the longer Germany footage whereas this stuff would make a yearbook project. Still, if you liked Vader on the AWA and NJPW sets, you should fill in your Vader watching by checking out these clips.

Tanahashi vs. Suzuki 10/8/12 * This was the first time for me to see old man Suzuki. Only knowing him from UWF, PWFG and Pancrase, I don't think I could pick the guy out in a line-up these days. The dude looks terrible and moves really poorly, but he does just enough with his strikes, kicks and submission holds to remain a threat. * This was pretty cool. The biggest thing it had going for it was that it was different from the style of matches that Tanahashi had with Okada and the body work, for want of a better term, filled out the body of the match nicely. Tanahashi's selling perhaps could have been a little better and I get what people say about his strikes when it comes to his forearms, which kind of made working that arm not that engrossing outside of a wrestling storyline, but it all made sense. * Tanahashi probably went to the dragon screw too many times, though for some reason I really like dragon screws and could live with that. One thing I thought they got right was the amount of offence in the stretch run leading to the finish. It seemed to me that Tanahashi nailed just the right amount of offence to put a guy like Suzuki away without going over the top. * I would put this around four stars. Suzuki was more like a broken down Osamu Kido than a modern day Fujiwara and didn't overly impress me, but he did have a number of nice broken down old man touches. Tanahashi worked pretty hard.

It's because of a lot of those workers didn't get over in Japan.

There was a set-up for the feud at Spring Stampede where Rude got into a backstage fight with Race and Vader.

Jim Breaks needs some publicity.

Tanahashi vs. Okada 1/13/13 * I didn't mind the slow build here as I assume they were trying to do something different from their previous two matches. It wasn't hugely compelling but there was nothing that was actively bad. * The match didn't reach the epic heights they would have liked from the build, but I think a lot of that has to do with the inexperience of Okada and the repetition of spots. Okada's not always that great working from the top and his selling wasn't that great this time round. Tanahashi probably should have carried him better, but tends to give him the match in equal portions. * I'd probably go three and a half stars on this one max. After my enthusiasm over the first match I watched, the wind's been knocked out of my sails a bit. Too many matches in too short a space of time for mind. Okada needs more time to grow and bring more to the table. We'll see what happens in the more heavily pimped matches, but a lot of the time it's like watching 80s WWF workers having the same match around the horn.

I wonder if we'll get any tidbits on how the Matsunagas ran business. There were five of them, IIRC. I'm assuming Takashi was more than just a Paco Alonso figurehead.

This was from back in 2009. The best Perro match I've seen doesn't apply anymore.

I like the video shop theory for the nostalgia of it, but you can do all that and more with the internet. I just think it's a personality type that's interested in history and research and takes hobbies seriously, but if you have time PM me the results of the discussion.

Murdoch was 19. Windham was 19. Race was 16/17. Looking for more examples under 16. Davey Boy Smith and Dynamite Kid were close to that age when they made their debuts. Danny Boy Collins was 16. There's no doubt more from England.

That's one way to look at it I suppose, but more people wanting to see Akiyama work for free than pay to see Tanahashi wrestle makes drawing comparisons tough.

Chicana vs. Aguayo from '92 is shitloads of fun --

I think this is a key point. How can he be compared to other wrestlers from the past decade or so like Akiyama, Sasaki, Nagata or Suzuki when the numbers have been so heavily worked? With that NOAH Dome Show in 2004 that drew 58,000, the rumour was that the real number of ticket sales was 20,000, so how do you wade through all that and figure out whether Akiyama was a better draw than Tanahashi? Folks are relying on Dave to report the real numbers. On the Wrestling Culture podcast, Dylan questioned why Tanahashi's candidacy wasn't debated as heavily as John Cena's and I would argue that people simply don't get as much backstage knowledge or business details about Japan as they do about the US.

I don't know where the stuff was originally from. I watched it on YT. The Flair/Andre interaction is fun in that one match where Andre's the ref.

Watching the reels of Steamboat and Flair's 70s stuff I as pleasantly surprised by how aggressive Steamboat was. He was even biting the cut on Flair's forehead. Man, the girls in those 70s crowds were hot for Flair vs. Steamboat. In more ways than one, I guess.

Axel Dieter vs. Bob "UFO" Della Serra (Hannover 1981) I wasn't sure what to make of Quebec wrestler Bob Della Serra before the bout, but he ended up giving Dieter the best technical match of his Hannover tournament. This was wrestled almost entirely on the mat. 30 minute mat contests shot on handheld are an acquired taste, but I was pleased to see Dieter use more of his skill even if there was no real arc to the match. Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz (9/22/86) Early Wanz/Vader match. I think this was a body slam challenge. We didn't get to see all of it, but it looked like typical Wanz/Vader action, though they'd get better later on. Wanz bleed. Axel Dieter vs. Bull Power (9/29/86) This had a cool dynamic while it lasted as Dieter showed some fight and didn't let Vader walk all over him. He kind of reminded me of old man Pat O'Connor here.