ohtani's jacket

More catchen... Otto Wanz vs. Don Leo Jonathan (Graz 7/15/78?) Otto Wanz vs. Don Leo Jonathan (Graz 7/12/80?) Had some trouble dating these. The first match was a 45 minute handheld with slightly poor VQ (it was B&W basically), while the other was 12 minutes of colour footage. The trouble is that each uploader dated their match as 7/12/80. Originally, I thought the second match was a pro-shot version of the first, but the finish was different. The 45 minute match may be the 1978 CWA World Heavyweight Title change as the celebration at the end was befitting a title change, and Jonathan seemed to look older in the second match in so much as you can tell from a B&W handheld, but I don't see how we can have a full handheld from 1978. Anyway, Wanz was younger here and in better shape. Jonathan was one of probably a litany of big men that Wanz faced over of his career and both these matches were pretty classic Wanz -- take a beating, make a comeback, wash, rinse and repeat. Jonathan took some pretty big bumps for a guy who was nearing the end of his career. I haven't seen a ton of Don Leo Jonathan, so I'm not sure how good a showcase this was or whether he was restricted by his role as the generic cheating American with his all-in wrestling style, but it worked well and the pair were a good match-up. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed actually watching pro-shot stuff, though. It's so hard to concentrate on handhelds. You miss so many details without the benefit of medium close-up. Klaus Wallas vs. Jörg Chenok (Bamberg 4/3/83) I quite like Klaus Wallas. He was an Austrian judoka who represented Austria at the '76 Olympics, if I'm not mistake, and debut around '78. He seemed to get the hang of wrestling pretty well. He knew how to clobber people and how to sell and struck me as a guy with good timing. This was a decent showcase for him and featured some neat work from Chenok as well. Axel Dieter/Eugen Wiesberger vs. Ivan Strogoff/Klaus Wallas (1983) Decent tag match. Better than anything I've seen from England in the same time frame, but I don't think we're ever going to find a tag match from Europe that ranks among the greatest tag matches of all time. There was a loose FIP structure here and some nice work from Wisberger on the face side, along with some strong Dieter segments and more good wrestling from Wallas, but ultimately it as just a match. As a bit of an extra, if you go to around 5:10 on this clip, you can see the workers camping at one of the summer German tournaments and Alex Wright is practicing backbends at the age of 10 --

I understand your points about hotcakes and apathy, but if you were to appoint a screening committee and an honours committee and have a select group of people vote in Hall of Famers, the quality control would probably be better, but I think Dave would lose interest quickly and probably his readers too. I'm sure the majority of voters don't take it any more seriously than the WON end of year awards, but even with ballots that are well thought out I've noticed a pretty big discrepancy in who gets voted for. I think the key thing is that are people working hard to heighten the awareness of different candidates. Overlooked historical candidates have been voted in & the bios for Atlantis and Wagner were informative if nothing else. People's research could do with more support, but overall the good outweighs the bad in my view. Modern stars going in too early is going to continue to be a problem as is workrate favourites being inducted who didn't draw, but that's indicative of the state of the business, particularly in Japan. I doubt Dave is going to close shop on Japan until someone comes along who can sell out famous buildings.

Sayama's reputation is one of work and influence as much as drawing, at least that's my understanding of it. If he were on the ballot this year, I'm sure opinion on his work wouldn't be an issue as the sphere of Dave influence regarding his work is greater than our circle, but I have a hard time believing there wouldn't be any revisionist arguments about how good a worker he was. Theoretically, that would weaken his case, at least in the eyes of this board. It wouldn't stop him going into the Hall because he's not a work only candidate, but it's the best example I could come up with for "judging work on how it was viewed at the time" vs. "judging how it's viewed now." I don't really have a problem with judging through 1982 eyes in this context. I think the problem with Dave's argument is when he dismisses things out of hand because nobody thought so at the time. Okay, but if saying that Bellamy was underrated and suffered from playing on bad teams and being traded a lot instead of putting up his early numbers for the Knicks, who he probably would've been drafted by in an ordinary year, is revisionism then is Dave's point correct or are you advocating deeper analysis and contextualization?

Which is no different from any other HOF. None of them are perfect beasts. Every year the International Rugby Board hands out international rugby awards chosen by a select group of ex-players. Every year there is controversy. This year the International Rugby Players Association have decided to run their own awards also chosen by ex-players. They're just as head scratching. It doesn't matter whether it's the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame or NBA All-Star voting, it's never perfect and people will always disagree. To argue that the WON HOF is a clusterfuck because people don't like certain people who got voted in is a pretty flippant remark. Good things happen in regard to the Hall and not so good things, but the Hall itself has merit otherwise this thread is a colossal waste of time.

No Hall of Fame is perfect. If the WON HOF were perfect then there wouldn't be any room for debate and where would the fun be in that?

Fortunately, it's possible for two or more things to be big at the same time. Was Hogan a bigger deal than Hogan? Figure that one out. I'm not sure movies are the right comparison really, since Hogan was more of a television star than a film star. A television star who due to the nature of his business drew stadium crowds the same size as sports stars and movie acts. And he did that from '84-89 or '85-89. That's a big run and a lot of eyeballs.

Axel Dieter vs. Moose Morowski (Hannover 1981) This was pretty awesome. While the Zrno and Della Serra matches have some nice holds, this was a Dieter match with an actual narrative as Moroswki beat on Dieter and Dieter had to make a comeback. Dieter was a pretty decent brawler and from the limited footage we have his brawls are perhaps more compelling than his technical matches. I'm not sure that this is as good as their 1980 match, but it was the best of his '81 Hannover matches thus far. Axel Dieter vs. Le Grand Vladimir (Hannover 1981) This followed along similar lines, although it was shorter and Vladimir wasn't quite as interesting as Morowski. Mainly it lent weight to this idea I have that Dieter was most fun to watch when he was brawling. Bull Power vs. Klaus Wallas (8/31/86) Finally, Vader was matched against someone who gave as good as he got. This was the most fun of the early Vader CWA stuff. Wallas just whaled on him repeatedly and Vader was his usual merciless self. Bull Power vs. Steve Wright/Eddie Steinblock (1987) As far as handicap matches go, this was pretty good. Wright and Steinblock had some fun double team moves working over Vader's arm and Wright did a bunch of cool shit once they had Power neutralised. Vader kind of shook off the arm work later on, but that's okay because he was busy pummeling Steinblock, which is what you want from Vader. Wright got sick of it, though, dropkicked the ref and choked Vader with some sort of cord, while the crowd got all excited and started gathering around the ring and thumping on the canvas. Fun clip.

If this thread keeps up, I might end up having one of those weird PWO induced dreams... Well, let me tell you something brutha. Everywhere I go people keep saying the name Molly Ringwald.

Of the top of my head, George Kidd, Mike Marino, Les Kellett, Masambula, Count Bartelli, Steve Logan and Ricki Starr and possibly The Wild Man of Borneo, Dirty Jack Pye and Dirty Dominic Pye all deserve consideration for European section. Possibly even the likes of Albert Wall, Tibor Szakacs and even the Saints and the Royals. In all honesty, I think the Europe section is bollocks at present, but I don't think that Dave is interested in Europe or in opening the floodgates. I don't think my watching old school European wrestling in 2013 and determining what's good wrestling holds much weight compared with historical research and accounts from people who were fans at the time. If somebody says that X was never a good worker, perhaps there's enough footage to dispute that, but when it gets into the territory of how big a star someone was, you'd have to defer to the folks who were there, especially since there isn't a lot of attendance records for Europe and we're often left to look at card placement on big shows. There's also bias that needs to be eliminated. I don't like Saint's matches for the most part and Rocco annoys the shit out of me by not wrestling the way I like and the way I know he can, but that type of stuff needs to be ignored when judging how important they were historically or even how good they were as a worker, IMO. In my own private viewing I can have any opinion about workers that I like, but objectively I think you need to weigh up all the factors even if there are a ton of guys working at the same time who in 2013 I think were better than Rocco or Saint. Otherwise, I think there's a danger of saying "Rocco wasn't the first or only guy to push a more workrate orientated style, look blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah were doing it first" when the perception that Rocco was the first guy to do it was a big part of both his rep and stardom and ultimately part of his candidacy.

I'm all for positive revisionism, but I also think perceptions have their place. I think Fujiwara is one of the greatest workers ever, certainly one of the greatest Japanese wrestlers ever, but that wasn't the perception of Fujiwara at the time among Japanese fans or tape traders. You can probably find positives for Fujiwara in terms of drawing, but it doesn't change the perception that he was considered another tier down from the truly top stars of his era. I'm not sure he warrants being on the ballot to be honest, other than the standards for being on the ballot aren't that stringent.

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.