ohtani's jacket

I'm a little confused by the topic description. There are a lot of guys who've been mentioned before who weren't main eventers but had a big match feel to their matches. Liger and Fujiwara for example. Finlay in title matches in Europe (I'm not really sure that he was a main eventer in Europe, btw.) Are you looking for the best guys who were non-main eventers or the best workers who didn't have such a big match feel to their work but were great workers anyway?

Sure, and have fun with it. Kawada was a bit of an Internet darling back in the day and people tended to interpret the Kawada/Misawa feud as Kawada chasing even though it's possible that the heel chasing the company ace wasn't really the focal point. But if you're a Kawada fan you can look at it that way. There might even be a lot in the matches to support that perception. We used to "write" Hokuto's story for her back in the day, so to speak. Just trying to describe the emotion in everything we were watching. It's a lot of fun.

He was nobody particularly special as such -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norio_Honaga

As I was trying to say the other day, we don't really know the details about these sort of things. The stock answer is that when Tenryu jumped to SWS he took a bunch of the All Japan talent with him including Tsuruta's tag partner, Yoshiaki Yatsu. Taue was a similar sort of build to Tsuruta and Baba adored him despite the fact he was lazy and didn't train as hard as the others and the thought was he could learn a lot being under Tsuruta's wing. How that was presented to the fans and whether it was even addressed in any way is not clear. We don't really know how the whole split was dealt with on air or in the press. There may be some details in the Observer at the time, but mostly you've got to accept most of these things at face value. Jumbo's feuding with Misawa now, Taue's tagging with Tsuruta, etc. Watching Japanese wrestling is quite different from watching American wrestling and I think people change their mindset a bit when they turn it on. The way you process it and understand it isn't the same. It's almost like the difference between watching a silent film and a talkie in terms of following the silent film a different way. I think that's why people have been suggesting to follow the in-ring details, because it's hard to get a grip and the whens and the whys.

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera (AAA handheld 3/16/96) I was all ready to moan about how this wasn't real lucha, but the first two falls of this were actually really cool. It was a really spiteful match compared to most Rey Mysterio vs. Juventud Guerrera bouts and the atmosphere was fantastic with a seat right at ringside and a pan of the arena that made it seem like an amphitheater. There were a lot of neat details that a pro shot match would never dwell on, like a "long take" of Rey Mysterio in his corner trying to recover before the next round. I was really impressed with Juventud in this match. He's not a worker I've ever fully embraced, but there was a real sting to his offence here and from the moment they spat at each other, he brought a real intensity to the match. Of course, anybody who knows anything about this match knows what happens in the third fall. There's a series of run-ins which are indefensible. They don't just ruin the match as a contest, but they decimate it. It's bad enough that it's not worth watching the match, but if you can tolerate the unbelievable shittiness of the third fall the first two falls are excellent. Dr Wagner Jr vs. LA Park (TXT 5/11/13) This isn't the kind of wrestling I like but I forced myself to watch it because so many people are saying it's one of the matches of the year. Usually when there's crowd brawling and chair shots I start to tune out. I can't figure out what was wrong with a good old fashioned ring posting and a little bit of brawling out on the floor, but I will say that as far as dragging a guy through the crowd and the stunts that go along with it, so to speak, these guys are pretty good. I didn't love what they did, but matches like these are all about visuals and they created some great ones. By the time the third caida rolled round, you had Parka with this horrendous blade job that the ref, Black Terry, had to tear off a strip of his mask or something to tie round his head to stop the bleeding, and Wagner with his eyes almost bulging out of his mask, all glass-eyed, probably from the numerous chair shots and Parka slamming his head repeatedly into the mat. The doc did some running repairs on Parka while he was out on the floor, but the bandage went flying as soon as he was back inside. A few people had a problem with the back and forth, your turn/my turn nature of the third caida, but I thought it was pretty typical. In matches like these, the workers tend to take turns dominating the opening two caidas and then the third caida is largely 50/50. They could've done a better job with the overlapping of the falls perhaps and had a third caida turning point similar to the spear into the chairs that began Wagner's comeback in the second fall, but I didn't really find myself wishing for more. The match was largely okay. The finish was bullshit, but that was always on the cards. They could have cut out a bit of the crowd brawling and tightened things up a bit, but I can see the appeal the match has. With the tinge of grey that Wagner was showing and Parka being fat and middle-aged, I did wonder about who'd be better off losing their mask if their long awaited mask match ever pans out. I'm thinking that Parka is so dependent on the skeleton costume that losing the mask would be a pretty big blow. Wagner could probably do his Rock rip-off schtick and still be over. Mind you, I'll probably be middle-aged by the time they find a money mark to put up the cash. Do check this out. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera (AAA 4/21/95) This was better than I remembered. It's a good thing I watched it during this period where I've softened on AAA. It wasn't really lucha (ha, there's the moan), but it was reasonably well worked and probably the best Rey vs. Juvi match from AAA. There were a couple of things they blew, but the match had a good energy to it and there was an obvious chemistry between the workers. Psicosis worked the corner well with his FMW t-shirt that looked like it was personally signed by Atsushi Onita. There was a spot I really dug where Juvi had his back turned to Mysterio on the outside and Rey did a tope into his back. That was cool. They did a bunch of other crazy shit too and I've got to give Mysterio his due here: he really is the greatest high flyer of all time. I don't think any of the other flyers have had quite the balance that Mysterio achieved. He really was an extraordinary athlete in his day. I also really dug the way these two would pin each other. If they could have rubbed each other's faces into the mat while getting the three count they would have stuck it to each other. They lent into those pins and there was a whole bunch of extra holding. Good match. Fuerza Guerrera vs. Mike Segura, hair vs. mask (IWRG 11/4/99) This was a fun one-fall apuestas match. Segura's a good worker so I was fairly confident this would be worth the watch. He had a real early 90s grunge look going on for this apuestas match and I half expected him to start singing Even Flow, even though he looked closer to Iggy Pop's age than Eddie Vedder in his close-ups. This being one fall was a bit of a twist on the apuestas format as instead of having the match broken up into three there were twists and turns along the way. There wasn't the blood that you associate with hair vs. mask matches and the brawling was mostly limited to Segura ripping Fuerza's mask, but it wasn't a bad little match. I thought the mask ripping was about as interesting as mask ripping can get. There were some really neat touches from Fuerza, as you'd imagine. He's actually had surprisingly few apuestas matches in his career if his record's correct (like half a dozen), so this is worth watching if you're a particularly big Fuerza Guerrera fan, which most of us are. I was amused by the advertisement on the ring apron for IWRG's angelfire site. Those were the days. Rayo de Jalisco Jr vs. Universo 2000 (CMLL 12/10/99) This was a fun "CMLL is where the big boys play" match before Villano III and a couple of other rudos did a run-in to attack Atlantis at ringside. Whoever was booking this must have had one eye on the Monday Night Wars. Bit of a crock really, but fun to see Rayo and Universo Dos Mil dropping bombs. El Hijo Del Santo, Fuerza Guerrera y Villano III vs. Negro Casas, Shocker y Felino (CMLL 9/4/98) 1998 was a real come down for CMLL after their amazingly hot 1997. They still had an extraordinarily talented roster, but the booking became lax and things turned average pretty quickly. I still think they dragged the Santo technico turn out for too long, though Jose disagreed with me over that the last time we spoke. Week after week of the rudos not wanting Santo in the club anymore but the technicos not being ready to welcome him back into the fold got a bit old to me. This was one of those matches, but look at the talent in the match lineup. There's no way this is going to be anything less than an enjoyable television match and that's exactly what they delivered. Some great match-ups in this -- Casas vs. Fuerza and Casas vs. Villano III to go along with the usual Santo vs. Casas riffs. Negro was really good in this and had an MVP night. Lizmark, La Fiera y Atlantis vs. Bestia Salvaje, Emilio Charles y Dr. Wagner Jr. (CMLL 2/6/98) Fun match that ends in a big pull-apart between Emilio Charles Jr. and Dr Wagner. It starts off with a bunch of heat between Atlantis and Wagner, actually. Their exchanges spill out of the ring several times and it's all very much apuestas tease stuff with a bunch of ground and pound to take advantage of the UFC's rising notoriety?... Seriously, I don't know why they were doing mounts, but they were. Wagner was really starting to come into his own at this point and cracked me up on a few occasions. Emilio was sporting his Triple H look here. He did some decent stuff with Atlantis before the angle. He couldn't bump like before with all the theatrics, but he was busting ass to get back up after each bump. Bestia didn't get to do much and Lizmark still looked pretty good, but Fiera was actively bad. It was kind of sad, to be honest. Match was still technically fun, though.

Did anyone actually benefit from jumping to the WWF? Steamboat maybe? Flair? Dusty from what folks have said.

Who was the chubby Mexican guy with the curly hair and moustache who was often at CMLL and AAA shows in the 90s? He would wear leather jackets and studded clothes or full body suits. He seemed to be a celebrity or something.

The guy to contact about New Zealand wrestling is Dave Cameron. Keep in mind that New Zealand had a population of just over 3 million in the 70s and Lewin would have been selling out town halls the size of World of Sports shows, which didn't impress Dave when discussing that territory.

Japanese wrestlers fought against each other before Choshu and Fujinami and even feuded with one another, but Choshu and Fujinami were prominent because it was part of a hot period for New Japan where they were drawing strong ratings for their Friday night television show and Choshu was quite unlike any star there had been before. There was a greater emphasis in the 70s on native wrestlers challenging the touring champ or Inoki wrestling martial artists from around the world, the latter of which drew big ratings for individual fights, and this started to die out as the territories did, but native vs. native existed even in the Rikidozan era. It wasn't as prestigious as say yokozuna vs. yokozuna in sumo and things like the NWA World Heavyweight championship carried more weight, but it wasn't a foreign concept. Choshu came through in an era where rebellious figures were popular in pop culture. Actors such as Bunta Sugawara, Ken Takakura and Yujiro Ishihara. The fans ate it up, though he was likely polarizing to an extent. I'd have to do a little research, but I can imagine older fans perhaps not liking him and I suppose fans of Fujinami. EDIT: Incidentally, Choshu and New Japan used to go head-to-head with Yujiro Ishihara on Friday nights running against the cop drama Taiyō ni Hoero!

It really depends on the style of wrestling. In Joshi puroresu, for example, they often get on the house mic at the end of the match and cut promos on one another. These promos are most notable for the language they use. Language you'd never hear people use in daily life and especially not ladies. The promos are often quite emotional and feature a lot of screaming and crying. Pre and post-match backstage interviews are a feature of most Japanese wrestling as well and vary in quality and content depending on the speaking ability of the workers. In Joshi, you'll get the occasional angle like Dump attacking Chigusa during one of her concerts and the press conference they did before their hair match where Dump cut a chicken's throat in front of Chigusa. Other angles I can remember were Kandori being at ringside to watch Hokuto fight when their feud was first starting up, Amano pledging to Ozaki and a bunch of beat downs over the years. Something like shoot style, on the other hand, was presented almost totally like sports, except for when Takada would go around trash talking outside fighters, challenging them to matches and trying to pull stunts at rival gyms. There was a sizable media for pro-wrestling in its heyday as well. I couldn't tell you the difference between the Japanese media and say the Apter mags, but wrestlers certainly spoke to and were interviewed by the media and from the little I know that built to the matches. You tend to get a lot of "I tried my best but my opponent was just too strong" kind of post-match comments from wrestlers in Japan, especially those without strong personalities, but some wrestlers cut angry promos post-match. Akira Hokuto used to cut some pretty amazing promos. EDIT: I forgot to mention that the commentary generally has colour and play-by-play too.

I thought the Lucero vs. Hechicero title match turned on the missed tope and became a great match after that point. The early matwork was no better or worse than the week before, but I can see someone liking Lucero's performance more in the first match. It was the same basic opening to both matches, though. Lucero maybe wrestled a little cleaner because it was a title fight but I seem to remember him getting frustrated in the title match as well. He just didn't throw the punch. The punch was a great spot in the mano a mano but you can't really do that in title match conventions.

Don't worry, they wrestle each other all the time and have been teasing a mask match for the past decade. Another of their matches will pop up eventually. Any in particular you'd recommend? Definitely want to check them out if they're even close to this one. It's not really the kind of wrestling I like, but their 11/15/12 match from Naucalpan is online as is their 12/16/11 title match from Puebla. You can also find their Arena Mexico match from 2006 online. And as Phil said, the Mesias matches were highly regarded.

Don't worry, they wrestle each other all the time and have been teasing a mask match for the past decade. Another of their matches will pop up eventually.

The finish was a DQ. I don't think it's going anywhere since Wagner has left TXT and no-one wants to put the money up for the Wagner/Park mask match after that TXT show drew poorly.

Maybe, but there are a lot of shoot style sprints that I don't know if I'd classify as go-go. Or maybe they're high quality go-go matches.

To me a sprint refers to the length and pace of a match. Some workers can work the Go-Go style for 25-30 minutes, even an hour in the case of some Joshi matches. I guess I'd define the Go-Go style as a type of up tempo, non-stop offence where both workers keep hitting spot after spot. When it works, it's usually because the workers hit their spots in rhythm and the transitions were solid. It also helps to have at least short term selling in the longer matches. I think it also depends somewhat on the viewer. There have been Kurt Angle matches I've enjoyed, Manami Toyota matches I've enjoyed and recently AAA matches I've enjoyed largely because I've been in synch with them. It's difficult to explain but sometimes I think you need to be in rhythm with the match to enjoy certain stuff. When I watched a lot of Joshi, for example, I would sometimes really dig when Toyota went on an offensive tear as the match was swinging for me. If I watched her now I think I'd struggle to get into that sort of groove. The Steiners are another example of the style I think.

Mark Rocco is a name I'll add, which is one of the more frustrating ones because when he worked mat based catchweight contests he was as good as any other worker in England.

Other regular posters could have been Joshua, Spanky, me, Matt Talbot (SweetJesusFreak) or possibly one or two others. That is my entire contribution to this thread and I have no memory of the debate in question Joshua was the guy, I think.

The only person who thought you were right in that Liger/Sano argument was that hanger on of yours, captain swing or whatever his name was and probably Jewett before the two of you had your break-up. Todd agreed with me, the other regular there whose name I can't remember now agreed with me, because it's obvious that Liger won the blowoff match and won the feud. I do find it amusing that a guy who goes into minute detail about a Bruce Springsteen concert, the steak he had for dinner, the time he ate dinner with Meltzer in Japan or his masturbatory habits as a teenager doesn't think there's any value in a little bit of extra detail, perhaps a bit of context from the commentary or a clearer idea of how the narrative was framed for the audience, but whatever... my point was that you didn't need any of this extra context outside of a knowledge of the booking history, but as you usual you argued what you want to argue, threw some pot shots and acted smug. And keep calling me Daniel to be condescending. Anyway, I regret being involved in this thread.

La Parka vs. Jerry Estrada, Mexican National Light Heavyweight title, AAA 3/28/95 Man, how good was Parka at this point? He brought the same sort of attitude to this as the Lizmark match, shoving Estrada early and gyrating in his face. And if there was ever a guy who deserved a Park gyration it was Jerry Estrada. This wasn't as epic as the Lizmark match as it had a ton of bullshit with Tirantes, but it was a similar brew of uncooperative matwork and killer high spots. On the Jerry Estrada scale of out of his mind to utterly disinterested, he ranked about an inoffensive, but there was some visible spot calling in the third caida that hurt this a bit. It was also shorter than average for a title match, but that was largely because of the Tirantes angle. Lizmark vs. Enfermero Jr., NWA World Middleweight Championship, EMLL 8/83 Early 80s lucha has a different vibe to it. It's kind of like when you watch older sports matches and the crowds are completely different from the ones you get today. You watch a match from the Boston Garden for example and it seems like a special time. This was the same. Kids would flood the ring before and after the match, hoping to get an autograph from one of the workers and there was the kind of buzz about the crowd that only happens when there's a solidarity of everybody being there to see the wrestling. And the work itself was different. From the workers' grappling stance to the exaggerated stylings of some of their moves and holds, it seems like early lucha may have been even more expressive than the work we're used to. Enfermero Jr was Jaque Mate before he repackaged himself as such (and had that really fun Intocables run.) His gimmick was an evil nurse. Don't ask me what Mexico has against doctors and nurses, other than some serious mistrust in the healthcare system. The match was really good. It didn't maximise the dramatic potential of a title match, but the work was really strong, and any and all Lizmark is worth watching. Enfermero looked like a capable worker, albeit not a serious challenger to the title. Satanico/La Parka/Fuerza Guerrera vs. Lizmark/Mascara Sagrada/Volador, AAA 2/15/94 This had a really solid mat exchange between Lizmark and a rather portly looking Satanico, but the AAA style exchanges dragged on and on and eventually this became a bore. Mascara Sagrada looked surprisingly smooth, however. First I softened on AAA, now Mascara Sagrada. What's wrong with me? Lizmark/Rey Misterio/Rey Misterio Jr. vs. La Parka/Psicosis/Espectro Jr., AAA 5/5/94 This was the kind of all-action match that AAA was good at even if it fell short of a classic. Lizmark again got the mat section, this time with Espectro Jr. They put on some really good exchanges, which were further proof of how good Lizmark was in AAA. The others couldn't really match that pairing, but this had better rhythm in the AAA rope exchanges. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Psicosis vs. El Mariachi/El Charro/El Mexicano, AAA 10/15/94 AAA tended to let only one pairing work the mat in the primera caida. In this case, it was Blue Panther and El Mexicano instead of Panther and Solar. Panther had a couple of short exchanges with Solar later in the mat, but Solar (or El Mariachi as he was packaged here) squared off against Fuerza to start in what was a pretty disappointing match-up. The rudos weren't really on their game here and the technicos, for all their costumes, weren't that charismatic, but it was still okay. Eddie Guerrero/Art Barr/Lizmark vs. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/La Parka, AAA 7/11/1993 For a while, Art Barr's life must have been pretty good. Snort some coke, come to the ring to Van Halen, hobnob with Roddy Piper and get plenty of love from the publico. I've never been much of a fan of Love Machine, but I thought he was pretty much perfect here. This was a really hot match from AAA's big '93 run. It's not a great match because of the booking but Parka rocks and just about everyone else is good. Watching this, I began to wonder if Parka was the best worker in Mexico in 1993. I think he certainly has a case. I always thought of Parka as being somewhat green at this time, but watching this stuff is blowing my mind. I can't think of anyone significantly better than him in 1993.

You're always trying to undercut people's arguments with silly examples. You've been doing it ever since you dug that hole for yourself by belligerently arguing that Sano won the Liger feud. You can't really answer the questions I posed because the answers weren't in the WON and you didn't receive a fax about them. It's okay if you don't know the answers, they're not really important to people's enjoyment of the matches, though they would provide a bit more context as El Boricua's explanations of the back stories in Puerto Rico wrestling have. Mind you, the ghost of Baba himself could post here and you'd probably tell him it wasn't in the WON.

Nah, I haven't seen that one. I've softened on AAA lately and Mascara Sagrada for that matter, so I'll try and check it out. I'm on a real Lizmark kick at the moment and brawling is one thing I haven't seen him do much of.

1980 and 1981 were also years where Joint Promotions was still really strong. I expect Saint vs. Grey to be a contender for the top 10.

I'm pretty high on Parka's early AAA stuff at the moment so he may move up soon. With Garza, I feel like I've only really seen two parts of his career, the early trios stuff and then the later charismatic, heat magnet stuff. I have more of an impression of a guy like Apolo Dantes than Garza, so yeah match recommendations would be good. Virus has been one of the best workers of the past decade or so, which is why I had him so high. I actually think he's the best guy in CMLL but doesn't get the push that others do. I know there's a reason why I like Ringo, I'm just drawing a blank on it.

My wife is a fan. She even has a Tanahashi key holder.