ohtani's jacket

I watched Flair vs. Sam Houston for a second time today, which I think is the match everyone talks about, and while I wouldn't call it the most amazing pro-wrestling moment, it is a good studio match for what should ordinarily be a relatively straight forward squash match. I absolutely disagree with anybody who says Flair gives Houston as much as he'd give a Nikita or a Magnum, however. It didn't strike me as a formula match whatsoever.

I quit watching the WWF partially because I was disappointed in Benoit's matches after he jumped, but when I went back and caught the stuff I'd missed during the WWF Smarkschoice Poll I thought he ended up adapting well to the WWF style. I'd rather watch his 2006 Smackdown match with Finlay than any of his mid-90s stuff. I don't get the criticism of the Smackdown Six era. After the shitty wrestling we endured during the boom years, you'd think people would've appreciated better television wrestling. Maybe it's a counter reaction to the era being overrated at the time, I don't know.

That's great. Do you know anything more about her career ohtani? There's nothing on youtube beyond 1980. She retired in June of '81. Her career ran from '75 to '81 which was fairly typical for those times. She got a singles push post-Beauty Pair/Black Pair era and held the All Pacific title a few times. In fact, she was the inaugural champion, IIRC. Her partner Kumano ended up having six kids.

Konnan was probably CMLL's biggest singles star at the this time as he was getting his big babyface push after losing his mask to Aguayo. I never had a problem with Octagon. He's a bit of a poor man's Black Man but I like his trios work. There were worse workers in CMLL at this time than Octagon. His best singles match is the Fuerza match from Nov '91.

Hey, somebody else has discovered the greatness of Yumi Ikeshita. I really love when she retires and they say she's leaving to get married and everyone is like "whoah, somebody's marrying one half of The Black Pair?"

I broke the "w" and the "l" key on my keyboard. Is my keyboard trying to tell me something?

Terry Rudge vs. Franz van Buyten (Hamburg 10/1/87) Fab contest between two of the best European workers of the 80s. Rudge had so much more scope to work in these German tournaments than he did on the crappy TV at the time and you can see why he was Regal's favourite worker, not only because of his style but because of his mannerisms and attention to detail. This was actually the first time I've heard Rudge speak and his Bedfordshire accent didn't quite match his asskicking image, but his hammerwork work sure did. Man, was he the king of the hammerlock. Van Buyten sold superbly as usual and provided his trademark comeback. I especially liked a desperation spot he did where he back body dropped Rudge over the top rope only for Rudge to re-enter the ring and kick his ass some more. The tiebreaker section of the match wasn't as good as the Lasartesse match as Rudge wasn't the theatrical type and I actually enjoyed the body of the match more, but it was still a treat to see these two go at it.

You can't say the word motel on Japanese TV either.

Those Spanish words are also misused, but lucha can at least loosely refer to a form of professional wrestling developed in Spanish speaking countries and a sombrero is still a hat. I think the usage of the Japanese words is worse, but I don't really care about it or anything. Finding gaijin offensive reminds me of a Zach Arnold talking point or Lorefice writing those incredibly long Japanese names for submission holds. It just seems goofy.

The same way anime and manga are used in English to mean Japanese things when they're simply blanket terms in Japanese.

Has anyone seen Randy work the mat? Legitimately curious.

Worst rest holds of all-time. Great worker but for that one terrible flaw.

I'm about to get some more Rudge in, but here's two I watched recently: Tibor Szacaks vs. Terry Rudge (aired 5/4/74) These are two of my all-time favourite British workers so of course I was into this. Unfortunately, it ended in the third of fourth round of a possible six rounds just as the action was getting really good (like Tibor Szacaks vs. Terry Rudge good.) If I have one complaint about Szacaks it's that his matches weren't long enough, but he was probably past his prime at this point. Mike Marino vs. Terry Rudge (1/22/77) This was a few weeks after the classic Rudge/Jones match, so he has the shaved head here. Marino/Rudge was an awesome sounding match-up so I ordered this and for the most part it didn't disappoint. Walton was all over Marino, gushing over practically everything he did. Marino was an excellent worker, probably the closest thing we have to what Billy Robinson might have been like on a regular basis, but like Tibor Szacaks and a couple of other guys I've noticed lately he didn't always go the distance. I really wanted this to be more epic, but it was a little on the short side because the scores came early in the rounds where they occurred. Rudge was also relegated to subtle heel, which took some of the shine off his awesome wrestling. I dug Walton's bullshit line about Rudge taking Inoki to a draw on a recent tour of Japan. I have the feeling Inoki was just about the only Japanese wrestler Walton knew.

When I first got into wrestling after it was taken off the air I remember being really surprised that they'd pushed Bret as the main guy. Looking back on it now, I think his '89 singles work foreshadows an IC title run. I wouldn't never have guessed he'd be world heavyweight champion, though.

Unless the WWE buys the tape library, there are only three Street matches on tape.

All Joshi workers are go-go-go at heart. We tend to think of it as a flaw but at some level their was a deliberate, conscious decision to wrestle that way. I think Asuka suffered the most from a lack of personality. Devil was part bitch, part mother wolf and Kansai was leader of the little engine that could promotion. Asuka didn't have much of a discernible personality.

Two more matches added to the list: Masambula vs. Tony Charles (aired 2/9/72) This is the only Masambula singles match with have on tape, which is pretty much the reason I'm listing it because Masambula was every bit the TV star that McManus, Pallo, Kellett and Steve Logan were and everyone should see his schtick at least once. It's basically the same blend of comedy and great wrestling that Kellet and Co. were famous for, but he had his own unique spots that were highly entertaining, from his wheelbarrow escape from a hold to his corner post headstand to celebrate a fall. The headstand is amazing the first time you see it and like nothing I've seen before in the world of wrestling. He really hammed up his witch doctor gimmick and voodoo schtick and had a lot of fun with it. Just a tremendously entertaining performer by the looks of it. Sadly he had a really awful end to his career where he ended up crippled. This went to a draw and kind of petered out instead of both guys pushing each other all the way, but it was the best Tony Charles match I've seen for what it's worth. Les Kellett vs. Bobby Barnes (aired 9/25/73) This was from the same show as Adrian Street vs. Kellet's son Barrie and followed along similar lines only that Kellett was far superior to his son at this type of showmanship. I haven't seen Kellett for a while so his act was a novelty again after getting sick of it the last time I watched his matches. The reason I'm listing it is I thought Barnes added a lot to this bout. It's easy for Kellett to work a bunch of schtick around the fact that Barnes is a "poof" (in his words), but Barnes should his anger at Kellett's BS extremely well. I loved the end where Barnes was furious with the decision and had to be held back. You rarely see a British worker launch into a post-match tirade like that and he actually went after Kellett beating the crap out of him (and Les was big on doing shit that actually hurt.) Little things usually tip a match on or off my list and Barnes' post-match antics were the icing on the cake here.

Just out of curosity I watched the Jaguar/Lioness 4/14/96 match, which is online. They do a lot of cool shit in the match, but they don't pace their selling to get as much out of the spots as they could. It's really no different from how they wrestled in the 80s the spots are just modernised. It wasn't a bad watch, but I didn't get a lot out of it. Lioness did some decent stuff on the mat but the holds were dropped after a few seconds so they could keep moving.

I haven't seen that much of Lioness' J'd or GAEA work and not much of it is online. Flik is your man there. As for 80s Lioness, my recollection is that she liked being on offence and wasn't interested in selling. In the 90s, the athleticism of her 80s work appealed to the likes of Lorefice because workrate was king at the time. In the 00s, we tended to find her work flawed compared to Chigusa, who sold more, and Jaguar, who had a more commanding aura. I was down on her quite aggressively at one point but haven't delved into that stuff for years so I don't have a strong opinion on her one way or the other. I went to the 10th Anniversary GAEA show in 2004 and I thought the Crush Girls were head and shoulders above everyone when it came to popping the crowd and that included just about every other name girl that was still working.

Why would Vince let the booking stay the same? He's hardly going to market the rasslin as the rasslin is he? Besides, Vince as marketing genius is a very post-territorial, job-for-life, DVD talking head point. We used to throw it around a lot in the Mon Night Wars era when folks took sides, but it's overplayed.

Vince wasn't faring too well himself in 1992 and he certainly wouldn't have booked WCW any way their fanbase wanted to see. WCW was a national company that only went national because someone with money and a TV station bought it not from it's own volition. It was amateur hour all the way.

Tell me how many people lived in the world during JYD's peak. Tell me how many countries there were. Tell me how many wrestling territories there were within those countries. Tell me how many fans within those territories gave a crap about JYD relative to their local heroes. JYD was one of the biggest draws in the country pre-national expansion is probably praise enough.

That Phil Schneider is a funny bastard as we say back back home. I want to know if there's an AWA equivalent of Prince winning over the Minneapolis crowd in the third chorus of Purple Rain.

What I was angling at was the difference between a fleeting draw and a permanent draw no matter how successful said draw is. If New Orleans and the South is the "world" then I guess that's a fair statement, but I kind of wonder if the world was paying attention to JYD at said time. Well, I guess that clears that up. I can understand the negative connotation, but I tend to think that my childhood and teen years were made up of a series of fads and tend to look back on them positively.

But Watts and Ladd pushed JYD initially because he was black just as Vince pushed Hogan because of his look. The fact that neither promoter could replicate their success with similar looking workers indicates that Hogan and JYD were special, but you can be special and still be a fad. The implication from you guys seems to be that a fad is something superficial, but I don't think that's necessarily true. My point about not being able to replicate the success of JYD is that the fans wanted to see JYD not a black football turned wrestler. If the fans had been interested in seeing black wrestlers main event then it would have been a trend. I don't think Jerry/Parv intended to diminish JYD's drawing power in any way, I think he was was simply trying to explain why so many people jumped on the JYD bandwagon. C'mon, everyone of note gets obits when they die. Saying he wasn't forgotten anymore than any wrestler of his level of push in the WWF expansion isn't exactly high praise for a guy who was meant to have been an important draw. Sure, but we don't know what would have happened in 1985, 1986, 1987, and so on. And we know by 1993 that he couldn't get booked in a national promotion anymore. Again, I don't understand why we can't acknowledge that his time in the spotlight was temporary by any measure. Chiggy and Dump were the draws. They over time left, and the Product was less interesting to the Fans. Business went back up to even higher levels when the Product was something that drew in fans. The schoolgirls didn't care about the product. They cared about Lioness and Chigusa. If they'd cared about the product they would've kept watching to see what new stars emerged. When my parents went to watch wrestling in the late 70s/early 80s when I was a child, they didn't care about the product. It was because wrestling was popular and a fun date. When my classmates got into wrestling in elementary school it wasn't because of the product it was because everybody was watching it. When people started taking interest in it again during high school it wasn't because of the product it was because it was suddenly cool again and there was nostalgia value in it having been big in elementary school. Japanese girls stopped watching wrestling after Dump and Chigusa retired and never returned despite the Matsunagas' attempts to create new idols and new villains. It was a fad, the Matsunagas knew it was a fad. They tried to replicate it, they lamented that no-one was able to get over like the Crush Girls and eventually they changed tact, but it was far more intangible than the product, which I think is a fair point that Jerry raised.