ohtani's jacket

This thread finally prompted me to watch that Regal/Singh match from South Africa. That was a really good performance from Regal considering how he looked on his World of Sport performances at the time. He certainly wasn't given the opportunity to wrestle like that on television, which made me wonder what his houseshow performances were like at the time and whether he was stuck playing the young lad on TV. There are a couple of Singh matches I like, but he always wrestled a really slow burning, grind 'em out style on television and never showed much personality. I've read before that he wasn't all that popular among the Asian fans at the time because of that lack of charisma, which is the polar opposite of what was going on in South Africa. I must have only watched his work from the early 80s, because I don't remember him getting so large and veteran looking. And I can't remember a time when he ever drew such heat. I don't know whether he was the promoter, though. The internet says Tiger Jeet Singh was involved but the internet could be wrong. Gil Singh seemed to work for the promoter regularly though, because he was on the undercard of the Hogan vs. Terry Funk match from '82.

It seems to me that with Wrestlemania II they concentrated on the main event emanating out of each of the three locations. They threw some crap out on PPV well after Wrestlemania III, but along with those three mains they pushed the Savage/Steele feud coming out of the show. Four feuds isn't a bad strike rate on a big show.

Don't you think you're overstating things a bit, Johnny? I don't think I need to list all the feuds that were going on in 1986, but there were some pretty good ones. I don't know how much people cared about Savage's feuds that year, which tag teams were feuding over the belts or all the shit that went down with Heenan, Orndorff, Piper and Adonis, but they had to have been aware of it, at least the fans who also watched TV, and it was in the mags. I am not really convinced that there was ever a point in the 80s where it was the main event and no midcard angles. I just think their undercards sucked. Eventually, Vince gave even the curtain jerkers cartoon gimmicks and Superstars time.

Went back and watched the first ten minutes. Will add the following comments: * I'll concede that Harley at least did some selling in the hold. Don't know that I'd call it great but he was kicking the mat with his foot, reaching for the hair, trying to turn onto his stomach and there were a couple of reversals into a pin attempt. The bare minimum perhaps, but it was there. * I liked the stuff in between the holds more than I remembered. Dug all the headbutts and the big fuck off shot from Baba. Baba countering the two Race nearfall attempts worked well as did his one big nearfall. Would like to have seen more headbutts and selling off strikes rather than going back to the headlock, but it worked well on the one big takedown Baba did. * Baba torqued it. Technically it's true. I think it was a gentle looking headlock and I think Harley put it over way too much as being so strong that he couldn't really move in it, but I don't want to argue the point. Baba grimaced a bit in the final headlock segment, which I guess counts as decent selling. * The headbutts, the scoop slam thing Baba did, the stomp to the gut and the general frustration Harley must have felt about being in Baba's vice are all plausible reasons why it descended into a brawl. It could've been done better, but it wasn't as bad as i was making out. * The final headlock segment was the real offender. I think it went on for too long and the Mid-Atlantic escape was weak. * In general, I would have prefered to have seen Harley try to struggle to his feet, get countered back to the mat, struggle to stand up some more, then work a spot off the ropes before getting countered back to the mat, and I think Baba should have leaned into the hold a lot more and been more aggressive with Harley trying to break free far more vigourously, but I can see myself being the only one with those complaints and others thinking it's not that bad. * Wasn't as boring as I said and wasn't indefensible. Wouldn't call it good, but had parts I liked. Probably a case of me not liking the headlock as the base hold. I'm keen to see how Jumbo and Harley work it.

In that era, pretty much every match of that length would have a body of the match where they filled time. Have you seen a lot of non-stop spot-a-thons in the 1975-83 time frame where no one grabs a hold? Would love some examples, and also what % of matches you think they amount to. I've only seen British heavyweight and catchweight contests of late and apart from some of the slower matches with workers with little charisma I can't think of any matches where the matwork was as boring as Harley and Baba. Of course, British wrestling used the rounds system which is structurally very different from what Race and Baba were doing at the time, the holds they used were a lot more interesting than Baba and Race were capable of or would want to do, British wrestling was far more vaudevillian, and you had Kent Walton to make things like the "undressing" of holds seem exotic, but on the whole they were a lot better at mat wrestling providing one isn't turned off by the idiosyncrasies. I've seen Rocco and Jones go at an amazing pace mid-70s, as well as numerous British lightweights. The Joshi girls worked up tempo, as did the New Japan juniors, but those are lower weight classes so it's not a great comparison. The lucha available from the late 70s via Japan and the early 80s via Mexico smokes the matwork in Race/Baba. I don't know what the % of up tempo matches was in that time frame compared to the grab a hold matches, I'd be more interested in how good it was when they did grab a hold. They could have shaved some of the time off the front of this, started brawling earlier and had an even better match. The headlock stuff was completely unnecessary. Looking at it as smart or effective time killing may be one way to enjoy a match, but personally I don't get my jollies over smart and effective time killing especially in a match that isminutes shy of being a sprint by NWA title match standards. I think they would've done their headlocks whether they were going five minutes or fifty seven. That's why I questioned whether they were really filling in time. It seems to me that working headlocks was how Race thought a match should start and that it really had nothing to do with filling in time but with starting a match. We could perhaps call it the old "baking a cake" theory after that strange promo Backlund cut during the Adonis feud. He liked to work headlocks, all right. That explains it, but it doesn't settle the issues of a) whether it was any good and whether it had to be headlocks. Don't you think he could've worked a bit like Stan Hansen? Hansen would grab a hold, but he'd also work guys over with his elbows and knees. Harley had one of the best kneedrops in the business and cool offence, which he'd sometimes do between headlocks, but instead of controlling the opening portions of matches he was often the guy on the receiving end of the headlocks and to me it just didn't play to his strengths. When he takes over a match offensively things pick up for me, but working from beneath he is one of the least interesting guys from his era and my only hunch is because he wasn't that good at selling. I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Lots of matches well into the 80s are like that, probably into the 90s, and probably into the 00s and 10s: people do shit, then move onto other shit. People get all worked up about Juniors matches where they do a bunch of mat shit for 10 minutes, admit that it's reasonably well done, but are annoyed because it's blown off for that 8 minute run to the finish. It's been common for ages. The first half of the match is Baba and Race working in and out of a headlock for ten minutes. The second half of the match is a brawl with a decent amount of blood. The only thing that connects them is that after 10 minutes Race decides instead of taking Baba to the mat he'll start doing some moves. There is nothing in the first half of the match that causes it to escalate into a brawl. The first half of the match could be the first ten minutes of a sixty minute draw for as much as it relates to the last ten minutes. If you want to connect the two you could probably come up with an explanation. I just think it's lousy wrestling. Sure you see it a lot. You also see them work the mat for an age, drop it completely, then go to the ropes for a finish in this era. Does that make it good? The era has a lot of bad tropes. We can accept them, sure, but I'm looking for an argument as to why they're good. If that's wrenching the fuck out of a hold, I'd hate to see what he'd do to a guy's head if he really bothered to pull. if you can find 10 times where he worked the hold in a demonstrative way go ahead. I'll go back and see if I'm wrong. Again, how is that good? Why would Baba allow that to happen and what is Race supposed to be doing in the time it takes him to get up and push the guy into the ropes? I mean in a kayfabe sense, not in the sense of filling in time. It could be worked so much better than that. There was a fair amount of activity. I'd be happy to chart all of it. What's the over/under that I need to break in those first 10 minutes? 20 bits of activity? That's every 30 seconds, which is a pretty low standard. 30? Go ahead and chart it. Backlund is a different beast in working holds than Harley. I don't think anyone would compare them. This is more along the lines of what Flair would do. Is Backlund being a different beast at working holds meant to mean Backlund is better at working holds? Flair strikes me as better than Harley as well.

Jaguar Yokota has a significant career output both from her original run and from her comeback. Fiera also has stuff that will fill up one of Will's sets. There wouldn't be a lot of matches where he was the lead guy and I don't think there are too many of his singles matches out of circulation, but he had a long run and much of it is buried in Lynch's Mexico list. The point being that sometimes people's examples of low output workers haven't been exhaustively examined.

Regarding the macro and micro discussion, last night I was watching the movie Bad Day at Black Rock when I started nodding off half way through. This morning I got up and finished watching the movie. Afterwards, I went back and watched the stuff I'd nodded off during and having seen the reveal and the film's climax I was able to notice a lot of the set-up and foreshadowing earlier in the film, but despite all that micro detail I still didn't think it was that good a picture on a macro level. I'll freely admit that I'm not very good at noticing micro details during a wrestling match. Oftentimes, I'll be watching a match and wonder "when did that guy get back on offence?" But Flair is a guy who I think has more exciting matches than Hart on a macro level. Maybe if you go through is matches there are micro instances that don't make sense, but if a guy like Hart is doing a lot of great micro stuff but his matches still aren't exciting on a macro level then what's the point? I realise that a lot of stuff that seems great on a macro level on first viewing doesn't hold up on repeat viewings, but I still think the big picture is more important. My impression of working is that you're trying to create an arch from the beginning point to the end. The micro details are important in a book or film, but in wrestling the highspots matter more and the micro details I suppose are there to reward the discerning viewer. I don't think they're anywhere near as essential or necessary as they are in works of fiction, but others may disagree.

I'd defend it. There's plenty in the first 10 minutes that I like about it, including the head lock stuff. Actually thought they worked the headlock better for filling time than most matches of the era. John Why did they need to fill time in a match that went less than 20 minutes? Were they really filling time? Because this seems to be the way they started every match, which to me suggests it's not filler so much as a standard part of the match structure. But if it was filler then why did it have to last half the match and doesn't it give the impression that the two halves of the match are disjointed. My gripe was that Baba didn't wrench the hold, Harley didn't try to reverse it and they basically lay in the hold until it was time to stand up and do a spot. There wasn't a hell of a lot of activity or movement or selling to keep it interesting. Not like a Backlund match, for example. It doesn't seem like Harley was all that great on the mat and his punch drunk stuff kind of ruins the image of him as a straight shooter, legit tough guy. His true calling seems to have been as a brawler.

Harley Race vs. Giant Baba, AJPW 10/31/79 Fuck the headlock work in these matches is bad. I don't see how it can be defended. The first ten minutes of this are a complete waste of time, then Harley takes over on offence around the time that TV joins and the match suddenly becomes good. Moves, a real fight, excitement. The outside brawling and blood add to the drama here and this back and forth action was the best Harley's looked so far.

Harley Race vs. Ricky Steamboat x2 Clips from the Mid-Atlantic area. The first clip is actually quite long, but it's only interesting when Steamboat is laying in the chops or the two are brawling on the outside. Once again, the build features Harley's opponent controlling things on the mat. That hasn't been an interesting build so far. The second clip is shorter and basically captures the more exciting parts of the match. I never realised how much punch drunking selling Harley did. He took some really exaggerated bumps too. Makes me wonder who initiated that method of selling. Steamboat seemed to do a lot more punch combos in the 70s. He had one punch combo spot that almost looked like a Dusty Rhodes inspired Dick Murdoch hip swivel. The crowd are really behind Steamboat in the shorter match and get embroiled in the Dusty finish. Fun clip, but nothing Flair didn't do better. This isn't going too well for Harley right now.

Harley Race vs. Terry Funk, 2/6/77 Difficult to judge without seeing the full thing, but what's shown isn't that good. Funk does all the best spots and has the best selling. The only real highlight is the headscissors and that's not much of a highlight. Harley's celebration is a bit naff, but authentic in away. Harley Race vs. Dick Murdoch, 7/2/78 Can't make head nor tail of whether this was any good, but the stretch where Harley was in control was significantly better than when Murdoch was on top. Murdoch's selling was awesome as usual and there was a great brain buster nearfall, but mostly it was standard touring champ stuff. Harley Race/Masked Superstar/Ric Flair vs Blackjack Mulligan/Dick Murdoch/Wahoo McDaniel Fun clip. The heels were mostly bumping and stooging ala rudos in a trios match. Harley got in a bit of offence towards the end, but he was mostly clowning around. His clowning wasn't as good as the very best, but decent enough. Anyone who thinks it didn't match Arn's character will be surprised by Race, though, as it was full on comedy. Never really realised how cut Flair was in the 70s, either.

Unfortunately, there's not a tremendous amount of Buddy online, but I did manage to see an Adonis/Rose match that Rip Rogers commented on in comments section. I thought the match was good, but the rhythm of two long falls and a lengthy gap between them threw me off a bit, and I wasn't sure about the amount of time Rose kept Adonis grounded. It's kind of difficult watching a guy for the first or second time and seeing all the things that someone who's watched him dozens of times can see, but I sort of felt I could see the things that people like. What I was unsure of was why people think he's better at those things than dozens of other guys. What is it that makes him better than other guys from the same period. I really want Dylan to make that top 25.

Not many people mentioned him in the top US workers thread and I'm not sure what his own rep is with me, so here we go, as much as the internet allows: Harley Race vs. Giant Baba, AJPW 12/9/75 I liked the way Harley and Baba communicated the size difference here. Harley's early ducking and weaving was cool and I thought his wrestling stance was rad, but for a former NWA heavyweight champion he sure went into the opening exchanges half-cocked. Why he tried attacking Baba off the ropes is something only Race would've been able to explain after the match. Baba controls the early portion of the match on the mat and it's not very interesting. I liked all the stuff inbetween the matwork, but the holds themselves were boring. For a while I was trying to convince myself that it was all a game of human chess instead of "get up, work a spot, go back to the mat" over and over again, but neither guy's selling was good enough to justify all that laying around. Harley sweat a lot, but Baba's selling was crap. I liked his offence a lot, but neither of them were interested in staying on the attack. Race had this kind of cool strategy going where he was trying to KO a downed Baba, but he didn't stick with it. After all those resets, they tried turning it into a barn burner of sorts with some high impact spots and a kind of unnecessary bladejob from Race, but I wasn't buying that tempers had flared or that shit was real. Bit of a so-so match, really. One thing I noticed, perhaps after seeing the awesome photoshop stuff, is how awesome his knee drop is. Man is that beautiful. He seemed to really over do the headbutts, though. It was often difficult to understand why he was doing a standing diving headbutt as though it were a regular strike. And I can see that his signature miss from the top rope is going to be a reoccuring annoyance.

Did Crockett really use their roster better? A lot of those houseshows look good on paper but I'm figuring the same match night after night is going to lead to some pretty average performances, and their PPV and Clash cards weren't exactly shining examples of putting together a major show.

How on earth did TNA Impact win? I have never watched a second of TNA. I thought everyone hated TNA.

OK, maybe a bit of discretion though otherwise Europe would be something dumb like Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Oto Wanz and Kendo Nagasaki. EDIT: Not Nagasaki as he was retired and came back when All Star got TV, but I'm sure you catch my drift.

Ok, and did you mean top four guys or top four workers?

If the era is 1980 to 1984 and the criteria is the top 4 guys not necessarily the top 4 workers then New Japan should be Inoki, Fujinami, Choshu and Tiger Mask. For Europe I would consider Big Daddy, either Bridges or St. Clair, maybe Pat Roach, Marty Jones, Rocco and Saint, but that's ignoring a couple of weight classes and the whole of Germany. Lucha is super tough. I guess I'd consider Perro Aguayo, Villano III, Canek, Dos Caras, Fishman, Lizmark, Sangre Chicana, the Misionares, Satanico.

That Bockwinkel/Stevens vs. Robinson/Bastien tag was cool. The ring ropes moved a lot and I kind of wondered if a lot of the cool spots they did had anything to do with the ring. Bastien was a lot of fun in his role, though I'm not sure what that schoolboy thing was he did when Robinson dropkicked Bockwinkel into him. I also loved the spot where he hit his head on each of the ring ropes. Bockwinkel was class, but the more interesting thing for me was Robinson's hybrid style. He used quite a few British spots but under US rules. They had rules about striking an opponent when he was down in the UK (you could only do it if you were following through from a previous move), but obviously you can strike a downed opponent in the US and it was fun watching how he incorporated that into his work.

First off, thanks to Black Terry Jr for shooting these matches and making them available. Terry is selling his videos here from now on -- http://tvluchadelpasado.wordpress.com/ Solar vs. Navarro is still the best mat wrestling on the planet as evidenced by their 8/17 match. The excitement of seeing this match crop up isn't the same as when we only got to see it once a year (or not at all), but that's the funny thing: as lucha fans, we're always wishing we could see more -- more from a worker, more from a specific match-up, more TV from the 80s, most of which we'll never see. It's something you have to come to terms with if you become a serious lucha fan otherwise you'll be sorely disappointed. Yet when we get more than we bargained for, such as with Solar and Navarro, we tend to get all analytical and go into critique mode. I've done it many times in the past and am by far the worst offender, but if you'd told me five years ago that we'd get to see this match-up on a regular basis and people would get fed up with it, I'd have told you they were looking a gift horse in the mouth. That's not to say that this match-up is perfect. Despite the fact that they're able to organise the events in the match into a reasonable narrative structure and that there are clear stretches of one worker in control and the other selling well, they don't make much of an effort to create the same sort of drama as Casas/Panther or the Santo tag. If you were to label their bouts as exhibition matches you wouldn't be too far off the mark. I tend to prefer their work in trios because of the speed they work at, and I'm still hoping that one day (just one day) we'll see a Black Terry vs. Navarro match in full, but... this is still the best mat wrestling on the planet. Casas and Panther are nowhere near as quick with their holds. Virus and Valiente are slicker, but don't have the same submission knowledge. Navarro still looks like the best worker in Mexico to me and I don't think Solar gets enough credit as a worker, a mat wrestler or for being one of the three or four best masked technico workers in modern, taped, lucha libre history. The familiarity that people have with Santo or Atlantis should be extended to Solar, in my opinion. The lifeblood of lucha is its masked technicos and few have been better for longer than Solar I. The 4/9 Gran Apache/Trauma I/Mari Apache vs. Negro Navarro/Trauma II/Fabi Apache trios was a blast. One of the things I love about lucha the most is that it can be so off the cuff and fun. This was only a single fall, but it was a great ensemble piece. Loved the quick exchanges between Gran Apache and Trauma II, thought the father and son stuff was really good without being overbearing and that Fabi and Mari's stuff was a nice change up. To my mind, rhythm is the most important thing when watching wrestling. If you can't get into the rhythm of what the workers are trying to do or the rhythm of a particular style, you're going to struggle. You often hear people say that a lucha fall was rushed because it wasn't long enough or shorter than the falls surrounding it, but I sometimes wonder if those people haven't gotten into the rhythm of lucha libre yet. This match had rhythm. The exchanges built on top of each other and it was worked at a fun pace. The ending was the kind of mano-a-mano showdown that I love in IWRG matches and I came out of the whole thing as satisfied as I would've been had it been three falls. Gran Apache is so underrated. I always forget him when it comes to judging the best workers in Mexico. If you asked me tomorrow who the ten best workers in Mexico are, he'd probably slip my mind. I don't even know how active he is these days, but man is he good. Those opening exchanges I mentioned were so much snappier than the usual IWRG matwork and like the match in general made a nice change from the norm. I went into the 12/20 Fuerza Guerrera vs. Black Terry match with low expectations as I'd read it wasn't the type of match they could have had if they'd put their minds to it and that it was basically an angle to further the hostilities between their two wrestling schools, but it was Fuerza and Terry in a singles match. It wasn't a Black Terry special like some of the carry jobs he's done in the past, but there was plenty to like from the point of view of it being two of the biggest legends of my time taking off the gloves. Would've been nice to see them settle it like men, but the interference was what it was. Can't say I blame them for trying to give the rub to their students. Another match I really enjoyed was the 4/28 Black Terry/Negro Navarro vs. Solar I/Super Astro maestros tag. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't watched a maestros tag for a while and was watching with fresher eyes, but this seemed to have a better flow to it than the last round of maestro tags I watched. The Navarro/Solar exchanges were excellent without being overbearing, they changed dance partners more often and the match had more of a three part rhythm than usual. I'd read all the comments about Super Astro's decline and while he does have trouble doing his signature spots these days, the fact that I'd braced myself for it made it less jarring than I expected. He's the guy I'd most like to see everyone in the lucha world wrestle and for that reason takes my top spot. This was all pretty fun stuff, and again, thanks to Black Terry Jr for making it possible.

Watched an old Robert Mitchum movie tonight where he gave the standard Robert Mitchum performance. Reminded me that nobody worked the same match night after night more than old-school Hollywood actors. There were exceptions like Lon Chaney, Sr. and Paul Muni, but by large I think the old adage about stars and actors doesn't even really apply to the actors in the studio days. May have been a result of the star factory, but even guys like Kirk Douglas who tried their damnedest wound up getting pigeonholed. Casting probably had a lot to do with it.

I still don't get why albums are the metric. The Zombies' singles weren't commercially successful which denied them the opportunity to record LPs. Does that mean their singles don't rub shoulders with the Beatles or the Beach Boys? But if we're talking albums, a quick look at All Music Guide reveals: Bob Dylan -- 9 five star albums Miles Davis -- 18 five star albums Now there, that was no contest.

What about Pillman? I would also consider Tully.

Is it blowing your horn to say you are a big geek/nerd/whatever of something? I don't know. There's always someone who knows more, for sure. I like The Kinks too. If you're using it as a defence for making contentious statements, I think it is. I'm sure you didn't mean much by it, but there's plenty of people here at this site who are heavily into movies and music. I don't think anywhere here is special in that regard. They won't say so, but there's a few people who posted in this thread who really know their stuff. Don't know that any of us really compare with Dylan, though. Not unless there's someone else who can read a book, watch a movie, do a podcast and write a review at the same time. And he even finds time to watch some wrestling.

Is that really true? WWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - April 24, 1989 (16,000) Greg Valentine (w/ Jimmy Hart) vs. Blue Blazer Hillbilly Jim vs. Honkytonk Man Dino Bravo vs. Hercules Paul Roma vs. Boris Zhukov Ted Dibiase vs. Jake Roberts Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect Bushwhackers vs. The Brain Busters Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage Perfect and Bret Hart had a thing going on at the time. Roberts and Dibiase had a thing going on at the time. The Bushwhackers gimmick was over. The undercard is forgettable but you know what you're getting with the gimmicks. Weakest guy on the card is Roma in terms of gimmick and presentation. Maybe I'm blinkered by my memory of this era as a kid where we devoured wrestling magazines and knew everything about everyone. The cards may have been top heavy, but most guys had a program. That's how I remember following wrestling back then -- program to program, who was feuding with whom.