ohtani's jacket

In pro-wrestling I would define a narrative as the ordering of events in a pro-wrestling match to create a dramatic effect through the structure of the plot. I suspect if you looked at a Flair studio appearance from the 80s and compared it to a Bret TV match, Flair's match would have the stronger narrative. Yes and no. For a long time he was, rightly or wrongly, accused of always following the five moves of doom. My intention wasn't to defend Flair as such, simply to point out that Bret was a formulaic worker like Santo and Flair and many other great wrestlers. I think maybe we are worlds apart on this because it's more important to me that the match pays off the angle than paying off a previous spot. Having said that, Bret clearly paid more attention to detail.

I agree with you here. I don't know that 80s WWF was an entirely different genre from Crockett but they were certainly distinguishable from one another. As a wrestling fan, I wish Ted Dibiase had a higher number of good matches, but from a WWF perspective I think it makes more sense to judge him by how well he wrestled as his character rather than whether he was technically good, though this may be truly of practically all workers and I still maintain that he was a ring technician. I watched that '89 Bret/Dibiase match and when Bret countered the rear chinlock with a top wristlock and Dibiase went for the hair, that mother knew what he was doing.

There's only a handful of Bret matches that tell a story in the proper sense of the word. I actually think the lack of narrative in your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Bret Hart match is the reason why Loss couldn't find too many interesting Bret matches outside of his big match performances. If he'd been a master storyteller like a Satanico or Casas then every performance would have been interesting, but your average Bret match is just a match and can't claim much of a story. I dare say there's more of a narrative in your average Flair match than there is in a Bret Hart match, but what I can't abide by is the insinuation that Flair was repetitive but Bret somehow wasn't. We're all familiar with Bret's moves and signature spots. I'm sure many of us could do a pretty good job at calling a Bret match. The sternum-first bump into the middle turnbuckle, the shoulder into the ringpost, sticking his knees up when an opponent came off the top rope, the times he played possum... all these things may be better or more logical than Flair's spots, but it's not like he did something new in every match. Whenever he'd debut a new spot (like the ringpost figure four spot) it would immediately become part of his repertoire. He was a guy who worked within his comfort zone and his matches were often slow, IMO, especially in WCW. I can understand being a mark for the guy and what he represented, but in no way was he a polar opposite to Flair.

Bret reminds me of Pearl Jam, since he was a fan of theirs and reviewed their Vitology album in WWF magazine.

The matches I watched were from World Pro Wrestling on TV Asahi. Ditch would know better than me, but I believe Ohtani/Dragon, Wagner/Kanemoto, Liger/Sasuke and Kanemoto/Wagner vs. Ohtani/Takaiwa are available in full on commercial tape. Most of the Super Juniors stuff was clipped even on the commercial release.

Reading through this thread piqued my curosity about the juniors in '98, but honestly their matches are so badly cut that I think it's going to be a great source of frustration when it comes to putting the yearbook together. Anyway, here's what I could track down: This was nothing special. The only reason I can think of for including it was that it happened on the Jan 4th show. Standard New Japan trios action. About 7 minutes aired. Match isn't notable in any way, but the action is good. Doesn't build to either of the Liger singles matches if that's what you're thinking. Less than ten minutes aired, but what was shown was really great. Really boring. Not an interesting match at all. Excellent match between these two, as you'd expect. Not as exciting as their February match but more is shown. Didn't care for this much, but I guess if you're interested in the '98 version of Liger vs. Sami it's worth sticking on. Around half the match aired. Nothing special whatsoever. The February six-man was much better. Only five minutes of this aired and it was the same recycled Liger/Ohtani shtick. I'd say this is worthless.

Caudle had a professional sounding voice and his delivery was good. I never really had a problem with him. Having a good voice is pretty much key. I was watching a Bret/Dibiase match where some guy on youtube overdubbed his own commentary and in the comments he was going on about how he had more talent than Michael Cole. Needless to say, the guy better hang onto his day job because his voice and delivery were awful.

What I mean is that when it comes down to the business end of a match, the third act of a Ric Flair match is generally more exciting than the third act of a Bret Hart match, if you'll allow me to use that term. I find the stretch run of whether Flair is about to lose the heavyweight championship of the world more exciting than whether or not Bret will be able to apply the sharpshooter, even though I know that Flair will retain his belt through some crappy finish. I think the reason for this is because Flair is a better actor and performer than Hart and sells the finishing stretch well, and I also think there's more of a change in Flair at the beginning of a match where he's cool, calm and collected to Flair at the end of the match where he's wild-eyed and desperate. Bret goes through subtle changes, I'm sure. I used to be a big fan and big fans notice those sort of nuances, but generally speaking I think big is better. This might sound a little stupid, but Bret never really made a lot of noise in his matches. He rarely spoke during a match and he wasn't that audible a seller, either. Compare him with a Flair or a Hokuto and he's down right mute. Personally, I think Flair begging off deep in a match when he's exhausted and covered in blood is more striking than Bret doing his Gretzky "I'm the best athlete" routine, but again it's something I appreciated in the past and may do again if the wind changes.

Nakamura looks one of those guys who goes around hawking young girls for hostess club jobs, but the strikes in that match were pretty bad ass.

The main criticism of Flair is that he wrestled the same match no matter who his opponent was. It's a criticism that Loss and others have gone to great lengths to disprove, but that's the criticism. No matter how true it is, there are patterns that one sees in Ric Flair matches and I don't quite see how they can be random. Instinctive and habitual, yes, but not random. Personally, I think Flair's matches build to a much bigger payoff than Bret's even if the finishes are usually shitty. The arc in a Flair match from beginning to end is generally wider than in a Bret match because he was a much more dramatic and demonstrative performer. Bret had a kind of working for the front row Misawa vibe to him without Misawa's ability to sell that he was dangerously close to losing the match.

AJW laid an egg with Big Egg Universe. Dream Rush and Dream Slam I were much better shows.

So what is the consensus on Hashimoto's best matches? Because I'm kind of struggling to find new stuff of his to watch.

I really love this match. Eaton made Steiner look like fifteen thousand bucks here.

I'm not really a fan of either of these guys, but I thought this was a good match. I dug a lot of the shots Vader gave Mutoh in the early going and I thought the stretch run was really good. The finish could've been timed a bit better, but it didn't take the gloss off what was a well put together match. It seemed a little on the short side to be a top 5 heavyweight match, but I haven't seen a lot of 90s New Japan and from what people say about their longish heavyweight bouts the length of this may have trimmed a lot of the dead spots. I often dislike the set-up and execution of spots in Vader's matches as they seem really telegraphed, but the release german and the rest of his spots were cool, and Mutoh was fairly likeable for a change.

Interesting how wrong Dave was about the Wrestlemania III card.

I think the point of the caning spot was that Aja wasn't hitting Bull hard enough. When Bull took the sticks off her and used them on Jungle Jack and the ref she split the things in two. Aja wasn't able to muster that sort of rage at this point as she was still really green. At the end when Bull is taunting her, she spits the dummy and releases some of her anger. That was the point of their feud -- for Aja to summon the kind of hatred and rage that Chigusa wanted from her student in the GAEA Girls documentary. I think this match makes more sense in the context of their ongoing feud and Aja Kong's development than as a stand alone match, although it's entertaining enough on its own. It's somewhere in the middle between what Joshi was in the 80s and what it would become by the mid-90s and I think there's a lot to like about it in the context of this time frame where the matches were a little rough around the edges.

Way off topic, but for some reason I watched an Irish dude on youtube talking about Hashimoto's ten best matches and he pointed out that WAR should be said as W-A-R not war. Never occurred to me.

This match is a total blast. Neither guy is a good enough worker to expect a truly great mask match, so it tends to get judged by different standards. Here's what I wrote about it back in 2008: "This has got to be one of my favourite lucha matches of all time. I don't know if either guy could ever work; the stuff they do here is really simple, but the heat is amazing. One of the greatest things about lucha is that two 40 year old guys can have a mainevent with this much at stake. Where losing the mask really means something. The match is beautifully laid out... Caras attacks Rayo on his way to the ring, smashing him over the head with a guitar & from there it's just heat building. Slow, methodical rudo work & crowd inspired comebacks from the technico. Great lucha. And the finish is fantastic -- it comes from nowhere & may not have been an actual three count, but it means the rudo has to unmask & there's a fucking swarm of photographers jumping over each other's backs. Caras has one of the great unmaskings, as he simply refuses to take his mask off & they end up brawling while the photographers scurry for their lives. Magic."

I don't know that I'd accuse him of selling too much. I just think he sold the same way match after match and it got a bit old in the end. My main point of contention was that it's not great storytelling or psych. Realistic storytelling or psych, maybe, but I don't think he was a good enough actor or performer to really sell the way I think is good storytelling.

Since Hashimoto has never really been underrated, I'm going to take Dylan's argument to mean that he should be rated even higher than he is. I'm not so sure about that. I like Hashimoto a great deal, but it seems to me there were limitations to his style and the way he worked that prevented him from having as many great matches as he perhaps could have. Maybe I'm wrong, but because his matches didn't have the same kind of build as an All Japan heavyweight bout and relied more on atmosphere and energy, those latter two qualities had to be right for the match to be memorable and those things are difficult to produce. I also have a tough time imaging how good Hashimoto vs. the All Japan workers would have been. Hashimoto vs. Kawada and Taue seems appealing, but Hashimoto vs. Misawa or Kobashi strikes me as a bit of a style clash. I suppose it could have worked since styles make fights, but I'm not sure it would have been an automatic slam dunk. Kind of like how Jumbo/Hansen or Misawa/Hansen weren't.

If that's how you want to look at it that's fine (although I disagree). But I would also completely disagree that Bret is using the same storytelling or psychology working against Owen and Diesel. I think if you have a bad wheel and it's hindering your mobility so that you're only working on one leg then you must be the underdog even if you were the favourite before the fight. I think Bret was meant to be perceived this way when he entered the Rumble in '94 and again when he walked out for the Wrestlemania main event. He may not have been the underdog heading into that Wrestlemania but it wouldn't be much of a story if things didn't change from the beginning to the end. I don't think Bret worked that differently against Owen and Diesel. He got beat up, sold a lot and worked towards setting up the sharpshooter. I broke down last night and watched three Bret matches against Bigelow and honestly Bigelow could have been anyone. I'm not going to go through and catalogue every time Bret sold his leg because that would require me to watch a whole lot of Bret, which I don't want to do. I think his knee was a theme throughout his career and he liked selling leg injuries. If I was to be cynical, I'd suggest it was because he liked being the focus of every match, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was because he thought it was important and logical to sell the effects of every move or hold that was applied in the ring and to do so consistently and thoroughly. Forgetting my poor choice of words in "underdog" and "all the time", would you deny that Bret went into selling mode in just about all of his matches? You don't think he spent a large part of a match hobbling around and sucking wind?

You're halfway there to being right

The way Bret worked was to target his opponent's injured body parts while selling his own injuries and since Bret usually sold more than his opponent it often seemed like he'd taken a huge beating. He was clearly supposed to be a ring general but he sold so much that he often seemed to escape with a victory. The roll-up finishes also give me that impression. I may be overstating how often he played the underdog, but it was a lot. Perhaps he was trying to go the sympathetic babyface route. I'm not that surprised that people prefer him as a heel as a lot of his schtick suited the cocky heel role, as well as many of his best face performances containing a tweener bit. I like the guy. I just think the way he worked was relatively straight forward and not such amazing storytelling.

If you're injured in a match you automatically become the underdog. Bret sold the knee all the time. He'd do it in random Raw matches like the one against Bigelow in '93. He even faked a knee injury after the match with Hakushi and worked a real knee injury into the Austin feud. He loved to sell a limp and he was forever proud of the fact that he'd come to the ring the next night still selling the injury. He even did it in WCW. The knee was supposed to be his Achilles heel or something.

I probably shouldn't take the bait but that is a curious statement at best. Just looking at his 1994, I can think of only two instances when he worked as an underdog (vs. Yokozuna, Diesel). The Quebecers tag through to Owen re-injuring his leg in the Wrestlemania opener and Bret coming out on one leg to challenge Yokozuna for the title was all classic Bret. He had so many leg injuries he should have retired mid career. That and his tweener work were his go to stories.