ohtani's jacket

Hogan was off making a movie when I began watching wrestling. Macho was the guy for the first few weeks that I watched it. I vividly remember the angle where they reintroduced Hogan. This was right before SummerSlam '88. I remember DiBiase saying that Hogan had crawled out from under the rock he was hiding under. I missed out on WrestleMania III and The Main Event and didn't watch them, or WrestleMania IV, until sometime later. I was into the Mega Powers, though, and the absolute peak of wrestling in my country was the Mega Powers exploding and the lead-in to WrestleMania V. I kind of fell into wrestling and comics around the same time. I think wrestling came first and then comics, but that was a formative year.

Typical Los Perros del Mal match. It helped that Casas was there as he tends to bring out the best in Perro. When Perro's not busy mugging for the camera or gawking at the ring girls. I'm not sure about sticking Shocker with Los Perros. The faction is bloated enough as it is and that's two alpha males in the same unit. I guess they didn't want to bring him back as a tecnico or give him room to shine with a new Guapos faction. The thought that it was punishment crossed my mind, or forcing him to pay his dues again, but it looks like turns We'll have to see how it plays out. I have zero faith that they plan these things out.

That may be true, but Japan is also a society based on seniority and hierarchy where decision-making of any sort takes an eternity and innovation is stifled. You can't just look at things through a prism of "this must have been best for business." The narrative that people like to tell in the West is that Baba reacted to this, Baba reacted to that, but there's the TV people to consider and other external factors. In other words, Japanese wrestling was a political hotbed all of the time. I think Baba missed a step by not putting over Jumbo, but I don't know the ins and outs of it. All you can say is that New Japan had much more success pushing native stars at the time than All Japan did.

There has been a bit of discussion elsewhere about how good Blue Panther truly was. I want to preface this by saying that I'm a Blue Panther fan. There ae many Blue Panther matches and performances that I hold dear. That said, unless he's working a title bout or having classic lucha exchanges in a trios bout, I don't have a lot of time for Panther. I don't think he's a great brawler or a great rudo. I don't think he's very good as the lead guy in a feud, and I don't hold him in high regard as a rudo trios worker. So there's definitely a version of Panther that I consider ideal. I intend to put that to the test until I get bored. Blue Panther/Vulcano vs. Rocco Valente/Tony Arce (AAA March 7th, 1993) I'll lay my cards on the table straight away. I'm not a big fan of AAA or Pena's booking, and by and large I think Panther and a number of other good workers wasted precious years of their primes working for AAA. Those biases aside, I'm trying to look for the good in these matches. That's hard to do in a match like this. It's a long, boing, half-arsed match where there's something going on with Los Destructores that I don't fully understand or care about. They work the same pace throughout the match, which is never good, and nothing is resolved. If Panther was meant to be the fuse behind all this, it's another example of him not being great in the number one role. He did throw better strikes than I expected, but not a good start to Project Panther.

Bob Backlund vs. Adrian Adonis (WWF, 3/20/82) I was hoping this would pop up at some point. This is the Philly version of their MSG bout. It's not really a great match. The work is logical and the wrestling is smart, but it felt like there was an entire third act that they left out. Still, it's Backlund vs. Adonis and that in itself carries some intrigue. Kal and Dick were strangely subdued, especially Kal. They treated the match seriously, but I kept waiting for one of them to say something outlandish and it never happened. They showed a keen interest in the finish and poured over it with Adonis and the ref. Adonis threatening the ref might have actually been the high point of the bout. Well, the arm work was pretty good, but I needed that third act.

At the beginning of the match, a masked man accompanied Los Perros del Mal to the ring. He leapt onto the turnbuckle ropes and revealed himself as Shocker before putting on a Los Perros del Mal t-shirt and leaving the ring. I always thought it was anticlimactic how CMLL would introduce wrestlers to the crowd then have them leaving ringside. You'd think they were so Americanized at this point that they'd have them involved in the finish. He did have an altercation with Rey Bucanero on the ramp, so it wasn't a total waste, but still it's like hey, Shocker's back, here's a match. It was actually a pretty long match by CMLL standards, though if you tallied the amount of action wrestling in the bout it probably wound up being the same as a regular match. This was a Los Perros del Mal heavy match. If you like their shtick then you'll enjoy this bout. I know a lot of people like Garza's stuff, and he has some fun moments in this. My favorite part was when a guy in the tecnico section was taunting Perro with a giant dog biscuit. Los Perros were interesting in that while there have always been successful trios groups in Mexico, with the amount of t-shirts and merch they sold, they were over in a way that I can't remember any other faction being. They were almost like CMLL's version of the NWO. They sure as heck wrestled like the NWO. And as with the NWO, you know there's no real end game to this. Yet there's no denying that they packed in the fans.

Hulk Hogan vs. Killer Khan (WWF, 9/12/87) This was a summer feud that the WWF ran in select markets. It was prompted by an episode of The Snake Tape they taped where Khan spat green mist in Hogan's eyes and blinded him (a great, over-the-top Hogan sell that got a chuckle out of me.) They had matches that aired in Boston and Philly. From the sounds of things, they were the exact same match. Not the best of the Hogan mini-feuds, but fun for what it was. Hogan went after Khan with a chair, which I wasn't expected, and even did his infamous back rake. He was incredibly over in Boston. You could barely hear his theme music when he entered. Definitely the best of times as far as Hulkamania was concerned.

This was the match where Holly sliced his back open going through a table. Absolute nasty gash. I don't wanna say it added to the match, but it definitely wouldn't have been as memorable without it. I like Holly's no nonsense style, but when you're selling for real it adds another layer to work. Van Dam did a bunch of dumb shit in the bout, but the chair spots made me wince. Holly was lucking he didn't get a staph infection from this bout. He stayed in character even when the trainer and doctor were tending to him. Should have put a rocket on him in this ECW offshoot, but they weren't interested in capitalizing on the guts Bob showed.

This was pretty good. I don't think it was on the level of the Samoa Joe or Low Ki matches, but that may be because I've never really jumped on the Super Dragon train. There were some botches that they covered fairly well. The hand injury was a cool storyline and the finish was crazy.

El Hijo Del Santo, Felino & Super Astro vs. Blue Panther, Dr. Wagner Jr. & Principe Joel (6/13/1998) This was a fascinating match. It was wrestled inside a bullring in Bakersfield, California. The match starts at sundown and it gets progressively darker throughout the bout until you can barely see anything in the tercera. In a way, that adds to the atmosphere, as it's a weird set up to begin with. The rudos come out to Bad Medicine, but the tecnicos come out to Bret Hart's theme. The exchanges are good. It's house show lucha, but good house show lucha. I like this period of Wagner's work before he turned into the lucha version of The Rock. Felino is energetic throughout and even goes into the crowd. The Panther/Santo exchanges are excellent. The match is shot from ringside, so you get to see them close up. Those dudes were smooth. Fun stuff.

I seem to remember Eliot Frederico wearing some kinky shit.

Perhaps he was referring to some of the S&M gear the wrestlers wore in the 80s.

This was good stuff. I don't know how legit Danielson's shoulder injury was, but they were selling it as though he hadn't wrestled since the match against Cabana and was refusing to have surgery on it so that he could continue his reign as a fighting champ. The shoulder came into play during the course of the match, and Danielson did an excellent job of selling the injury. The highpoint of the match was Danielson's incredible plancha into the crowd. That may be the most memorable spot I've seen from him. I'm not the biggest mark for dives but that one impressed me. The finishing stretch was exciting, though they overdid it a bit with the elbows and multiple attempts at cattle mutilation. The cattle mutilation is a cool looking spot with a badass name, but I'm sorry if you do it that many times then it's no better than the ankle lock. Part of the problem was KENTA's lousy selling of the elbows. That said, a finish that went more beats than necessary is a minor blemish in what was an exciting bout.

Les Blousons Noirs (Marcel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) vs Remy Bayle/Dan Aubriot (1/2/66) The only notable thing about this was when they wound in in the first few rows. By far the weakest of the studio matches. Not even Manneveau did anything interesting. Couderc got on my nerves with his singing.

A man after my own heart.

This was a test for the young Aguayo. Would he bring his working boots to a match against Santo? These two had a match in 2004 that was well received and went a long way to establishing Perro Jr as a singles star, but he's been living the high life in recent matches, riding a wave of immense popularity that doesn't require him to go full throttle in the ring. So how did Perro do? Well, the match was good. It was mostly good because of Santo, but Perro sold well. It was a classic example of a Santo formula match. Santo had been working matches like this his entire career. He could roll out of bed and work this match before his coffee was ground. However, he still managed to make it seem special. His selling and attention to detail were impeccable. He worked this with the same intensity of a big title match or apuestas despite it being a mano a mano. The match was far more interesting when Santo was on offense, not only because Santo is a more interesting offensive worker than Perro, but because of the intensity he brought to each hold. Perro put over Santo's stuff well, though I suspect he was sucking in the big ones in the tercera. The finish was screwy. I was kind of surprised that Santo went over and that he disrespected Perro after the bell. I guess we've seen that shitty side of Santo before. I'm not sure where they were heading with this as it was clear there wasn't going to be an apuestas match, but that would have been fun.

Danny McShain vs Great Bolo (NWA Los Angeles, 09/14/1953) I'm not sure about the date on this one since it's from the Wrestling Stars of the Sixties TV show, but it may have been rebroadcast. I have a lot of time for Danny McShain, however I had my trepidations about watching him work a long match against a generic masked heel. Bolo was extremely limited in the ring, but if you follow this match closely from moment to moment, you'll see amazing attention to detail from McShain that is honestly on a Terry Funk level. That's not to say it's a great match, but McShain gives a masterful performance. I especially loved the struggle over the atomic drop. Ricky Rude would be so proud. Great selling from McShain as well, as Bolo is constantly sticking a piece of metal under his mask and headbutting his man.

Paul Orndorff, Adrian Adonis & Hercules vs. Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper & Billy Jack Haynes (WWF, 3/7/1987) Fun, proto-Survivor Series match. A lot to enjoy here, from Piper firing up the Boston crowd in his "last" appearance in the Garden, to the ping-pong agility of Adrian Adonis despite all of that added weight, and Orndorff still managing to be awesome despite only having one working arm. Even Billy Jack and Hercules weren't bad, all things considered. It reminded me of the type of match I'd have with my WWF action figures. Will brought up the mystery of Orndorff not appearing at WrestleMania III, and it's rather baffling all things considering. Was he the backup to Andre right up until the 11th hour? He was still working house shows, teaming with Bundy, so it wasn't the injury. Man, when Hercules put Hulk up in his backbreaker, the size of Hogan in Hercules' arms was unreal. Hulk was a large human being.

This is considered the weakest of the four Danielson vs. McGuinness matches from 2006, but that's largely by people who don't care for broadway matches. Danielson must have been binge watching Flair or Bockwinkel matches at the time because he had three broadway matches in August alone. I thought this was better than the Samoa Joe match since McGuinness showed more urgency in his final shot against Danielson than Joe displayed. I do think the timing of the match was odd coming two weeks after their unification bout. I'll also admit that I watched it while doing a bunch of other things since it's an hour long and I'm too old to be invested in an hour long match from one hold to the next.

I forgot to mention that the Pat Curry clip shows a rare instance in catch of a guy wearing a championship belt around their waist, and yep, it's ugly as all hell.

Interesting that they turned Foley's backstage heat with Flair in '94 into a match twelve years later, but I guess it was part of wrestling lore after Mick's booked was released. On the surface, this was a lite version of Foley's match with Orton and similar to his match against Edge, but I'll be damned if Ric didn't go completely overboard with his bladejob and taking the thumbtacks. I never really got what Dylan was talking about when he compared old man Ric to Onita but here it was. He did an awesome job of snapping. The finish was edgy. Incredibly violent for a WWE match.

This was fairly decent. It was a mano a mano match so they held back from delivering as much as they would in a title match or an apuestas match, but it was reasonably well-paced, given a decent amount of time for a mano a mano, and the exchanges were meaningful. Perro was riding on a wave of popularity at this point and didn't have to work as hard as when he was an up and comer, but he was able to pick his moments here and Bucanero's selling and Santo at ringside helped carry the drama.

This felt a bit mediocre, to be honest. They were building towards a Santo vs. Perro match the following week, but there was barely any heat between them. If it wasn't for Santo throwing a few punches, you wouldn't know they had beef. Perro was one of the most over guys on the planet at this point, but a lot of that was due to him stalling and mugging with the audience. His ring work had gone south at this point. Nothing really gelled here and there were no interesting exchanges.

1948.2.2 Yvar Martinson vs. Stan Karolyi 1949.10.19 Stan Karolyi vs. Sandy Orford 1950.6.28 Stan Karolyi vs. Big Benny 1953.11.29 Stan Karolyi vs. Mohamed Djaber 1954.1.24 Stan Karolyi vs. Pat Curry 1954.2.14 Stan Karolyi vs. Lino Di Santo Karolyi was a grizzled, Hungarian veteran who was a fixture in the European scene from the 30s to the 50s. He was clearly a skilled light heavyweight, although we only get glimpses of his technique in these bouts as most of his matches turn into violent brawls (a winning formula in my books.) It's clear that that the formula we saw in the late 50s catch footage was already well in place by the time TV rolled round. It would be interesting to figure out whether audiences grew tired of foreign heels or if there was some financial reason they stopped being booked as often. It seems that more outlandish gimmicks because popular in the 60s and tag team wrestling began the top draw. There were still some of the old elements of the 50s brawls, but they definitely moved away from the big foreign singles stars

Dandy jumped off the page for us when we watched the stuff originally. He was like a rock star. I kind of feel that we've reached a point where we're waiting for new matches to be discovered, then we consume them and wait for the next thing to come along. The Dandy/Pirata match was on a Japanese VHS tape that Jose Fernandez discovered in the Champion wrestling store in Tokyo. It was rental only, and I was able to rent it and convert it to DVD at my job at the time, which was a high level public junior high school. Little does the school know the part its AV equipment played in match culture. The Emilio stuff was on a random comp of 1989 lucha that a guy had. After I acquired it, Bihari was surprised that I had matches that weren't in circulation. Alfredo eventually sourced the stuff from Mexico, IIRC. My 15 minutes of semi-fame. I realize that it was a tough transition for Atlantis, but he looks lost. You can find lacklustre stuff from various points in his career, to be honest. I am a big Atlantis guy, but I think if I'm being honest, his best stuff was always against other top guys. He does hold together ragtag tecnico sides in trios matches, but it's the same routine 90% of the time. I don't know if it's because he goes on auto pilot or needs a fire lit under him, but I suppose it's also to his credit that he rises to the occasion when he gets to wrestle another great worker.