ohtani's jacket

Here's some film of Adrian Street/Bobby Barnes vs. Alan Dennison/Sid Cooper from the 60s, plus a tiny bit of Jackie Pallo vs. Johnny Kwango.

Man, remember when Terry Taylor had that super rep for his booking or whatever it was he was supposed to do. People were all giddy when he jumped to the WWF.

Kent Walton didn't get a lot of face time on WoS, so I thought this was kind of fun --

Fuck me, Big Daddy grappled in this match and it was actually pretty good. This is the most surprising thing I've seen in ages:

Just noticed I've listed three matches from the 11/16/72 card, all of which were on the same episode. I guess that makes it my favourite episode of WoS.

Another great match from the 70s: Davie Barrie vs. Sid Cooper (11/16/72) Shit, what a match! Cooper I knew was one of the best heels in the business, but Barrie I'd never head of. He was billed as Les Kellet's protege but it turns out he was actually his son, and the apple didn't fall very far from the tree when it came to wrestling ability. The match is mostly Barrie trying to fight through a barrage of forearms from Cooper, but the crowd is rabid. Probably the loudest WoS crowd I've ever heard. They keep stomping their feet and shouting and screaming. There's two really great moments in the match. The first is at the bell. Cooper is on Barrie's shoulders and Barrie lays him on the turnbuckle then suddenly attacks him. The ref steps in and Barrie spends the interval jawing with him, something you rarely see from faces in WoS. He's hugely fired up and so is Walton who is practically marking out. The second is when Cooper has Barrie in a Boston crab at the money end and breaks the hold to kick him in the back. The crowd go nuts and this woman springs to her feet and slams her fist on the apron. The finish is absolutely fantasitc as well and people are on their feet afterwards, which again is special for WoS. Great match.

After watching the excellent Virus/Fuego title match, I think the answer to this is Virus.

That's cool.

Man, I was watching a Flair/Garvin houseshow match from '85 last night. I don't watch a lot of Flair these days but sometimes you've got to stop and admire how he put it all together as a performer. I also watched parts of the '86 Superstation special and when they did the crowd montage to Dire Straits it really drove home the cross section of fans they had back then. These days the crowds all seem to be twenty-somethings. At least on TV, dunno about houseshows. Finally, were Willie Nelson and Dusty Rhodes really friends?

What's with the blog function on this site? It keeps doing screwy things with the font and font size and the page views never increase. Buggy stuff like that.

Emilio Charles, Jr vs. Atlantis, NWA World Middleweight Championship, 8/14/92 Emilio Charles, Jr was one of the first luchadores I became a fan of. In fact, it was Dean or one of the other playa's review of the 12/89 Charles/Dandy title match that sparked my interest in lucha in the first place. After I saw that match, I tracked down the rest of their '89 feud, kick starting one of the more satisfying love affairs with any style in my wrestling fandom history. I was shocked to hear of his passing the other day, as I'm sure everyone was, and decided to watch one of his matches. Having read about Charles before I ever saw him, the first thing that stood out about him was his name. In a world filled with Satanicos and Villanos, Emilio Charles, Jr seemed a tad bit ordinary for a heel. It reminded me of a cross between Emilio Estevez and Charles in Charge, but it had a certain ring to it, and sure enough if there's anything to be said about Charles it's that the man had personality. He was as entertaining doing apron work as he was in showcase matches, and even in the smallest of bit parts his trios work was always memorable. He had a face only his mother could love and hair that practically goaded opponents into wager matches. And above all, like every great heel, he had a shit-eating grin the size of the gulf of Mexico. He was a great worker, as equally adept at grappling as he was brawling, and he was a fantastic bumper, rivalling at times even Pirata Morgan. Like all the great bumpers, his body eventually broken down, as I've mentioned a thousand times on this blog, but he was always savvy even if it was a slippery slope down from his late 80s peak. This was a much better match than I remembered. I think I was turned off it the first time because people had praised it as a mat classic. I don't think some arm work and a couple of cool submissions from Emilio make for a mat classic, but this match is something different. You don't often see the type of sustained armwork that Emilio works here or the long term limb selling that Atlantis exhibits, and luchadores usually tap instantaneously rather than fight for all death like Atlantis does here. I don't know what prompted them to work the match like this. Emilio wasn't Atlantis' best opponent (that would be Blue Panther) and Atlantis wasn't Emilio's best opponent (that would be Dandy), but they had a certain chemistry together which is best evidenced in their match from '88, which is sometimes confused as being from '84 and is really fast paced, cutting edge lucha. Rather than being great on the mat together, they were awesome at fast paced rope work, slick counters and exciting nearfalls. All of those trademarks can be found in this match, but there's also the narrative of Atlantis surviving a ton of work on his injured arm. It's actually quite a superhuman effort if you look at it from a technical viewpoint of what Emilio actually did his arm, and I suppose there has to be question marks over how believable it was, but I kind of looked at it from the perspective that Atlantis had held the belt for over two years and defended it at least twenty times (with a worked, possibly real number that was even higher) and they really wanted to put Emilio's challenge over out of respect or some other reason. That's what I'd like to believe anyway as they really went out of their way to make it seem like Emilio could win. I didn't think it was one of the truly epic lucha title matches, but it was rock solid. I've never had a problem with the rapid fire, equalising fall as I think it's a great storytelling tool and helps turn the momentum, and the finish didn't bother me other than the fact that the rhythm could've been better. All told it was a fine defence and Emilio looked good for 1992 Emilio. It's hard to believe he's gone, but y'know, I was having this conversation with my co-worker the other day about how weird it is when you're watching an old movie and you suddenly realise that everyone in this movie is dead, and I guess that Emilio's career will keep playing out on youtube and grainy VHS tapes for decades to come. Always young, always great, always one of the very best. Emilio Charles, Jr.

Time for some Rocky Moran appreciation. Moran is the Belfast brawler no-one's ever heard of. He was from the same stable of wrestlers as Finlay and made his television debut a few years after Finlay had established himself, quickly becoming one of the more consistently entertaining guys on television after the All Star split. He wasn't as athletic as Finlay, but he had the same core skills. He could work pretty much any style and was equally adept on the mat or at brawling, and with his long mane and his 80s working class moustache (stick a pair of bad jeans on him and a vinyl jacket and he looks like a character out of a Ken Loach film), he made for a quality heel. In fact, he kind of reminds me of the Emilio Charles, Jr of British wrestling. He looks like a chippy or a sparky. Steve Logan vs. Rocky Moran (5/10/83) Alan Kilby vs. Rocky Moran (6/28/83) Fuji Yamada vs. Rocky Moran (11/25/86) The first match is Moran's television debut. He plays it straight on debut and it's basically a decent technical match with the young "blue eyes" Steve Logan, showing off some of Moran's wrestling skills. The Kilby match is a title match and a really good one. Moran is in heel mode here and Kilby ends up getting well fired up, which much with the likes of a Tito Santana is the best Alan Kilby. The match ended just as it was getting heated (for my money), but the finish is great as they avoid the obvious cop out and go with a different ending. The Yamada match is nothing special. Yamada brings a real juniors feel to it and it's not like European wrestling at all. Moran does a good job putting it over. The work is more state of the art than Sammy Lee, but Sayama was more exciting than Yamada and had more charisma.

I don't like the modern CMLL style so I don't think terribly much of the matches Averno had, but I think he got his due amongst people who do like that style of lucha as well as from the promotion. Freelance should have been the 2000s Rey Mysterio, Jr. but wasn't.

Finally got around to listening to the show with John Lister. Would love to hear who John's favourite workers are, what he thinks the best matches are and which of the "made for TV" gimmicks he liked the best out of the Tally Hos and the Streets and the Maxines and so on.

CMLL had two oustanding years in the 90s -- 1990 and 1997. It also had good years in '91, '92 and '96. We know that it had an excellent year in '89, which is the only semi-complete year we have from the 80s, but it's safe to assume from the '83-88 footage we have along with wrestling magazines and other anecdotal evidence that it was better for a longer and more sustained period than the 90s. A lot of promotions in the 90s peaked for two or three years and then nose dived. AJW may have had better wrestling from '92-94 than the decade prior but it fell off the cliff in a way that 80s AJW never really did despite being bookended by post-boom periods (post-Beauty Pair to open the decade and post-Crush Girls to finish.) All of the Japanese promotions went south in the 90s around the time when Japan really began to feel the crunch of the bubble bursting. The same argument applies for the territories in the States by the end of the 80s, but if wrestling hadn't been reasonably robust by the end of that decade then the so-called 90s peak never would have occurred. I'd also argue that there's a lot of 90s wrestling that hasn't aged as well as 80s wrestling. A lot of it looks dated.

It's the WWF. I don't think it's realistic to expect Dibiase to wrestle like Tully. Curt Hennig didn't wrestle like AWA Curt Hennig in the WWF, did he? He was still considered a technician in the WWF. Also, aren't you watching a match from a guy Dibiase was supposed to be feuding with? Wouldn't it make more sense to watch a wider sample? Jobber matches, random Prime Time matches, matches against other technicians, etc.

It depends on the type of wrestling. For the most part I'm interested in watching great matches from my favourite workers, but if there's a style, promotion or era I'm interested in then I'll watch everything from the point of view of the style/promotion/era.

A heel technican who didn't take liberties would be a pretty shitty gimmick.

All New Japan workers spent a significant amount of time on the mat. Does that mean they were all technical workers? It was a prerequisite. Obviously, in Liger's case it's part of why he was considered the world's finest technical wrestler (when the matwork wasn't cut from TV), but I'd be willing to wager that moves played a far bigger part.

AJPW simply didn't do that kind of thing. Don't be too reductive. That fucking terrible Bret Hart vs Tiger Mask II match was as close to Wigan-style counterwrestling as Misawa was ever gonna get. It just wasn't one of his strengths. Nobody's perfect. Misawa was not a great technical wrestler, he essentially left all that behind to build his own style. Misawa had a solid amateur background, the same as Kawada. The pair of them were at least as good as Liger. The difference was the promotion. Liger was voted best technical wrestler in the WON for a few years before Benoit took the award and I ask you whether either guy was a great mat worker or whether it was a matter of execution. Misawa as the ace of All Japan was supposed to be a technical wrestler.

The way Kawada executed his kicks and chops wasn't martial arts style. Even the shoot style guys didn't really execute their kicks in a martial arts style. Later on, RINGS fighters mimicked a stand up game more closely, but Kawada didn't have any sort of martial arts stance and he sure as hell didn't display any sort of martial arts etiquette as he would kick a downed opponent and so on. We'll have to disagree about whether you can be a technican without working the mat, but if Misawa isn't a technical wrestler then what is he? Part power wrestler, part brawler, part flyer, part strongest fighter, part Kings Road/Four Corners of Heaven whatever?

I've watched a ton of Brody in recent years from St. Louis, Montreal, Puerto Rico, AJPW, NJPW, Texas and the AWA. You can find islands of selling and even some good matches (for example I really enjoy the Abby match from the Texas Set). But they are rare, rare exceptions. I watched the Blackwell/Brody matches and he sold again. Not very well, but it was still selling. Brody kind of sucks, but I wonder how much of it is Brody not being very good at what he did as opposed to not doing it. Blackwell smoked the absolute fuck out of him and it seemed like Brody had no idea how to act in the ring. I mean, Blackwell is just kind of shaking his body a bit while he makes a comeback and Brody couldn't even send those kind of signals to a crowd. I did kind of wonder, though, that if everyone had historically said Brody sucked whether anyone would try to defend him as dumb but fun.

I don't see this. When did Misawa ever demonstrate mat skill? About the only time he ever went to the mat was to apply the facelock. And he never worked his way out of holds that were applied on him, he just made the ropes. It wasn't his technique that got him out of trouble, it was his elbows. If you've been following the discussion you'll know that my claim was that as matwork became less prominent execution became a driving factor behind who was perceived as a technical wrestler. Misawa was noted for his execution. He executed state of the art suplexes with a high degree of difficulty to win matches and even his elbows were meant to be effective because of their precision. That's fantastic, but you can work like a brawler and not have a brawl y'know. Kawada's offence was mainly based around kick, punch, elbow, chop, knee. It was very deliberate and meant to play off his character. When you watched All Japan you were meant to think that Kawada had the temperament to kick a man in the face, which is an attribute of a brawling heel to my mind.

It just means what we think of as technical wrestling has changed.

It's simpler and far easier to generalise than to break down the exact way a guy worked. If someone wanted to say that Ted Dibiase was a technical wrestler who got into a lot of fights in Mid-South then I don't think that would be entirely unreasonable. After all, there were stories and angles and reasons why Ted got into a lot of fights during his time in the territory. Wrestlers are primarily remembered as being either a heel or a face. In Japan they're remembered for a lot of their signature moves, whereas States side they're remembered for their schtick. I think it's fair to say wrestlers are primarily one thing or another, a brawler or a technical wrestler, a high flyer or a big man. Some were more of the all-rounder style and a few of them shifted styles over the years, but as I said, I think it's better to generalise because wrestling is presented in a very simple way to the customer. Take Jim Breaks, for example. Breaks was a high skilled technical wrestler who preferred to needle his opponent all match long with cheap shots. When he was on the receiving end, he'd throw a tantrum and demand the ref do something about it. Invariably, his matches would disintegrate into the type of all-in, forearm contest that Kent Walton so openly despised. Was he a technical wrestler? Was he a brawler? Was he both? I'd say that it was pretty obvious that he was a fantastic technical wrestler who would be unbeatable if he could only control his temper. The audience got this because it was a common archetype for just about any heel who could wrestle. Walton would beat the audience over the head with it any time one of these guys was on the small screen (in that "I'm beating you over the head with this, but it's all right because I have silky smooth delivery and I'm sitting at ringside smoking a cigarette and drinking a gin and tonic" Ken Walton kind of way.) The fun was in baiting Breaks so that he flipped out, but primarily I think he was a technican. As for the All Japan guys. According to Baba, the All Japan style was primarily about absorbing as much punishment as you could handle before making a comeback. The All Japan guys worked according to their body types and characters, mainly. I think Misawa was undisputedly a technical wrestler. He was meant to have the most perfect technique and invariably it got him out of trouble. Kawada was more of a brawler. Kobashi was primarily an athlete. And Taue was supposed to be a big man like Baba or Tsuruta. Hashimoto I think more of as a stand-up fighter and a striker. I think the technical aspects of his work would probably be looked at as the weaker part of his game if you were judging it from a fighting perspective. What I don't think makes sense is to say that guys who worked the mat a lot like Billy Robinson represent the technical wrestlers and that anyone who didn't work the mat as much as a Robinson can't be classified as a technical wrestler, because Robinson came up in an era where it was still considered the mark of a great wrestler to work the mat. The NWA touring champ match as we know it doesn't really exist anymore outside of perhaps lucha title matches and some indie workers maybe trying to replicate it at times. I think it makes more sense to judge things in context.