ohtani's jacket

I really don't see the case for Hamada.

Dandy footage has always been out there. People just aren't interested.

I can't see how the past four years would hurt Paco Alonso's case.

He has a point. Rocco and Jones 70s matches are massively ahead of their time.

Hennig vs. Tito from SNME is an excellent match. Easily the best SNME match I've seen.

In the 4/15/85 Observer recap on this site it mentions that Gran Hamada is very unpopular with wrestlers. Has this ever come up in Hall of Fame discussions?

I don't think I would vote for Breaks or anyone from Europe for a variety of reasons. But I am high on Breaks. When I was watching a lot of WoS he consistently stood out as one of the better/unique guys there, who was excellent at building heat. Not only do I think he was a great worker, but he seemed to consistently have a title from 62/63 forward. When I was looking through title histories last year he had a good bit more than Saint IIRC. Since the working theory/position being pushed by many Brits seems to be "those who held the titles the most were positioned as the top stars," it seems fairly safe to say he was one of the biggest names in Brit wrestling for his run. Having said I really don't know enough to vote for him. Trouble is George Kidd was the undisputed and undefeated World champion from 1950 to 1976 and when he retired it was Saint whom they pushed as his successor. Kidd's candidacy is problematic from the 60s onwards, but Dave isn't handling Europe properly. Logan, Masambula, Pallo, McManus and Kellett were the guys who carried the industry during Breaks' prime.

Why would you vote for Breaks?

Sure, it's always a crowd pleaser.

The British Bulldogs vs. The Moondogs, 7/12/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Moondogs, 9/7/86 The Bulldogs continue their fun Brit invasion (or should that be Brit-cum-Calgary-cum-Japan invasion?) One of these matches was a really fun TV bout. I want to say it was the July match but it's been so long since I watched these. Not sure where the Bulldogs bad rep comes from? Is it because those Bulldogs/Hart Foundation matches aren't like Midnight Express/R 'n R Express matches? The Dream Team vs. US Express, Philadelphia 8/24/85 The Dream Team vs. US Express, Boston 11/9/85 Mike Rotundo vs. Greg Valentine, Philadelphia 12/7/85 The Dream Team vs. US Express, Philadelphia 1/10/87 The Dream Team vs. US Express, Toronto 1/11/87 The tag title switch between these sides is well worth watching. It's an actual "proper" tag match with face in peril rather than heel in peril and while the finish doesn't entirely work visually it was a novel concept. Some of the Valentine/Rotundo exchanges in the Spivey version of the US Express inspired me to check out their singles match, but it was the usual bust. The matches from '87 were boring as shit. The Killer Bees vs. Hart Foundation, Boston 2/8/86 The Killer Bees vs. Hart Foundation, MSG 2/17/86 These were excruciatingly boring. The Hart Foundation had some good offense and Bret took an insane bump in one of the matches, but the Killer Bees had all the charisma of a dead bee hive and the matches had no excitement to them whatsoever. They fought a million times, but this time I'm steering clear.

I think it would be next to impossible to get Ueda in on her own. The perception that Sato was the bigger star is probably true given that she stayed on as the ace while Ueda's post-wrestling acting career failed to take off. Someone would have to do a bunch of research about how Sato vs. Monsta Rippa, the Black Pair and gaijin women drew compared to the peak of the Beauty Pair phenomenon where they were able to run Budokan. They pushed Ueda to the WWWA title before Sato but I don't know the reason why. It may not have meant that much in those days given how often AJW belts changed hands and the fact that she went over in her hometown. On the other hand, she was the better looking of the two and they hadn't yet established that lineage of athletic, sporty types that went from Sato to Yokota to Nagayo and beyond. Unless someone can come up with some clear numbers, it's really a matter of whether you recognise how big the Beauty Pair phenomenon was in terms of mainstream success. Even now, if you mention Beauty Pair or Kakemeguru Seishun to Japanese women of a certain age they instantly know who you're talking about. Kakemeguru Seishun sold 800,000 copies and you can still sing it at karaoke. Every now and again they use it on TV. Pretty good for two wrestlers who couldn't sing or dance to save their lives.

So, Joshi stars aren't credible draws but the Matsunagas should be in the Hall because they got Joshi acts to draw? I don't follow you. Are you implying that it's difficult for Joshi acts to draw? If the Beauty Pair and Crush Girls weren't draws then very few workers in the Hall qualify as ever having drawn. At what point does a sensational hot period become "historical impact"? The Matsunagas' system was a clever business model that showed they understood their audience. That being said, after the Beauty Pair split they could only replicate their success with the Crush Girls despite numerous attempts at creating idols. As for why only Sato is in the Hall, I pressume it's because she lasted longer, was a bigger draw in Dave's eyes, was the better worker of the two (in so far as Dave thought they were good workers) and passed the torch to Yokota. Most probably it's because someone told Dave that Sato was the true star of that era. Ueda retired due to injury, IIRC. It wasn't because of the mandatory retirement rule. I think Beauty Pair should have gone in together, but I don't see the case for the Black Pair though I like both of them as workers. Sato went in in the original class, so Dave must have considered her a decent enough draw. The whole point of drawing is to make money. The Beauty Pair made money. I don't really understand your criteria for drawing.

So, you're saying the Beauty Pair or the Crush Girls didn't draw big TV ratings, sell out hundreds of shows, move a crapload of merchandise and make the Matsunagas rich? Joshi had the same business model as Joint Promotions -- the revenue from hundreds upon hundreds of shows in the hands of a few. Why the obsession with big gates? England didn't have large scale indoor venues to begin with and neither did Japan during the Joshi's heyday. Joint Promotions ran townhalls and the Matsunagas similar venues. Who cares if they weren't running venues the size of Madison Square Garden if it was successful?

I'd sooner see McManus and Pallo in the Hall than Big Daddy but arguing that Dale Martin should have ran Wembley Arena more often if Daddy was such a draw is like arguing that the Matsunagas should have run Budokan more often. Big Daddy vs. John Quinn was the biggest indoor drawing match in British wrestling history at the time it occurred and it was just short of 10k. The record was 14,000 to see Bert Assirati face Maurice Tillet at an outdoor football ground. Dale Martin to my knowledge never ran outdoor shows. Their biggest show of the year was the 5k Royal Albert Hall. Most of the venues they used housed well under 5k. So, it's really a question of how much credit you give being a TV star, selling out small capacity venues around the country and drawing the biggest indoors crowd of any British promoter ever.

I was kind of expecting the Estrada/Stuka hair match to be on the set. Not that I've seen it.

There was a HIP stretch in most of the Dream Team matches where Beefcake would eat a bunch of offense usually from Davey Boy Smith, but I think it was supposed to convey how close the Bulldogs were to winning the titles before the inevitable schmozz. That and the fact they had some pretty state of the art offense for 1985/86 WWF and tended to overload their matches at times. The thing I couldn't figure out is why they were so bad at entering the ring to prevent a pinfall or to stop one of the Dream Team from attacking their partner. So many times they'd stay on the apron. I don't know what the later Bulldogs were like, but in '85/86 they were billed as aerial exponent and these exciting young guys with arsenals at the cutting edge of pro-wrestling and I thought they delivered that with their offense. I had never seen that Monty Python skit before. Nice parody of WoS and a good Walton impersonation.

The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Boston 10/12/85 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Toronto 10/13/85 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Toronto 12/15/85 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Mid-Hudson Civic Center 1/7/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Philadelphia 1/11/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, MSG 1/26/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Philadelphia 2/8/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, SNME 2/15/86 The British Bulldogs & Lou Albano vs. The Dream Team & Johnny V, MSG 3/16/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, Wrestlemania II 4/7/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, SNME 5/1/86 The British Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team, MSG 5/19/86 The British Bulldogs & Lou Albano vs. The Dream Team & Johnny V, Civic Center 10/29/86 Greg Valentine vs. Davey Boy Smith, MSG 4/22/86 Dynamite Kid vs. Brutus Beefcake, MSG 4/22/86 This was a pretty good feud once you get past the fact that it's not Southern style tag wrestling and that there's heel in peril and other structural quirks. You've basically got three good workers involved and Beefcake trying harder than at any other point in his career. For the curious I would suggest just watching the two Toronto matches as the stuff from '86 doesn't really add anything to the '85 matches. I was quite impressed with their TV matches, however. By WWF standards they were quite good and featured plenty of action. I particularly liked the short, non-title match from the Mid-Hudson Civic Center and the first SNME match. That fireman's carry and super diving headbutt the Bulldogs did was insane. The December Toronto version was my favourite. The singles matches weren't bad. The Valentine match was a typically solid Greg Valentine match with some good spots. The Dynamite Kid match was the clipped version from the Bulldogs tape but also had some good action. Thoroughout these matches I didn't see too many flaws with the Bulldogs and I thought DK did some good stuff. There were flaws with the WWF style of tag wrestling, but in general the Bulldogs were pretty good. It kind of reminded me of Strike Force vs. The Islanders in that all of the matches were decent but none of them were great and thus they all kind of blur together into a stream of decentness.

I think the WWF as a whole was over. Hogan was its biggest star, but at the peak of its popularity we were reading about everything that was going on in the WWF magazine and in the television guide and local tabloids that had weekly two page spreads devoted to the WWF (as well as posters of WWF superstars), we collected all of the trading cards and wrestling figures (not just Hogan's) and we each had a favourite tag team or midcard face. I think you only have to look at the heels who turned face like Savage, Roberts, the Hart Foundation and Demolition to see that the popularity there was there for other guys. Whether this translated into drawing power in terms of ticket gates I don't know; from my perspective it was a television product. But late 80s WWF was popular on such a worldwide scale that it was almost impossible for the rest of the roster not to be known. To my mind, WWF Superstars was aptly named. Like I said, whether they were tangible draws I don't know, but there were a lot of memorable gimmicks and care and attention was given to the heel and face turns. So much so that I think anyone who got caught up in that boom would remember some of the workers outside of Hogan and even a few of the angles. At the least they're bound to remember a couple of guys Hogan wrestled.

The implication was that undercard workers weren't able to draw much heat because people weren't interested in their matches or were only interested in Hogan. I don't remember a problem with the heat for undercard matches and I haven't seen any examples recently. If there was a problem with the heat, I'd wager it more to do with the matches being shit than people not following the storylines. And as far as drawing heat goes, I can't understand how anyone would believe that the WWF undercard were trying to draw heat but failed repeatedly. The matches were shit far too often for it to be a coincidence.

So you're saying that the rest of the roster weren't over because their matches didn't draw heat?

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest. Every match is supposed to be worked to garner heat? Or at least the vast, vast majority? I mean aside from the one a show "popcorn matches" - most of which had standard heeling designed to draw heat in them - I'm not sure what other goal promoters would have in mind. "Hey guys don't draw heat. In fact do your best to alienate the audience if possible. We don't want people coming back." If every match on a card was meant to draw heat then you'd have a card where the workers are trying to be actively good in every match. When does that ever happen outside of indies and Joshi puroresu? If you look at an 80s WWF card, it's ridiculous to say the undercard matches are trying to garner more heat than the mainevent. A semi-main may do, but the rest of the matches are just filling in the card. 90% of them could have been 10 times more heated if the workers had tried more. It has nothing to do with whether they're a draw or not, it's simply the way the company was set up. We've all seen 80s WWF workers have better matches in the territories they came from and on the houseshow circuits away from TV and PPV. It's even the case that they were told to go short and have hot matches. If that was the case, every 80s WWF PPV would be exciting and Coliseum videos would be full of hidden gems.

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest.

I haven't seen any examples of undercard matches lacking heat. Then again, how many undercard matches were worked to garner heat?

I got hooked as an 8 year-old not only by the colourful characters but the fact that everyone else at school was watching it. I don't know if wrestling creates that sort of buzz on the playground these days (it was literally a phenomenon like Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but what's to stop an 8 year-old getting hooked if he catches a glimpse on TV? The era that you're talking about died a death in the early 90s. You can't reproduce it for today's kids anymore than you can reproduce the glory of 80s toys, cartoons, comic books and arcade games. It belongs to the past. I do agree that the focus on the entire roster was important, though. It wasn't just Hogan. As far as I recall, people followed all the storylines heading into a PPV and were into guys at every point of the card. It was a slickly oiled machine in that respect.

The other day I was showing someone the Mean Gene "fuck it" moment and he said "Rick Rude! I remember him." I don't think people remember everyone from that era, but there's always a handful of names they remember.