ohtani's jacket

Here are some of the other matches Patera had on tour in '77: 10/1/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Giant Baba/Tenryu (Furukawa, Miyagi?) 10/3/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Giant Baba/The Destroyer (Nagoya) 10/5/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Rocky Hata (Osaka) 10/9/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Giant Baba/Rocky Hata (Yanagawa. Fukuoka) 10/11/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Giant Baba/Jumbo Tsuruta (Omura, Nagasaki) 10/26/77: Bobo Brazil/Ken Patera vs. Giant Baba/Jumbo Tsuruta (Akita) 11/4/77: Ken Patera vs. Rocky Hata (Suwa)

1993 was a bad year for Dustin. They pulled the plug on the Windham feud far too early.

If only they let people volunteer. If they're the broadcast tapes they'd probably be clipped right?

Patera wrestled at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium not the Yokohama Prefecture Gym. Yokohama is a city not a prefecture. Tokyo University Hall was Nihon University Auditorium, a different university altogether. It was originally a sumo venue that was requisitioned by the Japanese military during the war and turned into a weapons factory. It was then appropriated by the Occupation forces and turned into an entertainment venue before being sold to Nihon University in 1958. The University rented it for public use up until 1977. It has since been torn down. Capacity was 10,000.

Who cares about standing? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I watched every match from that Rude/Dustin feud and aside from the May '93 one the rest were unbearable and I don't think Rude was shot either because he had decent matches afterwards like the Bossman debut.

Dustin's feuds with Rude and Austin were awful. His feud with Bunkhouse Bunk is one of the best feuds in WCW history.

Watched one of Flik's choices: John Naylor vs. Zoltan Boscik (8/15/74) This was really good for two guys who always annoy the shit out of me. Probably the first time Boscik has looked like the European mat wizard he's meant to be. His work wasn't completely smooth, nor completely original for that matter, but it was tricked out in the way only lovers of World of Sport will ever truly appreciate and I probably would've added this to my list if Naylor hadn't won so easily against the run of play.

This was all right, but it wasn't as good as Hogan's brawling sprints against Orndorff and Race. I don't think he did anything special to get over, either. He got a pop because he was Hulk Hogan. Match was better than the usual WWF fare at the time, but I didn't like how symmetrical it was in terms of the length of time Hogan spent working Hansen over and Hansen's reply, and the finish wasn't very dramatic. It was interesting how close it resembled the modern WWF style with its over reliance on going to the outside, something which plagued Japanese wrestling horrendously as the decade wore on. Hogan's takedowns were probably the most fun part of the match. You've gotta protect yourself in Japan, brutha.

I wonder if there's film of Masambula and the other workers that didn't show up on TWC much.

Nice to know it exists; nicer still if a copy actually makes it into circulation.

There are many unsavory things about Takada but lack of charisma isn't one of them.

Watching the matches in the context of the shows gives you more of an idea how UWF was booked. Maeda was the top dog in 1990. The rest of the workers traded wins under the pretense that it was real competition though Fujiwara was protected as was Takada to a lesser extent. When Funaki returns from injury he gets a big push and ends up challenging Maeda by year's end.

Marty Jones doesn't belong anywhere near the Hall but that still sucks.

The majority refers to the majority of people reading and writing about this type of wrestling now, most of whom weren't WON subscribers in the 80s, weren't influenced by the backstory you've provided, hadn't seen a large chunk of the footage the Death Valley Driver provided and for the most part had little exposure to prime Fujinami and Choshu due to a gap in pimping from 1987 to 2009. Nobody's saying that Fujinami and Choshu were never pimped or that there was never any positive consensus about them as workers. Nobody is saying that the post-2009 consensus is entirely new, simply that they were out of vogue and then "rediscovered" or re-evaluated, so to speak. I cannot believe that anyone would honestly say in the ten year period from 1999 to 2009 that Riki Choshu was a highly regarded worker among internet users. If we consider the Smarkschoice poll, Fujinami was #58 and Choshu was #100. Of the 50 odd people who voted, Choshu only received 13 votes. I think it's possible that both Fujinami and Choshu would receive a bump from the Death Valley Driver sets if a poll was to be taken tomorrow. How is Dylan saying Fujinami had a better match with Dynamite Kid than Tiger Mask proof that the rest of us thought highly of Fujinami? All it tells us is that Dylan thought highly of his juniors work. I don't know that Dylan had seen even half the Fujinami stuff that was on the Death Valley Driver set, but he can tell us for himself whether his own opinion of Fujinami was reappraised. Of the 80s Fujinami matches that I would consider widely seen prior to the set, that match did fairly well but there were a number of new discoveries [for people who were not WON subscribers in the 1980s] that did better.

Hey, Mick McManus. Nice one. How did Pallo do?

Dylan pretty much covered everything. A lot of his Dream Team work is solid but it pretty marked the beginning of the end of him being one of the WWF's top workers.

There's always going to be people who say something's good before the majority cotton on. Just because a few people were writing positive things about Choshu before the New Japan set hit doesn't mean people were tripping over themselves to see his stuff. How many people watched Choshu because Jewett wrote some Gordy List about Ishingundan? As many people who watched his stuff because of the New Japan site, Ditch's site or even youtube? It doesn't matter whether the consensus is new or old hat, the only thing that matters is what the consensus is now. As Will continues to release sets, people will come round to plenty of workers. Let's say Will releases Portland and people start claiming Buddy Rose is a great worker. Then the consensus becomes that Rose is an all-time great or at least in the discussion. Dylan has written tomes about Buddy Rose, Will always talks about what a great worker he is, John D. Williams gave us an opinion about Rose... are people going to turn around and say this consensus is nothing new, we've been saying it all along, blah, blah, blah? What a load of crap. It's all just words on paper or a computer screen until people watch the matches.

It's the pre-Crush Girls 1980-83 era that could use more complete footage.

Tell me more....is there Japanese media with this written out somewhere online? Not really sure what you're after... The kanji for Ishu Kakutogi Sen is 異種格闘技戦 Inoki didn't coin this term as such contests existed long before his fights. These days MMA is usually called 総合格闘技 (Sougoukakutogi.) A Japanese source tells me that they have been referring to mixed matches as Ishu Kakutogi Sen (異種格闘技戦) since Inoki-Ruska in 1976. Do you believe it to predate that bout? What I'm looking for is maybe a poster or VHS tape cover or some piece of media showing Japanese promotions were using this rough translation (mixed martial arts) before the UFC or Extreme Fighting, or even the Pittsburgh Penguins! I think the root term is Ishu Shiai (異種試合). I will have a look for any media.

That's what his Japanese Wikipedia page says. The sources it cites are an All Japan TV special and an article in Weekly Pro-Wrestling, neither of which are online. And for what it's worth, the Jumbo stand-in is the strongest character in the Fire Pro Wrestling games. On the pyramid of Japanese wrestling Jumbo wasn't at the top. There may have been people post-humously giving him props, but for the most part New Japan was the Yomiuri Giants to All Japan's Hanshin Tigers. I agree that Fujiwara was closer to proper revisionism. He did attain a certain level of popularity in his home country, mind you. With Fujiwara it was a matter of taste. Matwork based matches became in vogue amongst a certain segment of fans and then it was discovered that the carney crap that Fujiwara was so good at translated superbly to the pro-style as well. I'm not sure his look helped either. People generally preferred flashier wrestling through the 90s.

Making a best of list for films or records isn't the same as these type of wrestling discussions. Very few people would argue that only the Beatles knew how to record songs or that only Hitchcock knew how to make movies to the extent that people praise (or used to praise) All Japan Pro-Wrestling. There is far more leeway in other forms of entertainment because despite the fact that there are seminal figures people don't go around claiming Hitchcock and Kurosawa are the be all and end all unless they've just discovered Hitchcock and Kurosawa. Those directors are the jumping-off point for most people not the end point like All Japan Pro-Wrestling. All Japan was seen as the perfect way to wrestle and therefore nothing could better it. I don't think that's completely analogous with the way people treat other forms of entertainment despite there being people who think the Beatles made perfect music or that the '87-88 Lakers played perfect basketball. The Smarkschoice poll was in 2006 a full six years after Jumbo died. Plenty of people who participated in that poll had not seen a significant amount of Jumbo prior to his death as Jumbo was not a gateway to Japanese pro-wrestling when many of us first began watching. Just because he was talked about among WON readers in 1990 doesn't make a difference to those people, most of whom were in elementary school in 1990. What Meltzer thought of Choshu in 1983 is also irrelevant to these people. There were a group of people who began writing about wrestling and joining discussion post-2000 who got into things much later than the first wave of people online. If you want to squabble perhaps more than 90% of them were aware of Jumbo prior to his death. I think the first time I heard about him was when he retired and I think it was on 1wrestling. I doubt very much they were watching Jumbo prior to his death, though they may have seen the Tenryu feud or the early 90s All Japan opposite Misawa and Co., but even that became more widespread with the DVDVR best of the 90s results through the early part of the 2000s. There are people for whom the GOAT was Bret or Shawn and then suddenly became Misawa and Kawada and then Jumbo and never really moved past the jumping-off point. That's all right, it's not really a criticism, but like this Choshu and Fujinami thing which Graham Crackers spelled out, to act like it didn't happen because x and x knew about it all along is way off. We're not talking about x and x.

Jumbo has never been regarded as the strongest Japanese wrestler. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I have heard that at the Feb 1990 Supershow he got the loudest reaction and at that point was considered the MVP of Japanese professional wrestling, but I don't know if it's true. Anyway, we're really talking about what English speaking, Western fans think not Japanese fans. I don't buy Jerome's '98 memory. He's probably thinking of Other Arena or Frank Jewett or something. They were obviously ahead of the curve in that (from memory) Jewett had the Tenryu/Jumbo comp tape made that ended up circulating and being sold by people like Lorefice and Scott Mailman, etc., but I don't know whether that comp predated Jumbo's death nor do I think it's really important. It was the memorial tapes that kickstarted the Jumbo boom and I think Dean's Jumbo vs. Harley review in the DVDVR was more influential than the Other Arena crew as DVDVR had a greater reach. After that people got into AJPW Classics and Williams' DVDVR 90s pimping post and ballot were also highly influential. If people are lifelong Beatles fans that's their business, but do people go around touting the best ever in other fields of entertainment? It seems a particular obsession of wrestling fans. If pushed I would name what I think is the greatest of all time in any other field, but it's not some badge of honour like it is with wrestling. I wonder if it's because wrestling fans spend more time talking about wrestling than watching it. Or maybe I don't move in the right circles in regard to my other hobbies. Wrestling sure has its sacred cows, though. Regarding Fujiwara, neither shoot style nor 80s New Japan were widely watched by the swarm of new fans who got into Japanese wrestling late. They may have been watched by hardcores previously, but those people didn't make up a vocal presence on the internet from 1999 onwards in my experience. Fujiwara was not well regarded in real time, so to speak. You only have to look at Lorefice's site to get some idea of the dated opinions about shoot style and Fujiwara from the late 90s. I always kind of dug Fujiwara but began to seriously re-evaluate him with the failed Smarkschoice best matches ever initiative around five or six years ago. That was some glorious revisionism. Revisionism is a wonderful thing even if it may be disrespectful or sacrilegious at times. Returning to your original point, I actually think we caught up with what Japanese fans already knew in regard to Fujinami and Choshu most recently.

Here's 50 of them -- http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/08/the-...rences/#gallery

I bet you the bell time was longer especially if it was a draw.

Jumbo as the greatest of all-time was a revisionist trend in the first place. Ninety percent of the people pimping him as the greatest didn't even know who he was until he was dead and even then it took a few years for the memorial tapes to circulate. There weren't too many people around from when his matches originally aired in the 80s and early 90s and those who were ahead of the curve were a small minority compared to the ever expanding newer, young fans getting online and discovering foreign wrestling. I don't know what it was like in the mid-90s as when I first started using the internet I was only interested in WWF and WCW news, but if Jumbo had been pimped from the mid-90s onwards he would have been one of the first guys to be immediately pimped when people turned to "puro". AFAIC, he was some way down the list from juniors and Misawa and Kawada and garbage wrestling. Without trying to put too much of a historical bend on it, Jumbo as the greatest arguably peaked with the Smarkschoice poll after which many of the people involved slowly stopped watching wrestling and the newer fans became (inexplicably) more interested in the newer stuff. But I thoroughly agree that if Lawler and Fujiwara had been consensus picks for a long time that people would look elsewhere. Who doesn't crave new footage or new workers or new footage of old workers which suddenly sheds things in a new light? Everyone went through their Misawa and Kawada phase (or whatever) like some kid discovering an old rock band and thinking he's found the greatest band of all-time, but c'mon... move on, discover new things... It doesn't matter whether Satanico or Fujiwara are better than Flair or Jumbo or anybody else... the idea that somebody has to be atop the mantle is what's really boring.