ohtani's jacket

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #3 -- The Barbarian The Barbarian didn't bring as much offense to his WWF matches as he did during his WCW run but he was still a pretty fun power wrestler. I always thought it was a bit weird how The Powers of Pain were broken up and repackaged as nothing singles workers. I mean, there's nothing to Barbarian other than some new threads, some hair and the fact he's managed by Heenan. Astute Tito Santana vs. the World readers will remember that Tito and The Barbarian had some history as Tito and Martel brought them in as hired guns to gain revenge on Demolition. As a kid, I thought it was badass that there was a team who might stop Demolition, but even I cottoned on to the fact that they were incredibly boring in the ring. I'm sure someone who take objection to that and point out the great Powers of Pain matches, but I think by the double turn no-one gave a fuck. Anyway, there's no reference to Tito and the Barbarian's previous history in this match-up, no baggage and no learned psychology. Just bear hugs. I watched three matches -- Wrestlemania VI, MSG 9/21/90 and a 12/2/91 El Matador/Barbarian match. All decent matches, but the highlight was Barbarian's clothesline to win the Wrestlemania match. Man did Tito eat that. One cool thing about watching Tito matches is that someone usually jobs as wins and losses in later Tito matches are inconsequential.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #2 -- "Mr Perfect" Curt Hennig These guys wrestled each other a bunch of times. I watched matches they had from 5/1/89, 5/16/89 and 8/21/89, as well as the final of the IC title tournament in 1990 and their Saturday Night Main Event match from 7/16/90. This was a real workrate feud by WWF standards and I imagine wildpegasus was a fan of this series. The impression of Hennig I had from the last time I watched his 80s stuff was his over the top bumping, but this time he struck me as a workrate machine. Compared to guys like Rude or Dibiase, Hennig was relentless. It was a bit suffocating, to be honest, as it was almost like watching Kurt Angle if Kurt Angle had no offence. The 1990 matches are much more impressive than the '89 bouts in large part because Hennig wasn't sticking to his man so much. The SNME match is the one to watch if you're going to watch any of their matches as it's a hot bout with a great crowd and a ref storyline that works. The only downer is the finish, which is too clean (of all things.) Definitely one of the better Curt Hennig matches and one of my recommended Tito bouts as well. If it had happened on a PPV it would be a lot better known. Tito had this ability (habit?) of blending with whoever he faced, but he was a pretty good foil for Hennig, firstly in vying to be the guy who ended the perfect streak and then as a rival for the IC belt. I don't know if it's true or not, but in the youtube comments some guy said Tito told him the original plan was for Santana to win the IC title off Hennig, not Kerry Von Erich. Kind've makes sense except for the fact that there seems to be other "Tito was supposed to win the belt" rumours. One final thought while watching this matches was whether Tito was better than Bret Hart. They were very similar wrestlers and did a lot of the same moves and I think it's an interesting comparison at least for Bret's work prior to '94.

All right, let's fire this baby up. I dunno how often I'm gonna do one of these, but here we go: TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #1 -- Don "the Rock" Muraco Tito Santana was the man who ended Don Muraco's reign as WWF Intercontinental Champion at the Boston Gardens. That match only exists as highlights, but there are two MSG matches from 1/23/84 and 2/20/84 that give you a fair look at their title feud. It was quite a disjointed feud as Muraco cut these awesome heel promos where he said a bunch of derogatory things about Santana and Mexican people in general, but Tito was in real challenger/title match mode so instead of the fired up Santana we love so much we got a bunch of leverage holds. There were good things about the MSG matches, particularly when they unleashed on each other, but nothing beat the intros from the first match with Tito's hair and jacket, Muraco's badass red hoodie and the MSG crowd. Those early 80s MSG crowds were a much different beast to later WWF crowds. I dunno if you'd call them a wrestling crowd or a New York crowd or what, but every time the camera pans the crowd there's an array of interesting looking characters. But as great as the crowds are, these matches are a little disappointing. I actually prefered the shorter, tighter matches they had in Philly in '85 and Boston in '87. They're nothing special, so don't trip over yourself to see them, but they have a more watchable structure than the messy MSG matches. They also had a match at the Wrestling Challenge in '85 which is skippable and some matches in ECW in '93 which I only skimmed through but looked lacklustre. The thing I took away from watching this match-up is that they could have had matches as good as the Santana/Valentine ones but instead were going for some kind of title match psychology that didn't pan out very well. Nothing here I'd really recommend watching, but that MSG crowd sure rocked.

Rude was definitely a lot more enjoyable in '89, but to have a great match you obviously have to rise above a certain level and during that whole period nobody ever really does. It doesn't matter who the workers are, there doesn't appear to be any incentive to have a great match or even a clever one. EDIT: By clever, I mean if Tito and Rude had done a shorter match where they hit all the high points from their brief stretch run to the time limit, it would've been a cool Tito vs. Rude match. But because of the road agent or the booker or whomever else, it was waffle. I dunno why anyone would give pre-IC title Rick Rude more than 10 minutes, though I must admit that he turned the bear hug into a pin attempt which was pretty cool.

Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, CMLL 4/24/11 Neither of these guys rank among my favourite lucha libre vets but this was an excellent mano a mano bout. I think it's fair to say that mano a mano bouts don't have the grandest of traditions in lucha libre. Historically, they remind me of studio matches from the territories system where the purpose was to further an angle or tease an arena match. For the most part, they were an excuse for both guys to spill a little blood before a wager match while holding back their big moves and doing the sort of fluff you see in the first two falls of any hair or mask match. Things don't really work like that anymore, but to be honest the classic mano a mano probably works best in a dark, dingy arena with a promoter who's teasing a wager match that will never, ever happen in his territory. What made this Casas/Panther match so good was that it was more or less worked like a straight-up singles match between the two. They also kept it really tight. I still don't like maskless Panther and I hate the way he waddles around the ring, but his work was snug in this match and I felt like he was keeping everything close quarters like in an old school mano a mano bout. I've mentioned many times in this blog that I think Panther's brawling is suspect, while acknowledging the times when it's been very, very good, but he managed to pull off what I'd describe as "technically minded brawling" in this particular bout; something that Negro Navarro and the Villanos are very good at. He's nowhere near as vicious at it as those examples, but then he's not a prime candidate for a hair match either. Nevertheless, he was looking to exploit Casas' injuries through submission and the finish was a ridiculously good shoot move. As for Casas' performance, I'm a big Casas fan without being a huge Casas fan. I agree with people who claim that Casas is one of the greatest workers of all-time, but for my mind it's a very old-school Casas that's one of the greatest workers ever. Casas was a guy who could generate massive amounts of heat through his magnetism and flamboyance, his sheer ability to get under people's skins, and many other things that didn't involve ring work. As times changed and wrestling became more and more offense driven, Casas had to move with the times, but offense was never Casas' biggest strength. Others may praise him for adapting to a changing wrestling environment and staying at the top or thereabouts for so many years, but for me the appeal of Casas begins to wear thin from about 1998 onwards. This match had pared down offense and a very dogged focus, but there was a long submission struggle that didn't really work for me where I thought it was clear that Casas came off second best in terms of pure technique. Mind you, even in the work from his prime I think he's been overrated as a mat wrestler. Sluggish matwork was really the only fault in what was otherwise an enjoyable mano a mano bout, however. Considering how forgettable most mano a mano bouts are even when they have blood and mask ripping and pillar to post brawling, this was a really decent match.

Dustin Rhodes vs. The Barbarian, WCW Saturday Night 11/14/92 Here we go, I've been wanting to see this ever since Loss pimped it a few years ago, but it never surfaced during the Smarkschoice WCW poll. Every few months, I check to see whether someone has put it on youtube or dailymotion and finally I hit pay dirt. That's a long wait in proportion to how short the match is, but it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. For a sub-10 minute match they pack a lot into it, but never in a way that rushes things. There's simply an urgency to it because Dustin is hurt. It's a great example of selling well and not breaking character even in a minor bout. The urgency really helps the finish as well, which is a nice bit of booking against the run of play. Satisfying match.

I really wanted to like those Jake/Rude matches because of how memorable the angle was, but that feud was torturous. They may have had a good match at some point, but I couldn't get through the several I tried to watch. Just out of curiosity, I watched a Rude/Tito match from '88, and while you'd be hard pressed to call it a bad match, all it entailed was a lengthy test of strength spot, a chinlock, a bearhug, some stalling, a bit of stooging with the Brain, a drawn out atomic drop spot, a frustrated Santana getting his offence in spurts and a neat hot period before the time limit draw. This is what I imagine a stock 1988 match looked like between a babyface and a heel who could both work. You'd be hard pressed to call it bad, but it wasn't very interesting either and therefore a waste of time.

Did anyone have a good match with Rick Rude in 1988? Did Tito have a good match in 1988? Steamboat had numerous matches which were poor but so did Arn and anyone else you care to name. Every guy who I can think of who was consistently good had poor matches. It's a question of how many good matches they had amid the poor ones and how consistent they were in their prime.

The "They Shoot Pictures Don't They?" list is about as boring as you can possibly imagine, but both Rules of the Game and 8 1/2 are great films. My favourite Renoir film is Boudu Saved from Drowning, however. Most wrestling doesn't tell a story for the simple reason that the stakes aren't high enough. 90% of matches are just matches. They may have a narrative of some sort, but they don't really tell a story. Wrestling follows the same principle as sports: the majority of sporting encounters are disappointing in terms of their quality, but every now and again you get a classic. Sometimes that classic occurs during a finals series or a championship game and the sports writers go into overdrive and a story is spun. I think people confuse "psychology, logic and storytelling" with basic performance tennets. Just because a wrestler played their character well in a particular match doesn't mean it told a story. When story occurs in wrestling it is praiseworthy for the fact that it's a performance art. The story for a book or movie or play is written and rewritten countless times until it's acceptable. With wrestling you have to do it on the fly. It's a completely different discipline. Shakespeare would not have been able to knock out Hamlet in 20 minutes and Joyce couldn't have finished a sentence in that length of time. Basically, people want wrestling to give them their jollies in a way that sport does.

I liked all of the Sting/Regal matches. It was always fun to see Sting bring his mat game to those bouts. There's basically two interesting periods with Sting. One is 1992-93 where the roster in general are busting out quality stuff and the other is '94-95 where Hogan's come in and the quality wrestling has thinned out a bit. Sting did some interesting stuff in the latter period. Check out his matches with Meng, for example.

Danny Boy Collins was awful.

I just watched a bit of it on youtube. It was okay but the 2011 Muppets are to the 80s Muppets what 2011 WWE is to the 80s territories. Nevertheless, how is this any different from the usual backstage vignettes? They've been doing comedy in these things for years now and they've always made a mockery of kayfabe. I get where you're coming from, but the WWE is so far gone now down the entertainment route that I don't see why anyone would bat an eyelid at this sort of thing.

How many times did Lawler turn? Because if you want to get into the logic behind pro-wrestling a guy who turns back and forth a lot doesn't make a lot of sense.

Villano III vs. Rambo, mask vs. mask, 10/25/87 This was awesome. I don't know how much of it exists on tape since it was a Cronicas y leyendas de la lucha libre hatchet job that I watched, but I presume it's the whole thing since it's a handheld shot from ringside. Whatever the case, it was every bit as bloody and violent as the pictures suggest: And everything you'd expect from a Rambo vs. Villano mask match. In fact, having watched their later hair matches it's pretty much the capper. In lieu of a review let me just say that you know you're watching a hair match when Villano looks like that in the opening fall.

El Canek vs. Don Corleone, UWA World Heavyweight Championship, 2/14/82 This was okay, but I was expecting something different. I guess I was anticipating some sort of non-existent Ray Mendoza mat game from Canek, but it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill Canek match from this era. Canek was a guy who could do a lot of things athletically, but he was a bit of a boring prick really. The highlight here was Don Corelone, who had a great build for pro-wrestling and moved really beautifully. He was spry throughout this bout and did a number of cool spots, but they never went anywhere because of how lazy Canek's pacing was. Heavyweight bouts are obviously going to be wrestled slower than other lucha libre bouts to distinguish the weight classes from each other, but Canek loved the resthold/action/resthold/action pattern of heavyweight wrestling and seledom did anything to lengthen or shorten the periods of action and inaction. There was no flow to this and no discernable theme, but it all built to a tope like a lucha libre title match is supposed to, so I suppose it was job done as far as Canek was concerned. It didn't help that the crowd wasn't mic'ed, either. Without crowd noise, matches always look muted. The handheld footage of this show is much better than the Japanese TV coverage, IMO.

Why would anyone be surprised that Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero were the only picks on everyone's list? They were internet darlings at the time.

Atlantis, Lizmark, La Fiera, Ringo Mendoza, Fuerza Guerrera, Black Man, Mano Negra, Dos Caras, Javier Cruz, Gran Cochisse, Americo Rocca... Mexico was stacked beyond belief in the 80s.

Trash.

The answer is Yoshiaki Fujiwara.

I watched the Eddie Guerrero/Scorpio TV title match, which was okay but not great. Neither guy could adjust for the length and just kept pushing it along. Scorpio was great at dropping bombs, but I fail to see how anyone would regard him as a complete worker and Eddie's babyface acting was terrible up until 2004.

I really wanted to like it. I had this whole big idea worked up that I could watch bunches of Shane Douglas and Scorpio ECW matches, but unless there's something a little more solid and a lot less extreme I think I'll pass.

The opening exchanges are poor then they take it to "the extreme" with some convoluted spots on the outside and off the top rope mixed in with some inspid crowd brawling. The pre-match angle of Douglas not respecting the TV title is "who gives a shit?" material, the post match shoot promo is nauseating and Scorpio not going for the pin and attacking Douglas at the end is tripe. I dunno, I got away more enjoyment out of Douglas tagging with Steamboat and Scorpio tagging with Bagwell than I did from this match. I'm not a big fan of Arn's singles stuff from '92 (i.e. against Dustin and Big Josh), except for perhaps some of his shorter stuff, but his work in tags destroys this match seven times over.

Man, I just watched that Douglas/Scorpio match from '96 and I'm sorry but that was a fucking awful match, angle, post-match promo and spectacle in general.

Go back through the early parts of the thread. Lots of wrestlers names got tossed out. Several times. John Only Mad Dog gave a list of his 10 best workers. I want to see your Arn Anderson/Ricky Steamboat-less list. And as for Buck? Why not? Roll with it. Not everybody is going to agree with every single "project", but for those of us who hadn't watched a lot of early 90s WCW "Dustin of the Day" was an eye-opener. Dustin wasn't without his flaws and many of his matches were poor, but I still like him enough to go deep into that list. Pimping Buck, even if it's ridiculously left field, is still better than rolling out the Dean Malenkos and Chris Jerichos. I dunno. Maybe I'm just bored.

If the 90s had plenty of great wrestling matches then who were the 10 best workers? I'm not seeing a lot of commitment to the topic here.