ohtani's jacket

I always thought it was a known fact that Steamboat had been DQ'ed in all the houseshow matches leading up to Wrestlemania III. I could never understand the criticism of that match from a booking standpoint, similar to the Bret/Owen cage match which didn't make sense to have any blood in the context of the feud. 1997 was arguably the best year in CMLL history in terms of what we have on tape. Either '97 or '90. '88-97 works for me.

I managed to find that Orton/Mysterio match. It was a good match considering how limited Orton is, but it was spot driven and choreographed and followed along the lines of the typical WWE match patterns. These things are okay if they're executed well, but it's blatantly obvious that they're executing them in terms of following the patterns. This is especially the case with transitions. All WWE matches have the same kind of transitions that are replayed again in slow motion and lead into commercial breaks. That's obviously part of the overall production, but it makes it seem like the matches fit too neatly into the overall package. I think the quality of matches is definitely higher than at any other time in WWE history, but I'd rather watch great matches from the 80s no matter how scare they were than the current Hollywood-ish formula for blockbusters. Of course some of the better 80s stuff was formulaic and staged looking as well, but with simple camera set-ups at an arena and the lack of commentators screeching about angles and the workers' gimmicks it simply feels like professional wrestling, which is always staged looking to some degree. With the WWE everything is so planned and carefully orchestrated and they're all so focused on working the WWE way that it definitely seems homogeneous.

Can anybody give me the date on the famous Mysterio/Henry match? And isn't there a Orton/Mysterio match worth watching?

I'll have to watch it again at some point because I don't remember the opening falls being a problem.

Since when did the first two falls being short in lucha matter?

Sting/Flair matches suck. Even the worst Luger/Flair match is better than a Sting/Flair match. Sting was never a great worker but he reached that point where he "got" what he was supposed to do and did it well. Luger was awesome in '89 and even into 1990 and is so ridiculously fun to get behind.

Piper was awesome on commentary when Virgil won the Million Dollar belt. The best heel commentator among active wrestlers was definitely Owen. Never heard anyone in WWF or NWA/WCW who compared.

Akira Fukuzawa says hello. I don't speak japanese, and as it is I would rank him pretty much at the top along with Lance. Ross over excitement during finishes post 1999 just makes him unbearable to me during big matches, he sounds like he's having a panic attack and it's just as ridiculous as Joey Styles infamous screamed lines (and I like Joey as much as anybody). Basically Ross ranks that way to me : WCW Ross > WWF (1993-1998) Ross (at his best, really great, and excellent most of the time) >> UWF >>> WWF post 1999 (could be just plain terrible and annoying, oversells everything by gawd!) Fukuzawa does the same thing as Ross and Styles only it's cool because it's like a crazy Japanese TV commercial.

What is all this crap? Tony was a million times better than Ross in WCW and Tony and Jesse were the best WCW commentating pair of the 90s. Jesse was better in WCW than he was in WWF, and Gorilla with Jesse or Heenan was much better than the montones of Vince in WWWF. The winner in all this is Lance Russell who I will stauchy argue was better than Kent Walton in the battle of the all-time greatest announcers.

Cerebro is 39 and made his debut in 1996. The Traumas are good, but hardly constitute the "young guys coming through."

Off the top of my head, Clive Myers, Honeyboy Zimba, Johnny Kwango, Johnny Kincaid, Dave Bond, Kid Chocolate, Lenny Hurst, Jim Moser and Caswell Martin. That's not counting the Indian and Pakistani wrestlers they pushed, either, which you don't see much of in other territories.

Los Infernales and Los Brazos. Trios wrestling is after all tag wrestling.

I love Black Terry and Negro Navarro and Solar and all the rest, but the only reason they're "the best in the world" is because the young guys coming through are crap. On the flipside, they've made me go back and appreciate veterans from all eras which is a new way to watch wrestling.

Dale Martin/Joint Promotions probably pushed the most black wrestlers of any territory in the 70s.

MJH's point about the TV director is spot-on and something that's almost never mentioned. Well done.

That Demolition vs. Brain Busters match where the Demos get themselves deliberately DQ'ed is as fun as anything on NWA TV at the time.

I don't know if that was directed at my comments on blown lucha spots, but even if it wasn't I feel the need to clarify. High flying lucha is what I tend to have issue with. Heavyweight style lucha is one of my favorite styles to watch, but the high flyer guys just kill me with how they tend to turn every match into a "can you top this" contest. Dives are cool, flippy spots are cool, but like I said before I prefer wrestling of any style or origin to at least have the pretense of two guys engaging in an athletic contest rather than an Olympic floor exercise. I wasn't trying to direct my comment at anyone. I just saw lucha being lumped together with highflyers and cruiserweights. Some of the breakneck stuff can be good like minis matches in recent years. It's a matter of doing it well, really.

Well, I've been trying to watch Demolition and PG-13 matches. The Demolition matches aren't great but they're not exactly bad either. I don't think their offence was a problem but by the same token their structure wasn't fantastic either. PG-13's USWA matches were far more entertaining even if the ones I saw were basically angles, but I'm not seeing how they're anything more than good at their bit. The most interesting thing so far was the Rock 'n' Roll Express working heel.

There are a lot of different reasons why a wrestling match might be good and I don't really see the need to pick one element over another. If pressed, I would probably say selling since that's what matters to me most, but my definition of selling encompasses quite a lot. In the past I broke it down into acting and selling with the end result being everything they do to put the match over. This isn't the only wrestling I enjoy, however. If you watch a lot of wrestling, as I do in phases, you'll know that there isn't one particular way that works. There's a few comments in this page that suggest that all lucha is the same, but "lucha" isn't a style in the same sense that "puroresu" isn't a style. Ultimately, I think it's better for wrestling fans to dig deeper, look harder and have less preconceptions about what's good and what's bad, because wrestling for the most part is imperfect and being a fan is about finding good matches in whatever form they come.

Nice one Arnold.

I have no idea who PG-13 are. Can someone recommend a match?

That's a lucha spot. I doubt the Michinoku Pro crew had ever seen a Memphis match in their lives.

I was hoping this was that Don Corelone guy who wrestled Canek.

I wish they'd sign more.

The Simmon's interview links to this -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TnSPQGHz7A Forgot how awesome that was, especially the flick of the nose. The botch is amusing as well --