ohtani's jacket

Barry Windham vs. Johnny B Badd (Worldwide 05/22/93) This was such a kick-ass TV match. Barry's speciality really was short TV matches where he's dropping bombs as opposed to long NWA style title matches. He did a really beautiful job controlling the flow and pace of this match. It looked like Windham had the match in hand, but just when you thought it was over Badd rocked Windham with a series of nearfalls. I watched this for the WCW poll, but even though I've seen it before it was exciting all over again. The finish was awesome too, as Barry won without using a finisher. I also watched a Rude/Badd match from '94 which has left me convinced that Rude was god awful at least 50% of the time. Really poor match. Very similar to his mind-numbling bad series with Dustin in '93, where the only good thing about the matches is the jawing before they lock-up.

I guess it's a bad time to point out that the '94 Regal/Badd matches aren't put together well.

I guess I stadn corrected, then. It must've taken on a life of its own somehow, because I've never encountered any group of fans who considered Badd a top 20 worker.

Ultimate Warrior vs. The Macho King Randy Savage, 1/21/91 I know that Warrior is the complete opposite of what a good worker is supposed to be and that it's Savage who is carrying him in this match, but after watching the most God foresaken Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude match the other day I've reached the conclusion that I'd much rather watch an Ultimate Warrior match than a Rick Rude one. In fact, the way I feel about Rick Rude matches right now I figure his famous carry of Ultimate Warrior was as beneficial a match-up for Rude as it was for Warrior. This was a steel cage match Warrior and Savage had a couple of days after the "he said no" angle at Royal Rumble '91. I watched this and a title vs. title match they had from '89 and this was probably the better match. Like almost all WWF matches it had a mindnumblingly boring dip in the middle, but the beginning and end were good. I don't know why the WWF had such poor heat segments in their matches, but they did. The weird thing about this match is that after rejecting Sherri's blowjob at Royal Rumble '91, Warrior strips her to her underwear in this match. Not only that, but he stares at her skirt talking to it. I'm no lip reader, but he was questioning his destiny right there. There's a pull apart at the end with the Nasty Boys coming to Savage's aid, and Sherri returns in a new dress for a bit more male on female violence.

Lord Steven Regal vs. Johnny B. Badd, Clash of the Champions XXV (11/10/93) Regal vs. Badd was a fun match-up, not only because the wrestling was decent but because Badd was exactly the sort of commoner that his Lordship despised. This wasn't a particularly great match (it was completely devoid of a third act, if you care to think about wrestling in those terms), but for the life of me I can't figure out why Mero had such a bad rep as a worker. Seems like it was completely personal or disdain for the gimmick. He kinda reminds me of Zenk in that he had a look that people (read: sheet readers) don't want to like. A bit too bodybuilder-ish and a bit too pretty. Not to mention the tassles! Never a good thing if you want to get over with the sheet readers. Anyway, he's a guy who needs his reputation restored along with Buff Bagwell.

Ted Dibiase vs. Virgil, 9/10/91 Ted Dibiase vs. Virgil, 11/11/91 I love this feud. When I was a kid, we only got Superstars and pay-per-views on TV, which meant we could only really follow the storylines that carried through into the annual events. No matter how bad the matches were, there was always something satisfying about the pay-offs to even the stupidest of feuds. And if you ask me, the pay-off to Virgil/Dibiase was IMMENSE. Right up there with my favourite pieces of early 90s WWF booking. These matches couldn't possibly live up to Piper spluttering all over the place (and making dodgy analogies to the slave trade), but they were a fun look at Ted's quest to win the title back. The second match was better than the first, which was somewhat ruined by having Randy Savage as the guest referee. Ted leads the way like he did in the SummerSlam match w/ great heel gusto, but I was impressed with Virgil's babyface timing and I kind of dig his streetwise boxing style, not that it ever really worked against anyone other than Dibiase. Randy Savage vs. Jake Roberts, 2/17/87 This was a couple of months after their heel vs. heel match on SNME, and Jake was clearly the babyface this time round. The match veered on the simple side a bit too much and didn't have much action for a sub-10 minute match, but the crowd were into it. Probably the most interesting thing about it was that they gave Jake the clean win with the DDT. 123 Kid vs. Bob Backlund, Raw 11/14/94 This was a fun TV match. It was pretty much Waltman trying to avoid the crossface chickenwing as best he could and then a pull apart with Bret Hart where Backlund psyched Bret out by applying the hold and letting it go, but it was a really neat piece of TV. I really dig it when the WWF (of all companies) do wrestling hold angles.

It's a handheld.

Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund, MSG 6/12/93 This was pretty good. I'm very much a reformed Bret fan at this point, but it was more of a cross between a Bret match and a Backlund match than the usual Bret mode, which at least made it semi-interesting. It was pretty standard fare from a work perspective -- sit in a hold, stand-up and do something, get a pop, sit back down -- and neither guy being the one in "charge" hurts the match from time to time, but it's the kind of match you watch for the significance of the match-up, and in that sense it's more meaningful than the usual handheld.

I did not know that. She was doing nude photobooks for a while. One caused a stir in Japan because it showed her pubic hair.

Rumi wasn't really that bad. She just thought she was hot shit.

Most of the WCW I've been watching lately has been rubbish. The US title contender tournament WCW did in early 93 was incredibly weak and made worse by the fact that Rude couldn't actually defend the belt. Somehow they managed to fuck this tournament up despite the multiple storylines involved. Steamboat vs. Spivey was a decent enough big man vs. little man match and Windham vs. Badd was pretty good (again because it was short), but that particular taping had no heat, and I ended up trailing off in thought about why Spivey was such a Barry Windham wannabe and how the Badd gimmick was even more awful in its infancy. Then I tried switching to some '96/'97 Sat Night stuff. Watched a cool Villano IV vs. Mysterio match that ended after two minutes, reminding me how much I hate this era of WCW Sat Night. Didn't really have the heart to keep watching anything else from this time frame. Switching to '89, Arn Anderson and Mike Rotunda managed to boring the fucking shit out of me, which was a bit surprising since I kind of liked Rotunda around this time period. Following youtube links and scraping the bottom of the barrel, I watched an Enforcers vs. Rick Steiner handicap match, which was pretty decent for the gimmick it was using, but was killed by the Freebirds coming to ringside.

There are enough Malenko singles matches available to make a comparison with Leilani Kai. As for Chigusa, I dunno if you can ever use two hands to count the number of great singles matches she had.

Chigusa didn't have a huge number of great singles matches and Malenko had none, so I wouldn't discount Kai so lightly. Rumi Kazama was talented enough to have a decent singles match, but the Hokuto matches aren't in the same ball park as Leilani/Chigusa. The Leilani/Chigusa matches are good on a "God, this is so much better than Chigusa vs. Asuka" level, whereas the Hokuto matches are nothing special.

Leilani Kai was a good worker. She had two excellent title matches against Chigusa which I'm sure will make the DVDVR Joshi set. Most of the American girls who toured Japan in the 80s were capable to one extent or another. They just wrestled a really American style. Malenko was a 90s style worker and so her stuff looks better, but she really wasn't that good.

Rick Rude vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper, Toronto 10/8/89 This was a fun match while Rude was bumping and selling and Piper was doing comedy spots, but as soon as Rude took over on offence it became completely uninteresting. Rude had this problem in WCW too. He'd suck the life out of a match with his control segments, usually involving some form of the abdominal stretch or a rear chinlock. Neither of these guys were great on offence, but this could've been so much better than it was if Piper had just done things like his punch combos and whipping Rude with his belt, and Rude had bumped and sold a lot.

Yeah, and the Higher Power is Ted Dibiase, Flair is jumping ship to be Vince's corporate champion, and Yokozuna will be on Raw on Monday.

I can safely say that the Toronto match is better than the one from Philly. The Philly match didn't strike me as anything special, really. Ultimate Warrior vs. Rick Rude, 4/22/89 This a fun match. Rude hardly got a lick of offence in, but his bumping and selling were great. Unlike Rude vs. Warrior matches from other cities (and a lot of Rude matches in general, I should add), this was wrestled with the intensity befitting a return grudge match. No auto pilot in this one or slow motion offence, and Rude made Warrior's offence look great just like in the Summer Slam match. Incidently, does anyone have a Rude/Roberts match they think is good? There's a ton of them out there, but bad Rude gets on my nerves. Any recommendations?

The 90s lists represented what the consensus was at the time. Even if people had been given tapes to watch, I don't think they would've been as comprehensive as the 80s sets because of the format. VHS limited how much wrestling most of us had seen and would've made it tougher to collect the footage together, so I don't think it could've been handled differently. As far as I recall, the voting wasn't that big a deal. There wasn't a big viewing period like there are for internet polls these days, where everybody watches as much as they can for six months. Looking at the results, they simply need to be redone as opposed to be some kind of failure. The beauty of the 80s sets is that every voter gets the footage. That eliminates the type of ballots where the voter didn't make an effort to track down matches. I don't see the problem in voting for a collection of matches chosen by a committee, since most people are unlikely to have that much footage of a promotion in their possession. I could understand a huge fan of a certain promotion wanting to vote for matches that didn't make the cut, but it's unlikely that anyone else would. It will be interesting to see what people make of the results in ten years time. The results may date (as the 90s results have), but I doubt there will be as many gaps as the 90s poll. I do think they're a bit long, however, which makes it difficult for people to finish the discs and meet the deadline. I can understand why the sets are the length they are, but aside from having fun with the bottom rung of matches I hated, I had a hard time ranking the sixty or so matches that aren't good enough to crack a top 100. I suppose other voters had some of those matches in their top 100, however. The bottom line is that if you asked people to send in a ballot of their top 100 Memphis matches (or however many), you'd get a handful of ballots and some pretty crappy results. It might work for WWF or Crockett, and perhaps for All Japan and New Japan to a lesser extent, but the results would've been more or less what the consensus was five or ten years ago. The irony these days is that there's more footage available than ever before, but viewing has dropped off from where it was when I first came online. People simply aren't going to know about great matches unless there's a pimping and viewing period and all the matches are a click away. The sets deal with that nicely. I remember when the idea of a DVDVR Best of the 80s poll was first floated. It's come a long way from those humble beginnings. I kind of wish the sets were more popular in the sense of a great number of voters, but I guess that can't be helped. Anyway, if I were you I would have no reservations about which is the better way.

Is this better or roughly the same as their 04/22/86 MSG version of the match? It's essentially the same match, with the same beginning and end, but the Maple Leaf Gardens set-up means they can throw each over the barricade and use the ramp area to brawl, which makes the build to the bladejob a lot better than at Madison Square Garden. Savage's missed double axhandle happens later in the match and is arguably a bigger spot in Toronto. The first half of the match is probably better in New York, but the second half of Toronto fits the bill better and feels like more of a No DQ bout. There's also a difference in the way the matches are shot. The finishing stretch, for example, is shot from the front in New York and from the side in Toronto. When they use a front on shot in Toronto (and I'm assuming it's because of the ramp), it's from a far wider angle than in MSG, similar to the type of shot you see in handhelds. The upshot of all this is that the punch exchange, for example, is more interesting, if not better, in Toronto than it is in New York because of the different angle. The crowd seemed hotter in Canada as well. KB8, you can find it in the usual place.

Sgt.Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik, Championship Wrestling 2/25/84 Sgt.Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik, MSG 4/23/84 Sgt.Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik, MSG 5/21/84 People talk about the Boot Camp match, but the rest of this feud is awesome in its own right. The 5/21 match in particular is an awesome spectacle w/ Slaughter doing a killer bladejob and the incredible bloodsoaked promo at the end where Slaughter gets the crowd to plead allegiance to the flag. The post-match brawl after the April match is sweet as well, especially when you have guys saying, "get your fucking ass out of here, Slaughter." Even their appearance on Regis was awesome.

Tito Santana vs. Greg Valentine, 7/15/87 Tito Santana vs. Greg Valentine, 11/26/88 I became a big fan of the Tito Santana/Greg "the Hammer" Valentine feud during the Smarkschoice WWF poll, so I decided to check out some of their matches from a few years later. The match from '87 isn't a particularly meaningful bout, but there's some of the hard hitting action that I remember from their feud for the Intercontinental championship. This was a few months after The Dream Team broke-up and they do that annoying shit where Brutus is on commentary pretending to be at ringside. Brutus was always incredibly shitty at promos (something I was aware of even when I was a kid) and his delivery on commentary isn't any better. Thankfully, it's a short match. The '88 match is much longer and pretty good actually. It's slow and methodical -- it's a Greg Valentine match, after all -- but if you dig both these guys then you'll find something to like about this match. The only real downer is the typically 80s WWF restholds that they do every now and again, but inbetween that is the usual Tito and Greg brawling and many of the same spots from their IC feud. There's also some cool strength spots on the mat, good use of the shin guard angle Greg was doing at the time, and a nice "moon" spot when Greg shows his ass to Madison Square Garden. Not a classic or anything, but it satisfied the itch I had to watch more of their stuff.

Randy Savage vs. Tito Santana (No DQ), 5/4/86 What was up with the Macho Man and Toronto? In any of the good 1980s WWF feuds, there's likely to be one match where it all comes together, and for Tito and Savage this was that match. For long stretches it was as good as anything from the other territories in the 80s. I'm not sure if I liked it as much as Tito vs. Greg, which I think had better Tito performances, but this was extremely well worked for the sort of bout it was. Being a Savage bout, you can't shake the feeling that blocked it all beforehand, but if that allowed him to concentrate on the performance aspects of wrestling then I don't mind if it feels a little scripted. The finish is kind of hollow, but you have to expect that with a tour match and a stip like this. The WWF didn't have a lot of great wrestling in the 80s, but there was definitely enough there to make a nice little collection. Far more than it was ever given credit for in the past.

I also love the Pillman matches and his TV matches with Arn, but the key to those matches is that they're short. I don't think Windham had the tools to wrestle long television matches. Loss' WCW matchlist has 23 Windham singles matches from '92 and '93, and I'd wager that the biggest factors in whether they're good or not are the length and the performance of his opponent. I don't think he was all that great in leading match or being in control. Stuff like the Scorpio match contradicts that, but that was a short, sharp match. A lot of Windham's bouts meander. A few more matches: Steven Regal & Bobby Eaton vs. Johnny B Badd & Marcus Bagwell (Saturday Night 08/05/95) The Blue Bloods were an excellent tag team who unfortunately didn't have a lot of excellent opposition to face, but for some reason I find Mero and Bagwell likeable despite being cheesy as shit. This was nothing special, but it was fun watching Regal and Eaton work. Nasty Boys vs. Southern Boys (Saturday Night 10/06/90) The Nasty Boys were awesome in their brief stint with WCW in 1990. I wasn't sure how these sides would mesh and I was confused when Ross told me to look for the Nasty Boys to dominate on the mat (did he even know how they worked?), but this was a really solid match and a decent tune-up for the Steiners. After the match is a clip of the contract signing, which was cool too. It's a shame we didn't get more of the Nasty Boys in WCW before they jumped to Titan.

Vader & Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas (Main Event 01/03/93) This looked promising on paper, but it was a real cookie cutter match. Which isn't to say it didn't work; I just have no interest in watching contrived Vader matches where Steamboat sells melodramatically. Steven Regal vs. Johnny B Badd (Main Event 10/10/93) I can't remember whether I watched this program for the Smarkschoice poll or not, but this was better than the other matches I've been watching. The thing I like about Mero is that while he may not have been a good worker, he was always trying things. Sometimes it looked bad (like his strange looking armdrags) and sometimes it was out of synch with either his character or the flow of offence in the match, which may have meant that he was over-extending himself in such cases, but you always got the feeling that he trying to make a fist of it. This was a typical time limit draw, but the rhythm was easygoing and Regal used a lot of his best offence (like his kick ass senton.) No problems with this.

Devil had 20 years as a top level worker, which is pretty remarkable by anyone's standards. The only real criticisms I can think of are her her no-selling (which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't), her Super Heel gimmick, and perhaps the last decade of her career, though I'm not sure we should begrudge her that.