ohtani's jacket

I totally forgot about the Plum Mariko/Commando Bolshoi submission match from the 1/15 JWP show. What an awesome undercard match that was. By the same token, I loved the hell out of Kyoko/Takako from the AJW 1/24 show.

I really dug not only this but everything about OZ Academy that year, from the Amano pledging angle to all their matches in GAEA. 1996 was the high point of Ozaki's career, IMO.

Wasn't it something Meltzer said about her when discussing the people on the WON HOF ballot?

Aja was a Dump clone at first. It was something she shed over time, though she never really ditched it completely. But by the same token Dump was a Monster Ripper clone.

Jake Roberts/The Barbarian vs. Ron Simmons/Barry Windham, WCW Saturday Night 9/26/92 Another awful match. Roberts was already starting to look pretty rough by the time he showed up in WCW and his ring work was abysmal. As good as WCW was in 1992, it took a dive in the second half of the year. This got the "skip ahead" treatment and didn't look good at any point. Ricky Steamboat vs. Barry Windham, WCW Saturday Night 1/9/93 God almighty was this boring. There's a thread over at DVDVR where people are trying to say that Windham and Steamboat are universally praised workers; well come over and spin this. If the second half of '92 took a nosedive, then '93 was the beginning of one big long rut. Steamboat and Windham aren't the type to easily mesh in singles, but Barry was the king of the boring ass singles matches and this was yet another example of Steamboat not working to the storyline. This was the semi finals of the number one contender tournament for the US title and Ross was trying to sell it as a grudge match between Windham and Steamboat over what Barry did to Dustin. Could've fooled me because it looked like any old Steamboat or Windham match to me. This also got the skip forward treament and I had the pleasure of watching everyone who was involved in the poorly booked feuds at the time running in to remind us that A is feuding with B.

I'm surprised you didn't include the Rayo/Dantes match on this set. One of the best lucha matches of the 90s (in my opinion, anyway.)

Brian Pillman & Larry Zbyszko vs. Arn Anderson & Bobby Eaton, WCW Saturday Night 8/8/92 In theory this should've been awesome since Zbyszko was looking for a measure of revenge and paid for his troubles, but Jesus Christ is this a boring match. One of the worst WCW matches I've ever see. Ross just drones on and on.

Don't you think the Valentine/Backlund draw from 79 is the best WWF match of all time? That doesn't mean they're not a bad idea in general. I think strap matches are a bad idea too, but that didn't stop me from putting Vader/Sting number one on the WCW poll. I really don't think the one hour All Japan and All Japan women matches from this time were good and I don't see how anyone would want to see them go an hour in those styles. In fact, I would argue that they were part of the reason both companies went downhill.

Barry Windham, Dustin Rhodes & Ricky Steamboat vs. Greg Valentine, Dick Slater & The Barbarian (Worldwide 08/29/92) Valentine, Slater and The Barbarian, how's that for a trios? This was too short to be anything special, but all six guys are pretty workers so it was fun while it lasted. Would've liked to have seen this get the "Kip Frey" treatment. Ric Flair vs. Bill Irwin, Power Hour 9/29/89 For some reason, I like watching the short TV matches Flair had before jumping to Titan. If you've never seen this, you're not missing much, but this was pretty good as far as this sort of thing goes. The short television match is something of an art form and difficult to do well (sort of like short films in cinema), and there's just enough offence from Irwin to make this work. Flair's stuff doesn't look all that great in this particularly outing but they manage to pack a lot into a short time and give it a decent sort of an arc. The structure was better than the above match. Babyface Flair isn't all that interesting, however.

The last time I watched this I thought it was better than people make out, but that was a long time ago. It doesn't really matter how good it was, however, since it was supposed to be the match of the 90s and they fucked up the whole approach. I've got to call bollocks on there being better one hour matches, though. All of the one hour matches from around this time are wretched. One hour matches are just a bad idea in general.

Lord Steven Regal vs. Terry Taylor, WCW Saturday Night 1/1/94 Quite a decent match this. I'm not overly familiar with Terry Taylor as a worker, so I'm not sure how it relates to his prime, but aside from some awkward moments here and there, it struck me as pretty much a pre-cursor to the Zbyszko match. A nice contrast between Regal's Japanese influenced European style and Taylor's more traditional US style stuff. The finishing stretch was really cool. Barry Windham vs. Steven Regal, Worldwide 4/17/93 I can't remember whether I watched this for the Smarkschoice poll or not, but anyway Regal appeared to be a face here and it was kind of interesting to see him use his European uppercuts and forearm smashes as babyface comebacks instead of heel moves. Barry was the NWA heavyweight champ at this point, so it was essentially a Barry Windham match with him calling it. All in all, they meshed better than I expected. Dick Slater & Dick Murdoch vs. Dustin Rhodes & Robert Gibson, The Main Event 8/11/91) It's too bad the Hard Liners were such a short lived team as that combination of Murdoch and Slater is pretty appealing. This match existed solely for Ricky Morton to do a run-in and attack Robert Gibson, just as so many other WCW matches existed solely for a run-in, but it was pretty fun while it lasted. You can't go past that heel team. Rick & Scott Steiner vs. Arn Anderson & Barry Windham, The Main Event 6/24/90 Same formula as above, minus the run-in which was replaced by some outside interference from Ole. The Horsemen looked good like you'd imagine, but it was one of those matches where it's so cut and dried as a throwaway TV match that your biggest impression of the match is something random (in this case, the size difference between Windham and Rick Steiner.)

I forgot to mention the really odd thing that happened in the 6-man where Funk had a confrontation with a fan who kept saying "punk, punk, punk" over and over again. Weird. The Patriot vs. Lord Steven Regal, WCW Saturday Night 2/26/94 The Patriot vs. Lord Steven Regal, WCW Main Event 3/20/94 Now THIS is why you do an ongoing WCW thread. The Sat night match is a non-title return match from Patriot's debut, where he took Regal to the television time limit. The cool thing about it is that Regal works it like a New Japan tour match instead of a studio taping. Right from the get go, he's throwing nastier strikes than usual and they work this tight little match that's similar to Regal's matches with Hashimoto (complete with cauliflower-inducing matwork and nose shattering uppercuts.) The Main Event match is nowhere near as good, and Bischoff and Jesse have any ongoing bet that's really distracting, but there's still some quality wrestling on show. The Sat Night match is the one you want to watch, though. Lots of fantastic stuff in that match, from Wilkes as well as Regal.

Cool, I'll check out the Arn/Steamboat match later. Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat vs.Arn Anderson/Bunkhouse Buck, WCW Main Event 9/4/94 Sting/Rhodes/Steamboat vs. Funk/Anderson/Buck, WCW Main Event 9/11/94 These were disappointing considering they were part of the Studd Stable feud. The first match had an uncharacteristically weak performance from Steamboat and the second match is like watching guys brawl in a Royal Rumble match. Sting & Dustin Rhodes vs. Arn Anderson & Bunkhouse Buck, WCW Main Event 11/6/94 This was meaningless filler before the Clash with Dustin vs. Vader and Sting tagging with Hogan for the first time. Completely forgettable.

Inspired by the Forgotten Good Workers/"Hey I Thought This Guy Was Supposed To Suck?" thread and the ghost of the Smarkschoice project. Dustin Rhodes vs. Arn Anderson, WCW Main Event 8/28/94 This was an enjoyable teaser for War Games. Dustin came out all bandaged up, looking to lay a beating on Arn. He was on auto pilot a bit, which is something Dustin was prone to doing, but Arn was his usual consummate self. It's amazing how much Arn bothered even on tapings like this. They basically worked they type of match you'd have in the opening two-to-five minutes of a War Games match, though it was a notch or two down on the type of intensity they'd bring to an actual War Games match. After stooging for a while and doing the type of punch drunk selling that rivaled Terry Funk, we got a nice stretch of Arn on offence before the Colonel and Meng got involved. The finish was the usual "order to the PPV" finish, but it did involve Ricky Steamboat trying to scare the heels away with his torch. This was slightly comical, but you've got to love how committed to the cause Steamboat was. If they told him to scare off the heels with the torch, he went and did it. Meng stared down the flame. Probably would've been more badass if he'd swallowed the flame and put it out. Okay for what it was.

Haven't checked in on my favourite mat worker for a while. This may come as a shock, but he's still wrestling Solar. Negro Navarro vs. Solar, Ultimo Dragon Produce, 7/19/10 Negro Navarro vs. Solar, AAA Arena Neza, 1/8/11 It was interesting watching these back-to-back. The Korakuen Hall bout was their typical touring match which we've seen them do in Japan before, while the match from Nezahualcoyotl was a lucha libre title match for the belt Navarro holds. On the surface, it seems like the Arena Neza match is the more serious of the two because it's a title match being wrestled in Mexico, but a closer look at both matches reveals that this is not really the case. In fact, the only real difference between the two is that one is pro shot and the other is a handheld. The crowd has more of a hum about it in Mexico, whereas the Japanese fans are happy to sit back and watch the match and laugh at "chotto matte" jokes, but that doesn't appear to have any impact on how they work the matches. For all intents and purposes, they're the same match. At first glance, the Neza match appears to be all business, but I think that has a lot to do with the uploader editing out the parts where Navarro and Solar play to the crowd. You could maybe argue that there are less holds and that they're held for longer, but the matches basically build to the same finish in exactly the same way. Whether this means they've tweaked their touring match, I'm not sure, but these guys are pretty much tireless when it comes to adding new variations to the holds they work. There was one awesome stretch in the Tokyo match where they started out doing a Dos Caras-like submission, hooked each other on the mat with leglocks around the head, and turned this contortionist act into a Fujiwara-like chinlock submission. Quite the gauntlet. Neither match was what you'd call a traditional lucha libre singles match (with a three fall structure and proper arc), but they did have a throughline (what you'd call the theme of the work, if you were to think about a match in literary terms.) Solar and Navarro are often accused of being "exhibitiony," but I think it's the finishes that hurt them more their tendencies to give up or release a hold. I'm not sure why they keep short-changing us on the finish. There's no reason that I can think of why there can't be a winner. When you finish a match the way they do here (it was a double pin in both matches), you pretty much consign things to the "that was a nice bit of wrestling" basket. It really takes the wind out of a match's sails, because there's no way that you can really say you saw a match, with all the connotations that implies. On the other hand, it's a bit like those maestro tags, where you just have to accept that they're never going to be worked with a satisfying match structure. Unnecessary finishes aside, I enjoyed both these matches. The Nezahualcoyotl match wasn't quite as special as I thought it was before I had the bright idea to compare it to the Korakuen bout (which was very good for a lucha in Japan match, I must add), so that takes it down a few points in terms of the best of 2011, but it really is amazing that these guys are still wrestling at such a high level ten years after they started this junket. Negro Navarro/Black Terry vs El Apache/Angel Mortal, IWRG, 1/9/11 Negro Navarro/Black Terry vs El Apache/Angel Mortal, IWRG, 1/16/11 Speaking of maestro tags, these are the matches that are getting everyone excited in the small lucha indy community on the net. A few years back, maestro tags were the high point of the lucha year because of how difficult it was to get indy footage (think Terry/Navarro vs. Mano Negra/Solar), but with more footage available it's been easier to become critical. Most of the maestro stuff in recent times has struck me as a waste of talent because of the way everyone not named Solar or Negro Navarro is reduced to a passenger, as well as the refusal to swap partners and work a proper match with shifts in momentum, overlapping falls, and all the rest. But these were interpromotional maestro tags; a fact which managed to breathe new life into an old dog. The difference between the first tag and other matches that BTjr has shot is plain to see. One of my biggest complaints about maestro tags (at least the Solar/Navarro ones) is that there's nothing to tie the falls together; no through line to give the matches any sort of focus. The reason for this is that they forgo the traditional lucha structure of overlapping the falls, whereby the momentum from one fall carries over into the next, leading to a turning point in the present fall where momentum shifts back the other way. Since lucha is ultimately a back and forth, 50/50 style of working, this toing and froing helps build overall momentum in the match, leaving it unclear who's going to win heading into the third. In theory, anyway. The through line here was pretty simple -- the worker's competitive instincts boiling over (or however you want to describe it) -- but they executed it fairly well. I wouldn't say it was worthy of excessive praise, but I was pleased that they shifted from Terry/Apache and Navarro/Mortal to Apache/Navarro and Terry/Mortal and back again. There's nothing worse than watching these matches and seeing guys seagull on the apron. The only gripe I had with the way they worked the match was the finish. I'm not the first person to mention this, but it really was stupid. Forgetting for a moment the miscommunication spot between the AAA guys (since there was a revancha instead of them not teaming again), the reason for the aggression in the match was because Navarro was behaving like a bastard gym teacher. Watch how he behaves when he squares off with Apache to start the second caida. Maybe it's just me, but as soon as Apache retaliates to let Navarro know that they can grapple too (essentially), the AAA guys automatically become the technicos to me and not some outside rudos. Terry's comeback was (or rather would have been) a decent finish, but I actually think the AAA guys should've won, which would've added more fuel to the fire and been earnt in my eyes. Still, it didn't really matter because the revancha was awesome. The first fall was a neat "let's forget the last match happened and start again" fall and finishes with a reminder that the last match did happen when Apache and Mortal lose again. The second fall is the lucha equivalent of hitting below the belt in a title fight; well, luchadores do hit below the belt in some title fights, but what I really mean is that there are unwritten laws in lucha about how you work a hold and the parts of the body you target and the AAA guys were purposefully shitty in the second fall. As for the third fall, it was as good as any Terry brawl since I started taking notice of his stuff three or four years ago. Terry's a good mat worker, an excellent mat worker even, but as a brawler he may very well the best of all-time. The only guy who'd give him a run for his money (and I'm talking about in lucha here) would be Sangre Chicana. Other guys have been better at doing the brawling, but it's Terry's selling that sets him apart. Most people who read this blog are going to go ahead and watch this match on youtube anyway (or already have), so I won't go into great detail describing what Terry does, but the whole thing reminded me of the intro to the Lee Van Cleef spaghetti western The Big Gundown. Just an epic piece of violence.

Really? Interesting. So you're not likely to youtube a match that you might have seen people discussing, because it's a one-off? I can see the point. If one jumps from AJPW 1994 to RAW 1994 (or vice versa), it would be a pretty big culture shock. But then once you get used to the flow, you can appreciate better what's happening. The match works better in context of a worker's development or an ongoing angle or a direction the whole company is taking. What I find is that if I youtube something that I haven't watched a lot of in recent times, it tends to annoy the shit out of me. 90s Joshi is a perfect example. I honestly believe that to enjoy Joshi you have to get into the rhythm of how the workers work (the flow of the match, the way they sell, the saving your partner and breaking up pins, the long finishing stretches, etc.) If you haven't watched it for awhile, it's tough to get back into the swing. The end result (for me anyway) is that I end up hating something I might have tolerated had I watched a whole batch of it. Having said that, sometimes tastes change for unknown reasons. I used to always hate Southern tag teams (don't ask me why, I just did), but when we did the WCW poll the Midnight Express etc. finally clicked for me. I can't explain why.

I enjoy flip-flopping on wrestlers on a weekly basis, but the conclusion I've come to is that you have to be into the rhythm of whatever you're watching. Whenever I watch a big batch of stuff for a poll, I always have an easier time getting into a style/company than if I'm just watching a one-off match where I may not be in the right mood. With that in mind, recent shifts would be enjoying Inoki and Choshu's work on the NJPW set (with some reservations) and realising, for the first time, that Fujinami was a first class worker. With the WCW poll over at Smarkschoice, Arn stood out as a far better singles worker than people gave him credit for in the early 90s. I also grew to like Steamboat more than ever before after watching all the Dangerous Alliance stuff. That's a little boring, though, so I'll throw Marcus Alexander Bagwell out there as a tolerable guy when he first hit the scene. With my shootstyle thread, Carl Greco is my favourite discovery, but that's not really a flipped opinion. I also have a European wrestling thread, and as far as that goes I'm past the point of being excited over Johnny Saint and Marc Rocco. Regarding lucha, I'd pick Perro Aguayo and Los Hermanas Dinamita as workers I like more than I ever did before (particularly Universo 2000.) As for guys I like or have liked in the past who I'm down on -- Owen Hart's stock continues to drop for me (I was a huge Owen fan growing up), Regal's WCW TV run is a world of disappointment, I don't like a lot of Finlay's Euro stuff once he shacks up with Princess Paula, I think El Hijo del Santo is overrated, and I don't like Negro Casas' work from around '98 onwards.

I liked all of Sting and Regal's matches even if none of them are great. It always surprises me how good Sting is on the mat in these matches. Folks are better off watching all three matches from this angle, as well as the slap that set the whole thing up. Such a great nothing angle.

The Dustin/Cactus Jack feud was from '92. Dustin's 1993 started out with his Windham feud being reduced to houseshows and a couple of non-satisfying TV matches and never recovered from there. From memory, his best match was a TV bout against Rude during their awful feud.

JWP was backed at first by a sort of talent agent company who were in the business of promoting idols. They were trying to capitalise on All Japan Women's success with idol wrestlers, but lost money from the beginning. Meltzer mentioned in the Observers Loss typed up that JWP was already bankrupt in 1988 (WON 12/12/88.) Their backers went bankrupt in '92.

Mexico.

Junior.

In defence of Bobby, I really love his line about the fan not lasting long, which is particularly funny in the Lebron James version.

Recently, I've been digging Miguel Pérez. Does he ever get his dues?

Schiavone and Jesse are my favourite WCW announcing pair. I never really felt he gelled with Bobby right from the get go, but it's a damn shame that Schiavone became so loathed during the Monday Night Wars.