ohtani's jacket

Man, that question for Dave was brilliant. There are some clever people in the world.

The Regal/Larry Z ranking was the one that surprised me the most.

Man, you've got some great WCW matches awfully low. What gives?

IWRG 8/10/09 (taped 8/6) We have a new benefactor on youtube! Los Piratas Barba Roja - Pirata Morgan Jr - Hijo del Pirata Morgan vs Los Terribles Cerebros Cerebro Negro - Dr. Cerebro - Black Terry This was the first time I've bothered to watch Los Piratas, and I must say I approve. They've got matching outfits, matching masks, can wrestle on the mat, brawl when they need to, and more importantly, they've got the right build. Thick and stocky, none of this skinny abs crap. Los Terribles Cerebros have been by far and away the best trios in Mexico this year. Black Terry isn't the worker he was in 2007 or 2008, but the two Cerebros have stepped up to the point where Terry doesn't have to be the workhorse for the team and thus they've become a slick unit. If fact, if it wasn't for Hijo del Pirata Morgan tossing his mask at Terry, Los Terribles Cerebros would've won this in straight falls. That allowed Terry to do some brilliant pleading with the ref and a bunch of awesome finger pointing once the Piratas were awarded the fall, and it's those performance aspects which are really Terry's forte these days. Don't get me wrong, he can still work the mat and still throw a punch, but he's not in the kind of shape he was a few years back. What I liked about the Cerebros' team work here were the finishes. They were classic trios finishes, similar to how lucha was worked back in the days of Los Temerarios. Considering Terry wears the same jacket as his Temerarios days, it's only fitting that his present side work the same way. Classy team work is something that's missing from a lot of trios matches today, not to mention finishes that carry an idea. Watch how well they work the second fall DQ finish. The Piratas were all set to take the second fall, but the Cerebros pushed past the point where the Piratas would usually win the fall. Negro and the Doctor hit topes on the outside, leaving Morgan's kid all alone with Terry. The timing of Morgan's unmasking was perfect, and the look on Terry's face when he realised what had been flung at him was one of those moments that only happen in Black Terry matches. Strong match. I'm looking forward to the revancha. Los Oficiales Oficial 911 - Oficial Fierro - Oficial AK-47 vs La Dinastia de la Muerte Trauma I - Trauma II - Negro Navarro Haven't seen the Oficiales in a while, and more to the point, haven't seen a good Oficiales match since last year. This was a brawl, which was understandable since the semi-final was a long, traditional style match, but the first two falls bored the shit out of me. It was noticeable, however, how much better La Dinastia de la Muerte were at taking the reigns. The Oficiales don't brawl with enough intensity and haven't added anything new to their routine. Fortunately, the match came to life in the third fall when Navarro unleashed an ass kicking on Fierro -- lefts and rights, knees to the head, kicks to the face and head stomps... those Oficial caps were made for head stomps. 911 is clearly the best of the Oficiales and did a cool brawling takedown in this match, but the Oficiales will need to strike a little harder if they're going to make this feud interesting. And when will luchadores realise that you don't go mano a mano with Negro Navarro when the match is on the line? Another awesome submission finish. One pleasing note from this show -- the card was well attended and the crowd were vocal. Good shit.

Sergio El Hermoso & El Bello Greco vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kengo Kimura, New Japan 2/3/89 Oh, man. I'm a huge fan of Fujiwara, so there was no way I could resist watching him work against exoticos. This got over with the crowd better than I thought it would, since there were nowhere near as many gay entertainers in Japan twenty years ago as there are now. There were a couple of genuine laugh out loud moments, and Sergio El Hermoso in particular was fantastic. They worked a pretty simple match around Fujiwara's old New Japan gimmick of having a harder head than the ringpost or the steel behind it. His weakness, as it turns out, is that he doesn't particularly like being kissed by transvestites. I've got to admit that I actually expected Fujiwara to be funnier than he really was, but the exoticos made up for it by being gold. Poor Kengo didn't have much of a personality, though. Jesus. The highlight of the match were the spectacular bumps Sergio took off Fujiwara arm whips. Man were they good. His performance here totally made up for how shitty he was in that WWA tag against Solar and Super Astro. Sergio El Hermoso, you are back in the good books. Sangre Chicana, La Fiera y Mocho Cota vs. Los Infernales (MS-1/Satanico/Espectro Jr.), EMLL 9/30/83 This was a revenge match a week after the famous MS-1/Sangre Chicana hair match, and I don't think I've ever seen a more fired up group of rudos in all my life. Their whole purpose seemed to be to keep the other technicos out of the ring so they could beat the shit out of Chicana. Cota tried making a save one too many times, and the Infernales got stuck into him, giving him a nasty cut over the eye. The cool thing about all this was that MS-1 was staggering around the ring looking for someone to punch, which I don't think he was doing on purpose but made it seem like has having a difficult time controlling himself. The editing and dark picture made this difficult to follow, but this was one of the hottest crowds I've ever heard at Arena Mexico. It may have been the loudest support I've ever heard for a technico comeback, and what I liked about the comeback was that these weren't technicos who point to the crowd and signal they're going to use a closed fist. Guys like Chicana and Cota were at one time or another absolute cunts as rudos, so there was a viciousness to their comeback that you wouldn't ordinarily see from technicos. There were no real winners here, however, and no spoils despite Cota claiming Espectro's mask as a trophy. The post-match scene resembled a battlefield with both sides tending to their fallen. Unfortunately, the match was too short to be anything other than heated. It would've made a good first two falls, but the rudos never got a look in once their ass stomping began and there was never any sort of showdown between MS-1 and Chicana. It felt like their feud had been aborted, and along with it, the entire reason for having such a match. Martín Karadagián vs. La Momia, Titanes en el Ring 1972 OK, so technically this isn't lucha libre, but it's in Spanish so we'll pass it off as a cousin. The only reason I'm writing about this match is because I've never seen a guy play a gimmick better than the guy who played La Momia. Seriously, the guy was incredible. He moved and fought exactly as a mummy should. He even got up like a mummy should whenever he fell over. According to Kurt Brown, Martín Karadagián was the Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan of Titanes en el Ring all rolled into one. He looked a like Rip Rogers if Rip Rogers were Argentinian and had a ginormous nose. He pounded away at La Momia with right hands, but the mummy kept walking into him with big open handed strikes until he could get close enough for a chokehold. This was from a movie, so there were countless inserts of bewildered children. I couldn't really figure out what happened at the end, but there were countless inserts of happy children so I'm guessing Karadagián was the victor.

Dr. Wagner Jr. y Espanto Jr. vs. Celestial y Coloso Man, Espanto Jr. was good. This match confirms what we already knew from the Santo title match -- Espanto Jr. was in the top handful of workers in 1992. Sadly, this match, a couple of other tags, and the two Santo matches, are the only footage that exists of his UWA work, but there's enough evidence to suggest that he's one of the lost workers of the 80s. I know there's people who point to his AAA work, but I don't think he was anywhere near as good in that promotion (an argument I'd make rather strongly about El Hijo del Santo as well.) Wagner, on the other hand, had been in the business since '86, and yet nothing, not even that piece of information, could persuade you from thinking it was his very first match. As far as sons of famous luchadores go, Wagner was one of the all-time worst at this point. Celestial was actually Black Man of Los Fantásticos fame, but you wouldn't know it to look at him, since he did none of his signature spots. In fact, the only good thing he did was a pescado off a Coloso lift. Coloso had the type of build all the technicos want these days and the moveset to match. He did herd Wagner through a cool rope exchange, where he leapt over the top of him and did an awesome mid-air snapmere. That's a move the young guys should crib, since it's such a virtuoso looking throw. The match itself was only really good when Espanto Jr. was in the ring, which is unforunate since it went a good twenty minutes. One guy, no matter how talented he is, can't carry a tag match by himself, so this was another of those half-pie UWA matches that make up most of the existing footage. Can't say the same about this match, however: Espantos IV y V vs. Las Estrellas Blancas This was very good, and a sure fire recommendation for lucha enthusiasts. Traditional tag wrestling is by far the weakest match format in lucha libre, largely because they always try to work a trios style match instead of a Southern style match, but this had all the elements of a good lucha match -- matwork, rope exchanges, bumps, brawling, awesome lucha style submissions, you name it. The heel ref even put one of the Blancas in a wristlock. I'm not sure if the Estrella Blanca here was the original, since luchawiki puts his birth date as 1938 and he kicked so much ass it would make him the greatest 54 year-old technico ever. What I can tell you is that judging by this, the entire Espanto "family" was talented, as these guys smoked a lot of what the other trios combinations were doing in 1992, and that includes the Missioneros, the Brazos, the Villanos and even the Infernales. The third fall was too short for this to truly be great, but they jam packed more well-paced action into five minutes than you'd see in a year's worth of trios matches these days. The execution was a bit sluggish, since most of these guys were over 40, but the spots were glorious by design. They did this awesome tope sequence, where Estrella Blanca II and Espanto IV did topes on opposite sides of the ring. When Espanto IV looked up, he did these fantastic headshakes as the crowd told each other that the other Blancha was heading their way. With both Espantos tope'd out of their boots, the finish was unusually thoughtful for this type of midcard tag. Espanto IV rolled forward in a sunset flip, and held the legs to save the brothers from losing, which set-up a nice mano a mano finish where Estrella Blanca II took a committed face plant off a no-look moonsault. Definitely worth checking out if you're a lucha fan.

El Dandy vs. Emilio Charles Jr., hair vs. hair, CMLL 10/23/93 The most obvious thing about this match is that it's a hair match without any blood. Normally, I'd go on a spiel about how you can't have a hair match without any blood, but I never promised to be fair or consistent with these reviews. This was a great fight and one that carried a bit of extra meaning for me. The great thing about getting into lucha libre is that you have to want to get into lucha libre. There's not that many people who can tell you what to watch, so you have to figure it out for yourself. Everyone has a different entry point and for me it was 1989 CMLL. 1989 was a great year for CMLL and one of the highlights of that year was a lengthy feud between El Dandy and a rudo named Emilio Charles Jr. Emilio was a guy I'd never heard of before, since to this very day he doesn't have a big rep as a worker, but watching those '89 tapes it struck me that Emilio was every bit the worker that Dandy was. Guys like Steve Sims or Kurt Brown, who were lucky enough to watch CMLL in the 80s, point to Pirata Morgan, La Fiera, Negro Casas or Jerry Estrada as workrate guys, but if you watch something like Emilio Charles Jr. vs. Atlantis from '84, you'll see that Emilio was pushing the envelope as much as any of those guys. According to Jose, he was put into Los Destructores to learn the ropes, but if you ask me, CMLL had a diamond in the rough. Dandy's star continued to rise in 1990 and Emilio settled back into trios wrestling. This wasn't that uncommon in the late 80s/early 90s. A guy like Satanico would bide his time in trios until the bookers were ready to use him for another mainevent run. This was how CMLL were able to book so many different hair and title matches, and for the most part it was a successful formula. Somewhere along the way, however, Emilio's body began to break down. I don't know the full story, or if there's even a story, but he was a huge bumper in trios and had a fondness for that high arcing bump over the top rope that Pirata Morgan was so famous for. What I didn't realise until recently is that CMLL brought back the Dandy vs. Emilio feud in a down year. The chance to see a competitive Emilio Charles Jr. match in 1993 was a complete bonus for me. Dandy came to the ring to a remix of I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred that had the lyrics "soy un sexy luchador." Sometimes the down years are greater than the boom years. Emilio had his Andre the Giant hair going on here. His ability to grow his hair out was rivaled only by Mocho Cota. Cota was unbelievable at preparing for hair matches. Seriously, the guy would go from looking like like Shakespearean villain to Dr J in a matter of weeks. The opening fall was pretty standard. There were a number of spots where usually the blood would flow, but for whatever reason Dandy didn't blade. There was plenty of niggle, however. Emilio pulled Dandy's hair in the ropes and straight out of the break Dandy fingered him in the eyes. Emilio won the first fall with the type of simple move that I know bothers a lot of people about lucha, but you have to get into Emilio taunting the crowd to appreciate these type of matches. His fist pumping, chest beating, fnger pointing taunt told the crowd in no uncertain terms who the man was in that fall. The second fall was likewise nothing special, with Dandy taking the most direct approach available to him, which mostly consisted of punching and kneeing Emilio in the face. Dandy did a good job of selling the work Emilio had done on his back, but there was nothing in it in the first two falls. Dandy's crucifix pin to win the fall was beautiful (especially on the replay), and the tone was set a winner takes all third fall. The third fall wasn't the greatest contest I've seen in lucha, but you have to remember how broken down Emilio was by this point. The best parts of this fall came across as a high-end title match and Emilio's selling was fantastic. There was one stretch where Dandy had Emilio in a headlock and it truly looked like Emilio was struggling to breath. The vicious elbow he gave Dandy to break the hold complemented the vibe he was giving off and his selling of Dandy's figure four leglock bordered on the sublime. It didn't matter how slow Emilio had become, he was one tough bastard and the match kicked into high gear when he tope'd Dandy into the second row. The transitions were rough as guts, but so was CMLL in 1993. What I loved about this fall is that both guys wanted the win and they fought to the bitter end. And Emilio fucking won!! I wasn't expecting that at all. How awesome is that? Dandy went for La magistral and Emilio low blowed him while he was in the armbar. He clotheslined Dandy from behind and applied a crucifix pin of his own. Such a brilliant finish. The instant he low blowed Dandy the crowd were aghast. There was a rudo fan sitting in the front row and on the replay you could see that photographers were blocking his view. He sat forward as the ref began to count, and as soon as that hand came down for a third time, he lept into the air and rang his bell for all the arena to hear. Other fans looked like they wanted to rip their tickets up. So there you have it. A competitive Emilio Charles Jr. match in 1993. Maybe not worth its weight in gold, but there really aren't that many great Dandy matches after the Casas feud, so like I said at the top -- it's a bonus.

Pentagon, or at least the guy who played him (Espanto Jr.), was also a really great worker. That's one of my favourite AAA trios.

It seems to me that a CMLL/AAA split would be more likely if Vince were to die. The circumstances that led to Chigusa starting GAEA would be like Steve Austin starting up his own promotion. I don't see that happening in the US market. It's easier to start your own promotion in Japan because everything is run out of Tokyo.

A better question is why in the hell wouldn't Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson hate each other? That's a Sam and Dave situation if ever I heard one.

Los Infernales (El Satanico/MS-1/Masakre) vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr./La Fiera/Tony Salazar, CMLL 1987 When I say "Classic Infernales," I really mean older footage of the Infernales in action, since Pirata Morgan had already left the group by this stage. Nevertheless, the Masakre version was a good team in its own right, and this was an awesome Southern style tag match. The Infernales were fantastic as Southern heels -- backing into the ref when the technicos wanted to duke it out, attacking from behind when the technicos turned their backs. Each of the technicos took turns playing FIP, and there were long stretches of two-on-one brawling, but not once did I feel like I was watching a sluggish opening fall. A lot of modern brawling relies on video editing to prevent it from being static, but the Infernales had an endless array of shit they could do to to keep a match ticking over. La Fiera was the best of the technicos here, but he was carrying a leg injury into the match. This was back when Fiera used a lot of high kicks. Needless to say, the Infernales saw an opportunity. The Little Master was in his element here. Some of the holds he put Fiera in, and Fiera's selling, made this worth including on a Best of the 80s set. After a fall and a half of rudo treatment, Rayo snapped into a babyface pose. There was a tremendous pop for Rayo, but unfortunately most of the workers were scattered at ringside. Rayo had to go to the floor to dish out his haymakers, which kind of killed things for the audience on the far side, but Satanico flung himself head first into the ring post for those of us at home. Back in the ring, the technicos cut loose. The Infernales did the most awesome punch drunk selling off whips into the turnbuckle. The contest was on to see who could collapse in the most entertaining fashion, and MS-1 may have been the winner. His unicycle act was incredible. Exaggerated bumps were a big part of 80s lucha, but looked awful when technicos did them. Kurt Brown told a great story the other day about how Dusty Rhodes flipped out the first time he saw Pimpinela Escarlata live. I think Big Dust would've lost it over most lucha if he'd had the opportunity to see it more often. If you think Arn Anderson was good at comic stooge bumping, the Infernales made an art form out of it. Fiera's offence was hot on the heels of The Karate Kid, Part II and straight-to-video kickboxing movies, but fuck me, you HAVE TO SEE his KO of Masakre on the outside. Really good match. Could've used a third fall, but it had a nice mano a mano finish between the captains MS-1 and Rayo de Jalisco Jr. I'd put it on the level of the trios leading into Satanico/Dandy, Dandy/Casas and Santo/Casas despite Rayo vs. MS-1 being a lesser feud.

Misawa and Kawada, though from what I hear that was from much from Misawa's side.

Why are Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero on the list when realistically Villano III stands no chance of being voted in?

Lizmark vs. Jerry Estrada, Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship, AAA 6/18/93 I hate Jerry Estrada. He's probably my least favourite lucha worker of all time. To me he's like the anti-Sangre Chicana. Sangre Chicana was out of his mind the entire time and took it to surreal heights. Jerry Estrada was out of his mind the entire time and was a train wreck. But like him or not, this was one hell of a match. By far the most coherent performance I've seen from Jerry Estrada and also the best Lizmark performance to ever make tape. It may even be the 1993 MOTY, and if it's not the greatest AAA match ever, it's certainly in the top five. Lizmark was brilliant in the first fall. This wasn't CMLL style, Satanico vs. Gran Cochisse or El Dandy vs. Javier Llanes matwork, so don't expect anything mindblowing like that. It wasn't the holds or matwork that impressed me here, but the psychology. Anybody who thinks lucha has no psychology, hasn't watched the right matches. Estrada played the challenger role to perfection. He tried everything he could think of to gain an advantage, but the maestro was on top of his game. Every time there was a break in the action, Estrada would stare Lizmark down. He couldn't believe how well Lizmark was wrestling. He tried changing tack, tried changing the point of attack, but Lizmark had a counter for everything. They used to call Lizmark The Little Blue Genius, and if you watch this match you'll get some idea why. He wrestled most of this fall from a defensive stance, standing ever so slightly on the back foot. This meant that whenever Jerry charged at him, he could use Estrada's own momentum to counter his offence. Jerry, as retador, was just a little bit guilty of forcing the action, and Lizmark was able to tie him in circles. The second fall was your typical two minute fall where the challenger strikes back straight away. Jerry was bumped for this fall and they started off by shoulder charging each other. Lizmark wouldn't back down from the challenge and sent Estrada to the floor with a flying headscissors. I haven't seen any of the trios leading into this match, but I can only imagine there was tension between the two. After dominating the first fall, Lizmark let his guard down and was suckered into working a rudo fall. Jerry leveled the score, and from the way he kicked the bottom turnbuckle, it was clear that he wasn't finished yet. The third fall was the type of fall that separates the great matches from everything else. It's not often that a third fall does justice to a match, so you have to sit back and admire this one. Estrada threw away the "retador" tag here and began working rudo, which I suppose is an effective way to deal with a counter wrestler like Lizmark. He can't counter much of anything if he's getting the shit beaten out of him. Lizmark tried some counter-offence and ended up sailing through the ropes, which set-up a tope from Estrada. It wasn't the fastest or nastiest looking tope I've seen, but if you've seen a better set-up than that from the current lot of workers, you are lying to yourself. The last few minutes with full of drama as Lizmark hung onto his title reign by a thread. They worked some great nearfall submissions, where Lizmark had to power his way out of the holds with all of his upper body strength. One of the ways to judge a match is by its arc, i.e. how far they've come since the opening bell. Lizmark was so smooth, so assured in the opening fall, but now he was scrambling. Time and time again, he avoided Estrada's Media Cerrajera hold, countering with a high risk gamble. He was sucking wind on a bridged suplex and at other times could barely pin the man. It's not every day of the week where you see a match where they lay it on the line like this. I won't spoil the finish. The tension was palpable and neither of them had anything left. It could've gone either way and the post-match was tremendous. The selling was fantastic the whole way through and perhaps my disdain for Estrada stems from his hair matches. If you'd like a copy of this, leave a message somewhere.

Enrique Vera vs. Dos Caras, UWA World Heavyweight Championship, 2/26/84 (slightly clipped) Dos Caras is a great wrestler. One of the finest to ever step foot inside a squared circle. But this isn't a great example of his work. The difference between Caras and workers like Lizmark and Solar is that Caras was a heavyweight, which meant he had to work from a dominant or standing position. Guys like Lizmark could zip around, but Caras had to maintain the illusion that he was difficult to take off his feet. He also worked the 70s NWA heavyweight style -- a style UWA honoured until the very end. This was similar to the 1992 heavyweight match between Caras and Canek; a slow building match, where matwork gives way to increasingly dangerous moves. There's a certain charm in watching wrestling where a carefully executed piledriver can put people out of commission, but there wasn't enough artistry here. It started off with the usual armlocks and grapevines, holds that peg your opponent to the mat and let him know he's not going anywhere; but the thing about Caras is that once he got into his mat sequences, there's never been a worker in the history of lucha libre with as many mindblowing holds as Dos Caras. He worked a few holds here -- holds that would blow away most workers' repertoire -- but as great as they were, they just seemed like standard fare from a guy as legendary as Dos Caras. It wasn't clear from watching this whether Vera was ever a good worker. He made his debut in '68 and was still quite young here (35), but his knees were taped and he didn't appear to be moving well. He wasn't as clumsy as Alfonso Dantés in his All Japan match against Mil Máscaras, but he was pretty ordinary. He looked as though he was cut from the same cloth as Ray Mendonza; big, strong, wearing wrestling tights and a pair of boots, but showed almost nothing on the mat, which is unusual for a Diablo Velazco student. He may have been a brawler turned technical wrestler, or perhaps he was better in the 70s, but in any event he was a disappointment. The other problem with the match is that it was technico vs. technico, which oftentimes is too polite. Caras was somewhat aggressive with the title in his sights, but for the most part this was pretty spineless. I do, however, recommend the Caras brothers' fight against Wahoo McDaniel and Frank Hill from 1979, which is anything but spineless! It's on youtube. Check out the chops.

There was never really an AJW split. The Matsunagas went bankrupt, couldn't pay the workers anymore and there was an exodus.

I caught WWE while switching channels the other day and what the fuck is with Hardy's facepaint?

I gotta take back what I said about Heenan awhile back. I've been watching a ton of WCW with the Smarkschoice poll running down and he really wasn't that bad, at least in his first year with WCW.

Negro Navarro, Trauma I, Trauma II vs. Black Terry, Cerebro Negro, Fantasma de la Opera, 7/9/09 I dunno what's been going on with IWRG lately, but there hasn't been any TV available and this is the first match I've seen in almost a month. Things got off to the worst start possible really, when Navarro called Fuerza out on the house mic. This led to some group conference over an angle I haven't been following, while the match time became shorter and shorter. Fuerza said his piece, the Cerebros + Fantasma got the jump on Dinasta Navarro, and we were away! Talk about your false starts -- the ref and the timekeeper ought to have called them back because this was the worst caida I've seen all year and that's covering an awful lot of territory. At this point, I was kinda worried that this angle -- whatever the fuck it is -- had ruined the only promotion I give a damn about these days, but something SENSATIONAL happened in the second fall. It happened towards the end of the fall when Navarro said "fuck this shit" and started throwing punches. The mark of a great worker is whether he can stem the tide, and this match was going nowhere until Navarro brought it to life. Terry's selling was fantastic -- everything you'd want from a 56 year-old guy selling like a 56 year-old guy, and the Traumas got stuck in with knee strikes. The refs tried lecturing the Navarros over their tactics, but Negro was so pissed that he had one of them flinching in the corner. We don't usually think of Navarro as a great actor, but he looked like every member of the Dirty Dozen rolled into one. Terry's blood pressure was soaring in the third fall and he had a chippy little exchange with Trauma II that left IWRG with no alternative but to book them in a singles match. Trauma I finally looked convincing in his role as the one who got all of Negro's size, and while strikes and submission attempts aren't to everyone's taste, but this was manly. The only way it could've been more manly is if Terry had told Trauma II to keep his lovin' brother happy. Watching this again, it wasn't quite as exciting as I'm making out, but it's pulp drama. The kind of rag you read once and throw away. But mark my words, one of these days Terry and Navarro are gonna have the showdown to end all showdowns.

Gotta say I'm enjoying the reviews Loss. Panther/Love Machine matches are never good outside of some of their trios work. Takada was a crap shoot style worker and UWFi was the worst of the shoot style promotions. Occasionally, Takada had a good match with one of the natives further down the totem pole, just like Yamazaki occasionally delivered in the midcard, but RINGS and early PWFG smoke it for quality.

I read the whole Matsunaga obit. It was OK as an overview, but Dave tends to generalise a lot. I appreciate that he took the time to write the obit (since I hadn't even heard about it in the Japanese news), but it read more like the obit he wrote for the company when they closed. Would've liked a bit more insight into the Matsunagas themselves, but I guess Dave's Japan connections aren't that strong anymore with the weekly magazines folding. There's more he could've written about the way they ran the company, etc. He was way off the mark about a lot of stuff, especially the "success" of Big Egg Universe, the old line that Sato wasn't a good worker, the lesbian references, the workers post-retirement profiles, the stuff he wrote about Kyoko Hamaguchi and so on.

Doesn't really fit your criteria, since he was a good worker, but it has to be Super Porky. His hair match with fellow slob Asesino Negro was mindblowing.

I guess that's an apt comparison, though Jaguar may be more famous now than she was in her prime. Dave always forgets that Jumbo had that period where he was the biggest pro-wrestling star in Japan.

True. I'm not sure what Dave is talking about really, since Bull was still heavily protected during the 90s boom and was still one of the top stars. Almost every AJW show in that era began with Bull addressing the crowd. It was pretty clear that she was still a top dog. Smart girl really. Got out of the business at exactly the right time and never looked back. If there was ever an MVP in wrestling, it was Bull Nakano from Chigusa's retirement in '89 up until the first Dream Slam in '93.

Matsunaga died? Dave's sentence should read "didn't have the TV to set business records."