ohtani's jacket

I'm afraid that swings both ways. For every wrestler or fan who is ultimately embarrassed by being associated with something as inherently silly as pro-wrestling, there's a person who derides pro-wrestling as being inherently silly and not worthy of being legitimised or made credible. Your argument may be true, but the whole Sakuraba angle was based on him legitimising Japanese fighting, which the fans and media ate up. The whole Sakuraba thing is simple. If you take a guy who was doing worked shoots and make him a star doing MMA fights, aside from the angle that you spin on it, it doesn't matter what he does in the ring. It could be real, it could be fake, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that he drew pro-wrestling fans and new fans to a different sort of promotion. People in this thread are advocating a guy who did 3-5 minute matches that consisted mostly of body checks. The fact that Big Daddy did works is not part of his candidacy. His matches, for the most part, are irrelevant. If a guy can get into the hall for being a huge draw and being good on the mic then a special case like Sakuraba or Funaki is not a stretch of the imagination when the business works differently in Japan than it does from the US. Whether Lesnar is the same sort of case is up for debate. Let's say a mediocre wrestler goes into boxing and wins a title. That in itself is not grounds for being in a pro-wrestling HOF. But if pro-wrestling people put him into boxing and manage him to stardom, then it gets a little blurry. If Vince started up his own boxing promotion or latched onto it somehow, and started sending his workers in to do real fights, people's heads would explode.

I wouldn't vote for him. Politics, for the most part, is unrelated to pro-wrestling. MMA is related.

Sakuraba worked a far more legit style. It's highly unlikely that Sakuraba would've been a success at shoots if he'd been a deathmatch worker. Eh, I think it's a stretch to say that Severn was a pro-wrestler. Shamrock dabbled in it but was more or less unknown as a pro-wrestler before 1997. It's highly unlikely that Tamura will ever get in the HOF, but he'd be a stronger candidate in Dave's eyes if he'd been a more high profile MMA fighter. Right, and I'm saying it doesn't matter whether it's pro-wrestling or not. The entire foundation of pro-wrestling was based on the idea that you took something that was supposedly legit and fixed it so that you could control the outcome and make money. But when a promoter comes along and takes something rigged and makes it real, people balk. Why? It's simply an off-shoot. The fact that in Japan, and even the US, you had guys switching between the two ought to tell you something. This type of argument would only work if WCW did worked basketball games. C'mon, Tamura switched between shoots and works long before Maeda went full time with shoots. Are you telling me he had a split personality? The only real difference between Tamura the worker and Tamura the fighter was that Tamura the worker was a hell of a lot more exciting than Tamura the fighter. Apart from Inoki and UWF? That's a fairly large chunk of Japanese pro-wrestling history. And an important chunk too. What's more, worked shoots go back further than Inoki in Japan. It depends how you look at it. Too many people define pro-wrestling based on the fact that it's fake, but in essence it's a type of fight promoting where you control the outcome. Pro-wrestling belongs in the same fight promoting categories as boxing and MMA. They overlap in numerous ways and why people can't accept that they're in the same business is beyond me. They're all trying to draw crowds, sell merchandise and get people to order pay-per-views on the basis of draws, cards and fights.

It's not irrelevant. The problem here is that people think there's some sort of sweeping critera that covers every candidate. Each candidate is different. Whatever their background is, it will play a part in their overall candidacy. If they have a legit athletic background more power to them. Someone should tell Dave that Big Daddy was a rugby league player. Don't be stupid. His matches were more legit than Onita's. Shamrock and Severn wouldn't pushed as pro-wrestlers doing MMA. If Tamura had been a bigger success in MMA, he'd be an ideal candidate for the Hall. Are you telling me Tamura stopped being a pro-wrestler when RINGS turned to shoots? A large chunk of Japanese pro-wrestling history is based on faking worked shoots, to say that it's not pro-wrestling anymore if they do shoots is ridiculous. No-one in Japan saw it that way, because they genuinely believed that Inoki had pioneered it decades before. It was not a giant leap for mankind. Too many people look at the difference between WWE and UFC and hold that as the distinction between pro-wrestling and MMA, but in Japan the lines are blurred because of the worked shoot movement that began in the 1980s. Dave has a lot of fair points about MMA being pro-wrestling.

He was the biggest pro-wrestling star in Japan this decade. Whether he did this by working shoots or works is irrelevant. Amateur wrestling wouldn't consider professional careers because an amateur hall is concerned with success at the amateur level, not drawing power and the business side of things. Pro-wrestling is concerned with whatever draws, which in the earlier part of this decade in Japan was PRIDE.

Lesnar will be on the ballot and it won't surprise me one iota if he gets in.

Absolutely. We're talking about a HOF where an amateur background carries weight, particularly if you went to the Olympics. If that carries weight, then so too should a successful MMA career, especially if you were billed as a pro-wrestler, drew as a pro-wrestler and attracted long time pro-wrestling fans to shows that were essentially promoted as pro-wrestling. Whether PRIDE was a work or shoot never mattered in Japan. Sakuraba spent his pro-wrestling career trying to create the illusion that his matches were shoots. To say he was no longer a pro-wrestler when he joined DSE is silly. If he hadn't been successful, he probably would've wound up back in pro-wrestling. He was a cross-over star. He wasn't a judo-ka or a rikishi.

Sakuraba should be in the HOF and so should Funaki. I can't understand the argument that as soon as you do shoots you are no longer a pro-wrestler. There is no delineation whatsoever. If a MMA guy does a work is he a pro-wrestler? No, he's an MMA fighter doing works.

Territory seems a bit misleading. He was a national draw. It's a little different from saying someone drew in Calgary or Memphis or Mexico City.

The resistance to Big Daddy is that he was an attrocious worker. In every other sense, he was a HOF level candidate. I have no idea if he was a better worker in the late 50s/early 60s, but he was 46 when he first got the Big Daddy push and a super heavyweight. His whole gimmick was based on a camp ring entrance with a Seekers song, a union jack hat and a whole bunch of other stuff that seems hokey now but was relevant to the times. England went through a major recession from 1979-81.

Not really. How many national TV channels were there in Japan in Rikidozan's, Inoki's and Baba's heydays? Or in America and Mexico when wrestling first appeared on TV there? Not many! That's exactly the point. There's a lot of stuff that did monster ratings when television first began to spread. It's something you have to keep in perspective.

Joint Promotions featured all manner of workers and wrestling styles. To make out that every match was worked in the George Kidd style is misleading. The vast majority of the workers had gimmicks -- technical worker is a gimmick itself. There were gimmick matches, angles and spots. A ton of spots. It's not as though it was Memphis or anything, but it was pro-wrestling through and through. You only have to watch the WOS starting where they do a comedy intro to realise that the Johnny Saint style (or whatever it is that people identify British wrestling with) was part of a larger show. If you watch the catchweight matches, it opens your eyes to the booking side of JP. I dunno, to me it's like pimping AAA's hot period and ignoring what was on top.

The three channels part is pretty significant.

I don't understand where Dave's British readers are coming from. The last two sentences aren't true at all.

Man, I wouldn't pay that much to watch the WWE.

To hell with this, Dave is awesome. I wanna see how good this gets. Big Daddy was a summer lifeguard y'know.

I don't think there's been a massive upswing in appraisal of Rayo, Caras, Perro Aguayo or any of the heavyweights. I bet Dave and his ilk still have the same opinions about them that they had during the early 90s.

Lizmark/Kung Fu/Siglo XX (The Killer) vs. Los Infernales (El Satanico/MS-1/Masakre), CMLL 1987 I've been in a funk lately and haven't liked anything I've watched. I can't be bothered writing about any of that stuff, since this blog is negative enough as it is, so here's something I know and trust -- Classic Infernales. At first glance it seemed like the Infernales were taking the night off, but I should've known better. The Infernales knew exactly how to pace a fall. They were masters at the "change-up:" switching from a slower, methodical pace to sudden bursts of action. They knew how to put over a "rudo" fall, and never skipped a beat. The match started off with a bit of comedy as Masakre picked Kung Fu up with one arm and placed him back in his corner. Masakre was clearly the least of the Infernales, but he had this shit eating grin on his face, and it's always a great rev up when the least talented member does the most amount of shit talking. The technicos tried a bit of matwork, and Siglo impressed with some of his armlock work, which just goes to show you can never underestimate anyone's technical prowess, but the Infernales took over and won with the ease of their shitting eating grins. What the match needed next was a technico comeback, but I liked the way the Infernales cut off the technico's first drive. When the technicos stormed back into the match, there was plenty to enjoy. I dislike karate gimmicks immensely, but Los Fantásticos have always been an exception. Kung Fun had put on some beef since his Toreo days, but his schtick was still top notch, and I doubt readers out there will have too much difficulty imaging Satanico or MS-1 bumping for it. There were a lot of great sight gags in this bout. My favourite was Siglo suggesting that Satanico was too short for him. Satanico run to the turnbuckle and backed up onto the second rope to make himself taller than The Killer. Naturally, the great one started charging in like a bull terrier and anytime Satanico gets a full head of speed up the results are hilarious. In fact, anytime they get the ball rolling like this, you're guaranteed a laugh or two. Lizmark was on hand to provide some actual quality as the rudos bumbled one, and a good time was had by all as the rudos were kicked in the ass repeatedly. This wasn't a classic, but most nights the workers don't go out there to have a classic. Instead, it was perfectly entertaining and more than enough to pull me out of my rut.

I don't think you're wrong, strictly speaking. That said, I'd wonder how many crap things that a wrestler could do are impossible to be done in a non-crappy way. It's why I'm a little hesitant to name specific traits in this thread. Unless you go in really outlandish directions (I'm hard-pressed to think of a way that a wrestler could shit himself during a match in a really effective way), most of your notable wrestler "qualities" can be done well or poorly. A lot of wrestlers rely on schtick. Some people dig their gimmicks, but I think if you're an average worker you've got to have at least some redeeming features that make you entertaining. A guy like Rayo can bring that when he's feeling it (which is about once a decade), but has there even been a good Jimmy Valiant match?

I think "it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it" is overrated. I'd actually it's what you do AND the way you do it. I can't think of two many wrestlers I like who do crap stuff in a charismatic way. If I like a worker just because they're charismatic, generally it has a flow on effect that what they're doing is pretty good.

Atlantis suffers from timing more than anything else. He broke into the business to late to benefit from the UWA/CMLL cross promotion. By the time he was further up the card, business between the two was all but dead. He had a couple of main even programmes, but I don't think you can call him a consistent draw like Cien Caras for example. Lizmark is already in the HOF, so that hurts him workwise. Jose did a Gordy List for Atlantis that was pretty good -- http://www.luchawiki.org/index.php/Atlantis

Has anyone seen stuff from Funk where he dogged it?

Fuerza, but I seem to be the only guy who can't stand Jerry Estrada. Mark Rocco or Jimmy Breaks? Johnny Saint or Steve Grey? Pirata Morgan or El Dandy? Yuki Ishikawa or Daisuke Ikeda?

When you're talking about Goldberg, you're only really talking about one year right?

I honestly don't see the appeal of Nagasaki, but he was a pop culture icon if you wanna spin it that way. As for Rocco, I guess people liked his "all-action" style, but I can't see the case for Rocco over Breaks. McManus wrestled after '77. He retired in 1982.