ohtani's jacket

Atlantis vs. La Fiera, NWA World Middleweight Championship, 4/3/92 It's weird watching a match where one of the participants gets stabbed to death years later but that's wrestling I guess. I'm not going to eulogise La Fiera too much, but he was part of that generation of luchadores who debut in the late 70s and ushered in a more contemporary style of lucha libre. By the time the 90s rolled around, his body was already showing the effects of that new working style, but he managed to make the transition into "seasoned vet" and remained a useful player. He also stuck with CMLL when everyone jumped to AAA, which protected his spot somewhat, partly out of loyalty and partly out of necessity. This match was somewhere between the Fiera of old and the seasoned vet, and probably a good example of how you manage a pro-wrestling career (Atlantis) and how you don't (Fiera); but let's just concentrate on the match. Atlantis was in his absolute prime here. Much like "real" athletes, wrestlers only have two or three years where they're at their true peak. They may be good workers either side of that peak, but if you look back in retrospect there's a clear crest. The first fall here was among Atlantis' career best. One of the things that people complain about when it comes to lucha is the length of the opening falls, which are almost always too short for people used to other styles of wrestling. By and large the third fall is the one that counts, but as I've documented many times in this blog, the workers have choices about what they can do in the first, second and third falls. Here, they worked in essence a "mini match" in the primera caida. From the lock-up to the break, and the matwork and submissions to the standing exchanges, there was a clear arc between the opening bell and Atlantis winning fall. I'm not sure what the heat between Atlantis and Fiera was, but the part where Atlantis ignored Fiera's handshake and used it as a takedown instead was boss. There was an edge to their lock-up work and it continued in a competitive vein on the mat with great side headlocks from Atlantis and niggly counters from Fiera. The side headlock for all its simplicity is an amazingly visceral move when done correctly and this would be exhibit A in how to make it look good. The finish saw them return to their feet, which is something that drives me up the wall about the NWA style matwork that influenced this match, but this was about as natural a transition from matwork to standing exchanges as you'll ever see. Fiera scored a rope break off a nice counter-reversal from Atlantis and the match was reset. Atlantis positioned himself for the lock-up, but was caught by surprise by a kick to the gut and whipped into the corner. This set-up the chain of events which led to the finish, and while it may seem rather elementary when I type it up, rarely do you see workers link the matwork and the stand-up exchanges together like that. Nine times out of ten, they simply release the hold, back-off and reset the match with a whip into the ropes. Here, it seemed like Fiera seized an opportunity to change tack, which had the added effect of making it seem like Fiera was thinking about the win and not simply going through the motions of a typical primera caida. Unfortunately for him, Atlantis was stellar on his feet and reeled off a sequence of offence that was good enough to be the finish to the entire match. This ended up being a problem later in the match, but more on that in a bit. The first fall was a cracker as far as first falls go in lucha. The second fall was designed for Fiera to hit back straight away, but was entertaining all the same. Atlantis continued to have the upper exchange in the standing exchanges, which was a nice bit of overlapping from the first fall, and Fiera wasn't getting much purchase with his signature kicks (which were noticeably lower than in his prime; something us aging guys can sympathise with.) Fiera's opening here wasn't quite as strong as in the first fall as he did the over top rope bump that Pirata Morgan and Emilio Charles Jr. were fond of but didn't sell it to any great extent. Back in the ring, he finally clipped Atlantis with one of his kicks and that was the set-up for a massive swan dive plancha that they replayed over and over again. This was an unnaturally big finish for a second fall, which left me wondering how they were going to top things in the final caida, but there certainly wasn't any short changing of the fans in falls one and two. Unfortunately, they weren't able to top their efforts in the final caida. Ironically, it may have been a case that the first two falls had too much action. Traditionally, the reason why the first two falls are short in lucha is because the third fall is supposed to be a big 50/50 fall where the winner takes all and both guys come desperately close to winning on numerous occasions. This can stretch believability at times because the pinfalls and submissions often come simply in the opening caidas and take a superhuman effort in the finale, but the basic idea is that the jeopardy increases and the tension and drama escalates. If you pack too much into the first two falls, it's like a movie that runs out of story or a record release that has great singles put not enough songs to make an album. Fiera slowed the match to a crawl by working over Atlantis' arm, which was an understandable strategy, but completely out of place in a tercera caida where the action should flow back and forth. Atlantis sold it well, but it really needed to start in the segunda caida (as Fiera's avenue back into the match) to have any dramatic effect. The idea was that Atlantis would get heat for fighting off Fiera, but they needed to establish it as more of a turning point, i.e. Atlantis is in control of the match until Fiera injures him. It was an odd fall, really, as they both wanted to put the match over but didn't give themselves a hell of a lot to do. The finishing stretch and everything leading into it was pretty lacklustre. I don't know if they ran out of steam or if they were just out of synch at the end, but it didn't do the match any favours. My take on it is that they got the order of the spots wrong, which hurt the progression of the match. They should've split the armwork over two falls and saved the big plancha for later in the match where it would have more impact. It's strange that two guys as experienced as this would falter like they do, but there's no denying the match falls flat. It's still worth watching even if it isn't perfect; you just have to downgrade what was a pretty promising match.

Atlantis/Fiera is my next review if I ever get around to finishing it. There's a Dandy/Bestia title match that Loss will probably want to include as well.

Don't forget the minis 1/7/97 CMLL: Cicloncito Ramirez vs Damiancito El Guerrero (CMLL Mini?s Title) - Arena Coliseo 10/3/97 CMLL: Bracito De Oro/Cicloncito Ramirez/Mascarita Magica vs Damiancito El Guerrero/El Fierito/Pierrothito - Arena Mexico Two of the greatest matches ever, for sure. Blue Panther vs. Atlantis, La Copa Victoria final, CMLL 12/5/97 Outstanding mat-based match. El Hijo Del Santo, Scorpio Jr. y Dr. Wagner vs. Negro Casas, El Fiero y Ultimo Dragon (CMLL 6/6/97) El Hijo Del Santo, Scorpio Jr. y Dr. Wagner vs. Negro Casas, El Fiero y Ultimo Dragon (CMLL 6/13/97) El Hijo Del Santo, Emilio Charles y Dr. Wagner vs. Negro Casas, Felino, Ultimo Dragon (CMLL 6/20/97) El Hijo del Santo vs. Felino (CMLL 7/4/97) Great TV and a hot angle. Hands down my favourite Santo/Felino match.

Regarding CMLL, don't forget this one: 2/14/92 CMLL: Huracan Sevilla vs Bestia Salvaje (Hair vs Hair) - Arena Mexico This is a fantastic match where a lot of people haven't seen. You might want to take a look at the trios surrounding Dandy vs. Casas as well as they really add to the match. And you need to find some match that shows how great Pierroth was that year. There's a great Sangre Chicana/Pero Aguayo hair match from '92 CMLL as well.

Regarding Joshi, outside of the well known matches I think these are easy to overlook: 11/02/92 - Malenko & Hasegawa vs. Toyota & Yamada (TLTB) 12/13/92 - Kong & K. Inoue vs. Toyota & Yamada (TLTB Final) TLTB matches -- big yearly tag tournament, which along with the JGP singles tournament was an important event for AJW. The first match isn't essential but it was a good league match that Coey discovered when he went back through all this stuff. The final was his baby as no-one had ever pimped it before and it was his discovery. 04/29/92 - T. Inoue vs. Yoshida (All Japan Singles) 07/05/92 - K. Inoue vs. Yoshida (JGP Blue) 08/30/92 - Yoshida vs. Toyota These are only three star matches or what have you, but later on Yoshida will be featured in the '99 yearbook and I think it gives some kind of context as to what was happening further down the card. Joshi is a bit unique in the sense that its fans often watched the entire cards instead of the pimped main events and thus people tend to be fans of the midcarders. JWP wasn't very good in 1992. There was an interpromotional tag that used to be pimped, but I don't think it's very good. I like some of the Ozaki/Kansai singles matches but I can't see anyone else digging them too much. Jerome wrote a really great rundown of 1992 Joshi once including some of the better JWP matches that year.

I don't really think this is a pressing concern for people anymore. I can't imagine people ever getting as involved in a topic like this as they may have done in the past. If you asked people now who they thought the greatest of all-time were, you'd get a bunch of new choices from folk who like "digging in the crates" for new stuff and standard answers from folks who've either stopped watching or only watch a bit. I agree with MJH. I don't think there's all that many people pushing the names you've mentioned. Jerome's fretting about people being anti-Takada, but that amounts to all of four or five people. Speaking for myself, finding new workers is the only thing that keeps me interested in wrestling and seeing any list of great workers with names like Jumbo or Kawada instantly bores me. This tends to influence my own wrestling opinions a lot, but it can'be helped. New is better for me, and revised opinions are paramount. Personally, I'd like things to go further. I'd love for there to be a great overall of the thinking about lucha, for example, but I can't see it happening. All told, I think wrestling opinions are becoming less and less important.

Assuming they have a gay fanbase, that's hardly surprising considering it's marketed to Japanese women in their twenties. The whole idea is stolen from Johnny's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_%26_Associates), and I assume those guys have their share of gay fans too.

Wrestling isn't marketed in Japan with gay overtones and porn for the most part is socially acceptable anyway.

Dustin Rhodes in a golden bodysuit portraying a glamourous manipulative sex-freak with a tiny female with huge boobs smoking a cigar at his side. It sounds so much better decontructed than it was on screen. All I can remember is Goldust boring the shit out of me.

Rayo De Jalisco Jr. vs. Apolo Dantes, CMLL 5/31/96 -- epic Rayo match (Rayo being a guy who busts out a big match about once a year like most other Mexican heavyweights.) Probably Dantes' best match as well, as his selling is the perfect foil for Rayo's big match offence. Was part of the abandoned DVDVR Lucha March Madness tournament. Mascarita Magica vs. Damiancito El Guerrero (CMLL Minis Title), CMLL 2/27/96 -- not the best minis match from this era (those come in '97), but worth considering for the fact that the majority of people are oblivious to how good the Mexican minis are. Mayumi Ozaki vs. Hiromi Yagi, JWP 3/3/96 -- lengthy television match between Ozaki and one of the most promising workers of the 90s Hiromi Yagi. Quite long so probably has more flaws than I remember, but this along with the Amano pledging angle before and afterwards give more light to what Ozaki was doing in 1996. Personally, I think she was one of the more interesting workers that year. There's a bunch of ***-*** 1/2 star OZ Academy matches split between JWP and GAEA but I can't remember which one stands out enough to encapsulate them all. Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, UWF-i 5/27/96 -- I hate UWF-i like there's no tomorrow, but IIRC this is Tamura's final match before giving them the big finger. He was toying with the idea of heading to Pancrase and you can see how heavily influenced both these guys were by what was happening with that fed. Really beautiful matwork in this match.

I don't understand why people like the Goldust gimmick so much.

All of these matches from Bihari's list need to be on the set: 1/13/91 UWA: El Hijo Del Santo vs Brazo De Oro (Mask vs Hair) - El Toreo De Naucalpan 2/8/91 CMLL: Kato Kung Lee/Super Astro/Volador vs Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo - Arena Coliseo 5/3/91 CMLL: El Dandy/Popitekus/Super Astro vs Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo - Arena Coliseo 5/17/91 CMLL: Atlantis/Mascara Sagrada/Octagon vs Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo (Mexican National Trios Titles) - Arena Coliseo 5/17/91 WWA: El Hijo Del Santo vs Negro Casas (UWA Welterweight Title) - Auditorio De Tijuana 7/26/91 CMLL: Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo vs Chavo Guerrero/Eddy Guerrero/Mando Guerrero - Arena Coliseo 8/9/91 CMLL: Atlantis vs Blue Panther (NWA Middleweight Title) - Arena Mexico 11/1/91 CMLL: Octagon vs Fuerza Guerrera - Arena Coliseo 11/22/91 CMLL: Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo vs MS-1/Pirata Morgan/Satanico (CMLL Trios Titles) - Arena Mexico There's also this match which tomk used to pimp -- El Dandy/Apolo Dantes/Black Magic (Norman Smiley) vs. Javier Cruz/Pierroth Jr./Blue Panther, 8/18/91 And please, please, please do not forget the mother of all lucha matches -- Trio Fantasia vs. Thundercats, (Masks vs. Masks), 12/8/91 Everything else fits into the interesting for lucha fans category, but you might be tempted to include some of the stuff that was going on at the top of the card which mostly involved Konnan, Pero and Caras.

I spoke to Jose about this years ago and he couldn't shed much light on it, either. Santo was only really a rudo in Arena Mexico and a technico everywhere else, and he never really embraced "rudoism." It was more a case that he was on the opposite side because of his hatred for Casas but even that wasn't expressed very well in the ring. As the feud continues, Casas and Felino behave like rudos half the time and Santo hardly ever gets along with Bestia or Scorpio whose out and out "rudoism" bothers him. He never really turned all the way despite how long he stayed on the rudo side, which is interesting considering how drawn out his technico turn was. As far as this match goes, they probably ran it too soon after the trios matches.

No, but I have heard good things about it. I would be interested in seeing other clean, straightforward matches like this, even ones that aren't as good as this one. I know the '94 match has been praised, but I would imagine there are some other good matches like this on week-to-week TV, right? They don't just do mat-based matches every couple of years like this, do they? Almost all lucha title matches in this era were mat-based, but we're restricted by what made TV. Not all of the TV from the 90s is available and sometimes title matches are clipped. Still, there's a fair few that can be included on future sets.

The Santo heel turn was a confusing piece of booking. It wasn't really a heel turn in the Hogan sense so you can't think about it like that. It'll drive you nuts if you try to think about it in those terms. The whole thing is extremely overrated as an angle, though it did produce some excellent matches in the summer of '97. I assume the reason they booked a triangle match was because they'd already run Casas vs. Santo at the Anniversary show in September and wanted to save the hair vs. mask match for the following year.

Don't get me wrong, I love this fight and think Meltzer's comments are probably closer to the truth than not. It just stuck out like a sore thumb when I was scanning through Loss' match rankings.

Why did you include a shoot on the set?

I still think this is one of the all-time great promos. I thought the loose cannon stuff sucked in WCW but this was like the Richard Pryor live and uncut version.

Jake Roberts vs. Ricky Steamboat, MSG 5/19/86 Jake Roberts vs. Ricky Steamboat, Spectrum 5/31/86 I forgot that Steamboat's original WWF theme was Sirius. That's such a kick-ass theme for the intro to a grudge match. Steamboat looks AWESOME waiting for Roberts in MSG. These are essentially the same match with the same ref spots and the same finish. The Spectrum match is a bit longer for no other reason than it's slower than the MSG match, but the brawling looks a thousand times better than MSG because of the camera set-ups. One of the things I noticed when we did the WWF poll over at Smarkschoice was how shitty the MSG camera work was, but here it makes Steamboat look like a woman. Everybody knows that you have to shoot punches and most other contact in wrestling from an angle that hides the daylight, but it seems as though the MSG guys didn't know how to shoot wrestling. It's a shame really because MSG usually had better heat than Philly. Neither match is great, but fun in a continuation of the feud kind of way. They have a pull apart at the end where they keep doing Lou Thesz press takedowns and punching each other while midcard acts coming running out to separate them. That reminds me of how excited I used to be when people came running out to help. There was always that anticipation of "Who's it gonna be? Who's it gonna be?"

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.