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Everything posted by ohtani's jacket
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LUCY KAYAMA Lucy Kayama was one half of the Queen Angels (w/ Tomi Aoyama), a sort of late 70s version of the Jumping Bomb Angels. You can see brief highlights of one of their matches against the Golden Pair (Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi) from 8/9/78 if you search for Queen Angels on you tube. After Maki Ueda retired in February of '79, the Matsunagas decided to push Aoyama as Jackie Sato's new tag partner. The new Beauty Pair was short lived, however, as injuries forced Aoyama to retire. (The late 70s may seem like a simpler style, but they were working 300 dates a year & girls like Aoyama didn't really have the body to take that sort of punishment.) Kayama didn't last much longer, but some of her best work is from the period where she was cast off. Youtube has a new match up -- Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Lucy Kayama (1980.) It's a good watch. Mimi with her big hair and early selling prowess is rake thin, and you can see that she really did put on 10kg to keep wrestling. Jaguar was AJW Junior Champion at this point & Hanawa was her regular tag partner. She's a bit of a mystery like Chino Sato, neither were around long enough to really know what happened to them. They're a solid, young girl team. Kayama, unbelievably, is a veteran (!) with three years experience. And she's great in this & really does wrestle like a pissed off vet. 80s AJW is something I like to sample. It always throws a curve ball or two. Pissed off Lucy Kayama is the latest surprise. It didn't last for long, but the more I think about it, the more I agree with mandatory retirements. Here's some bonus, rare photos -- Jackie Sato's return to the ring against Kandori in 1986:
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Who would've thought they'd be MIKA KOMATSU matches on youtube? Mika Komatsu was part of the largely unknown 80s AJW midcard. She was a tag wrestler primarily, and after a few stints through Calgary with Yumi Ogura, they won the WWWA tag titles as the Calgary Typhoons. The ever popular Ogura became AJW champion during their tag reign & they had a sort of "respect" feud over the title (including a title change in Edmonton), similar to Yoshida and Takako Inoue in later AJW booking. She retired in '89, got married and had two kids. youtube has Mika Komatsu: vs. Machiko Saito (rookie tournament; Saito is Condor Saito) vs. Crane Yu (3 min clip, no finish) w/ Hisako Uno & Kanako Nagatomo vs. Mitsuko Nishiwaki, Yumi Ogura & Kazue Nagahori ('86) The last match is the one you want to watch for a good example of AJW undercard work from this era. It's actually quite different from the 90s style. And if you search for Four Women Tag, you'll get Komatsu & Nagamoto vs. Ogura and Nagahori from their juniors days. I'm a really big fan of the Ogura/Nagahori team, Red Typhoons.
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Michinoku Pro is something I've never really been into, so I decided to watch a batch of stuff from '93 to see how I like it. Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title vs. mask, 7/24/93 Great Sasuke/Sato vs. Super Delfin/Gran Naniwa, 7/26/93 (handheld) Great Sasuke/TAKA/Sato vs. Delfin/Shinzaki/Naniwa, 8/19/93 (handheld) Great Sasuke vs. Super Delfin, UWA Welterweight title match, 8/24/93 Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), 9/28/93 Super Delfin vs. Sato (Dick Togo), mask vs. mask, 12/10/93 Rudo Super Delfin was the revelation here. Not in the sense that he was a great rudo... I have no idea why they gave him this role, he didn't look the part and wasn't that great at playing the part... What surprised me was that instead of being spotty like I thought he would be, he worked a slower, more methodical style. The opening minutes are crap, as they are in a lot of juniors matches... And not just aimless matwork; aimless opening exchanges with no theme to them at all, matwork or otherwise... But once they settled into the heel taking the lead, Delfin did a lot of really good stuff. The 8/93 match against Sasuke is a really good title match. If Delfin had been a more charismatic rudo & Sasuke a more sympathetic babyface, it might have even been a great match. I was looking forward to seeing some early Dick Togo, but he was really green & his gimmick sucked. He was a power wrestler, who could do cool moves for a guy his size, but like most young wrestlers he concentrated on getting his offence right & hadn't developed a character or any of the other nuances of performance. The mask match isn't bad, but I gotta question the booking of why anyone would care that Dick lost his mask at this point. The tag matches aren't flash, but it's worth noting that they're closer to Lucha than the later M-Pro stuff. All up, not bad from a small company in its first year.
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Bull Nakano vs. Aja Kong, cage match, 11/14/90 This is unbelievably bad. Honestly, this has to be one of the worst "big match" match-ups of the 90s. Bull Nakano vs. Manami Toyota, 7/21/90 Typical "Bull as Monster Heel" delayed squash. Toyota has no fucking clue what to do when she gets on offence.
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CHIGUSA NAGAYO -- I mentioned before that Jaguar Yokota is the greatest women's wrestler ever, but on the strength of Chigusa's work from '85-87, I reckon you could make a reasonable case for her too, she was that good. Japanese fans sometimes talk about who was the "female Inoki" (Inoki is considered the greatest men's wrestler in Japan.) It usually comes down to Jaguar Yokota vs. Akira Hokuto, with the general feeling being that Hokuto is the greatest women's wrestler. I favour Jaguar for a number of reasons, but I think Chigusa's work gets slept on. Chigusa vs. Dump was synonymnous with Chigusa's popularity, not her work. Chigusa's peak in '86 was probably the peak of the AJW promotion in the 80s. Nevertheless, by the end of the 80s Chigusa had lost it. The more she bulked up, the more serious she came about being a legit worker, adding strikes, stand-up fighting and mat based submissions to her work. The schoolgirls still cheered for her like mad, but God knows what they made of the stylistic change. In her last year with AJW, Chigusa was angling for a big interpromotional match with Shinobu Kandori, but the Matsunagas wouldn't go for it. If you want to see a good example of the stylistic mess that was late 80s Chigusa, check out the Crush Girls vs. Marine Wolves, 4/27/89 tag on youtube. Hokuto & Minami simply didn't have the offence to work with Chigusa and Asuka & there's a God awful sleeper segment that goes forever as a result.
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No problem. JUMPING BOMB ANGELS -- The Jumping Bomb Angels were a midcard, workrate team that were pushed for a while in an effort to replicate the idol success of Beauty Pair and the Crush Girls. It didn't work out, but for a time they were the top tag team in AJW while Chigusa & Lioness pursued singles success. Yamazaki has long been considered the worker of the team & Tateno a bit of baggage. I always thought that was a little unfair on Tateno. AJW at this time had massive tryouts, and even if some of the girls they scouted didn't try out (I've met a few who didn't), you didn't pass a tryout, survive training and get a debut without talent. If you look at the whole roster from the 80s there's not one girl who stands out as having no talent. Yamazaki was a better worker than Tateno, mainly because Yamazaki was awesome on the mat, but Yamazaki wasn't charismatic. Well, she was charismatic in the sense that she was a really good worker, who sold well in a work sense (realism & believability as opposed to drama), but Tateno was there to be the less talented worker who took more of a beating. Tateno being the weak link was more or less a role she played, in large part I imagine to the Matsunagas realising she wasn't good enough for singles after her AJW Junior Championship push. Youtube has the following JBA stuff: vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 3/20/86 (2/3 falls, WWWA title match) vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 9/14/87 (TLTB) Mimi Hagiwara and Noriyo Tateno vs. Masked Yu and Tarantula (1982, one fall shown) Veoh has Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Leilani Kai ('86) vs. Chigusa Nagayo and Lioness Asuka, 9/14/87 (better quality) vs. Yukari Omori and Hisako Uno (Akira Hokuto), August '86 The March '86 Crush Girls vs. JBA title match has incredible heat and is one of the best full length AJW matches available from the 80s. Probably in the top 5. Chigusa was awesome at this point. 1986 was probably her peak year and she's at the height of her powers here, to the point where you wish she wouldn't tag out. (I'm not a big fan of Asuka or Crush Girls, particularly their double team moves.) You need to see the Chigusa/Yamazaki stuff in this match. The '87 match also has mad heat, since Crush Girls didn't tag so often at this point, but Tateno looked in bad shape and I don't like the booking. The tag against Omori and Uno shows how quickly the JBA fell... This was right after Omori beat Chigusa in the JGP '86 Final. I don't think she'd won the Big Red Belt yet, but she was being heavily pushed as Chigusa's next big rival/feud after the second Chigusa/Dump, hair vs. hair match. They feuded through TLTB '86 and into the next year. Tateno looked better here, selling for Omori. She gets mauled in the Mimi tag, so she had the smaller girl gets destroyed role down pat. Finally, the Yamazki vs. Leilani Kai match is OK, but it's held back by the booking. Leilani was too good a wrestler to be working an overbearing heel shtick. Fortunately she got more opportunities in those great matches against Chigusa. This type of match does show the kind of limitations Yamazaki had as a singles worker. She was really smooth on offence, though, and that continued through to her JWP work. A lot of girls wanted to be like Jaguar, few pulled it off quite as well as Yamazaki.
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DEVIL MASAMI -- Devil Masami in the early 80s was the heel act that bridged Black Pair to Dump Matsumoto, mangling Mimi Hagiwara's arm every time they fought and acting as the No.1 native challenger to Jaguar Yokota after the retirement of Jackie Sato and phasing out of Monster Ripper, Rhonda Singh. When Dump started taking off in popularity, Devil turned face. She got over as a babyface on the strength of her singing. Almost every girl had an album at this time, but Devil was by far the best singer and had a couple of songs featured in TV dramas. God knows I have a hard time getting Silent Goodbye out of my head. I guess a lot of people have seen her now famous match against Chigusa Nagayo from 1985. If you're wondering if there's more Devil matches like that, the answer is that she didn't really reach that level again until the JWP match against Kandori. Devil was a good worker for twenty years, but her prime (in my opinion) was actually '93-94. Early 80s Devil is fun, she just got better later, like Bull Nakano. youtube has Devil vs. Chigusa Nagayo (early 80s squash of Chigusa) vs. Chino Sato (1979?) w/ Monster Ripper vs. Mimi Hagiwara and Jumbo Hori (one fall only shown) The Chigusa match has some classic Devil offence she'd use on JWP girls years later. The Sato match is decent. Devil was still a bit green, but she had a fair idea how she was gonna work things as a heel . Sato was quite a good worker. I still haven't found out what happened to her. The tag clip shows how much extra ommph Devil and Mimi had in their work when they matched up. Devil was doing some fairly basic heel work at this point, nothing Kumano or Ikeshita hadn't done before, but it looks nastier with Mimi's selling.
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JAGUAR YOKOTA -- Jaguar is the greatest Japanese women's wrestler ever, and if the stories about her training are true she worked harder than anybody else to become the greatest ever. Jaguar was small and didn't have the physique for wrestling, but as a 16 year old she would always get through her exercises faster than anyone else in training, which shows a massive amount of commitment for someone at such a young age. Her father was a drunk and beat her mother. When her mother divorced him, they moved to another part of Tokyo, and Jaguar had to find a job to support her family. So, she came from a disadvantaged background, but single-mindedly and with a fair degree of stubbornness she didn't let that stop her. Youtube has the usual Jaguar matches -- the famous '85 match against Lioness & a few of the La Galatica matches too. It also has two gems: vs. Jumbo Hori vs. Irma Gonzalez Jose talked about what a great worker Hori was and how he was his find of last year. The match is from around '82 and Hori was only starting to become a good worker. Jaguar was still wrestling as Rimi Yokota. Jaguar had a few long title matches with Devil Masami around this time, which I always hoped would air on AJW Classics but never did. From the clips I've seen of those matches, the Hori match is better. It's a clipped draw, but it's the same dynamic as Jaguar/Devil minus the Devil heel act. Jumbo was 180 cm -- probably the tallest girl to ever work in wrestling. Jaguar was like a legit 159 cm. Hori got boxed into a heel role later on, but here she's a face & what's shown is really good. The Gonzalez fight shows something that people might not be aware of. The Japanese girls often weren't that co-operative with foreign talent, but Jaguar was by far and away the most co-operative and she pretty much gave every foreign girl on tour their best match or their best minutes of ring time. That's one thing I always admired about Jaguar -- it didn't matter who you were or where you were on the card, she was all about wrestling you. When she retired, the younger girls were so devastated because she commanded everyone's respect. When she was a trainer, Aja Kong refused to call her Jaguar-san, sensei, senpai or anything that someone in Aja's position in Japanese society should do, but she eventually broke through to Aja too and when Aja won the WWWA title, she was clearly moved. Just a champion. Wouldn't even let being over 40 stop her from having a baby.
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BULL NAKANO -- Bull was a solid midcarder in the 80s, part of the strong AJW undercard during the Crush Girls era. I can honestly say I've never seen her give a bad performance in the footage I've seen. She was just incredibly solid. I guess that's the reason why she was pushed as Dump's #2 after Masked Yu retired, although, like all of the young girls, she didn't want to play a heel and apparently she cried bitterly the first time they shaved her hair. One of my wife's friends grew up in the same part of Saitama as Bull and described her as a loner, which goes with the misfit image some people have of wrestlers, but she spent the 80s growing into her heel role, and had one important member in her official or unofficial fanclub -- a young Akira Hokuto. Youtube has Bull: vs. Itsuki Yamazaki, 2/25/85 (aired on Classics) w/ Lola Gonzales & ???? vs. Chigusa, Lioness & Itsuki Yamazaki ('85) w/ Condor Saito vs. Yumi Ogura & Kazue Nagahori ('86) Veoh has Dump's Army vs. Yukari Omori & Co. from '86 (elimination match) The Chigusa tag is after the first Dump/Chigusa hair match, since Chigusa is sporting a mean buzz cut. She has an awesome staredown with Bull & the match is great whenever they're in together. It's cool to see Bull as the main heel as well. The Dump's Army tag is the typical Dump brawl/orchestrated madness... The Saito tag is a good example of the solid Bull/Saito midcard heel team. They had better matches with Ogura and Nagahori, but along with the Yamazaki singles match it shows that Bull was a good hand in the ring.
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JACKIE SATO -- One of the biggest disappointments about the various incarnations of AJW Classics is that we never got to see the 60 minute Sato/Ueda title match from '77 or a full version of the retirement match from 1979. Hardly any of the Beauty Pair footage that's available shows Sato in the kind of positive light that her early 80s matches against Yumi Ikeshita or Rimi Yokota do. Watching Beauty Pair & her New Beauty Pair team w/ Tomi Aoyama, it's always the Black Pair that come out looking best. They were great workers, Ikeshita especially, but they control 90% of the matches. youtube has some Sato stuff: vs. Mami Kumano vs. Vicki Williams w/ Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano and Yumi Ikeshita Voeh has Beauty Pair vs Mami Kumano & Chabela Romero. Sato is better in singles & the two bouts are post-Beauty Pair, so that's good. I always thought Sato had some problems in the ring because she was tall and lanky (she was recruited from basketball), which meant a lot of her stuff looked a bit awkward, particularly off the ropes, and at this point structure was still a bit iffy. Well, structure in Joshi is always a bit iffy, but when she kept it on the mat she was generally very good and some of her offence is nice. The real question for me was how good a babyface she was. She has some decent matches against Monster Ripper, which was her big feud after Beauty Pair retired, and the schoolgirls go nuts in those fights... A large percentage of that is the dramatic structure the Matsunagas had in place for making the schoolgirls go nuts... She was kinda straddling the line between being an idol and being sort of stoic, a transformation Chigusa would later go through. The picture on Sato has always been a little incomplete for me. I wonder if Jose, DanG or anyone else has seen matches that shed some light on Sato.
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Jose's comments are spot on. There's a Mimi/Jaguar/Jumbo Hori vs. Devil/Tarantula/Peggy Lee tag* on youtube that's one of the definitive Mimi Hagiwara selling performances. Personally I think there's more to Mimi than just selling her arm and letting out blood curdling screams, but that's what she's most famous for. * it's only the first fall, however. The Japanese guy who caps this stuff never caps it in full.
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The list Al posted was pretty long & suggested that porn had (has?) as big, if not bigger, problem with AIDS than wrestling does with drugs. I've seen as much porn as the next guy, but I think watching porn is a really selfish thing. Perhaps watching wrestling is too, but I think it's sleazy how every day there's hawkers in Tokyo trying to hustle girls into adult video on the promise of a gucci handbag or some shit, and I think it's stupid that some girls are dumb enough to go for it. And when these girls end up pretending to be schoolgirls abducted and raped by homeless guys or some shit, that's sleazy. And this idea that porn stars don't get psychological problems from doing porn is stupid. There was an expose on the porn industry by a British documentary filmmaker a few years back, and if you wanna see a guy who's ready to snap there was one straight guy doing gay for pay who was really hanging on by a thread.
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On a scale of fucked up things in wrestling, I think washing a guy's balls ranks pretty low. Beating a trainee to death, as happened in sumo recently and in wrestling before, is beyond sleazy or scummy. The question is whether the dojo system itself is fucked up. Here's an article about sumo -- http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displa...tory_id=9963190 As the article says, "Young Japanese men reject the brutal training and regimented lifestyle." Time will tell if these practices become archaic. Dojos have always served the purpose of weeding out people who aren't mentally or physically strong enough to become wrestlers. I suppose you could argue that anybody who'd go through that & still want to be a wrestler must have something wrong with them psychological, but there are plenty of wrestlers who've passed their dojo training, navigated a pro-wrestling career and retired to live a relatively normal life... Others probably haven't. I can see that type of abuse begetting abuse, particularly among wrestlers who came from abusive backgrounds. I imagine it differs on a case by case basis. I find it hard to believe that everyone who enters the wrestling business has something wrong with them psychologically. One thing I'll say for the dojo system, I think it prevents a lot of young people from getting hurt, because if you can't pass the training then I don't think you belong anywhere near a ring. The reason I mentioned the US is because far more wrestlers are dying in America. I don't have enough interest in Japanese professional wrestling to pimp it as some haven from wrestling scum.
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Freaking out about some dude washing another dude's balls is stupid when you're trying to compare wrestling with porn. What am I supposed to say? I don't know what the guy thinks about washing another guy's balls. It's been that way forever. You think Kobashi didn't wash Baba's balls? Baba got the shit beaten out of him by Rikidozan with bamboo canes. Rikidozan ended up fucking dead. Look, pro-wrestling has its seedy side. A lot of famous Japanese wrestlers came from broken homes, were abused or left junior highschool to make money for their families. And I have no idea what some of these people would be doing if they weren't wrestlers. But I think porn is worse. The sex industry is worse too if you want to make that point. And what's with that creepy Japanophile shit? That type of smarkish bullshit is why I even bothered to give my opinion, which you asked people for.
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To my surprise, youtube now has a fair bit of 80s AJW. Some of it I've seen before and some of it I haven't. A lot of it is crap, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about this era and the workers from it. Starting with MIMI HAGIWARA... -- Mimi was trying to make it as an actress, singer and model when she met Jackie Sato (IIRC) during a TV appearance, and that's how she got into wrestling. She made her debut in '78 but didn't get a push until 1981, and in fact, in 1980 a doctor recommended she quit wrestling due to internal injuries. She "bulked" up by 10kg and her break came in 1981 when she beat Yumi Ikeshita for the All Pacific title on the same show that Jaguar beat Sato for the WWA title, which ushered in a new era of Joshi Puroresu. Over the next three years, Mimi became an idol and star. youtube has the following singles matches. They're mostly clipped and I'm not sure what year they're from. vs. Chigusa Nagayo (Mimi's mother dominates the commentary) vs. Yumi Ikeshita (JIP and no finish) vs. Lucy Kayama vs. Devil Masami vs. Peggy Lee Mimi never had much of a reputation as a worker among online fans. The only thing most fans knew is that Manzerman had a thing for her &, of course, her ring attire, but the thing that becomes pretty apparent about Mimi is that for an idol she was a damn good worker. She was a great seller and a very good actress. youtube has these strange "Mimi in pain" clips that show how good she was at selling, but the Devil Masami match is a better example. Devil vs. Mimi is one of the most interesting early 80s feuds because it really made Masami as a heel & Mimi as a babyface -- it's not often the case that you have the two happening at the same time. The Ikeshita match is a strange cap, but it's the type of match that shows what she could do in the ring. The Kayama match is amazing. Easily the best Lucy Kayama match I've seen and proof that you can't judge any of these girls on their tag work and more importantly on their work against American and Japanese rudos. Those were brawls and not a lot of these girls were strong at brawling, but in native vs. native singles matches you can see how good they really are. People made this mistake with Sato. Sato is a far better worker than matches against the Black Pair or Monster Ripper suggest. Mimi was pretty much the forerunner for Ozaki, pre-JWP split Cuty Suzuki and mid-90s Takako Inoue as a not so natural athlete who was a great performer and hard worker. Mimi was an idol -- she had albums, acting gigs and modelling... She didn't need to bust her ass this much. Her stuff still has a type of cult status in Japan. For a career that was over in a few short years it was certainly a memorable one, although sadly her internal injuries -- not only from bumping but from AJW training -- meant she could never have a baby and this led to her divorce from her first husband.
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Hokuto's on TV nearly every week. She's part of the TV talent circuit. I once saw her sing a karaoke love song to Sasaki & another time there was a feature about their family going camping. The gimmick they work on TV is that Hokuto wears the pants in the relationship. On one of the big shows last year they did sumo on a soapy, water slide mat. The girl can still take a bump. Life after wrestling for broken down, painkiller addicted Akira Hokuto. Who would've thought?
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I gotta disagree with you gordi. Japanese mainstream porn is fucked up beyond belief, even the stuff they show on satellite or cable. The stuff you can walk off the street and buy in a normal bookstore is unbelievable. I won't go into details, but I've seen some insane shit in Japan. The sleaze in the wrestling business -- and I can't differentiate between good sleaze and bad sleaze in these type of threads -- is mostly its connections with the underworld. But yakuza are cool guys if you don't owe them money.
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I don't have an opinion on it one way or another, but they've been training people like that in Japan since God knows how long. It didn't start with the wrestling business. A kohai washing a senpai's balls is nothing. Sumo wrestlers get their ass wiped for them.
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The dojo training is normal in Japan, though it sometimes leads to deaths like in sumo recently. Mistico being banged up is the same thing that's happening in the US, only in the US it's leading to more deaths.
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I think a lot of the shit that happens in the wrestling business is scummy, but if I felt strongly about it I wouldn't watch it. The reason I mentioned America is pretty obvious. No matter how sleazy the business may be elsewhere, things aren't as bad as they are in American wrestling right now.
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Porn can have an impact on people's marriages and relationships. It can cost people their jobs. Look, I'm not against porn. People can regularly view porn and have normal relationships and lead normal lives, but pornography addiction (and particularly online pornography addiction) are bigger social problems than a guy who downloads wrestling all day. A wrestling fan might look for more obscure matches. Heavy porn viewers are looking for harder stuff and more stimulus. Given the amount of illegal pornography that exists, I don't think wrestling is in quite that territory. Porn has a far darker underbelly. Child pornography is a bigger social problem than wrestlers taking drugs and carking. Whatever way you look at it, porn affects a far greater number of people's lives, since porn exists in nearly every country around the world. Wrestling is a tiny subculture that in the last 20 years in America has gotten out of hand. My real contention with this type of talk is that people will say wrestling is this, wrestling is that and then sign up for WWF 24-7. That's not an attack on anybody, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.
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Emilio Charles, Jr. vs. Angel Azteca, 1/14/90 Some really good work in this match. This was about two years after Azteca's debut & one of those matches where he looked like he could hold his own in the push they were giving him. Emilio clearly led him through this, but he hit his spots beautifully. For some reason they gave up on Azteca after his big title match with El Dandy in June that year. Lucha booking is hard to follow at the best of times & there's not a lot of continuity to the TV, but anyway Azteca looked good here though perhaps not at the level of a star. El Dandy/Satanico vs. Atlantis/Angel Azteca, 6/15/90 This was disappointing given who was involved & the matches they'd had up until this point. It was pretty simple booking and a simple style of Lucha storytelling, but they didn't execute it very well. Not to my sense of rhythm anyway. Los Brazos vs. Pirata Morgan/Pierroth Jr./Gran Markus Jr., 6/1/90 Now this is Lucha... Exactly the kind of match I'd show to someone who wanted to try Lucha. Los Brazos are basically everything that is unique and special to Lucha & this type of trios has clear and distinct falls. The first fall is the slow, deliberate rudo beatdown. The second fall is basically the Brazos clearing house, and the third fall is the "all in" fall... If someone knew to Lucha can understand this rhythm then they'll have no problem watching any other kind of lucha. MS-1/Masakre vs. El Faraon/Ringo Mendoza, 9/7/90 You gotta love it in Mexico how two guys over 40 can go out there and put on a clinic. MS-1 is the undisputed king of the rudos, but this was all about the older technicos. The second and third falls were things of beauty.
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And please, the entertainment and sports industries are riddled with people who became fuck ups once their career was over.
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Perhaps if this were PornOnly.com we'd know more stories about porn actors and actresses. Porn is a much bigger industry than pro-wrestling, so in that sense the number of premature deaths in wrestling is ridiculous, but in terms of sleaze pro-wrestling doesn't compare. Porn is porn -- it's always existed and always will -- but it affects not only the lives of the people who star in it but often the people who watch it. It simply has a greater social impact than wrestling. And porn doesn't just imply some Adut Video production company out in California. That side of the business may or may not be relatively clean. When you factor in internet porn, underground porn, hardcore porn from other countries, all the different types of fetishs, illegal porn... John is right, the exploitation in porn is far worse.
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I ended up watching a fair bit of 70s wrestling today. Harley Race vs. Giant Baba, 12/9/75 This was pretty good for a match with mostly headlocks. Harley was good at working these kind of holds, using enough movement and the right kind of selling to keep things interesting. As with most wrestling, all of the switching on the mat was just a way to bide time before the hard hitting stuff. In this case, Baba was really into the heavy hitting & it came across as a hard fought bout. Harley's supposed to have this rep as a tough guy -- he could shoot on anybody, other wrestlers were afraid of him -- but as a touring champ he spent most of the time putting his opponent over. Baba didn't need to be put over this strong; I guess that speaks for Race's work ethic. Billy Robinson vs. Giant Baba, 7/24/76 Man, this is awesome. Definitely the best match I've seen from All Japan in the 70s. I was really surprised that they worked this standing up instead of taking it to the mat. The basic strategy of Robinson trying to take Baba's legs from under him & Baba trying to strike Robinson down was brilliant. Robinson was a wrestling machine, but you have to give Baba a lot of credit here for understanding what Robinson was trying to do & working with that. Great match. Looked like something from the 90s. Jerry Lawler vs. Harley Race, 12/10/77 Long, excellent title defence by Harley. It wasn't without its flaws, but that's to be expected when they go one hour. This was different from the Harley you see in Japan. Here he was like Flair and pretty much got his ass kicked for one hour. Lawler won this thing on points and then some. That kinda led to a less than hot ending, because Lawler was in control the whole bout and you knew he wouldn't put the champ away as the time keeper counted off the remaing minutes. Still, the body of the match was strong with lots of deft touches. The Destroyer vs. Mil Mascaras, 10/9/73 Man can Destroyer wrestle. It never ceases to amaze me. He had the best possible build for wrestling ever. This doesn't get as much praise as their match from '74, but I guess anyone who cares to see Destroyer has seen him by now... That was a great time when we all started discovering The Destroyer. Mil always gets overlooked when talking about Beyer. He was a fine wrestler in his own right, and the figure four leglock they work in this match is quite possibly the best figure four spot I've seen. The Destroyer vs. Horst Hoffman, 12/17/75 Fun bout, nothing more. It's a treat any time you see Destroyer work.