ohtani's jacket

I think some of these "cut and paste-excite.co.jp" people would be shocked if they knew where many of these venues are. I was shocked when I discovered where Shinjuku Face is... As for the wrestlers there's always TV. Japan is the land of the variety TV show and there's a whole Variety TV circuit. Hokuto and Sasaki are firmly entrenched in this circuit. Their gimmick is that she wears the trousers in the household. Sometimes Sakaki brings along his NJPW buddies, and there's a comedian who does a Riki Choshu gimmick. Oh, and Inoki still has his face plastered everywhere. The other day he was on a truck promoting a Japanese rapper's new single... Other than that, puroresu is pachinko parlour theme music. If not for that area around Tokyo dome with all the expensive puroresu shops and a few major Tsutaya video stores and puroresu magazines, it would be completely dead. I did find one cool ramen shop that had pictures of Baba, Inoki and Rikidozan. And sometimes there's an ad for a show on the big TV screen in Shibuya. Waste of fucking money that.

Is "pro wres" really a romanization of that katakana? Anyway, Japanese people use different romaji all the time, so I won't quibble. If they can say Erikku Kuraputon and Makudonarudo, then Westerners can write and pronounce プロレス as "pro wres." I think in certain contexts saying puroresu is OK. Like, "I went to a puroresu show in Japan." It is, after all, puroresu[/] in Japan. And since it's katakana, some Japanese aren't sure how to pronounce it, either, especially if they have no interest in wrestling. As far as I can tell, there's a long way and a short way to pronounce it and it depends on how familiar you are with the term. Japanese is a bitch to pronounce anyway... I do have to say that on the radio show they mispronounced practically every single wrestler's name, but I can't pronounce Tsuruta or Tenryu to save my life. It's dead in Japan anyway. People on the internet care way more about it than Japanese people do. It's like a relic from the past over here. They're all about soccer in Japan.

I see what you mean. Actually if you ask a Japanese person about puroresu they'll usually say, "you mean WWE?" It would be better if people called it Japanese puroresu, but as the other guy said it's a tag like "anime". I can't stand that "pro wres" shit, though. That's annoying. And there's other words like Joshi and gaijin which are borderline. But Japanese misappropriates English all the time. It drives me crazy when people ask me if I'm "high tension." Oddly, people got crap for saying Zenjo. One of the more acceptable pinches.

Why does this bother you? Do you mind Lucha Libre?

In that case, what position is the fan supposed to take? I don't see too many people refraining from downloading, distributing or pimping matches and it's only a matter of time before people start criticising workers in the same way as before. Will this seriously change the way people judge wrestling matches, considering the things that made Benoit a good wrestler played a part in all of this? I mean, can a person justify criticising a wrestler or the way they work a match if working hard leads to your body breaking down and a safe style may still involve a risky lifestyle? And if the business is rotten to the core or just fucked to begin with, what are we doing watching it?

There was an article on DVDVR about common trends in men who kill their familes. From the sounds of things Benoit was pretty obsessed about his family.

I think most wrestling fans realise it's a shitty business, but nobody really wants to stop watching it. In that sense, Benoit exemplified what's good about wrestling, or rather what can be construed as "good." But in light of what's happened, the characteristics of a Benoit match (for me anyway) have taken on new meaning... It's probably stupid to feel that way, since these things never bothered me in the days leading up to the fact, but I don't think I can watch another Benoit match any time soon. I could probably watch another wrestling match given time, but at the moment wrestling is depressing to me. I live in Tokyo right now, and I will say that it's good to see someone like Hokuto on TV all the time, someone well adjusted who seems to have gotten out and stayed out.