ohtani's jacket

This was a lot of fun. It was clipped in parts so it was hard to get a gauge for the rhythm, but the third fall was hard fought and featured some great action. Virus, Ricky Marvin & Volador Jr may have been the best trio in Mexico in 2003. This was an opportunity to see them in a different territory, and against guys you wouldn't usually see them wrestle.

This was a decent spot fest, but I was looking for something with a bit more meat, especially since ROH hasn't had anywhere near as good matches in 2003 as it did in 2002, and Joe's run as champ hasn't had a lot of blow away matches, either. Instead, it was more of the same. The work was good, but there was no real attempt at trying to make this a classic world title fight, which is strange because a classic world title fight would have really stood out in '03.

Modesto Aledo vs. Bob Remy (aired 7/29/67) This wasn't as exciting as the first Aledo match, largely because it didn't descend into manchettes and crowd brawling, but we did get to see some of the mechanics of Aledo's wrestling. He definitely looks like he was a great worker. It's a little difficult to tell which mold of worker, but I'm glad this match wasn't missing as originally thought. Frank Valois vs. Jacky Wiecz (aired 8/2/67) Jesus, Valois was a big unit. This isn't my preferred style of wrestling, but they joined during the heated part so it wasn't too bad. I was surprised to see Wiecz take the win. Robert Gastel vs. Eddie Williams (aired 8/2/67) This restored my faith in Robert Gastel. I was kind of down on him after the boring Di Santo match, and was beginning to have my doubts about him, but he was much better here. Williams was a good looking, athletic type, but didn't offer much outside of his physique. Gastel totally carried this. The ref was truly awful and almost ruined things with his cornball act, but even his BS couldn't detract from Gastel's crafty performance. Anton Tejero vs. Walter Bordes (aired 8/29/67) This match was available back in the old days when every piece of Catch footage was like mana from heaven. Tejero is a fabulous worker, but I wasn't really feeling this. I wanted to see Bordes shine, but Tejero was up to his tricks all bout long and Bordes didn't cut loose until the finishing stretch. I'd probably like this more on a different day where I haven't just watched an entire run of similar matches. Teddy Boy vs Gerard Bouvet (aired 12/16/67) Final few minutes. Looked like they drew good heat. Bouvet was jacked for a smaller guy.

I may have been too hard on The Authority. I'm still not fond of late 90s superhero comics, but it's better than I gave it credit for. Hitch's art is beautiful even if it is at the forefront of the shift towards big panels and sparse dialogue.

I'm not super high on L'Ange Blanc as a worker, but those tag matches look intriguing, especially the one with Hercules Cortez.

Crime and Punishment: Marshal Law Takes Manhattan is a 48 page one-shot that offers us Patty Mills' irreverent take on some of the most famous Marvel superheroes. Originally, Mills wanted to use the actual characters, but Marvel wouldn't let him. I think I prefer it that way as it lets O'Neill cut loose with some unhinged versions of Marvel's heroes. The story is standard "superheroes are bad" fare with a generous helping of bloods and guts. O'Neill's artwork is every bit as demented as you'd hope, and Mills provides some zingers, especially if you're a longtime fan of the Marvel supes.

I read the original Marshal Law limited series last month. It kind of fell apart in the final two issues, but in the wake of Kevin O'Neill's passing, I'd rather emphasize the great artwork. I really liked the coloring too. I'm mostly used to reading O'Neil's work in black and white. The color made his art pop on Marshal Law. RIP, Kev. Torquemada is still one of my all-time favorite villains.

This was a standard elimination match up until the Michaels bladejob, and not a particularly inventive one. Michael's bladejob was pretty horrific by WWE standards. The match kicked up a gear with Shawn trying to defy the odds and save Austin's career. The ending was a bummer. Austin felt it, the crowd felt it. They took forever letting Austin get his heat back with the goodbye promo and the stunners on Jonathan Coachman and the security guards. Lawler being at a loss for words was a nice touch. Not sure why people think this is a classic Survivor Series tag. The early eliminations are an afterthought. The Michaels stuff was good, but not off the charts. Gotta agree with Makai's rating on this one.

Fair point. I watched Burke vs Weston again last night to see whether I'm barking up the wrong tree, and I still think Burke looks great. Weston too. Anyway, Burke is already in, I won't take up anymore of your time about this.

We'll probably never know how truly good Burke was as a worker, especially since much of the debate about what made a good worker from that era was whether they could shoot. The opinion of other workers is hearsay. You have to take into account the biases, prejudices and jealousies that exist within the business before taking a wrestler's word at face value. That said, Leen believed that both Burke and Byers were great workers, and I'm fairly certain he meant workers period not "women workers." Just because no-one was comparing the women to the men before Terry Funk told Dave that the All Japan girls were better than the men doesn't mean the women were worse. Thesz and others may have thought women's wrestling was a freak show, but if you look at the Golden Age footage, it's not a primitive style of wrestling. A primitive style of wrestling would be hairpulling and catfights. There was an element of that in some heel-led matches, but in many bouts the women show a fair degree of technical skill. It was surprising to me, as I expected nothing but back scratching and hair tosses, but that style of wrestling became the predominant women's wrestling style after Burke & Co. retired. I also object to Burke being just as good as the standard guys given the huge number of journeymen at the time. I don't have proof of this, but I suspect Burke's better world title fights were a damn sight better than the average journeyman heel vs. babyface bout from the Golden Age.

God, the selling in this sucked. So many pop up transitions from both guys when they were meant to be dead. The commentary was unbearable. Some shrill geek screaming cliches the entire time. I'm not predisposed towards liking this type of match, but I thought Homicide and Corino would do better. They should have spent more time watching FMW tapes beforehand.

This was an interesting novelty match with Ogawa trying every cheap trick he could think of to possibly pull off the upset. You have to give Ogawa a ton of credit for his performance here as heel tricks don't always resonate in Japan. I loved the part where Kobashi finally lost his cool and started chopping Ogawa's cut. I wouldn't argue with anyone who claimed Kobashi was the best worker in the world in 2003. It's kind of sad that a broken wrestler is the best worker among the world's elite, but as a guy who hasn't always been the biggest Kobashi fan, I've gotta say he was on a different level to everyone else in terms of crowd connection and the weight behind every move. It's not necessarily doing more with less, or any of that bullshit, but the timing of every movement queuing the crowd into the stakes. Smart stuff, but it must have hurt like a mother fuck.

Man, am I glad to see Danielson back in ROH. I don't buy into the argument about him being the Best in the World since day one, and I find his heel gimmick a little forced (his acting in general has never gelled with me the way it does with so many others), but this was a shot in the arm that ROH desperately needed after treading in the water for much of its second year. Match-wise, that is. Diehards may have enjoyed the booking more than I have. Immediately, you can see this is a guy on AJ Styles' level, as opposed to someone like Punk, and they work a really great smash mouth style of wrestling that's full of piss and vinegar. Ordinarily, grappling on the floor would annoy me, but I liked the intensity here. This wasn't in the all-time classic range, but it was relevant to the time and place it was wrestled. There was a lot of clever wrestling and the big spots were nicely done. Good stuff.

The last bit of footage from the Buffalo video is a Gallagher Bros. vs Lisowski Bros match that was uploaded donkeys years ago, and the beginning of a Fritz Von Erich vs Great Zabio match that probably didn't last much longer than what was shown. I'm surprised at how short these matches are. I understand that they were taped for TV, but Chicago and Los Angeles tended to give you longer bouts than these. I was quite impressed by Killer Kowalski in the Australian clips from 1967. They're only clips, but he wrestled with much more urgency and intensity than I've seen from his US work. O'Connor looks solid too.

Nobody said she was top 10 for the era, or just as good as the elite men. You said she was merely good. Based on what? Testament from other wrestlers, or lack-thereof? You haven't explained how you reached that conclusion.

You're saying there's no anecdotal evidence that Burke was a great worker. I'm saying there isn't an video proof that she wasn't. Burke, along with other female wrestlers from the Golden Age, had far more technical skill than people might imagine. Byers has never stood out to me in the footage I've seen, but there's neither here nor there. We're not going to agree on this, but I feel modern reappraisal of wrestlers and matches is far more important than how they were viewed at the time. If we were suddenly to discover a hoard of Burke matches, a contemporary critique of those matches would hold far more weight to me than accounts of how Burke was viewed in the past. And if ten years later, a new generation of fans presented opposing views on the matches, that would still hold more weight with me than how the matches were received in the 40s and 50s. Perhaps historians wouldn't agree with this line of thinking, but if they're going to draw conclusions about a wrestler's legacy and impact beyond how audiences thought about them at the time, then we can do the same with their work. And yes, there are plenty of reasons why this mentality can be unfair towards older workers and older matches, but it also serves to champion the overlooked and underappreciated workers of the past.

How do we know that Mildred Burke wasn't an elite worker? She looks fantastic in the footage we have of her. Miles better than Byers, fwiw. What does it matter if people at the time didn't rate her as highly as Thesz & Co.? And how do we know this for a fact? You've already explained how women's wrestling was viewed in the 50s, so it hardly comes as a surprise that no-one from that era would rate her as highly as the men. We've reevaluated so many wrestlers over the years -- some of whom were overlooked in the 80s and 90s let alone the 50s -- that all that should matter at this stage is whether she passes the eyesight test.

That Backlund/Patera match is really good. Great nearfall from that atomic drop, and that ref bump was the most natural looking ref bump I've seen in a long time. Backlund was making weird noises and acting demented, but I gotta admit, I love the rowing spot he does with the armbar. Nothing beats the late 70s/early 80s Madison Square Garden crowd. It's a total New York vibe. It kind of blows when that crowd gets replaced by the Hogan crowd.

I see a lot of arguing online about whether Lynch is a draw or not with claims that both sides are using quarter hour ratings to fit their preferred narrative. Alvarez goes from arguing that Lynch isn’t a draw at the beginning of 2019 to claiming that she is the biggest star and biggest ratings mover of the year. Others claim it doesn’t mean much when ratings are down across the board. Then there’s this from Dave: I guess if you look at it from a certain point of view, Lynch is the biggest worldwide star in women’s wrestling history, but by that rationale a lot of WWE stars are bigger draws than national pr regional stars simply because of the company they work for.

Small business model vs. big business model is the same stumbling block we face when trying to advocate British and European candidates, as well as other small markets and regional promotions. I don't see why you can only be considered a strong draw if you drew x number of live gates, especially in a large promotion like the WWE where the brand itself draws the gate. The WWE is going to draw a certain number of fans regardless of whether Lynch is on the card. How do you determine the exact number of fans who attended a WWE show because of Lynch's individual drawing power? A big show like Wrestlemania is going to draw a large number regardless. It seems to me as though workers like Lynch get a ton of credit for where they're positioned on the card, but the card was already a draw. Is there any evidence of a bump in ticket sales after a Lynch match has been announced? Because we can damn sure credit Beauty Pair for selling out Budokan, or point to huge prime time TV ratings for the Crush Gals and Dump Matsumoto. In a cyclical business model, it's easy to see who the draws are, but in the modern WWE, they have tried extremely hard to create a scenario where it's the company that draws and no one individual star, even if there are popular stars who can still move the needle. It's fantastic that Lynch is being positioned high on WWE cards as a woman, and that women's wrestling has achieved what it has within the business is the past decade or so, but a bigger star than other women's wrestlers because she works for the number one company? I dunno about that.

I don't see how Becky Lynch was a bigger draw than the Beauty Pair or the Crush Gals. The latter weren't just draws, they were phenomenons. I'm sure Lynch does well in whatever metrics are used to judge wrestling draws these days, but the Beauty Pair and the Crush Gals weren't just wrestling draws, they were entertainment/show business stars. Now, admittedly, the show business world is a lot smaller in Japan, but they were still on television and in the media *all the time* on TV commercials, television dramas, variety shows, interview and news shows, music shows, etc. Does Becky Lynch have anywhere near that level of celebrity? The Matsunagas business model was never designed to draw big houses. Their number one priority was show business. After that, their focus was on running as many shows around the country as possible within a single year. Eventually, they were able to run Budokan, and later on, they ran bigger venues during the inter-promotional era (to determinantal effect for the most part.) If the metric for a draw during the Crush Gals run was the most number of 10,000 houses drawn, then they probably didn't qualify for top 10, but you'd be hard pressed to find 10 more famous wrestlers in Japan at the time, and frankly the world-wide competition for being a draw in the 80s was significantly higher than in the modern era where other a handful of companies draw. I get the need for Becky Lynch advocacy, but I think you can do that without trying to draw a straight line from Burke to Lynch while downplaying the drawing power of the Joshi stars in relation to WWE's global stranglehold on the business.

I made it to issue #50 of my re-read of Nexus. I don't know if I'd call Mike Baron the best plotter in terms of story development, but it was impressive for any indie title in the 80s to reach 50 issues (if you, in fact, consider First Comics an indie publisher.) Paul Smith may be the best guest penciller of all-time. He's so good that he can replace Steve Rude on pencils and the quality doesn't drop a smidge... Well, that is until Rude comes back and you remember how freaking amazing Steve Rude is. Elfquest had almost lost me with the long and drawn out Kings of the Broken Wheel, but the final two issues of that limited series were really good, and then the decision to go with color for Hidden Years was a revelation. The first four issues of that series contain some of Pini's most beautiful artwork, as well as some wonderful, self-contained stories. Unfortunately, this is the era where Elfquest splintered into separate titles, and Pini hands the creative duties to other people. That's a shame as I kind of like her short stories better than her drawn out epics. I finished reading First Comics' reprinting of Lone Wolf and Cub, which ended 45 issues into a projected 110 issue run. There was no fanfare or goodbye, but it's weird, even though it was a reprint of a comic from the 70s, it felt like the end of an era as the title was synonymous with 80s independent publishing and it truly felt lie that era was over by '91. At some point, I will have to pick up the rest of the series, but it's not a series that you necessarily have to finish to appreciate. I absolutely loved Sock Monkey! That is my kind of comic. So charming and inventive. Almost as good as Frank.

Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs. Blousons Noirs (Manuel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) (aired 9/6/66) This is the quintessential French tag. It would have bee nice to see a longer heat segment from the Blouson Noirs, but the Ben Chemoul/Bordes tandem was the most pure distillery of French Catch you're likely to see. Ben Chemoul excelled at two things -- hot tags and cocky babyface wrestling. Given that I hate cocky babyfaces, it's no surprise that I can't stand Ben Chemoul. Daniel Boucard vs. Francis Ragot (Le Legionnaire) (aired 9/20/66) This was a total surprise. Ragot was a tall, lanky worker who looked like he had no business being in the ring, and at first glance this seemed like it was going to be a loose mess, but man, these guys could scrap. And they stayed on each other the entire bout. I totally overlooked this when I devoured the archives the first time, as I kind of figured Le Legionnaire would be some kind of crappy gimmick and Boucard wasn't on my radar. One of the most pleasant discoveries from the archive. Robert Gastel vs. Lino Di Santo (aired 10/9/66) This was dull. I like both these guys, and I was keen as shit to see a great Robert Gastel performance from the 60s, but this was a slow, plodding affair that never got out of second gear. Le Vicomte Joel de de Noirbreuil & Pierre Lagache vs. Abraham Edery & Georges Cohen (aired 10/16/66) This was a match that could have taken place any night of the week in Paris, but it was highly entertaining largely because Georges Cohen is lowkey one of the best babyfaces in the archives. The heels were nondescript here. With a name like Le Vicomte Joel de de Noirbreuil, you'd expect something a little flamboyant, but nope, it was all black tights and standard heel work, but Cohen was good enough to carry the entire bout by himself. I wish enough people watched French Catch to make controversial statements about it, so I'll put one out there. Georges Cohen > Rene Ben Chemoul. There, I said it.

Roy McClarity vs. Al Korman Tony Marino vs Great Zabio I'm a big fan of 50s wrestling but even I have to admit that it gets a bit samey at times with the heel/face antics. But, that's what the public paid to see. Interesting to see that Buffalo had already devised the 10 minute television match. These bouts feel extremely short by 50s standards. That may be a good thing depending on your point of view as there's plenty of action and movement. I really like the way they put over submission finisher holds. Watch how long it takes Korman to recover from the cobra clutch hold in the McClarity match. Marino vs. Zabio was uploaded a hundred years ago, but it's a fun look at a pretty unique beatnik gimmick. I wish Zabio had done a bit more with the gimmick in-ring, as it was mostly the commentator putting it over. Marino working over the fingers so Zabio wouldn't be able to play the piano afterwards was a nice touch.

I haven't been keeping track of Super Dragon, largely because I can't get my head around the gimmick, but I really liked his performance here. Grimes was a big, burly fella, who didn't have great timing but was committed to the match. Dragon bumped his ass off for him all over the garage. I liked the change of pace from a typical Dragon match and enjoyed watching him deliver a different type of performance. The finish was bullshit, but the key point here was Dragon playing pinball to a big man.