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ohtani's jacket

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  1. ohtani's jacket
    1946.11.15 Henri Cogan vs. Charlie Fisher We already had some Charlie Fisher in the archive footage, but he's fun to watch. I suspect if we had more Fisher, he'd be a favorite of many since he's a lively and energetic worker. 1946.12.18 Louis Loew vs. Butcher Johnson 1946.4.27 Butcher Johnson vs. Martin Butch Butcher Johnson is another of those great black workers lost to history. A big star in Britain in the 30s and a stalwart of the business right up until Paul Lincoln broke off from Joint Promotions in the early 60s yet, i suspect, an unknown name to most folks. He worked barefoot and was extremely athletic. There was an exoticism associated with him, particularly in the 30s, because of his ethnicity and skin color, but fortunately that didn't prevent him from demonstrating his wrestling prowess in the ring. I suspect he would have been one to watch in the 1930s.
  2. ohtani's jacket
    This held up well. Yoshida was a special talented lady. It's a shame she doesn't have a deeper pool of matches as she deserves to be recognized as one of the best wrestlers of the 2000s. As far as I remember, this was style of match wasn't Kimura's forte, but it goes to show that if you execute the fundamentals, sell your ass off, and hit some of your own stuff, then you can have a great match regardless of the matchup. It subtly moved away from a Yoshida style match towards more of a hard fought pro-style match, but even that part of the bout was good. This might be Yoshida's best post-ARSION bout.
  3. ohtani's jacket
    As I imagined, most US wrestlers would bill themselves as junior heavyweights. I kind of love how those sites exist when it's a work, though.
  4. ohtani's jacket
    This match doesn't getting going until Todd Sinclair orders the restart. After that, it's a fairly intense fight. There are a few miscues, but it's a compelling bout. Danielson's heel performance is overstated. He had one good moment where they had to force a rope break instead of letting him get DQ'ed, but mostly his heel performance was made up of him giving people the finger and hollering that he was the best in the world. The story here was Homicide, win or go home. I have a soft spot for Homicide so I was glad that he won. TBH, the work in the post-match celebration probably tops the work in the match, but I'm sure there were a lot of real emotions mixed in there. I was in two minds about the finish. The nearfall off the Cop Killa was good, but I kind of wish he'd won with the Cop Kila rather than that lariat. The shoulder stuff was pro-wrestling fluff. Danielson did a good job of selling his arm, but you're not gonna win points with me for that. Overall, I thought it was one of the more memorable matches from 2006, but I'm not sure if it was one of the best.
  5. ohtani's jacket
    Hulk Hogan & Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage & Honky Tonk Man (WWF, 1/5/87) Another fun match from the peak Hulkamania years. I would have eaten this shit up as a kid. There's a lot going on in this match without a hell of a lot happening in the ring. They give you a taste of Savage/Steamboat without spoiling your appetite for the big bout. There's a reminder of the bad blood between Savage and Hogan, and Honky looms on the horizon of both Steamboat and Savage. It's another bout where you don't get the full Hogan experience, and where everyone else in the bout is doing the work, but it's fun watching Hogan in the Andre role from a few years prior.
  6. ohtani's jacket
    1946.11.5 Charles Rigoulot vs. Bill Garnon Garnon was another important figure in pre-war British wrestling. In fact, it was Garmon, along with Atholl Oakeley who introduced Britain to All-in wrestling in 1930. There is a short clip on that match available on YouTube. Garnon was closer to retirement here, and didn't have the strapping physique that he possessed in 1930, but he still cut an imposing figure and was a strong looking man. This may only be a snippet of footage, but it's nice to see these famous names from the 30s in action.
  7. ohtani's jacket
    I don't think you're going to find too many examples of US wrestlers between 63 kg (139 lb) and 70 kg (150 lb), certainly not billed at that weight. Almost every wrestler would bill themselves as being over 200lb. I don't think direct comparisons help. I forgot about Rocca. He was certainly spectacular for his time even if he would have been a heavy middleweight in Britain.
  8. ohtani's jacket
    1946.1.9 Harry Brooks vs. Mano Melas Harry Brooks was a British star whose career spanned both the pre-war and post-war eras. The lads over at Wrestling Heritage say he was more of a ruffian than a stylist, but I thought he looked fundamentally sound in these clips and had a great physique. He leaned into the foreign heel trope that was so popular in 50s Catch, but it's a good trope and always leads to wild matches and wild crowds. Though from what I can gather, Melas was actually an American wrestler playing off his Greek heritage. Brooks would go on to appear in one of the first televised matches on the BBC in 1947.
  9. ohtani's jacket
    McManus and Pallo's popularity had little to do with their weight, or even their wrestling skill. It was about their gift of the gab, which ironically is very American. Their FA Cup bout is decent, but not a technical masterpiece. As many people have echoed in the past, the Jacky Corn vs. Billy Howes bout from the same tape is a vastly superior bout technique-wise.
  10. ohtani's jacket
    I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's schematics The Cruiserweight division from the 90s onwards was synonymous with light weight wrestlers. Unless you're trying to argue that the great European lightweights were lighter than an American cruiserweight, but even that seems irrelevant.
  11. ohtani's jacket
    The WWE acquired the WCW Cruiserweight title when they bought WCW and used it to replace the WWF Light Heavyweight title. The Cruiserweight belt was Smackdown exclusive and lasted from 2001-2007. During the early part of Rey's run in the WWE, he competed in the Cruiserweight division while sometimes having matches against bigger opponents. After Eddie Guerrero died, they gave Rey a push where he won the Rumble and became a world champion at WrestleMania. He was never positioned as a heavyweight. He was treated as an underdog with a huge heart. He definitely added muscle, though. After they retired the Cruiserweight belt, and Rey had already been a world champ, they basically had him work against whomever.
  12. ohtani's jacket
    Well, that's crazy.
  13. ohtani's jacket
    2006 was indeed a strange year for the WWE, and not a particularly good one, but I thought this was pretty good by ladder match standards. I had forgotten that Dave Taylor had a run in the WWE. Regal and Taylor had no place in a ladder match, despite some of the great pirate fights Taylor worked in Germany. I thought it was amusing that they spent most of their time on the outside giving people European uppercuts. They also worked a bit of comedy into the bout by doing that shtick about being afraid of heights. That said, Regal was involved in a couple of brutal sequences, including that incredible spot where Spanky caught him with a neckbreaker off the top of the ladder. I like JBL's enthusiasm, but man was he laying it on thick. Did Joey Mercury mess up his nose for real? That was nasty looking. There were a lot of bodies involved in this, and it had the potential to be a train wreck, but I was entertained.
  14. ohtani's jacket
    This was a decent match as far as clean, technical Cena matches go. He had better matches than this when he first broke through, but he was in a vastly different role here to his early breakout period. As far as I recall, 2007 was Cena's best year. I didn't see too much foreshadowing of that here, and overall I thought 2006 was a weak year for Cena compared to his 2005, and even that year dovetailed towards the end. It will be interesting to see what sparks his 2007. Whatever merits this bout had were ruined by the run-ins at the end. I have zero interest in the DX reunion and Edge hamming it up at the end like a Saturday morning cartoon villain was ridiculous.
  15. ohtani's jacket
    Hulk Hogan & Roddy Piper vs King Harley Race & Paul Orndorff (WWF, 11/24/86) With all the crazy rhetoric flying around about Hogan at the moment, I thought it would be better to just watch a match, and who better to go to for WWF recommendations than elliott. This is a fun match from Hogan's peak years that seems him form a reluctant partnership with Piper, who winds up bailing on the match, leaving Hogan to face Race, Orndorff and Heenan on his own. Even though Hogan never gets to fully unleash, he's over like a mofo and the crowd are happy just to see him pose.
  16. ohtani's jacket
    I don't know the exact reasons, but there was clearly an emphasis on size in America and a larger focus on heavyweight titles. Where that emphasis originated from, I don't know. Lightweight wrestling wasn't the only form of wrestling that fell by the wayside. Women's wrestling and minis wrestling was also marginalized after being fixtures of the Golden Age of professional wrestling. I don't think lightweights ever completely disappeared from the sport, but certainly by the time the 80s rolled around there was a lot of pressure on lighter weight wrestlers to bulk up. I don't think that pressure ever completely disappeared. If you look at the Mysterio that broke through in the WWE, he is far more jacked than he was in ECW or WCW. Japanese and Mexican wrestlers are generally of smaller stature than their American counterparts, so that likely played a role in the development of their wrestlers. However, in both countries, the lightweight wrestlers tried to climb the weight divisions. Fujinami, for example, was one of wrestling's great lightweights, but harbored a desire to wrestle in the heavyweight class. In the US, where weight classes mattered less, small wrestlers also aimed for the world title. I suppose the true answer is that until Mysterio arrived on the scene, there wasn't a Petit Prince level talent working in the States. Some very good workers, but no-one spectacular.
  17. ohtani's jacket
    1948.10.8 Louis Loew vs. Rex Gable 1949.2.4 Al Cabrol vs. Rex Gable 1950.10.13 Georges Freymond vs. Rex Gable Borrowing a name like Gable, I expected someone more dashing, but it turns out that Gable was that most common of grapplers-- the vanilla British heavyweight. Boring as these workers may be, they're still skilled wrestlers, and in actual fact, the third bout is one of the longest clips in the collection (running around 7 minutes) and is a highly competitive and skilled bout. So, I imagine against the right opponent, Gable probably delivered good bouts.
  18. ohtani's jacket
    This was closer to the Joe vs. Angle match that I want to see. it wasn't perfect, but given the circumstances it was as good as you could expect. I was so frustrated with Benoit and Angle's matches in 2001 that I gave up watching the WWE for a good five years, and I felt a similar weight of expectation on these bouts. but I guess I've mellowed a bit over the years. Even the ref bump didn't bother me that much because Joe still won the bout. Of course, it would have had far more impact if Joe had won cleanly, but it's not as though he used the chair himself. He still won using the same hold. It was like winning in overtime vs. clinching it with a buzzer beater.
  19. ohtani's jacket
    I thought this was an excellent TV match despite the cage match gimmick being overdone in the eight years prior. Much better than their Unforgiven match from an ebb and flow standpoint. I didn't love the interference at the end, but the marines being so staunchly in Cena's favor meant that it finished on a high note regardless of how it got there. Overall, I thought Cena did an outstanding job of selling the injury and Edge was practically Savage-esque compared to his usual ham acting.
  20. ohtani's jacket
    1952.10.26 Joachim La Barba vs. Rene Bouchoucha 1954.5.14 Roger Delaporte vs. Joachim La Barba I had forgotten how talented Joachim La Barba was. He's another guy you wish there was a cache of footage available. One of those guys who's always in motion and always doing something to draw the crowd's attention. It was amusing seeing a young, skinny Roger Delaporte. He had the physique of a young Tony St. Claiir in this bout. He was still honing his act at this point and was a lot more physical and active than the grand stooge he'd become.
  21. ohtani's jacket
    I imagine he was. The clips don't make it explicit. The Rene Ben Chemoul match is hard fought and heated, but Rene raises Mann's hand at the end.
  22. ohtani's jacket
    Great stories, but it doesn't really mean much if it doesn't translate to ringwork.
  23. ohtani's jacket
    I don't think this lived up to the initial hype of the Samoan Submission Machine vs. Olympic Gold Medalist, but instead they went the pro-wrestling route and had Angle bleed a shit ton before finally engaging in a submission duel. It was okay but kind of lacking compared to the MMA bouts from the years presiding it. It could have been laid out better, IMO, however it received the desired result in terms of the finish and crowd reaction. Closer to a 3 star match than a 4 star one.
  24. ohtani's jacket
    i didn't love this match, but I didn't hate it either. The best thing about it was the dynamic of Edge wrestling in his hometown. There was a point somewhere in the midway of the match where Cena was leaning into his heel roots, which at the same time was justified because of all of the shit Edge had done to him, but Edge kind of faded from the picture and then it became a John Cena overcomes the odds match. I thought that was the least interesting creative choice they could have made. That said, if you're going to win the title in one of these shitty matches then a FU over the top of the ladder through two tables isn't a bad way to end things. It wasn't boring but it wasn't great.
  25. ohtani's jacket
    Not in the footage. I would argue that every one of his opponents looked better. That said, it was the late 40s. He may have been better earlier in his career.
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