ohtani's jacket

The Catch stuff is interesting, but there's not enough of it to change the perception of Andre, IMO. It's fascinating to see what he was like in his rookie years, but forget about him being Andre for a second, how would you judge him relative to other French heavyweights? Did you see anything exceptional in him? I didn't expect him to be so technical or to be so versed in the style, but it's a really short period and most of it was in the halls. By the time he leaves France, he doesn't look anything like his rookie year. I don't know if was because of his disease or Parisian dinners, or a bit of both, but he was well on the way to being a monster even before he showed up in Montreal. People should watch the footage, for sure, but to me it's impact is like seeing young Baba more than holy shot, young Andre is one of the best European heavyweights ever.

It's almost impossible for people to copy Toyota directly as she was the strongest girl on the AJW roster with the most stamina and crazy flexibility. She deliberately created moves that were difficult for other wrestlers to copy because was driven to be the absolute best. I don't know how closely the Ice Ribbon girls she endorse resemble her style, but if there is still workrate Joshi, the go-go-go style still exists, and there are feminine ultra competitors with elaborate ring attire, then they have been influenced by Toyota in some way even if they're not aware of it. I'm guessing there are girls today who weren't even born during Manami's best years.

The upshot of that, to me, is that Flair would have wrestled Windham a bunch of times in 1990 instead of Luger. I just think it's unfair to pin expectations on a guy like Windham when there was no longer a territory system for the NWA champ to tour. I suppose he could have been a bigger star in early WCW but it's hard to envision much changing. All I can imagine is that he headlines a few more shows. Can we envision an alternate timeline where Windham is a big time player in the Monday Night Wars?

I don't think the Catch stuff adds a ton to Andre's case. In the 60s footage, he's in great shape and works like a traditional French heavyweight. Within a few years, he's heavier and working like an embryonic Andre the Giant. It's interesting stuff, but I don't think it changes the conversation about Andre.

Doesn't Toyota have a handpicked successor in Tsukasa Fujimoto? The idea that Manami Toyota has no influence on the modern scene seems pretty absurd given she only retired five years ago and still works in the business as Ice Ribbon's managing supervisor.

Did Windham really underachieve? I could understand that argument if the territory system never collapsed, but what was Windham supposed to be post 88? The NWA champ? The WCW champ? He was never going to be the NWA or WCW's answer to Hogan. He could have been a great worker for longer, but that's about his ceiling for me.

I've declared Ultimo the best rudo in CMLL, but here's a challenge for him: can he get anything out of Vampiro in a mano a mano? Vampiro comes out to a hip hop track instead of 'Welcome to the Jungle,' which I couldn't figure out at first, but then Shocker came into shot. That's the first time I've heard a second's theme used for a singles match. Vampiro can't seem to figure out what look he wants to rock. He's back to Biker Taker here. This is a great performance from Ultimo Guerrero, and a really good mano a mano. Ultimo works stiff with a mix of brawling and shoot submissions. He does a great job of making Vampiro's shit look good. There are a few hairy moments where Vampiro can't execute cleanly, but it's still an excellent bout. The crowd is red hot at the end. CMLL is on fire right now. It's summer and the Aniversario is around the corner. This shit is exciting.

This is kind of a strange match-up for Greco, so it's against a main eventer and heavyweight champion, but Greco is one of my all-time favorite workers so I'm happy if it draws more attention to his name.

In an alternate reality where Hansen leaves AJPW, invades New Japan, and has death matches with Onita, and Tenryu stays and wrestles the "Pillars", who has better matches?

I think the areas where Toyota excelled at selling were during the meaningless filler sections in Joshi matches where they stretch each other, selling the impact of a bump, and putting over the fatigue and the physical and emotional exhaustion of a match. I know some people are turned off by the screaming, but I'd rather listen to Manami shrieking than the workers talking to each other while they do submission holds. She sells bumps like an all-timer, IMO. She always likes like she's been wiped out. And she's a champion at putting over the overall effect a match has on the competitors. She was very good at putting over the fact that her matches were special and distinct from other girls' matches. I wouldn't call her a great actress. I find her a bit over the top when she tries to work heel or shine as the ace, but I don't really love that mid-90s period for AJW in general. I gravitated toward JWP for that period and early GAEA vs. Oz Academy matches. .

It's a large amount of footage, and sifting through it to find the good stuff, or simply catalogue it all, takes time. Especially if you're trying to watch the other matches on the shows as well. The reason we don't have a laundry list of every Casas match worth watching is because no one has dedicated the time towards making one. I personally have never had an experience watching weekly lucha in real time. I have either focused on a particular period of lucha I like, or scanned match-listings for match-ups that look interesting (and not just singles matches, for the record.) I have been taking a weekly approach with 00s lucha and the Tenay stuff, but my progress is slow. I will be quite happy when we get the full picture of Casas as a worker, but again, this is not how people watch Terry Funk matches (to the best of my knowledge.) It seems to me that most people just watch random Funk matches. Funk footage is scattershot. He didn't work in the same building week after week, or for the same promotion, but he benefits greatly from the mentality that "I can pop on any random Funk match and I know he's going to be entertaining." I know Funk's body of work was a sore spot in the last poll, and that his defenders have built up a catalogue of work and more of his matches have emerged since 2016, but I don't feel as though people have presented The Complete Works of Terry Funk either, so why can't we judge Casas the performer vs. Funk the performer without worrying about the matches? They're both similar performers, that's why the comparison was made. There's not a single thing that Terry Funk can do that Casas can't do and vice versa. The caveat I would add is that Funk did it everywhere, the world over, while Casas only shone in Mexico. I don't really agree with Matt's career point. I think you can clearly see the shifts in Casas' career from rudo to tecnico, and back again, and young guy to veteran, etc. Breaks doesn't have a huge career arc unless you factor in winning and losing belts, and his slow aging process. I do think that his act developed over time and that the Breaks we're familiar with is later period Breaks and very showy. I have some early 70s Breaks where he is clearly a heel but not doing the full blown Crybaby act with people throwing dummies at him. I have a feeling that period of Breaks came during the Big Daddy era where Crabtree was trying to shake things up. But it's all conjecture until we can get access to the footage.

Yeah. The hair match is not talked about a lot, so I doubt that it's a classic, but the two trios I watched are awesome.

The 8mm film footage of Bockwinkel in the early 70s is amazing. .I was really impressed with the Ernie Ladd footage.

Anyone who doubts Casas needs to watch the Tarzan Boy feud. Hot damn.

This was a great match! It was only a two fall trios match, but it may have been the best two fall trios match I've ever seen. The tecnicos were on fire. Negro Casas vs. Tarzan Boy -- oh man, what a feud. Casas upped the ante in this bout after last week's blood, and it was INCREDIBLE. No-one can up the ante quite like Casas. Arena Mexico was rocking in this match. You had Atlantis and Wagner going at it again, Casas going full throttle against Tarzan Boy, and even Niebla refusing to hold back against Rey Bucanero. I've said it before, but you can't beat a trios match where the tecnicos are fired up and dishing it out to the rudos. Usually, you get that in the tecnico comebacks, but when the entire match is built around the tecnicos handing out an ass whipping then you know you're watching something special.

This was joined in progress, but it ended up being pretty decent. It was closer in quality to Virus' lightning matches than his classic title matches, but he worked in some cool shit, and Fuerza was able to hang. The finish wasn't what the crowd wanted to see, but Fuerza drew good heat and I thought he sold the finish well.

I haven't gone through Mike Tenay's entire collection yet, but Casas' 93 is built around the Ultimo Dragon title match and trios and the La Fiera hair match and trios. There is also the long Casas/Dandy vs. Jericho/Ultimo tag that personally I'm not a fan of. In '94 his major program is an apuesta feud with Mocho Cota that leads to an oddly structured hair match. In '95, his big feud is against Santo leading to their match at the Anniversary Show. I haven't seen much lucha from '95. IIRC, Segunda Caida have reviewed some of it. I don't know if there are any hidden gems outside of the Ultimo, Cota & Santo feuds. He may have some good performances here and there.

Yeah, that was a great podcast.

I need some clarification on this week-to-week thing. If you're talking about three trios and an apuesta/title match then there are few better. If you're talking about three random matches on TV from Arena Coliseo or Arena Mexico then not so. The thing is, I just watched a run of CMLL where Santo & Casas had a great match against Ultimo & Rey which moved into a Ultimo vs. Santo tease until CMLL and Santo had a falling out, or Santo fucked off for whatever reason, and Casas picked up the slack. It wasn't as good, but they plugged away and Shocker and Mascara Magica got involved, and Vampiro, and now they've set up Casas vs. Tarzan Boy, which is a great match-up. And the thing is, in between all that, Casas changed his wrestling style to a brawling style focused on punching and looked fantastic against GdI. Now if you expect Casas to look amazing in every match, it's not going to happen. Chad and I have mentioned the lulls lately. But what do we have week-to-week from Funk? Some All Japan tours? Funk benefits from random, isolated footage. Funk benefits from "we don't have much of him but what we do have is awesome." Funk benefits from "here's a new Terry Funk match that nobody's seen before that adds to his legacy." Casas was probably that way in the past, too. I am sure if we got random pre-92 Casas matches spring up that he would benefit in the same way that Funk does. There's never going to be a level playing field in these arguments, but I will say that the '93 trios matches I watched recently, which is for all intents and purposes a random watch, where I put Casas over as at the height of his powers, to me that is no different from how people judge Funk.

I'm not a huge Johnny Valentine guy, but man, that clip of Harley and Valentine in St. Louis in '72...

This was cool. It was built around Vampiro vs. Ultimo, and Ultimo being the best heel in CMLL naturally made it awesome. There was even a flashback to last week's low blow. Holy continuity, Batman. I am actually hyped to watch the Ultimo/Vampiro singles match after this. Vampiro was DQ'ed for throwing a back elbow at Babe Richard, who sold it like a fucking champ. I can get down with this reckless Vampiro with a hard on for Ultimo. The other story was Tarzan Boy vs. Casas, which is a great match-up. Tarzan Boy bust Casas open, which was barely noticeable at first, but when Casas put a rag around his head it soaked right through. He looked like Buck Shelford playing the French in '86. Look it up if you don't get it. I kept thinking how much I wanted to see them have a hair vs. hair match and then Casas got on the mic and said the magic words. There's a lot riding on that match. It could make or break Casas' year. The build up was ace.

Virus and the Guerreras are on the same side despite last week's brawl, but of course they're not cooperating. The tecnicos keep inviting Virus over to their side, which the Guerreras openly mock. I hate these drawn out turns in lucha, but at least Virus is in the spotlight and it's fun watching him sell the angle. Fuerza gets absolutely humiliated during the match when Niebla bumps and grinds all over him. Virus wants Juvie mano a mano, but first he has to go through Pops.

I'm gonna go with Casas on this one. I'm not really a Terry Funk guy. I love listening to his promos, but he's not a guy who I get immediately excited about when it comes to a match. And he doesn't represent wrestling to me like he does to so many other people. In fact, I went down a YouTube foxhole recently and wound up watching his roast, and I was interested in the part where Funk started listing the guys who represented wrestling to him when he was coming up in the business. Terry's a legend in the business, no doubt, but I don't think he's everything. I am interested in watching more of his 70s work if I get the chance. I didn't realize that we had some agnostics on the forum when it comes to Casas. That's interesting.

I've been reading up on Dump to see if there's anything I can add to this thread, and man, between the way rookies were treated, the management practices, and the amount of money the Matsunagas blew, AJW ought to be a lot more notorious than it is. One thing I've discovered recently, and they did this with Aja and Bull and Dump and the Crush Girls, is that management would get in the workers' ears and feed them lies that their opponent was saying about them. Then they'd encourage them to take it on their opponent in the ring.