ohtani's jacket

I thought this was cool. It was more dynamic than their return match in ROH and had a lot more dramatic selling, but like Sleeze said, it was a blur of competitive action. Styles walked a fine line between being cutesy and innovative, and the commentary was annoying as fuck, but you can't deny the intensity and hard hitting action. I don't really need that JR/Michael Cole "Good Gawd" Almighty School of Narrative Wrestling when watching pro-wrestling. I'm perfectly okay with grappling if you bring the ruckus. Low Ki was badass in 2002. Easily the US Wrestler of the Year in my opinion. I prefer watching him against some like Homicide than Styles, but it's cool that he can mesh with different dudes.

I haven't seen much Joshi since the 2007-09 period. I've seen Jaguar through social media recently but no matches. I haven't watched that much of her Jd' stuff for that matter. I might do a deep dive on that.

Jaguar retired early because of her shoulder injury. Jd' wasn't her own promotion. It was formed by the entertainment conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo. Jaguar was hired as a freelancer similar to Jackie Sato with the original JWP.

I went back and checked, and it's the show where Debbie Malenko is on commentary. Fumi Saito translates the promo for her.

I don't get what you mean by the challenge happening until after the tag finals was booked. Toyota challenged Yamada on the mic after Yamada won their JGP match on 6/21. The tag tournament didn't start until 7/30.

I just finished the Jonah Hex Spectacular, which tells the story of how Jonah Hex died while serving as a eulogy to the passing of the Old West as a whole. The twist ending, if you can call it that, is one of the most ballsy things I've read in any comic, mainstream or underground. An incredible ending to a brilliant one shot. I've been going through some of the Giant Size comics from the 70s. It's amazing to me that you had Conan the Barbarian, Savage Sword of Conan, Savage Tales, and Giant Size Conan, and yet I' m not sick of the character. A large part of that is due to the art as Thomas always seemed to get great artists working on his scripts, but it's also because Conan is such a reliable character. You know no matter what happens that Conan is going to be Conan. I think it's his nobility that appeals to me the most. That age-old trope that the uncouth barbarian is the most noble soul of all. I've also been impressed with the effort Gerber put into his Giant Size comics compared to other writers of the day. Gerber's Giant Size comics feel like proper issues of the regular title. I actually kind of enjoy his Giant Size Man-Thing issues more than the ongoing title. I wrapped up Gerber's run on Howard the Duck the other day. On the whole, I'd probably rate it higher than his Man-Thing, but I didn't find it as funny as folks did in the 70s. Colan's art was decent, but with Colan, I'm starting to believe that nothing outside of Tomb of Dracula compares. I started reading Werewolf By Night the other day, which I really want to like, but Mike Ploog's cartoony art was as off-putting to me as Michael Golden on 'The Nam. I guess I had a certain expectation of Werewolf as a horror title. I'll see how far I get on the book. I also finished Kirby's The Eternals, which I thought was a book that had a lot of great concepts and great art, but was deeply flawed. I enjoyed the first year or so of issues, but the book fell off the rails pretty quickly and was cancelled shortly thereafter.

I'm pretty sure the Yamada/Toyota hair match stemmed from their singles rivalry not their tag team. They had three time limit draws until Yamada beat her in June. Toyota was so incensed by the loss that she demanded a rematch, putting her hair and title on the line, which led to the famous ending where she regrets what she's done. This is pretty much one of the key matches to understanding Joshi. Folks interested in Joshi for the GWE should study it like the bible.

Vader vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (CWA Bremen 12/21/1991) Usually, I wouldn't care about a transplanted match like this, but Fujinami is a rare case of a Japanese wrestler who was great the world over and CWA Vader is just about my favorite Vader. This wasn't a great Catch match, but it was a decent Fujinami/Vader house show match. I was disappointed that they didn't use the rounds system since Vader's style lends itself perfectly to rounds, but I was happy enough with the strike exchanges. The finish was dumb, but I guess they wanted to cook up a schmoz. I just don't see a beast like Vader needing to surprise anybody with a flash pin. I guess pulverizing Fujinami into submission was off the cards.

There's not a lot to love about Japanese wrestling in 2002, but Takayama's G-1 run is up there. This was a great slugfest. Takayama looked like a beast, and they worked the exact way you'd hope Takayama and Sasaki would. Credit to Sasaki for making Takayama look good on his debut.

Great match. We've seen these two have some great TV matches in TNA. This was a chance for them to have a longer bout. They worked the same basic style just double the length. It was strike/counter strike, move/counter move, the entire way with no real dramatic pauses. I can live with that when the match is stiff and the intensity is full throttle.

Wrestling in Japan in 2002 would have been much better off if Togo had stayed in Osaka Pro, but I guess I'll take Togo and Takaiwa beating on each other in a half-decent juniors fight over no Togo at all.

This wasn't the follow up match you'd hope for after last week's title match, but Halloween and Damian deserved another main event. Halloween was really entertaining, grabbing the mic from the ring announcer and doing his trio's own intros, eating a nasty super kick from Lizmark, and taking a bump into the open arms of a ringside fan. It was a pretty shitty tecnico team, but the rudos made the most of it, and I enjoyed the one-on-one confrontations in the tercera. Vampiro was awful, of course. He came to the ring dressed like Biker Taker and looked spaced out. He's all over the match listings for the rest of the year. I'm not gonna jump the gun yet because of how quick I've been to dismiss the Japanese workers and La Familia de Tijuana, but I'm not super excited about this development especially since he pairs up with Shocker a lot, who had a perfectly good partner in Magica.

I’d take three Wanz fights.

This was a really good match. In fact, I thought it was something of a statement match from GdI. We've seen them have great matches with Santo & Casas, but not with anybody of the calibre of Damian and Halloween. Damian & Halloween are hardly slouches. Their double teams rock in this match, and Halloween busts ass to keep up with GdI, but you get the point. This is pretty much non-stop action. I don't know if it's edited, but it doesn't need to be because the teams keep hitting that sweet spot where each spot is more interesting than the last .Even though it's a quick match, they do a really good job of taking a fall a piece and setting up a tercera that goes back and forth in classic lucha fashion. The finish isn't worthy of the action that proceeded it, but the celebration is top drawer. Considering that this could have been a nothing bout, it was outstanding.

This was an improvement on the match from the week before thanks to the injection of Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero. With Shocker turning tecnico and Wagner off the boil, GdI have risen to the fore as the best heel act in CMLL. I was always dismissive of GdI in the past, and probably a bit of a jerk, but watching them in context, I appreciate their work a lot more than I did in the past. They worked more of a modern, action driven style, but beneath the sheen they were excellent rudo technicians. I love watching Atlantis wrestle these guys. He pairs off with Ultimo at the beginning and instantly I'm thinking this is a match-up I want to see more of (outside of the mask match, that is.) I know Atlantis wrestled some cool singles matches with Bucanero. Props to Halloween and Damian as well. They're not the greatest workers in the world, but they worked the GdI style here and did a fine job of it. This match set up a title bout between GdI and Familia de Tijuana after Halloween and Damian ate topes instead of the tecnicos. Seems short notice, but I'm glad to see CMLL trying something a bit different.

Fun handicap match. We got to see Villano III, who we haven't check in on in a while, and I was glad to see that he could still go even if it was in a labored way. Dantes drew the short straw in facing Silva and did some fun stuff.

Gorgeous George was essentially a comedy worker. Buddy Rogers was the template for your Ray Stevens/Pat Paterson/Buddy Rose/Ric Flair style worker.

I have a hard time thinking about Thesz in those terms because every Thesz match that is unearthed is a treasure trove. My stock answer would be that we don’t have as much 60s footage as we do 50s footage, and what we do have from the US in the 60s doesn’t have the same appeal to me as the 50s television wrestling. Theoretically, Thesz should have still been good throughout most of the 60s, but we don’t have a lot of film. As far as his individual traits as a worker go, that’s not something I’ve thought about a lot. I don’t really need Thesz to be anything more than how he presents himself in those 50s matches.

I have the same problem with Eddie. I love his 1997 and 2004-05 runs to the point where everything else is a disappointment in comparison. That's strictly because of character work. The other periods of Eddie's career are simply Eddie doing work. Now usually I don't care about that sort of thing. I've long outgrown the need for characters in wrestling, but I either really love Eddie's character work or I find his work by itself dull. Maybe a bit of both.

I would start with the Hans Schmidt fights as they're great matches. Then I would watch his matches with Gagne and Carpentier. If you like those, there are plenty of other matches to enjoy vs. Ray Gunkel, Ruffy Silverstein, and more. There's also some maestro stuff from the 70s. Here is his Microscope thread -- This thread also has Thesz matches included:

I've had some time to reflect on this in the past few days instead of bursting into uncontrollable tears. Miura was one of the greatest mangakas ever, and one of the finest artists in the history of comics. Please google search his work if you've never seen it. If you think manga is thrashed out work with little attention to detail or no background work then Berserk was the complete antithesis of that. It was the best manga I've read. It was dark fantasy that was uncompromisingly dark, but the main character's struggle was better than anything I've read in comics. It's uncertain at the moment whether Miura's assistants and publisher will continue with the series, but I'm not worried about whether we'll learn how the manga ends. We lost someone who had a profound influence on so many lives. Berserk is Darkhorse's top selling book. I hope it's reputation continues to spread in the West.

The irony is that Pete Parker was only in high school for the first 28 issues of Amazing Spider-Man.

Kentaro Miura died. I am going to lie down. When I wake up, I hope this was a bad dream.

I finished up Gene Colan's run on Batman. It started off okay. I liked the early Gerry Conway scripts. But there were no classic stories and the monthly continuity wasn't that interesting. No matter how hard Moench tried, I wasn't interested in Batman's romantic relationships or the cast of characters. Colan had a lot of different inkers, and I don't know if it was his pencils or the inkers, but I didn't like the way a lot of the characters' faces were depicted. I especially disliked the way he drew Jason Todd and other kids. His Bruce Wayne was inconsistent as well. It's possible that his work on Batman works better in isolation than reading it within the continuity. The last issues I read were Batman #373 and 383, which he drew after he stopped working on the Batman book regularly, and those books were much more interesting visually than his end run on Detective, but again, that may be because of the inking. The reason I started reading Colan on Batman is because I liked a lot of Colan's work on Daredevil, but I'd have to say that his Daredevil work was better than his Batman run. Not sure if anyone feels differently about that.