ohtani's jacket

I can't speak for anyone else, but the way I remember it was that after Jumbo died there was a renewed interest in his work, particularly among my generation who had come to All Japan late (around '99 or so.) I don't remember the timeline precisely but there were some Memorial tapes released and people began sharing the Classics footage. I remember Dean reviewing Jumbo vs. Harley in DVDVR, for sure. jdw had written his pimping post and there were people going through the TV based on his advice. Jewett had also made a Tenryu vs. Jumbo comp covering their '88-90 matches. So basically there were people watching Jumbo matches from all eras and a lot of us discovering his work for the first time. My recollection is that it leaned strongly towards his 70s and 90s work, but I could be wrong. In any event, people were watching Jumbo.

Well, every Thesz match that is uncovered is a big deal regardless of how good the match is because of the scarcity of footage whereas the impact of Ishii having so many 4 star matches is diluted by how many high rated matches New Japan has in general. Personally, I don't have a problem with someone pushing Ishii as a candidate. That's something I'd expect. But I think you really need to tell folks, "Here are his five best matches, go check them out" instead of raving about how much stuff he's done. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what the best Ishii match is. You need to lay it out for folks the way Jimmy did with Cena and Rey Mysterio Jr during the last poll. At the end of the day, people are still going to compare their impression of Ishii to their impression of Thesz. I'm not if volume of matches will sway folks one way or the other. I would actually kind of dig a list that Thesz and Ishii on it. That would be cool. I really hope Jumbo doesn't finish number one, or Flair, or Funk, or any of those boring choices.

Baba was aware of the decline of the territories by the late 80s. If I'm not mistaken, AJPW, NJPW and SWS were all courting the TV and SWS won out in the end. NJPW then struck up a working relationship with WCW leaving Baba with the foreigners who had no where else to go.

Wakamatsu city government refers to Ichimasa Wakamatsu.

I found an article about the Mutoh situation and ran it through DeepL for y'all:

Sakaguchi was the president of New Japan at the time. He has a sterling reputation as New Japan president. He basically cleaned up the financial mess the company was in. He learned bookkeeping, mortgaged his own house, gained the trust of financial institutions, and began paying off the debt that occurred under Inoki. He also had a strong relationship with TV Asahi. So strong, in fact, that they didn't reduce New Japan's broadcast spot until after Sakaguchi retired as president.

This was Benoit's first match back from his neck injury. It's impossible to overstate the impact that Benoit and Kobashi's injuries had on the wrestling landscape during the time that they were sidelined. They were two of the most important clogs in wrestling before before getting hurt. You don't get a feel for that here because they slot Benoit into a midcard program, but he shows plenty of intensity, particularly in the way he dismantles the Dudleys after the bell. He'd go on to do more important stuff before the year was out. Eddie still looked awkward here. It's amazing how long it took for him to be a confident WWE performer. it's easy to blame that sort of thing on the environment, the politics, and the backstage manipulators, but there are also times when a guy's confidence is shot, and Eddie had that look about him to me.

This was a very good trios match. I liked the way it opened with two solid falls of action instead of having the rudos go through the motions. There were no weak links here and the pairings were extremely good. At one point, Tarzan Boy appeared to botch a spot. If it was botched, then his recovery was one of the best I've seen in a while as he turned it into a brilliant comedy spot. My favorite sequence in the match was when Casas and Ultimo forgot where they were and started potatoing each other as though it were CMLL Japan. This was well on the way to being one of the better matches of the year when they opted for a crappy finish. Ultimo Guerrero and crappy finishes are pretty much synonymous in this era, so not a huge surprise. I wasn't super excited about CMLL going back to this match-up again, but this was high quality stuff.

It's not every day you see Dr Wagner wrestle Nishimura in Arena Coliseo. They wrestle for a bit, like you'd hope, but it's not very polished. Eventually, Nishimura is forced to start acting like a rudo, and the match turns into a brawl between Shocker & Magica vs. Masada & Takemura, but I guess there is some novelty in seeing Wagner vs. Nishimura in a CMLL ring. I just wished their exchanges had been slicker.

Aside from the obvious ones like Andre and Carpentier, the big bodybuilder types had runs in the USA -- Drapp, Duranton, Mortier and Voiney. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. From what I understand, most French workers worked in France, Spain, Germany, England and a few other countries like Belgium and Switzerland. I'm not sure how many of them made it to Japan. UK heavyweights worked countries like South Africa, Iraq, India, Pakistan, etc., but the French guys mostly struck to Europe. They regularly worked in the UK at least through the 60s to early 70s. One of the most famous UK matches we have on tape is actually Jacky Corn wrestling under his real name against Billy Howes.

Fujinami is like one of those classic sports anime characters that will stop at nothing to reach their dream. As a rookie valet, he was obsessed with Inoki to the point where Inoki would joke that Fujinami knew more about him than his wife did. When he came back from abroad, he instantly rose to the number three star behind Inoki and Sakaguchi. He was young, handsome, had a good body, did flashy moves but was also grounded in Gotch's technique. He was a truly impressive wrestler in his youth. He was not only a stylish junior, he worked strong style, he could brawl, fight, bleed, you name it. What makes the Fujinami vs. Choshu feud so great is that even though Choshu is the rebel who's hellbent on tearing down the system, and Fujinami comes across as Inoki's lapdog, or what have you, Fujinami shows some balls by using Choshu's finisher, which was considered rule-breaking at the time. You also have the narrative of his title matches against Inoki from the 80s, and the fact that NJPW probably would have collapsed if he'd jumped ship along with everyone else. He won the Tokyo Sports MVP in '85 for that very reason. The biggest criticism I could make of him is that he changed very little about his persona or even his wrestling style from the moment he debut until whenever his most recent bout was. He has some fun post-prime performances in the WAR feud and the classic MUGA bout, but he didn't adapt quite the same as guys like Jumbo, Mutoh or Kobashi.

The best pure wrestlers are Leduc, Drapp and Jacky Corn, and the best showmen are Delaporte, Inca Peruano, Jack de Lasartesse, and Liano Pellacani. Le Petit Prince should absolutely be on the list and is a contender for the greatest junior of all-time. Other top wrestlers include Modesto Aledo, Jean Corne, Rene Gerber, Michel Saulnier, Al Araujo, Ami Sola, Albert Sanniez, Georges Cohen, and Isha Israel.

I thought this was pretty damn great and made me want to check out everything else these two did during 2002. Hoshikawa seems like he should have the size to smother Sakata, but Sakata picks him apart. Great finish.

BTW, check this out:

Jumbo and Yatsu were called Gorin Konbi, which directly translated means Olympic Combination. In Japanese, the kanji used for the Olympics is "Gorin", which stands for five rings. As NintendoLogic mentioned, they were partnered together because they had both competed at the Olympics (Jumbo at Munich and Yatsu at Montreal), hence why they wore the black jackets with the Olympic symbol and moto. Jumbo needed a new partner after his tag team with Tenryu broke up. I believe they tried to stick him with Wajima at first and then he had a run with Tiger Mask. After Japan Pro Wrestling dissolved, Yatsu joined All Japan and began tagging with Jumbo straight away.

Wagner, Casas & Shocker is a hell of a trio. They could have easily overpowered the 'Japon' trio here, but credit where credit's due, I was actually impressed with how well the Japon team did. My first thought was that Tarzan Boy wasn't good enough to hold up his end of the stick like Black Tiger had been doing, but he was good here. Not only that, but the Japanese lions were perfectly good foils. They kept up with everything the superstar luchadores were trying to do and their timing was on point. This turned into a pretty exciting match with the Mexico trio trying to outdo each other with every exchange. If Shocker keeps up this form, he'll take out the 2002 Lucha WOTY without question. The match broke down into a huge pier six with all of the Japanese rookies brawling with the CMLL locker room, but even that felt fresh and something you don't see every episode. The Japanese rookies were really good at mugging and acting tough just like a Japanese high school gang. I guess this tour is better than I expected.

This match was an excuse for Pierroth to stir a bunch of shit. That's okay because I'm a Pierroth fan and I enjoy watching him stir shit. First he took out Veneno accidentally, then he had a confrontation with the mysterious man in black who advises Los Capos, before finally dodging a hair vs. hair challenge from Gran Markus Jr. Like I said, I don't mind Pierroth segments in my 2000s CMLL.

Sad to see so many empty seats for Momoe's big moment. The match followed a similar pattern to their previous matches. Ito threw Momoe around like a ragdoll and all Momoe could do was hang in there and hope to hit a reversal. Momoe was great at bumping and selling, and she brought a lot of energy to her reversal game, but I was hoping for more from this. Momoe basically won the title with a botched reversal that she was able to hold onto for a three count. The fact that it was messy didn't bother me. It was the overuse of the reversals that made the finish anticlimactic. She kept trying the same thing over and over again until one finally stuck. Instead of overcoming the challenging of Ito, it came across a fluky win. I don't know if Momoe had anything in her arsenal that could have put Ito away convincingly, but I am pretty sure they had better matches in their JGP encounters than they did here. I'm not sure if Momoe winning the title was the right choice, either. From a business point-of-view, it didn't really matter since AJW was in the crapper anyway. Ito was fine as champion from a diehard's viewpoint, especially folks who had followed her ascension after the AJW exodus in '97, but she was never going to draw in the way that past champions had. Momoe, however, was the type of worker who would have never had a sniff at the Big Red Belt in the past. If you think about the talent that never got anywhere near the tile it's surreal to think that Momoe wore the belt. Girls like Momoe are great as chasers, but I could her struggling more than Satomura or Hamada in The Woman role. From memory, this isn't their best match. I am pretty confident that the Ito vs. Momoe dynamic worked best in those JGP matches.

Dan Aubriot vs. Pierre Bernaert (aired 11/9/62) This was uploaded years ago by Bob ALPRA, but clearly we know more about Bernaert now than we did six or seven years ago. Aubriot wrestles a classic European style full of flair. Fortunately, he doesn't veer toward comedy, instead punctuating his flair with tight matwork. Bernaert's MOD is pretty clear by now. He never really strays from it in singles or tags. He wrestles a bit more in this match than others, but I'd describe it more as "hanging" than showing his prowess. Aubroit gets suckered into a manchette battle, which doesn't seem like his forte, and is overpowered in the end. This didn't change my opinion of Bernaert, but it's definitely one of his better matches.

These guys had great chemistry together and are one of my favorite pairings of 2002. I still think Super Dragon is a stupid gimmick, but I'm definitely sold on these Quance matches.

Modesto Aledo shows up later on as the masked Kamikaze, though there are a few matches where I'm not sure if it's actually Aledo under the hood.

I don't see the problem with including a wrestler on your list because you think they're a great promo. If your entire list is based on promos then maybe there's an issue, but c'mon, there will be lists based on who was the best technical wrestler, the best brawler, the best bumper, the best high flyer, the best best all-rounder, the best punch... What does it matter if people focus on promos?

No, he was involved with SWS and later WAR.

A lot of promos in Japan are cut in the ring and can be difficult to hear clearly. I think in the backstage interviews you can tell who is comfortable cutting a promo. That doesn't necessarily mean they're cutting an interesting promo, but it's clear who's confident. Having said that, sometimes shyness is endearing in those types of situations. The commentators are more interesting. I always got a kick out of the CMLL announcers but people who can speak Spanish often say they're talking rubbish. I used to love Akira Fukuzawa because he sounded like a Mr. Sparkly gag, but now I can barely stand him.

They both performed the role.