Tim Cooke

Shibata vs Sakuraba (7/5/15) is the best Shibata match

"I quite liked the opening and how Shibata dominated, his headlock escape was lovely, but the terrible no-sell sequence in which Goto came back to control turned me off big time" Echoes my thoughts exactly. Thought for a few minutes it was going to be a really good to great match and then it goes to hell with the pop up bullshit

Agreed, this blows away: 5/92 Wargames 11/26 Toyota/Yamada vs Kansai/Ozaki 7/29/93 Hansen vs Kobashi 6/3/94 Misawa vs Kawada 10/26/97 Rey Jr vs Eddy Guerrero and those are only five matches it blows away

Nog vs CroCop (11/9/03) Sakuraba/Silvia 2 (11/3/01) Nog vs Herring (11/03/01) Yoshida/Silva (11/09/03) Hashimoto vs Takada (4/96)

Heat evolves, just like everything else in wrestling. People have phones and tablets now - even in the biggest of big spots, some of them are going to be filming it, rather than living in it. I also just believe that people react differently. People evolve. It's been decreasing steadily since the mid 90's. Just have to watch the matches to see that

Elliott 'There was lots of great stuff, but none of it really seemed to matter and that was reflective in the fact that the crowd response to the match. (Pausing momentum briefly, I see Dylan literally just made a post about the crowd. Damnit. I'll soldier through my point nonetheless). Other than the big holy shit spots, the crowd was pretty damn quiet for the first...like 35 minutes of the match. I'm not going to say they were shitting on the match because they were right there to pop big for every big spot. Before sitting back down to politely watch. They came alive and were nuts for the finishing stretch. But it didn't have that buzz you get from great crowds. Seems like a weird nitpick on the match granted, but for something getting "Greatest match of all time" praise I'd want the crowd to at least be able to match the sustained heat of something like Rock n Roll Express vs Dirty White Boys. :)' Bingo I'm not sure fans of only modern day wrestling understand what crowd heat is

* Do a complete review of all the Promo Azteca '96-'98 with Paul * Continue work on the special writing project that we have planned for release by the end of 2017 * Debut the "rare" match streaming service * Go through 1997-2006 to look for hidden gems * Continue to watch BT Jr's handhelds

Would love to beta test. Like the idea

Manhatten Center can hold up to 2000 for wrestling. I don't know (or care) what the attendance was for the Danielson/Morishima match, but throwing out incorrect facts isn't going to help any argument.

I'm not sure you have even watched the matches - maybe this is just some mid level trolling. The 5/17/86 TV and 7/5/86 house show matches against Ricky Morton have Flair working over Morton's nose, something that I haven't seen worked on outside of the 1995 Misawa orbital bone injury. His Boogie Jam 60:00 draw against Steamboat is worlds different from their 1989 series. The Garvin cage match from Sept 1987 is very different from 12/85 studio match and the much lesser 11/87 Starrcade match. Like every wrestler, Flair did have a formula for lesser opponents such as a really young Sting, Luger, Koloff but lump categorizing every Flair match into one narrative is ignorant at best, terribly lazy and boring at worst.

This isn't hard. Meltzer hasn't watched that match (if he has, he hasn't written about it) and it is most likely something he wouldn't see as a MOTYC. So that's 80% of the reason that it won't finish high in the WON awards.

Getting back to the original question, Meltzer has never really liked lucha. He has periods where he is into it for one reason or another (1993-1995 AAA flying with Rey Jr revolutionizing what can aerobically be done), 2004-2005 CMLL for rise of Mistico/most heated wrestling during that time period) but he has never embraced it like he has with Japanese wrestling. One match made Jeff Bowdren's top 100 of the 1980's, which was a list based off of Meltzer tape trading with others through 1986-1987 before they had more sources. Granted, there has been more unearthed 80's lucha in the past 10 years than the prior 20, but it was only a Santo/Casas match that happened in LA that made the list. Meltzer was complimentary of it at the time but he also enjoyed talking about how it outdrew the NWA and WWF in LA as much as the actual match quality. In the 1990 yearbook, he says that Casas is the only great wrestler he has seen from Mexico because even exciting guys like Atlantis have major style flaws. Just reading his 1990 guide to Lucha Libre shows you where his mind was regarding the style at that point in history. When AAA started falling apart in 1996, he didn't go over to CMLL, whose 1997 is full of great angles and matches. He comes back for the 3/17/00 PPV and that wins MOTY because of his influence. Disagree? How does Tamura/Kohsaka from 6/98 finish 2nd that year? People weren't just automatically getting RINGS shows every month in the late 90's. He would go on to review the CMLL PPV's through March 2001 before just going back to live reports for match opinions (see Bob Barnett pimping Vampiro 2002 matches w Shocker vs. UG/Bucanero) and he doesn't give his own reviews of lucha TV again until late 2004. People who value Dave's opinion never had any other incentive to go out of their way to see CMLL in the early 90's or AAA in 1999 or 2004 because he wasn't watching and/or promoting. Prior to his newsletter going online in June 2008, subscribing to the WON was a very niche market. Certainly a profitable one, but as a subscriber were willing to put up with 9 pt font, some run on sentences, and no design what ever. His opinion carried a lot of weight pre-2008 and especially pre-2000.

Enjoyed reading this. RINGS was essentially the minor league feeding system to PRIDE, the most successful MMA company in Japan and around the world that is NOT UFC. If Han had stopped working when they went completely legit, I could see RINGS not being something that favors Han. But he did participate and took arguably a top 4 heavyweight fighter in Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera, who was in his prime, to a judges decision at the age of 40. So if Sakuraba gets him based on his PRIDE work (which is a totally different topic), Han's RINGS work, both work and shoot, should have been a crucial factor in voters minds.

Genuinly curious to know the 10+ matches better than the June Misawa/Kawada match

1992 - WCW TV/Clash/PPV from first seven months is awesome - Casas/Dandy - Misawa/Kawada I, Can Ams vs Kobashi/Kikuchi - AJW has maybe their best year of the 90's - WWF has Bret/DBS at Summerslam - Santo/Espanto III (of the 'made' tape kind)

That Velocity match is still great. Wish they had more.

It's Eddy for me and it isn't really close. Rey vs. Psicosis from 9/22/95 AAA *might* be his best singles match (and I really love the Bash at the Beach 1996 match) but Eddy and Rey have multiple MOTYC spread out over a period of 8 years.

Favorite style when done right - classic NWA side headlock takeover being worked and worked and worked (ala Final Conflict '83 match, Destroyer/Baba '69) Tend to gravitate more towards lucha and shoot style as overall favorites because at their best, they are innovative and appetizing to my personal tastes.

Rey Misterio Jr. 1993 - w/ Super Calo/Winners vs. Psicosis/Picudo/Heavy Metal (1/29 - AAA) 1994 - w/ Santo/Octagon vs. Fuerza/Psicosis/Blue Panther (7/15 - AAA) * Runner up - vs. Juventud Guerrera (Tijuana - date not known -- it's not their 11/30 match) 1995 - vs. Psicosis (9/22 - AAA) 1996 - vs. Juventud Guerrera (3/16 - AAA) 1997 - vs. Eddy Guerrero (10/26 - WCW) 1998 - vs. Kidman vs. Juventud Guerrera (12/27 - WCW) 1999 - vs. Kidman (3/15 - WCW) 2000 - did not have a MOTY 2001 - did not have a MOTY 2002 - vs. Kurt Angle (8/25 - WWE) 2003 - not sure 2004 - vs. Eddy Guerrero (3/28 - WWE) 2005 - vs. Eddy Guerrero (6/23 - WWE) Best match on that list is the 1995 Psicosis match (top 10 match of all time for me)

Tamura's MMA run (from his first shoots with RINGS through his career with DEEP, PRIDE, and K-1) was essentially a microcosm of what Sakuraba went through. Tamura was a good fighter, especially at his size, but the Japanese mentality of not having weight divisions (which still exists a little bit in 2016) ended up shortening his career and making him appear to be a much lesser fighter than his piers, even though I would argue he was much better than he was given credit for. Throw out the 1996-1997 potential shoots (4/22 vs Kohsaka, etc). When he fights Frank Shamrock in April 1999, he not only hangs with the best lightweight in the world at the time (Sakuraba wouldn't officially take that title until early 2000) but does it while still having a monthly schedule in RINGS. The April 2000 loss to a much bigger Gilbert Yvel is what lead him to depart RINGS as he was burned out and wasn't going to be able to beat people bigger than him, ala Sakuraba post-Gracies feud. When he goes to PRIDE, he gets Silva as his first fight (again, Silva was technically in the same division but was much larger) and while he puts up a good fight, he falls short and the PRIDE folks decide to give him Bob Sapp two months later. We know how that worked out. It's during this time period that we lose what could have been a FOTDC with prime Sakuraba vs. almost prime Tamura. But for political reasons, that match is never able to be put together until 2008 when both should be retired. I would recommend checking out the 9/7/02 fight vs. Ikuhisa Minowa in DEEP. It's not Sakuraba/White or Sakuraba/Newton like in truly being the bridge between worked UWF style and "real UWF" but it's a fun fight with a lot of heat, a lot of good action, and a glimpse at what Tamura could have been if he was able to fight guys his own size. I also like the 8/10/03 Yoshida PRIDE fight as it has a ton of heat and is the rare example of native vs. native in PRIDE (especially for this era). Some think it is a work (I don't) but work or not, it's really heated and worth watching to see heat that Japanese pro wrestling wasn't able to get outside of Misawa/Kobashi in 2003.

Meltzer constantly wrote about Tamura being the best wrestler in the world in 1998 and 1999. His subscribers agreed if you look at his finish as best wrestler in 1998. It may have been a follow the leader mentality - that's why the 3/17/00 Atlantis vs. Villano III mask match won the WON MOTY (it deserved to but it won because Dave put it over big time). Great write up Elliot. One thing I would add is despite U-Style not drawing well, there would have been NO U-Style 2002-2004 without Tamura. The 10/6/03 KH show drew 600-700 people as Tamura was not on the card. U-Style cards with Tamura usually came close to filling up KH.

That was actually his kid who was a wrestlers for a couple of years in the early 90's Kurt Beyer