Death From Above

I thought the first 10 minutes were great. I was really zoned in on it and just enjoying the story of Han being a bit quicker, and better on the ground than Maeda. It's a good intro to Han and his ability to always grab *something* and just start twisting it. Then after the first 10, Han just sort of stands around looking winded for a minute, they hit the spin kick, then go to the finish. Not a perfect match by any means but still compelling viewing. Probably the best intro match for RINGS just as a good example of what it is about. I think UWFi often got it wrong by letting fights drag on too long which often resulted in just massive periods where guys lay around in leg locks because they are limited in what you're allowed to do in this style, where as this is really a better sort of length for the style to work towards. Shoot style can be really enjoyable stuff when it is done well.

It's been around a long time. Old timers talked about it a lot. Sometimes they were on point, others frankly they were making excuses for their inability to pop the crowd looking for something different. Japanese crowds are hard to define exactly. They don't get as rah rah as north American fans over any old thing. But when you really light it up over there they will go as nuts as anybody. I mean hell I've seen those late 70's Funk Brothers matches where there's fans dressed up as cheerleaders and they are outright getting mobbed on the way to the ring. There's "jumping in the aisle guy" during Misawa/Kawada 6/3/94 which I think everyone who sees the match multiple times can't help but notice. It's not like they're a bunch of statues when the mood strikes. But just because they were quiet didn't always mean they were bored. There are a lot of long 70's/80's matches where it's almost silent at points but when the big nearfalls come they're just as into it as you'd hope. I think over the years it's become somewhat less true, at least in spots. Korakuen Hall for example tends to be a pretty energetic building, probably because it's hosted possibly thousands of shows at this point and undoubtedly there's a lot of Japanese superfans at a venue like that regularly. It's just a social quirk. Like that speech in Pulp Fiction about being able to get a glass of beer at a movie theater in Amsterdam.

Bill Dundee. He's a bigger draw than Kurt Angle after all. This forum declared it so.

I'd also say it's hard for me to judge the split as well as many American fans because as I've noted several times before, Raw and Nitro aired on the same station here in Canada nationwide. So I don't get the sense fans here were nearly as divided as your core Atlanta people that think Vince is the devil vs. core northeast US Yankees that think everything from the south is backwards and stupid. Most wrestling fans here were either WWE or WWE and WCW but not both, but I think that has more to do with WCW not having nearly the exposure here before the Monday Night Wars than anything else.

In nobody's universe but your own is this true. Fuck, WWF wasn't even about good wrestling the 10 or 11 times a year they'd luck into doing it by accident for a whole show on a good year. Never mind the other 90% of the time. I say that as someone that grew up exclusively on WWF until high school, and I'm pretty open to defending sports entertainment as a style when it's done well. But Vince's focus has never been "put on good wrestling for an extended period". Hell, everything we know about Vince suggests he thinks only marks care if matches are good in the first place. Which he's probably half right about.

That's actually a pretty interesting observation. Hadn't really thought about it in those exact terms but I agree with that entirely.

The problem with Tenryu is as great as his chops are, he has a pretty terrible enzuigiri he liked to break out pretty often. This is kind of splitting hairs though. I'm not about to knock Tenryu, on the whole. Quite an entertaining guy to watch in general.

If not Tiger Woods, then who? Ok, I'll stop now.

There is no way the British is more prestigious in golf than the US. Half the players on the tour (and I'd note, personally I think quite wrongly) despise links golf. Wimbledon is literally the only thing in tennis that matters though. Having said that if you ask English people anything you will get ENGLAND NUMBER ONE as an answer every time. I think the reason they have such a love/hate relationship with the USA is that they see so much of themselves in the other.

That cover is a million billion stars.

Yes.

Golf already has a fifth major. The PGA are the only people on earth that don't call The Player's Championship a major, and they never will because it involves revising a bunch of record books. Which is fine. It will be the "unofficial" 5th to the majority of golf fans (and clearly to a huge chunk of the golf media) for the foreseeable future.

Every time *the* Kobashi/Hansen match comes up I just end up pointing to my review which is basically all praising Hansen's strikes looking great. On the other end, Lance Storm's punches are... um... I'm sure there are worse, but most of those are "people that never mattered" or "people that aren't real workers". Storm was in a position to know better.

I don't like the idea of moving MITB because I see it as the thing that sets up this whole part of the year. Royal Rumble ----> Wrestlemania MITB ----> Summerslam They can stick with this and it gives them some easy form for two thirds of the year. I'd rather they messed around with King of the Ring or Elimination Chamber.

I never cared for this match. I honestly think Taz is a bad kind of opponent for what Sabu is capable of doing and vice versa, but Taz was a very strong promo, they did build this well, and I give them credit for making this seem like a big deal to their audience.

It's a goofy match but as far as "goofy matches that are nothing but random big spots" I've seen a hell of a lot worse. It's also worth being on the set in my opinion because "goofy matches that are nothing but random big spots" was still a growing thing at this point. Not a particularly good match of course, but I will play a very slight Devil's advocate for this. Very, very slight.

I'm ashamed to say there was a point I was one of those guys that figured paying to see an indy show gave me license to act like a jackass in front of 100 people. Looking back I really don't know what the hell I was thinking, and wouldn't be at all down with that now. Watching fans do that sort of thing now really gets on my nerves.

I hope Buddy Rogers filed a complaint that no one ever talks about that tournament he won in Brazil to win the inaugural belt. ;-)

To this day I remember my mom walking in on this segment and making fun of how retarded Shawn comes off freaking out at having his bubble burst. I don't know why but that always stuck with me as a "pro wrestling will never be a family activity" moment for me.

This is the funniest sidetrack I've read in months.

Ace to me is weird in general. I don't want to quite go as far as to say most of his All Japan time left me with the feel of a guy cosplaying All Japan's idea of a "good wrestler", but he really did strike me as the least of all their regularly featured guys, a guy that just had a few big moves to run through and that was it. He wasn't outright bad, yet I can't remember ever thinking "Ace is the best guy in this match".

Too bad, early ARSION was pretty bonkers.

Either Mean Gene handled it really well because he's a cool pro, or just wasn't paying attention at all and just doesn't give a shit. Hard to say which. But I always liked how he doesn't really react or freak out or anything and just goes on with it. Booker has this "fuck imma gonna get fired" look on his face.

Why do people talk about WWECW like it was a company? This is pretty much it.

I actually think they're in much better shape roster-wise than they were just a few years ago. One of my main complaints about them not *that* long ago was that they had a roster full of "guys that have already wrestled each other 100 times each" and since then they've tried pushing a lot of new people pretty hard. I'm not sure when this happened exactly as I haven't followed them that closely in years, but I want to say that Edge retiring started a snowball of new people shuffling up the card happening. The company looks really, really different from the days of Evolution and beyond when they went through like 3 years of just recycling the same 8 dudes. Now they're onto a somewhat new 8 dudes. ;-) Shaemus came sort of out of the blue, CM Punk has been a hit, as has Daniel Bryan. There are many others. Granted, not everyone is a giant Alberto Del Rio or Ziggler fan, but they've found this entire new generation (no pun intended) of workers that have at least freshened them up in that sense from my perspective. Roster stagnation was my biggest turn off from their show at one point and it now feels like I've been away long enough that this isn't an issue, for me. At this point WWE should feel pretty content, as they shuffled out guys like Batista and Edge and Angle and have proven in the end almost every part they have is interchangeable.