El-P

Why does it matter ? It's the same exact thing whether his pro-wrestling skills are good or bad.

Who cares about a "career narrative", if such a thing even exist, overlapping from pro-wrestling (aka "pretending") to MMA (aka "fighting for eal") ? Sakuraba did pro-wrestling and he also did MMA. He's judge for his pro-wrestling accomplishments here. What he can do in a MMA match doesn't matter one bit to me. Are we gonna use Brawl for All to gauge Steve Williams toughness next (his toughness as a"pro-wrestler" was definitly part of his "career narrative") ? Are we gonna study Alberto Del Rio's MMA matches to judge him as a worker ? PRIDE wasn't pro-wrestling, apart from a few worked matches, which were the last remains of the UWF shoot-style pro-wrestling culture, and because it was needed for some guys. This is also the closest to "fake shit" pro-wrestling ever got, since PRIDE was supposed to be the real "real deal".

No. Because one is a shoot-fight and the other one is a pro-wrestling match. And this is Pro-wrestling Only. That's simple. MMA is not pro-wrestling. Dan Severn won a ton of MMA fights. Should we look into that to see how good of a pro-wrestler he was too ?

Oh yeah, it was pretty damn funny actually. Made myself smile. So, falling (not counting joshi and lucha, because I'm not sure if I'd vote for any of them, not having watch *anything* of that ilk since 2006) : Gordy Race Mutoh Chono Malenko Kojima Nagata Psicosis Owen Rude DiBiase Oh, and I forgot... Rising : Onita Dustin

No sense of humour at all. *sigh* (plus Flair will probably stay at the same level with me, or even grab a few places, so actually, you don't know)

Ok, let's be positive... Rising : Fujinami Choshu Tenryu Fujiwara Takada Lawler Anderson Martel Bockwinkel Baba Hansen Tamura (Kiyoshi) Maeda Sano 2 Cold Scorpio Morton Rey Rey

Falling : Ric Flair. What ?

Agreed. And from watching that 66 Fritz vs Baba match, two things : Fritz was probably better than any of his sons, and Baba was indeed one damn good worker.

So we can add Ken Shamrock's best match ever in PWFG to Sano's credit.

That Sano match was indeed really good, although it went a bit long. It peaked around 18-19, and the following minutes seemed just too much, although they brought it up back for a hot finish. Shamrock looked better there than he ever did during his WWF comeback. And it's crazy to think how good Sano was at that game. I believe it was an interpromotional match between PWFG and SWS, as you can see Takano in Sano's corner. Sano busting out a DDT and going straight into an STF later on was cool. He's the first Battlarts worker, kinda. (ok, not true, Tiger Mask was doing lots of pro-wrestling shit in UWF anyway, as were Takada and Maeda) Totally forgot about the Owen's matches, which were Shamrock's highlights in the WWF, and Owen's last notable matches too. I have somewhat of a fondness for Shamrock because he reminds me of my favourite era in watching WWF (97/first half of 98), but he's just not a very good worker. And I was always kinda distracted by the fact he looks like a hugely buffed up version of French comedian Elie Seimoun.

Yumi Fukawa couldn't drive worth a damn back in 2000.

I really enjoyed this edition, Magnum was a solid and interesting interview (as opposed to Vader or Windham in the WCW serie). I kinda got a kick out of him saying that Flair was "very predictable" and that after just a few times, you could have a match with him with your eyes closed because of that… But yeah, this is a good one.

Even more fascinating to me is the thought of Kerry Von Erich, IC champion, showing to the world that you can lose a foot yet still be a champion and go on with your life and achieve great things. With Kerry's babyface charisma and terrific body, the WWF could have had something really big and positive on their hands. Of course, drug use and depression would have caught on indeed, but still...

Greatness really shows its (rare) face, when you're watching a product and all of a sudden two guys like them show up, and you realize they just aren't on the same level as anyone else. That's what happened with me going through WCCW TV. The product is so damn drab as a whole, and then the MX show up. And they look like they are head and shoulders above everyone else. Of course, working alongside the Fantastics, who themselves were better than most people in World Class. But still, that's the sign of greatness. (of course, I was already familiar with this version of the MX, but it was so striking in that context)

Yeah, you can interpret the whole Sasaki Promotion two different ways : he felt guilty inside and found a way to redeem himself by taking care of young prospect and giving back to pro-wrestling. Or it was a way to make people forget about the incident (light word when we're talking about an actual death) and paint himself under a very favorable light (great family guy and such). To this day I have no idea.

He's in the ZONE ! Thanks for nothing about the ankle lock BTW. I could have lived without this shit in US wrestling, although he was better at it than Angle who just grabbed a feet and turned it sideways most of the time. (not understanding Kurt Angle in 2015...)

But his body of work is more like the Japanese Arn Anderson though.

Oh, that shootfight against Gilbert Yvel.

Are the couple still married ? I wonder how Fukawa looks these days, that cute little shoot-style demon. I guess she hasn't aged a bit in 15 years.

I liked both better in managerial roles, Lita at the very least from what I've seen with Edge. She really wasn't much of a worker, she was all about spots and not doing them very well. Trish was better, but again, she could have been a much better valet/manager who could bump instead of a "good for WWE 2000 standart" in-ring worker. Hey, I remember her actually acknowledging *me* when she was working on the LAW in 98 or so, saying she loved me for talking shit about one of the two guys who hosted the show (I was listening on Realplayer and sending them mails back then, oh, the memories). Yeah, that's my Trish Stratus story.

I really liked him until he married Yumi Fukawa. Wait, no, that's not it. I really liked him until he became Heat, which was a shitty gimmick and hurt his work. No idea what he became afterward.

Watched one or two matches of him for the 2006 poll, and they were terrific. Haven't really watch any lucha since, and probably won't do.

Great euro-trash gimmick in WCW. Underrated worker. Not enough output to slip him in.

Most probably. Could make any kind of shitty NJ undercard program watchable, and even fun. Gotta rewatch some of his junior work soon, as part of my "rewatch some Takada" project.

Haven't watched RINGS in years, but his 30 minute draw with Tamura is the most beautiful pro-wrestling match I've ever seen. Terrific shootstyle worker.