El-P

Funny. Back then the one thing that I really disliked about the Hardys, even before some of their work, was their look. They looked like absolute twats to me back then already, but then again, maybe I was too old already. They were the perfect blowjob tag team for the time, and Lita was the perfect blowjob girl to tag with them I guess. I just didn't relate one bit. Yeah. Pretty much.

She debuted in 2000. Pro-wrestling...

Me neither. This thread already gone to hell.

I'm not saying they aren't interesting. I loved the few Tamura fights I saw. But I won't take them in account when I'm judging his pro-wrestling career. Because it's not worked. That's pretty much it.

Relevant as far as his identity goes, yes. But how good he was as an MMA fighter or not means zilch, because MMA isn't pro-wrestling. It's really simple. You can enjoy how much his pro-wrestling character derives from his MMA career, but in the end, how good of a pro-wrestler he is really has nothing to do with how good a shootfighter he was. And trying to make a case for pro-wrestlers career by taking in accounts how good they were as MMA fighters (or whatever fighting *sport* they played) is irrelevant to me.

How wasn't it significant ? Steve Williams career in the WWF was basically derailed totally because of his loss in Brawl for All. Alberto del Rio used a shoot-style finisher because he did MMA before. I don't care that Sakuraba's current NJWP career is shaped by what he did in PRIDE. It's not relevant to how good a pro-wrestler he is/was. It's just a gimmick at this point, like any other gimmick. Let me put it like this : the fact Kurt Angle won a Gold Medal at the Olympics did shape his entire pro-wrestling career. It was his entire gimmick too. Still, it has nothing to do with how good (or not) he was at *pro-wrestling*. Because amateur wrestling, like MMA, isn't pro-wrestling. It's not a work. It's as simple as that to me.

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.