MJH

That's a no-brainer. Reading the article, it makes the most sense. Unless they can attract someone like Zbyszko or Graham to do it, Paul seems the obvious choice. And frankly, he kind of deserves that much for essentially making this happen. This. I'm glad it's happened if only for the history to be out now and not swept under the carpet or an elephant in the room.

First of all, re-reading my post, there's a far bitchier undertone to it than I intended... Face/heel in All Japan tends to be subtler than in America (though how couldn't it be?), but I'm not sure of anything remotely heelish that the natives did there. Kobashi broke up a few holds on Misawa, Misawa stopped a powerbomb on Kobashi... their partner's in trouble, of course they're going to help him, and there needn't be any moral/karmaic reprimand for it. After all, they're well within the rules to enter the ring for five seconds, or indeed, to stand inside the ring and not interfere for as long as they like (such as on shielding pin spots), though they're can't be tagged in from there of course. Looking at things morally, the '96 Tag Final is all about "if you cheat enough and do it well, you will win". Besides, in this match, Doc did it first.

Well, OK, I re-watched the match. First of all, I'm not sure how the face/heel is unclear. For one it's native/gaijin, you have Hansen and Doc stooging (admittedly not very gracefully) for Kikuchi, Doc and Ace attacking Kikuchi outside and pleading innocence to Joe Higuchi, the gaijin attacking Misawa's recent neck injury, regular double/triple teaming... it's All Japan, they're not gonna be blinding the ref and using Hansen's cowbell on him, and so what if they clapped? Cornette, Sherri, Heyman, Heenan, they all clapped/slapped the apron when their guy/s were in trouble. They're popular, too, especially Hansen who'd been with the company for longer than any of the natives, so they're going to have fans, and the fans want everyone to do their best and fight hard, "Hansen ganbare!" etc... I also didn't see "there was a moment where Williams had Misawa in seated chinlock and they show Kikuchi and Kobashi desperately reaching for the tag, dramatic." For one, the seated sleeper comes really early in their control and isn't dramatic anyway, but I just saw Kobashi and Kikuchi stood on the apron, watching, and then when it became clear Misawa wasn't escaping, Kobashi came in to break it up. In kayfabe/story terms to stop Misawa's neck injury being re-aggravated; in real terms because it was long enough in a spot no one was buying as dramatic and one that there wasn't an easy out of other than Doc just releasing it. But look at the "hot tag". When Misawa finally gets an opening, he makes the tag with no fuss; there's no "dramatic" crawl to the corner race going on. Misawa rolls outside to sell the beating for a bit whilst Kobashi comes in and works a nice sequence with Stan. He gets the Baba clothesline for the pop, and it's serving the same purpose, but it's not a "one fresh face beats two near-flesh heels" stooge routine, he's still having to work for it. That said, it's really a nothing match on a C/B-level show tucked away on the fourth comm for the tour. It's a solid enough little match but very much of a house show level; fine for what it is but nothing remotely out of the ordinary or even a "hidden find".

The number of tags built straight-forwardly around the "hot tag" as in America is pretty low... it factors into it, but it's not *the thing*. Take the American idea and put it this way: if your partner is getting beaten up, constantly double-teamed, cheated on, and you're just standing there holding the tag rope because you haven't been tagged in... what kind of partner are you? There's only so much anyone can stand "good morality" before it becomes unpalatable.

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I enjoy the Damien Sandow character, but I don't really believe it either, it's still rather "put on" to me, though it's also one of the better (/best) new heel characters they've had in a while. Add me to people who'd rather see Ryback/Show. Show's at his best with a big hefty guy who can lay it back at him (see the Sheamus series), which falls comfortably within what Ryback can do, and incidentally I have no doubt Ryback can do his finish on Show. Maybe Jericho wants to put right his aborted Goldberg feud after fifteen years, who knows, but, as others have said, given how much the fans want to cheer Jericho, I'd keep him as a face too.

I've been avoiding this thread but why not... Hansen, Terry Funk, Eddie, Flair, Bret, Savage, Austin, Rey, Harley... and probably Doc just because I love his '93-'95 run in All Japan as much as I do any run of any other US workers... I'm less well-versed in Memphis so can't speak on Lawler too much. Even less so in Buddy Rose. Tully, Barry, Arn, Morton, Eaton, they're all on the cusp more or less.

I'm no frequent flyer, but surely someone in that medical state wouldn't (shouldn't) have been permitted to fly by the airline? I have no sympathy if he dies, it was his choice and a fucking stupid one, but still, the way the courts are with compo, they could still be held liable by the family, right?

I'd imagine that being "WWF/E-oriented" has a lot more to do with the company's vastly greatly international exposure, and thus what most, if not all, wrestling fans outside of NA/Japan grew up with, than people being "promo fans"...

Cena/Rock doesn't need the title, except the angle with The Rock this year is "one more time as champion". If it wasn't for that, assuming Taker/Punk is the plan, I'm all for Dylan's idea - in fact, I love it, was only speaking to someone about it the other day and it makes perfect sense. It's still an easy segue for Punk into challenging Taker with or without the belt (and Taker at Mania doesn't really need the belt either), but one of those matches absolutely has to have the belt. We don't need a second consecutive year where the belt is third from the top...

I'm with Dylan in that 1989 has always been a default choice because of the famous feuds with Steamboat and Terry, but I think it's pretty apparent to anyone who has watched him throughout the decade that his "peak" as a talent came a few years earlier than that, around '85-'87. That doesn't mean 1989 wasn't his "best" year, mind...

Harley is the only guy I've ever seen work the babyface base hold shine routine with any logic. I'm talking about the Jumbo match from '77. They work a pattern into the headlock, I think a dropkick, followed by a slam, followed by the headlock takedown. On the third, after the dropkick and the slam, Jumbo does away with the headlock you're expecting and goes for the double-arm suplex, obviously a much bigger move. Maybe it was Jumbo's idea, we have no way of knowing, but I've seen neither guy repeat it in any other match, and the base hold thing was NWA schtick 101 (it's like 80% of Dory/Inoki as I remember it). Why it's never been nicked, I don't know; why it was only used once, I have no idea; but it's such the ideal way to work it.

Oh, shit, what the fuck have I started? OK, a rephrasing: on any Popular music (that is stuff that doesn't have it's own section in an average record store, be it classical, jazz, country, folk, whatever - if someone was to say Miles > Bob I have no problem with that whatsoever) list of "greatest artists", The Beatles and Dylan are the de facto #1 and 2, usually with the former first but Bob might get the odd nod, with the Stones generally taking the third spot. As automatically as a figures-in-literature list would start with Shakespeare, and to put even, say, Homer on there ahead of him would be to court controversy.

I'm struggling to think of a Bret match I dislike more than the tag w/ Owen vs. The Steiners... last time I watched it, I remember a spot where Bret's face is shown in a close-up and it's on his face that "this is a fucking mess". Whether that was the case or it was me seeing shit, I don't know, I have no intention of watching it back, but Goddamn is it as incoherent as any Bret match of that era, and a case where "hey, Owen's game for our Japanese offense!" I enjoy the odd squash for what they are, but, shit, if you want to see crazy spots on jobbers even the Smoking Gunns hit a back body drop into a piledriver on some dude, y'know?

Five, and that's at a push. Then again it depends on how you slice it. I have a "greatest in-ring ability at their peak"... there's "greatest in-ring ability with night-in/night-out consistency", and, if you want, a "greatest factoring promos/angles/'all-around ability'" (at least for the US). But as for the first one, even if I wasn't sure in mine it'd be at most a handful of candidates. Think popular music: you've got Beatles and Dylan, and that's pretty much it.

ARGH! Flik, I remember liking this a whole lot but not giving it my full attention, having bought the tape for Hokuto/Minami and not really looking forward to what Bull could drag out of Ripper in the main... re-watching soon.

One of my all-time favourites... seriously, I bought this show thinking Yamada/Toyota, Hotta/Hokuto, and this would be interesting to see, being completely ignorant of AJW between Chigusa's retirement and I guess mid-92 (though I had seen the 1/4/92 show). Just loved this match and triggered me then collecting all the tapes between, which is one of my fondest "quests" (or whatever) that I've done with wrestling tape collecting.

I recall this being a whole hell of a lot more coherent than I expected it to be. There was a match I watched around the same time, from either the '09 or maybe 2010 Champion Carnival, Seiya Sanada against Kono, where you could see they weren't "there" yet at all, but, for whatever reason, their lay-out of the match was really rather strong and logical, as though an agent had ran through it with them beforehand. I'm not saying this was nearly as good as what they'd've done two years later, in fact I think I was sufficently less impressed by their JGP '92 match even though it might've been better just because they'd both improved so much by then I had higher expectations, but, yes, I recall liking this a lot more than I expected to.

I'm not sure I recall this as being anything fantastic - I was impressed with Aja/Toyota (I was honestly expecting a mess), and the undercard Debbie tag was fun as hell - but I do remember they had a match a month or so before this, and this then being an immense improvement on it. I'm not sure whether it's this match or the earlier one though that has my all-time worst Hotta moment... where Yamada is selling on her back, groggy, and sits up only to be punted completely unawares squarely in the face.

Kyoko was as quick a study as they had in that era, perhaps the quickest - people often forget that she was a classmate of Takako and Yoshida rather than Toyota, Yamada and LCO. You see her in the undercard matches in 1990 already with more offence, and hitting it much cleaner, than the others around her, and it's a shame in some ways we don't have anything from her rookie year that I can recall seeing. You only need watch the '91 JGP, where she wins the thing and Takako and Yoshida have a fun, but sloppy and green as hell match on the undercard for I think the AJW Title to see how far ahead of them she was. Teaming with Bull no doubt helped there, but that she was put in that position as early as the double hair match says enough in itself.

I actually think the Living Dangerously match with Van Dam works... he comes in with little fanfare, people knew of him but it was a throwaway match for Van Dam, and then Lynn matches him spot-for-spot and surprises everyone. The follow-up matches were all recreations and total bleh, but I do think the first one works fine, they just milked it far too much afterwards.

Same basic principle/technique, yeah. The point being, it's less of a "I'm gonna get you this time" (heel getting back up of their own volition), and more "heel is slammed down with such force that they bounce back up" (not of their own doing), which, for me anyway, works better as the idea behind it

You'd be amazed how many wrestling trainees do that before they get it "right"... but, no, what I'd much rather see, as much as I love a good stooge, is a guy who bumps and feeds in one (ie, they use the force of their bump bouncing the ring to propel them on the way back up); I don't recall seeing anyone do it since Shawn was younger (and motivated).

Like John, I'd always thought of pinball-bumping as the bobo doll effect, rather than the big OTT stooge bumps. The OTT bumps almost surely predate Stevens and are as old as guys were taking bumps; the bobo doll effect being more modern.