MJH

Edit: Loss beat me to the punch...

Win.

Because a massive billboard written in Hanzi is going to stand out to you far more than one written in English.

This weeks Observer was over 43,000 words. For the average journalist, I would guess 10,000 is considered a very busy week. Even if we knock that down by 25% as being provided by someone else/results C&P-age, etc, that's a whole lot of writing. If you asked the best writer in the world to knock out a novella each week it's not going to come out pretty.

That might have very well been the case, but if someone was to say, for instance, "as an NWA Champion overall, as a world-wide representative etc, Terry was alright, but really pales compared to Dory", I don't think it'd be an outlandish statement by any means.

No one, in any form we might care to discuss, is so versatile as to completely re-invent themselves tour-by-tour, much less night-by-night. If you were to break down every Miles Davis solo ("he'd turn around and look completely different", etc...) you'd find lines/licks/progressions/"tropes" that carry on throughout his entire career. In wrestling, it's rare for a guy/girl to have two/three separate, different runs (Eddy's the first to come into my head), much less several. Besides, if a guy did Lucha one night, shoot-style the next, "WWE" the next, "King's Road" the night after, maybe a Zenjo-style match to round off the week, maybe a comedy match on the Saturday matinee shot to take a rest, what would we even make of it? (Ignoring the fact that a guy/girl with such a mindset wouldn't make it far in wrestling because they'd be running to their own drum and catering to themselves and their own desire, not the crowds, and would therefore cease to be booked long before they'd ran out of styles/spots to do)...

Most probably. And bad crowds. And good crowds. Yet you rarely hear people bring up the acoustics of the building or the quality of the sound equipment, hmm...

Pretty much what Loss said, though I use "wrestler" and "worker" interchangeably and would have a "wrestler/worker" list versus an "overall performer" list... (or something like that anyway). Too many problems arise for me if I were to include mic-work. For a start it obviously rules out Japanese and Mexican guys, as people always mention. Secondly, bringing this back to the Flair/Bret thing, even if Bret could've cut a promo like Flair, like a Roddy Piper, it wouldn't have fit his character at all. I love his little interview before the SummerSlam match with Owen. Is it a great promo in the sense of "Hard Times" or something? No, but it works perfectly for his character, and for the feud, and you can't ask for more than that. Besides, someone who has a problem with how Flair wrestled is likely to have a similar problem with his promos as well. He was never at a loss for words ("stuff to do"), full of character, always with the end-goal in mind... but didn't always make a great amount of line-by-line sense (especially with a promo as cerebral as Arn beside him) and was always that bit liable, especially as he got older, to be too OTT if not characaturish.

For the same reasons you have separate women's divisons/promotions - yes. The biggest stars in boxing over the last ten years sure haven't been the heavyweights... most of the UFC's biggest names over the years haven't been heavyweights (though I guess the 205-lbers would work as heavyweights in pro-wrestling)... the only time I can really think of a company where they had a few weight classes, all pushed pretty equally, was here in the WoS days, and plenty of the smaller guys were just as popular as the bigger ones. Most people I know and talk to tend to prefer the speed and technique of the smaller divisions in most sports anyway.

Given Dory held the NWA belt for, what, four years? and Terry's reign was much shorter, there's context in their runs as champion that'd make it a perfectly fine statement. Other than that...

If you're talking strictly pro-wrestling, I don't think you need most of them at all. The Saku thing is great fun, but outside of "his success lead others to try it", it's direct affect on wrestling itself is pretty minimal. The Takada matches can all be scratched though, they brought the early crowds but that's it. I can understand including Fujita's wins over Nijman, Kerr, Shamrock and maybe Yvel too. Kerr was pushed as a top guy in the early Prides and obviously Ken was a big early name. If he just beat Nijman, for instance, it's harder to imagine him getting the NJ push as hard. Takayama's fight with Frye is definitely worth including; as are Takayama's post-match interviews and such from the time where you can tell he's just, y'know... You don't really need the Sapp fights, just the sense of how big he was at the time and a few highlights. If you want a couple of fights though I'd keep the Nog fight and use the wins over Hoost in K1 (a much bigger deal) rather than the squashes of Tamura and Yamamoto. I don't remember the Nakamura fights at all other than that takedown -> knee he loves to eat comes from a loss.

He only did the one vs. Suzuki, right?

... which never came into it. Nagata didn't even shoot for the takedown at any point - Mirko blocked a quick clinch attempt and high-kicked him. But in fairness to them, Mirko was coming off being taken to a draw by Takada of all people, a worse shootfighter than even his biggest detractors would consider him to be as a wrestler. As Ditch said, though, putting him against Fedor (the fucking Pride champion) was lamb to the slaughter 101.

Whole show as one file, plus individual matches, are all on YouTube...

He has better hair... The second thing that really bothered me in the match though is that, and maybe I'm giving them too much credit or reading too much into nothing, Tanahashi never got any sustained run of offense and was basically playing catch-up from the start, avoiding the Rainmaker at all costs, and yet he didn't sell it at all as a struggle. If anything, because Okada put much more effort into his selling, he came off as the more sympathetic figure, but for the bum knee he would've taken it.

Finally wrapped up my watching of the show this morning... Obviously, the whole "best show ever contender" thing is an almost tabloid-esque hyperbole, but I've heard enough about New Japan turning the corner and read between the lines to expect a solid-good show with a better atmosphere than the show's had in recent years and, to that end, it delivered. I thought the Nagata/Suzuki match was pretty good (though would someone payback Suzuki's spots on him already, Jesus), even if Nagata's armbar is blatantly there just for the Taker-Eyes. The junior title match was a fun spotfest, and everything hit quick and clean. Saku/Nakamura was fine too. As for the main event, I thought it was fine, and felt like the main event, and didn't particularly drag for me, but... I don't get Tanahashi's character at all, in fact I find it so undefined as to be distracting. Now, I don't watch NJ with any regularity, but with the lone exception of him working the Carnival in '08, it's just never worked for me at all. With Okada, I know exactly who he is, what his character is, I love how he confidently paces himself on offense (particularly after the early DDT where he went all around the ring knowing Tanahashi was out), and his offense all fits together, with focus and enough swag on his submissions etc, etc... With Tanahashi, it's not even that I don't buy him as the top guy, because he carries himself as enough of a star that that's not an issue, but you toss this weird, cocky, effeminate, bulked up Sexy Boy whose idea of fire is to hop the ropes as a cue for his finish, I don't get it. I've never been notably bothered by his offense, but, having what Dylan said in my mind, I did pay more attention to it and do agree with him on it. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as Cena (though I prefer John, quite honestly, all around), but you expect a little more oomph from the ace of New Japan. Maybe Hash spoiled us, and I'm not gonna start to make that comparison because it's much too unfair, but someone like Suwama in All Japan, without stiffing the fuck out of guys, without being particularly great, he comes off as the toughest guy there. Nakamura has enough shootery shit to be OK, but I don't know with Tanahashi. He's clearly a good talent, but, yeah...

114... but I'm coming from England and it's doubling as an end-of-uni celebration (I get my last grant on April 2nd) so I've no problem paying the extra $$...

Except the key run for seeing how great Bull was is 1990-1992, when she was the 3WA champion and everyone else is suddenly much better against her than anyone else/each other... But, yeah, it has to be the '90s...

Well Kobashi bladed in the '99 Battle Royal... but how much Baba was doing at that point a few weeks from death is, y'know...

Ed was doing the "Oklahoma" gimmick in the WWF, though. Doc damn near broke his neck on one skit (I'm thinking on Heat or something - it's on youTube somewhere), but it wasn't a WCW deal.

See, I'm curious about the intersect between these two comments. When MJH is saying that, who is he talking about? The average person over 40, or the average person he talks to who is still really into wrestling. There's a difference and it matters. I don't think the average person who grew up with the WWF in the US when it was big nationally would mention Dynamite Kid or Ricky Steamboat before they got through guys like JYD and Duggan. Average person over 40. ITV Wrestling is remembered with a lot of fondness, it was a staple part of most people's Saturday afternoons, and if/when wrestling comes up (which is more frequent than you might think), people are happy to reminisce. With Big Daddy, I don't even have to bring him into the conversation, it's always "but that Big Daddy..." and into a negative comment. You know how the comments section on most old music on YouTube can't help but degrade into a Justin Bieber slagfest? It's pretty much like that, and only marginally less visceral.

Big Daddy was huge... he's now a joke figure. People remember Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, even Les Kellet with fondness. I've never heard a single positive retrospective comment on Big Daddy. Not one.

It's good but short, only 15 minutes or thereabouts. The best match on that show is Kyoko/Toyota vs. Bull/Sakie.

How does that contradict anything I said? The angle started with the ref bump which came a good few minutes after that.

Eh, I disagree. They literally cut out the entire middle of the match. A few minutes of OK matwork and then straight to their comeback sequences... As for the show, it was alright. I'd've liked the matches to have gone longer, but that wasn't the point. The cameos were generally fine. I marked for Sean Mooney. That was probably the best moonsault Lita ever did, too.