MJH

That's pretty much it. There are certain times where I notice the ref: Wada, for instance, I've seen put his ear right in close to a guys face when in a submission (particularly Misawa's facelock) in order to hear him better, which I liked and thought more people ought to do. But, other than that kind of thing, yes, what Jingus said. I wouldn't like to be the WWE referee who walks in front of the hard cam (and, so, the wrestlers in shot) during a spot.

It's not as though it'd be difficult for him to use it - just once - on a guy as they're climbing the ropes. Climbing to your feet, your head facing the crowd, is almost babyface 101 to show the crowd your facials as part of your selling, and so its a natural movement within the scope of wrestling, even if done by a heel. The same way there's no reason for a guy to stand there bent over for Booker's axe kick waiting for the shot when he can just as easilly hit it on a guy as he's in the process of standing up (albeit with his head down). The company/Rey/Booker/similar example don't seem to think the crowd would recognise the spot in time for the pop, though, which is pretty silly. The importance of filling your time/feeding between spots effectively cannot be overstated, as its the key difference between something looking terribly forced (as the 619 setup does) and looking natural.

Whilst I agree on her over-achievement, I don't buy that Kudo was better than Toyota or Yamada in 1993; I thought she was the weakest of the four in the DS1 main, for instance. On the other hand, fourth best for her match with Aja at St. Final seems strange. Third behind the top two, sure, but I sure can't recall any of the undercard being extraordinary. What Joshi would really benefit from is a carefully selected (and match-ordered) comp, or something akin to Ditch's site. Most of the Zenjo tapes in circulation are comms, with the full cards, and by the time you get to the meat-and-potatoes on top - almost always the best and pimped matches - the rookies and mid-card will have often exasperated a newbie's patience. And even something like Dream Slam I, or any of the other big epic shows from the interpromotional era, are really fucking long. As great as any of the big AJPW matches are, I don't really want to sit through the first two-odd hours of the show to get to them, but their comms, and far more widely circulated TV blocks, had a lot more (most) of the dreck cut out, too.

I don't think Aja/Hotta is any more than maybe a Top 5 MOTYC for Zenjo in 1994, but it is fucking brutal and one of the best 'Joshi for Non-Joshi' matches you'll find. The reality is that Joshi has far more stylistic variation than this thread is giving it credit for. Yoshida has stuff in ARSION that's up there with the best matwork-based matches that men have done other than the ultra-top-tier RINGS/whatever; Hokuto/Kandori is as great a big epic match as anything; Dream Rush Main is the perfect inter-promotional match; Kudo/Toyoda is one of, if not the, best death match ever; there're tonnes of great grudge matches; the best sprints are some of the best ever and still pretty 'state of the art' twenty years on; etc... Really, the only company who had a better collection of matches in the early-mid '90s than AJW was the All Japan men, and there's almost certainly more variety amongst them.

To not want to watch women wrestling *because they're women* is sexist. To not want to watch Toyota vs. Inoue because it's a sprint and you prefer something else stylistically is not. I'm not actually that big a fan of sprints - I can't stand Davey vs. Edwards etc - but my argument in defence of Toyota/Inoue, Toyota/Yamada, and Toyota in general is that she's (one of) the best sprint worker(s) I've ever seen. Much like, I don't know, Dragon Gate in general I find pretty bleh but the 8/03 12-man match is great fun, or something. Dismissing all Joshi as sprints is silly, though.

If I remember correctly, it came after Channel 4 (terrestial/basic network channel) picked up the rights for four pay-per-views in 2000, an ill-fated run that ended up with the pay-per-views being delayed fifty minutes and having adverts put in. I remember Rumble 2000, Backlash 2000, and at least as far as Invasion being on there, so my guess would be in 2002?

This is pretty on the money. I quite like HHH in general, or there's enough stuff of his I like that, whilst I'd never want to watch hours of his stuff on end or anything, I don't have any kind of visceral reaction against the guy.

I'm not really sure I have a breaking point, I just go through phases. If I watch too much of one thing, I'll move onto another, then another, and so forth, and then back to something else of the first thing and so on. There's enough stuff that I really like and can watch over (it can a few years between watching them again) that I've never fell into complete over-saturation with wrestling as a whole.

Fucking glorious.

What does Mayweather/Show have that, I don't know, Hogan/Warrior didn't? I haven't watched it in years and years but probably the same applies to Bigelow/LT. Whilst I like Show in a way, I never got the sense it was anything other than a great agent job. Which isn't to say he had no input or anything, but it wasn't like he went out there and led Mayweather around by the hand on the fly... a LOT of pre-match work and run-throughing no doubt went into that match.

We only had this thread a few months ago, but the question that you have to ask is, how many strong candidates were there? Now, of course, there's also the idea that black athletes weren't attracted to pro wrestling because of that, but, unless there are multiple clear instances were a black guy who was obviously a star waiting to happen was held back, you can't really tie it down to 'racism'.

To a point, like Jingus said, I can agree. But, at the same time, I don't know... if you're going against the Bill O'Reillys of the world you kind of have to force your point home and not give him the chance to talk over you like Dawkins did. When Bill slipped and said 'the movement of the tides in and out' (or something to that effect) were 'one of God's mysteries' and Dawkins just casually said 'well, we know why that happens...', you want a Hitchens to slap it back in his face. And, besides, he was always intelligent and articulate in his arguments, and that's an unfortunate rarity. -- But, yeah, I'm not sure how it'd work. If someone came out, thanked God, whatever, and this other guy came out and ripped it to pieces, I don't see where the business is in that. I'd also love to see an anti-nationalist angle, but again, how would you apply it to wrestling? The 'how dare he not be patriotic!' would be wretch-inducing. I'm just beyond sick and tired of the religion/patriotism so would mark out if someone came out saying that sort of shit...

I think it'd be pretty easilly done, though I wasn't necessarilly saying that they'd have to be faces, as such. Personally, I don't think it's a subject where the writer shoudl cast their own moral judgement, and therein lies its problem being translated to wrestling, but, I mean, there's plenty one could go after against religion to paint that as being the more morally 'evil' of the two perspectives.

I've said these before, I think, but a feminist wifebeater and a Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens-style atheist campaigner would be interesting, especially if not actually fed as heels. Also, I don't think there's anything instrinsic in wrestling that means it can't be intelligent.

It's been lurking around online for a few years, I remember downloading it on Kazaa/something what must be 8/9+ years ago now.

The thing with Suzuki is, he should be the easiest guy in the world for a good babyface to work against. Pretty much every single spot/mannerism is a payback spot in waiting. And very few people seem to do it.

Oh, Toyota going first is hard to grumble by given she's always been touted as #1 by Dave.

I must admit I was nearly riled when Jaguar Yokota came last in a Female GOAT Poll.

I may sound like a dick, but I always thought those Bull vs Blayze match only really appealed to people who never watched any joshi at all, and just don't cut the mustard compared to any kind of short undercard match from any joshi promotion at the same time. Same match happening in Japan, and it wouldn't even be noticed. See Big Egg.

I've always judged a promotion by how it handles its rookies. WWE has them go in, follow the 3-part formula to a tee, no digressions, with a simple moveset. NJPW has them go on, and predominantly work the mat, which is the staple of the first-half of their matches. AJW had them go in, and do the simple spots they could do (dropkicks~!), with lots of rope-running, but most importantly, it was about keeping up a certain (ie fast) pace. It didn't matter how many dropkicks, running mares, etc that they did, provided the pace was kept up. There'd be a smattering of matwork, sure, but it was all about that pacing.

Yoshida debuted in late-88. The comparative period for Hase would be mid-89 - mid-90. It is worth bearing it mind that Kyoko debuted from the same class as Yoshida; I wouldn't be playing the 'inexperienced/super-rookie' card for her. But... the Yoshida '92 argument is 'she was clearly showing signs of becoming a great worker down the round' and never that she was a fully-formed 'great worker' undervalued by the company (that was later). I've no problem with Jerome saying 'Yoshida > Toyota/Yamada in'92' because she'd do more long-term selling and was less of a 'sprint' worker. Then again, Zenjo was a sprint promotion.

Benoit's problem at this point was that because he was so fucking good, and his peerless execution can't really be hidden, no matter how hard he'd try to make them look good, his opponents would just come off looking inferior. Such is the case here.

It's whomever you have as GOAT. Their '99%' is by proxy better than anyone else's. Pedantry .

Yoshida. Hase's career is well documented, he was a superb worker from the mid 80's to the mid 90's, and although his days as a juniors might not may remembered favorably these days, his peak as a workrate machine of NJ in the early 90's makes him a contender as one of the best japanese worker or the era. That being said, he has been rather disapointing during his comeback in AJ. Not meshing that well with the AJ style (which was surprising since Hase was all about stiffness and workrate, which suited the spirit), not delivering on a regular basis like he would before, although Hase was still good in the later part of his career, he wasn't a great wrestler anymore. Yoshida's early career is not as well known, because she was not pushed as much as girls like Takako, Hasegawa, and because she got injured just before the interpromotionnal eras, missing some of the biggest shows ever. Still, watching Yoshida in the early 90 makes it clear she quickly became an excellent worker, to me she was better than Toyota in 1992, and she remained an excellent worker despite the lack of push and bad outifits until she left AJW. Then, she reinvented herself in ARSION, turned into an über sexy and sleek matwork machine, created her own style that no one could follow (except Yumi Fukawa) and to me became the best wrestler in the world at that time. Lack of lot of good competition made it tough to get great matches back then, but she's been consistently superb since then, and people who followed the scene in the following crumbling years never reported any kind of drop in her work. She was also noted for being one hell of a trainer. Peak vs Peak, Yoshida is better. Career vs Career, Yoshida takes the cake too, her years in AJW are very underrated and about as good as anything Hase did during his peak (for the mid-90's). Yes. And Hase is my favourite NJ worker of that era. Flik did a great job in elevating Yoshida in peoples' minds during his run-through of 1992 Zenjo. I don't think she was better than Toyota (though more well-rounded), I think there're times in their JGP match on 8/30 where you can tell Toyota is more experienced in higher-profiled matches, but there's no question Yoshida would've been a big addition to the inter-promotional war. I do sometimes wonder though if, perhaps, it was in missing those two years that she was able to be at her peak much later than the other girls. But even something like her 8/91 match with Takako (JGP '91 tournament, I forget the exact date, 8/18?) is, as I remember it, a pretty-perfect 'young girls' match in Zenjo, full of exhuberence, with strong selling from Yoshida and a killer bump that decides the match (and plays into that exhuberency).

To throw my oar into JVK/JDW's debate: Firstly, newspapers are garbage here. Sure, the tabloids focus more on celebrity bullshit, but every newspaper is laden with its own propaganda and prejudices. People deride the Mail - deservedly so - but every paper, including the Telegraph, the Times, the supposedly-'objective' Independent, and the Guardian, they all have their stances which they stick to rigidly; your tolerance of it is depended by where your own opinions fall, and even though I might agree more with certain aspects of the Guardian/Independent (being generally 'of the left'), this kind of shit shows their cards a little too well. Papers would generally be well-served to do away with their op-eds and prohibit the use of adjectives/adverbs in their columns. Even the local press. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but in Liverpool, the Echo preaches the fuck out of that retarded 'us vs. them' mentality. And, unfortunately, as with the readers of the national papers, most people slurp that cool aid up. And the idea that this is absent from the sportspages is wrong. Take the Suarez story. They bashed Liverpool's players for wearing his shirt warming up. But to make that argument, they played it as Liverpool players, if not supporting racism, then as not supporting the 'kick it out' campaign. Whereas, in reality, they were supporting Suarez. As in, what they were actually saying was 'we know this guy personally and we don't think he's a racist'. That's a small but crucial difference that the press were happy to forego in order to proudly show their support for getting racism out of football, which is a stance that shouldn't need such twisting into and is cheapened by doing so. * As far as SkySportsNews vs. Sportscenter goes, I can't say definitively that Sky are more sensationalist (we only get a truncated, I presume 'international', version of SportsCenter, as well as PTI, Around The Horn, Jim Rome... and the pre-game/half-time coverage on NHL, MLB, NBA and college football/basketball broadcast on ESPN. Sky Sports and Channel 4 have the NFL and do their own) but like all Sky News they're closer to their American counterparts in how they handle the news as opposed to the BBC. They don't 'pick sides' as it were, but they juice things up. And when they can pick sides (ie; international sports - which I'd be more than happy to have done away with altogether, or at least have England removed from) it's unbearable. * But as far as the fans go in relation to wrestling... There is a great deal of the 'pantomime' that you get in wrestling. Whilst as a Liverpool fan (sorry John), I have no problem with an 8-game ban for Suarez for racism (though I haven't read the full report and the only video footage is of him pinching Evra's arm), of course provided Terry gets the same punishment (there's video footage in that case). However, him getting an additional ban for sticking a finger up to the crowd? That's bullshit. Adebayor getting all kinds of shit for racing down to the Arsenal supporters who'd spent the entire match shouting abuse at him after scoring against them? Bullshit. Even whatever happened in result of Gary Neville kissing the United badge in front of the Liverpool fans? Bullshit. Fuck the FA/press when it comes to that: you can't not have the players react, and the games all the better for it. Sure Cantona had to get punished, but even then, even Robbie Fowler put in his book that just about any footballer was thinking 'good on him' for doing it. But an important aspect of the fans that you're missing, though John briefly touched on it, is that, away from the game, and even during it, the fans don't hate each other. I've got lots of friends in Manchester. Sure, there's the obvious banter that goes on, but we'll give credit where it's due and talk well of both sides. What makes the Liverpool/United feud so good is that the fans respect the worth of both clubs: they're the two most successful teams in English football and have been 'big clubs' for years and years. They didn't 'buy their way' to the top as Chelsea and City have. As much money was United spent/invested in the '90s, it was their home grown class of Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Neville, etc... every Man United fan I know has said various forms of 'City need 10-15 years at the top before the derby's as big as Liverpool-United'. Everyone I know give Ferguson his due. They'll debate his status as 'GOAT' on the grounds that had a singular man had the manager's seat for Liverpool's dominance (it was all one system/regime) he'd have just as much, and that Paisley's 9 years were more successful than any period of Ferguson's. Not to mention he won three European Cups - no worry about Fergie losing his motivation. But they speak respectfully of him as a manager. The criticism is that he's a douche and/or cocky. But they always give him his fair and deserved due as a manager. Any knighthood for football in bullshit, though, and I soon as I point out, with regards to not giving Paisley one as they're not done posthumously, that even Shakespeare hasn't been given one, that point dies. I've never heard a bad word said about Scholes. Ever. Or Giggs. Even when the affair stories broke, the only stuff I heard was that they wished he'd've had classier taste in women. And as much as they might take the piss out of Rooney, there's always a compliment to his actual playing ability suffused in there because they like their football and he's a fucking great player. And there's still a fair degree of 'local pride' (even if personally I couldn't give a shit) that probably the two best English players of the past 6/7 years have been Liverpool-born. Etc... Wrestling doesn't have what I guess you'd call the kayfabed version of this board kind of discussions. Maybe, in the past, they might have had them in Japan, I don't know, maybe Dan could help out there, but you can't take that 'objective' ( ? ) aspect from sports discussion.