Sean Liska

On one hand I totally understand the concerns. On the other hand a guy who was already a brilliant all-time great has been studying Lawler and Tenryu in his free time. I'll probably talk myself into it until he starts doing stupid stuff.

Well I'm not trying to overwhelm but yes the second half of 79 is awesome.

I'll take whatever I can get at this point with indy wrestling, watching some OTT and the crowd is all over the heels and the matches have legit face/heel heat and it's great.

I was having an interesting discussion with someone on the Observer board about how UK indies are so much more fun than American ones. One thing I really love is that heels in these promotions actually get heel heat. It was suggested this is partly because of the history of pantomime in UK culture. I'm totally in the dark on this stuff - do we have anyone here from the UK who keeps up with the scene and can comment? Basically, my big question is, are the UK indies going to be the last bastion of true heel heat besides casual WWE crowds? Because I go to American indy shows and it's nothing but people cheering for high spots and near falls and not my thing.

There's so much Memphis TV available and it's so worth your time. It's like my mission in life to get people to watch 80s Memphis TV, it's so good and accessible now (except 1980, boring year, skip it). If you love Dundee heel promos, the first few months of 1986 are tremendous, Dundee has one of my favorite heel runs ever.

I feel like this is a board where this tidbit of news will brighten some people's days. Here's all we know at this point, believe me I've searched, a quote from Lawler on his latest podcast. "“We did a pilot episode of our classic wrestling show here in Memphis. And it got picked up! September 9, we are going to get Bill Dundee back in the studio and we are going to shoot the first episode of Jerry Lawler’s Classic Memphis Wrestling. The Memphis wrestling that everybody grew up here in Memphis watching Saturday mornings. That’s going to be a weekly show coming up in Memphis on Channel 30, CW 30 here in Memphis.” Lawler and Dundee being on local Memphis TV on a weekly basis just brings a smile to my face. I have no idea if it's just highlights or if they're going to tape any new stuff. Of course we'll have to be on the lookout for whether or not any classic stuff we don't have emerges.

Yeah I've been informed of that so my bad on that one. I got bored during that show tbh.

All right, keeping my mind off Flair for a bit - I've been going off of a lot of memories when talking about classic AJPW and how I think it's a level better than modern NJPW and Dave is committing wrestling sacrilege by putting NJPW ahead of it. Let's dig in and watch this stuff back to back and see if I really disagree with Dave and if so by how much. I'm picking a random Misawa-Kawada match and comparing it with Tanahashi-Naito from Friday, which to me was one of the better NJPW matches I've seen. I try to keep the PBP here interesting with commentary injected. Final thoughts at the end. This is a long post but it has to be. Misawa-Kawada (7/29/93): 26 minute match so right at the same time frame as the two semis this weekend. Misawa goes for an elbow and Kawada blocks, the crowd “ohhs” because they respect the elbow so much, I love that simple stuff. Kawada kicks Misawa in the throat and he goes down and goes to the ropes, selling the power of Kawada’s kicks. God the strikes are so stiff and solid looking. Kawada starts working Misawa’s elbowing arm, really working it, and this is definitely slower than the G1 matches, he’s really wrenching it in. Fiery Misawa hope spot but Kawada regains control with brutal lariat. Another Misawa comeback and elbow and Kawada does that thing of his where he slowly falls down, I love that. Back and forth, the selling of exhaustion and pain is great. They’re using finishers that the crowd buys, I like that about this period of AJPW. Now we’re really starting to hit the near finishers and getting the big pops. Misawa keeps trying to finish Kawada off and Kawada uses his last energy to tackle Misawa and momentarily hold him off. But Misawa finally buries him with a barrage of suplexes and pins him, as fitting with their spots in the hierarchy at the time. An epic war. Tanhashi-Naito (8/11/17): Tanhashi slaps Naito in the face twice, nice tone-setting. Naito slips out of the ring a few times and does the Tranquilo pose, more character work than you’d get in 80s/90s puro. A lot of the crowd doesn’t like Tanahashi kicking him while he’s in the pose. Some legit stiff chops! One of my critiques of NJPW has been the weak looking strikes but they’re laying these in. Naito goes after the bicep. Working it pretty hard, respect. They really work a neckbreaker with Tanahashi winning the struggle. Naito goes for his corner flip into the ring kick thing and Tanahashi turns it into a dragon screw, nice spot. Tanahshi tope. Tanahashi trying to continue working Naito’s leg with a dragon screw on the second rope but Naito reverses and drops Tanahashi’s bicep on the top rope. That’s great stuff. First Destino attempt gets turned into a german. Frankensteiner from the top turned into a sunset flip and then another dragon screw, man that’s clever wrestling. Elbow exchange has the crowd rocking and then Naito spits in Tanahashi’s face, again great character work, they exchange slaps and then Naito hits a german. Now we’re hitting the finishing stretch. Dragon screw from the second rope into a cloverleaf, I love it. Crowd is buying it even though I feel like these matches never end in submissions, in AJPW the fans eventually stopped buying it and they stopped doing the teases. The NJPW finishing stretch feels more spotty than Misawa and Kawada just drilling each other. Naito hits two Destinos for the win. Man that Naito-Tanahashi match really was a hell of a great match. More Americanized with the Naito character work which some like and some don't, I'm fine with it here. I'm not taking back my criticism of some other praised NJPW matches, mostly Okada ones, where I feel like they just kill a lot of time before the finishing stretch. But this one - no wasted time, character work, limb work, escalation, rabid crowd, finish came at the right time, I really dig it. Don't know if I'm ready to put it ahead of Misawa-Kawada though but it may just be a personal preference thing. Misawa-Kawada felt like more of a war to me, I buy into their characters more, everything looks so violent, I like the finishing stretch better.. So I dunno. I don't think this is even one of the more praised AJPW matches of the decade, but I can certainly say that it's not like it was leagues ahead of Tanahashi-Naito. This is progress for me. Hell of a great puro battle with those guys Friday night. I recommend it to people who have been turned off by the NJPW style because I've certainly been bored stiff by a lot of NJPW main events but this was really clever skilled pro wrestling.

Yeah I've come to peace with Dave's love of NJPW, great for him to still be so passionate after 35 years of doing the Observer and missing like 2 issues in that time, but he really doesn't get the idea of subjective personal taste. Money drawn is objective. NJPW being the best thing ever is not. NJPW's growth over 5 years is validation to a degree of what they're doing but how much money did Hogan draw while Dave hated it.

Actually look what just showed up on YouTube a month ago, that TV show. I think I can post the link here since nobody knows who owns Memphis footage but if I'm in error here mods please forgive me, it's in trying to introduce a brother to the greatest wrestling of all-time,

No, its available oin full, some of the good folks who post here had it on the DVDVR Memphis 80s set. To me it's like the 6/3/94 of 80s American wrestling, one of my all-time favorite matches. It may not be online but I bet someone here could get you those items very affordably, it's worth it, all-time classic stuff.

Oh my God man, that's like asking for the best 60 minutes of 90s AJPW or something, there's so much great stuff to cover. As peachchaos said, If you're only going to do that though, the best bet would be to watch the 6/4/83 WMC-5 Memphis TV show with the two of them spending nearly the entire show out with Lance Russell hyping up their upcoming loser leaves town match. Then watch the 6/6/83 match itself. You can see them being brilliant at both promos and character work and in-ring and everything that made the feud so special.

So any thoughts on the main events the last two nights? I'm not a big modern NJPW main event style guy but I thought they were fantastic, just great stuff. So maybe the bigger NJPW fans here will think they weren't as good, who knows.

This is why if Bryan Danielson does decide to come back, I'm looking forward to seeing what he brings to the indies/Japan and how he influences these kids. Because in retirement he's talked about discovering love for Lawler's punches and Blue Panther's mat wrestling. I mean, how does it get better than that.

I've been critical of the NJPW main event style over the past few years, thinking its incredibly overrated, a shadow of 90s AJPW, etc. But with the growth this company is showing, I have to admit that it may not be my favorite style but it's really working. They're doing 3 straight nights at Sumo Hall and the first night looked like a pretty full house. In the past the first two shows have had more sparse crowds. The final night sold out well in advance. They sold out the big building in Osaka for Dominion with 13,000 there. They sold out Osaka Hall in advance for the G1. They set their gate record in Sapporo according to Meltzer during this G1. What they're doing is working. It may not tickle me as much as Lawler-Mantell but it's a winning formula for growing a company in 2017.

They also do comedy spots in matches that modern WWE doesn't do, like stuff out of an 80s Little Tokyo match. It's successful so I'm not knocking them. But newer fans of puro go on about Strong Style and have no idea how different the style is from the 80s and 90s at times.

When I said "perfected the style", I meant the Taker-HBK WWE self-conscious epic, certainly definitely was not saying they've gotten it better than 90s AJPW. My bad for not phrasing that correctly.

Is the first half actually what happened? Well, in terms of popping the internet it has, fair question.

It would be interesting to re-visit this discussion now with NJPW really perfecting the style and Meltzer crowning it the best wrestling ever.

This is strictly for my fellow Memphis obsessives here. Scott Bowden has found audio from the mid-70s when Memphis wrestling was on WHBQ. This is classic stuff - we hear so much about the days of Lawler and Sam Bass torturing Lance Russell every week and Lawler being such an obnoxious punk heel but to my knowledge not a lot of it exists. Anyways, here's two he's put up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhbdOj_Pm6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsbdSMFO268

Bix - is now really the time to pile on Jim Ross with what he's going through?

I mean he probably thinks something like Strong-Roode couldn't touch Okada-Cody. I'm glad it's 2017 and there are other people to point me towards good wrestling.

Agreed, people who usually skip NXT TV should make an effort to see this one. So old-school, crisp, physical, snug, a sense of struggle, everything meaning something, just a great style of match that we see so rarely nowadays. Roode is really peaking now and Roddy is great.

Wasn't Dave at that show in San Jose that had Onita and Santo against Casas and some FMW guys in a match that was strangely awesome with Casas bumping his ass off while the FMW guys brawled around the building?

I'm just joking around about him hurting my feelings and the scandal and stuff. But when the most respected voice in the wrestling media says Negro Casas phoned it in during the entire 90s, to big lucha fans, I mean, it's crazy. Again it's like saying Flair phoned in the 80s or something, it's so out there, certainly worth mentioning in a Dave Meltzer thread.