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Ditch

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  1. Ditch

    Holy Grails

    Ditch replied to BBscout's topic in Pro Wrestling

    Misawa vs Kawada, Champions Carnival 1996. Shown ultra-ultra-clipped on the comm, so it was taped.
  2. Ditch
    You should have just said Young Lions.
  3. Ditch
    In classic backstage vignette fashion, she didn't have a mic but everyone heard it.
  4. Ditch
    They filled the dome in '98 with essentially a one-match card (the semi-mains were Budokan level at best), and that one match was stale and built to horribly. They would have EASILY sold the dome out for, say, the '94 or '95 Misawa/Kawada matches. As JDW said, the problem wasn't workrate, it was countless other things mentioned repeatedly over the years.
  5. Ditch
    '90s New Japan was successful on TV in Europe as "Ring Warriors", but then the in-ring product was way better and there was less TV competition. Otherwise, successful Japanese products overseas are markedly less 'Japanese' than something like puro. Translate the dialog on a Final Fantasy game and it's ready to go with only a lingering amount of uniquely Japanese element to it. Cars have zero culture content. The market for US animation is significantly larger than the US market for pro wrestling. Now apply that to anime and puro to get a sense of the monetary implications. Plus you already have puro-influenced US indies copying the 'highspots and pure sports build' aspects that in theory make puro superior to WWE/TNA. Bottom line: not gonna happen.
  6. Ditch
    Tanaka goes ahead of Kanemura based on having an exponentially better last 10 years. But damn, is Tanaka even top 20 for 'puro people who deserve to be in a HoF'? Ogawa is a 'hell no'. Huge hype to start, basically coasted that down. Nakanishi is 'hell no'. He's like a worst possible Taue in terms of a HoF case. Not sure how Nagata is "a poor man's Chono" but he certainly has a better case than CIMA, who is the head of a company based on stables and with *very* communitarian booking (ie. lots of guys get a push). Nagata is a bigger star by far and a better worker. Agreed that Jimmy Hart smokes the others on that list.
  7. Ditch
    I don't think 'oh no evil random Japanese people' was going to be much of a draw in late '95 unless they put in the kind of effort Vince did for Yokozuna. And even then, Yokozuna's size and ability are what made that work, not PEARL HARBOR NEVAR 4GET. Loss points out most of the problem. In general it felt like a bunch of nobodies trying to jump a huge organization; the feud felt like an extended squash or something. The initial three-man nWo was much more intimidating.
  8. Ditch
    As a Bills fan I'm sick of being a JTTS, though we did get a token Patriots win in a rare piece of Choshu-style booking that deviated from the usual Baba-style, rank-focused AFC East.
  9. Ditch
    I always thought it was overrated, glad I'm not alone.
  10. Ditch
    I think this smokes both Mutoh/Takada matches by an order of magnitude.
  11. Ditch
    WCW brings in Nakanishi and Sasaki at their dearths, but we only get the briefest taste of Ohtani. Friggin' morons.
  12. Ditch
    Another good touring match from them. They keep it short, fit in a bunch of stuff, and impress the crowd... like the other touring matches.
  13. Ditch
    I was 14 at the time and tended towards being a Hogan fan (though I preferred Giant) but man was he a jackass here. Really soured me on him.
  14. Ditch
    As with so many WCW ideas, I have no idea what the payoff was supposed to be with this angle.
  15. Ditch
    A lot of Dave's rant is just a matter of giving too much weight to off-hand/rare/uninformed comments. 'HTM was the greatest IC champ' = someone who almost certainly never saw the HTM title reign but heard it repeated enough by WWF that they're willing to parrot it; and it's not like any IC reigns stand out in hindsight as notably great. Lots of great wrestlers involved to be sure but too many switches and too few multi-time champs for 'HTM was the best' to be handily swatted down. As opposed to someone saying Mutoh or Minoru Suzuki or Suwama was the best Triple Crown champion, which is a simple matter to refute. In other instances you'll have mitigating factors surrounding it. Gorilla was good at some announcer aspects and bad at others; Whelan was a big media figure, etc. Some people are overrated. That does not mean EVERYONE eventually gets overrated. The stuff about "some people say '99-'00 WCW was great"... well, there's someone who's willing to back any position. The question is whether that's a belief held by a substantial number of people. If not, no reason to get worked up about it. The biggest sports radio host in Rochester NY gets obsessed with subsets of people who hold minority opinions and it ruins shows.
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  17. Ditch
    That singles match happened before (10/28) and after (12/10)
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  19. Ditch
    Third time Double-H has to defend against TenChono, and the fourth match between the teams in six months. Kinda repetitive to do that but hey, if the end result is a quality match who are we to complain? It's not like the AJ tag scene was less monotonous in '95. This is the last time these teams faced each other (...like the RWTL final). Anyways, I really enjoyed the finishing run, and the finish really feels meaningful (as opposed to the RWTL final). It really helped that all these IWGP tags weren't overlong. 15-20 minutes is a very good length for a match to be fully fleshed-out while avoiding too much downtime, unless you've got superworkers. Hirata is likeable but NOT a superworker.
  20. Ditch
    As much as anything, this match just didn't feel like it accomplished anything. Baba hits the reset button to have Misawa/Kobashi win the league, but wusses out and has Kawada/Taue keep the tag belts, then breaks Misawa/Kobashi up. It worked out in '96 with the Akiyama storyline, but man, it would get REAMED if someone did that today. It's good action and all but there's 20+ minutes of good action in like two or three hundred All Japan '90s matches. This needed to be on the set, and maybe I'm underestimating the quality, but it's still a letdown.
  21. Ditch
    Too much of NJ vs UWFi was about who was better at leg submissions. This match, like the two Chono vs Anjoh bouts, was all about HATE and energy. Takayama adapted quite well to the brawlish nature of the match. Anjoh was so great in the feud.
  22. Ditch
    6/15.
  23. Ditch
    THEM JAPS ATTACKED US AT PEARL HARBOR DAMMIT!!!
  24. Ditch
    To me this all circles back to *1995*. Who was available, looked like a high-end talent, and would have fit better than Albright? Once Albright is in there, Baba has less to spend on other free agents. If we're gonna second-guess we need to be fair about it. If we're saying that UWFi natives stay with UWFi, well, there goes a bunch of names. Hayabusa wasn't a proven commodity and was the face of FMW, he wouldn't jump in '95. Tanaka was unproven. Ikeda was unproven. Seems like the only answer is Vader. I wonder if Vader's asking price came down a lot by late '98; maybe that's the only reason why Baba brought him in. And maybe there wasn't enough money to hire '95 Vader. In which case maybe Albright *was* the best available. edit: Also, while everyone agrees that late '90s AJ had a lot of problems, the time to really start fixing things was '95, in order for things to be in place for late in the decade. And other than "find better guys to train" and "spend a boatload of yen", not much else Baba could have done in '95.
  25. Ditch
    Takayama needed three solid years in AJ before he hit his stride and was ready for the upper tier. He was given lots of matches with top guys and that helped him, as evidenced by the 9/4/99 singles match with Misawa that was a preview of 2000s Tak. He was developed (re-developed?) about as well as possible. Tanaka's height was enough of an issue that even post-split AJ saw him as a midcarder. He's a natural junior with a smaller frame than Kawada (who's only 2cm taller). Clearly he would have been a better long-term prospect than Inoue, Izu and Honda, but I'm just not sure if he would have been anything more than a right-hand-man and sporadic title challenger. He's a spotty worker. Effort helps and he's got that in spades but it would have taken a lot of work to drill psychology into him. Same with Mike Awesome, who they could have gotten from FMW but allowed to go to ECW. Ikeda is an interesting case. I'd compare Ikeda-in-AJ (and NOAH) to Chris Hero in ROH: guys who can work the mat and deliver hellacious violence on a small stage, but seem to reel it in on the bigger stage. Ikeda probably saw himself as a midcarder-for-life in AJ/NOAH and thus rarely felt compelled to bring the punches-and-headbutts aspect of his Battlarts work. Or perhaps he wasn't allowed to. Anyway, he had the potential and was never given a serious push. Not sure he deserved a push after watching him sleepwalk through so many midcard tags. Guys like Honda and Izumida were more consistent. In fact, I think Honda absolutely could have been used more despite his age. He was phenominal during his push in 2003, and solid during earlier mini-pushes in '99 and '01. NOAH essentially gave up on him starting in 2004 (aside from a brief tag title fling in '06), but he wasn't banged up or anything. He could still bring it at least as late as '06, and plenty of people (ie. Phil) still loved him last year. That seems like a long enough time to be worth the investment. It really is something to think about how much better '90s AJ could have been with the benefit of hindsight; it was already an incredible decade. Though certain old-timers knew about those problems when the '90s were still going on
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