Ditch

FWIW, Mike Modest loved the hell out of wrestling Taue because Taue could get the crowd going without requiring stiffness or big bumps. I wouldn't be surprised by Hase being seen as better than Taue in Japan. That doesn't change Taue's merit vis-a-vis Edge. I mean, Taue was big at a time when there was a ton of competition and no matter what the promotion did they couldn't get airtime before midnight on the weekends. Edge is on top of a quasi-monopoly wrestling machine that already had a ton of widely available prime-time airtime when he got his push. And he got his big push by a combination of lucking into heel heat thanks to a scandal, and being in the right place at the right time since so many top names left in the previous 5 years. He was going to get title reigns pretty much by default because WWE's title scene has been so thin. Taue, meanwhile, had to work his ass off to contribute to matches with far superior athletes in the best in-ring promotion in the history of the world. And Taue did so in main events or semi-mains for longer than Edge has, and without needing gimmicks and killing himself with stunt-show bumps as a crutch.

He and Funaki would have gone into the now-defunct WON MMA HOF if it was there at the time.

Sasaki has a much better case than Edge. Headlined way more big shows, won titles everywhere he went, headliner for longer so much longer. I'm sure some would say that Edge has the better "best match" resume, but the vast bulk of that is stunt show matches that really only require a lack of common sense as opposed to knowing how to put together a good match. Edge was never in a straight match a fraction as good as Sasaki/Nakajima vs Kobashi/Shiozaki, or Sasaki vs Kawada. Hell, a straight match as good as Sasaki vs Tenryu 1/4/00. So yeah, make mine Sasaki ahead of Edge.

Nigel doesn't work in Japan. He's too small to be a headliner and isn't especially good in tags.

ROH cards are looking worse and worse by the season, and that's BEFORE these two left. At this point I think the best move would be for them to do an "old ROH vs new ROH" feud, bringing in castoffs like Xavier and the SATs who weren't good enough for 2006 ROH but aren't worse than frigging Super Smash Brothers.

NJ vs UWFi had its moments even if Choshu did just about everything in his power to ruin it. Certainly much better than the 2001 Invasion.

After reading the latest WON, where Dave muses about how incredibly low the buyrate-to-ratings ratio is in TNA, I got to thinking about Russo's past. WCW got the exact same way when he was booking. I know that WWF buyrates went up in '98-'99, and of course there's the "Russo only works with Vince's heavy hand" factor, but I'm thinking that the ratio wasn't all that good in '99 compared to several years this decade where ratings were half or less and buyrates were comparable or only slightly below. And I'm talking domestic buys.

I wonder to what extent TNA's profitability issues, and WCW and ECW before that, would make 'the boys' less likely to see greener pastures in a post-Vince environment. It's one thing in early decade Japan where you have two huge, densely packed cities to draw from without a ton of effort, and could split off easily and get a piece of the pie to live on. It's another in the US where the population is dispersed, so you really need TV to draw more than a small number of mainstream fans. And while TV might be easier to come by than in Japan it's still not easy. While some would jump to TNA, I think the bulk would stay on as long as they could.

Choshu had some great runs of booking.. really the majority of men's feds in Japan were booked by current or retired wrestlers. Flair in '89 was good.

What's the story on Baba buying Jumbo a reign?

Gonna need the story on this.

Who did fights in movies, one of which was Jackie Chan's "Wheels on Meals", which is where Misawa's "Spartan X" theme came from.

The thing with Hogan and Japan is that the difference REALLY stood out in the '90s. In the US he became a caricature of himself, doing the exact formula every time against every opponent, using the same very small number of moves and spots... then in Japan he's doing chain wrestling and giving opponents nearfalls and such.

Yes. Also FMW and Osaka.

MYTH: It is inevitable that one day All Japan and NOAH will merge. Why it's a myth: because current All Japan has exactly three employees (Fuchi, Kea, Wada) left over from the split, so there's no natural connection to be had. There's more reason for NJ and AJ to merge, or AJ and Z1, than NOAH and AJ.

Zero-One survived with a way weaker roster. NOAH is just likely to shrink.

Helms has been hurt, he's still on payroll. WWE is so desperate for talent they'll have a tryout in Japan in a couple weeks. Good luck finding Wellness-ready heavyweights *there*, guys.

Coming in a bit late here. Having people from Wrestling KO become such an important part of the DVDVR puro board, especially when it comes to the voting stuff, has been fascinating. At times it seems to the untrained eye to be a hivemind, for instance giving support to Battlarts or critiquing KENTA matches. But I find it next to impossible to say with any certainty whether a given match will meet with Mike's approval or scorn, or anyone else for that matter. Plenty of Purotopia denizens are predictable to at least some degree, myself included, but not those from KO. That like-minded but not lock-step KO posters, all of whom have a lot of knowledge and are willing to debate, clashes with easygoing puro watchers for whom the cool moves are still novel and thus enough to make a match commendable. The dynamic requires some moderation to keep in line, but the back-and-forth combined with a full variety of outlooks has really added to the subforum. If KO really was sheep and a couple shepherds, that wouldn't be the case.

Over, yes. But that DEGREE of over?

The first Baba match anyone should see is vs Destroyer from '69. He's at his physical peak and it's top-notch old-school technical work. If you like that then maybe you'll like other 60s-70s Baba. As the style moved from milking holds to ACTION, at the same time as he became nigh immobile, wel... bad combination.

Tom, I think something in your writing short-circuits my brain. I've had to re-write this way more than it's worth. I think your point is that Eddie wasn't seriously pushed by WWE in a "giving him a chance to get main-event heat" way, but he got over anyway and Vince gave up and let him have a title. As opposed to others who were more deliberately pushed to the title on WWF/WWE's part. Benoit I'd tend to agree on. He was pushed from the outset as being on HHH's level, then as a strong contender to Rock (Fully Loaded '00), Austin (after WM17), then he got hurt and before too long after his return was put in a high-profile match with Angle (RR '03) that was obviously supposed to be a four-star crowd-pleasing match, then a year later he was the planned winner months in advance for WM20's main event. By comparison Eddie got crappy gimmicks (Chyna's boyfriend, a guy stealing golf carts) and had very few world title shots before winning. So the hand wasn't really forced for Benoit. He was never a 'face of the company' kind of guy, they pushed him as much as one could reasonably expect. Miniscule chance he'd have been an IWGP champ if he stayed in Japan. Rey I think was a 'hand was forced' deal. Sold merchandise, drew ratings, great crowd response in situations that weren't always designed to pop the crowd. Squashed every now and then to put over monsters in a way that expected future world champs never are. Vince clearly begrudged Rey getting the belt, I mean look at the lack of kayfabe momentum heading into his win and how he was swatted down after it. Jericho as well. Pretty clear he wasn't thought of as world title material coming in. Rather than have him feud with Rock after his hot debut segment, they shuffled him into a feud with friggin' Chyna (including a very ugly loss) and then put him in essentially cruiserweight matches with Benoit for much of 2000. Oh and he suffered one of the most blatant 'face loses clean to heel in gimmick match' losses to HHH that I can remember when he first got hot as a face. Gets the push alongside Benoit after WM17, only Jericho was the lesser man and Benoit himself wasn't pushed as a superstar, just a good rassler. At Summerslam 2001, the big follow-up to the Invasion, Jericho feuded with... Rhino. Whoopee. Then they finally went back to the Jericho/Rock feud they failed to do in '99, and quickly enough Jericho was getting split crowd reactions, if not more support than Rock. He'd gotten great heat and reactions but it took two years for him to have a singles match for a world title on PPV. And then he won and they cut him off at the knees. Jericho was getting more 'superstar'-type heat than Benoit, as opposed to 'good worker respekt' heat, and after No Mercy '01 he got pushed as a guy who had no business having a world title. That squares much more with 'fan-forced push that Vince resented' than it does 'Jericho was a handy semi-over fall guy that they planned 6 months in advance to be fodder for HHH'. Benoit's reign was during the post-mania letdown, and he dropped it at the first big PPV and promptly dropped out of the title scene; Vince pushed Benoit as much as fans really cared to have Benoit pushed. Jericho was in the title scene for Survivor Series through Mania, hardly a placeholder reign, and that's because of the reactions he got. The differences in how Benoit was pushed before his big win, and how Jericho was pushed, and in the way that they were over, is somewhat subtle but I think it's clear. Owen never got that level of crowd response during a much longer WWF run, even when put in some high-profile feuds. I can see him as the veteran-who-puts-over-champ-on-Raw. I can maybe see him as champ if he got over during the early '00s when they re-emphasized in-ring action. But they re-emphasized wrestling in '94 when he got his biggest push and he didn't get especially over, certainly not the way the ex-WCW Cruiserweights did.

Plus WWF was losing money as it tried to expand, and if things went south it would have forced a fast and ugly retreat. Add in the fact that WWF was on its way to becoming essentially a touring superhero show for kids rather than traditional wrestling, and there would tend to be some backlash.

I think I get what you're saying, and to the extent that I do I agree with you. The match wasn't a turning point by itself for US smarks and today it's just one of many great matches from the '90s. Kenta Batista's post was quite silly and I didn't grasp that your post was in response to him. Still, my misunderstanding led to some interesting discussions at purotopia so it's not all bad.

NHL changed its rules and bless them for doing it. They'd probably be dead otherwise. Basketball added the 3 pointer. Football changed rules on downfield pass defense and the sport took a dramatic turn towards passing being the key. However all of those changes combined don't meet the changes for wrestling in the last 30-40 years, so a good point there.

The elephant in the room is that for the US, Canada, Europe and a few other places, WWE = wrestling. I don't regard WWE very highly, I don't consider Raw or Smackdown worthy of intense analysis, and I don't think the US wrestling industry really merits more than two or three people making a living as 'journalists'. But I think pro wrestling as a whole is worthy. I really like this topic. Thinking about it made me think of a particular reason why I enjoy pro wrestling so much. From the standpoint of suspending disbelief and enjoying it as a sport, or caring about who wins, wrestling (especially if you follow multiple promotions) lends itself to more satisfaction than does sports. I say this as a Buffalo Bills fan, where losing four straight Super Bowls was heartbreaking, and missing the playoffs for a decade has been depressing. In wrestling, you can get behind a number of wrestlers at once and be happy when any of them get a big win. You don't get a sense of "well, that's a year wasted". There's no "we're out of playoff contention, time to look at the next draft". This goes back to the WWE thing. You have Obama casually referencing 'WWF wrestling' when it comes to cable TV talking heads, and besides the accuracy of the comment it acts as a huge slam on wrestling as low. Beyond just him saying WWF long after the name change, he uses it as an example of something not worth his time. That's how most people see it: a farce of steroided men in tights yelling at each other, or 'soap opera for guys'. If I get half a chance to talk to someone about things like Japanese wrestling I can usually make headway on making my interest seem less freakish, but with the effort involved I don't bother. I cringe when I'm at a family gathering and my mother brings up my fandom. I have to defend pro wrestling in order to defend myself, and it ain't easy to defend pro wrestling. Exactly how I feel. I think the business/promotional aspect is much more interesting than it is for regular sports. The best matches in a given year tend to thrill me more than the best albums or films or TV series. So it combines sports (rooting for athletes, free agents, athletic development), fictional storyline analysis, business analysis, and entertainment. Reading about how FMW had the biggest indy gate in history in '91, then looking at how Onita now wrestles at lowly Shin Kiba 1st ring in front of 100 people, gives me something to think about. Or I can watch him get thrown into exploding barbed wire and say "he blowed up real good".