Ditch

I called the Conservatory and they said I could get an interview. There's only so much I can glean about him from Terry's book, and I'm not too familiar with his work other than "he was world champ" and "he helped train a bunch of guys". I got a lot of help here for the Harley Race interview and I'd appreciate that help again.

I'm hosting it if all you need is a web video. When it was put up at PWTorrents last year I was floored. That it only just aired in full/good quality explains a lot about why it isn't more pimped. I'd peg it as the best All Japan match between '78 and '87.

I'm genuinely curious because I've only really seen praise for their '81, '82 and 6/83 matches. I *love* the broadway, but there's like five or more after that and none of them seemed especially good.

Some were good. Lots were well below either of their average, especially after the June '83 broadway.

I've run into this so often when I try to get ROH fans who are open to puro to actually watch puro. When I was a novice I'd watch just the big matches with no context and often totally fail to appreciate them as a result. But for fans who are used to tons o' highspots a lead-in match from Japan doesn't cut it. They just want to see the ***** match so they have more time to watch Impact. Someone PLEASE explain that one to me... At the same time there's just so much pro wrestling out there that you'll be told is good and worth watching. It can be hard to invest the time needed to get a deep understanding of any one era/area/style, especially if you're also trying to keep up with today's stuff. I've put in a ton of time over most of the decade in doing just this and I still don't have time to watch the DVDVR '80s sets; I can't imagine how much more overwhelming it must be for someone who's a newcomer today. So there's a certain amount of necessity in only watching the best of the best. Ah, but who else was really in that position? Touring champs before Flair weren't dealing with quite so many bodybuilders/gasheads. Ditto wrestlers who were primarily in Japan and Mexico; not many get to the top in either place based entirely on look. After that you're pretty much left with US promotions in the last 25 years, and by that point a whole lot of "best wrestler ever" usual suspects are gone. Flair's formula was very effective at getting a three-star match out of 1/2* wrestlers. After a certain number of times that point is proven. But was he able to carry said roid freaks to something good any other way? And how many times did his reliance on the formula hinder his ability to do something good with top-flight talent? I'd say his flaw there is especially evident from his time in Japan. Like JDW, I'm not big on Flair vs Jumbo. The Japanese, wrestling more often in the same place, expected to do something different every time out. I don't know if the problem was more Flair failing to do something different or Jumbo not just going with the formula, but they were "off" most of the time. It's by far the most disappointing series of any big opponent Jumbo faced. Yet Flair got by far the most watchable outing with Waijima I've seen. Which side of the coin matters more? It's a testament to Flair that he can be thought of as one of the best ever despite admittedly having "one match".

I'm not saying that the crew going to MLW were anything like heirs of Baba, but neither were they the heirs of Inoki.

I want 2004 Prazak back doing indies.

As opposed to El Generico vs PAC, where if PAC was replaced by Tyler Black or M-Dogg 20 and the match happened the same move-for-move then the crowd (PWG/IWA-MS/Europe) would react exactly the same because all that matters is the spots.

I'm going to do this a bit differently, because I can't get the wording right on making it a one-line proposition. I think "Strong Style" is a myth. New Japan doesn't have a style. I could watch Kerry Von Erich vs Jumbo Tsuruta, then Misawa vs Kobashi from January '97, and point out how generally they both fit in the Royal Road style despite the vast number of differences. There was continuity from Baba to Jumbo to Misawa to Akiyama. Fuchi and Kikuchi wrestled Royal Road style in the junior division. 'Strong Style' is a blank slate. What the hell do Liger, Nakanishi and Makabe have to do with Inoki? There are wrestlers like Nishimura who do Inoki spots, there's Hashimoto who largely inherited Inoki's role as defender of New Japan, and they have nothing to do with how Tenzan or Hirooki Goto approach a match. I'll never forget going to the first MLW show. They listed a bunch of styles like "lucha libre" and "strong style" on a shirt, because they're a hybrid. Ignoring the fact that MLW had ties to All Japan rather than New Japan, even in 2002 when I was still quite a newbie to puro it was obvious how stupid that was. They were saying "strong style" as shorthand for "Japanese style", ie. stiffness and head drops and legit submissions. Over the years I've seen the term get referenced in other situations the same way. I've seen lots of long, detailed writeups about what it means. At the end of the day the only thing "strong style" means is whatever New Japan wants it to mean at that specific moment in time. Is it more Inoki-ism or Choshu-ism or Fujinami-ism, or is it some combination of the three? I suppose that right now Tanahashi and Nakamura and Nagata, who have controlled the heavyweight division for the last three years, are all good representations of mythical Strong Style. And if Tenzan wins the title in a few months and holds it for two years, ignoring that such a thing is only possible in theory, all that goes out the window. Strong Style isn't about an approach to wrestling a match the way Royal Road is/was, but rather it's about the clash of differing styles in order to determine which style is strongest. The 2004 G-1 Climax is a textbook example. The New Japan wrestlers had very different approaches and the outsiders added to the variety. That tournament played to the company's strengths, as the contrast in styles produced a number of solid and distinct matches. Nakamura was "technique" and Blue Wolf was "power" and Shibata was "kenka strong style" even though he wrestled nothing like Chono. All three were NJ trueborns, and if "strong style" means anything they'd be a heck of a lot more similar. That's all I got.

"I don't care at all for Jumbo Tsuruta either. Seriously. I watch all his stuff and just tune out." - Naylor two years ago. Not saying it disqualifies his opinion, just putting his comment in context. I can see why Naylor would think of Flair's matches as being the same based on what he tends to like and dislike. Flair isn't much for highspots and his moveset has been nigh unchanged for 30 years. He's doing the same things every match, sometimes with subtle variation and sometimes without. I doubt Rob would disagree with much of Loss' post above (which is, needless to say, great); none of that would change his personal enjoyment of watching a ton of Flair. I don't know how much Flair there has been so far in the '80s project, but I can imagine that it would be VERY repetitive to watch every filmed Flair match from the '80s within a brief timespan. Even someone like Bryan Danielson who draws from the entirety of wrestling history for his spots AND knows he's playing to hardcore fans has a hard time staying fresh just wrestling a handful of shows a month. Flair is drawing from '70s US wrestling and he expected that any given fan will only see him a couple times a year, so mixing it up a lot goes from being necessary in Danielson's case to a potential liability in Flair's. If you only got to see one or two Flair matches a year, you'd be disappointed if he did next to none of his trademarks. I do fault Flair for not adapting as well as some other legends have, but the fact is that he was able to make a ton of wrestlers look great and the matches weren't as predictable as they would have been if a lesser wrestler had been in Flair's place.

"Naylor's post" is kinda vague... I'll take a shot anyway. Flair was far, far more predictable/formulaic by a few years into the '90s than he ever was in the '80s. Compared to, say, Hogan. In the '80s there were certain commonalities in Flair matches, for instance "legwork ---> face turns over figure-four ---> comeback ---> finish". But again that was more a '90s thing than '80s. If there was a formula in the '80s, it was that Flair wrestled the same 'role' in the same way most of the time. He was babyface now and then, but mostly he let himself look overmatched. He had the skill needed to overwhelm backwater faces in small studios/arenas if he wanted to be more domineering/overconfident champ caught by surprise as a match wore on... but I haven't seen that. Or something along the lines of ambushing the babyface, putting him in a deep hole early and making the face struggle to survive. The matches themselves, whether he's up against a top-notch opponent like Jumbo or Windham, or needing to guide someone like Sting, have much the same feel in terms of Flair going hold for hold early and begging off late. The Steamboat series was different, but then Flair was less of a heel in '89 leading up to his full face turn. Flair treated the top babyface of the area like the top babyface in the world. That was his job, he did it well, and he didn't experiment much.

Or using Jimmy Hart's megaphone to beat the lowly Beverly Brothers, who hadn't done even light cheating.

Casual US fans really have to be taught what holds matter, and if they aren't familiar with something right away they'll lose interest. They'll react to trademarks/finishers, sure, but little else unless it's REALLY stretchy like that time Lesnar did the stretch muffler crab thingy. edit: Big agreement on the "it's taboo to tap" point. It especially hurts the viability of heel submissions. See: WM18 main event.

Crowds, especially arena crowds in the US, don't tend to "get" submission work and the like. However I do think any wrestling fam can point to the random lazy chinlock/sleeper and call it what it is. Especially if the ref starts lifting the babyface's arm.

If they're not done right (ie. doing a bunch of moves and then applying a chinlock), yes, they bring down the match. There are so many submission holds that can be applied so many ways, there's no good reason to just sit on a random boring hold that has nothing to do with the rest of the match.

I can't imagine how one would do a touring babyface world champ for a decent length of time. I just can't. The "local babyface gets momentum, feuds with world champ and is screwed by local heel" storyline is classic because it's hot before the champ comes AND after he leaves. If you do face champ coming in to face top heel, well, if the face champ wins then there's nothing to build off of. Face vs face is hard to pull off and could make the local face look second-tier. Compare to having a long-term face champ in one company, where you can build up heels to face him and when the face wins he's still on your next show, ditto if you do face vs lesser face. I don't think I've seen any of the old-school wrestlers/bookers discuss this before. Could be wrong.

Mike Modest absolutely GUSHED about Yoshinari Ogawa, and I'm reasonably sure it's for that reason. I can kinda understand when the alternatives include literal heart-stopping Kobashi chops, full-force slaps when wrestling Rikio, and Misawa's head-rattling elbow.

In certain parts of the country, especially more rural areas, they're quieter. Or in Ariake. Every wrestler I've talked to mentioned the difference. Granted you can say the same thing about the US, but here you're talking about a less homogenous population huge distances away with often dramatic cultural differences. But I digress. When two Japanese wrestlers are trading holds, the crowds will usually watch quietly and offer polite applause. In the states (especially these days) you'll either get smarky applause for everything or suck heat or murmuring. Very few US crowds ever just sit in silence.

I don't think anyone was talking about 'X-Pac heat' in '98 and early '99. I didn't like him but he was over as hell. He didn't have negative heat in WCW either. But stuff like the Kane feud, where he kept making Kane look bad and kept getting away with it month after month, and then the GODAWFUL X Factor stable... oh man that was almost as bad a stable as RTC. And almost as bad an entrance song as RTC. Anyway, that led to the situation SLL mentioned in '01. Part of it is (IMO) that when you're a babyface you can get away with having a weak finisher. When you're a heel or a not-over babyface a weak finisher really comes across as cheap. The X-Factor is cheap as hell, and he'd use it to pin babyfaces (after interference/low blow) after getting in no credible offense beforehand. I think part of Cena's heat comes from how weak the FU is. To that extent it was smart of them to add the STFU.

I'm of the mind that Cena vs Umaga is massively overrated, but "myth" is harsh. Considering that Umaga had no chance to win at all, the way they put over his toughness was very memorable and creative. I think the match done without WWE's constant camera angle shifts would show that there was a lot of downtime, but the same could be said of many other recent WWE matches to be highly touted. The 3-way tag feud had a tiny number of even decent no-gimmick tags, let alone great ones. It maybe revitalized how Vince viewed spotfests and hardcore, but proper tag wrestling? No way. Then again I don't think I've seen that 'myth' stated before. Like, I think that there's some underappreciated psychology behind the Hogan vs Warrior promos leading into WM6, but the promos aren't much discussed so there's no "myth" to bust. The TLC matches get pimped as some of WWF/WWE's best, but I never see raves for there having been a hot tag division (again, beyond generic references to the many gimmick matches). As far as Booker goes, I'm a firm believer that he was buried. Despite being at WM he got the same treatment that RVD, Kane and others received. All of them made to look like solid opponents who could win, but none seemed like a THREAT to the title because none were treated like big stars. They were all "here comes a new challenger!". The match saw HHH come back handily from Booker's superfinisher and then do a ridiculous slow cover after the pedigree- which Kane kicked out of on Raw just a few months earlier. Oh and while I'm at it, most everyone thought Scott Steiner screwed the pooch in early 2003. He was booked wrong (lots of cutesy muscle stuff rather than him nuking guys with suplexes) and HHH sandbagged him. Steiner wasn't particularly good, but he didn't have much of a chance either. Sorry Mike.

Prowrestlinghistory gets data from Meltzer so I trust it over the "official" attendance every time. And good catch OJ.

I was going by the Wiki number which is just under 48000. Which is apparently a paper number. So now we're left with wondering how Dave's Japan connections happened to overlap with the Funaki Fan Club.

I had no idea the PWFG dome show was heavily papered. Doesn't shock me; I was amazed when I saw that they'd done a dome show given that they weren't exactly selling out the Sumo/Budokan Hall level venues out left and right. The other 'big draw' I referenced was for his fight with Saku. But that could just as easily have been a paper crowd. Interesting that you mention Akiyama because he definitely has more 15000+ draws under his belt than Funaki, yet apparently doesn't have significant HOF support from Japan. Also worth pondering: why Minoru Suzuki, who had a couple big wins and has done way more in pro wrestling, apparently isn't getting lobbied for by Meltzer's people in Japan.

Fujiwara didn't have a hand in Pancrase or Battlarts, but they were heavily dependent on his students. The influence is the training. As for Funaki... well Meltzer heard a lot of support from Japan, and he drew two huge crowds, so there must be SOMETHING there. edit: Cripes, why does so little of this WON stuff filter around the internet...

Huh. That must have been back before I was regularly reading the WON. Unless it's only just now come out.