Matt D

I have nominations, including a spattering of French Catch guys. Haruka Eigen Incredible comedy worker and foil to Rusher Kimura. Able to change up his act from match to match while still playing the hits. Has a long career in other roles as well but I find him to be one of the best comedy workers of all time when it comes to timing, crowd interaction, avoiding and then getting comeuppance. Has a trademark "spit spot" which had Japanese fans acting like they were at a Gallagher show. reviews: Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/12/found-footage-friday-tajiri-hhh-baba.html Kenta Kobashi/Mitsuo Momota/Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen/Isamu Teranishi/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 10/20/89 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/04/found-footage-friday-eigen-six-man-park.html Masanobu Fuchi/Mighty Inoue vs. Haruka Eigen/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 8/30/88 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/01/found-footage-friday-fuchi-inoue-eigen.html Jacky Corn One of the top babyfaces in 50s-60s French Catch. We have almost twenty matches of his, tags, singles, face vs face, face vs heel. Excellent chain wrestling. Great at working from underneath. And one of the best of the style at hitting hard as things are boiling over and heading towards a draw or a finish. In some ways he's the baseline, but being the base line for French Catch in these decades is no small thing. reviews: Jacky Corn/Guy Mercier vs. Ted Lamarre/Jo Marsalo ?/?/70 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/12/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-batman-inca.html Jacky Corn vs. Cheri Bibi 12/14/62 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/03/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-corn-bibi.html George Gueret/Teddy Boy vs. Michel Chaisne/Jacky Corn 7/30/56 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/06/tuesday-is-french-catch-gueret-teddy.html Modesto Aledo One of the greatest Spanish lightweight wrestlers. We have less footage than I'd like as him as himself, but enough to really stand out. You can just tell how good he is. What puts him over the top for me is that we have him in a number of matches as Kamikaze as well. In those matches he changes his look and style completely, subsuming himself in his character and channeling those skills to different ends. Probably hard to place but worth a try. reviews Modesto Aledo vs. Teddy Boy 10/13/60 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2020/07/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-leduc.html Modesto Aledo vs. Bob Remy 7/29/67 https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/09/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-gastel.html Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs. Kamikaze 1 and 2 12/26/68 https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/11/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-boucard.html Guy Mercier Another one of the "baseline" French Catch babyfaces to me, but Mercier's stuff tended to be a little more technical, a little grittier, a little harder hitting. He had some wonderful takedowns (a fake out spin before a leg-pick or a rolling one), a bridging headcissors takeover, and lots and lots of hard shots. He could work from underneath against a bad guy or foreign menace and have a straight up technical war against another babyface. He was excellent portraying a sense of very believable (and undeniable really) exhaustion. A real anchor of the French Catch footage. reviews: Guy Mercier vs Allen Le Foudre 1/24/70 https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2020/06/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-delaporte.html Guy Mercier vs. Mr. Montreal 8/27/83 https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/01/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-bordes.html Peter Kayser vs Guy Mercier 8/22/70 https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2022/01/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-rene-ben.html

The biggest thing I learned about Bret in the last ten years is that he’s really a peak case. It seems counter intuitive considering how he presents himself, how conventional wisdom presents him, but it’s true.

Not going to step on Land's feet. People pretty much have to go through his Patreon to get them. I'm just glad they're out there. https://www.patreon.com/c/u110961841/posts

Doing a quick scan of the new Richard Land post for today. Looks like... 9/17/80 Hanover Chris Colt vs Axel Dieter (sounds great) Steve Wright vs Sal Bellomo (should be a really good babyface match) Caswell Martin vs Gran Vladimir (again, sounds really good and entertaining) UFO vs Tom Shaft (never bad to see more Shaft and UFO is always super over but not as exciting as the first 3) Achim Chall/Michael Schneider vs Moose Morowski/Ed Wiskowski (No reason to think this isn't very good; the heel team is a killer). 9/20/80 Hanover Kim Duk vs Louis Laurance (JIP) Steve Wright vs Takashi Ishikawa (again sounds really good) Chris Colt vs Caswell Martin (sounds super) Looks like a really good drop this month.

If I could avoid making a list at this point, I would. There was a certain purity to my 2016 list based on what I haven't seen but I've spent the last five years or so trying to rectify some of the missing spaces and it's like when you clean a room by taking out all of the mess first. I've got ten years before I'm going to be done. If ever. And in general, that's great because life long learning is the way to go. It's terrible for this list though. I am going to lay down some ground rules for myself that everyone will hate however. 1. No active competitors unless they were wrestling in the 90s. I don't want to deal with it. I'd love to not have to deal with Danielson too but I probably have to. Hero too. That means no Moxley, no Mistico. I want a more absolute picture of their career I guess? Mainly I just don't want to deal with it. Most of these people wouldn't have made my list anyway. The Omegas of the world aren't making it certainly. I don't particularly like their matches. But I'd have to think about people like Darby or Joe or Kingston or Hechicero and I don't really want to. The Dustins, Christians, Blue Panthers, Fujinamis, etc. are ok. 2. I can't rate someone unless I have at least a 50-75% understanding of their career (footage dependent) to my standards. I don't for Hashimoto. I'm doing the work now. I don't for Chono. I don't for Liger. I don't for Tamura, at all. I don't for Devil Masami. I don't for Dump. I don't for Yokota. I did a ton of extra work to fill in gaps for the people I was close to being able to rate in 2014-16. I'm not doing that this year. I'm just continuing on with my projects. Borderline people will be UWF 1 guys like Maeda/Takada/Yamazaki even though I'm limited into their 90s, people like Vader where I have big gaps still. someone like Yumi Ikeshita. Pillars are real borderline but I do have a sense of them even though I haven't seen much of their 00s and am limited after 92-93 in general. But I'll probably just rank them lower on the basis of incomplete comprehension. I won't rank Akiyama for instance, however. I'm making a list out of obligation but I take no joy from it this time around. I do feel like I'll be in great shape in 2036 though.

Kauroff worked babyface in 81, teaming regularly with Axel Dieter.

Fletcher had been doing pretty interesting things in working the crowd during commercial breaks back into early 2024 (maybe even earlier) but he was still doing the maximalist stuff against Johnson on ROH that wasn't hitting for me. The moment everything really shifted was the one-two punch of his C2 match against Shelton and a match against Komander about the same time.

We’re gotten some wonderful performances with an elated crowd from early 80s Germany.

We have a major Strongbow find in the last few years with the Otto Wanz match where he works heel. https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/10/found-footage-friday-omni-87-otto.html I mean I'm not voting for him but having that variety would be big for his case for anyone who might.

He had stood out the most to me from that footage if I remember correctly. I wish we had more radio broadcasts in general. That'd be a fascinating project for someone to do even with what English language recordings we might have. To examine the experience and what we can get out of matches from that.

Nothing new on 86. They just added the finals (which we already had) from the release a few years ago. We hold out hope for 87 though.

Haven’t gotten Sebastian’s post yet so could be a skip. Next up is Corne/Marc Mercier vs Les Samurai. just four more after this. EDIT: And it's up: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2025/09/tuesday-is-french-catch-day-corne.html

Next Richard Land drop in a few days is more Sept 81 with maybe Bret vs Roach, two Wright/Kimura tags, and more Adrian Street. We shall see.

We’ll be back next week. Start of school slowed me down this week. I think there are still 5-10 “Shows” left to go through.

Insane sentence.

Probably a longshot but i was just thinking that I haven't seen many truly violent Hechicero matches so now I want to track this down. Anyone have a date/link?

I’d like to see a three month JetSpeed vs Bowens/Garcia feud with the latter frustrated that the fans decided to back the former.

He’ll almost certainly be in my top twenty. I hadn’t seen his 80s NJPW run before. Now I have.

Just on vacation this week. More to come.

His last act was one last grift on the stage of the RNC as an attempt for them to channel a nostalgic view of jingoistic hypermasculinity. He gets whatever he gets from people today.

Imagine what you'll know when you have another ten years of newspapers to work off of.

Honestly, my only regret in the entire project is not joining Twitter earlier. I knew someone was posting some of the gifs I was posting over on DVDVR and I was ok with that (though I'm doing it more comprehensively now) but just being able to talk to Phil in real time about these matches as we were going through them initially would have definitely helped us out. We were the blind men touching the elephant on a lot of it (and still are as Sebastian made a logical leap there from cagematch).

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=110961841

One of my favorite uncovered matches I’ve seen all year was a Roma vs Sharpe match. Just total commitment.

New Richard Land drop this month is 9/10/80 Hanover Le Grand Vladimir vs Karl Dauberger Achim Chall vs Caswell Martin Axel Dieter vs The Destroyer Ed Wiskowski vs Steve Wright Plus a pre-show ceremony of some sort.