Matt D

Outback Jack is a recruiter.

Juno accounts existed in 1998. Would 2008 be that much different?

I'll probably end up doing both of them in the end. It's all blind spots to me. What's the best way to do both to get the best appreciation? Just do them both at the same time chronologically?

I went with it because it was 98 Dave and not 88 Dave.

I'm going off an old (98) observer mainly. Dave doesn't follow up on it later in the bio. Inoki, who was half Japanese and half Brazilian, lived in Brazil as a teenager and was a high school track star of such proportions that Rikidozan heard about the large agile Japanese athlete and recruited him into pro wrestling. He started his career as Kanji Inoki (the Antonio name was hidden to keep from the public his Brazilian ancestry making him not pure-blood Japanese and thus fearing it would keep from being fully accepted as a national superstar), and worked both in Japan and in the United States during the early part of his career.

A couple of reasons. I'm still a sucker for a Great Match and Hunter has had quite a few of them. He's not "on" as often as I'd like, but when he's on he's on. Also I haven't watched enough new wrestling (new to me, not recent) to have 100 guys that I've watched enough of and rate to honestly place above him. Same goes for other heavily flawed guys with lots of great matches that in a perfect world I'd be able to eliminate, Edge and Angle being the obvious ones. I am basically excluding Japan so I can't fault you for that. It just means you have something to work towards for the next one. I think there won't be a guy on my 100 that I feel really doesn't belong there, even with my blindspots. We'll see though. As your boss, I am going to make you watch a bunch of Fujiwara Once we get past April, I will. Actually, the whole lucha bit was to really get a handle on it, and I'm hitting some level of diminishing returns now that I have. I'm thinking that once I hit the two year mark, I get the DVDVR New Japan 80s set and go through that. He's all over that, right?

I'm going to stick a random, ignorant Inoki question here. I know he hid his Brazilian heritage early in his career, including not using Antonio. Later on, though, how much of a part of his public perception was it?

A couple of reasons. I'm still a sucker for a Great Match and Hunter has had quite a few of them. He's not "on" as often as I'd like, but when he's on he's on. Also I haven't watched enough new wrestling (new to me, not recent) to have 100 guys that I've watched enough of and rate to honestly place above him. Same goes for other heavily flawed guys with lots of great matches that in a perfect world I'd be able to eliminate, Edge and Angle being the obvious ones. I am basically excluding Japan so I can't fault you for that. It just means you have something to work towards for the next one. I think there won't be a guy on my 100 that I feel really doesn't belong there, even with my blindspots. We'll see though.

That summed up Hunter pretty well. So why is he making your list?

I think they were pretty careful how they managed expectations with Andre relative to Brock.

Come on, Dave. It's ok you write about MMA, but don't make your lead story a compare/contrast about some UFC guy and Reigns so I can't easily skip the MMA stuff if I want to. "Luke Rockhold" is a great wrestling name though.

Also, they're selling Merch. That's a big difference.

I think Piper worked as an opponent because he felt like an outsider, someone beyond the typical WCW dynamic. It was apparent that nothing WCW could throw at the NWO would work and Piper was a wild card, someone from outside the system, someone who didn't care about the rules or the establishment. He shook up the board and that's always exciting in some ways.

We were very much on the same page with this one. It's a really great Casas performance.

Yeah, I've been holding off on this one because I'm still two Exiles behind, but I'll probably have to listen.

What I'm really excited for is Asuka and Bayley teaming up first.

i'm still playing catch up, but I'm looking forward to getting a better sense of Conway, Jr as a wrestler.

I got a kick out of the Mark Briscoe > Jumbo talk from last week's Exile, but it would have been even better if the talk about how good Bossman was that immediately followed it had been tied in.

If they are serious about making Reigns, feeding HHH to him in February would be the way to go. I think Hunter would veto that on the idea he had to look strong for whatever Mania match he has.

Throwing this out there: would people rather see Reigns vs Brock II or Reigns vs Cena at Mania?

They should absolutely get credit for doing something well. It's just not some sort of grand plan. There's also no reason to think that the next few weeks will go well based on history. Good on them for tonight though.

Props are due but it was a different crowd. That Rumble was mainly a travelling crowd.

"The Mike Jackson principle."

I'm too lazy to find the general lucha thread, so I'm tossing this here. I know what I'm watching tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDBb2s6nPiA

If they're going to go that route, have him fired or suspended off screen and not come out for a long opening interview segment. Then when he comes out at the end, the crowd wouldn't have seen him for the whole show and they'd be excited and ready to. I'd find him doing the Randy Savage sits in a chair in the middle of the ring and destroys people opening acceptable too.