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Holy fuck, another Hector/Lothario match? The Mexican Death Match is unreal and my favourite thing to come out of Classics so far, so I'm hyped beyond belief for this. Jose has been a total revelation on all of this stuff, but Hector Guerrero was awesome at the pro-wrestling and I'm excited for every bit of footage involving him that comes out.

Casas, Satanico, Dandy, Santito, Blue Panther, Virus, Fuerza, Sangre Chicana, Pirata Morgan, LA Park, Emilio Charles Jr. Those are the locks. Villano III, Atlantis, Fiera, MS-1, Espanto, etc. (pretty much echoing everyone else at this point) either feel like guys I need to see a little more of to be sure one way or the other, or in someone like Atlantis' case decide if he makes it into the bottom quarter of the list out of the fifty or so people I have in that particular pile.

Only thing I've really used YouTube for, at least in regards to this project, is to check out WoS footage. Everything else is on DVD (Will's comps, yearbooks, all the other discs I've had sitting here for around a decade), and I guess NWA Classics. I probably will use YouTube, Dailymotion and the likes a little more over the next couple months, though. I don't intend to buy a bunch of DVDs in order to check out US indy stuff from the last five or so years, for example.

I nominated him and will almost certainly vote for him in my bottom 20 somewhere. I'll be honest, he mostly stands out to me because I find him almost eerily similar to Eddie in a lot of respects, and Eddie is my favourite wrestler ever. Watching the Houston footage from NWA Classics he's been fun as hell in all of it, and if you squint hard enough you'd think it was 1997 Eddie in there rather than Hector. The way he begs off, the way he takes a backdrop, even the way he moves around the ring - he and Eddie were almost identical, and it seems pretty clear Eddie based a lot of what he wound up doing on what Hector did. I mean, I didn't nominate him solely because he reminds me of his brother, because that would be silly, but it's something I thought was cool. For Hector performances, the Texas Death Match against Jose Lothario from 6/8/84 is the first one I'd go to. Hector starts out acting like a good sport, but he does it in this subtly disingenuous sort of way where you know it's only a matter of time before the charade crumbles. Then when it does crumble he turns into a vicious bastard, just headbutting Jose in the face and busting him open on the ring post. He also sells Jose's incredible punches in really spectacular fashion; especially the big uppercut. I thought the whole match was tremendous and it would've made my top 10 for the Mid-South set had it been available at the time. There's also plenty of good stuff where he's tagging with Chavo. You can't really go wrong with the Lothario feud there, either. Pretty much anything involving Hector and Lothario is worth watching. There's also a really good Hector/Buddy Rose match that made Will's Rose set that I think is from '79.

Hector Guerrero They're taken from my blog, but there's a bunch more pimping of him in the NWA Classics thread.

He'll be on my list, though not sky high. I love Shawn as a tag worker, and there's still a good handful of his '92-'98 singles matches that I like a lot (and Mind Games has been my favourite match ever for about twelve years now). Post-retirement I'm pretty whatever on unless he's in a tag match, but there's some singles stuff there I'd probably find enjoyable enough as well. He mostly gets in for his tag work, though.

Yes yes 1000 times yes. Everyone thinks of Anjoh as a surly punk who throws stiff strikes but he also an incredible mat worker and everytime he gets in the ring with Tamura is absolute magic. Anjoh is flying up my list and I might look into doing a Complete and Accurate Yoji Anjoh when I'm done with this project. I've always liked him but he is flying up my list. I became a massive Anjoh fan a few years ago and actually started a C&A on him myself: http://whiskeyandwrestling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/complete-accurate-yoji-anjoh.html It kind of fell by the wayside like every other wrestling-related project I try and do, but I make a point of updating it if I watch an Anjoh match and feel like writing about it. I really need to see all of the early Tamura matches, evidently. This is an awesome thread, btw. Tamura's knocking on the door of my top 10 for the GWE poll and it feels like this is the kind of serious look that could push him through it.

I'm actually in the process of watching the Hogan/Piper build up on the '96 yearbook, and I'm with you (Grimmas). I'm not expecting the match to be very good, but the build to it has been tremendous fun (I even watched any Piper and/or Hogan segments that never made the yearbook by hitting up Nitros on the Network).

Reed v Wrestling II. Hot damn.

Yeah, Fuerza is one of my five favourite wrestlers of all-time and he's a stone cold lock.

Chavo v Buzz and Gordy v Koko could both be pretty great (though I don't remember Koko ever being pushed all that strongly in Mid-South, so the latter might not be all that competitive). Count me among those that would be down for the whole tournament being released as a whole.

November had some unreal stuff. 1. El Hijo del Santo & Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr v El Dandy & Negro Casas & Hector Garza (CMLL, 11/29/96) 2. El Hijo del Santo & Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr v Negro Casas & El Dandy & Hector Garza (CMLL, 11/22/96) 3. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (All Japan, 11/29/96) 4. Bret Hart v Steve Austin (WWF Survivor Series, 11/17/96) 5. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama v Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (All Japan, 11/16/96) 6. Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue v Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (All Japan, 11/22/96) 7. El Dandy v Black Warrior (CMLL, 11/2/96) 8. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama v Kenta Kobashi & The Patriot (All Japan, 11/22/96) 9. Steve Austin v Mankind (WWF RAW, 11/18/96) 10. Sabu & Rob Van Dam v The Eliminators (ECW November To Remember, 11/16/96) 11. Rey Misterio Jr. v Ultimo Dragon (WCW World War 3, 11/24/96) 12. Volk Han v Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (RINGS, 11/22/96) 13. Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada & Super Delphin v Dick Togo, Mens Teoh & Shiryu (M-Pro. 11/12/96) 14. Shawn Michaels v Psycho Sid (WWF Survivor Series, 11/17/96) 15. Taka Michinoku v Hayabusa (FMW, 11/16/96) 16. Nobuhiko Takada & Naoki Sano v Yoji Anjoh & Gerard Gourdeau (UWFi, 11/23/96) Hell of a month. Top 4 there all feel like potential top 10 for the whole year. Both CMLL trios were incredible. For a lifetime tecnico, Santo really took to brawling like a psychotic rudo like he'd been doing it his whole career. The rematch was as wild and crazy as anything I've seen in ages and cemented Casas and Dandy's places as two of the five best wrestlers in the world for the year. The 11/29 Misawa/Jun v Kawada/Taue match adds another layer to their story and I'm hyped about re-watching the Tag League final for the first time in a decade. I'd still go with Shawn/Mankind over Bret/Austin as the US MOTY by a shade, but the Mind Games match is my favourite match ever so, you know, take that for what it is. I'm not as high on Dandy/Black Warrior as Loss, but it's an excellent match and the fact I only have it #7 for the month speaks to the strength of its competition.

I liked this a lot. Ikeda and Ono have only showed up as a team about three times on the set (so far), but they're a pair of incredible shit kickers. Ono has shed the Vietnamese girl bun and so doesn't look quite as obnoxious, but he still has no compunction about kicking someone in the liver. Ikeda is a total fucking steamroller and I kind of loved how the M-Pro guys decide it'd be in their best interests to isolate him and rip his legs off. Then they try to get too fancy and he mows them down with lariats.

I actually like this more than the These Days match. That one was felt more like an exhibition, albeit a great one, while this felt more like a contest where all parties were close to perfecting the formula. KDX were inspired in this. They had just the right mix of douchebaggery and viciousness, constantly swarming guys, interjecting themselves whenever they could, etc. Yakushiji v Togo is such an awesome match-up, and while there were only brief instances of it here we still got plenty of Yakushiji busting out the killer highspots, including the wild tope that about wiped out the whole commentary team. The mugging of Sasuke in the body of the match gave it some meat that I think has been missing from some of the other M-Pro matches on the set, and this whole thing pretty much rocked from start to finish.

This feels like a pretty nice taster of where the New Japan juniors division would go heading into '97 and beyond. They got extra TV time and started to show the juniors with a lot more regularity pretty early on in '97, right? The division certainly never had the same exposure in previous years and I remember looking through match listings from '97/'98 and finding a ton of tags and six-mans that looked interesting, usually with these guys on opposite sides. That stuff isn't really my cup of tea anymore, but I have fond memories of it and if I'm going to go back and watch a bunch of juniors stuff I'd go back and watch Ohtani and Kanemoto acting like punks towards Liger and his old buddies. Anyways, this is along the lines of what would come in the near future, with plenty of chippiness and dickish behaviour from Ohtani and Kanemoto that eventually leads to Liger blasting someone in the face with a shotei. Ohtani's had that chip on his shoulder almost the whole year and his progression from the Samurai match in January through to now has been really great. In the Samurai match his hesitation cost him, then in the Liger match in March he got ahead of himself and tried to do too much, and that ended up costing him as well. He lost against Ultimo in August, but there was clear progress there -- he lost not because he tried to do too much or second guessed himself, but rather because his opponent on the night was just a step better. Now here he is at the end of the year, totally assured and fully aware of what he's capable of, but that chip on his shoulder is even bigger. Kanemoto's always been an asshole and acts accordingly here. He gets better the following year, though. There was one bit here where he took a spike piledriver and three seconds later decided he wanted to go back on offence (although Sammy shut him down promptly enough), but I think the whole "piledrivers in Japan" horse be well and truly fucking dead at this point, so whatever. Fun match, and a cool look at what's coming next year.

That match is nuts. I thought Dragon broke his femur at one point on a bump across the edge of the stage (I think that was it anyway, it's been a couple year since I watched it), and the double stomp on Necro's face was fucking disgusting. That's one of the nastier things I've ever seen Necro take, and that is a sky high bar.

Man, Bock v Reed about did me in. If it actually exists... Of those there I'd be geeked for Reed/Dusty and Reed/Wrestling II. Pretty much anything with Reed, actually.

I'm a big fan of the Cruz and Felino matches, but that's all I've seen from him that struck me as being memorable. As in, I've seen other matches where he's been involved, but I don't remember a thing about what he did in them other than the very obvious thing you remember from every Ciclon Ramirez match which is him fucking torpedoing someone with that tope. It's a hell of a tope.

Awesome. I've absolutely loved Hector in all this stuff, so I'm looking forward to that.

October is in the books. 1. Yuki Ishikawa & Alexander Otsuka vs Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono (Battlarts, 10/30/96) 2. Volk Han vs Masayuki Naruse (RINGS, 10/25/96) 3. Genichiro Tenryu v Great Muta (WAR, 10/11/96) 4. Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 10/18/96) 5. Dick Togo, Shiryu, Taka Michinoku, Shoichi Funaki & Mens Teioh v Super Delfin, Gran Hamada, Tiger Mask IV, Masato Yakushiji & Gran Naniwa (M-Pro, 10/10/96) 6. The Undertaker v Mankind (WWF In Your House 10: Buried Alive, 10/20/96) 7. Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono v Yuki Ishikawa & Naohiro Hoshikawa (Battlarts, 10/2/96) 8. Aja Kong v Maanami Toyota (AJW, 10/6/96) 9. Steve Austin v HHH (WWF In Your House 10: Buried Alive, 10/20/96) 10. Jushin Liger & El Samurai vs Shinjiro Otani & Yuji Nagata (New Japan, 10/25/96) 11. Devil Masami & Kyoko Inoue v Dynamite Kansai & Aja Kong (JWP, 10/13/96) 12. Dick Togo & Mens Teoh & Shiryu vs Great Sasuke & Gran Hamada & Masato Yakushiji (M-Pro, 10/19/96) 13. Billy Scott vs Kenichi Yammamoto (UWFi, 10/23/96) 14. Rey Misterio Jr vs Dean Malenko (WCW Halloween Havoc, 10/27/96) 15. Keiji Muto & Rick Steiner vs Manabu Nakanishi & Satoshi Kojima (New Japan, 10/25/96) 16. Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV & Hikari Fukuoka & Hiromi Yagi v Super Delphin & Gran Naniwa & Candy Okutsu & Commando Bolshoi (JWP, 10/13/96) 17. Ultimo Draagon v Great Sasuke (WAR, 10/11/96) 18. Shane Douglas v Mikey Whipwreck (ECW, 10/18/96) 19. Jushin Liger v Great Muta (New Japan, 10/20/96) 20. Rey Misterio Jr. v Psicosis (WAR, 10/11/96) 21. Shawn Michaels v Steve Austin (WWF RAW, 10/14/96) The 10/30 Battlarts tag was so great. Thought it was a tremendous amalgamation of that kind of shoot style and a US/southern style tag match. Ikeda and Ono were an unbelievable pair of assholes and the moment where Otsuka finally drops Ono with that German suplex to leave Ishikawa to finish Ikeda was one of the best spots of the month. I have no problem calling it a strong MOTYC. Han/Naruse was a totally different kind of shoot style, but awesome in its own right. It's got a clear story to it as well, which makes it a match I'd maybe point to if someone was trying to get into RINGS. Muta/Tenryu was a killer spectacle. I love those kind of Tenryu matches and this one ruled. Kobashi/Kawada is something I would call very good at worst, but I really struggled to stay engaged for the whole hour. That's just where I'm at as a fan at this point, though. I certainly didn't dislike it, and it had some great stuff in it, but as a whole I have no interest in re-watching it any time soon

I liked him enough as a poor-man's SUWA a few years back ('09-ish, I think), but there isn't a ton else. Granted, I haven't watched him in a good long while and junior heavyweights don't work a style I really want TO watch, but yeah.

Was there ever a Reed/Wrestling II singles match? Their interactions in that 12/83 tag were great (hugely fun match, btw) and I loved them up against each other in the cage match on the Mid-South set.

I watched a ton of WWF TV matches from 2000 a few years back and I found Helmsley that year to be mostly fun in a TV match setting (on Tim's point: I don't even remember anything about the Taka match). "Bloated" is definitely the word I'd use to describe him in a PPV setting, but his TV stuff was much tighter. There was some PPV stuff that year I enjoyed as well, though. The Rock match from Backlash is crazy overbooked Attitude Era ridiculousness in the good way (if you're someone who thinks there is a good way, at least), the Foley match from the Rumble is good (though I would say it's very much a Foley show), and the last man standing match against Jericho is one of the only times where I actually like him working methodical, primarily because him and Stephanie are a great pair of assholes and fill in the downtime with goading of Jericho. Thought Rock was better than him that year, though. I took part in a best match of the 00s poll on another forum a couple years ago, and while I'd still say 2000 is Hunter's best year, I certainly wouldn't put him in the same bracket as Kawada for WOTY (also thought Tajiri was WOTY in the US and Helmsley wasn't all that close).

I thought his singles matches with Flair and Race in '83 were pretty great. He does such an awesome sell of the arm in the Race match that it makes all the other occasions where he smothers opponents even more disappointing. If he spent more time on defence and selling than potatoing guys he might have a shot, but as it stands, no.