Forgotten Good Workers/"Hey I Thought This Guy Was Supposed To Suck?"

[Dylan Waco]

This thread is a little different than a standard "underrated" wrestlers list because I'm more interested in talking about and hearing about guys who either a. Have been almost totally forgotten over the years, i.e. "lost" or b. guys who have been casually dismissed as not worth watching or going out of your way to see because of some established consensus about their lack of talent/commitment/whatever from the broader wrestling World.

 

Brad Rheingans

 

Watching for the AWA Set Rheingans really comes across as the ultimate "I thought this guy was supposed to suck?" dude. The knock on him from veterans has always been that he had "all the talent" but didn't "understand" pro wrestling and was too bland. Not "understanding" pro wrestling is obviously bullshit. The guy was really awesome at it. He was essentially what Kurt Angle should have been - a super athletic, amatuer wrestling machine, with a slick combination of throws/suplexes and a nice ability to adapt to opponent and setting. I've seen him in good tag matches, good undercard matches v. guys like Steve Regal and awesome main events v. Martel and I've just really scratched the surface. Rheingans has been a star, or the star in all of this. Really fun to watch on the mat, really dynamic and explosive offensive wrestler, very athletic bumper, could sell and was great at working leverage and struggle spots. I'm even somewhat skeptical about the charges of "blandnesss" (though to be fair I haven't seen any interview of his) after watching the Regal match where he really hams it up and reacts well to Regal's taunting of ringside fans. Definitely a guy where the conventional wisdom is skewed if not totally wrong.

 

Kantaro Hoshino

 

Really the find of the DVDVR 80's project so far and in a lot of ways the star of the NJPW Set. Hoshino was basically a total unknown prior to that set and I doubt many who didn't get the set could identify his name, let alone his picture. And yet he was at worst one of the top ten guys in NJPW during the 80's - I would argue a strong contender for Top 5 - with tremendous charisma and a shocking degree of versatility for a very small worker who looked like Elvin from the Cosby Show and was often paired off against guys twice to three times his size. Great rapid fire punches, great at working the crowd into a frenzy, tremendous bumper, sweet high spots, et. Was perhaps most impressed by the fact that that the same guy who was working comedy Tom and Jerry spots with Andre The Giant was working grizzly, sadist, veteran gimmick against Liger just a few years later and seemed totally natural in both types of matches despite the fact that his style, gimmick and demeanor never really appeared to change. If another Greatest Wrestler Ever poll ever happens Hoshino seems like the sort of guy that ought to be a top hundred discussion.

 

J.T. Smith

 

Obviously not the level of worker as Hoshino, but I agree with Gabe Sapolsky that he was really the workhorse of early ECW and is a sadly forgotten part of the early era of that company. Unlike Gabe I think the FBI gimmick was great and think the J.T. era was impressive, especially given the fact that at the time his job was essentially to get his ass kicked by various incarnations of the Dudleys. He really was the guy that developed the "shtick, highspot, schitck, highspot" formula that the great Rich, Guido, Smothers incarnation perfected. A really great bumper, with nifty offense for the time, I was also impressed by how well he structured his matches against guys like Hack Myers or Axl Rotten. In a different promotion or era he probably would have been given a lot more chances and had a lot more memorable matches.

 

Mike Enos

 

The little bit of the AWA stuff I've seen holds up well, but in general my love for Enos is based off of his WCW undercard run. Just a truly great utility player. I think Enos worth as a jobber was that he had a good look, good mannerisms and good offense so he always seemed like someone impressive and thus a win over him had value. The 96 Set looks great on paper and I plan to get it, but Enos v. Jericho is a match I would have liked to see make the cut. I absolutely understand why it didn't as it is in no way essential, but it's a match more people ought to see as it is one of Jericho's two best WCW matches and in large part that is because of the incredible offensive barrage Enos unloads on him. Enos was also good fodder for guys as diverse as Malenko and Goldberg and even had a last minute thrown together match against Benoit at Souled Out 99 where he got to showcase some really good selling, in between working some really sweet transitions. One wonders if he would have gotten a bigger push had his first national break been anywhere other than dying days AWA.

 

Bobby Blaze

 

Sort of the "WTF?" star of SMW. Not on the level of Smothers who was absolutely incredible there, but a really unique and talented wrestler who was good at a lot of different things. He's probably most remembered for his feud with Landel where he held the SMW title and worked a sort of redneck Mikey Whipwreck gimmick as accidental young champ. He was good in that role, but I don't think he was nearly as impressive there as he was working workrate matches against Candido, or even paced openers against guys like Killer Kyle. He had a unique offense for the era as he was a big framed guy, with an unusual athleticism that made him capable of looking credible against virtually anyone on the roster. More than anything I was impressed by the fact that Cornette chose Blaze to be Severn's opponent when they brought him in, as the matches are all mat based affairs that are totally different from anything else SMW was doing at the time. I like those bouts an awful lot and I think Blaze would have been an interesting addition to undercard ECW or the WCW Nitro circuit (yes I realize he worked some in WCW, but it was sporadic at best).

[shoe]

Blaze from what I have seen of him comes across as real solid worker. To me though the Severn matches were the real eye openers. I mean before that he was having good matches with Candido,DWB types who had a reps as really good workers. Then with Severn hedidn't even come close as having a good worker rep. Then Blaze comes in and has credible matches with Severn. When you think about it did SMW really have a bad worker on the roster. I mean they had a few that were poor like Bedlam, Punisher, Unabomb , the Mummy etc. But all of them could be carried.

[Dylan Waco]

I actually think Unabomb was respectable for the most part.

[shoe]

The mummy sucked.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'd like for somebody to tell me what was wrong with Octagon.

[Al]

The one Unabomb match I watched he was fairly sloppy. I chalk that up to Jacobs being green as he really did blossom into a fine worker.

[jdw]

I'd like for somebody to tell me what was wrong with Octagon.

Sloppy. Trainwreck / Reset spots the ground matches to a halt. Like to do his couple of spots and get the hell back out. Rudos made him look like a king, but he really wasn't terribly good at making rudos look got like Santo did.

 

We just watched the TripleMania eight-man the day after Christmas. He was the 9th best worker in the match, behind Tirantes. That's saying something since Tigermoto was in it, and having one of his own off nights. Granted, it was a match loaded with a lot of talent. But not good Octagon.

 

I think one of the better examples of Bad Octagon is the long Gringos Locos vs Santito & Octagon match on one of the PWO sets Loss and Will did. When I showed the match to Lee and Billones after getting the dvd, the "wow... this match really isn't that good" comments from them *all* came during segments where Octagon was front and center trainwrecking the match. These were two people who enjoyed the hair/mask match, and were pretty large Eddy fans, and got Art as an annoying, evil heel... and were receptive to Santo.

 

I suspect there's good Octagon out there. I would be interested in anyone doing a deep, comprehensive rewatch of 90s Lucha to figure out if there's a dividing line between "Octagon is Decent" and "Octagon seems to be sucking it up more often". Live, we started to get that feeling no later than 1994, but really hadn't been watching him carefully prior to that beyond the "He's got some cool stuff and the crowd loves him" level. I think it was more along the lines that we were getting that Santo was a tremendous worker (far beyond the level of play he got in the WON at that time), and the different wide qualities that Santo brought to matches were wildly contrasting to what Octagon did.

 

I wouldn't draw the analogy exactly to Jumbo & Taue and Kawada & Taue. Taue was a fine student/partner for Jumbo, but it was a tough contrast given how great Jumbo was, how good those four guys on the other side were, and how even Fuchi was a pretty great foil for Kukichi in the rivalry. In turn, from the start he was an acceptable partner for Kawada opposite Misawa & Kobashi, but those three over 1993-94 started moving off into their own planet and it made for a tough contrast for Taue. He wasn't "bad" for most of that period, and frankly pretty useful in his role. It's just a tough contrast... I suspect Mutoh would have looked bad in that spot if he didn't pick it up.

 

It's why the majority of the "Taue isn't good" or "Taue really is out of place with the rest" stuff was in the newsletters: the others were much better. I was more tolerant of him than most, and really didn't think he reached the "sucked" level until a short stretch in late 1994 into early 1995 where he just seemed lost given where the other three went, and tended to suck the forward momentum out of matches far too often when he was in and *not* getting the shit kicked out of him by Misawa and Kobashi (he pretty much always retained the ability to eat their spots). On offense, heat suck, especially noticable at points like the January 1995 tag draw: a really heated crowd would go down a notch and kind of get across that they were hoping he'd tag the shorter guy, at which point things picked up for them. Then in Carny, he picked up his game and went down a path of getting better than he ever was.

 

Pretty much every wrestler has stretches where they suck relative to their own prior work, or the wrestlers around them, or just in general. Some simply just look poor due to the contrast when they're perfectly solid for the most part, or within some limits.

 

My recollection is that Octagon went beyond that at a certain point. We were pretty tolerant of a wide variety of luchadors, and not locked into just digging the hardcore favs of the time like the high flyers or big bumpers. We could watch a ** Perro match and think it was perfectly acceptable if it was laid out well, played to the crowd and was "good for what it was". Octagon was one of the few ones that annoyed us, and we certainly didn't start going to shows thinking he was weak as I don't recall that being his rep in 1992 and 1993. Not "great", but not at the other end of sucking. Just sort of built up over time.

 

There are times where we thought he was very good. The second fall of When World Collide was quite good. The rudos were obviously strong, and Santo sold the fuck out of the mask being at risk and completely out of his hands. But Octagon really did his job well, and I think that remains the best crowd reaction I've ever been in... including Macho-Liz at Mania '91. Have to credit Octagon for his part in that.

 

Sorry... long response.

[goodhelmet]

Really the find of the DVDVR 80's project so far and in a lot of ways the star of the NJPW Set. Hoshino was basically a total unknown prior to that set and I doubt many who didn't get the set could identify his name, let alone his picture. And yet he was at worst one of the top ten guys in NJPW during the 80's

This part of your statement is 100% true. When we were watching the footage, I kept mistaking him for Gran Hamada and Phil would get pissed off because he kept looking forward to Hamada matches that would never happen.

[khawk20]

I'm more interested in talking about and hearing about guys who either a. Have been almost totally forgotten over the years, i.e. "lost" or b. guys who have been casually dismissed as not worth watching or going out of your way to see because of some established consensus about their lack of talent/commitment/whatever from the broader wrestling World.

I think Greg Gagne fits in this part of your category, so I'll nominate him. Solid wrestler who gets the neopotism tag hung around his neck at times unfairly. People can't grasp that he didn't look overly out-of-place in the 70's and early 80's. He was a believable contender for the AWA title against Bockwinkel in the late 70's.

 

Too many people have only seen his work post 1985 and their knowledge of him starts with "Rambo" Greg Gagne. That's a damn shame. I am hoping that some of his pre-1985 work makes the AWA 80's set when all is said and done to give people a broader sampling of his work.

[Matt D]

I obviously feel very strongly about Demolition, though there are really just all sorts of strange nostalgic backlash there. Do people crap on John Nord? I think Craig Pittman was more lost in the 1995 shuffle than anything else.

 

Okay, I've got one. I think there's a general consensus that Hercules Hernandez really wasn't any good later in his career that I would contest. He had a number of pretty good singles matches in 91 on MSG cards and PTW and his work with Roma was pretty good. If nothing else, he was doing the coolest inverted atomic drop in the world then.

[ohtani's jacket]

My defence of Octagon would be along the lines of the ""Hey I Thought This Guy Was Supposed To Suck?" argument.

 

I agree that he liked to do his couple of spots and get the hell out but really that's what all luchadores do. They may not want to leave in such a hurry, but they all have their routines they like to do. Octagon's stuff always looked better when he had a rudo like Fuerza bumping for him, but so long as he came in and executed his Fantásticos stuff well then that's more than satisfactory, IMO. It wasn't as though he was as bad as Máscara Sagrada or Super Muñeco, who maybe had one performance per year that rivalled a good Octagon showing. In fact, there are so few good technico workers that any technico who doesn't get you to think twice about ordering random trios matches can't be that bad.

 

I'd say his biggest strengths were being the technico who clears the ring of one or more rudos (usually during the technico comeback after the rudo beatdown section) and a good offensive guy during the pinning sections. Again, a lot of that depends on the rudo eating the offence but that's ever the way with lucha libre. The other thing I've noticed about Octagon was that he could sell when he had to. I was watching a mano-a-mano the other day between Satanico and Octagon during their feud in '91 and Octagon sold his ass off. Workers generally had to do that against Satanico when he was calling the shots, but I've seen him do it in his feuds with Fuerza and Pentagon too.

 

I remember that long Gringo Locos vs. Santo/Octagon tag being tortuous. Octagon no doubt struggled, but to be honest there's a lot of non-Octagon matches from Gringo Locos and Santo in that time period that don't hold up compared to CMLL. My memory of '94/95 Octagon is that he was generally good when working with the top guys. Sloppy yes, but so was Psicosis and I don't recall anyone saying he sucked.

[Ditch]

On offense, heat suck, especially noticable at points like the January 1995 tag draw: a really heated crowd would go down a notch and kind of get across that they were hoping he'd tag the shorter guy, at which point things picked up for them.

Having seen the match several times I really don't know where you got that impression from. He certainly didn't "suck" in that match, or else it would have gone in the toilet whenever he was called on to do something. Granted, that match isn't on the same tier as the 5/94, 6/95 and 10/95 iterations of the match, but it's still high-end and has a hell of a lot going for it. Bad workers do things like botch important spots, lose track of where the match should go, get winded, etc. He didn't do any of those things. Least guy in the match, yes. Added the least to the match's quality, yes. But suck, nooooooo.

 

That has always been my biggest qualm with your epic AJ '90s rundown. In fact it might be my only real one.

[Childs]

I would dearly love to see some of the '70s Hoshino that Meltzer referenced in his obit. Sadly, there's not a Hoshino-level "find" on the All Japan set. There are guys who are better than I thought, like later-period Yatsu and young Tenta, but nobody shocked me.

 

Takashi Ishikawa might fit this topic, but he's more of a WAR find than an All-Japan find.

[ohtani's jacket]

There will be plenty of new workers to discover on the Europe set.

[Dylan Waco]

I'm more interested in talking about and hearing about guys who either a. Have been almost totally forgotten over the years, i.e. "lost" or b. guys who have been casually dismissed as not worth watching or going out of your way to see because of some established consensus about their lack of talent/commitment/whatever from the broader wrestling World.

I think Greg Gagne fits in this part of your category, so I'll nominate him. Solid wrestler who gets the neopotism tag hung around his neck at times unfairly. People can't grasp that he didn't look overly out-of-place in the 70's and early 80's. He was a believable contender for the AWA title against Bockwinkel in the late 70's.

 

Too many people have only seen his work post 1985 and their knowledge of him starts with "Rambo" Greg Gagne. That's a damn shame. I am hoping that some of his pre-1985 work makes the AWA 80's set when all is said and done to give people a broader sampling of his work.

 

I agree with you. The worst thing about Greg besides the "nepotism" deal was that he moved around the ring awkwardly at times and had a strange body type that some times resulted in bits of his offense looking goofy. No way in hell was a he a bad worker. He had more charisma then he was ever given credit for. In fact I would compare him to Backlund in terms of how he comes across on tape as it goes interactions with the live crowd. Really loved his diving knee off the top and headscissors, he was a solid mat guy, could play a good FIP and was good off the hot tag. In general the High Flyers are one of the more underrated teams ever and I think a lot of that has to do with the way Gagne has been shit on over the years by "smart" fans.

 

Mad Dog Vachon is another AWA guy I expected nothing out of who has looked good so far. Even late in his career he brought real energy to his matches and seemed to work a hundred miles an hour and I don't mean that in the modern indy workrate sense.

[Ditch]

I would dearly love to see some of the '70s Hoshino that Meltzer referenced in his obit.

I'm hosting matches of him vs Inoki and vs Fujinami from the late '70s. Sadly there's hardly anything else out there from him in the '70s.

[Dylan Waco]

There will be plenty of new workers to discover on the Europe set.

Very true. I suspect people are going to love Jim Breaks even if they don't care for WoS (which is hard for me to fathom really, but I guarantee you there will be plenty of people who don't "get it.") And Breaks is really the tip of the iceburg.

[KB8]

How many people were talking up Butch Reed before the Mid-South set? I guess Reed might fit into both categories though, at least to an extent.

 

I mean, no doubt people had watched his run with Doom and maybe some of his WWF run and figured he was "pretty good", but at the same time I can imagine a decent chunk of people thinking he wasn't very good at all for periods within those runs (I've come across a shit-ton of people that dismissed him as a guy that was generally pretty crappy all the way through the WWF run, which I don't think is true at all).

 

But the Mid-South set REALLY opened my eyes to the guy. Dude came out of that as probably my second favourite wrestler of all time.

 

Of course maybe I was just late to the party and people were already expecting a bunch of great Butch Reed matches going into the Mid-South set .

[jdw]

On offense, heat suck, especially noticable at points like the January 1995 tag draw: a really heated crowd would go down a notch and kind of get across that they were hoping he'd tag the shorter guy, at which point things picked up for them.

Having seen the match several times I really don't know where you got that impression from. He certainly didn't "suck" in that match, or else it would have gone in the toilet whenever he was called on to do something. Granted, that match isn't on the same tier as the 5/94, 6/95 and 10/95 iterations of the match, but it's still high-end and has a hell of a lot going for it.

 

I actually thought the match headed towards the toilet at times late when he was on offense. He was effective in eating Kobashi and Misawa's offense, which covers for a lot since they'd eventually cut his weak offense off and take over. Plus it wasn't terribly complicated: most of their offense was rather over.

 

I'll be happy to rewatch the match. I suspect you have the 60 minute version up. Lord knows where my tape of it is buried in some box... if you have a link, PM it to me and I'll watch it this weekend and point out what I thought were pretty obvious points where Taue was well below the level of the other three, and where the crowd checked out on him.

 

 

Bad workers do things like botch important spots, lose track of where the match should go, get winded, etc.

I think that's a limited way to look at bad workers, or bad work.

 

He didn't do any of those things. Least guy in the match, yes. Added the least to the match's quality, yes. But suck, nooooooo.

I think in that stretch of late 1994 through early 1995 he started to suck in an All Japan context, especially at the level where he was working. There's another match in that period where Kawada & Taue worked against the Can-Ams that was a pretty staggering contrast to the Tag League match in the period between Misawa & Kobashi and the Can-Ams.

 

 

That has always been my biggest qualm with your epic AJ '90s rundown. In fact it might be my only real one.

Again, I was far more tolerant of Taue than my peers in the early 90s and actually defended his spot & push when most hardcores wanted him to just go away. I was probably the first to start pointing that he'd improved massively at the Carny, then hammered across the point of Misawa-Taue Triple Crown vs Mutoh-Hash G-1 Final that aired the same weekend as evidence that Taue hadn't just improved, but actually turned into a really good worker. I might have been the only one who *hated* Kobashi taking the TC from Taue as almost overnight after winning the belts, Taue seemed to start carrying himself with an aura of "Yeah, I reached the point where deserve these fuckers" which was really interesting to watch, and something that I'm not sure if Kobashi every really had that same aura until NOAH. It was really annoying to see that dased in just two months, though it's a damn fun element of the Tag League Final that it was Kawada that played (rather exceptionally) to having "doubts" while Taue came across as the completely confident, sure one... which he played really well.

 

So I tend to think that my rep as a Taue-Hater is overplayed, a bit like my rep as a Flair-Hater... not to mention that I was considered the chief Kobashi-Hater and Toyota-Hater back in the 90s.

 

Wait... looking back at the Pimping Post, the negative comments about Taue seem to be limited to this:

 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (1/24/95 ­ World Tag Titles)

 

One of the more overrated matches of the decade. Taue just wasn't any good. Of their 9 matches against each other from 6/93 to 12/95, this rates with the 12/95 Tag League Final as the least likely to hit my VCR at any point soon. I felt just like the crowd did every time Taue tagged in - "NO!?!? TOSH.... NO!!! STAY IN!!! AW FUCK!!!"

 

NOTE: The following match should be on the list - 10/15/95 Kawada & Taue vs. Misawa & Kobashi (World Tag Title)

 

This is the 60:00 draw that is vastly better than the 1/95 60:00 draw between the two teams. Why? Taue sucked in 1/95. Taue was excellent by 10/95. This will probably make my Top 20... simply because I seem to be the only person who's seen it and is willing to pimp it. Someone needs to carry the flag for it against the heathens who think the 1/95 match is any good.

I do point out that the first Misawa-Taue TC match doesn't deserve votes, largely to get across a match that hadn't even been nominated at that point: their 9/95 TC match.

 

There's much more positive stuff about Taue in the thread. There were a were at least four Taue singles matches I added to the nomination list that weren't getting any run (that 9/95 Misawa-Taue, the 3/95 Taue vs. Kobashi, 4/95 Kawada vs. Taue and 4/96 Taue vs Williams). I could have added more if the intent was simply "stuff people should watch" rather than matches I thought might get Top 20 votes from people, such as the Taue-Kawada singles match when they were heated rivals. Didn't think they'd draw any votes at the time, and they weren't making my final ballot.

 

Wait...

 

It looks like I was the only person to put the 9/95 Taue-Misawa on my ballot:

 

16. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue (Carnival 95 Final - 4/15/95) 115 points

41. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue (Triple Crown - 5/24/96) 26

58. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue (Triple Crown - 7/25/97) 14

88. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Akira Taue (Triple Crown - 9/10/95) 4

97. Steve Williams vs. Akira Taue (Carnival 96 Final - 4/96) 1

 

Those are all of the Taue singles that made the ballot... Yikes!

 

I'm guessing that's my fault: people hated Taue because I put over things like 9/95, had pushed the 4/95 Kawada-Taue for years, and said nice things about Doc-Taue... so they voted for the Misawa-Taue matches that I pimped less. So much for influence... it was already dead in 2000.

 

John

[Robert S]

I would dearly love to see some of the '70s Hoshino that Meltzer referenced in his obit. Sadly, there's not a Hoshino-level "find" on the All Japan set. There are guys who are better than I thought, like later-period Yatsu and young Tenta, but nobody shocked me.

 

Takashi Ishikawa might fit this topic, but he's more of a WAR find than an All-Japan find.

How was Mitsuo Momota? From what I have seen of him in NOAH I would have expected that he was a pretty good to great worker in his prime, but in one of the 80ies WONs Meltzer wrote that Momota was the worst wrestler in the world.

[Ditch]

re Taue: I rated the 9/10/95 match #18 so we're certainly on the same page there. But I rated 1/24/95 #13 and enjoy it quite a lot. PM coming.

 

re Momota: He looked good in a singles match vs Fuchi in '89 that's on the set. Granted it's Fuchi, but Momota held up his end. I haven't seen him much in listings so I don't think there was much footage, maybe there is some more Momota content that I didn't see.

[jdw]

I agree with you. The worst thing about Greg besides the "nepotism" deal was that he moved around the ring awkwardly at times and had a strange body type that some times resulted in bits of his offense looking goofy. No way in hell was a he a bad worker. He had more charisma then he was ever given credit for. In fact I would compare him to Backlund in terms of how he comes across on tape as it goes interactions with the live crowd. Really loved his diving knee off the top and headscissors, he was a solid mat guy, could play a good FIP and was good off the hot tag. In general the High Flyers are one of the more underrated teams ever and I think a lot of that has to do with the way Gagne has been shit on over the years by "smart" fans.

Agreed. It was kind of funny in Wade's forum when someone posted links to a few High Flyers matches on Youtube. Wade thanked the poster. Bruce came in to take a shot at the High Flyers.

 

John

[MJH]

I always thought Yokozuna was pretty good, actually, at least until he got really really big by late-'94 into '95. I mean, pretty good considering his size. Some nice stooge bumps and a decent handful of solid spots that due to his girth looked killer. I even think the first Taker casket match is a fun sprint (or as much as could be expected) before the run ins start.

 

Mika Takahashi was a good hand for Zenjo before her early retirement in '91. More graceful than most at that time.

 

In an entirely different way Bull Nakano doesn't get as much credit as she should. I know OJ, Flik and a few others have given her strong write-ups in the last few years but she never featured in the "classic" list of Hokuto, Jaguar, Aja, Kyoko, Toyota etc... as Chigusa's retirement-mid '92 was (is?) a dark period of sorts for the company in terms of what's known. You could give Chigusa a similar nod, really. I know the Zenjo Classics set has swayed a lot of people but I still remember the late-90s/early-00s Chigusa-hate (probably more in lieu of GAEA but whatever)...

[Ditch]

I get the sense that Bull is more well-regarded than Kyoko, but I agree with the sentiment that her time on top is a 'dark era' in terms of Joshi That Anyone Has Watched. I don't think she's "forgotten" in the way that this thread means, since if you asked people to list 10 top joshi workers, Bull would be on most lists. She was #43 in the big Smarkschoice poll, and 8th on that poll for joshi.

[jdw]

In an entirely different way Bull Nakano doesn't get as much credit as she should. I know OJ, Flik and a few others have given her strong write-ups in the last few years but she never featured in the "classic" list of Hokuto, Jaguar, Aja, Kyoko, Toyota etc... as Chigusa's retirement-mid '92 was (is?) a dark period of sorts for the company in terms of what's known. You could give Chigusa a similar nod, really. I know the Zenjo Classics set has swayed a lot of people but I still remember the late-90s/early-00s Chigusa-hate (probably more in lieu of GAEA but whatever)...

Bull got a massive push from Dave. That was always the problem in trying to get him to swing around on Aja for the HOF: he thought Bull >>> Aja. Bowdren and Zavisa were big pushers of Bull.

 

John