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

[jdw]

Still, despite that worry, you'll see the praise of his work a lot in the WON no later than 1992, and it's probably not too hard to find in 1991 as well. Someone probably has the Torch Annuals to see were he's ranked as a worker in the two big companies. I suspect he does pretty well in those years. Don't know if there's one for 1991, but Wade picked up the poll in 1992 and went through at least 1995.

Forgot to bring them it into the office, but took a quick look at the 1994 Torch. It had the poll for 1994, and listed where/if the wrestlers were ranked in 1992.

 

Dustin was in the 21-30 in 1992. Dropped down a good distance in 1993, and was in the 70s in 1994.

 

In the 21-30 range in 1992 was a pretty strong ranking: a lot of the Usual Suspects from the US and Japan would be packed the Top 20.

 

The lower ranking in 1993 is probably due to:

 

* a large increase in wrestlers from Mexico

* a few more guys from Japan popping up

* some indy guys starting to get run

* perhaps Dustin getting less respect

 

The first was most of it. 1993 was the big spurt in hardcores watching lucha, and the voters in the annual Worker Poll were always the hardest of the hardcores back in those days.

 

The second probably has a bit. The third would be guys like Sabu starting to get pimped, Lynn, etc.

 

Don't know if Dustin had a lower profile in 1993, or perhaps fewer feuds/rivalries to shine. The Austin feud was earlier, the partnering with Steamboat, and pretty consistently in the mix in 1992 with guys to work with. Don't recall if 1993 saw him less focused on strong series or two.

 

1994 would have been more of the same:

 

* more wrestlers from Mexico building to When Worlds Collide

* more guys from Japan popping up: think MPro and the younger NJ Juniors (Koji & Ohtani)

* ECW! ECW! ECW!

* perhaps Dustin getting less respect

 

I don't think his ranking within WCW changed a great deal over the three years, nor probably in WCW+WWF... though perhaps a few WWF guys got increased rankings. I think that's one thing that can be done with the polls in 1992-95 (if I can find 1995) is to pull out the WWF+WCW guys and see how they're slotted.

 

Anyway, the initial point would be: he was pretty well respected no later than 1992. He wasn't a fogotten or suck wrestler in that year. I'm willing to bet there are positive things in 1991 as well.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

93 was a down year for Dustin and WCW in general in between two real high years of 92 and 94. He didn't have a group as strong as the Dangerous Alliance to play off, and they he was still really good when given the chances, I doubt a lot of people were paying attention to his b-show feud with Foley that ran three weeks or other things of that ilk. 94 he would have been low in part because of the ECW bump which is funny because 94 ECW really doesn't have anyone you would identify as above Dustin's level besides guys that were all with him in WCW the year before (Benoit, Scorp) and guys that were overrated due to novelty at the time (Sabu, maybe Tasmaniac?). Still you get the feeling what hurt him more in 94 was the fact that the Studd Stable feud - which was a tremendous feud with numerous great matches - did not set the World on fire in an age where speed, fluidity and innovation were being pimped as the be all and end all.

[FLIK]

Yagi is not exactly the lost 90's super worker, as she was always referred to as a great worker, it's just that people didn't pay attention. The last lost great worker of joshi puroresu was Naomi "The Bloody" Kato. No one watched Jd'.

Bloody's a good choice, not that she never got praise but it came from so few.

Dunno, Joshi (and wrestling in general) is littered with people like that. Wrestlers who were really good but only lasted a short period of time and became forgotten about or never got their due to begin with.

 

Making my way through the early days of GAEA, a lot of their OTHER trainees never get as much praise as they should. Everyone knows & loves the big 6 - Meiko, Kato, Sugar, Nagashima, Toshie & Hirota but GAEA churned out a ton more girls then that. At their peak there was a time when they had around 11-12 home grown talents on their roster. Girls like Makie Numao, Chihiro Nakano & Rina Ishii were just as good as those I previously mentioned but it's just that they had all faded away by the time 99 roled around and the promotion boomed in popularity with the SSU angle.

 

Kumiko Maekawa is a more famous name I always felt was way better then some would give her credit for. When she was active in the days when more people regularly talked about joshi she got shit on quite regularly I remember. Not totally but she was very polarizing, especially after the series with Momoe started. Some hated but some loved too and I was always on the side of those that loved those matches and her work in general. Her & Watanabe vs LCO is one of my favorite series as well.

 

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.

Bad Boy Hido is a guy who fits into this catagory for me.

 

Sure there's a lot of really crappy matches out thear of his and while I won't go as far as to say he needed to be carried, he did need to be in thear with someone talented and not a lesser opponent usually (he did have MIRACLE matches vs Super Leather in 98). But when Hido was healthy, motivated and in thear with a quality opponent he could have really good matches. Great brawler if you're into the hardcore/death match stuff and even if you're not, he was good in a lot of straight stuff as well. Mostly tags but watching them you never get the feel he's a guy just along for the ride & not contributing his share.

[kjh]

Yeah, I saw a Bad Boy Hido semifinal tag match in a warehouse in Shinkiba that was a blast live with the guys from Real In Memphis before the NOAH Dome show in 2005.

[Dylan Waco]

I really need to rewatch the Honma/Yamakawa stuff. I converted the matches about a year ago and paid casual attention to them thinking they were good in the process. Remember some other good Honma matches from that period too. Both of those guys strike me as guys who are almost totally forgotten despite the fact that Big Japan is the last man standing among the garbage feds and to some degree they created that style.

 

For FMW guys who don't get their due, Oya strikes me as the ultimate but I haven't watched any FMW in years aside from the little bit that was on GH's Funk comp.

[Bix]

There was a a Honma-Jun Kasai match from a comm. tape that was really good.

 

Has anyone here seen Yamakawa vs Usuda? Always wanted to see that but never got the chance.

[FLIK]

Remember some other good Honma matches from that period too. Both of those guys strike me as guys who are almost totally forgotten despite the fact that Big Japan is the last man standing among the garbage feds and to some degree they created that style.

 

The Yamakawa/Honma matches are still very well remembered by a lot of people and I still see Yamakawa's old work praised all the time. Honma's had a cushy gig in New Japan for the past few years, mostly just a jobber but hardly forgotten unless you were talking about just his stuff early on as a death match guy.

 

There's a few matches on my site I put up recently you guys might be interested in with those guys in it

 

FMW 4/11/2000 Jado, Gedo & Koji Nakagawa vs Tomoaki Honma, Ryuji Yamakawa & The Winger

FMW 1/16/2001 Masato Tanaka, Jado & Gedo vs Kintaro Kanemura, Ryuji Yamakawa & Men's Teioh

 

Will be putting up a lot more Yamakawa/FMW stuff in the next few days/week or so actually over on the DVDVR board.

 

For FMW guys who don't get their due, Oya strikes me as the ultimate but I haven't watched any FMW in years aside from the little bit that was on GH's Funk comp.

Thought about bringing up Oya but didn't know if he fit the criteria for the thread. He got a lot of praise once upon a time, it's more the case that not as many people are talking about old FMW anymore when he was at his peak. One of the few matches I was kinda bumed to see didn't make the 1996 set was him vs Daisuke Ikeda from the Jan FMW show.

 

Has anyone here seen Yamakawa vs Usuda? Always wanted to see that but never got the chance.

Haven't got around to watching it but I have it on my hard drive.

Link to it was somewhear in the DVD matches forum, Dean's thread maybe???

[Dylan Waco]

I haven't seen any one other than me praise Yamakawa and Honma in years. I don't doubt you FLIK but where is that discussion going on? That first six-man is on one of the BJPW Neo-Death commercials from memory and is really good.

[Loss]

I'm not sure if he falls into this category or not, but Michael Hayes was always one of the most mislabeled guys out there. He could go. I'm baffled that Watts wanted to keep him out of the ring because he thought he was no good. He wasn't Gordy or Roberts, but he was perfectly capable of having a good match. He fizzled out at a young age, but even post-peak, there are some good matches. I love the Luger match at Wrestle War '89 and the title change to the Steiners on Saturday Night later in the year, which is Hayes holding together a match pretty much on his own. Part of his appeal was that he didn't do a lot, but he got so much mileage out of everything he did do.

[Dylan Waco]

Hayes fits comfortably in the "I thought this guy was supposed to suck" category. I like Hayes a lot in the ring actually. I'm only three discs into the TX Set (got some binging to do there in the next couple of weeks), but Hayes has been the star of a lot of the matches so far. I think Hayes was at least as good, if not better than David Von Erich

[FLIK]

I haven't seen any one other than me praise Yamakawa and Honma in years. I don't doubt you FLIK but where is that discussion going on?

The 2nd Yamakawa/Honma match did quite well in the best of 00 puro poll on Death Vallery Driver. Didn't pay as close attention to the best of polls on the pwtorrents forum but I know it atleast got talked about in nomination over thear and is in pretty regular rotation on the tracker. They'll randomly get mentioned from time to time on the Observer forums too.

 

That first six-man is on one of the BJPW Neo-Death commercials from memory and is really good

You sure?

It's an FMW match not a BJW one so seems odd that BJW would release footage of it.

Never seen it but around the same time there was a similar match with Kojika, Yamakawa & Winger vs Kanemura, Jado & Gedo in BJW, maybe you're confusing it with that?

[Dylan Waco]

That's got to be what I am confusing it with.

[GSR]

I'm not sure if he falls into this category or not, but Michael Hayes was always one of the most mislabeled guys out there. He could go. I'm baffled that Watts wanted to keep him out of the ring because he thought he was no good. He wasn't Gordy or Roberts, but he was perfectly capable of having a good match. He fizzled out at a young age, but even post-peak, there are some good matches. I love the Luger match at Wrestle War '89 and the title change to the Steiners on Saturday Night later in the year, which is Hayes holding together a match pretty much on his own. Part of his appeal was that he didn't do a lot, but he got so much mileage out of everything he did do.

I am slowly working my way through the 1989 World Championship Wrestling (watched 4/15 episode last night) and we are in the middle of the Hayes-Luger feud at the moment. One of the issues at the start of the year was that Hayes as a face was difficult to get into (a similar situation with the Midnight Express & Cornette who were also faces at this time), and he seemed to be just treading water (pointless tag matches alongside the likes of JYD, Dick Murdoch and Vincent Young (although the six man where he teamed with Young and Young's music played was part of the subtle tease of the eventual heel turn)). The moment he turned heel on Luger at the Omni and 'took' Hiro Matsuda's money (and I'm sure there is no need to go into how bad and pointless Matsuda was then) things really kicked in and this feud is pretty darn good. At this point he is also co-hosting the WCW show alongside Jim Ross and is great in this role, and the 4/15 show closed with Luger challenging Hayes 'there and then', Hayes accepted and they brawled until the show went off the air.

 

Luger also had a match with Kendall Windham from 4/8 that is worth searching out featuring a great finish, where Windham goes for a crossbody off the top and Luger catches him and instantly turns it into a sweet powerslam for the pin. That show also has Bob Orton Jr vs Shane Douglas that is worth a look.

[rzombie1988]

Yagi is not exactly the lost 90's super worker, as she was always referred to as a great worker, it's just that people didn't pay attention. The last lost great worker of joshi puroresu was Naomi "The Bloody" Kato. No one watched Jd'.

Bloody's a good choice, not that she never got praise but it came from so few.

Dunno, Joshi (and wrestling in general) is littered with people like that. Wrestlers who were really good but only lasted a short period of time and became forgotten about or never got their due to begin with.

 

Making my way through the early days of GAEA, a lot of their OTHER trainees never get as much praise as they should. Everyone knows & loves the big 6 - Meiko, Kato, Sugar, Nagashima, Toshie & Hirota but GAEA churned out a ton more girls then that. At their peak there was a time when they had around 11-12 home grown talents on their roster. Girls like Makie Numao, Chihiro Nakano & Rina Ishii were just as good as those I previously mentioned but it's just that they had all faded away by the time 99 roled around and the promotion boomed in popularity with the SSU angle.

 

Kumiko Maekawa is a more famous name I always felt was way better then some would give her credit for. When she was active in the days when more people regularly talked about joshi she got shit on quite regularly I remember. Not totally but she was very polarizing, especially after the series with Momoe started. Some hated but some loved too and I was always on the side of those that loved those matches and her work in general. Her & Watanabe vs LCO is one of my favorite series as well.

 

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.

Bad Boy Hido is a guy who fits into this catagory for me.

 

Sure there's a lot of really crappy matches out thear of his and while I won't go as far as to say he needed to be carried, he did need to be in thear with someone talented and not a lesser opponent usually (he did have MIRACLE matches vs Super Leather in 98). But when Hido was healthy, motivated and in thear with a quality opponent he could have really good matches. Great brawler if you're into the hardcore/death match stuff and even if you're not, he was good in a lot of straight stuff as well. Mostly tags but watching them you never get the feel he's a guy just along for the ride & not contributing his share.

 

Maekawa is dangerous you know because she has some stiff kicks, even though she may have not ever injured anyone. I call it the Kana syndrome. Meanwhile Aja will mess someone up and she's awesome.

[El-P]

Maekawa is neither forgotten nor underrated. Maekawa is a shitty worker with a shitty attitude. Call it the Hotta syndrome, except uglier and with less talent. Watanabe carried her ass for years in tag, so Maekawa got herself involved in great matches when LCO could do no wrong. Then she got into LCO (ugh), and was carried by Momoe & Nanae. Fucking awful worker.

About GAEA, yeah, some early rookies had shitloads of potentials. Rina Ishii I seem to remember was quite good. Of course Chiggy drove them away being Chiggy. Meiko was always overrated by the DVDVR crew. Well, the entire promotion basically was. Sugar Sato was really good before 98, and then got sucked into a suckage circle of suck. Toshie was decent at best. Kato & Nagashima really were the great ones.

Hido, I dunno. I guess he can get into the "he's supposed to suck" category, because he was never pimped as anything but The Ugly Guy Who Married Megumi Kudo, but he wasn't that bad. Not that good either, but far from a bad worker.

Jd's two judo girls basically are all but forgotten. To the point I don't remember their names ! There was a Megumi something I believe... Damnit... And Bloody's favourite punching bag was really good too.

[ohtani's jacket]

The Dustin/Cactus Jack feud was from '92. Dustin's 1993 started out with his Windham feud being reduced to houseshows and a couple of non-satisfying TV matches and never recovered from there. From memory, his best match was a TV bout against Rude during their awful feud.

[FLIK]

Meiko was always overrated by the DVDVR crew. Well, the entire promotion basically was.

I'll take peak GAEA over pretty much any other wrestling in the world myself.

 

Sugar Sato was really good before 98, and then got sucked into a suckage circle of suck. Toshie was decent at best. Kato & Nagashima really were the great ones.

Toshie at many times was just as good as any of the others up until maybe 99 when she started slowing down a little and then never got the big push until she magically grew a personality out of nowhear at which point she was still good but no whear near what she was when younger.

 

Jd's two judo girls basically are all but forgotten. To the point I don't remember their names ! There was a Megumi something I believe... Damnit... And Bloody's favourite punching bag was really good too.

Megumi Yabushita & Sumie Sakai?

Yabushita's still around today. Splits her time between wrestling & MMA. She works for JWP regularly now and usually teams with Bolshoi. Still really good.

Sakai moved to the US, slumed around the East Coast indy sceen for a few years, got hella lazy and now mostly competes in low level MMA shows while ocasionally still wrestling.

 

No clue who you're refering to as Bloody's fav punching bag????

[El-P]

I'll take peak GAEA over pretty much any other wrestling in the world myself.

Well, this explains that. I was an ARSION überfan at the time. Mariko Yoshida, Aja, Yumi Fukawa, early Ohmukai, Mikiku Futagami (yeah, not GAMI), AKINO, Ayako, Ai Fujita, Candy Okutsu comeback, the Apache sisters etc etc...

 

Megumi Yabushita & Sumie Sakai?

That's it ! Thanks ! I loved Yabushita.

 

Yabushita's still around today. Splits her time between wrestling & MMA. She works for JWP regularly now and usually teams with Bolshoi. Still really good.

Good to know !

 

Sakai moved to the US, slumed around the East Coast indy sceen for a few years, got hella lazy and now mostly competes in low level MMA shows while ocasionally still wrestling.

I remember her moving to the US actually.

 

No clue who you're refering to as Bloody's fav punching bag????

Come on FLIK ! Yuko Kosugi ! Miss Megumi Kudo redux. Hot and hardcore. Could take a beating like nobody's business. She quit the business in the early 2000's I think. She was damn good.

[rzombie1988]

Kosugi got married to a fan and retired. She was my favorite Jd' girl.

[FLIK]

I always meant to get more into ARSION, seen a bunch of tapes and loved it but got distracted by GAEA and never looked back after that. Actually only maybe 20 or so shows away from my goal of seeing every GAEA show ever and once i'm finally done with that ARSION prob will be next on my list.

 

Only seen a small hand full of Kosugi matches, prob less then 10 but was impressed in the little i've seen of her. Hosting a few of her on my site as well. w Jaguar vs Lioness/Bloody 60 min draw & w Fang vs Toshie Uematsu & Bloody (another of my fav short lived teams)

[El-P]

Kosugi was just a though girl, really hard working and though as nails. Really the second coming of Kudo in term of work if she had the time to build a career.

Funny to talk about Yuko Kosugi in 2011. Fun though.

I loved ARSION to death and bought every new tapes back in the days. Yumi Fukawa getting severely injured really depressed me, and then Lioness coming in really ruined it for me. But the two first years were probably the most fun I ever had watching wrestling.

One day maybe I'll get back into what was my favourite wrestling in the world !

[jdw]

What was the Jaguar bloodbath match in J'd under her alter ego that people liked a lot back in the 90s? Also meant to watch that at some point... is it hosted anywhere?

 

John

[FLIK]

Heh, what a weird weird coincidence you bring that up John. Jaguar as Li Hua vs Bison in 96 is in fact up on my site as well.

 

Kosugi was just a though girl, really hard working and though as nails. Really the second coming of Kudo in term of work if she had the time to build a career.

JD in the days before it got taken over by the wave of pretty idol girls always got over shadowed by there just being way way too much other stuff out thear. I'll get in the mood now & then for something diffrent and buy a show of theirs and most of the time I really enjoy them but with so much AJW, JWP, GAEA & ARSION among others out thear that I still haven't seen it just always ends up taking a back seat.

[jdw]

Going back to the Dustin discussion, here are the Annual Worker Polls from the Torch for 1992-94.

 

My recollection from discussing this with Wade long ago is that the group of voters initially were pretty much the same as Dave's from 1982-90. Changed a little over the years he did it (1992-95), but Dave's also changed over the years as he added voters and others lost interest. Always was a small number of voters relative to the Annual Awards in each newsletter: Dave had in the range of 30-35 voters at the end if I recall. I don't think Wade had a large number either.

 

I'm just tossing up the WCW/WWF guys, the Top 15 for 1993 and 1994, and a slightly lower number for 1992 which I'll explain. The # infront of the wrestler is their overall "worldwide" ranking on the list.

 

I'm also making no judgement on where they ranked. I didn't vote in any of these years.

 

1992

7 Flair

8 Shawn

11 Vader

12 Bret

14 Pillman

22 Arn

26 Eaton

27 Dustin

32 Cactus

33 Austin

34 Sting

 

I'm only going 11 deep for 1992 as I don't have the full list, or a reference to who was in it in 1992 that dropped out. The 1994 write up indentifies who dropped out form 1993 and where they ranked.

 

One obvious person who would have been in the list in 1992 would have been Steamboat. You'll see him on the 1993 list, and pretty clearly would have been somewhere in the Top 15 of WCW/WWF workers given how hardcore fans looked at him. Probably slotted ahead of Dustin.

 

One other likely person that would be in here is Rick Rude. Since he quit WCW in May 1994, he's not ranked in 1994. Unliked everyone else who dropped out of the rankings (such as Steamboat), Rude isn't mentioned. It's hard to imagine that he wasn't in the Top 100 in 1993 as he had some respect as a worker in the 90s among hardcore fans. So he's another candidate likely to be in here.

 

A third likely person not listed is Barry Windham. He had the knee injury in mid-1993, which would have caused Wade to keep him off the 1993 list: Steamer went out with the injury in Aug 1994 and Wade removed him. Dittos Art Barr dying, with Wade indiacting he would have ranked strongly based on the ballots received.

 

Dustin is "8th" among WWF/WCW workers. I think it's safe to that at least one of Rude-Steamboat-Barry was ahead of Dustin in 1992, probably two, possibly all three. So Dustin is probably either 10th or 11th.

 

 

1993

5 Vader

9 Shawn

10 Bret

11 Flair

17 Austin

19 Pillman

27 Waltman

30 Steamboat

36 Cactus

38 Janetty

42 Arn

50 Eaton

54 Owen

55 Sting

58 Dustin

 

Again, Rude is missing from the article, and it's hard to imagine that Rude wasn't in the Top 100. But I also don't have a clear recollection of Rude's 1993 campaign. I don't think he had anything as eye catching as what he had in 1992: the feud with Steamer, the Wargames, the match with Chono. So where he ranked... who knows.

 

Dustin is 15th here.

 

 

1994

8 Shawn

14 Bret

16 Vader

23 Waltman

31 Flair

32 Austin

38 Owen

55 Razor

56 Sting

59 Pillman

62 Finlay

73 Arn

75 Regal

80 Dustin

83 Badd

 

Cactus was 25th, but I'm uncertain whether to toss him in. Did have the two beloved (back then) tags with the Nasty Boys. But also worked ECW, SMW and I want to say some Japan as well. So I left him out.

 

Hakushi was 57, but Wade specifically said he rated high due to a strong year in MPro. So I left him off as well.

 

Dustin is 14th here.

 

We can argue about whether he should be higher or not, and I suspect that Dustin-Pillman ratings are ones people will focus on. That's not really the point that I was trying to get across earlier: Dustin was thought of as a Good Worker back in 1992-94. If one wants to draw a comp, I'd suggest people focus on this one:

 

6-11-12 Arn

8-15-14 Dustin

 

Arn always was a well respected worker. He never was as beloved by hardcores as a high end worker like say Barry or Eaton at their peaks, but he was always respected.

 

Dustin's in the same ballpark as Arn, not only in the WWF/WCW set of rankings, but also the overall rankings. I would think that evidence that Dustin was well respected as a worker in those years by these hardest of hardcore fans.

 

John

[jdw]

Quick addition note on the other thing I said earlier.

 

Looking at the fill list and the people who were "new" to it in 1993 and 1994, my thoughts on why Dustin slipped were accurate. It's not really Dustin having off years or being thought less of relative to other WWF/WCW workers.

 

It's a massive influx of lucha, in addition to some new & younger Japanese wrestlers, and an increase in non-WCW/WWF US wrestlers (ECW, Indies, Etc). There was a wave in 1993, then another in 1994.

 

John