Reactions to the List: 100-51

[Timbo Slice]

The Kohsaka match from 98 was pretty remarkable for Tamura, too, and the first match I saw outside the Han matches that sold me on him. He also had the Mishima and Ito matches from U-STYLE, with the Ito match perhaps being the best in the history of the promotion.

 

I get the argument about those Han matches being better representations of the style, hence why people lean more on what Han did. I just don't see Han being able to have the matches that Tamura had with guys that were either on the fringe or wholly not shoot-style workers, and I've always liked that more about Tamura, no matter how smooth Han was in the ring.

[DR Ackermann]

I had Tamura at 24 and I didn't rank Han at all. I'm not sold on the idea of Han as a great wrestler. Too often he comes across as a guy just doing moves in an exhibition.

[Timbo Slice]

I wouldn't go that far, but I do feel like Han worked towards those spots we've all come to be wowed by in spite of the match.

[elliott]

The Kohsaka match from 98 was pretty remarkable for Tamura, too, and the first match I saw outside the Han matches that sold me on him. He also had the Mishima and Ito matches from U-STYLE, with the Ito match perhaps being the best in the history of the promotion.

 

I get the argument about those Han matches being better representations of the style, hence why people lean more on what Han did. I just don't see Han being able to have the matches that Tamura had with guys that were either on the fringe or wholly not shoot-style workers, and I've always liked that more about Tamura, no matter how smooth Han was in the ring.

 

Oh I totally agree that Han couldn't have had the Vader match. Han's one of the few guys in wrestling I could come up with that I think is great that I just can't imagine meshing with Vader. I don't think that makes Volk less great at what he did, but I do think that it is something that separates Tamura from Han.

 

I'm going to start a Volk Han Complete and Accurate soon and one thing I've been thinking about lately is Volk being a high spot based wrestler or a guy who excels in spotfests. Tamura was really great at milking drama and building to big moments and pacing his matches so there is a sense of escalation. I'm not sure Han is on his level in that regard so it is something I'll be on the lookout for.

 

I know people always point to Han/Tamura as the best "pure shootstyle" but I really think Tamura vs Kohsaka is. Volk feels like the Billy Robinson to Tamura's Jack Brisco. Like when Fujiwara and Friends were creating shoot style and developing all the workers, someone like Tamura at his absolute peak would be the best they could hope for. Volk Han is awesome, but he was doing wacky shit that the Shoot-Style Founding Fathers weren't thinking of. I haven't really worked it out quite yet, but I've been thinking about it because I want to go back and give the Han Trilogy and Kohsaka match real reviews in my C&A and I'm thinking it might be best to talk about them all together and compare/contrast and that Billy Robinson to Jack Brisco line has been floating around in my head.

[Jetlag]

Bull Nakano is too high. Altough I love how it just says "Bull Nakano" in her list of recommended matches. She's def. not a great match girl but what a character.

[El-P]

I'm not familiar with her work really, but I just noticed Etsuko Mita was ranked 113 ten years ago and wasn't even nominated this time. Oversight? Stock fallen?

 

Don't think she was nominated. There are *tons* of joshi worker as good or way better than tons of people making the list . It just fell out of fashion. If anything, Mita should be part of the tag team poll as LCO, although since I didn't turn a ballot for this, I don't expect them (that's her and Shimoda for those not familiar with joshi) to do that well.

[El-P]

 

I'm not familiar with her work really, but I just noticed Etsuko Mita was ranked 113 ten years ago and wasn't even nominated this time. Oversight? Stock fallen?

 

Joshi slaughter. I don't know how much Phil's line about LCO being the female Public Enemy has stuck as far as a change in acclaim, but Takako Inoue (as El-P has bitched over and over) wasn't nominated either and she wasn't part of the team, just part of the same AJW generation.

 

LCO are the fucking best. Check the '90s yearbook forums for a sampler. I really should have found a way to make a ballot, she'd probably have gotten a Mando-esque vote out of me.

 

 

Schneider was saying the same dumb shit about LCO 17 years ago FWIW.

 

Yeah, Joshi slaughter, plain and simple.

 

Seeing a great fuking wrestler like Bull Nakano drop so low in the top 100 is a symptom of this. Saying she isn't a great match worker is totally wrong. She had a bunch of epics. She was my #17.

 

And since my favourites are dropping now, Tamura, of course, my #5. It's not surprise the two guys from my top ten wo have dropped are two shoot-style workers. The Croatian Devail said Tamura was Beethoven. Pretty much. Tamura vs Kohsaka for 30 mn is the apex of pro-wrestling from an aesthetic poit of view. The most beautiful match I've ever seen. (Yoshida vs Fukawa being the female counterpart)

[El-P]

Baba is definitely better than Andre and should have rated higher. I'm an Andre fan, but agree that he's a guy where the pendulum has swung too far.

 

THANKS. I voted for Andre after waching a bunch of younger Dre, but in all honesty, I think we all got totally carried away by pimping how good he was. Well, he was that good, but not a Top 100 candidate either. iI's just the best giant ever…. except he's not. I had Baba at #80. One of the smartest wrestler I've seen, just a pleasure to watch.

 

That being said, Andre is not the one I kinda regret voting for.

[jdw]

Come on, accessibility is more than having an internet connection. Let's not be that simplistic.

 

There are $1 and $3 disk sellers out there. Given we paid $20 a tape to get each Tamura card back in the 90s, he's rather wildly accessible today.

 

As far as his style of wrestling, it's more accessible (in the sense of "easy to get) today than in the 90s given UFC's vastly more mainstream. It's a fairly easy style for people to get.

 

We really shouldn't excuse folks for it. Hell, given Fujiwara is still in play, and likely going to be dozens of spots ahead of Tamura, it's more a matter of choice (they liked other folks better) or being lazy (didn't watch his stuff). Either is a perfectly fine reason: most lists have elements of that. Pawning it off to "accessibility" is a waste.

[El-P]

Given we paid $20 a tape to get each Tamura card back in the 90s, he's rather wildly accessible today.

 

Living in France, I waited like 3 or 5 weeks before I was getting my batch of 5 or 6 120mn tapes every three months or some, after spending shitloads of money I didn't earned.

 

Today ? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kiyoshi+tamura

 

So let's not kid ourselves.

[Jetlag]

It mystifies me how Baba gets so much support. Andre is more compelling at working holds and a better giant than Baba. I recall a lot of matches where Baba added nothing aside from gangliness.

 

 

 

Seeing a great fuking wrestler like Bull Nakano drop so low in the top 100 is a symptom of this. Saying she isn't a great match worker is totally wrong. She had a bunch of epics. She was my #17.

 

What are those epics? I watched all the Nakano I could find and there wasn't anything GREAT.

 

LCO are good but not Top 100. But yeah they are good. Better than Chris Jericho easily. I like them both as singles workers a lot.

[El-P]

Bull vs Aja in a cage, the two Bull vs Kyoko in 95 from the top of my head.

 

LCO are not top 100 indeed. They are top 15 at worst.

[ohtani's jacket]

There's an established list of great Bull matches. Whether people agree that the matches are great or not is up to the viewer but let's not pretend thst they don't exist.

[Grimmas]

Yeah, listed three on the list. She has the great matches.

[ohtani's jacket]

72. Brian Pillman

My first reaction to this was Pillman was a 115 guy max. I thought maybe if I liked his Hollywood Blondes stuff more or his Loose Canon stuff, I could justify him in the top 100. Then I started to remember just hoe much Pillman I like. There's the Luger stuff, the Flair matches, the War Games '91 performance, the feud with Windham, the Liger stuff, the match with Rude and the tag team with Windham. That's an incredible amount of stuff to cram into four years from 1989-92 and doesn't even include the legendary Rip Rogers stuff. I feel a bit like Jimmy Redman pimping weekly WWE television workers, but perhaps now I feel more affinity with her than ever before.

[Frankensteiner]

 

The Kohsaka match from 98 was pretty remarkable for Tamura, too, and the first match I saw outside the Han matches that sold me on him. He also had the Mishima and Ito matches from U-STYLE, with the Ito match perhaps being the best in the history of the promotion.

 

I get the argument about those Han matches being better representations of the style, hence why people lean more on what Han did. I just don't see Han being able to have the matches that Tamura had with guys that were either on the fringe or wholly not shoot-style workers, and I've always liked that more about Tamura, no matter how smooth Han was in the ring.

 

Oh I totally agree that Han couldn't have had the Vader match. Han's one of the few guys in wrestling I could come up with that I think is great that I just can't imagine meshing with Vader. I don't think that makes Volk less great at what he did, but I do think that it is something that separates Tamura from Han.

 

I'm going to start a Volk Han Complete and Accurate soon and one thing I've been thinking about lately is Volk being a high spot based wrestler or a guy who excels in spotfests. Tamura was really great at milking drama and building to big moments and pacing his matches so there is a sense of escalation. I'm not sure Han is on his level in that regard so it is something I'll be on the lookout for.

 

I know people always point to Han/Tamura as the best "pure shootstyle" but I really think Tamura vs Kohsaka is. Volk feels like the Billy Robinson to Tamura's Jack Brisco. Like when Fujiwara and Friends were creating shoot style and developing all the workers, someone like Tamura at his absolute peak would be the best they could hope for. Volk Han is awesome, but he was doing wacky shit that the Shoot-Style Founding Fathers weren't thinking of. I haven't really worked it out quite yet, but I've been thinking about it because I want to go back and give the Han Trilogy and Kohsaka match real reviews in my C&A and I'm thinking it might be best to talk about them all together and compare/contrast and that Billy Robinson to Jack Brisco line has been floating around in my head.

 

 

I don't get why being able to have a match with Vader is any sort of criteria or benchmark for a shoot-style worker. It's like asking if Misawa could have a match with with Austin Idol that was as good as the Lawler/Idol cage match. I liked all the Vader matches in UWFi but they're a hybrid and it really wouldn't make sense for Han to work that kind of hybrid match-up in RINGS. Han did have excellent matches against Vrij, Tariel, and Hans Nyman. Those were the RINGS monster equivalents of Vader.

[Jimmy Redman]

I do like Tamura and Han being so close together on the list. They are always linked in my mind, so it seems fitting.

 

I had Han above Tamura. His uniqueness was probably a big factor.

[Matt D]

I nominate Steven to be the one to tell Han that his hair is goofy.

[Grimmas]

I nominate Steven to be the one to tell Han that his hair is goofy.

Is he on twitter? I'm not going to Russia.

[stomperspc]

Thirteen Han voters did not vote for Tamura at all. I'd be interested in hearing the reasoning from anyone that voted that way. Their strengths are similar enough that I find it interesting that some one would like Han enough to rank him (and rank him highly give his avg. vote) but exclude Tamura. Or maybe some voters have seen a fair amount of Han's work but Tamura? I am not surprised Han finished Tamura even though I had Tamura ahead on my ballot (21 vs. 14) just find it interesting that the gap in votes for each was so significant.

[Matt D]

Big jump on the list as we have our first person with over 100 ballots.

[bradhindsight]

 

I nominate Steven to be the one to tell Han that his hair is goofy.

Is he on twitter? I'm not going to Russia.

 

 

Sadly, no. I sought him out to share Dave's deep dive on his career and he isn't out there.

 

Although maybe he's reading this right now because days after we posted the videos started getting copyright claims and it's a wasteland of Volk on YouTube now in comparison.

[Tim Cooke]

 

Accessibility is key. People have to dig pretty far beyond even the highly touted material from another country to get to Tamura.

 

Totally agree. It's really hard to find Tamura...

 

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kiyoshi+tamura&tbm=vid&start=0

 

I think I'd put it this way:

 

I had a far easier time finding Tamura stuff today that classic Prince videos, thanks to his IP people taking a machete to stuff online over the past 3-4 years. Tamura, matches, in contrast, are accessible.

 

They are also accessible in the sense of understanding and enjoying: really simply stuff, even if the holds and exchanges are intricate.

 

 

RINGS put in copyright claims about three months ago so a lot disappeared quickly. I had about 10 Tamura matches that aren't available anywhere online and it got my account shut down, so accessibility is certainly an issue.

 

I also think Volk Han has more accessible high spots to someone not completely gaga over how RINGS was worked from, especially in the late 90's.

 

But you are right in the era of $2 DVD's, it shouldn't be an issue. God knows Lynch is probably funding college for his kid partially based on my money over the last 16 years.

[Jimmy Redman]

Or maybe some voters have seen a fair amount of Han's work but Tamura?

I think it's exactly that. Han is the gateway, so people who haven't levelled up in shootstyle might not have got to enough Tamura yet.

 

I know Han was on my ballot way before Tamura.

[pol]

I think Han is on Facebook somewhere.