Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[Johnny Sorrow]

How is it possible that Bix being on Stories With Brisco and Bradshaw to talk about his newly published story about how the INS was trying to deport Pat Patterson in the 1960's hasn't been brought up here? By the way, it's important viewing. Oh, and at the end Gerry tells what actually happened during the sale to Vince of the TBS time slot. It's fantastic and essential, even if Bix' mic isn't the best.

 

[Robert S]

Bix on a podcast together with JBL (or even better being the guest on JBL's podcast)? I guess I'll have to wear warm clothes tomorrow because this is one of these hell has frozen over moments.

[sek69]

TBF I was still reeling from JBL putting Bix and his story over on Twitter. I'm almost certain JBL did one of those "butthurt WWE employee/contractor bashes the wrestling media" tweets at him at some point.  

[NintendoLogic]

Who would be considered the biggest Japanese star who wrestled primarily under their real name? Rikidozan, Inoki, Baba, Choshu, Tsuruta, and Tenryu are all out. I believe Fujinami is as well because his ring name is written with different kanji than his real name although the pronunciation is the same. Who does that leave? Akira Maeda? Chigusa Nagayo?

[Rah]

9 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Who would be considered the biggest Japanese star who wrestled primarily under their real name? Rikidozan, Inoki, Baba, Choshu, Tsuruta, and Tenryu are all out. I believe Fujinami is as well because his ring name is written with different kanji than his real name although the pronunciation is the same. Who does that leave? Akira Maeda? Chigusa Nagayo?

Atsushi Onita

[KinchStalker]

Fujinami didn't adopt the ring name with different kanji until he came back from the hernia, so I think it's him; sure, he's now wrestled longer under it than not, but he wrestled under his real name for the entirety of the Showa period phase of his career (that is, the stretch of his career when wrestling had the most cultural relevance). Kobashi also did his kanji change later on.

[KawadaSmile]

Is Liger appearing in NXT one of the biggest WTF moments in recent memory? Given how WWE just  doesn't work with outside people...

[Dav'oh]

An even bigger WTF was that Tyler Breeze got the gig. Did I read somewhere that Liger asked for him?

[Steenalized]

Wasn't Liger the one who absolutely loved Cheeseburger?

[MoS]

Great thread here

[Mad Dog]

I think that's normal. I hesitate with older wrestling to recommend it. Mid 80s to now all feels similar but when you start pushing back into the 70s and beyond it can start to feel really foreign and not like the wrestling people know. 

[KawadaSmile]

I think this is something common to all sports, too. Even super pimped squads like Bill Russell's Celtics or the 1958 Brazilian Football Squad feel fairly different, like a relic, despite of how avant-garde they end up being.

[sek69]

8 hours ago, Steenalized said:

Wasn't Liger the one who absolutely loved Cheeseburger?

Yes, he was a huge fan and they even did the bit where he passed the Shotei on to him.

[Mad Dog]

2 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

I think this is something common to all sports, too. Even super pimped squads like Bill Russell's Celtics or the 1958 Brazilian Football Squad feel fairly different, like a relic, despite of how avant-garde they end up being.

That's true. I think baseball and boxing retain a familiar feel even if you go back 80 years but everything else feels different. I think Japanese wrestling is easier to go back to or even 50s wrestling because the footage tends to be higher quality than a lot of the 70s and early 80s American stuff.

[Al]

NYou can listen to a baseball game from the 1930s and it really doesn’t come off much different. Boxing kind of modernized in the 1920s. You watch Jack Johnson and he’s fighting a very different style. 
 

I actually watched Thesz/Longson earlier today. Thesz is signing autographs before the match. Thirty years later with the Von Erich boys kids are still trying for autographs before matches. I don’t think that was an exclusive rite of the Sportatorium but it’s a neat little bit of tradition. Even if it looked like the wrestler was capable of one autograph every two minutes.

[Matt D]

Biggest issue feels like length. Every new 50s match we get seems like 25 minutes plus. I know with the 60s French footage I’m generally watching two 30+ minute matches a week which involves some planning on my part.

[joeg]

Completely off topic.... would BJW draw better if they did away with deathmatches? I know its their thing, but their deathmatches haven't drawn well for almost a decade and their top young acts are all on the Strong division. At this point, one would think the excessive violence in their deathmatches is actually turning people away not bring them in. 

[Makai Club #1]

Deathmatches are their biggest drawing card. They always get bigger crowds on a Deathmatch main event over the Strong division matches barring special occasions such as Elgin vs Sekimoto. 

And I don't think they have enough hot prospects who could be drawing stars in the making to sacrifice losing the DM fans to build the traditional wrestling fanbase up. 

[Mad Dog]

I think it would generally be bad. You might draw better for non-deathmatch stuff but you could potentially chase away most of your audience trying to pull in those extras. We have seen a lot of media companies chase away their core audience chasing casual fans the last decade. 

[Jmare007]

Yeah, for them to compensate losing the deathmatch division they would have to spend some real money in a couple of wrestlers that could draw at least decently. And I'm pretty sure Big Japan doesn't have the kind of money needed to pull that kind of move off.

If they would only run with non-deathmatch stuff, it would be interesting to see if they would do worse than Zero-One. If that were the case, they'd probably die a quick death. Considering Akiyama and Mutoh are already "taken", they would need someone important to leave New Japan and buy them or something, lol.

 

Now, a promotion like All Japan adding the whole strong division in their ranks would be awesome, but that's never gonna happen either.

[CarpetCrawler]

On 10/19/2021 at 10:29 AM, Matt D said:

So if I'm not mistaken we don't get the Samoans vs Soul Patrol match from March (though there's a "bonus" Garea vs Sharpe match) and we don't get Snuka vs Valentine or Maeda vs Goulet from May.

We do get the Bobo Brazil match from the May show.

As far as I know the only existing footage of the Snuka-Valentine match from that card is fancam footage taken from Warner Wolf's WCBS sports recap, which tells me that if it's not even in Peacock's archive, that WWF likely never recorded it.  A shame.   But at the same time I'm so happy to hear two long considered "lost" MSG shows that were recorded and meant for air are finally out there now in some sort of official form!!

[Dooley]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I used to be able to get classic wrestling from a certain xtreme place. The site doesn't appear to be working for me now. I had a kickass ratio too. Is it just me or is there a site problem?

[MoS]

I get "you need to enable cookies to log in" when I try to sign in, even though my cookies are enabled. Started happening a few months ago.

[JNLister]

I get that problem, but if I then hit the Browse button in the menu at the top it works fine.

[Noah's_Savior]

I've been researching and writing about post-war joshi wrestling, the 1940s-1960s, for the last several months but have hit the road block of lack of information for the years 1957-1967. If anyone here has sources or links, english or japanese is fine, that would be a big help otherwise I'm just going to give a handwave generalization of that decade of time before we get some drama between the Matsunaga Clan and their partners running All Japan Joshi Wrestling Association and the later Japan Joshi Wrestling Association.