80s AJW

[pantherwagner]

I was supposed to post this yesterday:

 

As the story goes, some time ago Dan Ginnetty found a source for "new" 80s AJW TV that nobody else outside Japan has (except a few tapes here and there). At one time I had just being paid a work bonus so I got a few DVD's out of nostalgia - basically because I am a big JB Angels fan and I wanted to see some of their big matches. Well, the stuff ended up being so enjoyable that during the span of 1 year, even after finding buying partners, I ended up spending a ridiculous amount on money on this stuff.

 

In a different thread Loss said everybody should watch some of that stuff and form an opinion on that era, and I completely agree on it. There are so many myths about 80s AJW due to the previous lack of footage, and I think watching the actual TV from the Ginnetty set is much better than AJW Classics because it gives you a bigger picture of the promotion's environment at the time.

 

I already made some of these points months ago in smarkschoice, but as the grounds for future discussion and opinion, here is some of the stuff I have found out after watching many hours of 80s AJW.

 

- Anybody who thinks Lioness Asuka is better than Chigusa Nagayo needs to watch more 80s AJW. This is linked to...

 

- Lioness Asuka is the wrestler who comes off the worst by rewatching all of this stuff. The more Asuka I watch, the less I like her. No matter what the story of the match is, she always needs to get her spots in. Also, her tendency to be in offense is usually irritating, and her selling is not all that great. She's like the best Chris Harris ever or something. Not to take anything away from her, because she was such a hard worker and in the major matches she delivered, but really benefitted out of being Chigusa's tag team partner.

 

- The great hidden worker of the era is Jumbo Hori. She was the tallest Japanese native of the era (ever?) and you'd think that as a babyface she'd be terrible at the role, but her selling was so good that it didn't matter. She was a lot like Devil Masami in laying out matches and was naturally suited to fill in the "mother" for the younger girls role that Masami had, but when she was getting really good... she turned 25. The Dynamite Girls (Omori & Hori) matches vs. Crush Girls and Devil & Tarantula are worth tracking. Even though they are not classics, all the Hori vs. Asuka matches are worth tracking to realize just how good and smart Hori was.

 

- Mimi Hagiwara is, gasp, actually a pretty good worker. For an idol wrestler, she is better than Cuty Suzuki and Takako Inoue (though she didn't have the benefit of the great opponents Takako had). After all the Manzerman kind of guys that touch themselves watching her matches, you'd think she was terrible. But she was a really big bumper who didn't take it easy at all, and a tremendous babyface. Weakness was brawling, as she usually faced much larger opponents and her boxing jabs were ridiculous. Her best work was in tag matches, though she had a good run as an All-Pacific champion.

 

- The Jumping Bomb Angels are awesome. Kind of a W-Inoue (Kyoko & Takako) team that you could count on anytime to bring the workrate. In the WWF you couldn't tell them apart, but in AJW Itsuki Yamazaki and Noriyo Tateno had very different roles. Tateno was the "Ricky Morton" of the team, as the young schoolgirl, who would sell most of the time and take most of the pinfalls. I think the role of Tateno was to make the schoolgirls in the audience think that there's only one Chigusa, but Noriyo is a girl just like you. Yamazaki was more of a Tommy Rogers than a Robert Gibson, as the experienced worker with great offense. During regular TV, it was also usual to see Yamazaki face somebody in a singles match in the semi-main, an Tateno doing the selling/job in a six-women tag with all the stars. Don't look for deep psychology in their matches, but as a pure work team, they were really fun to watch.

 

- The more 80s Bull Nakano I watch, the less impressive 90s Aja Kong seems.

 

- The undercard could be pretty decent. They did not have the depth of interpromotional era 90s AJW but Condor Saito was a good hand; Yumi Ogura was really good in her young star role, and you could see she was somebody who definitely enjoyed being in the ring; Hisako Uno was already worth watching back then, and there were some very good foreigners touring from time to time: Galactica and Lola Gonzalez, Peggy Lee (who used to be great) and the Judy Martin/Leilani Kai team. Martin never did much for me, but Kai was tremendous and her matches with Chigusa Nagayo for the All-Pacific title were surprisingly great.

 

- Jaguar Yokota is not as good as you think she is... she is better. To realize how good she was, you need to put her in her context in the early 80s, and realize how outside of Jackie Sato, there was no other babyface in the roster who was even 1/10th as good as her. Nancy Kumi was technically good, Tomi Aoyama had some nice moves, but they didn't have the energy and dynamism Yokota had. Even when she was just a novice worker getting squashed by more seasoned wrestlers like Chino Sato (who was pretty good, actually), you could see she was 5 or 6 years ahead of everybody else in the roster... which really makes me wonder who were her influences.

 

I don't know what's the best way to move some of this material but it definitely needs to be seen. Cheap comps for the registered users? Uploads? Is anyone even interested? My internet sucks to upload matches, but I'm willing to make comps and distribute them, or send them to somebody willing to cap the matches.

 

As I said in a different thread, watching a lot of of this stuff in one go can be repetitive, but when you need a break, it's a really fresh and enjoyable style of wrestling with super hot crowds. At this point, I am seriously convinced 80s AJW is better than 90s AJW.

[Loss]

This is really, really awesome. I'm glad you posted this. I'll chime in wherever I can when I get home. First, I have to ask why *anyone* would think Lioness is better than Chigusa? That's pretty ridiculous. I like Lioness Asuka plenty, but Chigusa Nagayo was amazing, and was absolutely on the same level as Masami, Yokota and the others that get pimped as being top of the line at her peak. Chig was over enough that she could have slowed down a lot and not worked nearly as hard as she did and still stayed over and done plenty to get by. The fact that she didn't says a lot for her. I always considered her a super-exaggerated Steve Austin with more talent, as far as her work ethic goes. What I mean is that both worked far harder than they had to considering how much heat they had.

 

I know this is more about the DG set than the AJW Classics, but there's a Yamazaki/Matsumoto match on AJW Classics (sometime in '86) that's pretty awesome that I'd recommend anyone check out who wants to see a really good singles match involving either of the JBAs.

 

And of course, anyone who hasn't seen Devil Masami against Chigusa Nagayo from 8/22/85 should immediately go watch it, considering that it has a strong case as being the best match of the 80s.

 

That 12-woman tag from late '87 that went an hour and had ridiculous heat, is it on this set? I saw a pretty bad quality version of it on the old Jo Mosh comps that were floating around years ago, but I'd love to see it in better VQ. I may even have it, since I have quite a few of those.

 

A couple of matches in 1980 worth also checking out are Jackie Sato v Tommy Aoyama and Jaguar Yokota v Chino Sato.

[jdw]

Jose asks what the best way is to get it out there. My thoughts...

 

I don't know how many "episodes" there are of AJW TV that Dan dug up, that were previously available (Lynch and others), AJW Classics, and the odd commerical tape here ant there.

 

But...

 

I think simply doing "seasons sets" of the TV is the WRONG way to go.

 

I agree with Jose's notion that people need to see more than just AJW Classics, and the flow of TV moving from one show to the next in telling storylines and showing wrestlers develop is really important. It's one reason why I've always tried to get people to watch more than just the Big Matches in All Japan, and instead also seek out matches that have "importance" in storyline or wrestler development like the 07/02/93 Kawada & Taue & Ogawa vs. Misawa & Kobashi & Akiyama or 07/09/93 Kawada vs. Akiyama matches.

 

But...

 

The problem with TV *only* is that there is just so much clip-o-vision to it. Jaguar vs. Lioness was butchered on TV to the point that folks think it's "perfection", while the Chiggy vs. Devil was a "lost match". There's just some much great stuff available in full or longer form on Classics or commerical tape.

 

I think what someone really needs to do is make a loving AJW 80s series like CMPunk on CrazyMax has/is doing with the NWA Crockett-Turner and WCW-Turner stuff. It's part "Best of", but not so limited that it's only the very best stuff. It's a really deep survey into that stuff in a chronological order.

 

I think there are a number of ways in doing that. CMPunk's is in the direction of getting as much as possible, though for me it's a positive in not trying to be "completist" which I often think is over-the-top. Frank's "digest" method is similar, but works with a tighter, more focused set of cuts.

 

There are a couple of projects I'd like to work on in the future, or see others take a crack at, that are along those lines... my own taste is somewhere inbetween Frank and CMPunk's cut-level. All Japan digest are of course a personal fav concept of mine. I'd love to see Tabe do something on the History of UWF-style in digest/chron form. I think a History of Juniorism in puroresu would be interesting, not just focusing on New Japan but instead using it as an anchor while also showing what of note is going on in other promotions.

 

So...

 

I think AJW in the 80s would be a really great one as well. You could start with a "Background" disc or two stuff from the 70s (depending on how much is available) that gives a bit of understanding of where things were pre-Jaguar.

 

I know we're moving in the direction of downloads as the central way that people look at stuff. I guess I'm old school, but I tend to prefer tapes/discs. The ability to toss something in the bag and take it over to a King of Chicken, or send it up to Frank, or not worrying about space on my HD... that's worth cash money to me.

 

 

John

[Loss]

It's interesting that you mention this, because I've been working on organizing all the footage I have for months and trying to create DVD yearbooks of the best footage of a given promotion for every year. My plan is to divide everything in the following ways:

 

WWF -- This would also include things like Backlund and Hogan in NJPW. I would also like to see the Coliseum Video matches, handhelds, etc, put in context with the TV and PPV by putting the key stuff in chronological order.

 

WCW -- Punk's set is great, and I know the whole point is not to include every single thing one can find, but once Punk crosses over into WCW, there are a lot of missing matches that really should be included. The first half of 1992 specifically was pretty loaded on TV. Arn/Dustin from the 1/4/92 Saturday Night show is a match that I think compares favorably to Sting/Vader at Bash '92. It's not on the set. There are various 6-mans and 8-mans from the Dangerous Alliance era that are really strong that seem to be missing. I think Punk did a terrific job on the NWA side of things (although there are other important things I think should be included there as well, such as more 70s AJPW, and more Florida and Georgia footage in the 80s), but I'm not sure that the WCW set comes close to meeting its potential.

 

NWA -- Similar to Punk's set, but with more focus on pre-1980 NWA title defenses, and more attention given to the territories like Florida and Georgia. I think Punk's set is great, but I also think he overly focused on Flair in some ways, and St. Louis is really not even touched at all. There are clips of title defenses out there like the Funk/Brisco match you watched recently and enjoyed, Race/DiBiase, Thesz matches, etc, that aren't really featured on the set at all.

 

ECW -- TV, PPV, commercial releases and fancams, with the key stuff put in chronological order. I can *feel* your enthusiasm as I type this.

 

Mid South -- Similar to ECW

 

AWA -- Similar to ECW and Mid South

 

Tennessee -- Doesn't fit with the NWA since there's so much stuff that extends after the NWA days. This is where 70s-80s Memphis, USWA, SMW, Gulas and Continental would go (even though Continental ran Alabama). I've debated whether or not to move Florida and Georgia here and rename this "Southeastern".

 

Texas -- World Class, Southwest and whatever other footage one can find

 

US Indies -- Starting in the 90s when the territories died and moving forward from there

 

AJPW -- I'm questioning the need for doing this for the years where Dan has released complete TV seasons, but it could be nice to put the available handheld footage and commercial upgrades in chronological order with the available TV that should be watched. It's a big project.

 

NJPW -- As you mentioned on CM a while back, this will be the hardest set to do because making sense of what's available for New Japan and wading through it is virtually impossible. I'm still hopeful I can make headway on this at some point.

 

Juniors -- Focusing on juniors matches worth seeing not just in Japan, but in Mexico, the US, Canada and Europe. Who influenced who? I think a Dynamite Kid/Marc Rocco match from World of Sport has a place alongside a Tiger Mask/Black Tiger match from New Japan, and Rey/Psicosis or Rey/Juvi next to Liger/Otani or Otani/Samurai seems right as well. Michinoku Pro would be included here. Then there's the Nitro era, and WCW's half-hearted attempts at creating a division prior to the Nitro era. I feel no need to include the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal stuff alongside this, though.

 

Garbage -- FMW, IWA, W*ING, Big Japan, etc

 

Joshi -- I agree that the best way to make sense of what DG has released is to go through everything and put the must-see stuff in chronological order and go from there. I also see no reason to separate the promotions, especially considering that so much of the talent has worked in so many of the promotions, and that the early 90s interpromotional matches should all be in one place. So this would be AJW, JWP, ARSION, J'd, GAEA, LLPW, etc

 

Other Japan -- IWE, SWS, WAR, Zero One, etc

 

Lucha Libre -- Again, because so much of the talent has moved around so much, I see no reason to separate this by promotion.

 

Shoot Style -- I hate that name for it, but I'm not sure what to call it. This is the one that perplexes me the most, because I have trouble distinguishing works and shoots, especially when there's a mixture on the same card. I do think including the shoot stuff next to the worked stuff seems a little silly, because the shooters aren't aiming to entertain. So this would be UWF-1 & UWF-2, UWF-I, RINGS, BattlARTS, etc. BattlARTS seems slightly out of place, but this is the closest to a good category for it.

 

Europe -- Self explanatory

 

Obviously, this is going to take years. Going through my collection of footage right now, my goal is to figure out which years and companies I have the most wrestling from, and knock out the easiest-to-do ones first. But it's definitely an overwhelming project, although I agree it's something someone should do.

[pantherwagner]

I have a history of AJW magazine that highlights the biggest matches year by year. That, and the year-in-review shows (that I imagine would be awfully similar) would be a very solid skeleton for a compilation.

 

The problem is that there's so much footage that you need to devote a lot of time to something like this, and frankly, I have zero desire to watch 150+ DVD's of AJW. Of course, I do not have the time either, and let's not forget the money involved in getting everything.

 

But I also agree that downloads are not the way to go. The only matches I'm willing to watch on the computer are matches that I know there's little chance to get on DVD (like rare lucha libre and things like that).

 

Perhaps a 2 or 3 disc sampler wouldn't be a bad start.

[jdw]

WWF -- This would also include things like Backlund and Hogan in NJPW. I would also like to see the Coliseum Video matches, handhelds, etc, put in context with the TV and PPV by putting the key stuff in chronological order.

Big project. Agree on all that.

 

 

WCW -- Punk's set is great, and I know the whole point is not to include every single thing one can find, but once Punk crosses over into WCW, there are a lot of missing matches that really should be included. The first half of 1992 specifically was pretty loaded on TV. Arn/Dustin from the 1/4/92 Saturday Night show is a match that I think compares favorably to Sting/Vader at Bash '92. It's not on the set. There are various 6-mans and 8-mans from the Dangerous Alliance era that are really strong that seem to be missing. I think Punk did a terrific job on the NWA side of things (although there are other important things I think should be included there as well, such as more 70s AJPW, and more Florida and Georgia footage in the 80s), but I'm not sure that the WCW set comes close to meeting its potential.

I think the earliest part of the project confused what the overall project would be. To a degree, I wish that it was just "NWA Crockett-Turner" in the first set. By that I mean the Mid-Atlantic company that then went national that then Turner bought. I'd prefer everything that wasn't Crockett-Turner being left off. That includes GA, FL, and everything from Japan that wasn't specifically Crockett related (i.e. Flair, Steamboat, etc.) Harley or Terry or Brisco defending against Baba and Jumbo... I would have left off and dealt with in other sets. Instead, I'd try to get in things like the Roadies in Japan *after* they come to Crockett in 1986, Nikita in Japan, etc.

 

I think in both series there are things missing. The thing is... I don't think the whole series needs a re-do. It just needs some "Supplimental Discs" of things that are missing. I have little doubt that CMPunk would be happy to do that if people point him to missing stuff, and present it to him in a nice chron order. I'd suggested that with stuff from Japan on the first series and he was receptive to it. But re-doing a massive set like that is a bit over the top.

 

NWA -- Similar to Punk's set, but with more focus on pre-1980 NWA title defenses, and more attention given to the territories like Florida and Georgia. I think Punk's set is great, but I also think he overly focused on Flair in some ways, and St. Louis is really not even touched at all. There are clips of title defenses out there like the Funk/Brisco match you watched recently and enjoyed, Race/DiBiase, Thesz matches, etc, that aren't really featured on the set at all.

See above. I think the set should have been more focused on the one promotion that eventually morphed into Vince's primary competition, and that the other promotions largely should have been left to their own sets. I think watching World Class in the context of World Class is better than mixing up the Von Erichs vs. Freebirds into Mid-Atlantic stuff.

 

I do understand the concept of showing what else Flair, who was "Crockett's Boy", was up to. It does give a major central theme for the set... I'm not sure I would argue against the concept of including Flair's major matches from elsewhere on the set.

 

 

ECW -- TV, PPV, commercial releases and fancams, with the key stuff put in chronological order. I can *feel* your enthusiasm as I type this.

I actually think it's a project that should be done. I'm just not likely to buy it.

 

 

Mid South -- Similar to ECW

Agreed. And loads of that stuff is getting available.

 

 

AWA -- Similar to ECW and Mid South

Agreed. Frank is working on something from "some point in 1985" through Super Clash 3. I'm looking forward to how that comes out. If it's looks good, I wouldn't mind seeing it go backwards.

 

 

Tennessee -- Doesn't fit with the NWA since there's so much stuff that extends after the NWA days. This is where 70s-80s Memphis, USWA, SMW, Gulas and Continental would go (even though Continental ran Alabama). I've debated whether or not to move Florida and Georgia here and rename this "Southeastern".

I really tend to think keep each-their-own is the best, unless it's a major stylistic thing. The UWF-style series I suggested I think lends itself nicely to being put *together* come the 1991 split in promotions. I also think the contrast in RINGS and UWFi as the move along would be interesting to see side by side.

 

Memphis sort of needs its own thing.

 

(cont)

[jdw]

AJPW -- I'm questioning the need for doing this for the years where Dan has released complete TV seasons, but it could be nice to put the available handheld footage and commercial upgrades in chronological order with the available TV that should be watched. It's a big project.

 

I think there's some point between "Best Of" and "Season Sets" where a digest would fit. I guess modern tape/disc collectors Want Everything. I often find that over-the-top. Two years of Dan's 1991-92 AJPW seasons is 100+ episodes, nearly 100 hours of stuff. There really isn't 100 hours of good stuff on there... or even 100 hours of stuff that really needs watching. Spread that across 10 years of AJPW, say 1984-93 when it was all still a 1 hour show. Mix in certain matches that were complete on Classics (Flair-Race, Footloose-Can-Ams) that was not complete on TV that *needs* to be seen... and you're talking probably two *thousand* hours of AJPW for that 10 year stretch if you're going to grab the seasons and the Classics and several comm tapes to cover it.

 

Insane. I'm the biggest All Japan fan of that era around, and I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone.

 

I don't know how deeply I would distill something like AJPW 1993 down, and how that would contrast with distilling AJPW 1987. Those would be two good years to test my thoughts on since I think 1993 might have been the height of AJPW filling up it's TV time with loads of quality matches, while 1987 was a crossroads year as Ishingundan slit apart and caused the product to overall be weaker. That would be interesting ones to map out and bounce around with people to see if they do justice to the years.

 

The years *after* 1993 get interesting for digests because the TV gets cut to 30, much more commercial footage starts getting released, and eventually Sammy comes along in late 1996. TV "seasons" begin to fail capturing the promotion in a rather big way at that point.

 

As far as handhelds... I don't know what to do with them. I've found them to be the least satisfying part of CMPunk's series. That's largely *me* - I've never been a big fan of fan cams. Admittedly they have gotten better through the years. The ones in the 80s were pretty brutal. Ones in Japan are often interesting, and Dan has snapped up some really interesting ones that were also shot pretty well. But they can be pretty jarring in a set like these. I also would just as soon see them shunted off onto their own "Handheld Digest" set. Folks who like handhelds can grab them. Folks who don't can skip it, and also not be worried about a handheld eating up 20-30 minutes of one of their discs.

 

I think collectively the handhelds in AJPW are far less vital than getting complete matches where television was clipped or non-exitant. At times the clipping is minor such as Kawada-Doc Carny Final, though in that case some of the early missed stuff gets across the intensity of the match. At other times, half a match ended up on the cutting room floor like the 5/94 and 6/95 Four Corners tag title classics. And then finally, there are the matches that completely hit the cutting room floor such as the 1/95 Kawada-Kobashi and 10/95 Four Corners tag title match. And it's vital stuff like that that needs to be put into the context of an All Japan series far more than handhelds that help us show that Jumbo Wasn't Lazy.

 

 

NJPW -- As you mentioned on CM a while back, this will be the hardest set to do because making sense of what's available for New Japan and wading through it is virtually impossible. I'm still hopeful I can make headway on this at some point.

 

This really has to be done in combo with Dan sorting out what's available and in what form. We're working on a project of putting together the TV match lists. He's got a lot of the Classics tape lists as well. Then the comms. Then getting that all dumped into a spreadsheet where you can sort out things and see that there are three versions of one match... and here's the one you want. Things like the Hash-Hase IWGP match or Hase-Chono G-1 match getting pimped... those are important because TV simply didn't do the first one justice, while it didn't bother with the second (largely because NJPW's tv time was limited for parts of the year in 1992-93). It is a massive, massive, massive task. I don't think it's impossible at all. It's just going to take a lot of love and care.

 

I think experiance learned in doing the AJPW and AJW would be vital for this. AJPW has a lot of TV, quite a bit of 80s Classics, and a variety of commercial tapes. AJW has less TV, an huge amount of comm tapes, and some overlap of TV and Comm where things need to be sorts out on occassion. NJPW takes all that to a nutty level - weekly TV like AJPW, comms out of their ass like AJW, a monsterous amount of Classics, and some much overlap and different versions that your head will spin. But...

 

I don't think it's impossible.

 

I just don't anyone should try to short cut a project like that. It really should be one of the magnum opuses of a tape/dvd compiler... not really attempted until things are all laid out.

 

 

Juniors -- Focusing on juniors matches worth seeing not just in Japan, but in Mexico, the US, Canada and Europe. Who influenced who? I think a Dynamite Kid/Marc Rocco match from World of Sport has a place alongside a Tiger Mask/Black Tiger match from New Japan, and Rey/Psicosis or Rey/Juvi next to Liger/Otani or Otani/Samurai seems right as well. Michinoku Pro would be included here. Then there's the Nitro era, and WCW's half-hearted attempts at creating a division prior to the Nitro era. I feel no need to include the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal stuff alongside this, though.

 

I hadn't thought to include Mexico. One of the problems with Mexico is that other than your handful of heavies, it's all "smaller guys". It's also not exactly straight juniors-style. I'd rather see Mexico handled with it's own series where Perro-Cien Caras stands next to what's going on with the undercards.

 

With juniorism, I was more focused mentally on Japan with New Japan as an anchor. I'm not certain what to do with Universal when it opens. Obviously Dragon is a key player in juniorism at some point, but I'd have to watch all that to see if it fits more into the Lucha set than juniorism. Honestly... I tend to think more Lucha than juniors. It's when he hits SWS/WAR that I would include him. In contrast, though Michinoku Pro was referred to as Jap-Lucha or Lucharesu, I think it's far closer to juniorism in concept - the NJ Juniors Division was always willing to accept and incorporate new styles into their style. MPro was as well, taking some of the old Universal influence and bending it further towards junior-style.

 

Of course there some junior stuff in other promotions over there as well. It's really hard to call junior wrestling in the Fuchi Era as "juniorism". Kikuchi had the Dynamite influence. But I never got the feeling that I was watching a juniors match in that Era. The Tigersawa vs. Kobayashi more clearly was juniorism. There's an interesting fork in the road in there at some point.

 

The US... I don't know if I'd want to see it mixed in. It's pretty spotty in jumping around, inconsistent in style, and oddly booked. It also morphs and mutates around too. At some point in WCW, Eddy and Dean move into other things, Jericho does as well, and the division becomes little more than US Spotfu style rather than anything close to juniorism. Even Rey after the injuries starts to morph into a different type of wrestling. I think that evolution is worthwhile to watch, but probably on it needs it's own set.

 

I more envision (and am more interested) in the evolution of Shinma's baby from Fujinami to Sayama to all the children in the country coming after as people come in and out leaving their mark and it spreads to other promotions.

 

 

Joshi -- I agree that the best way to make sense of what DG has released is to go through everything and put the must-see stuff in chronological order and go from there. I also see no reason to separate the promotions, especially considering that so much of the talent has worked in so many of the promotions, and that the early 90s interpromotional matches should all be in one place. So this would be AJW, JWP, ARSION, J'd, GAEA, LLPW, etc

 

I tend to agree with that. I don't know how some of the other promotions will look side-by-side with AJW, and if they might get the short end of the straw. Who ever does the 90s needs to have a good understanding of not just AJW, but also get a strong understanding of the JWP and LLPW and even FMW storylines to know what matches, while not exactly "great", are important in telling the story of what's going on over there.

 

It is one of the problems of dumping everything into one bag - some promotions don't reflect as well in a mix as they do on their own. One needs to keep an eye out to make sure the important stuff from those promotions hit the set.

 

 

QUOTE

Other Japan -- IWE, SWS, WAR, Zero One, etc

 

Yeah... something like that. The thing problems with them are:

 

(a) most other Japan is "niche" that would have it's own sets - Garbage, UWF-style, Juniors

 

( the semi-traditional promotions like IWE, SWS/WAR and Zero One tend to be spread out with little continuity. In contrast, the UWF-style has a pretty continuous arc from 1984 until the point that RINGS stops working.

 

In the end, IWE, SWS/WAR and Zero One(and BatBat depending on where it falls since it's such a mutant promotion) almost warrant their own smaller series as perhaps a subset of a larger collection:

 

Other Japan Series One: IWE

Other Japan Series Two: SWS/WAR

Other Japan Series Three: Zero One

 

Or some such thing. I think that would also allow one to take the IWE vs. AJPW and IWE vs. NJPW and show them in two contexts - over on the NJPW/AJPW sets as part of All Japan, and over on the IWE as part of their history. I know that usually "double accounting" is a bad thing. But within their own promotion discs, they tend to stand out in different ways. In the case of SWS/WAR, you've got a promotion that was pretty mediocre from the start. When they hit the feud with New Japan, it literally is the highpoint of the promotion. It's Tenryu's biggest and best matches of the era. Over on the NJ discs, what it comes across as is a good heated feud. It's an important part of the storyline of New Japan, it dominates the promotion for more than a year, and it has a nice payoff at the end. But... it's not really the high point of the decade for the promotion. It's a piece in the chain.

 

Anyway... I'm rambling.

 

 

Lucha Libre -- Again, because so much of the talent has moved around so much, I see no reason to separate this by promotion.

 

Tend to agree, and that's likely the way people would like to see it.

 

 

Shoot Style -- I hate that name for it, but I'm not sure what to call it.

 

Call it "UWF-style". That's what I've come to call it. Gaijin screwed up for more than a decade calling it "Strong Style", and Dave ingrained that so deeply in his reader's heads that some still don't understand that New Japan is "Strong Style".

 

"Shoot Style" really doesn't cut it. We've seen shoot not for a lot of years. UWF isn't shoot style. It's clearly worked, quite dramatically. For lack of a better phrase, what Maeda, Fujiwara, Takada and Yamazaki came up with was a style out of UWF. "UWF-style" for lack of anything else that's better.

 

 

This is the one that perplexes me the most, because I have trouble distinguishing works and shoots, especially when there's a mixture on the same card. I do think including the shoot stuff next to the worked stuff seems a little silly, because the shooters aren't aiming to entertain. So this would be UWF-1 & UWF-2, UWF-I, RINGS, BattlARTS, etc. BattlARTS seems slightly out of place, but this is the closest to a good category for it.

 

I think the shoot and work is less hard to figure out than most people think.

 

UWF-1, UWF-2 and UWFi are worked. You might have some things the break down into being uncooperative ("Break! Gary... Break!"), but it's largely all a work.

 

Fujiwara Gundan is largely a work, but it would be worth carefully watching some of the laterday things to make sure. I suspect what anyone would call a "shooting match" is closer to "gym sparing" where they're working out with each other, backing off after applying a hold rather than trying to get a tap, and in the end going with the planned finish.

 

RINGS evolves into shoots far later. Tamura getting his ass kicked shortly after winning the tourney is a shoot... and a really stupid one by the promotion. While there were some earlier than that (I'm recalling one *great* undercard match between a Lions Den fighter and a BJJ fighter), it's after that point that it gets tricky. There remain some works, and some shoots. The person doing it just needs to keep an eye open.

 

The thing is... after compiling the evolution of the style up to that point, the person doing it will be extremely well versed in the working aspects of the style. He'll start picking up on holds and counters being *given* to the opponent, whereas in a shot they aren't.

 

Pancrase has more works than Dave thinks, and done in a fashion not quite as he explains. Dave has a lot of skills, but seeing through Pancrase style never really was a good one. Yohe and I had a lot of arguments with him over Pancrase matches back in the day, including some that he now cops to being worked in that strange fashion that he does. Perhaps if he rewatched some of that now with the knowledge he has now he'd see more of it. Still, the majority of the matches in the promotion were shoots in those early days. Even the worked ones weren't really done in UWF-style, so I wouldn't bother with it.

 

BatBat... I don't know. Might be one of the Other Puroresu series. I tend to think the true form of the art died out as RINGS turned to shoots.

 

 

Obviously, this is going to take years. Going through my collection of footage right now, my goal is to figure out which years and companies I have the most wrestling from, and knock out the easiest-to-do ones first.

 

And also keep in the back of one's mind what may be heading down the pipeline. Jumping into NJPW and/or AJPW when they likelihood of more stuff turning up in the next few years is, to me, a mistake. Dan's taken NJPW back to 1983. There really is quite a bit more non-Classics stuff from that promotion that's available in tape collections in Japan. Some of the folks he's finding and dealing with. But it's a bit of hunting and pecking. But you saw me toss on the boards the Jumbo-Murdock matches. There really is quite a bit of 1977-84 AJPW and NJPW that's still in the pipeline and just a matter of shaking loose.

 

 

But it's definitely an overwhelming project, although I agree it's something someone should do.

 

If you like Joshi, that's a good place to start. It is on one end largely "unexplored" - the older stuff hasn't been shaped into a form that's easy for people to get their teeth into. Instead, it's been a bit piecemeal over the years. In the "middle" (though actually closer to the end), the early to mid 90s is a monster of TV and comms that's never been brought into an organized form. Down the stretch as AJW fractures and joshi starts to fade, there remain a variety of promotions that also could stand organizing into the end run of the series.

 

If you're looking at something to really sink your teeth into, that's it. It's possible that over time Dan will shake out more stuff, or that a new version of AJW Classics will come out with fresh matches. Nothing wrong with that - either supplimental discs can add them, or even early discs can be redone from #1 to #1-A and #1-B if the amount warrants it. In fact, it would probably be better to use a different numbering style than CMPunk that allows for redoing if a trove of material washes up for a series of years - go with the year and call it 1988 Disc 1, 1988 Disc 2, 1988 Disc 3, etc.

 

As you get further along in the series, it's pretty complete by the 90s - nearly everything is available.

 

I just don't know how hot you are on doing Joshi.

 

 

John

[Bix]

Once I get Dan's stuff that Will converted and then sort out what's missing between what we all have, I will try to work on a Stampede set similar to the Punk sets. It will be a little hard to get a handle on what exactly to include because of the way the TV was formatted and how the angles flowed from week to week.

[goodhelmet]

I htought about doing the same thing for 87-89 since that is what the Stampede I converted is heavy on.

[Loss]

I think the earliest part of the project confused what the overall project would be. To a degree, I wish that it was just "NWA Crockett-Turner" in the first set. By that I mean the Mid-Atlantic company that then went national that then Turner bought. I'd prefer everything that wasn't Crockett-Turner being left off. That includes GA, FL, and everything from Japan that wasn't specifically Crockett related (i.e. Flair, Steamboat, etc.) Harley or Terry or Brisco defending against Baba and Jumbo... I would have left off and dealt with in other sets. Instead, I'd try to get in things like the Roadies in Japan *after* they come to Crockett in 1986, Nikita in Japan, etc.

There are two advantages to this:

 

(1) It's much easier to get a handle on how good Crockett mainstays like Steamboat were during this time period by pulling All Japan footage than it is relying solely on Mid Atlantic footage, only because finding 15 minute+ matches available during this time period that aren't from All Japan is going to be difficult, if not impossible. I think someone like a Jumbo Tsuruta is a pretty good barometer and it so happens he has long matches available from the early 80s against plenty of guys who worked Mid Atlantic.

 

(2) While I can see the point on the GA/FL footage being left off, my thinking is that you either go all the way or you don't show any of it. Mid South wasn't an NWA territory, but any Ric Flair matches were included because he was the NWA World Champion at the time. That made sense. Florida and George were NWA territories and I'd say they should be included, if only because Florida was absorbed by Crockett in '87, and Georgia was absorbed by Crockett in '85, and all of that was purchased as Jim Crockett Promotions by Turner in '88. Watts fits into that as well, but since Mid South wasn't actually an NWA territory when it was in business, I can see leaving it off. I would maybe agree with separating Georgia and Florida from Crockett if there also weren't so many overlaps in wrestlers used (Flair, Dusty, Windham, Piper, Garvin, etc).

 

I think in both series there are things missing. The thing is... I don't think the whole series needs a re-do. It just needs some "Supplimental Discs" of things that are missing. I have little doubt that CMPunk would be happy to do that if people point him to missing stuff, and present it to him in a nice chron order. I'd suggested that with stuff from Japan on the first series and he was receptive to it. But re-doing a massive set like that is a bit over the top.

It's over the top, but the problem with supplemental discs is that the supplemental matches suffer for it, because they're not treated in the same way as the other matches on the set. I'd rather see an upgrade of the set instead of supplemental discs, mainly because I think a missing match from 1985 should be looked at alongside other matches from 1985 instead of as a "bonus" match, which is how people look at those.

 

See above. I think the set should have been more focused on the one promotion that eventually morphed into Vince's primary competition, and that the other promotions largely should have been left to their own sets. I think watching World Class in the context of World Class is better than mixing up the Von Erichs vs. Freebirds into Mid-Atlantic stuff.

I agree with keeping World Class separate, largely because they didn't tour with feuds like Von Erichs/Freebirds outside of World Class, and also because they seceded from the NWA as they were dying down.

 

I do understand the concept of showing what else Flair, who was "Crockett's Boy", was up to. It does give a major central theme for the set... I'm not sure I would argue against the concept of including Flair's major matches from elsewhere on the set.

I loved that Flair's matches from everywhere were included, because I think it put over the schedule and flexibility the NWA World Champion had to have. My issue was that if it was going to be done for Flair, it needed to be done for the other champions prior to Flair's era that did the same model. Baba/Brisco from 12/02/74 on its own is a fine match to include, but there's plenty more, that's readily available at that, where that came from.

[Loss]

As far as handhelds... I don't know what to do with them. I've found them to be the least satisfying part of CMPunk's series. That's largely *me* - I've never been a big fan of fan cams. Admittedly they have gotten better through the years. The ones in the 80s were pretty brutal. Ones in Japan are often interesting, and Dan has snapped up some really interesting ones that were also shot pretty well. But they can be pretty jarring in a set like these. I also would just as soon see them shunted off onto their own "Handheld Digest" set. Folks who like handhelds can grab them. Folks who don't can skip it, and also not be worried about a handheld eating up 20-30 minutes of one of their discs.

Understood, but if a match that took place on a house show was better than a match that aired on TV, should it be put in a different place separate from everything else just because it wasn't pro-shot? Handhelds are a bitch to watch at times, no doubt, but I do think they have value, but I think their main value is more in early 1990s WWF than anything in the 80s. Seeing Bret Hart alternate between title defenses on TV against the 1-2-3 Kid, followed by him doing an Ironman match against Owen Hart 8 days later, is interesting, because it's a way to follow the schedule of the champ as much as possible.

 

I think collectively the handhelds in AJPW are far less vital than getting complete matches where television was clipped or non-exitant. At times the clipping is minor such as Kawada-Doc Carny Final, though in that case some of the early missed stuff gets across the intensity of the match. At other times, half a match ended up on the cutting room floor like the 5/94 and 6/95 Four Corners tag title classics. And then finally, there are the matches that completely hit the cutting room floor such as the 1/95 Kawada-Kobashi and 10/95 Four Corners tag title match. And it's vital stuff like that that needs to be put into the context of an All Japan series far more than handhelds that help us show that Jumbo Wasn't Lazy.

Jumbo's house show reputation from Meltzer is a pretty strong case for some handheld footage being allowed, agreed. Kobashi/Hansen from 4/16/93 I think looks pretty good alongside the rest of All Japan for the year. The Carny every year could be covered extensively by mixing handhelds with available TV and commercial release. I know Lynch has a Misawa/Kawada match from 4/11/94 available in full on handheld. I believe that match was heavily edited on the '94 commercial release, was it not? This also applies to some of the Super Juniors tournaments New Japan would often do, and there are boatloads of matches that didn't make TV available from those.

 

This really has to be done in combo with Dan sorting out what's available and in what form. We're working on a project of putting together the TV match lists. He's got a lot of the Classics tape lists as well. Then the comms. Then getting that all dumped into a spreadsheet where you can sort out things and see that there are three versions of one match... and here's the one you want. Things like the Hash-Hase IWGP match or Hase-Chono G-1 match getting pimped... those are important because TV simply didn't do the first one justice, while it didn't bother with the second (largely because NJPW's tv time was limited for parts of the year in 1992-93). It is a massive, massive, massive task. I don't think it's impossible at all. It's just going to take a lot of love and care.

Maybe so. I do think we're years away from seeing it done.

 

I think experiance learned in doing the AJPW and AJW would be vital for this. AJPW has a lot of TV, quite a bit of 80s Classics, and a variety of commercial tapes. AJW has less TV, an huge amount of comm tapes, and some overlap of TV and Comm where things need to be sorts out on occassion. NJPW takes all that to a nutty level - weekly TV like AJPW, comms out of their ass like AJW, a monsterous amount of Classics, and some much overlap and different versions that your head will spin. But...

 

I don't think it's impossible.

 

I just don't anyone should try to short cut a project like that. It really should be one of the magnum opuses of a tape/dvd compiler... not really attempted until things are all laid out.

Agreed. Hopefully, the rest of the AJ and NJ season sets Dan has (along with the rest of his World Pro collection) will be released in the near future.

 

I hadn't thought to include Mexico. One of the problems with Mexico is that other than your handful of heavies, it's all "smaller guys". It's also not exactly straight juniors-style. I'd rather see Mexico handled with it's own series where Perro-Cien Caras stands next to what's going on with the undercards.

True. I'm thinking more of including singles matches like Rey/Juvi and Rey/Psicosis that are undeniably "juniors" matches. Those matches shouldn't be left off of a juniors set or a lucha libre set.

 

With juniorism, I was more focused mentally on Japan with New Japan as an anchor. I'm not certain what to do with Universal when it opens. Obviously Dragon is a key player in juniorism at some point, but I'd have to watch all that to see if it fits more into the Lucha set than juniorism. Honestly... I tend to think more Lucha than juniors. It's when he hits SWS/WAR that I would include him.

Would you include the NJ/WAR feud of 1993 on a New Japan set?

 

EDIT: Nevermind, you addressed this.

 

In contrast, though Michinoku Pro was referred to as Jap-Lucha or Lucharesu, I think it's far closer to juniorism in concept - the NJ Juniors Division was always willing to accept and incorporate new styles into their style. MPro was as well, taking some of the old Universal influence and bending it further towards junior-style.

 

Of course there some junior stuff in other promotions over there as well. It's really hard to call junior wrestling in the Fuchi Era as "juniorism". Kikuchi had the Dynamite influence. But I never got the feeling that I was watching a juniors match in that Era. The Tigersawa vs. Kobayashi more clearly was juniorism. There's an interesting fork in the road in there at some point.

Yes there is, because matches like Fuchi/Malenko wouldn't seem out of place next to what the New Japan juniors were doing in '91.

 

The US... I don't know if I'd want to see it mixed in. It's pretty spotty in jumping around, inconsistent in style, and oddly booked. It also morphs and mutates around too. At some point in WCW, Eddy and Dean move into other things, Jericho does as well, and the division becomes little more than US Spotfu style rather than anything close to juniorism. Even Rey after the injuries starts to morph into a different type of wrestling. I think that evolution is worthwhile to watch, but probably on it needs it's own set.

It does in some ways, but a juniors set for 1996, as an example, would probably need to have the Rey/Ultimo and Malenko/Ultimo matches from WCW late in the year. I think the issue there is to just be choosy. There's no reason to include the five-minute Nitro specials, unless the match runs longer than usual. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the set at all. But Rey/Ultimo and Dean/Ultimo definitely do. I think it would be the job of the person putting it together to (hopefully) understand the difference.

 

Other Japan -- IWE, SWS, WAR, Zero One, etc

 

Yeah... something like that. The thing problems with them are:

 

(a) most other Japan is "niche" that would have it's own sets - Garbage, UWF-style, Juniors

 

( the semi-traditional promotions like IWE, SWS/WAR and Zero One tend to be spread out with little continuity. In contrast, the UWF-style has a pretty continuous arc from 1984 until the point that RINGS stops working.

 

In the end, IWE, SWS/WAR and Zero One(and BatBat depending on where it falls since it's such a mutant promotion) almost warrant their own smaller series as perhaps a subset of a larger collection:

 

Other Japan Series One: IWE

Other Japan Series Two: SWS/WAR

Other Japan Series Three: Zero One

 

Or some such thing. I think that would also allow one to take the IWE vs. AJPW and IWE vs. NJPW and show them in two contexts - over on the NJPW/AJPW sets as part of All Japan, and over on the IWE as part of their history. I know that usually "double accounting" is a bad thing. But within their own promotion discs, they tend to stand out in different ways. In the case of SWS/WAR, you've got a promotion that was pretty mediocre from the start. When they hit the feud with New Japan, it literally is the highpoint of the promotion. It's Tenryu's biggest and best matches of the era. Over on the NJ discs, what it comes across as is a good heated feud. It's an important part of the storyline of New Japan, it dominates the promotion for more than a year, and it has a nice payoff at the end. But... it's not really the high point of the decade for the promotion. It's a piece in the chain.

 

Anyway... I'm rambling.

Maybe, but you're making sense. That's probably the best way to do Other Japan.

 

And yes, Garbage wrestling would be its own animal.

 

And also keep in the back of one's mind what may be heading down the pipeline. Jumping into NJPW and/or AJPW when they likelihood of more stuff turning up in the next few years is, to me, a mistake. Dan's taken NJPW back to 1983. There really is quite a bit more non-Classics stuff from that promotion that's available in tape collections in Japan. Some of the folks he's finding and dealing with. But it's a bit of hunting and pecking. But you saw me toss on the boards the Jumbo-Murdock matches. There really is quite a bit of 1977-84 AJPW and NJPW that's still in the pipeline and just a matter of shaking loose.

Agreed.

[Loss]

More:

 

If you like Joshi, that's a good place to start. It is on one end largely "unexplored" - the older stuff hasn't been shaped into a form that's easy for people to get their teeth into. Instead, it's been a bit piecemeal over the years. In the "middle" (though actually closer to the end), the early to mid 90s is a monster of TV and comms that's never been brought into an organized form. Down the stretch as AJW fractures and joshi starts to fade, there remain a variety of promotions that also could stand organizing into the end run of the series.

 

If you're looking at something to really sink your teeth into, that's it. It's possible that over time Dan will shake out more stuff, or that a new version of AJW Classics will come out with fresh matches. Nothing wrong with that - either supplimental discs can add them, or even early discs can be redone from #1 to #1-A and #1-B if the amount warrants it. In fact, it would probably be better to use a different numbering style than CMPunk that allows for redoing if a trove of material washes up for a series of years - go with the year and call it 1988 Disc 1, 1988 Disc 2, 1988 Disc 3, etc.

 

As you get further along in the series, it's pretty complete by the 90s - nearly everything is available.

 

I just don't know how hot you are on doing Joshi.

 

 

John

I'd love to do Joshi just as much as I would anything else. It will take a while, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

[jdw]

There are two advantages to this:

 

(1) It's much easier to get a handle on how good Crockett mainstays like Steamboat were during this time period by pulling All Japan footage than it is relying solely on Mid Atlantic footage, only because finding 15 minute+ matches available during this time period that aren't from All Japan is going to be difficult, if not impossible. I think someone like a Jumbo Tsuruta is a pretty good barometer and it so happens he has long matches available from the early 80s against plenty of guys who worked Mid Atlantic.

I agree on that. Full, complete and in good quality. It's nice to have Steamer vs. Harley in that form in December 1982.

 

 

(2) While I can see the point on the GA/FL footage being left off, my thinking is that you either go all the way or you don't show any of it. Mid South wasn't an NWA territory, but any Ric Flair matches were included because he was the NWA World Champion at the time. That made sense. Florida and George were NWA territories and I'd say they should be included, if only because Florida was absorbed by Crockett in '87, and Georgia was absorbed by Crockett in '85, and all of that was purchased as Jim Crockett Promotions by Turner in '88. Watts fits into that as well, but since Mid South wasn't actually an NWA territory when it was in business, I can see leaving it off. I would maybe agree with separating Georgia and Florida from Crockett if there also weren't so many overlaps in wrestlers used (Flair, Dusty, Windham, Piper, Garvin, etc).

My biggest problem is that we're getting "Crockett Storylines & Angles" while in the other promotions we're getting "matches". I'd prefer to see Florida just handled as its own promotion so that the entire Bass vs. Windham feud gets the time to be told, while other feuds do as well. That's even more the case with GA.

 

 

It's over the top, but the problem with supplemental discs is that the supplemental matches suffer for it, because they're not treated in the same way as the other matches on the set. I'd rather see an upgrade of the set instead of supplemental discs, mainly because I think a missing match from 1985 should be looked at alongside other matches from 1985 instead of as a "bonus" match, which is how people look at those.

I tend to look at supplemental discs differently if they're handled well. I'll use Frank's 1980-82 WWF sets as an example:

 

* the obvious point of "here is some great shit that didn't make the set."

 

* one doesn't have to replace their entire set or large chunks of it to get the additional materials

 

I think people get the first. It's pretty straight foward, and is accepted by everyone unless there's some feud going on between the person who did the original set and who did the supplimental (which in the case of the WWF one is entirely possible).

 

On the second point... 100+ discs of CMPunks set isn't a small number of discs to replace simply for 10-20 additional discs of bonus material, if even that much. :/

 

The only reasons I tend to encourage a re-do would be if (i) the first was horribly done, or (ii) the VQ of so much of it can be improved that it makes it worth replacing that many discs. If it's the VQ of just several matches (such as my copy of Tully vs. Barry sucking), then that's something I think would be better added to the supplimental sets.

 

 

I loved that Flair's matches from everywhere were included, because I think it put over the schedule and flexibility the NWA World Champion had to have. My issue was that if it was going to be done for Flair, it needed to be done for the other champions prior to Flair's era that did the same model. Baba/Brisco from 12/02/74 on its own is a fine match to include, but there's plenty more, that's readily available at that, where that came from.

The difference in my preference is that the others weren't Crockett's Boy. I know CMPunk was doing it as an "NWA Series", thought in the end it really wasn't one but rather a Crockett-Centric set. If you pull off the Flair stuff, the rest of the NWA is really covered in a very minimal fashion.

 

I don't quite see it as an "all" or "nothing" area. It's more like these options:

 

(a) do all NWA

 

( go Crockett-Centric, but show Crockett wrestlers when out of the territory

 

© Crockett with only matches in the Crockett territory or shows co-sponsorred by Crockett

 

You're kind of an (a)(1) option - do certain of the NWA, but cut off others for their own sets like WCCW.

 

I kind of prefer (. I like seeing Ric in Japan, Steamboat & Youngblood in Japan, it would be nice to get Steamboat & Youngblood for MSG, etc. I'd avoid the Road Warriors until they become officially Crockett's, but after that get their stuff from Japan while they're with the promotion. Etc.

 

That's my preference. I don't complain about how CMPunk did it. Someone could do more with the FLA and GA stuff as it gets organized.

 

 

John

[jdw]

Understood, but if a match that took place on a house show was better than a match that aired on TV, should it be put in a different place separate from everything else just because it wasn't pro-shot? Handhelds are a bitch to watch at times, no doubt, but I do think they have value, but I think their main value is more in early 1990s WWF than anything in the 80s. Seeing Bret Hart alternate between title defenses on TV against the 1-2-3 Kid, followed by him doing an Ironman match against Owen Hart 8 days later, is interesting, because it's a way to follow the schedule of the champ as much as possible.

I do think they have value. What to do with them... I don't know. I'm less tolerant of watching them than a lot of folks who grew into wrestling in the "fan cam" era, so when going through a tape and suddenly hitting a handheld is a bit of a mental block for me.

 

Too many of them on a set, simply because they exist... I'm not a big fan of. Selectively using the ones that are important or of note, that I mind less. If there are a lot, I'd just as soon see them on a all handheld disc or discs. Flair vs. Michaels at MSG was "historic" and people thought it was "great". Setting aside that it wasn't great , I don't know if I'd want to see it in the middle of a primary WWE set rather than as part of a Handled set.

 

 

Jumbo's house show reputation from Meltzer is a pretty strong case for some handheld footage being allowed, agreed.

I actually was joking there!

 

 

Kobashi/Hansen from 4/16/93 I think looks pretty good alongside the rest of All Japan for the year.

I do think that is true. It's also a pretty decent quality shot by the camera man. That's more an exception to the rule.

 

 

The Carny every year could be covered extensively by mixing handhelds with available TV and commercial release.

I don't know how much handled from Carny has shown up over the years other than that one match. I could see the argument on that. I suspect that if I were to do AJPW, I would probably move that stuff off into a handheld series rather than the primary series. I don't think anything absolutely essentially for AJPW is out there on handheld only in the 90s. The RikiPro stuff from the 80s is handheld only for the most part, but the critical stuff of the 90s seemed to make commerical or TV.

 

The one major exception that I can think of is the 1996 Carny. 30 minute TV. The commerical tapes were limited to largely what TV covered anyway.

 

In 1994-95 we had the commercial tapes to suppliment the cut back TV.

 

In 1991-93 there was the one hour TV. I guess it would be nice to see some of the JIP stuff in full, especially the matches that got lots of praise in JIP mode. I don't know how one would handle that... try to "splice" them together? No point in watching a full handheld of 1993 Kawada vs. Taue when the last 10-15 is on TV. What we really want is the handheld to fill in the missing space. that would be interesting. Anyway...

 

From 1997 on they had Samurai to cover more than just the regular TV space allowed. Some stuff is MIA, like Kobashi's first pin on Misawa.

 

Tag League would be a possibility in 1994-95, but the 1995 league was horrible anyway. It wasn't like there were a number of missing match up one is longing to see. 1994 was the 30 minute slot, but I think only a couple of interesting matches might be cut badly or missing.

 

 

I know Lynch has a Misawa/Kawada match from 4/11/94 available in full on handheld. I believe that match was heavily edited on the '94 commercial release, was it not?

I thought the 4/94 match was in full on the commercial tape, bit I haven't watched it in ages. It went 30, so it should be easy enough to check.

 

 

This also applies to some of the Super Juniors tournaments New Japan would often do, and there are boatloads of matches that didn't make TV available from those.

Yeah, if one is a completist.

 

 

Maybe so. I do think we're years away from seeing it done.

No doubt. It doesn't mean one can't start planning now.

 

 

True. I'm thinking more of including singles matches like Rey/Juvi and Rey/Psicosis that are undeniably "juniors" matches. Those matches shouldn't be left off of a juniors set or a lucha libre set.

I don't know. Rey-Juvi in Arena Mexico just doesn't seem to be an item for a puroresu focused juniors set. Their match at the 1995 Super J Cup... that's fine.

 

 

Yes there is, because matches like Fuchi/Malenko wouldn't seem out of place next to what the New Japan juniors were doing in '91.

I think there are parts that fit in. Then there are other parts where you're looking at Fuchi being the junior equiv of Jumbo's style. I'd recommend watching all the AJPW jr's stuff while working on the project and getting a fell on whether it fits in, or if it's more an extension of Kings Road than juniorism.

 

 

It does in some ways, but a juniors set for 1996, as an example, would probably need to have the Rey/Ultimo and Malenko/Ultimo matches from WCW late in the year. I think the issue there is to just be choosy. There's no reason to include the five-minute Nitro specials, unless the match runs longer than usual. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the set at all. But Rey/Ultimo and Dean/Ultimo definitely do. I think it would be the job of the person putting it together to (hopefully) understand the difference.

I agree on those two. There's also Liger vs. Rey from Starcade. How far to open the door... play it by ear.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

I enjoyed reading these posts but let me say this...

 

The dilemmas you guys are discussing are the main reasons I tend to stick with comps of wrestlers.

[Resident Evil]

Once I get Dan's stuff that Will converted and then sort out what's missing between what we all have, I will try to work on a Stampede set similar to the Punk sets. It will be a little hard to get a handle on what exactly to include because of the way the TV was formatted and how the angles flowed from week to week.

 

I htought about doing the same thing for 87-89 since that is what the Stampede I converted is heavy on.

 

 

That sounds great guys.

 

 

About the handheld talk -- If the match is good enough than it has to be included. Personally, if it's shot well enough than I like them even better than anything on Tv simply because A)it's a different perspective B)You have that great feeling of watching something you're not supposed to be watching and C)hearing the crowd reaction from the arena seats. There are matches I feel that come off better on handheld rather than TV. Lyger vs Benoit from 8/92 immediatly comes to mind as you have better heat, a beautiful shot of the ring and an excellent view of the finish which comes off better on handheld.

 

And with the 5 minute Nitro or other WCW program matches -- A few of them do have to be included because there were some doozys here and there on the program.

[Loss]

I agree that there is something cool about watching a match on handheld, but I also understand the annoyance with bad camera angles, blur, etc.

 

Will, what is your philosophy on separating footage? I ask because I know you put WWE TV in its own category when you make MOTYC comps.

[jdw]

I enjoyed reading these posts but let me say this...

 

The dilemmas you guys are discussing are the main reasons I tend to stick with comps of wrestlers.

 

Every "set" has it's own dilemmas. I tend to think hashing things out i.e. "thinking things through" in advance is a pretty good was to go about it. Some of the folks you talk to have experiance in doing sets/comps. Other are "customers" who have some insight into what works or doesn't work. Others are familar with the material and can hip you to stuff that might get overlooked.

 

Wrestler comps can be massive beasts on their own. Something like a comp on Jumbo or Kawada... that's such a beast of a project that it tends to make my head hurt rather than give me the thrill of thinking about what the end result will be. Jumbo is basically the God of Work. He has to be done just right. And we know that there is still a ton of stuff from the 70s and early 80s out there waiting to be found, or at least upgraded in quality. Doing a rushed job on him now, and then having to re-do... gives me shivers.

 

 

John

[goodhelmet]

WWE TV only got its own disc because the VQ was subpar and putting it on a 4 hour disc would make it one giant blur. That is the only reason. On this current 2006 set, I am putting the TV matches separate as well as the Tim Noel handheld on a 2:30 disc.

 

As for separating footage on the comps you are doing, I disagree with some of the points made and agree with others.

 

For instance, I am against putting Flair's Mid South run on a Crockett set becasue while it may give you an idea of the touring champion, it doesn't really follow any NWA story arcs. I would argue the same thing for the Portland matches he wrestled. Those should go on a Portland set. However, if I was making a Flair comp, all of it would be fair game since the wrestler, not the territory, is the focus.

 

The trick would be to make sure to include Crockett matches (for an example) that were shown on Japanese TV on the Crockett set. Those All Japan Classics have matches from the AWA, NWA and Florida mixed in with the All Japan matches. Just because it was shown on AJ Classics doesn't mean I would include it on an All Japan set. The exception would be when a certain belt is being defended. If Jumbo defends the AWA title against an All Japan wrestler then I see no reason why it should not go on an AWA set.

 

I do agree that handhelds are fair game and should be included if they deserve merit. A good match is a good match and we aren't so far removed from the days of shitty 4th gen tapes that I can't sit through a decent handheld on a DVD full of Master VQ commerical matches.

[jdw]

The trick would be to make sure to include Crockett matches (for an example) that were shown on Japanese TV on the Crockett set. Those All Japan Classics have matches from the AWA, NWA and Florida mixed in with the All Japan matches. Just because it was shown on AJ Classics doesn't mean I would include it on an All Japan set. The exception would be when a certain belt is being defended. If Jumbo defends the AWA title against an All Japan wrestler then I see no reason why it should not go on an AWA set.

Here's my thinking by examples:

 

(a) Jumbo vs. Nick for the AWA Title in the AWA in 1980

 

I would put that both on an AJPW set (since it's an AJPW wrestler in the match) and an AWA set (since Nick is an AWA wrestler). The added bonuses is that it a good match, it's for the AWA Title, it's heated, it shows Jumbo wrestling in the US.

 

( Steamboat & Youngblood vs. Stevens & Snuka for Crockett's Tag Title from Toronto in 1980

 

I would put this on a Crockett set and a Toronto set. I wouldn't put it on a AJPW set. Crockett's guys worked in Toronto, and it's a complete match so it's a good example of the work of the wrestlers. It really had nothing to do with AJPW other than as a preview of wrestlers coming in.

 

© Inoki vs. Backlund in Florida for the WWF Title in 1980

 

I'd put this on sets of the WWF, Florida and New Japan. I frankly think it reflects well on all of them. Backlund was the WWF champ. He toured a bit, I think we see it did so far more than he was given credit for back in say 1996. It shows him going out of territory as the Champ (in fact to "hostile" NWA territory) and being able to draw heat. Dittos for Inoki. And for a Florida it shows the different types of wrestling they'd see in the area.

 

Flair is a bit of a mutation. He was the last "touring champ", but he largely was still Crockett's Boy. He's as tied into the history of JCP as he is into the NWA, especially since to a generation of fans JCP and then Turner became "the NWA" in their minds.

 

 

John