The Bixenspan Group for 7/1/07

[ohtani's jacket]

I think it is just the way that most people use it that is obnoxious. I find this incredibly hard to explain, as it seems contradictory, but calling lucha lucha libre I have no issue with, but calling Japanese Wrestling Puroresu or 'puro' is just so nerdy and obnoxious. It means 'pro-wrestling' so why not just call it fucking pro-wrestling? At least in the case of lucha libre it means 'free fight' (loosely..), so it makes somewhat sense to use the original language for it.

I see what you mean.

 

Actually if you ask a Japanese person about puroresu they'll usually say, "you mean WWE?" It would be better if people called it Japanese puroresu, but as the other guy said it's a tag like "anime". I can't stand that "pro wres" shit, though. That's annoying. And there's other words like Joshi and gaijin which are borderline. But Japanese misappropriates English all the time. It drives me crazy when people ask me if I'm "high tension."

 

Oddly, people got crap for saying Zenjo. One of the more acceptable pinches.

[pantherwagner]

"Pro wres" caught fire among the OLC Class of 2006 smarky crew as a parody of some (Smarkschoice?) guy who actually used it for real. I imagine most of the usage you'll see here will be parody style.

 

OJ, as you know better than anybody here, the Japanese also have their own retarded words for stuff. It's funny there was this 90s Lorefice myth about Japanese fans being smarter, when it's pretty clear that stupidity among wrestling fans is something universal that has no sexual, racial or religious boundaries.

 

But the worst internet buzzword ever is lucharesu. I am confident that nobody that uses that one regularly is a valuable member of our society.

 

About the show - I have listened to the first hour so far and it's been fun. You should do it once a month.

[Loss]

My annoyance with it is that it's just easier to call it wrestling. It's wrestling, regardless of where it's happening.

 

I agree that not having a problem with anyone using the term "lucha libre" is a bit of a double standard on my part, but it just doesn't bother me.

 

Spunk explained it well.

 

It's like when people won't just call Riki Choshu's scorpion submission hold a scorpion deathlock. They have to call it that other name.

 

The term "puroresu" doesn't really annoy me that much, but calling it "pure-o" does.

 

For the record, the term "anime" bugs me too. Just call it a damn cartoon.

[Jingus]

But lazy folks like me don't want to say "Japanese animation" or "Japanese pro wrestling" when there's short & easy substitutes like "anime" and "puro". I just don't want to pronounce that many syllables when I don't have to. And yes, I'm also one of those guys who says "black" instead of "African-American".

 

I do agree on lucharesu, though. That's one of those terms (like Strong Style) that seems to have a different definition with every different smark that uses it.

[MikeCampbell]

I've seen dozens of matches out of Japan better than anything I've seen on Smackdown this year.

Such as............

[Ray]

Kobayashi/Sasaki/Shadow WX/MASADA vs. Kasai/Miyamoto/Numazawa/Teioh - BJW 1/2

Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki - NJPW 1/4

KENTA/Marufuji/Rikio vs. Takayama/Suzuki/SUWA - NOAH 1/21

Ricky Marvin/Kotaro Suzuki vs. Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe - NOAH 1/21

Kojima/Mutoh/Hayashi vs. Kondo/TARU/YASSHI - AJPW 1/26

Takashi Sasaki/Shadow WX/MASADA vs. Isami/Miyamoto/Inematsu - BJW 1/28

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Osamu Nishimura - MUGA 1/28

Satoshi Kojima vs. Minoru Suzuki - AJPW 2/17

Yoshihiro Takayama/Kohei Sato vs. Shinjiro Ohtani/Takao Omori - Zero-One Max 2/18

Minoru vs. Wataru Inoue - NJPW 2/18

Kintaro Kanemura/Mammoth Sasaki vs. Jaki Numazawa/Isami - BJW 2/26

Akira Taue/Naomichi Marufuji vs. Yoshihiro Takayama/Takuma Sano - NOAH 3/4

KENTA vs. Takeshi Morishima - NOAH 3/4

Takashi Sasaki vs. Yuko Miyamoto - BJW 3/14

Yuji Nagata vs. Giant Bernard - NJPW 3/18

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. Takeshi Morishima/Mohammed Yone - NOAH 4/1

Liger/Minoru/Milano vs. El Samurai/Taguchi/Yujiro - NJPW 4/7

Liger/Milano/BxB Hulk vs. Kanemoro/Inoue/Naito - NJPW 4/13

Minoru vs. Ryusuke Taguchi - NJPW 4/13

Yuji Nagata vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - NJPW 4/13

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. Yoshihiro Takayama/Takashi Sugiura - NOAH 4/28

Abdullah Kobayashi vs. Ryuji Ito - BJW 4/30

Liger/Minoru/Devitt vs. El Samurai/Taguchi/Yujiro - NJPW 5/2

Koji Kanemoto/Wataru Inoue vs. Tiger Mask/Tetsuya Naito - NJPW 5/2

Yuji Nagata vs. Shiro Koshinaka - NJPW 5/2

Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Kamikaze - Zero-One Max 5/27

Masato Tanaka vs. Yoshihito Sasaki - Zero-One Max 5/27

Ryuji Ito vs. Jaki Numazawa - BJW 5/28

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. D'Lo Brown/Buchanan - NOAH 6/8

[jdw]

I obviously have no issue with the term puroresu.

 

It's use among "smart" fans in the us predates any wrestling message board that exists. Frankly, it was a Hisa Tanabe who educate many of us to the term back on RSP-W. Google's archive have Hisa and Katz Kawai, both Japanese, introducing us stupid gaijin to the term all the way back in 1992. I suspect that if the archive went back further, we'd find it earlier.

 

The use from very early on seems to have always been to differentiate what the fan likes rather than "american wrestling". I actually used it in the same way off the net with Japanese co-workers - "I like puroresu, not the WWF stuff." And they got it.

 

"pro-wres" gets knocked these days because Meltzer once attempted to claim that there was no such thing as "puroresu", that instead it was "pro-wres". I can see why Dave got confused - I had Japanese co-workers use the term "pro-wres" when introducing me to Japanese wrestling... all the way back in early 1989, before I ever read the WON. I think there are some Japanese people who think that it's easier for us dumb gaijin to grasp the slang "pro-wres" rather than trying puroresu. The Japanese reporter that I delt with for years, who Dave dealt with for longer (and still likely does today) would use "pro-wres" with me until I started using "puroresu" enough that he saw that I "got it". So... while I was moderately annoyed by Dave's unwillingness to get educated on the subject when people raised it, I do understand where he's coming from - I dealt with the same thing.

 

Perhaps things have some so full circle that someone on SC/TSM started using it, and the guys at OLC had some fun with it. But it really isn't a new term.

 

On Lucharesu, it looks like Dean popularized it. He gave credit to Cheetah for coining the term. I'll have to asked her Wednesday... but I suspect she'll say someone else coined it, and all of that crowd of posters in Dean's old DVDVR threads in 1996/97 started using using it. I guess I have a soft spot for the term, since I have a soft spot for those old threads. The general point of the term was to differentiat the MPro melting pot of styles in 1996/97 from All Japan, New Japan, UWF-style, Joshi, or even NJ Juniors style. It served it purporse at the time.

 

 

John

[Bix]

The recent mocking of "pro wres" stems from Ecchi Rebirth using it on OLC in a bizarre, non-ironic fashion to defend Mick Foley.

[Guest Spunk]

Kobayashi/Sasaki/Shadow WX/MASADA vs. Kasai/Miyamoto/Numazawa/Teioh - BJW 1/2

Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki - NJPW 1/4

KENTA/Marufuji/Rikio vs. Takayama/Suzuki/SUWA - NOAH 1/21

Ricky Marvin/Kotaro Suzuki vs. Jay Briscoe/Mark Briscoe - NOAH 1/21

Kojima/Mutoh/Hayashi vs. Kondo/TARU/YASSHI - AJPW 1/26

Takashi Sasaki/Shadow WX/MASADA vs. Isami/Miyamoto/Inematsu - BJW 1/28

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Osamu Nishimura - MUGA 1/28

Satoshi Kojima vs. Minoru Suzuki - AJPW 2/17

Yoshihiro Takayama/Kohei Sato vs. Shinjiro Ohtani/Takao Omori - Zero-One Max 2/18

Minoru vs. Wataru Inoue - NJPW 2/18

Kintaro Kanemura/Mammoth Sasaki vs. Jaki Numazawa/Isami - BJW 2/26

Akira Taue/Naomichi Marufuji vs. Yoshihiro Takayama/Takuma Sano - NOAH 3/4

KENTA vs. Takeshi Morishima - NOAH 3/4

Takashi Sasaki vs. Yuko Miyamoto - BJW 3/14

Yuji Nagata vs. Giant Bernard - NJPW 3/18

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. Takeshi Morishima/Mohammed Yone - NOAH 4/1

Liger/Minoru/Milano vs. El Samurai/Taguchi/Yujiro - NJPW 4/7

Liger/Milano/BxB Hulk vs. Kanemoro/Inoue/Naito - NJPW 4/13

Minoru vs. Ryusuke Taguchi - NJPW 4/13

Yuji Nagata vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - NJPW 4/13

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. Yoshihiro Takayama/Takashi Sugiura - NOAH 4/28

Abdullah Kobayashi vs. Ryuji Ito - BJW 4/30

Liger/Minoru/Devitt vs. El Samurai/Taguchi/Yujiro - NJPW 5/2

Koji Kanemoto/Wataru Inoue vs. Tiger Mask/Tetsuya Naito - NJPW 5/2

Yuji Nagata vs. Shiro Koshinaka - NJPW 5/2

Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Kamikaze - Zero-One Max 5/27

Masato Tanaka vs. Yoshihito Sasaki - Zero-One Max 5/27

Ryuji Ito vs. Jaki Numazawa - BJW 5/28

Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio vs. D'Lo Brown/Buchanan - NOAH 6/8

I agree with a bunch of the BJW being great, and some of the NJPW I've seen, there is some stuff like Minoru vs Taguchi that I will openly scoff at, and I love Nagata but the Suzuki match wasn't that good. I think any given Matt Hardy match from the past few months on Smackdown blows a match like that out of the water with ease.

 

I think a lot of that list is that way for me. I think I'll just say that I RARELY agree with young Raymond when it comes to Japanese wrestling.

[Ray]

I don't get this Matt Hardy love at all. I've seen his matches with Kennedy, Regal, Finlay, and Cade recently and I thought they were all thoroughly average. I really can't see it being anything more than a part of the "good punches = good wrestler" trend that is so widespread right now.

[Guest Spunk]

I don't get this Matt Hardy love at all. I've seen his matches with Kennedy, Regal, Finlay, and Cade recently and I thought they were all thoroughly average. I really can't see it being anything more than a part of the "good punches = good wrestler" trend that is so widespread right now.

Because he puts on solid matches all the time and is good at what he does? Not every match needs to be an OMFG epic to be considered good. I'd take Matt Hardy pulling out a desperation Twist of Fate for the win than a finisher exchange/2.9 count-off.

[Ray]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

[pantherwagner]

"pro-wres" gets knocked these days because Meltzer once attempted to claim that there was no such thing as "puroresu", that instead it was "pro-wres". I can see why Dave got confused - I had Japanese co-workers use the term "pro-wres" when introducing me to Japanese wrestling... all the way back in early 1989, before I ever read the WON. I think there are some Japanese people who think that it's easier for us dumb gaijin to grasp the slang "pro-wres" rather than trying puroresu. The Japanese reporter that I delt with for years, who Dave dealt with for longer (and still likely does today) would use "pro-wres" with me until I started using "puroresu" enough that he saw that I "got it". So... while I was moderately annoyed by Dave's unwillingness to get educated on the subject when people raised it, I do understand where he's coming from - I dealt with the same thing.

"Pro Wres" it's not slang, it and "Puroresu" are two different (and technically valid) romanizations of the same katakana (プロレス) which is a shortened version of professional wrestling. The Japanese make short words for long foreign words they can't pronounce (the funniest one to me is "conbini" for convenience store) but they write in katakana what you hear, not each letter from each word. And then people usually romanize it back using the standard translation rules, which is why for "television" you have "terebi" instead of "televi". The Japanese really struggle with English because they learn how to pronounce them (of course, in Japanese style English) but not how to write them back.

 

I think there was a good thread about this something like 5 years ago in Wrestling Classics.

[pantherwagner]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

Today I saw Laredo Kid/Super FLAY vs. Super Calo/Gran Apache and damn those were some hot near falls. I'm sure the 2.9999999999999 stuff Spunk refers to is the Super Fire Pro Wrestling finisher style overkill.

[Bix]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

Today I saw Laredo Kid/Super FLAY vs. Super Calo/Gran Apache and damn those were some hot near falls. I'm sure the 2.9999999999999 stuff Spunk refers to is the Super Fire Pro Wrestling finisher style overkill.

 

Exactly. More Joe Liderish.

[Guest Spunk]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

Hot nearfalls rule. A match where the last 10 - 15 minutes is nothing but nearfalls isn't 'hot' nearfalls, its just cheap heat.

[Ray]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

Hot nearfalls rule. A match where the last 10 - 15 minutes is nothing but nearfalls isn't 'hot' nearfalls, its just cheap heat.

 

Yeah, those Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada/Taue matches sure sucked.

[Guest Spunk]

If I ever see that awful "2.9 count" buzzword again I'll scream. I love how hot nearfalls have become a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs.

Hot nearfalls rule. A match where the last 10 - 15 minutes is nothing but nearfalls isn't 'hot' nearfalls, its just cheap heat.

 

Yeah, those Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada/Taue matches sure sucked.

 

You know, I thought this was going to be a board where I *didn't* have to be an asshole once in a while, but jesus fucking christ, Ray. What the fuck is wrong with you outside of never leaving your house? Who the fuck is talking about 90's All Japan here. If you've followed any line of thought involved with current criticism for 'puro' it is basically saying -- 'THE FORMULA WHICH THOSE INDIVIDUALS STARTED HAS MUTATED AND PERVERTED INTO SOMETHING WITHOUT THE SUBSTANCE BUT JUST THE BIG SPOTS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT CREATIVE ANYMORE' -- does that make sense? Do I need to turn that into a long, rambling paragraph?

[Ray]

.

[Guest Spunk]

Its called having fun, Ray. I enjoy pro-wrestling and think it is fun to watch.

 

You can't seem to grasp the concept of differing opinions and get mad shook when somebody dares deviate from Ray's world view (all 1,000 sq feet of it) and is confident/comfortable with their own opinion. I've basically had the same fucking argument with you since 2004. I do not like 2.9 pro-wrestling, I think it is overkill and completely not exciting. You get excited and kick your computer chair over for it -- great. If you somehow relate 1990 - 1994 All Japan with current fucking NOAH you are just clueless as shit, dude. It is different in many, many ways. What exists now is a mutation of it, which to me plays out a lot like RVD ECW matches where its a lot of hitting moves, kicking out, laying around and waiting to get up to rush to the next big spot.

 

I do not find that exciting, but I find Matt Hardy and Fit Finlay matches to be incredible. Get over it already.

[MikeCampbell]

Satoshi Kojima vs. Minoru Suzuki - AJPW 2/17

You pimped this, and not the vastly better Kondo/Nakajima match from the same show?

[World's Worst Man]

When I came back to wrestling in 2004, after being out of it since mid-2000, the one thing I noticed about Japanese wrestling was the "2.9 syndrome", and how heatless some of those matches ended up being. I'm not saying I dislike that style, because when done right, it's probably my favourite, but what I mean is how many matches where it seemed like the wrestlers thought they could get heat simply by trading big moves back and forth for near falls without doing much else. Part of the reason why those AJPW matches worked so well was the gradual build and transition into the near-falls. They'd slowly start working bigger offense in, tease the biggest stuff now and then, and at the perfect moment, BAM, a guy would get nailed by a big move and be in a lot of trouble, which got the crowd on edge and lead into the stretch run. But with some of the more recent stuff (I'm looking at you Zero-One), the wrestlers would just lazily work through the opening portions of the match, and then all of the sudden start throwing big moves out left and right. It just felt like they were killing time to get to the part that the people supposedly wanted to see. Except more often than not, the crowd just didn't care because the wrestlers were taking it from 1st gear all the way up to 6th gear without anything in between. Which caused their 6th gear to have too large of a ratio, and the match just ended up being overkill, with guys kicking out of move after move after move, made even worse by the inevitable no-selling after all the punishment. They just seemed to not know how to fill in the middle portions of matches, so you'd have half a match of slow and dull, and half fast and dull.

 

I'm not talking in absolutes here, as there have been some terrific heavy near-fall matches in recent years. It just seems like the "big offense, near-falls~!" style has become stock, which means it's done by everyone, and not everyone has the ability to pull it off. And given how hard it is on the wrestlers' bodies, if they're not drawing with that style, it's rather unproductive and harmful.

[ohtani's jacket]

"Pro Wres" it's not slang, it and "Puroresu" are two different (and technically valid) romanizations of the same katakana (プロレス) which is a shortened version of professional wrestling.

Is "pro wres" really a romanization of that katakana?

 

Anyway, Japanese people use different romaji all the time, so I won't quibble. If they can say Erikku Kuraputon and Makudonarudo, then Westerners can write and pronounce プロレス as "pro wres."

 

I think in certain contexts saying puroresu is OK. Like, "I went to a puroresu show in Japan." It is, after all, puroresu[/] in Japan. And since it's katakana, some Japanese aren't sure how to pronounce it, either, especially if they have no interest in wrestling. As far as I can tell, there's a long way and a short way to pronounce it and it depends on how familiar you are with the term. Japanese is a bitch to pronounce anyway... I do have to say that on the radio show they mispronounced practically every single wrestler's name, but I can't pronounce Tsuruta or Tenryu to save my life.

 

It's dead in Japan anyway. People on the internet care way more about it than Japanese people do. It's like a relic from the past over here. They're all about soccer in Japan.

[Jingus]

I've referred to the 2.9 syndrome as "Finisher Burn" for a few years now.

 

But ya know what? It's not even in Japan where it's most annoying. It's in America, in ROH and even moreso in its various clones, where American indy guys repeatedly kick out of the most ridiculous finishers, and then just get up and no-sell mere seconds later. And they don't do it with anything even resenbling the style and storytelling that the AJ classic dudes did it in the mid-90s. Intstead, it's "Wrestler A hits murderdeathkill finisher, cover, 2.999!, they get back up, boot to the gut, Irish whip, OMG Wrestler B reversed it, B with murderdeathkill finisher, cover, 2.999999999!" As much as I like the rest of his work, Jack Evans can be real bad about that, kicking out of every damn thing under the sun like he's a li'l flippy Cena.

[pantherwagner]

Is "pro wres" really a romanization of that katakana?

Yeah. I have friends who write it as pro wres or even proresu. I guess the point is, the literal translation is pro wres or puroresu, but the interpretation is professional wrestling. I guess it's like people translating "lucha libre" as free fight instead of wrestling.

 

And as you said, wrestling in Japan is really dead. The only fans are people who were there in years ago. I have yet to meet anyone younger than 22 that is even a casual fan, like it's just something their older brothers watched but is now a big joke. Wrestling will stay around until the retirement of an entire generation of Mutos and Misawas who wrestle because they can't do anything else in life, and set up a bar or a restaurant or something like all Japanese wrestlers do.