Ridiculous quotes from WO.com columnists

[jdw]

Tenryu may be my favorite wrestler on the set right now especially after the turn. Him & Hara as a team was phenomenal and the Jumbo feud in general was my favorite feud on the set but I've loved Tenryu for 20 years.

Understood.

 

My prediction is (or better said "was" in the comment above) that there will be a lot of Tenryu Love after the set comes out from the folks who watch it and vote:

 

"I could make a similar prediction about a wrestler in the All Japan set, though in the other direction."

 

The other direction from Sayama (who has been predictably ripped) would be getting love.

[KrisZ]

Yeah I got where you were going and I think he will end up being the Fujiwara of this set although Tenryu did have a higher profile going in than Fujiwara did.

[rovert]

How UFC's attempts to control the media and unwritten message board rules distort MMA news coverage

 

Yes, I went there.

Is that Beast crying in the corner there?

 

Bix you better watch your back the next time you are at a Brazilian Streakhouse in Las Vegas.

[Beast]

I'd take the article more seriously if Bix didn't have a history of wetting his pants in rage whenever Bryan or Dave "disrespected" him on that very F4W Board.

[jdw]

Dave spent the second half of the 80s putting over the greatness of Tenryu, so the voters would be hitting the old consenus. Fujiwara is an entirely different beast: Fujiwara Luv is something that popped up in the past decade or so, and is complete different from the old consensus.

 

In a sense, Tenryu is the Fujinami of the New Japan set: voters reaffirming the old beliefs.

 

I'm not sure if there's a potential Fujiwara on the set.

 

Rethinking Jumbo's work in the 80s in contrast to what the old consensus sad about it has been done so long, and so often that "Jumbo Was Lazy" has been run into the ground. Jumbo's 80s work was Fujiwara before Fujiwara, and by the time the set comes out it's nothing new.

 

I don't know if there's another native with enough stuff that folks would rate as high end as they rate Fujiwara _and_ was crapped on or ignored in the 80s. It's possible that folks will love Hara, but I doubt to the degree that Fujiwara is. Yatsu has been pimped forever, and his "decline" is an old topic as well. It's not like a lot of other natives have a ton that would get them rated that high. There might be some gaijin, but we've already mentioned Brody as being the Sayama of the set.

 

John

[Bix]

I'd take the article more seriously if Bix didn't have a history of wetting his pants in rage whenever Bryan or Dave "disrespected" him on that very F4W Board.

EdInSanAntonio? Hardcore Hogan? Bryan? Granny?

 

Care to address any of the actual points I made or are you just going to keep the "Waaah stop saying things that reflect negatively on WO.com" train going. The board is embarrassment. I haven't trolled there since I started getting paid to write about wrestling. Dave, Bryan, et al make themselves look worse by making that cesspool full of feces-throwing imbeciles their home.

[KrisZ]

What's going to be fun to see is to see how everyone ranks the Can-Ams/Footloose series as the Can-Ams/Kikuchi & Kobashi match has been pimped forever but the Footloose series was pretty damn great in its own right but doesn't get talked about too much over the recent years.

 

Regarding All-Japan and the natives, the only real natives that got pushed in that time was Baba, Jumbo, Tenryu, & Choshu then you had the guys right below them in Hamaguchi, Yatsu, & Hara so there probably won't be that breakout native star that we had in New Japan since they had so many natives feuding with each other rather than AJ who was gaijin heavy.

[rovert]

The Dual conversation of the "I AM TEH UFC INSIDER!" story and the AJ set is great reading.

[Bix]

The Dual conversation of the "I AM TEH UFC INSIDER!" story and the AJ set is great reading.

I wonder if Tenryu reads 2ch.

[Loss]

The Dual conversation of the "I AM TEH UFC INSIDER!" story and the AJ set is great reading.

I was just thinking the EXACT same thing.

[rovert]

The Dual conversation of the "I AM TEH UFC INSIDER!" story and the AJ set is great reading.

I was just thinking the EXACT same thing.

 

It is the contrast of really considered analysis of Pro Wrestling and I know I am what are you style arguing. Again Beast what ya playing at. Seriously it is shit or get off the pot time how can you defend Olly in this situation? If he whats to disclose insider information why cant he do it via email or at the next F4W convention rather than the message board if he is going to get pissy about a "private" conversation spreading outside the ,000s of posters on that site?

[Beast]

I'll just say this. I understand why Bix and KJH thought it was fine to report Copp's message board tidbits as news, but I think their outrage at Copp's anger is overblown. You've obviously been following wrestling for years and yet you don't understand why Dave chooses to report on some things while keeping others on the down low. I don't know why you both steal news from WO/F4W (even if you credit them, it's still leeching) and at the same time bitch them out for not reporting to your standards. If you don't like how Dave and Oliver report news, get your own "sources" and do it yourself. You constantly bring up how you don't care about them since now you get paid to write, well step up and do it better. The constant petty digs at WO/F4W makes your site look incredibly lower class.

 

Also, I would take Cageside Seats a lot more seriously if Bix hadn't had a meltdown because Bryan made a disparaging comment about CM Punk (in a totally light hearted manner).

 

And yeah the board has it's trolls (Rovert should know), but I'd say a good percentage of it interesting discussion. Painting it as the 4chan of wrestling boards is a ridiculous overstatement.

[jdw]

What's going to be fun to see is to see how everyone ranks the Can-Ams/Footloose series as the Can-Ams/Kikuchi & Kobashi match has been pimped forever but the Footloose series was pretty damn great in its own right but doesn't get talked about too much over the recent years.

The June Can-Am vs Footloose was ***** at the time, so it would be Sayama-ish if people ripped it.

 

One thing to make sure of, if you're not already doing it: get the Classics versions of all of those matches rather than the original TV. Can-Am vs Footloose was JIP on original TV, and some of the ones later in the year were butchered by TV. Classics seemed to be pretty complete on matches.

 

 

Regarding All-Japan and the natives, the only real natives that got pushed in that time was Baba, Jumbo, Tenryu, & Choshu then you had the guys right below them in Hamaguchi, Yatsu, & Hara so there probably won't be that breakout native star that we had in New Japan since they had so many natives feuding with each other rather than AJ who was gaijin heavy.

Some of that. Also, All Japan wasn't as deep on the natives that they pushed for much of the decade. In the first half of the decade, natives other than Baba, Jumbo and Tenryu didn't get pushed much. In the second half of the decade, it didn't seem to have the rounded native depth that either NJPW did or that AJPW in the early 90s had. But rounded I mean that in the early 90s they had Jumbo, Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Kobashi, Fuchi, Kikuchi and Ogawa all getting pushed to a degree on TV not just against gaijin but against each other in a variety of match-ups but also in an pretty ongoing, focused fashion. In the 80s, you'd have stuff like the lumpy heavies who teamed with Jumbo & Tenryu in the feud with Choshu's army, but they never really amounted to anything remotely like Fuchi, Kobashi, Kikuchi and Ogawa did in the Misawa & Co. vs Jumbo & Co. feud.

 

That really stunts the ability for guys to break out. In New Japan, all sorts of people were getting on TV even if it was still a Inoki, Fujinami, Sayama, Choshu, etc dominated show. In a way, New Japan was long good in that way, deep into the 90s.

 

John

[Bix]

I'll just say this. I understand why Bix and KJH thought it was fine to report Copp's message board tidbits as news, but I think their outrage at Copp's anger is overblown. You've obviously been following wrestling for years and yet you don't understand why Dave chooses to report on some things while keeping others on the down low.

What?!?! I didn't say that at all. It's not a matter of Dave choosing to be mum (and I fully understand why he has to sometimes). He didn't. When Oliver posted about it, Dave replied with a confirmation. To Dave's credit, he didn't throw a fit over it being reported, but he also didn't say anything about it on the main site, on Yahoo, or in the newsletter, which is pretty odd when it already broke publicly. My anger at Oliver is over him claiming that Keith took his comments out of context when Keith did nothing of the sort. It was an out and out lie about the website that I run and one of its writers.

 

I don't know why you both steal news from WO/F4W (even if you credit them, it's still leeching) and at the same time bitch them out for not reporting to your standards. If you don't like how Dave and Oliver report news, get your own "sources" and do it yourself. You constantly bring up how you don't care about them since now you get paid to write, well step up and do it better. The constant petty digs at WO/F4W makes your site look incredibly lower class.

Jesus H. Christ, it's not theft or leeching. Is it stealing when it's done on mainstream topics? You also realize that in this case, my criticism of Dave was by far the most mild one I made, right? When the opportunity came to ignore or confirm the story, he confirmed it, but he didn't publicize it further, which is suspicious when you're dealing with such a huge story (to the point that it set and holds our pageview record), and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. I don't recall any petty digs at F4W at Cageside. I save those for this site.

 

As far as sources, maybe I'm just unlucky in being friendly with the few people in the wrestling business who DON'T talk to the WON. Since one of the more obvious WON sources (who was outed as such by another site) is a crazy drug addict who used the newsletter to try to bury one of said friends on multiple occasions (including a "He's dating my ex-girlfriend, who's perceived as slutty!") story, I'm pretty happy the way things are.

[KrisZ]

Yeah I got all the Classics to start off with then the TV afterwards and yeah the 6/5/89 match is the famous match but the 9/2/89 rematch is just as strong if not stronger.

 

Regarding the supporting cast, in the early part of the decade on the heavyweight scene it was guys like Takashi Ishikawa who was fun and then guys like Rocky Hata & Motoshi Okuma who were the designated job guys in random tags then the later part of the decade it morphed into Shunji Takano, Shinichi Nakano, Hiroshi Wajima, & Isao Takagi as the whipping boys.

 

The booking philosophy between New Japan & All-Japan was so different as well mainly because in All-Japan you had Dory Funk Jr. as the booker and looking at the early 80's it was very Americanized in that there was lots of blood with the heavy emphasis of gaijins being perceived as the stars along with Baba & Jumbo. Tenryu didn't really break through until 1983 when he got the nod as Jumbo's tag partner so you look at the first four years you had Baba & Jumbo as the top natives period with space between the rest but the gaijin were heavily spotlighted. Guys like Hansen, Brody, Race, Bockwinkel, Abby, Tiger Jeet, & The Sheik were the top guys until Tenryu moved up in 1983 and Choshu's Army came in in 1985.

 

New Japan was doing the same featuring gaijin but it wasn't as heavy on top as they brought in the IWE guys with Inoki feuding with Rusher then transferring over to Choshu's Army after the turn in 1982 so their main events were predominantly Japanese starting then. Andre & Hogan were about the only gaijin that was perceived as big of a star to main event with the Japanese after that at least on the heavyweight level.

[Bix]

Ooh I somehow missed this:

You constantly bring up how you don't care about them since now you get paid to write, well step up and do it better.

I'm pretty sure that I've never said that. In this thread, I said that I haven't trolled at F4W since I've been paid to write. I've also said that that if the WO.com columnists are paid, then it embarrasses me. Both are very different things from what you claimed I said, and are the extent of the "I get paid to write about wrestling/MMA" comments I've made about that site.

[Ditch]

Tenryu.

That is the #1 thing I'm looking forward to. After watching a lot of '80s AJ, SWS and WAR over the last year, I think the case for Tenryu as an all-time great wrestler is just as easy to make as the case for Jumbo was. Tenryu has weaknesses in things like matwork and athleticism, but makes up for it with such incredible consistency in so many feds and against so many opponents. No weak years at all between '83 and '94, then '95 was (as near as I can tell) an 'off' year for WAR, then back to good stuff in '96 and straight through to the World Japan disaster in '03. And even there it's not like he was bad. Then he goes to NOAH and tears the house down a bunch at age 55. Taken as a whole his body of work is incredible. I think he absolutely smokes more-beloved wrestlers like Liger at this point, and I say having probably seen a higher % of Liger's big matches than I have of Tenryu's.

[jdw]

The 9/89 mactch wasn't talked about a lot because it was edited way down on TV if I recall. The JWJ may have pimped it as being great while lamenting the edit job. The analogy might be the 10/95 Kawada & Taue vs Misawa & Kobashi that wasn't pimped at the time because it wasn't on TV. Then the commercial got in a few hands, it got pimped, then became a collectable.

 

That's one of the big benefits of the project: getting stuff out there in people's hands. It may not be my 150, your 150, Phil's 150, Will's 150... but it's an excellent starting point for someone to launch off into watching the promotion/area. If one likes Sayama from what's on there, it's not hard to get a whole hell of a lot more Sayama.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

I don't recall any petty digs at F4W at Cageside. I save those for this site.

Loss and I really appreciate that!!!

[rovert]

I think Bix answered your prior points rather well and Cageside Seats is his deal. But I will say Beast I dont think youve grasped SB Nation and blogs in general.

 

Also, I would take Cageside Seats a lot more seriously if Bix hadn't had a meltdown because Bryan made a disparaging comment about CM Punk (in a totally light hearted manner).

Bix has been commenting on the Pro Wrestling and how it was reported (on this forum for example) before that regardless what you think of the situation above. I still laugh in my role in that by the way by initially setting Bryan off by seemingly correctly outing a source by putting two of his news stories together.

 

You can check out my posts at the time to back this up but Bryan's treatment of Punk got darn creepy and personal at points. Let’s not forget Punk "being in the doghouse" the week before he won the title, as a subscriber I thought Bryan showed a lot of non-comedy anti-Punk bias at the time and was rating his matches based on his real life. To the degree that it even irked Punk himself someone by reputation is a non-internet guy.

 

And yeah the board has it's trolls (Rovert should know), but I'd say a good percentage of it interesting discussion. Painting it as the 4chan of wrestling boards is a ridiculous overstatement.

Yes the MMA board is probably one of the better ones on the net but in fairness name me another Wrestling board on a similar standing that has a jailbait thread.

[Tim Evans]

Yes the MMA board is probably one of the better ones on the net but in fairness name me another Wrestling board on a similar standing that has a jailbait thread.

I don't know if it's on "similar standing" but TSM had one.

[Bix]

And yeah the board has it's trolls (Rovert should know), but I'd say a good percentage of it interesting discussion. Painting it as the 4chan of wrestling boards is a ridiculous overstatement.

Yes the MMA board is probably one of the better ones on the net but in fairness name me another Wrestling board on a similar standing that has a jailbait thread.

 

Rovert for the win. I love you, man.

[rovert]

Yes the MMA board is probably one of the better ones on the net but in fairness name me another Wrestling board on a similar standing that has a jailbait thread.

I don't know if it's on "similar standing" but TSM had one.

 

Didn’t know that.

 

I was going for something tangible about that board being a cesspool (even Bryan has called it that at times btw) as we could debate the subjective nature of the standard of posting and make generalisations all day. Just to clear that up.

[kjh]

My anger at Oliver is over him claiming that Keith took his comments out of context when Keith did nothing of the sort. It was an out and out lie about the website that I run and one of its writers.

I think Oliver was upset at my editorialising after I had quoted him accurately and that's what he meant when I said he took his comments out of context:

 

Personally I could do without Oliver's "holier than thou" pro UFC tone. Sure it's shady. Part and parcel of the job of being a great promoter, unfortunately yes. It's not like Dana White is above doing a whispering campaign against his enemies, whether it be Pride, Elite XC, M-1 Global, Fedor Emelienenko or Strikeforce. Dave and Oliver should just be thankful that Vince McMahon wasn't ahead of the curve and didn't nix the first series of The Ultimate Fighter from following Raw on Spike TV in January 2005.

So yeah I understand why Oliver was upset, because I took a shot at him. But in my opinion it was warranted. There's an obvious conflict of interest when someone is employed by UFC and then starts spreading rumours online about WWE utilising shady business practices in his other hat as a "private" message board poster.

 

Just for the record, I don't get paid for my contributions at Cageside Seats, it's just a hobby. So, if this was aimed towards me:

 

You constantly bring up how you don't care about them since now you get paid to write, well step up and do it better.

then nothing could be further from the truth.

[jdw]

Tenryu.

That is the #1 thing I'm looking forward to. After watching a lot of '80s AJ, SWS and WAR over the last year, I think the case for Tenryu as an all-time great wrestler is just as easy to make as the case for Jumbo was. Tenryu has weaknesses in things like matwork and athleticism, but makes up for it with such incredible consistency in so many feds and against so many opponents. No weak years at all between '83 and '94, then '95 was (as near as I can tell) an 'off' year for WAR, then back to good stuff in '96 and straight through to the World Japan disaster in '03. And even there it's not like he was bad. Then he goes to NOAH and tears the house down a bunch at age 55. Taken as a whole his body of work is incredible. I think he absolutely smokes more-beloved wrestlers like Liger at this point, and I say having probably seen a higher % of Liger's big matches than I have of Tenryu's.

 

That's pretty much what I expect to hear from most of the voters/posters.

 

I was a fan when starting to watch AJPW in 1989, and he was on the first tape a Japanese co-worker gave to me: Tenryu & Kawada vs Hansen & Gordy. I probably "turned" on Tenryu back when Frank did his Jumbo-Tenryu tape set (which McLorefice then traded all over the place). Frank wrote up each match in Frank-style, and if you popped in the tape with it in hand you started to get the sense that Tenryu had a Sayama-esque quality of sloppiness, spottiness and at times happy to lay around catching breathers. He was missing the 1987 matches, which have seen one of them later wasn't terribly favorable to Tenryu's work (though of course he brought the "intensity"). I tended to agree with Frank's theme in those pieces: the 1988-90 matches on rewatch (and rewatch since) have looked like The Jumbo Show in their better moments.

 

I've found Tenryu hit-and-miss when watching his matches since then, often in the same match. The analogy might be Shawn Micheals, which may please some Tenryu fans... and not please some other Tenryu fans. Lord knows I might before I die become a Shawn Fan, and perhaps come a full 360 on Tenryu as well. Haven't reached that point with either of them yet.

 

I doubt that's the way the voters will see him, and highly doubt anyone will be the Frank to the group in putting out an opposite view on Tenryu (and if there was, he'd piss the hell out of the rest of the voters). It's far more likely there will be a Jumbo-contrarian than one for Tenryu.

 

I think what will come out of the voters will be very close to how Meltzer viewed Tenryu in the second half of the decade. My guess is for the same reasons: intense, stiff, great persona & aura, Cool Stuff.

 

Just a wild ass guess.

 

John