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The New Japan 175


goodhelmet

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Quick question, Will: are you planning on ever comping Liger at any point?

 

Liger will be released before the end of the year, maybe as soon as November.

 

That is splendid.

 

I'm intrested in seeing Tiger Mask as the only real matches I've seen from him is vs Dynamite and Eddie Gilbert in WWF.

 

So who would you say will be the Koko Ware of this set?

Is the Gilbert match from the PWO DVDs? If so, that was an awesome match.
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Twenty-eight Fujiwara matches? I wonder who influenced that many matches.

 

Set looks great, although some bias exists in plain sight, and there are some very key juniors matches absent involving Mask/Kid/Kobayashi.

I can't see how you'd look at this and make the complaint your making.

 

It'd be like Wild Pegasus/Resident Evil putting together a best of WCW project, there would be like two hundred Benoit matches.

Just because someone is a persons favorite wrestler doesn't mean that their matches are the greatest thing since hardcore porno.

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but look at the list.

Fujiwara isn't particularly overrepresented.

Perhaps the UWF angle is overrepresented. Fujiwara, Takada, and Maeda are all in 23 matches on the set in 86-87.

 

 

From 81-83 Antonio Inoki, who is the promotions ace and main evented most of their show only appears on the set 15 times.

From 81-83 Andre the Giant was one of the biggest stars in the world and a regular on big New Japan shows yet only appears on the set 3 times.

Hulk Hogan who is the biggest star in wrestling history and a regular in New Japan from 81-83 only appears in 3 matches during those years.

Compare that to Tiger Mask who is in a whopping 17 matches when he was only in New Japan for three years (81-83).

Look at those numbers. If anything the set way overrepresents Tiger Mask given the length of his New Japan career.

 

The Machines were in New Japan for three years too, I don't see the set compilers giving them 17 matches on the set. Biased against Machines.

Hiro Saito worked New Japan for almost the entire decade. Where are his 17 matches?

 

I mean this set has only one Bad News Allen match.

This set only has only one Umanosuke Ueda and that's one from way after his peak.

It has no Rusher Kimura matches.

It has no Tiger Jeet Singh matches.

No Kendo/Pogo matches.

No Gaspar brothers.

Doesn't have the undercard heavyweight Roger Smith v Animal Hamaguchi match.

And instead is overflowing with undercard juniors matches.

 

There are complaints to be made about this set, but anyone who complains "not enough juniors matches" hasn't actually read the match list.

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It'd be like Wild Pegasus/Resident Evil putting together a best of WCW project, there would be like two hundred Benoit matches.

Just because someone is a persons favorite wrestler doesn't mean that their matches are the greatest thing since hardcore porno.

Fujiwara was in 21 of the 75 Other Japan matches, more than anyone else. His matches also performed best in the overall voting results. Only 2 matches fell in the bottom third of the results and they finished 54th and 61st. So he had no matches in the Other Japan set that were universally hated by the voters and shouldn't have been on the set. Maybe you should cut Schneider, goodhelmet and Childs a little slack, as none of the Fujiwara matches on the Other Japan set didn't deserve to be there?

 

Obviously taste influences the DVD sets selection, but I think the fact that they could select 175 matches and still miss out a few matches that were conventionally well thought of, also goes to show just how much footage they had to trawl through and how many hidden gems they found through watching all the available footage.

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Replace Fujiwara with Fujinami and the Lawler comparison is more accurate. Fujinami was the king of the 80s in New Japan.

Although It might changes after I watch this set, I definitely agree with this. Fujinami was the man for NJ in the 80's and the fact he stayed the whole decade is another reason he'd be in so many matches.

 

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What had to be edited?

Didn't have to be edited. I just felt like deleting it at the time

 

Basically...

 

I don't agree with some of the matches which were left off and am puzzled on why some lesser matches were put on. I could never rate this set because of it even though I had no problem rating the WWF set even when I knew there were deserving matches missing.

 

Fujinami rules and I'm glad to see more people will realise this

 

Always been a Fujiwara fan

 

I think one should try to view all the matches as if they were watching them for the first time ever.

 

And while I'm at it -- Tiger Mask's effect, his aura that he created on the general audience is underappreciated.

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It's the Cobra/DK/DBS, probably one of the TM/Kobayashi matches, maybe some Owen Hart stuff.

Again I don’t understand this complaint at all.

 

It’s like the people making this complaint haven’t even looked at the match list Will provided.

 

Doing a quick finger math count I get 58 juniors matches (singles and tags with nothing but junior participation). I get another 30 matches with juniors where they are in multiperson matches that also include heavyweights. 88 matches on a set with 175 matches. More than half of the matches on this set include juniors.

 

For the purpose of my finger-counting, I’m saying that from 82 forward Fujinami is a heavyweight. This on some level is inaccurate as in 82 and first couple months of 83 he essentially was working as a natural junior fighting out of his weight class. Also I’d suggest in 88/89 he was being positioned as a true lightheavyweight (while most of the juniors were true middleweights). All that is to say that my finger counting of 88 matches under represents how many junior matches there are on this set.

 

This is a set of 175 matches where more than half of them have juniors in them. If you watch a season of NJ TV, you’d think this is ridiculous over representation of juniors. The three guys who put this together pretty clearly have a pro juniors bias.

 

The three guys who have acted as curators for this set did come at this with a clear post MMA bias. They can only conceive of wrestling as being presented as a great form of hand to hand combat. For most of the 80s wrestling was not just presented as the top hand to hand fighting style but also as being superior to most armed combat styles. Wrestlers vs. combatants fighting with forks, fencing foils, chains, and kendo sticks was a big part of what New Japan was all about.. This set fails to showcase that. Only one Ueda match and it’s a match where he doesn’t use a weapon. Only three Abby matches, two Brody, and two Buzz Sawyer matches. People are going to walk away from this set seeing only four matches with a chain and no matches with swords. No Tiger Jeet Singh, Kendo/Pogo, or Gaspar matches. Really? Are we supposed to believe that in the entire decade their were no great matches involving fencing foils or kendo sticks?

 

More than half of the juniors matches didn’t even make TV, or were shown in clips. Almost every second of the matches with Kendo sticks and fencing foils were shown in full. More than 50% of this set is steaming with junior heavyweights while less than 5% of it features guys who bring weapon to the ring. This set is permeated with a pro juniors bias.

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What's missing that should have been included:

9/23/81 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tatsumi Fujinami vs. El Solitario

1/1/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid

7/23/82 Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid

10/26/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

2/7/83 WWF Jr. Title: Tiger Mask vs. Black Tiger If full version exists

6/2/83 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

2/7/84 Kid/Smith/Cobra

8/2/84 NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title Match: The Cobra vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

9/19/85 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami

8/7/86 IWGP Junior: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Kazuo Yamazaki

9/16/86 Antonio Inoki vs. Bruiser Brody

12/10/86 IWGP Junior: Shiro Koshinaka vs. Kazuo Yamazaki

2/15/88 Top of the Super Junior League Match: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Shiro Koshinaka

8/8/88 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami

 

What is the defense for these selections? Are they better compared to the ones I have listed?

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Chavo Guerrero (5/9/80) Why wasn't the match from August included instead of this, as it was a much better match.

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura (9/25/80)

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Rocco (9/11/80)

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Steve Keirn (11/6/80)

Tiger Mask vs. Gran Hamada (11/6/81) this one, and the one below, why couldn't TM's better matches with Kid and Kobayashi be included instead of these?

Tiger Mask vs. El Canek (12/8/81)

Tiger Mask vs. Steven Wright (4/1/82) This is good, but better than 10/26/82 OR 6/2/83?

 

Hulk Hogan vs. Abdullah the Butcher (5/26/82)

Hulk Hogan vs. Antonio Inoki (IWGP League Final) (6/2/83)

Andre the Giant vs. Hulk Hogan (12/9/82)

Hulk Hogan vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (2/5/85)

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu (4/21/83) this is good, but consideration for one of the best NJPW had to offer in the '80s is stretching it just a tad.

 

Riki Choshu matches in '89 against Vader & Hashimikov, really?

 

I typed this up when the listing was initially released. It won't change anything, but it will provide some good commentary and discussion.

Oh, and another reason I posted it is because I killed the thread with my lost post = my bad.

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Let's take these one by one.

 

 

9/23/81 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tatsumi Fujinami vs. El Solitario - Nominated but a few bits of sloppiness and a lack of fight from Solitario at the finish left us thinking it wasn't quite as special as some of the other Fujinami selections. You certainly can't argue that any era of Fujinami is underrepresented on the set.

 

1/1/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid - I guess you feel that every one of their matches should make the set. This one didn't get much consideration from the panel as it was short and one segment hardly seemed connected to the next. You tell me what was special about it. I didn't see it.

 

7/23/82 Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid - I liked this one better, especially Bret Hart's work as a second for DK. But some bad no-selling, botched spots and their inability to follow up on body part work left us feeling this wasn't a must, especially with four other versions of the match-up already on.

 

10/26/82 WWF Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - Will and I liked this, but Phil didn't, and given that the 11/4/82 and 1/6/83 versions were already on, neither of us decided to fight for it.

 

2/7/83 WWF Jr. Title: Tiger Mask vs. Black Tiger - Some nice displays of athleticism but pulled down by some egregious no-selling of big moves. Their 5/26/82 match was much crisper and we didn't like the match-up enough to go past that one.

 

6/2/83 WWF Junior Heavyweight Crown Decision Match: Tiger Mask vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - This was fie but didn't seem to add anything to their top-notch outings from 11/4/82 and 1/6/83.

 

2/7/84 Kid/Smith/Cobra - I just don't get the love for this. You get a Davey/Cobra match with exactly one cool spot in it (Davey dead lift out of an arm lock), a weirdly paced Davey/DK match that just kind of ends out of nowhere and a Dynamite/Cobra match that starts hot but features lazy working of holds and an incredibly sloppy performance from Cobra. Yes, Dynamite wins the title, but where is the great work?

 

8/2/84 NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title Match: The Cobra vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi - I know it made the Bowdren list, but this was all clipped up. Good highlights but hard to tell about the build or transitions.

 

9/19/85 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami - This bored the panel to tears.

 

8/7/86 IWGP Junior: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Kazuo Yamazaki - This had a good finishing stretch, but the first half felt like a waste of time with a bunch of loose, pointless matwork. Too much great UWF invasion stuff for this to make it.

 

9/16/86 Antonio Inoki vs. Bruiser Brody - An hour of Brody? Really? Here was my review: They made it plain as day that they were going an hour, working with little urgency for the first 35-40 minutes. They basically took their normal match and stretched it over twice as long a period, which led to lots of lying around in holds. Broadway is a tough format but why do it if you're not going to take advantage of it to do something different? If you're asking me for a 60-minute commitment, I want the fucking Thrilla in Manilla, with great swings of emotion and uncertainty about the outcome throughout. The last 20 minutes were OK, with Brody allowing Inoki to look like his nominal superior. But I wouldn't want to watch this again, and I have no desire to inflict it on anyone else.

 

12/10/86 IWGP Junior: Shiro Koshinaka vs. Kazuo Yamazaki - Another Yamazaki match with a hot finish but a lot of drag in the body. Didn't hate it but again, it didn't stand out in such a well-represented period.

 

2/15/88 Top of the Super Junior League Match: Nobuhiko Takada vs. Shiro Koshinaka - This was good. We just preferred their other three matches and thought they covered the rivalry sufficiently.

 

8/8/88 Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami - This has been amply covered elsewhere. It's the one match I kind of regret leaving off as it was an epic between the company's two most enduring stars. That said, it fell short because they never quite paid off any of the intriguing ideas they raised.

 

What is the defense for these selections? Are they better compared to the ones I have listed?

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Chavo Guerrero (5/9/80) - The August match you mentioned was in Shea Stadium on a WWF show and therefore, not eligible for this set. I thought this one was better anyway with better matwork and more of a relentless build from the early trading of holds to the hot finish.

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura (9/25/80) - This was just an awesome showdown that built from solid mat stuff to unhinged violence. We all saw this as a slam dunk.

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Rocco (9/11/80) - Lots of nifty counters and a hot finish in this one. Why include the sixth best Dynamite/Tiger Mask match when you can instead introduce people to the excellent work of Tony Rocco?

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Steve Keirn (11/6/80) - Pretty much signature Fujinami here with your smooth trading of holds building to a fast, hot finish.

 

Tiger Mask vs. Gran Hamada (11/6/81) - Again, why include your fifth best Dynamite match or third best Kobayashi match instead of a beautiful demonstration of wrestling from Gran Hamada?

 

Tiger Mask vs. El Canek (12/8/81) - A lot of the disconnect seems to be that you'd rather see every version of the same three match-ups than watch Tiger Mask work a different kind of match against Canek. I really enjoyed watching Canek smack him around and heel it up.

 

Tiger Mask vs. Steven Wright (4/1/82) - Steve Wright is super cool with his Euro mat stylings. Again, why exclude him in favor of match-ups that are already well covered?

 

Hulk Hogan vs. Abdullah the Butcher (5/26/82)

Hulk Hogan vs. Antonio Inoki (IWGP League Final) (6/2/83)

Andre the Giant vs. Hulk Hogan (12/9/82)

Hulk Hogan vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (2/5/85) - Just to field these as a group, I think we saw a lot of value in watching the most famous American wrestler in history work excellent matches on a different stage. Hogan worked harder and showed a greater variety of offense in Japan, and his matches had great atmosphere.

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu (4/21/83) - Why is it stretching to love this match? Hardfought matwork, a dramatic ending and the hottest heavyweight rivalry in the world don't do it for you?

 

Riki Choshu matches in '89 against Vader & Hashimikov, really? - Yes, really. This panel tended to like heavyweight slugfests in front of hot crowds. Sorry if that's not your thing.

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