The Microscope

Really what's the deal with this guy? Would it be fair to say that he never really made it? Like ever. I mean in 1985 managed by JJ Dillon he just seems like a loser, a very poor man's Flair. For most of the 1990s, what should have been his peak years, he was working the indies or brief jobber runs in WWF / WCW. Seems harsh to say it, but I can't think of someone with a more disappointing and unremarkable career who lasted so long. What's the story here?

Per the orders of goodhelmet, the Rey discussion going on in the Punk thread must now be directed here.

I'm beginning to think Adrian Adonis is a severely underrated worker who needs some revisionist love. He was a unique and charismatic worker who needs to be in the conversation when we discuss top workers from the 80s. Adrian's main issue from a historical perspective is that the best captured run of his career is the Adorable Adrian run in the WWF, when he was going downhill from a physical standpoint. I'd still say, though, that his work in that time is excellent. He's bumping at a ridiculous level for a man his size, and he got over a character that pretty obviously reads like a punishment. Watch the tag team cage match with Savage v. Sammartino and Santana - the …

This is mainly me wanting to fact check Dave, since after watching a bunch of Portland, I'm confused about the timeline and I want us to work through this together. Please use this note for anything you want though. I just want to get this down. Dave said this in his bio of Borne: Now, admitting that the dates on youtube may not be correct but I think most of them are relatively incorrect at least., let's look at what we do have here. Borne was around as a prelim guy in 79 or 80 but he really starts interacting with Buddy in 81, teaming with Buzz Sawyer vs Buddy/Rip and Buddy/Destroyer in February and March. His one night reign with the title was between Apr…

Ten years ago, I enjoyed Tenryu as a lumpy grumpy veteran in post-split All Japan. I'd seen some of his '80s work and thought he was good, but nowhere near the level of Japan's all-time best. Now, I see him as either #1 or #2 from Japan, and certainly a GOAT candidate. THE CASE -Drawing. I don't think anyone can be on the GOAT list without a lot of big draws to their name. Tenryu has been in either the #1 or #2 match for dozens upon dozens of 10,000+ attendance events, including several Tokyo Dome cards. Pre-split and post-split All Japan, New Japan, WAR, SWS, UWFi, World Japan (debut show), and his series of semi-main Budokan matches was a big part of NOAH's suc…

Bleach Blond Japanese heel, who kicks ass, what is not love about my boy, Yoshihiro Takayama. I love how Takayama is one of the few native Japanese not afraid to heel it up. He is an arrogant giant that knows he can kick your ass and he still throws in an eye-rake. He is definitely one of those puro's wrestlers that gives off the badass aura even if Don Frye shattered that illusion. IWGP Heavyweight Champion Yuji Nagata vs Yoshihiro Takayama - Tokyo Dome 05/02 From winning the 2001 G-1 Climax to main eventing the 01/04 Dome against Akiyama, now Nagata defends the IWGP title against the shoot-style giant, Yoshihiro Takayama. Takayama just carries himself so diffe…

Now I know Punk is solid in ring and his promos are good every once in a while. But I just don't see why everyone thinks he is the best in the world. Pardon the pun. Now I haven't seen it too much on here but pretty much everywhere else. So help me out here an I missing something with this guy?

Best tag team wrestler of all time? I mean you have MX, the dangerous alliance and all their tags and I thought he kicked ass in the blue bloods and the ecw tag he was in. I might be missing another team outside of the kaos short lived connection but regardless that's a very good resume and as a singles star he always had good matches. I couldn't really point to one singles match particular but he was always a great worker. Thoughts....suggestions of matches and opinions as to where he ranks as a tag team wrestler fire away

Why the hell doesn't anyone like Stan Stasiak? I'm watching him vs Brett Sawyer here and he's king-sized in it. Sawyer's just a physical mess when it comes to coordination and Stasiak is great as this lumbering old bastard who just walks around the ring locking trapezius claws that would be boring if he wasn't such a looming presence and getting pissed off everytime Sawyer does a goofy Leaping Lanny taunt. There's one of the best jerkiest king of the mountains I've seen in Portland with a really good payoff. He's also pretty great at focusing on a body part with really, really simple but effective stuff. He's like my father in law if he was a wrestler. I really liked him …

Have at it!

My personal revelation from the 1980s lucha set. I had seen the MS1 match before, but when you add all of the other awesome performances in that set, I think he might go down as the greatest brawler in wrestling history. Insane bumper and bleeder, great left hook and just impeccable timing on his comebacks and attacks. I figured this would be a good place for folks to put some of their 80's Chicana reviews and to search out other performances.

Watching how Chris Sabin is seemingly floundering with an awful heel character, and how injury-prone Alex Shelley has been in New Japan, got me to thinking about the best thing they both have ever done: The Motor City Machine Guns. Myabe it's that they had a charisma about them together that they both have never been able to capture individually, or perhaps it's something as simple as that when they were teaming, you could be fooled into having something approaching hope for TNA's future with them and Beer Money leading the way. Whatever it was, because TNA is TNA, they killed it. The split angle for the Guns led to the dissolution of the team, the release of Alex S…

Vader came up a few times in the Bret/Flair thread, so I think it's high time for a thread dedicated to this glorious bastard. He's someone I've always liked, but after watching a bunch of him lately, he's firmly established in my Fave Five. Here's a starting point for discussion: Vader has the best offense of all time. Agree or disagree? If not, who would you put above him?

I would be interested in someone showing me the way here. I do think he's probably a great wrestler, but everything I've seen has struck me as him being more of a "fun" wrestler, excluding the Lawler and Jumbo matches. I mentioned the spaghetti-legged selling which I'm not a fan of. His best matches also all seem to be crazy brawls, with the Jumbo match being the one exception to that. I like brawls as much as anyone, but I'm more of a traditionalist and think a GOAT candidate should also have some all-time classic matches that don't involve blood or weapons. I'm not saying he doesn't. I'm saying I don't know what they are, aside from the Jumbo match in '76. I've nev…

He's always been a sentimental favorite, and watching his house show run with Warrior after 'Mania 5 has only made me appreciate him that much more.

Hey, Will, knock yourself out.

I didn't see a thread on the Lightning/1-2-3 X-Syxx-Pac Kid, so I thought I would create one. Looking back at his career it's really quite amazing. A lot of variety and had worked all over the place as a heel and a face. I wanted to watch some of his matches and I started with this: The set up to this was that Shawn & Diesel tried to take out Razor and the Kid stopped him and now Shawn wants to punish the Kid as revenge. I originally was just going to watch this, because I had never seen it before, but it was so awesome I had to write about it. It starts off with the Kid destroying Michaels with some fun high flying and kicks. There is a fe…

OK, I'm going to talk about a worker that very few of you have probably heard of, Caswell Martin. Martin was part of the contingent of British workers billed as being from the West Indies and made his professional debut in the early 70s. He was a worker with excellent amateur credentials and had a similar sort of build and athletic prowess to Clive Myers, for those of you who are familiar with Clive. He came along at a time when the public were beginning to tire of the older stars like McManus, Pallo, Kellett and Logan and where there were real opportunities for a young black star to replace the aging Johnny Kwango and Masambula. Martin was a wrestler's wrestler,…

I don't hear much talk about refs and when I do it tends to be Tommy Young, Nick Patrick or Earl Hebner. I have always had a soft spot for Atkins, when rewatching WCW from the early 90s, his stuff really stands out to me. The thing that makes me most pissy as a fan is referees doing stupid things within the context of the match. Looking away at an inopportune time, being out of position and the like. With Atkins he always seems to be the most believable of the refs. Opinions on Atkins or referees in general would be most welcome.

So the ECW project really gave me a new found appreciation for Tajiri. He had been one of my favorite wrestlers back in 99 and 00 but I had forgotten how great he was and he is a guy that really holds up on rewatch. In fact if anything he appears better in the rear view. So in this thread I'll review his matches from a variety of places including but not restricted to ECW and the WWE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypvQlwWmFHc Eddie Guerrero and Tajiri vs Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas - Ladder Match This was Eddie/Tajiri's first time as a team and they win the tag belts here in a pretty insane car crash style ladder match. I wouldn't call this a pure…

This might blow some minds: Ohtani has now been a chubby heavyweight for almost twice as long as he was a junior. He recently reached the 20 year mark in his career, and he's managed to go that long with no significant injuries or time off (that I can recall). Yet nobody really talks about him anymore. In the famous Smarkschoice vote he was in 27th place, 12th among all Japanese and 9th among Japanese men. A more recent poll on Ohtani at DVDVR has him in the top 30 for Japan, which strikes me as a lot closer to the truth. Ohtani's junior career is something most of us are familiar with. The feud with Liger, the big matches with all the big names, the facial expr…

So my current plan is to turn through the following 8 WCW mid-carders in the early 90s: Brian Pillman, Arn Anderson, Barry Windham, Dustin Rhodes, Cactus Jack, Steve Austin, Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat. I was pretty excited at the start of the WWF Tag Project and now I am dragging my heels to finish it. So I hope this does not kill my love for WCW. Giving a preliminary look through the booking sheets through 1992 for Cactus Jack uncovered something that I really did not recognize he was near the top of the card from his introduction with Abby against Sting in late '91 through his managing a stable of wrestlers against WCW World Champion Ron Simmons. In between, he…

Picking up where we left off in the other thread. This is not meant as a troll, but what part of Tanahashi's offense is actually good? I'll accept the frogsplash variation he does, though I don't think it looks all that great in the grand scheme of things. Other than that...? I think the hooking clothesline thing he does looks as bad and/or hokey as pretty much every single Cena spot that is widely panned. This is obviously unknowable, but I can't envision any scenario where Cena would bring that spot into his moveset without it being condemned across the board as a weak/phony looking spot. His dragon screws don't look particularly sharp, though I wouldn't cou…

I cribbed the first half of my name from Graham (Sorry, Dundee). The second half of my name comes from my favorite genre of music: sleaze rock. Well Titans of Wrestling inspired me to say why stop at 1979 why not go even further back. WWF World Heavyweight Champion "Superstar" Graham vs Bruno Sammartino w/Arnold Skaaland - 6/77 MSG This is a perfect match for podcast listening as not much happens but it is an enjoyable tit for tat match. I thought Graham was going to be Ventura-level shit in the ring, but he was not atrocious. His strikes are pretty weak and his bumping at the beginning is really goofy at the beginning. As the match progresses, he sells fat…

Quite possibly the most underrated, under-exposed team in the history of the game. Incredible in-ring talents who found a nitch as the gloating but successful foreign heels in All Japan, with a ton of good matches under their belt. They got over pretty well with the ECW crowd before signing with Vince. It really seemed like they would get the chance to revitalize the WWF Tag Team division, and they did have some nice stuff with Owen and Bulldog before losing all their momentum for good, but in the end it wasn't meant to be and they wound up back in ECW before injuries and car accidents forced them into retirement. Performed as a team in AJPW, ECW, WWF, UWA. A…