Tabe

So, what has Tabe been watching? I watched a couple episodes of All Japan G+ Classics - #81 and #83, to be exact. These two shows have the Flair/Martel title unification and tag match from 10/21 & 10/22/85. There's also a 1-hr Tsuruta/Choshu draw, Flair vs Tsuruta, Martel vs Choshu, and...a couple of Art Crews matches?!?! Anyway, the stuff with Flair & Martel is all great. The tag match is disappointing in that it's too short (17 minutes) and the finish is lame. Should have been 30+ minutes. It's good, just too short, and with too obvious an outcome. The title unification is fantastic. The 1-hr draw is meh - it's obvious that they're going long and there's never any hint of the match going to a finish. Flair vs Tsuruta and Martel vs Choshu are both pretty good but they are short (15-min time limits) and don't have finishes. I've been watching Monday NItro from its inception thanks to the Network. It's been a rough experience. I'm about four episodes in and the growing pains are very, very obvious. The commentary, as expected, is beyond awful. Bischoff, Mongo & Bobby just YELL CONSTANTLY. They ignore the matches constantly and everything is just really choppy so each guy can get his insults or talking points in. And stuff that doesn't make sense will sometimes get highlighted and then followed up with "Who cares! We're Nitro!" There's some good stuff here - Flair is still very sharp, there's a definite "what's gonna happen next?!?!?" vibe, and the show was truly groundbreaking. But...yeah. Overall it's a very up-and-down viewing experience.

They had a show in Japan called World Pro Wrestling. Think of it as a Japanese version of Pro Wrestling This Week. And, oh man, if you haven't checked it out, World Pro Wrestling is AWESOME. It's main event-level matches from a bunch of different promotions - JCP, UWF, WWF, AWA, Central States, World Class, and more - all thrown into one show. And there's a TON of stuff from that show that was never shown anywhere else. Flair & Morton in a cage, 25 years before the WWF released that Horsemen set? Yep, that's here. The Midnight Rockers in a match from the night Hansen forfeited the AWA title? Yep, that's here. And tons more. TRACK THIS SHOWN DOWN.

The definite impression I got from Verne's griping is that the Nacho match was from 1981. Was hoping to narrow it a bit further.

Funny, Rod Trongard refers to Verne Gagne as "Verne Ganja" when doing the intros to the Bockwinkel/Barrera match. Also funny to hear Gagne diss Bockwinkel for "backing into" the title after Gagne retired since, ya know, that was Verne's decision.

Do we have any kind of dates for the two Nick Bockwinkel matches?

I would say watch the two Dreamslam shows and then the two classics from 8/22/85. You'll get a nice range of match quality and workers, along with some all-time great matches.

First one was 1993, not 1994.

Gary Hart: "legends like Killer Brooks" - a quote from his book. Sure thing, Gary.

Yes, they did. Thank you.

More fun is looking at JCP/WCW covers and finding all the ones with: A) The wrong year on the cover; Pictures of wrestlers/matches not from that show; C) Other screwups in general. Some examples: - Best of Starrcade 1983-90 tape has a picture of Sting vs Flair, even though they never faced each other in that time period at Starrcade (not counting Black Scorpion) - Great American Bash '89 has a picture of Flair vs Steamboat on it And, then we have WCW messing up the boxes for their biggest show of the year. TWICE.

And it looks like it is. The match I had as being 8/31/84 between Doc and Taylor looks to be 3/22/85 instead. And the MX/Fants match looks like it matches Magnum/Reed from 8/31/84.

I know the date matches a non-title match. What I'm saying is it doesn't match the footage we've already seen from 8/31/84 (a Doc/Taylor match). Could be that the date on THAT one is wrong, of course.

Not sure the date is right on that Fants/MX match. Looks like a different crowd than the 8/31 Doc vs Taylor match...

The Takada/Yamazaki match is widely available in full, especially if you ask somebody known for having tons of shoot-style. Tabe, dude with tons of shoot-style

Glad to help in any way I can.

This one aired on Power Pro Wrestling on 8/2/86. It's basically a long squash for Link. Weirdly one-sided.

It's the 7/29/83. Same date as the Garvin/Link match.

Along those lines, I dislike that nearly all American matches have to have a "BIG FINISH!" Nobody ever loses because of a gradual accumulation of punishment - one more move after a 2-3/4 count, for example. It's always gotta be something big. That's just one of the (million) things I like about 1990s All Japan - great climax finishes that aren't just "MAJOR MOVE ENDS IT ALL". Kobashi kicks out after a big move, Misawa hits a couple elbows, it's over. Much more logical.

Yea I'm not sure they taped EVERYTHING on the card as Bruce Tharpe said something on twitter about Paul Boesch only taping "the best" matches. Somewhere Dale Veasy is crying at your implication that something in which he participated would not be "the best".

And now Iceman/Victory and Kamala/Billy have been posted, leaving just Daniels/Veasy, which we may never get.

My wife goes to bed by 9pm every night and I'm til 1am most nights, so... I have a few hours every night if I so choose. I also have days (sometimes multiple in a row) where I'm basically immobile because of my back. That all adds up to a lot of time to watch TV. I can easily get through 4 hours of classic TV in a single night (like when I was blowing through all the volumes of Power Pro Wrestling that I hadn't yet watched just recently). But then I also go through stretches (like the multi-year stretch I just ended) where I don't watch at all - instead focusing on video games, movies, or TV shows during those hours each night.

Two more for this card: Tim Horner vs Rip Oliver 12/27/84 Ernie Ladd vs Brad Armstrong 12/27/84 That leaves us just: Terry Daniels d. Dale Veasy Iceman Parsons d. Jack Victory Kamala d. Billy Jack As missing from that card.

Just added: Chavo & Hector Guerrero vs Jose Lothario & Terry Taylor 12/27/84

7/20 during the Reed/JYD dog collar match, there are people with teal/aqua outfits in the front row. Those people aren't present during the Doc/Taylor match.

July 20 is a draw between the two (this one is a Taylor win) and there are fans in this match that match up with fans from the 8/3 show.