NintendoLogic

Lance Storm's latest commentary is on, of all things, hooking the leg: http://www.stormwrestling.com/093012.html Naturally, Dave chimes in: I don't really see the connection. It seems pretty clear to me that the Vince McMahon "HE GOT HIM...no he didn't" school of commentary was a far bigger influence down the line. I also consider it to be far more detrimental to the product.

Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, 9/14-From South Africa. Not quite as good as the Survivor Series match, but it's in the same vein. In fact, it sort of feels like a test run for that match.

Moved from the omnibus thread since it fits in better here. I'm guessing the part about the GOP holding the Gov's office from 1995-2010, a similar statewide race, flew by in that post. John It didn't fly by, it's just not that relevant. Republicans held the Massachusetts governorship from 1990 to 2006, one of whom is the current Republican nominee for President. It doesn't mean that Massachusetts isn't a solidly blue state.

Compared to saying that Kobashi did rolling elbows and that Paul Boesch was the promoter in St. Louis, this is small potatoes.

The 80s and 90s are ancient history from a political standpoint. The Republicans who've traditionally done well in Connecticut are the moderate types that have been driven into extinction now that the teabaggers have taken over the nomination process at all levels. Anyway, the current Observer talks about how Linda's campaign has succeeded in placing the focus on personal attacks rather than issues. Also, Senate Democrats think Murphy has run a shitty campaign and are pissed that they have to spend more money on the race than they'd like to. Truth be told, focusing on Linda's wrestling past rather than tying her to Romney and Ryan was a huge strategic blunder.

More like a few thousand every year. So what do you think a better analogy would be?

The parallels between the NFL and the WWE go beyond crooked/incompetent officiating. Steve Young has talked about how nothing the NFL does will reduce demand for football. By the same token, it's basically impossible for the WWE to lose money no matter how bad the product gets.

He came in at 18 in a 2007 poll of the most influential people in history. http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/04/01/histo...-edition-video/ Because so many of them were inspired by her to become professional wrestlers themselves. You can over the degree, but she was definitely a pop culture icon.

Because you're attributing positions to me I didn't actually take. I didn't take a stance on the Chigusa-Madonna analogy one way or the other. All I said was that even if it were the case, I don't know how that compares to being one of the top 20 or so most iconic figures in a country's history. I guess it depends on how you're defining a Madonna figure. If it's the most popular female entertainer, Chigusa's not it. If it's a larger-than-life figure who was successful across a wide variety of media and was a big lifestyle and fashion influence on teenage girls, she has a strong case. Where I think it falls apart is that 80s AJW was largely stigmatized as something only girls were into, while Madonna's appeal was more universal. In that case, the Hannah Montana analogy is probably more appropriate.

It's no surprise that the first "bullshit" chant came from Baltimore fans, the ECW Mutants of the NFL.

I'm not sure how the existence of another Madonna figure disproves Chigusa being a Madonna-like figure in her own right. Is a country only allowed to have one Madonna at a time? In any event, in his Matsunga obit, Dave likened the Crush Gals to Hannah Montana.

Konnan and Sims were on F4D when the bio came out, and the process went like this: Sims wrote the thing up and submitted it to Konnan to get his thoughts. He corrected a few minor inaccuracies, but he took so long to get through it that Sims eventually said fuck it and submitted it to Dave. So not only did Konnan not co-write it, he hadn't even completely read it when it was published.

No, he didn't. All the writing was done by Steve Sims. Konnan's input consisted of correcting minor inaccuracies like his mother's name.

OK. But aren't Rikidozan and El Santo cultural icons in their home countries on par with Washington and Lincoln in the US?

http://www.luchawiki.org/index.php?title=Atlantis

I've never heard anyone go that far in describing Chigusa's popularity. What metric are you using?

You're probably thinking of 1/15/91. Good brawl. Was it the last match under Baba where someone bladed?

At the risk of opening up that can of worms, I would guess that most Dynamite Kid boosters don't think the Tiger Mask matches are overrated. At the very least, they would argue that the only relevant barometer is how the matches were received at the time. And yeah, Colon pretty much does come down to Brody. I suppose you could argue how relevant that should be post-Benoit.

The thing is, there's only a handful of HOFers who are in based solely on drawing power. Does Daddy compare favorably to any of them? Again, we're talking about someone who had no good matches, only drew a handful of big houses, never got over in any promotion that wasn't owned by his brother, and was instrumental in killing wrestling in his country, but is a household name in that country. Should name recognition alone be enough to get you into the Hall of Fame?

Shouldn't the fact that Daddy's peers and UK wrestling historians, who presumably understand the business model, uniformly despise the guy count for something?

Let's not get carried away here. HHH is a far stronger candidate than Big Daddy in every way.

Dave going off on Big Daddy:

Haha, I had a feeling I'd be throwing up the jdw Bat-Signal with my analysis. I should note that I limited my analysis to singles matches since virtually all the notable tags involved Misawa and Kawada going with or against each other. On the Taue front, I like all the Misawa/Taue TC matches better than any Kawada/Taue match. In fact, I think that in a lot of ways, Taue was Misawa's ideal opponent. He was certainly more limited than Kawada and Kobashi, but he was also less prone to excess.

Wrestlers who are about to win a title sometimes do jobs to set up future challengers. Race never challenged Flair in Japan after this, but they probably didn't know that they wouldn't face each other again at the time. Yes, I get that. It's just that two days beforehand seemed a bit much. But if Race was challenging for the belt the next night, that makes sense.

So I watched Race/Flair from 5/22/84. Why did Flair do a clean job if he was winning the NWA title two days later?