dawho5

Would love to see rounds 4,5 and the beginning of 6 of that Haward vs. Cortez bout. Great stuff. Cortez is like Dean Malenko, only he makes all of his smooth/cool mat stuff mean something instead of just doing it. Which makes him pretty damn incredible.

I think those terms are generally used as keywords to give somebody who hasn't seen it an idea of the style the match was worked in. To men, none of those are inherently good or bad, because I've seen both good and bad brawls, technical matches, epics and spotfests. I certainly have my favorite types of matches, and I think a lot of the time when you mix different elements together well (Battlarts was very much a combination of brawling and technical work with some of the flippy highspots thrown in for fun and I loved it) it can be great. But regardless of any of that, whatever "genre" you might put the match under it has to deliver on a certain level for each of us to be considered good or better. So I think the general use of the term "spotfest" as a negative is wrong. But it's use to describe a certain method of working a match is perfectly fine to me. As Loss has stated, the MPro tags (which most of us would agree are spotfests) have a pretty devoted following even here.

Gordy teamed with Hansen before the MVC for a while. I think 89 was part of that.

Haven't you said before that Harley Race was a big bomb throwing kind of guy? If nothing else, he's got to be a link to that period before it became really common. So maybe that's a good starting point to go backwards from, find the influences that pushed Harley in that direction and continue from there.

Yeah, and in those MPro tags, there was certainly a story being told. It may have been basic (Sasuke and his boys vs. those KDX punks with no respect), but it was enough that a lot of the rapid fire stuff worked just fine. And they definitely had a sense of when to let something breathe and/or create a valley. That doesn't mean the matches were not spotfests, but that there is a way to make that style work.

From watching a lot of Toryumon/DG stuff from the 2000s, I can say that "spotfest" can cover lots of ground as a term. And there is certainly a variability in quality within spotfests. The 3-team, 9-man tags from 2002 are okay and have plenty of cool stuff you hadn't seen before in them. Then the 8/30/04 4-team, 12-man match really hit on all cylinders and was one of the best spotfests I've ever seen. There was certainly a story behind the rivalries in each match and the way they played out seemed to come from that. But they were spotfests. Another match that comes to mind is Ibushi vs. Ishimori from DDT on 4/5/2009. For a spotfest (which it was) it had some stuff that did tie all of it together even if it wasn't always strictly adhered to. To me, it's a pretty general term to describe a style of working a match. I don't care for them compared to other working styles, but there are those who do. There is a very large amount of stuff that can fall into that category and to write it off because of that is a mistake.

Finally got around to watching Thatcher vs. Busick from Beyond Wrestling. One thing that's clear is that these guys watched their Japanese wrestling. It's a very Battlarts kind of style, but with less flow between the different genres. And that surfboard battle was reminiscent of Kawada/Kobashi/Misawa uses of the same. Not to mention the finish is a direct Minoru Suzuki ripoff by Busick. None of this was a problem because they did pretty good with it. Busick's selling of the arm was not there for as often as it was targeted. Thatcher had several points where he completely lost control of the arm during his chain wrestling and Busick didn't escape, but seconds later Busick would just pull his arm out of the hold into his counter. In a match worked like this that sort of thing should be avoided. It's not a huge point against the match, but it's something I noticed. The late strike exchange is pure modern Japanese wrestling and one of the aspects of it I hate the most. Not terribly executed, but I dislike the inclusion of it in any match. Busick's selling late is the biggest thing going against the match for me. I did like it, and I'm interested to see if they can iron out the kinks as they develop this style. It definitely has it's merits and I'll have to see more Thatcher for sure.

Alright, why not try approaching this from a completely different angle? Let's say somebody like Ric Flair or (we are on PWO after all) Jerry Lawler were confronted with a crowd reacting with something unwanted during a match during the 80s or 70s respectively. Do they play into said reaction and continually do so, allowing the crowd to condition them? Or do they find a way to get the crowd to do what they want? Is the former a better reaction because it may be better for business? If you give the crowd what they clearly came in looking for there is a much better chance they will come back. But at the same time, wrestlers have been conditioning audiences for years and people kept showing up. So maybe this really comes down to each of our individual reactions to these crowd chants and our perceptions of the motivation behind them. Or maybe there is something to it. But if that's the case, it involves both the wrestlers working in the ring (who have some control over what the crowd does) and the crowd itself. Continuing the way this argument has mostly gone is a dead end. Once an argument reaches that point, it's usually better to dig deeper into the reasons behind whatever is being argued rather than rehash the same points.

Hansen's matches against the Four Pillars and also Tenryu in the really late 80s are where he shines. For whatever reason, Hansen and Jumbo never really have great matches with each other. 4/16/89 is fun when Jumbo tries to out-Hansen Hansen, but it's not what that rivalry ought to have been.

Fuji has always been one of my favorite Toryumon/DG guys. Great stuff and I was wondering if you had links for the Yoshino/Mochizuki singles matches and that last 6 man you talked about.

vs. Ikeda 4/26/99 is on youtube, hits a lot of the right notes for me. They work all the different stuff that makes BatBat great, including lucha dives, giant swings and ridiculously stiff headbutts.

I've liked most Tanahashi matches I've watched. And most of the time when there's something I don't like, it's something that shows up in every other NJPW match from this era. So to me, that says that Tanahashi is doing a lot of things right. He is just working in modern NJPW which has some conventions I don't care for. Now the big question is, do I like the work being done by 100 other wrestlers enough to knock Tanahashi down off of the 100? If that's a no, I won't keep him on just to have a modern NJPW guy on the list. But at the same time I won't hold where he works against him if I see that the majority of the things I don't like in his matches are promotion-wide. I'll chalk that up to not liking the style while still appreciating how good Tanahashi is.

I try to look at stuff like modern NJPW and see strengths/weaknesses of the workers, how they adapt to different opponents, etc., when I watch. That's mainly because I don't care for the style. But I won't say that Tanahashi is an awful wrestler because of that. He's clearly a very gifted performer who just happens to wrestle within a system that I don't like (and to be honest he's not exactly suited for and somehow makes it work anyway, which makes me respect the guy quite a bit). I'm not saying I'd put him in my top 20, but he'd definitely get a vote.

I would absolutely agree as well. It's hard to fault Tanahashi for the aspects of his matches that are demanded by the promotion he wrestles in.

Preferably not in this thread though. I understand how things can move from topic to topic, but it's probably a good idea to migrate as they do for the purposes of GOAT stuff. Nobody will be looking for Kurt Angle stuff here.

Nagata is an odd one. When he got his first really big push he was clearly uncomfortable with the role he had to play. But when you get to 2007 (could have been before) he's grown into it and is really, really entertaining as the fired-up asskicker whenever somebody disrespects him. His best matches are against either Tanahashi (who the Hell does this guy think he is, anyway?) or anyone who cheats a lot and/or uses weapons to get the advantage. That riles Nagata up quick and makes for a fun watch.

I'm not a big fan of any names on your list I recognized, but I'll say this. It will be nice to have people advocating for them. I think for this to truly be a serious project, you need to at least take a short look at something outside your wheelhouse even if it doesn't last long. And it seems to me that group of wrestlers will bring at least the chance of that alongside stuff like joshi, lucha, WoS, etc. for a lot of people. Stuff like this ultimately becomes more about broadening your horizons and maybe discovering something you like that you might not have otherwise watched than just the ranking of wrestlers.

All you need is 3 per wrestler. So if you have the match threads, just post up a review for 3 matches and you will be fine. If not, make a thread somewhere (Microscope?) and get 3 reviews in that one.

I think that's one of his biggest problems. He works within the style of main events that he does, which for me handcuffs him. His match structure and execution is great, but it always leads to useless elbow/slap exchanges and endless nearfalls instead of following what is usually a good to great first 15-20 minutes. If you like that kind of ending tacked onto whatever match came before it, then he's fine for you. I don't care for it, but Tanahashi is easily one of the more entertaining guys over the later half of the 2000s and into 2014 as far as the New Japan guys go.

To be fair, a lot of the already nominated matches were 30 minutes or more. 30+ tends to wear me down more than I'd like to admit. My sweet spot is 18-25 minutes. Enough time to build something up, but not so much that it becomes a chore to watch if it's not done really well.

More lasers I say. Pew pew.

Crush Girls vs. JBA was really good. Starting to think the opening limbwork is very often treated this way in joshi matches, so it's just something I'm going to have to accept. One thing keeping it from being filler here is the execution. Finishing run is really well-executed. All four get some big nearfalls, they work a lot in between the falls with big moves strung together to set up the real and false finishes (2/3 falls). Yokota vs. Galactica was great as well. Galactica as the heel is really, really great. Attack during the intros, followed by Yokota mask ripping. Galactica goes to work on an arm and starts biting the fingers! (!!!) Yokota tries working a leg for a little bit but ends up having her arm destroyed. There's a cut above the bicep and Galactica finds interesting ways to work it. Yokota throws some bombs, but it may be too little too late. One thing I am noticing about Yokota is that she's very bomb-oriented and that isn't something I care for.

Since not many are volunteering matches, I'll throw one in. Fujinami vs. Nishimura 9/25/06 It takes place in Japan in 2006, but if you imagine it taking place in the 70s (would have worked well in the States too) it wouldn't have been out of place.

The match I mentioned earlier is: Ikeda/Ono vs. Suruga/Oba 4/9/09 There are better matches of the style out there, but it's more for the purpose of highlighting Ikeda in a role he's not in as often as that of the asskicker.