pol

I don't think that's really true, most of their events seem to top out around 3 and a half hours. I think the reason Makabe is positioned prominently is because he's the biggest mainstream celebrity on the roster. He has a TV show and recently had a major role in the Japanese Mad Max dub (which is something of a big deal over there, I guess).

Listening now. The reason this show was so long is because it was the biggest building they've run for a non-G1 non-Dome show in forever, so they had to deliver a stacked card.

He doesn't cover it as a sport, but as a business. Which thank god, because the parrallels to wrestling are the only reason I can muster any interest in discussion of it.

The Japanese Diet as depicted in the Kinnikuman anime

The camera work and announcing on this show was leagues ahead of their usual fare.

I enjoy some UWFi. I try to judge it on its own terms, not according to some set of criteria re: quality shoot style wrestling. If it fails at being realistic but still works as pro wrestling I don't see why that's a problem. To be honest, OJ, your criticisms strike me as a similar stance to the one you've criticised Parv for taking on lucha: not taking it on its on terms, rating it according to how much it resembles stuff you already like... I do dislike the UWFi tendency to build matches around manipulation of the points system though. It strikes me as a cheap attempt to manufacture drama rather than having it emerge through the work itself. It's kind of similar to why Iron Man matches tend not to work.

Just discovered (via this very cool page) that Fighting Network RINGS actually went by "Professional Wrestling Network RINGS" for its first two shows: Can we surmise that the name change was an attempt to rid themselves of the pro wrestling association?

God, I now wish I'd made note of these when I saw them but I've been watching a bunch of early PWFG stuff and there were definitely a couple of pinfall attempts in there. It's so rare and so ineffective, though, that it makes you wonder why they even bothered. edit: just found an example, the very end of the 09/28/91 Suzuki/Shamrock match has a pinfall attempt off a dragon suplex

That didn't seem right to me so I did some more research Apparently it's "Otose!", basically "drop him!"/"take him out!". I'm pretty sure I've heard it in 80s NJPW too.

Found out today that the Mexican R2-D2 and C-3PO did a tour for AJPW in 1979. Robot R2 is El Rebelde, but the internet doesn't seem to know who Robot C3 was. Imagine being Onita and Fuchi and receiving the word "yeah, you're doing the job to the Mexican robots" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5sCTOnwx8g

I watched him vs. Nakano from UWF 2 recently and for a guy who would later work an uncooperative shooter gimmick it's funny how much pro-style offense he gets in - Gotch style piledriver, dropkick, stomps and knee drops, even bouncing off the ropes at one point. It's all integrated really well. I'm not sure if he has the resume to make a top 100, I would really have to dig deep into the largely unexplored stretch between his return to worked matches and his hyped stuff of the past few years. He sure was good early on though and had that great surly charisma from day one - even as a young boy in New Japan you can see him hanging out at ringside looking pissed off.

Minoru Suzuki and Masakatsu Funaki both seem pretty damn good in the earliest footage I've seen of them, but I'm not sure exactly how early in their careers that stuff is.

Maybe OJ can help here, but with my (very) limited Japanese and the assistance of Google translate, this page seems to say that the promotion was originally called Universal Pro Wrestling, but still used the acronym UWF. They later changed to Federacion Universal Lucha Libre.

The main event of the first UWF show was still very pro style: I'm interested in the extent to which fans perceived each version of shoot style as legitimate at the time. In Snowden's book, Hisaharu Tanabe claims that fans believed the UWF/UWF 2.0 were real, but I've talked to people living in Japan who claim this wasn't the case, and it was more of a "the fights might be fixed but these guys are the real deal" sort of thing, which was why the whole Anjoh/Takada/Gracie debacle hurt the business so much. It's hard to imagine anyone seeing the UWF-i particularly as legitimate, especially when Pancrase existed at the same time.

Suzuki's GHC title defense against Maybach Taniguchi was really good. I guess a lot of people would be shocked that Taniguchi would have a better match with Suzuki than Marufuji did on either attempt, but the guy allowed himself to be carried whereas Marufuji took a proactive role in his matches and since he's the dirt worst that dragged them down. Takayama looked so awful just getting in the ring in the postmatch, so that one's gonna be another challenge for Suzuki.

I do think for most people the scale is kinda logarithmic. Like, is the difference in quality between ** and **1/2 really the same as the difference between ****1/2 and *****?

Those Observer excerpts are interesting. The mix of women, karate guys and luchadors sounds a lot like the early FMW shows. Striking how hard it evidently was to get decent native male talent as an indie in the late 80s/early 90s.

Been watching a bunch of FMW stuff with the intention of looking into Onita but this guy has impressed me more. Just absolute killer offense. Good sense of timing with hope spots and cut offs, plus some great transitions. His 1995 match with Cactus could've been MOTY in many years (although a large part of that is Foley being insane). Carried useless Mr. Pogo to a legitimately very good match. I think the biggest criticism I'd have from what I've seen so far is that he can eat his opponents up when he'd elicit a bigger reaction from a more Onita-style 'sell a bunch and come back' approach, but his offense is so fun to watch that it's hard to fault him too much for it, especially when he's working against limited opposition.

I've only ever seen the match where he kicks Tanahashi's head in (which I'm sure some people here would love him for alone ), but I thought he was incredible in it. Great heel charisma.

She's called into Wrestling Observer Live and effectively advertised her escorting service before.

Thanks for the knowledge OJ. Wish all this stuff was documented in English somewhere.

Thanks for that, there seems to be a lot of weirdness with the name that made Googling it hard. There's even a Wikipedia page! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Lucha_Libre Strange that the initialism 'UWF' was used considering no name seems to match up with that...

I just discovered that this promotion existed. Can anyone fill me in on the details? There's not even a Cagematch or WrestlingData page for it. When did it form? When did it dissolve? Why did Hamada elect to use the name of an already existing promotion? I assume Sasuke got his start here; did it debut any other notable workers?

Was surprised to see this isn't on the 1991 yearbook. Onita carries some judo guy to a very entertaining match. This is ostensibly a shoot-style deal, but it's Onita so of course there's some goofiness in there. Of all the martial arts guys I've seen face Onita, Verichev seems the most capable of what is asked of him, which is mostly to toss Onita around a whole bunch while Onita sells his ass off. Really enjoyed this.

Any opinions on Japanese refs? Kyohei Wada is well-regarded and I like the air of authority he commands, but he sometimes injects himself too much for my liking. Mr. Takahashi, from what I've seen, is excellent. Authoritative, able to get physically involved from time to time without making the wrestlers look weak since he was jacked himself. The current NJPW head ref, Red Shoes Unno, never used to bother me until I saw one of the Segunda Caida guys mention how annoying he is and now I can't not notice his ridiculous gesticulating in every match.