William Bologna

That's too bad. I saw Everett's obit, but I didn't know about his kid. But yeah, shockingly good match!

Antonio Inoki vs. The Monster Man Aug 2, 1977 Legitimacy in a fake sport is a funny thing. Modern wrestling cares less than it ever did, but it clearly used to mean something. Antonio Inoki was faced with a problem: Giant Baba and All Japan had the coveted NWA membership, which provided means to establish a wrestler as extremely tough and cool. If you can push the NWA champion to the limit and leave him lucky to have held on to his title, that makes you look good. Take him to a time limit draw - even better. And if you plop down the money to rent yourself the belt for a week until Harley Race goes back to the States? Well, no one's tougher and cooler than the World Champion. So what does Inoki do to keep up? You can buy yourself a phony baloney world title from Buffalo, but that's not convincing anyone. Well, what if we paid real fighters to come over and let Inoki beat them? Maybe Baba can beat the best wrestler, but Inoki can beat the best anyone! I guess it worked, except when Antonio got too big for his britches and tried to buy a win off Muhammed Ali. So tonight we have "Monster Man" Everett Eddy, a forgotten full-contact karate fighter. Here's a kinda interesting article from Professional Karate magazine. Here he is getting absolutely starched in Las Vegas. And here's a trailer for one of my favorite films, Rudy Ray Moore's Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, in which Eddy is credited as doing stunts. He might be in that trailer - there are a lot of guys with afros doing kung fu, so the odds are good. I was dreading this, and I'm against the whole idea, but they started winning me over with the presentation. They put in the effort to make this feel different from a regular ol' wrestling match. We've got corner men with buckets, a ring girl (who doesn't get in the ring), judges at ringside, the whole bit. And then it turns out that Everett Eddy is a pretty damn good pro wrestler. I wonder about the preparation for these things - did they get in the ring and practice? Eddy gets tripped by Inoki and put into an armbar. He takes it beautifully and goes right for the ropes. Inoki double arm suplexes him, and it looks no more awkward than a trained professional doing it. Inoki is the weak link. I have two main issues: He cheats! He's constantly cheap-shotting Eddy, and I don't get it. Maybe Monster Man did something nasty that I missed and Inoki's getting him back, but I don't know. He's supposed to be the hero, right? It's the kind of thing Jesse Ventura would call Hogan out for. I'm not cheering for this guy. He's a bad sport. He doesn't sell anything. We get what should a dramatic sequence: Inoki pastes Eddy after a clean break, and Everett is justly angry. He retreats to his corner, complains a bit, and then launches a flying kick that catches that cheating bastard right in his face. Inoki goes down, the ref runs over to count . . . and gets to two before Inoki springs right up fresh as a daisy. He didn't even change his expression. The pro wrestler in this match is failing utterly at the fundamentals of pro wrestling. Anyway, in round five (we even have rounds!) Inoki shoves Eddy, hits a very low late 70s powerbomb, and throws in a leg drop. Eddy is done! Rolling around, clutching his shoulder - the guy's a natural, and I wish he'd wrestled for 20 years. He's a better worker on defense than offense. Good seller, but his offense is probably hampered by having to be careful not to KO Inoki. This is billed on NJPW World as "Asia Champion Series & World Martial Arts world finals" AND "King of Mixed Martial Arts finals," so it's a big win for Antonio. He is officially the King of Mixed Martial Arts. Like I said, I was dreading this. This series of Inoki vs. real fighters almost convinced me not to undertake this project, but this is in the top half of the stuff I've watched so far. Also, I'm dead serious about this and let's all hope I don't put together a Greatest Wrestler Ever ballot: "Monster Man" Everett Eddy is a better wrestler than Antonio Inoki.

Black Cat Vs. Brutus Beefcake Jan 4, 1994 Black Cat (not his real name) was a Mexican guy with a Japanese father who was the foreign talent liaison for New Japan. I think Jericho talked about him quite a bit in his book. Today's one-off is Brutus Beefcake. Brutus is, of course, the Wolf Hawkfield of wrestling: Not any good and working with gimmicks so bad that you think the next one can't possibly be worse but then it is. This is the start of a big year for him: Here in January he's flaunting his ripped pants in front of 60,000 plus at Battle Field In Tokyo Dome. Come December he'll be headlining Starrcade (cf. the post on Steroids Warriors Showdown Scott Norton Vs. Ekuraiza regarding the awfulness of the early Hogan era in WCW). I'm trying to work out where Brutus is in his career (but not working real hard, because it's Brutus Beefcake who gives a shit). He's got Hogan's colors and manager - there's more Jimmy Hart than you'd think on New Japan World - but neither he nor Hogan would start in WCW for some time. I had assumed that he was here as part of the talent exchange, like when Kensuke came over to get a title for a little bit and High Voltage or whoever would do some NJPW tours. But no - the King of Sport decided to seek out otherwise unemployed Brutus Beefcake for their big dome show. Hogan's here too, so really it probably wasn't their idea, brother. It's two very different matches depending on who's doing what. With Black Cat on offense, it's perfectly acceptable pro wrestling. But when Beefcake takes over, it takes him all of three seconds to run out of ideas, and things never do get better. His moveset is ghastly, his transitions are so awkward I'm cringing just watching them, and after everything he does you can see him thinking real hard about what he should do next. That said, you know what? He's having fun. He's evincing a certain joie de catch, and it's contagious. Mr. Cat seems to be enjoying things. Jimmy Hart's always in a good mood. The crowd is settling in a for a stellar evening, as the Hulkster will take on Fujinami later, and Tenryu will gloriously put Inoki's bitch ass down for the count (turns out I've seen a lot of this card). So by the time he takes out his opponent with an anachronistic high knee (later to be his finish as *ahem* the Booty Man), we've forgiven him his trespasses.

Antonio Inoki & Umanosuke Ueda Vs. Andre The Giant & General KY Wakamatsu May 1, 1986 I didn't plan this, but once again we have an often-seen non-wrestler getting into the action himself. Today it's KY Wakamatsu, usually seen with a grab-bag of gimmicks managing Strong Machines. Long preface to this match, as Andre, KY, and some other guy argue with the referee about what I do not know. There is a coin flip, which settles whatever it is they're fighting about. The crowd pops for Wakamatsu revealing that his wrestling attire matches Andre's. It is pretty funny. The match is strange and not very good. No one knows their roles. You would expect that Wakamatsu would get man-handled, with Andre being the only thing keeping them in the game, but that's not what happens. Bizarrely, Inoki goes close to 50/50 with KY. He gets bodyslammed, irish whipped, heart-slapped - I've seen him be less giving with Stan Hansen. Very poor offense from the heels. When Ueda is in, they take turns biting his forehead until he bleeds. Inoki tags in and gets bitten in the forehead until he bleeds. Ueda's finally had enough and grabs a spike . . . which he doesn't do anything with. Andre takes it away and doesn't do anything with it. Everything is a bit off tonight. The finish: Andre breaks up a pin. On his way out, Inoki giris him in the enzui, so he spills onto the apron and gets his hand caught in the ropes. Wakamatsu's enzui suffers a similar fate and Inoki wins. Which was kind of neat, but really it should have followed Andre interfering constantly to save his hopeless, non-wrestler partner. That would have made sense and been a satisfying conclusion. But it didn't work, because they didn't treat Wakamatsu like a non-combatant, and Andre didn't do all that much interfering. I get it - he's not super mobile, but then build the match around something else. I was in the mood for some mayhem, but this did not deliver that and didn't make any sense at all.

Gedo vs. Lord Gideon Grey Oct 3, 2015 Gideon Grey is no stranger to New Japan World, seemingly coming out six times a night during the Junior Tag League to introduce United Empire teams. But I guess this is his only match. He has the home field (pitch?) advantage, as this comes to us from Reading, England. His opponent, "Gedo," is famous for almost killing Chris Jericho at Halloween Havoc and embarrassing Giant Baba at his country club by using his silly pro wrestling name. He's probably done some other stuff too. Grey comes to the ring looking like Mick Jones dressed as a leprechaun. He is accompanied by a guy in outlandish foreign garb and tells the crowd to shut up. Repeatedly. Needs to work on his patter. Gedo's in good shape, but he doesn't have much to do. He's the blue eye, so he's mainly a base for Grey to cheat while the colour commentator does Heenan shtick and pretends not to see it. The chicanery is too much for our virtuous hero (Gedo? They couldn't have found someone else to be the virtuous hero?), and Grey puts him in the "House of Lords" to secure the submission. I'm going to do a bad job of explaining why this match bugged me. Grey comes out and says he's better than you and you boo him because that's what you do. The bad guy announcer lies because that's what Bobby Heenan did. No one means it. No one's really even pretending to mean it. It's too many levels of abstraction, and they're all staggering around in the ruins of pro wrestling.

Akebono & Yutaka Yoshie vs. Hiro Saito & B.S. Machine Jan 4, 2006 Hey, it's Akebono! Akebono is an enormous and enormously successful former sumo wrestler. He attained the sport's highest rank (Yokozuna, named of course after the former WWF champion) and was on ESPN all the time fighting Takanohana. After retirement, he tried his hand at pro wrestling and won the Triple Crown a couple times. I did a shallow dive into Chad's work a while ago, and it was better than I'd figured it would be. He's got size and presence, and he's great against someone who can tee off on him. But Akebono's not why we're here. He actually has three entries on New Japan World. Teaming with the big man is Yutaka Yoshie, famous for wearing pink and being a big fat guy, although he looks like Check Shimitani next to Akebono. Facing them we have Hiro Saito, who isn't related to Masa Saito even though he has the same name and looks just like him, and the reason we're here: B.S. Machine. You will be either disappointed or relieved to hear that “B.S.” stands for Black Strong. I was disappointed when I found out that B.S. is . . . (wait for it) . . . Junji Hirata. Again. I had no idea this thread would mostly be about Junji Hirata, but he tricked us into watching another one by changing his name slightly. Naturally, Akebono is the center of attention. He starts and shows us that sumo technique doesn't really translate to this sport as he sumo slaps the bad guys repeatedly. The crowd enjoys it more than I do, but there are cultural issues. It takes chicanery to hurt Akebono - trips, double teams, etc. - but Saito and Machine are in Team 2000 or whatever, so they're not afraid to cheat. It's obvious that they're killing time when Yoshie is in. Nothing awful, but the definition of by the numbers. Finally we can start paying attention again once the big guy comes back in. They try to double suplex him, but he double suplexes them! They spent a great deal of time setting up the big double squish, which does look pretty devastating when a guy that size does it. It appeared, however, to take Akebono out of the running for a bit. He is as exhausted as anyone has ever been, to the point that Yoshie has to kick out of a pin that I think Akebono was supposed to break up. He recovers after a bit and sets up Yoshie's win. One final (I hope) note about Hirata: If our sources are correct, he was 49 years old here. I had no idea! I didn't believe it was him at first. Sure, he's got the mask, but he didn't look like he was 49, and he moved like he always did. He stayed a regular for years after this, too. Did Junji Hirata secretly have a Tenryu-esque late career? Maybe that's a bad example. Tenryu may have been the best wrestler in the world at 50, but he looked 50. Super Strong Machine was never the best, but at 50 he was the exact same person he had been years 25 earlier. Maybe he really was a robot.

Antonio Inoki vs. Tony Rocco Feb 2, 1979 Tony Rocco (or, as NJPW World has it, Tony Loco) is . . . a wrestler. There's not much out there about him. He wrested in California. Sometimes he called himself Don Corleone. In this match, he looks very much like he's from 1979; he could be a Star Wars extra. And he's up against Inoki; I don't think he even has a Samoa Joe chance a' winnin'. Things stay sporty until Antonio throws a kick. Rocco gets so mad! He threatens to punch the ref, and you can see his eyes bugging in full seethe all the across the ring and from 1979. Rocco is fun to watch move. He's pretty explosive, and he has this furious way of running the ropes. Like, he's taking out his frustrations on them. I've never been more glad not to be a rope. He's got a great, playing-to-the-cheap-seats angry face, and he's bouncing all over the place for Inoki. So he keeps it interesting enough until we hit a finishing sequence - some dropkicks, Inoki getting crotched, backslide, backdrop suplex, pin. Not bad! I watched the whole thing and didn't get annoyed with Inoki, so it definitely could have been worse. Whatever happened to Tony Rocco? Well two years ago he did 3,000 situps in Santa Monica. That's what happened.

Super Strong Machine vs. Pedro Morales May 24, 1985 I actually watched another match on this card for the Fujinami thing. He and Kengo Kimura beat Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis, and it was dope. This, on the other hand . . . Pedro and Machine roll around. They sit in holds. About five minutes in, the camera goes real wide because watching people wander down aisles is more interesting that anything that happens in the ring. It is at this point that commentary begins, which makes for an odd viewing experience. Maybe the guy was in the bathroom. He picked the right time. After nine minutes of absolutely nothing happening, my hopes are rekindled as they start running the ropes a little bit. But it's the 80s, so this is just a setup for another goddamn double count-out. And of all the DCORs I've seen, this is the absolutely the laziest, most obvious, most perfunctory one I've seen. I would rather have watched them sit in holds for another ten minutes. I guess the point of all this is to do an angle afterwards. KY Wakamatsu, who dresses like an idiot and manages sundry strong machines, comes out furious, kicking SSM and yelling into the mic. I'm mad. I just watched Dominion, which was real good, and then I had a blast in North Korea with Bull and Mrs. Kensuke. I was in the mood to watch some wrestling! Never have my expectations been failed so badly. I hadn't heard much about Morales, but at least he had novelty, and I really like Super Strong Machine. I didn't know he was capable of something this bad.

Has someone been watching battle royals?

Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto Apr 29, 1995, North Korea Pyongyang May Day Stadium I'm filling in some gaps here. As famous as it is, I haven't seen any of the matches from Antonio Inoki's infamous trip to North Korea. Time to cross that one off. The other gap is joshi. I have seen very little. I know a lot of the names, but I never got around to it. I mean, there are only so many hours in the day, and there are still Wolf Hawfield matches I haven't seen. In my defense, I was there for Manami Toyota's U.S. debut. I was all, “Oh shit it's Black Widow from WCW vs. nWo: World Tour!” I think she heard me. So this should be a promising one to get me started. I know who they both are – Hokuto's married to Kensuke, and I remember Nakano from my Alundra Blayze-plagued childhood – and they're both supposed to be good, right? Maybe that's not right. Like I said, I know the names but not much else. Was that like saying, “All Japan was led by such luminaries as Mitsuharu Misawa and Jun Izumida”? First we get like five minutes where they introduce all the competitors. There's 2 Cold! I fast forward to the introductions, which are in Japanese. There is some light, polite applause. It really is a big damn crowd. Bull largely relies on the hair-based offense that I remember her using in WWF. She gets a big reaction with a couple hair throws and a yell. She does seem to be a good choice for an unfamiliar audience. She's got a big look. I'm focused on the crowd reactions here, both because it's interesting to hear what people who don't know anything about wrestling respond to, and because I enjoyed Scott Norton's story about everyone being dead silent until Flair worked his magic on them. "Scotty boy, I've been doing this a long time." Something like that. Well, they're not silent for this. We get roars for Bull's spots, and real cheers when Hokuto mounts her comeback. I didn't think much of her spin kicks - the first one missed by a mile - but they're working on the crowd. We go back and forth for a while, with Bull cheating to a greater or lesser degree (she pulls out some nunchucks in full view of the ref, but maybe the Pyongyang Athletic Commission doesn't allow DQs) and Hokuto making comebacks. Missed kick aside, Akira is impressive. She gives Bull a really sweet German to get back for the 'chucks, and her cross-body to the outside is the best dive I've seen all day. By which I mean, I just watched Dominion. It was a good show, but not one of those dudes managed to land on the guy he was trying to jump on. Not Hokuto, though - she bullseyed Nakano, who did a very professional job catching her. Our finish comes when Bull tries a somersault senton off the top. Hokuto gets out of the way and does a sort of poison rana rollup into a pinning predicament that's complex enough that I don't feel like trying to describe it. The crowd is seriously buzzing when NJPW World shuts off the sound, so it's safe to say that these two won over the crowd. I enjoyed this a lot. I've watched some interesting or even entertaining stuff for this project, but this was the first good one.

Mar 21, 1991 Tokyo・Tokyo Dome 3RD MATCH Steroids Warriors Showdown Scott Norton Vs. Ekuraiza I'm leaving the title just as it is on NJPW World, because there's a lot going on there. Steroids Warriors Showdown! In the last match, Jesse Ventura reminded us of Superstar Billy Graham by stealing every single thing about his persona. Here we are reminded of Graham's surprising frankness when it came to the tools of the trade - in his case, lots and lots of steroids. Ekuraiza is Equalizer, who is best known to me as Dave “Evad” Sullivan. Pre-NWO Hogan in WCW is some of the direst shit ever, and this is a great example. See, evil Kevin Sullivan had a good-hearted brother who was the world's leading Hulkamaniac. He was also a dimwit who got his own first name backwards. Did anyone consider the implications of this? Hey WCW fans! Don't you love Hulk Hogan? Don't you want to be like this guy? That's in the future, though, and for now he's imitating my two least-favorite wrestlers, with his half-assed Ultimate Warrior facepaint and Bruiser Brody-style carpet samples on his boots. Norton gets a big pop and a very exciting entrance (ring announcer: "Ova za top Scotto Curush Norton!"), looking like Jonah Hill took so many steroids that he's about to pop. Did Scott start dying his hair later? He's all gingery here. It's a different kind of match. They do as many big guy spots as they can in three minutes. The blow a few, but there's no time to dwell on it because we're on to the next one. Really, it's the best match Scott Norton and Evad Sullivan could possibly have. They yell at each other a lot, and Norton shows some impressive athleticism. That's not all Norton shows us. The finish comes when Norton hits the worst powerslam you've ever seen, pulls Equalizer's trunks, and reveals his scrotum as the ref counts to three. The dude's sack was just out there in the Tokyo Dome getting some air. I hope Evad got a big sack of money to make up for the taint of defeat. Given that this is only outing on NJPW World, it looks like he took his balls and went home. At least fans were going nuts. I thought that "Steroids Warriors" was going to be funniest thing about this match, with the fearsome Equalizer turning out to be Evad goddamn Sullivan a close second. But they swerved me. They swerved me with Evad's balls.

Jesse Ventura Vs. Kengo Kimura January 6, 1983 Superstar Billy Graham recently passed away, and there's been a lot talk about the immense size of his shadow. Many of wrestling's top stars would not have looked, talked, and acted the way they did if it weren't for Graham. Case in point: Jesse Ventura flaunted a bodybuilder physique, arrogant attitude, and hippie flower pants too close to the Superstar's prime for it to have been an homage. He apparently made a joke of this, claiming that Graham stole the look from him. He completes the ensemble tonight with a beret and a Plato's Retreat shirt. Plato's Retreat was a sex club in New York, which I'm told had a very nice buffet. Was Ventura there for no strings attached sex with strangers or did he really like eating out of chafing dishes? I guess it's none of my business. The bulk of this match is about knucklelocks and heeling. Kimura is there to play the personality-less black trunks straight shooter, while Ventura whines. They do the bit where there's a clean break and Kimura pats him on the chest, and Ventura complains to the ref like Kengo hit him. He lies about using a closed fist. The work ain't much - these are some slow-motion knucklelocks, and the crowd is being "respectful," if we want to be euphemistic - but I'm a big fan of the chicanery. Which continues as Jesse punches Kimura in the ribs a couple times and lies about it. When Kengo does it to him, Ventura takes a huge theatrical bump and throws a tantrum. "He hit me with a fist!" We all perk up as we think we're getting a high spot, but false alarm it's just a bearhug. Finally Ventura gets Kimura into a sideways torture rack. There's cheering as Kengo fights, but he finally gives up. Ventura was exactly who everyone says he is in this match. Not much on the working side, but lots of personality. Tatsumi Fujinami was always helped by facing a cheating dirtbag, and we saw a similar dynamic here. It was a little off seeing Ventura play the coward and then win with a very direct strongman move. I didn't hate it, but it was only eight minutes.

CIMA & Gamma Vs Ryuichi Kawakami & Shimatani Check GLEAT Ver. 3 - 1st Anniversary - July 1, 2022 It's the first anniversary of GLEAT! All I know about GLEAT is El Lindaman, whom I dig, but he's not in this. This is a twofer – the only showing for both GAMMA and Check Shimitani. I don't know anything about these guys. CIMA is the only one I've heard of, and I wouldn't know if I walked by him on the street. Kawakami leads the "Bulk Orchestra" and his partner "Check." These facts lead to me believe that all the good names in wrestling have been used. Is it too soon to recycle "Tarzan" or "Team No Respect"? The Orchestra arrives in force, and they clearly have neither a height requirement nor a rule against performance-enhancing drugs. We get a lot of rope-running and talking. It's not doing a lot for me, but it's fun to see CIMA out there looking like Dan Spivey. These dudes really are very small. As things heat up, the Bulk Orchestra comes in to cheat. They put a guy in each corner, and then they all run into CIMA at the same time. It's incredibly dumb, but I like that it's in character – that's exactly the kind of thing a “bulk orchestra” would do. It soon becomes cartoonish. GAMMA hits everyone with a kendo stick, but Kawakami has these giant gauntlets that he uses to block it. Eventually CIMA wins. I might not be missing much by not keeping up with GLEAT.

A New Japan World subscription opens up a world of content. Want to see more of today's top stars? They have 1,407 Hiroshi Tanahashi matches. Are you interested in the decades-long history of the King of Sport? Well over six hundred Fujinami vs. Choshu matches. But I like the weird stuff. You got a classic Kenta Kobashi Triple Crown match? Nah, I'd rather watch Johnny Smith take on the Headhunters. So my favorite thing to do when I have an NJPW World subscription is go all the way to the bottom of the tags list and try to figure out what the hell is going on. That's what I'll be doing in this thread. We have 292 wrestlers with one listing (each) on the service. I won't get to all of them. Some of them aren't actually there. But there's still lots to check out: Dudes from GLEAT. Misspellings. Jesse Ventura. Women. The Great Antonio. Let's get started with . . . Dino Bravo vs. Abdullah the Butcher November 5, 1981 I remember Dino from my Hulkamania-plagued childhood, but this is the first time I've watched one of his matches on purpose. He comes out with Dick Murdoch, while Abdullah is accompanied by Bad News Allen, looking quite hipsterish in a goofy cardigan and t-shirt that says, "Pro Wrestling." He's also got a busted finger, and I gather that's why we spend ten minutes sorting things out before the match starts. It appears that this was supposed to be a tag match, but with Allen down to nine fingers we're going to make it a single. This is pretty contentious - everyone except Abdullah is yapping, and WWF president Hisashi Shinma has to come out to calm everyone down. I can follow what's going on because, in one of the great linguistic coincidences, "singles match" in Japanese is "single matchy." While they argue about this, the Butcher is standing perfectly still and sweating like a horse in church. He also looks like he's already bleeding. You'd think we were five minutes in. If you had asked me which of these four guys would still be alive today, I would not have picked the obese one with a seeping wound on his head who breaks a sweat from standing still. Shinma's also still alive, by the way. Surprised me. We finally get started, and in two minutes there's blood everywhere. Dino hits Abdullah a couple times, we go outside, and then we roll back in and bleed everywhere. Bad News throws a pound and a half of powder in Dino's face and commences to kicking him, triggering the DQ. Then Abdullah stabs Dino in the head with a spike and then brawls with everyone. And we're done! All that preamble for a four minute match. It wasn't a good four minutes, either. I went and watched Murdoch take on Abdullah from a couple years later, and it was so much better. The Butcher really worked in that one. Here he was just awful. He didn't come off like a wildman; he came off pained and tired. I didn't get much from Dino Bravo. His strikes weren't any good, and that's about all he did. He bled a lot, but maybe not enough to make it back onto NJPW World.

I still listen to Entre dos Tierras, and it’s all because of Kaientai’s entrance at ECW Barely Legal.

I really like this as a category. I always thought Super Delfin was good at it.

I'm always pleasantly surprised by Akebono matches. I realize I'm grading on a curve; I never expect much from a 40-something retired sumo wrestler. A lot of modern wrestling lacks a sense of struggle. Akebono matches are nothing but struggle, most of it against himself. He sweats at an all-time level. You can feel the difficulty he has picking himself off the mat. When he finally lumbers into position to do damage, it means something.

Bamford Bamington Bigelow

All chaps are assless. It’s like saying “sockless pants.”

He was the ref in the match Ed Wood watched before he recruited Tor Johnson (George Steele). One of the great pro wrestling movie moments.

Orange Cassidy isn’t a body guy either, but look at them.

So Cole’s just completely given up on the gym, huh?

ROH was on my local ABC affiliate at 5 pm on Sunday (DC area). That's not a normal thing, right? There's no indication on their website that I'd be able to see them there.

Mark Henry is absolutely the #1 guy from the Attitude Era.

Fightmaster is a name in English, but apparently it’s garbled German referring to woodworking. It gained something in the translation.