PeteF3

He's not--he got the "future endeavours" treatment, while Cass did not.

Me too. This is another 2.9-fest that wears out its welcome after a fun start. And those dueling-ducking-lariats at the very end were totally eye-rolling. Moreso than that, all those 2.9s and counters and beats just feel very choreographed in comparison to what the other Japanese companies are doing--"one, two, kickout at 2.9," like they're dance steps you can call in advance. Contrary to being an annoyance, I thought Kuroda was the most enjoyable guy in the match--he showed great personality early on and really made you want to see his face get smashed in, which it does in spades. That aside, the opening matwork was way more compelling than the closing finisher-spamming. In conclusion, most of late-'90s FMW is the classic child piano prodigy--their workers can play the notes, but can't play the music.

Koko was gone for about a year, from the fall of '91 until coming back in the fall or late summer of '92 to be part of High Energy. What's more forgotten is that he shows up again in early '94, and even works a match against the freshly turned Owen on Superstars.

Also, Butch was the in-between man between Vince and Paul Wight, who had been negotiating in secret since like 1996.

I was hoping we'd get Jeff Cobb or some other surprise/outsider (Johnny Mundo was also rumored, which would have at least been different), but nothing like that this year.

SD was weird--he worked up through New Year's Eve 1988, then not at all in 1989. wrestlingdata has no results for him but I believe he did work for Savoldi and people like that. Then he reappears in mid-to-late 1990 for a few TV jobs and then is gone for good. Speaking of nerding out over job guys, 1970's jobber Silvano Sousa suddenly showed up again in 1987 after years of absence to do a single shot, jobbing to the One Man Gang. The Bushwhackers interacting with Loose Cannon Brian Pillman (he broke a crutch over one of their heads) is one of the weirdest collision of eras and worlds in wrestling history.

Kazuchika Okada Jay White Hiroshi Tanahashi Kenny Omega Tetsuya Naito Minoru Suzuki Tomohiro Ishii Evil Hangman Page Sanada Juice Robinson Toru Yano Bad Luck Fale Yoshi-Hashi Hirooki Goto Kota Ibushi Zack Sabre, Jr. Tama Tonga Michael Elgin Togi Makabe No blocks yet, but it's the same lineup as last year except Nagata and Kojima are out, Hangman Page and Jay White are in.

And FMW had room for a women's division because they were a B-level promotion with less men's depth than the Big Two but still enjoyed the fruits of the Joshi class of the late '80s created by the Crush Gals' popularity. And even then, who ever really gave a fuck about any of the FMW women once you got past Kudo and Combat?

Bix has made that point repeatedly, actually.

Like I said in the New Japan thread, there are reasonable points to be made on both sides of this argument, and Dave has made some of them--but that basketball analogy needs to go into the circular file like, yesterday.

This is not to be read as a defense at all of segregation, but no, it's absolutely not ridiculous--there's past precedent for such an occurrence (scroll down to/search for "Economic Costs of Desegregation on Negro League Baseball"). If NJPW thought that incorporating women would help them, they would do it in a way that helped New Japan as a business and only New Japan as a business, not in a way that helped women's wrestling.

Dave's response about how NJPW adding women would be better for women's wrestling--this makes way more sense than his stupid NBA analogy: "It would be far worse for women's wrestling. Either you'd have the elite women go there, taking them away from the headline positions in promotions and those companies would lose popularity, or you'd have non-elite women there, meaning it would not get over,and be a failure. This is Americans who don't know the industry there trying to make a business decision while not even knowing the first thing about the business or the culture. UFC is completely different, they had the ability to hire hundreds of women and Strikeforce and Elite XC in their culture already proved the audience was there on a men's show. New Japan doesn't have the roster space to do that nor is there any evidence that the New Japan fan base wants it on their shows. This is a company that already books six, eight and ten man tags because they have so many men under contract, as keeps the matches short unless you are a top star because they don't want long shows unless it's the major events. There's no spot available unless they run multiple shows per night and you're happy with them killing off the places that develop the new talent." Me again: Joshi went through a severe talent shortage in the late '90s because they killed off the women and girls' audience, and thus their dojo tryouts went from thousands of women a year to maybe a hundred. I'm not sure how easy it is for Stardom, Ice Ribbon, et al to replenish their roster as it is drawing around 700 people per show if that, much less if two major promotions start raiding their talent instead of just the WWE.

I like wrestling--period. Even though joshi definitely had its own style at least in the '80s and '90s, I'm not sure about championing a match or a style simply because it happens to contain women. (Yes, I sort of followed along with all the Twitter drama on this subject--my view is, while there may not be any reason for NJPW *not* to have a women's division, I also don't see any really compelling argument why they *must* have one, either. I'm also not sure if 6-8 women getting a big pay and exposure increase if they were under NJPW contract would do much for women's wrestling as a whole considering that would probably cripple the women's federations, who probably need all the help they can get at the moment.)

Ole got booted out of the Horsemen, leaving Arn partner-less.

Sure seems like they're going to go with multiple uploads on holiday weeks, then. This series started on Memorial Day, now it's a

"Jim Cornette had a banana emergency and couldn't be there" is a line I remember from a Scott Keith review, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't being literal, just referencing an urban myth about Cornette (one that even DX referenced on Raw once).

It's okay for there not to be any babyfaces in this little pissing contest. Looks like a heel vs. heel program to me. If Corey does want to call out Punk for whatever reason that's his business, but I have no idea what taking a shot at "oversensitive" fans who might have committed the horrible crime of liking Kenny Omega was supposed to accomplish.

Bump? Second verse, same as the first, really. Punk wasn't an embarrassment in the 1st round and conceivably could even have won it, but after that he was gassed and helpless and would have been annihilated had his opponent not been a tomato can whom Rogan was actively saying seemed to be carrying the fight to make sure it went a full 3 rounds. One of the unofficial online scorers had the second round as 10-*7*, which I've never even heard of in an MMA fight.

I'm older now than they were then, never seen Frozen, but I still know "Let It Go." A Whole New World was at or past that level of ubiquity in the mid-'90s.

Remember, though, Benoit had brought up the "family emergency" before going home, and just when specifically have there been instances of someone finding their family dead (from CO poisoning, a home invasion, or whatever) and immediately killing themselves? It's my experience that suicide simply isn't that spontaneous. That said, I'm in the position of someone who was at work until 11pm that night with no Internet or phone access, so by the time I heard about anything happening I was getting the full story at once. I still already knew that Benoit was consciously missing the PPV, though. WWE had options for Monday night. Even running a generic best-of show would have been a better option than what ended up happening.

CLIMB THE LADDER, KID. MAKE YOURSELF FAMOUS! Glad to see this concept resurrected.

I don't know why, but Kieran's suggestion of Nash's suggestion regarding long-term planning--"Let's do long-term planning, but quicker"--gave me the biggest laugh listening to a podcast in a long time.