PeteF3

I don't know the specific answer here but you beat me to a point I wanted to make about how much better AJPW seemed to be about when Heel in Peril was worked. The standout example for me would be Hansen & DiBiase (and yes, they were tag champs) defending against Yatsu & Nakano, a sleeper bout from the '80s set. The foreigners are on the defensive almost the entire match, with DiBiase working a bum knee while Hansen is played up as this lurking, devastating tornado on the apron...until he gets tagged in and promptly hurts HIS knee, and suddenly the underdog natives look to have a real chance. The whole thing seemed like the two natives just barely hanging on by doing all the right things, strategy-wise, rather than an excuse to bitch out the heels as seemed to happen so often in WWF tags. It was the wrestling equivalent to Bill Parcells' Giants beating the offensive juggernaut Bills by playing conservative, run-it-up-the-gut football and keeping that offense off the field (until they ran into a Hansen Lariat, but the thought was there). My first instinct is to say yes, it is more effective with heel champs, but I don't know if the babyfaces being bigger has anything to do with it. I would say just the opposite--that "cutting the ring in half" is a more effective storyline when it's the heels who have the size advantage. To use a shitty example, any team challenging the Colossal Connection would obviously want to keep Haku in the ring as much as possible. That's smart strategy from a kaybae standpoint and in a real-life standpoint it keeps Andre (or Warlord, or some other shitty partner you care to use) from seeing any meaningful action.

And Stan Hansen wouldn't have? In real life, beating the shit out of someone with a cowbell and chairs after the bell would probably result in a multiple-month suspension, not to mention an arrest. '90s All-Japan didn't have any less carny bullshit than JCP, they were just better at hiding it.

I absolutely can't buy the idea that Luger would have won the title if not for blabbing the finish. The WWF themselves spoiled two of the biggest shows of the year twice in two months in 1988 and kept going. Plus you had Mr. Perfect as the guest referee. Even accounting that all WWF babyfaces were instantly friends, is any other finish possible besides "Perfect screws Luger out of the belt"?

I attribute most of the Stallions' suckiness to Jim Powers, who was absolutely frigging awful. No timing, hopelessly generic offense, and he was incapable of selling, which is kind of a major problem when you're supposed to be an underdog babyface. The Stallions managed to drag down the '87 Survivor Series match despite it involving 18 other guys. I'm not a big Roma fan but he did have a pretty gorgeous sunset flip off the top.

Coming just after the post comparing Kobashi to Andre, I read this as "Andre has a pretty good tope." Yeah, I know, cool story bro.

With the '70s Breaks/Saint match above being a notable exception, you're not going to find much in the way of blood on TV. ITV had strict rules for what was allowed. House shows allowed for more leeway in terms of blood, brawling, and occasional gimmick matches, and their own card-to-card storylines. Of course, there's not much to be done from our end for enjoying any of that. The only bladejob I've seen was by Wayne Bridges in his title match against John Quinn and that resulted in an immediate stoppage. (Quinn wasn't a great worker but he was a heat magnet--one of my favorite WOS spots ever is him charging across the ring at the first round break to clobber Bridges with a big boot, which was totally awesome and unexpected after seeing countless matches with even the heels respecting the bell). In terms of TV storylines there's the Pete Roberts vs. Wayne Bridges feud from the early '80s when Bridges was Joint's "World Heavyweight Champion." Bridges got DQ'd in a non-title match while heeling it up for most of it, then got beat 2-0 in a rematch to set up a title bout at the Royal Albert Hall, with Bridges working heel for probably the only time in his career. The copy of the Albert Hall match that I have is missing the first few rounds (no falls) but would be my #1 if I had to turn in an '80s ballot for Europe tomorrow, and is one of the 3 or 4 best WOS matches I've seen. Roberts was hit or miss in Japan with more misses than hits but I've yet to see a bad performance out of him in England. Steve Veidor vs. Gwyn Davies for the British Heavyweight title from 1976 is still my favorite WOS match that I've seen. No blood but plenty of heel vs. babyface hate, actual near-falls, and neat psychology with finishes and spots building off each other throughout each decision.

Slaughter may have gotten huge reactions from people in attendance (though he didn't really get anything out of the ordinary at the house show I saw him at, which was during his title reign), but I can't in good conscience place him among the most hated heels of all-time when his run was such a dud. Not really his fault because I thought he played his role well, but the Iraqi angle turned off more people than it drew in. Jim Cornette & the Midnights in Mid-South circa 1984 seem like they would belong, if only for the 6-man in Houston teaming with Ernie Ladd that ends with an NWO-worthy trash job on the ring and ring announcer Bruce Pritchard pleading with fans to return to their seats.

Jerry Lawler being a "slow starter." (Similarly, Greg Valentine "taking fifteen minutes just to get warmed up," though that was more of a Gorilla-ism than standard practice).

I honestly don't see what's "peculiar" about any of those. The Austin thing looks that way in retrospect but wasn't at the time.

If there's one thing I love more than random '90s AJPW foreign tourers, it's random Japan masked gimmicks. The V was GCW job guy and Deep South guy Don Sanders. Also... Dick Murdoch as the Tornado and Karl Kox as the Spirit, created just as masked guys to put over the Destroyer. Davey Boy Smith as Vampiedo, Charlie Fulton as "The USSR," Ray Candy as Super Mario Man, Mile Zrno as Silver Hurricane, Mario Milano as the Barracuda, Scott Irwin as the Asteroid, and Bobby Jaggers as the Mysterious Assassin. Among others. And for "peculiar," it doesn't get much moreso than Billy, Gary, and Bobby Gaspar--Bob Orton, Tyler Mane, and Karl Moffat plus a million other guys making random appearances and run-ins. Nothing like hockey mask-wearing pirates to build a major Inoki feud around.

Remember Shamrock was a wrestler first (working SAPW as Mr. Wrestling Vince Torelli) and a UFCer second. Still, there was a point when I was going through AJPW '90s TV that I got more excited about bizarro random imports than about the upcoming Misawa/Jumbo 6-man. I'm not sure anything will top longtime WWF TV guy Brian Costello showing up in '94, though the State Patrol, Barry Horowitz, Randy Rose, and Sunny Beach all come close. That, and Prince Iaukea (the original one and real son of Curtis, not the WCW guy) and his gimmick of throwing a giant net on his opponent before the bell. Also: Joe LeDuc's two-taping run in the WWF circa 1989. Got Frenchy Martin as a manager, lost to a prelim by DQ for excessive headbutting in the corner, lost to Tito Santana, and appeared in his most prominent role at Randy Savage's coronation and ensuring decades of Internet people asking, "Who was that guy?" High Chief Afi debuting as Bobby Heenan's new charge, slapping hands with the fans on the way down the aisle, and not even getting the pin in his debut 6-man before disappearing. Weirder than pre-paint, pre-savage Kamala turning up on WOS would be Tyler "Big Sky" Mane as The Skywalker, doing a one-off match with Pat Roach. I didn't even know Mane was wrestling that far back.

Hector Guerrero as the Gobbledygooker. Why do you even need to book a wrestler for that? Was there actually a plan to have him wrestle at some point?

Showapuroresu.com says that was his only NJPW tour pre-'90s. He did work in the UWF in 1985, but obviously wouldn't have met Fujinami there.

Definitely remember The Man name from PWI. If it's legit, it may have just been for an odd house show and maybe just a placeholder name.

I think the "held back" question was a joke relating to how 47-year old Raven and 41-year old Dreamer were kayfabe classmates.

"Bad patriot" was Sgt. Slaughter's gimmick in the summer of 1990 before he was hitched full-tilt to the Gulf War. Before Adnan was brought in, Slaughter's beef was with Americans going soft by cheering that pinko commie Nikolai Volkoff, and in fact I think some of his early vignettes actually criticized the U.S. for not invading Iraq. Traces continued afterward. There's the match in the Tito Appreciation Thread where Slaughter tries to force Santana to salute the Iraqi flag after cutting an anti-immigrant promo.

Sorry, I went from talking about the babyface retaining the title Dusty-style to talking about the Dusty Finish in general (which happened quite a lot with Bockwinkel). It does make a bit more sense with a heel champ but it was still overdone.

Actually from a geographical and style standpoint, Gagne should be Terry Ryan. Not to derail this from the AWA/wrestling talk but Jerry Jarrett was very Beane-esque as well. ECW took a lot from Memphis so of course that comparison is going to hold up, but I'll concede that Heyman was able to build up a cult following as a "mastermind" that Jarrett really didn't and that would put him closer to Beane's level.

Verne Gagne = Billy Beane? They've both had movies made about them, too. Martel's innate Frenchiness may well have prevented him from ever being a truly top-tier draw in the U.S. when Verne needed a champ on Slaughter or Blackwell's level. That said, it's hard to get a babyface World Champion to draw when he can't seem to beat anybody. Other than the return bout with Jumbo in St. Paul (?) and the blowoff bouts with Zhukov, it seems every Martel defense ends with him getting pinned and the new heel champion getting screwed out of the belt--in my mind, just as backwards as the common WWF complaint where the heel is often in control ready to make the pin when the bell rings for a draw. With whom are the fans' sympathies supposed to lie in these situations? Like any finish it might be okay in moderation, but it was not only insanely overdone throughout AWA history (I'm guessing much more often than any promotion Dusty booked) but it made Martel look weak--at least to this after-the-fact observer--when he couldn't retain his title over Michael Hayes or Jimmy Garvin without help from Wally Karbo.

You could argue that it was "class-based" but that's totally Andy Kaufman in Memphis. Tammy Fytch in Smoky Mountain too, for that matter.

No correlation between Vince getting Hayes and his departure from the AWA. Hayes was out of the AWA by mid 1980, and it wouldn't surprise me if Hayes didn't start for Vince in early 1984 but not earlier. Hayes is backstage interviewing the Iron Sheik after his WWF title victory, so he pre-dated expansion by a tiny bit, but it can't have been by much. He had a in '82, managing guys like King James and Billy Robinson and also doing commentary, leading to a feud with fellow commentator Johnny Weaver.

Other pre-'80s guys besides Berry who seem most qualified: Dr. Ken Ramey, Saul Weingeroff (deserves special recognition for the sheer audacity of a stereotypical Jew managing two Nazis in the Von Brauners), Prof. Boris Malenko, Sam Bass, J.C. Dykes, and Bobby Davis. And Bobby's year-long stint in Georgia shouldn't be overlooked, either. I admit he was kind of a weird fit for the territory but it was a fresh new setting for him at a time when he needed one.

Getting back to Solie with partners, his GCW partnership with Roddy Piper (who pre-dated Ventura as far as being a national, permanent heel color man) is generally well-thought-of. Solie's dignified, low-key approach combined with Piper's manic screeching sounds like a train wreck but they did have chemistry together and it's a big part of what made the angle where Piper saves Solie from Don Muraco so memorable. Solie & Buddy Colt were a longtime team in Florida but Colt didn't add much. It was thought that a cripple like Colt couldn't be a heel announcer so he was made into a babyface, which didn't suit him at all. Solie & Bobby Heenan at various times in WCW was a train wreck. Actually the biggest problem is Solie laughed at Heenan too much, even when Heenan was making fun of him directly. I'd like to know if Solie & Ventura ever teamed up. They were in WCW together for awhile and I'm curious if either one did at least a fill-in on the other's show.