ohtani's jacket

Some more details have emerged: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/first-picture-ex-pro-wrestler-10727578

Whoah.

This was a straightforward, old-school apuesta match. Angel Mortal did a great job of roughing Sevilla up throughout the match and looked every bit the classic rudo journeyman. Sevilla was a bit ungainly at times but they did a great job of making him look tough, which isn't always easy to do with a pretty boy tecnico. Not only did he produce a strong comeback after Mortal had bust him open, he took it upon himself to force Mortal back in the ring to have his head shaved when Mortal was fighting with security. That made him look tougher than say, Tarzan Boy. There was some bullshit with the seconds and the ref but on the whole it was a solid match. Mortal getting his head shaved was quite the sight and capping it off with a half-shaven beatdown on Sevilla was a fine way to cap the evening. Good stuff.

It's Strong Kobayashi. Some more pics from the match -- https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/hk08300830/30573256.html

More wrestling from Chicago: Mr. Moto vs. Ivan Rasputin had all the makings of a terrible match but it wasn't that bad actually. It was fought in the clinch like most of the Moto and Togo matches and there were some nice looking blows throughout. Ivan was a big Russian bear who threw a commanding forearm smash. He reminded me a bit of the British wrestler John Elijah in terms of being a robust power guy. Some of the commentary was inane but the match itself was worlds better than I expected. Jim Dobie vs. Lou Britton was a great match. This was right up my alley. It was a technical match with cheating so you got the best of both worlds, heel/face stuff for the crowd and mat wrestling. Lou Britton was completely awesome. A great wrestler and fine technician with a wonder Mexican moustache that was perfect for his role as role as the wrestler looking to take short cuts. I have no doubt he would be one of the finds of the 50s if there were more footage of him. Dobie was good too but Britton stole the show. Definitely a guy I won't be forgetting in a hurry. Fuzzy Cupid was a great dwarf heel. He had a bit of a Lord James Blears gimmick going on and amazingly fuzzy hair. He took on an Ethiopian dwarf named Haile Selassie, who was really some guy from Philly. Quite a good match. The crowd were really into it and showed their support for the wrestlers. It was nice to see the midgets taken seriously as entertainers. Definitely the best midget bout so far. Carl Engstrom looked like a decent young talent but he was stymied by having to work with Matt D's boy, The Mighty Atlas. Some nice holds here and there but too much of Atlas' strongman shtick grinding everything to a halt. I enjoyed the short Bozo Brown vs. Jim Graham match more. Brown was a fat boy wrestler with solid brawling skills and worked a good match before succumbing to a soft count out. Hope to see more of him in the future. All in all, quite good variety in these Chicago Archives. You really get a sense of how Fred Kohler promoted his cards from top to bottom. Valuable stuff. It's just a shame they ran out of money and didn't convert the rest of the collection.

Fun house show match in front of a noisy Tijuana crowd. We got some nice work between Santo and Wagner, some great comedy from Porky and Wagner and Cien Caras being Cien Caras. Wagner was fantastic in this. What a great worker he was at this point in time. He had the Lucha world on a string. And what more can be said about Porky? It's like watching Laurel and Hardy or an old Warner Brothers cartoon. It just never gets old. I liked the physicality as well. That's an element of lucha libre that often gets overlooked. Fantastic angle during the crowd brawling as well. I loved that shot with the guy wearing the cowboy hat and the image of Santo's mask holes poking through the throng of onlookers. Match ended abruptly with a Felino run-in which was a shame. We did see a more vicious Felino than the one we're used to but the apuesta challenges were pretty hollow and I didn't make it to the end.

I'm gonna take the opportunity to continue familiarizing myself like guys like Low Ki. He was a lot looser here than I was expecting and a bit more flippy than my image of him. Some of his stuff looked a bit shitty, to be honest. Mayhem was solid, The big knock on indy bouts like this is that they pinch stuff like the Fujiwara armbar and use the hold for no reason other than to name drop it. There were elements of that here but were pretty forthright about working a counter based offensive bout and stuck to their guns whether they were on the mat or the top rope. Not bad but didn't bowl me over. The finish was spectacular but bordered on overkill. The commentary sounded like it was done by a message board poster. I swear I heard him thumbing through the Big, Big Book of Moves. Retro.

This was a great appetizer for the Aja/Satomura rematch. Satomura was so babyfaced here and prone to shouting "bakayaro" and hurling herself at opponents but she rose to the challenge of facing Kong and remains one of Aja's best opponents. I thought Yamada did a bang-up job in the role she was called upon to play. She was almost unrecognizable with her Escape from New York look but took her lumps and dished out a few of her own in a perfect foil to the attrition that Aja and Satomura served up. Kaoru was a bit of an odd fit but it didn't really matter once Aja lashed out. This was good. On par with just about any match we saw in the lead-in to Villano/Atlantis or Satanico/Tarzan Boy.

This was a fun match. Ogawa isn't cut from the same cloth as wrestlers I typically like but he does a good job using the tools at his disposal. He made a pest of himself throughout and brought something different to the table with his rule-bending. I liked the part where they got into an elbow exchange and Ogawa got a reminder of who's boss. The finish was a little anti-climatic but the match was good. Post prime Misawa continues to fascinate.

This morning I was reading a story about a woman who stole babies and sold them to rich families. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11880172 It says that Ric Flair was one of the babies she abducted. Is this a true story?

This was all right. Won't make you forget Bret vs. Waltman in a hurry. Decent TV segment but the match was unspectacular and was basically storyline progression. Nothing special.

Here's a suitable match for Father's Day. I liked how this started out as a fun exhibition with Hamada getting cheeky taking on Mary, which Ayako scolded him for afterward, then turned serious as they ratcheted up the exchanges. Interesting dynamic between the fathers and daughters too with Mary constantly worried about her papa and Ayako bossing hers around. The Apaches looked like they were well immersed in the family business. Gran Apache was a great worker and I was sorry to hear about his recent passing. QEPD.

I'm not terribly fond of three-way matches so you can imagine what I thought of a garbage three-way. A lot of blood spilled over nothing in this match. The angle att the end was poorly done. Sandman's "shock" appearances are some of the worst I've seen. His music is too slow and he takes too long to make his way to the ring. Watching him labor his way to the ring like a drunken Sting and cane the shit out of everybody is hard to swallow. The Network outnumbers him and has an eternity to prepare for his arrival. They should beat the shit out of him every time. Van Dam's entrance was even worse. You're in a hardcore promotion and you come to the ring on your friends' shoulders like a buddy moment in a B-grade action flick? Whoever was doing the music forgot to turn it off when Callis began cutting his promo. Way too much of a WCW vs. NWO feel to this angle. I guess no-one told Hayman that angle was hot in '96-97, or maybe Heyman has always carried a torch for The Dangerous Alliance. The only original thing about the Network angle is that Rhino is allowed to swear. It's pro-wrestling the way you've never heard it. I kind of like Rhino in this setting. He looks like a man-beast and his finisher is appropriately named. You can tell he'll be neutered in the WWF but he works well in this setting.

This was more of the same from Crazy Max. That's not necessarily a bad thing mind you, but the babyfaces didn't mount any challenge whatsoever. Dragon Kid needed to shine for this to be anything special but he was largely anonymous. Hopefully, they address the heel/face balance soon.

Thanks for the heads up on this. Technically not a great match but it was fascinating to see that the tenets of pro-wrestling that Funk demonstrated so well in the 80s were something he had developed years before. Probably the most interesting moment to me was when he led the crowd in a hand clap when he tried his alternate finisher. That was proto-sports entertainment right there.

This was a nice match. Shame about the venue though. It looked like they were wrestling in the Japanese version of a Vegas banquet hall instead of in front of a proper wrestling crowd. Ran Ran Yu was a talented pro. She excellent in JWP as a youngster (before the name change) and was able to kick on as a worker despite plying her trade in some lean years for Joshi puroresu. Mad respect for her forging out an 18-year career in the business, especially the years spent freelancing.I liked her armwork in this and the stiff shots she gave Tsubasa. Definitely one to follow in the coming months.

Fun match between two underrated Joshi pros. Yagi's career was littered with three-star matches like this. She had a spectacular all round game and demonstrated it again here. Asari rising from the ashes of Joshi's late 90s fall is impressive. She's managed to make herself seem relevant in a down period for Joshi puroresu. Full credit to Chapparita Asari.

This was all right. It was set up by the commentators as a contrast in styles between the more orthodox Sano and the flashier CIMA. Sano, the 16-year vet, was portrayed as being from the Showa generation while CIMA was presented as the younger generation Heisei wrestler. And that was pretty much how they wrestled. But there wasn't a lot of passion in it from Sano and the match was lopsided when it came to who wanted it more. The fact that it was a young upstart heel wanting it more than the vet was an interesting twist but there wasn't enough fight from Sano to make this terribly compelling. And it was even less interesting outside of the tournament context. I think Sano went from being underrated to a tad bit overrated in our circle.

According to SuperLuchas, they tagged together in Guadalajara -- 3/7/65 El Santo & Lou Thesz vs. Benny Gallant & Karloff Lagarde. Thesz had two more matches on the same tour: Black Shadow & Lou Thesz vs. Benny Gallant & Rene Guajardo, 3/5/65 Blue Demon & Lou Thesz vs. Espanto I & Espanto II, 3/12/65 He also defended the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in Guadalajara on 5/23/54. The challenger was Gori Guerrero.

Thesz worked in Mexico as both a wrestler and a referee. His most famous bout was against Canek on 8/27/78 which drew a huge gate at the Palacio de los Deportes. Santo wrestled in the semi-main in a UWA Welterweight title match that led to a hair vs. mask match between them the following month. The card was billed as “Homenaje al Santo Enmascarado de Plata y Legendario Lou Thesz.” Thesz had been awarded the UWA World Heavyweight Championship in 1977 and had successfully defended it against Dr. Wagner and Mil Mascaras, the latter another huge sellout at the Palacio los Deportes. Thesz had a huge rep in Mexico as a world famous international wrestling star and Canek's victory over Thesz paved the way for him to become the top drawing heavyweight of the 1980s. Since Thesz and Santo were in different weight classes, I assume the only time they could have met in the ring was in a tag match or trios.

This was awesome. Another monster destroyed. Marvelously entertaining.

What a boring ass fight. I enjoy Kobashi but only to a point. I don't need to see him take on the world and certainly not uninteresting opponents like Omori. All Japan was obviously an excellent wrestling promotion but it had its systems and could feel formulaic at times. This felt more formulaic than inspired but Omori was a fairly big albatross. Match came alive at the end but you expect that in a Japanee match. I can see people having a completely different perspective on this based on what Kobashi was able to drag Omori too but I'm far less tolerant of wrestling that doesn't interest me than most fair-minded folks around here.

This was all right. I thought Smith looked more like Owen Hart or Chris Benoit working the European style than anything authentically British except for one or two holds. I guess I imagined something different when I read this was worked in the British style. There was more matwork than your average All Japan bout and Kobashi did some neat armwork but this was mostly a physical All Japan encounter with a bit of matwork instead of irish-whipping each other into the guard rails. Smith tried to take the fight to Kobashi in the second half of the bout but he was fighting a losing battle on that front. Korakuen Hall was a wee bit quiet on this night which didn't help inspire Smith. The finishing stretch was fairly standard but I didn't like the finish at all. Smith came off as fairly weak opposition if his German was so soft that Kobashi could counter like that. Not a bad match but I don't think it was a remarkable advertisement for Kobashi as a worker.

I thought this was excellent. If you compare it to their epic matches like 1/97 you'll be disappointed but to be frank they were past the point of being able to work those matches. This was an excellent match in the context of April 2000 and the first four months of the year. It was a Carnival bout so it wouldn't have made sense to work a match that was as outstanding as a Triple Crown bout or a Carnival final. That said, the bout was still hugely competitive. Misawa looked a healthier here than he did earlier in the year. Perhaps he had some nagging injuries to start the season. The commentator made note of how "slow starter" Misawa took a more aggressive approach than usual and used a few moves rarely seen from him and throughout the match there were further signs of the power shift from 90s Ace Misawa to the current Triple Crown champion. Misawa's selling was exquisite as usual and the finishing stretch made Kobashi look like a giant of the modern game. Not only did he withstand Misawa's usual barrage of offensive, he countered with immense strength and powerful offense. Sasaki has been good in 2000 -- great even -- but Kobashi is separating himself from the pack here with Misawa stepping down from the Ace role and Hashimoto being treated like shit.

This wasn't a match, it was a month full of RAW and Smackdown finishes rolled into one. Quite possibly the most over-booked match of all-time. It was entertaining in terms of its twists and turns but it wasn't a match. It was TV booking dressed up as a match.