ohtani's jacket

Well, I saw Carpentier sell for Killer Kowalski, so I guess that shows you how big a deal Kowalski was in this era. But Kowalski... I just don't know... I've never seen him look any better than wooden. Alberto & Ramon Torres vs. Art Mahalick & Mike Sharpe is from the mid-60s but a hot bout with some great action. The Torres brothers are perhaps a little bit too dominant down the stretch, but if you like the Guerrero brothers then the entire Torres family are worth checking out. I'm not a fan of Dick the Bruiser, but I can take him in small doses. Five minutes of him vs. The Beast was some rowdy old fun. I think the next thing I'm going to do is go through the wrestlingfilms channel in chronological order. That will include a lot of 30s and 40s wrestling, but I think I'll keep everything together in this thread.

Mile Zrno vs. Jimmy Ocean (2/29/92) This was very cool. It was a German indie match wrestled inside a tiny ring in a Berlin hotel. In the previous matches, Zrno did a lot of dropkicks and head scissors and other flashy babyface moves but here he showed his full array of talent. Ocean is a guy I've only known as a two-bit comedy worker, but he too showed me a lot. Some of the short range stuff they were doing was awesome. Short arm lariats and standing dropkicks that were some of the most "in your face" stuff I've seen in ages, probably due to the size of the ring. Zrno brought every aspect of his game including a fair bit of his mat skill. This was the Zrno I was talking about when I said he was underrated. As for Ocean, either the guy could really work or Zrno was making him look good. Either way, I'd go as far as calling this my favourite European match from the 90s it was that cool.

Great pun.

I think that's a false dilemma. It's possible for it to be a combination. And it's the combination that makes the firing fair enough to me. I also bristle a bit at the suggestion from some it's gotta be about offensiveness. I'm not personally offended by the joke, but it's still way out of line for what I think are clear, obvious reasons, which Bix and others have highlighted. When someone deliberately disobeys their boss, does it in a flaunting, throw it in their face for all to see way, and not only disobeys by making a political joke, but also a joke where the punchline is that someone would get sexually assaulted bcs they're attractive...that's a confluence of a lot of bad stuff in the context of "disobeying the boss." 'm not sure it matters, but the joke didn't get over either. I'm just saying that if it was a different milder political joke no one would give a shit. Also, the more people weep about not getting called pussies, the more other people will want to CALL THEM pussies. Just basic psychology. Tell a kid they can't do something and their impulse is to do it, forbidden fruit. Trump was the guy who no one was meant to vote for. Turns out lots of Americans don't really like being told what to do. So they got in the booth and did their own personal little Stone Cold moment. Basic facts. I'd talked about which hills to die on before, picking and choosing battles. I've said before where all this leads. Now literally Donald Trump is the fucking president and Britain is leaving the EU. And there are still people saying "hey, don't use the word pussy" in earnest like that's the important thing going on. How about waking up and smelling the coffee and confronting exactly what that behaviour does and where it leads. I mean for fuck's sake, look at the year we've had and here people are arguing about the word "pussy". Jesus Christ, can't take it anymore. Also, I want to be clear. This is not a "meltdown", I'm not losing it. I'm angry at the extent to which sensible discussion in every realm has been hijacked by SJW-ism. Make no mistake, blindly dogmatic PC policing is part of the confluence of problems I blame for the present situation. And I get angry about it because it comes from people who are meant to be on my team, meant to be clever, meant to represent, broadly speaking, the left. Get your heads out of your arses for five minutes to see what where that method of approaching the problem gets you. I'm not apologising for this post. Someone has to say it. And at the same time, fuck Joey Styles. This type of thing is nothing. It's about words and their meaning. It's about definitions and usage. It's about connotations and baggage and history. You wait until there's a crisis and there are lives on the line. When there's no pressure people are free to talk big but when the shit hits the fan you know what the reality is like. I always thought of myself as left leaning; always supported leftist groups. But in a time of crisis they were of no help to me. So, since then a moderate approach has seemed like the only approach to take. If you can't trust the left and you can't trust the right then you have to forge your own path.

Just a heads up -- the date on Fuerza/Octagon is 2/1/91.

Because the Silver Hurricane deserves his own thread. Quite possibly one of the most underrated talents of all-time. Mile Zrno vs. Dave Morgan (Hannover 10/27/85) Morgan was a British dynamo who preferred to work abroad than traverse the U.K halls. This was clipped (in true German handheld fashion) and mostly a Morgan showcase, but you could tell it was a crowd-pleaser. Early on, they worked some comedy sequences with referee Mick McMichael but later they got serious and were pissed at one another. Zrno was mainly typecast here as the good looking babyface like some kind of glorified Tom Zenk, but the German tournaments are nothing if not nightly house shows and they gave the paying customers an enjoyable mid card whirl. Mile Zrno vs. Rambo (Heumarkt, Vienna 1988) Rambo is not the awesome UWA luchador who had a decades long blood feud with Villano III, but the significantly less awesome Canadian wrestler who made a name for himself in Europe and was later part of the Truth Commission. This is a good showcase for Zrno's ability to make his opponent look good but not a great showcase for his full range of talents.

As predicted, Enrique Torres vs. Ted Christy was more shtick than mat wizardry. One thing I've noticed so far about 50s wrestling is that champion caliber wrestlers like Torres are booked to look exceptionally strong. They hardly ever sell for the heels and rarely go off their feet. Instead, they spent most their time making the heels look like buffoons. Christy was a fun buffoon, though. He reminded me of Mick McManus' tag partner, Steve Logan. He even did the same wet hair trick his slicked back sides. Torres didn't really break a sweat here, but it was entertaining enough. Also fun was getting to see Joe Blanchard in a swift 15 minute time limit draw with Pierre LaSalle of Rougeau family fame. The only thing I'd seen from Blanchard previously as snippets of his awesome feud with Fritz Von Erich. He looked solid against LaSalle even if they didn't really hit the mat as hard as I'd like. It was more dancing about playing heel vs. face, but they made a go of it. I'm still trying to crack Edouard Carpentier. In theory, he's a wrestler I should like since he wrestles like a masked tecnico, but there's something that's not quite clicking. I still can't put my finger on it. I did like the match I watched against a thick set Mike Gallagher, but again it was a heavy offensive showcase with Carpentier barely putting over Gallagher's stuff. Carpentier was definitely one of the more dynamic and striking workers of his time but just how good he was remains elusive.

I finally got the chance to see the Inoki/Bock match from Stuttgart. It's a match that would bore the beejesus out of most folks, but I thought it was an absorbing contest and another addition to my list of Inoki classics; matches which may not be classics in the true sense of the word but certainly are in Inoki's case. What made it so interesting is that while it was clearly a work, Bock was about as uncooperative as anyone I've seen in a pro-wrestling bout. He no sold practically every thing Inoki threw at him and gave him precious little on the mat. And the strange thing about it was that Inoki seemed reluctant to do anything about it. Not that I blame him, as when the tension started to mount Bock appeared down right murderous. Now you might say that Bock being uncooperative is unprofessional and the very definition of a dangerous and poorly worked match. And you might be right if Bock hadn't been an absolute beast with vicious strikes and almighty dead lift suplexes, i.e. one badass motherfucker. His behavior gives the match even more of a shoot style feel than they intended, and while Inoki is made to look bad at times, it's as close to true Gotch style "professional wrestling" as I've seen. More so than any shoot style bout, to be honest, because it's non-cooperative. I think a few people here would appreciate it so check it out you guys.

The best match I've seen the 50s has been Thesz/Gagne. The Thesz/Schmidt and Thesz/Rogers matches are MOTYC level. Maybe Gagne vs. Carpentier too.

I forgot to mention that they loved a tournament. Any excuse for a tournament. And so many replays in the finals. I swear someone in Dale Martin thought FA Cup replays were the pinnacle of sports booking. Lots of team events too. Kind of like mini Davis Cup ties.

A bit. Guys who were working programs together and who had several of their matches featured on TV would generally have matches that advanced a storyline. The most common storyline revolved around wrestler A earning s title shot against wrestler B. The angles were pretty simple -- Wayne Bridges turning heel against Pete Roberts, for example, or Dennison seconding Young David sparking a Breaks/Dennison feud. A lot of the angles and storylines happened on top with Big Daddy. Their success at Wembly was build around Big Daddy storylines with John Quinn and Giant Haystacks. Nagasaki was involved in a fair bit of stuff too like his famous unmasking. It was a bit like lucha in that they'd film a house show where sometimes there would be matches with guys feuding but it wasn't really episodic. One storyline they did really well was young guy vs. vet. They also handled title feuds well. But guys almost never made dramatic heel or face turns. They'd just start acting differently, displaying a new attitude. When Dixon started All-Star, he focused on angles that ran from show to show and I believe Paul Lincoln did the same thing in the 60s.

Are you listing the matches by air date or taping date? Most of the dates on tellemyort's channel are air dates. You need to be careful about the difference between the American and British dating systems as well. The first match you have listed for '71 (Steele vs. Mulligan) actually aired in December. ITV wrestling is a good site to use. You sometimes need to cross check it, though, by doing a way back machine search for the old British wrestling archive site. I have a list of every WoS match I've seen includibg taping dates. That ought to cover most of the missing dates. If you'd like a copy PM me.

Wild Red Berry is a fun wrestler to watch. He's a comedy heel worker who has enough wrestling ability to remain credible in the ring. He's quite the character really, and wouldn't look out of place in a 50s television sitcom or a Frank Tashlin film. Wild Bull Curry, on the other hand, didn't impress much. He seemed like the living embodiment of a stereotypical kick-punch wrestler. He was pretty much a caricature of every guy who's ever gotten into the ring with limited ability and kick-punched their way to fame. Some might argue that makes him a success, and no doubt he was, but he's not exactly Perro Aguayo in the ring. The match he has with Johnny Valentine is reasonably compelling but far from great. Perhaps the fault lies with my expectations as I was expecting something much edgier. There's a new Enrique Torres match online, which pleases me greatly. Unfortunately, it's against a rule breaking heel instead of a technical marvel, but it takes all types to put on a wrestling show and we'll see how Torres deals with a rule breaker.

Parv, if you found the Thesz/Gagne match dull then I'm not sure there's much point walking through the bouts. I'm not sure how you can ignore the narrative running through that match and conclude it was two guys in black trunks doing standard spots for 50 minutes. This seems like it's going to go nowhere like Dandy/Aztecs and Bossman/DiBisse. I will say this, though -- a year ago I would have claimed that Thesz and Gagne were boring too. So keep an open mind about their stuff.

It depends on the style. I don't like the German rounds system because I find it confusing and difficult to follow. Portland threw me off because I wasn't used to such a long break between falls. French catch was also strange at first because all of the falls are of equal length and they're all long. WoS is the simplest and most straight forward to me. You know exactly how long the break between rounds will be and how much talking time Walton will have. Lucha is easy to follow once you're familiar with the different match patterns and the way they play around with the fall lengths. What's weird is when you have straight single fall matches in styles that are usually segmented.

I just bought a house and haven't gotten an Internet connection yet so I can't compare those matches. The Jumbo match seems like a bit of an outlier when it comes to a typical Flair match unless you're trying to say that Flair as a fish out of water is as good or better than Thesz/Gagne, which I have a hard time believing because I can't think of any Flair bout I'd say was unequivocally better than Thesz/Gagne. Even if people are generalising, Thesz generally had a strategy to work a particular body part or parts and would work those holds for longer than Flair. More often than not, the holds would factor into at lest one of the falls Thesz won whereas the early matwork in Flair matches rarely factors into a typical Flair finish. Fxnj already cited the importance of the headlock in Thesz/Gagne. The closest comparison I can think of to that is the importance of the chicken wing in the Steamboat Clash match.

The Golden Era greats were overlooked during the GWE voting. It's an era that people haven't watched a lot from for fairly obvious reasons. I hadn't watched much from it until recently and am still busy exploring it. So far it's been full of good workers I've barely even heard of much like WoS when I first began exploring that. Anyway, Flair was an okay mat worker. I don't think he'd make a list of the top 100 mat workers ever, but he was ok. I don't think he compares to Thesz in any way, shape or form on the mat. When I think of Flair, the first thing that comes to mind is the arc in his matches where he'd go from being the Nature Boy to his hair being a mess, the crimson mask, that deranged look in his eyes and the screaming ("Noooo!") When I think of Thesz, I think of those shots he'd fire, sometimes provoked and sometimes unprovoked. There's an edge to Thesz that Flair couldn't ever hope to replicate. Thesz was a dangerous man. Thesz could hurt you. Does anyone believe that Flair could shoot on a guy or hook them? Irrespective of that, I agree that the work Thesz did on the mat led somewhere whereas for Flair it was filler. That's what happens when a match is built around working holds vs. working spots. If you look at 50s workers, Flair is much closer to a Gorgeous George or a Baron Michele Leone than he is Thesz. He's more talented than those guys but he worked in the same fashion. I don't think it's s big deal. It's s different way to work and if it works for some wrestlers than so be it. Just don't peddle that Flair was the perfect all-round wrestler. The perfect performer maybe but not the complete wrestler.

The babyfaces in the 50s were obviously a llot more wholesome than later on, but I'm not sure that Thesz represented the ideal. Thesz seemed more like son of immigrant parents ideal for past generations whereas a an All American like Wilbur Synder was more of a new generation type. The promoters had plenty of gimmick workers to line up against their All American babyfaces. There were Japanese heels and German heels, exoticis, and everything in between. Wrestling crowds inherently love to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy. If 50s wrestling had been X guy in black trunks vs. Y guy in black trunks, it would have appeased graps fans like me but it's really closer to classic pro-wrestling than shoot style. Regarding rhe Abby/Bruiser thing, I'm not s big fan of the Brruiser but he was several degrees removed from Abby. And when he was younger, he was actually a pretty good performer.

I've gotta say I much prefer 50s babyface Blassie to 60s heel Blassie. Blassie was never a great worker in terms of his wrestling ability, but as a babyface he'd work a few holds, do that backwards shuffle on the mat whenever he got in trouble, and had a Terry Funk wild man quality to him. As a heel, he was about as boring a kick/punch/bite/scratch worker as you can imagine and only a good promo if you can excuse the frequent stammering.

People wanted a great night out in the 50s as well. You think the folks at the Hollywood Legion Stadium aren't looking to be entertained? There is a touchstone for the workers you mentioned of wrestling as real sport, that's true. But the Golden Era product was ready made for TV. It's full of larger than life gimmicks, but much like French catch or WoS, it manages to strike a balance between sport and entertainment. And for what it's worth, the serious sporting wrestlers did drop titles to the gimmick workers. Just not the big prize. I don't think you can blame Flair or Race for speeding things up. That was the evolutionary path of wrestling everywhere, and to be honest it wasn't even that quick by the standards set by other late 70s workers. The difference between Flair and other NWA champions is that Flair made the bouts about him and not the championship. The precursor to that was clearly Buddy Rogers, but he didn't have a dynastic run. Harley is interesting because he had some pretty strong ideas about what he thought was good wrestling but didn't quite have the personality that Flair had. I wonder whom Harley would have wished to be like.

I personally don't make a distinction between character work and selling. It's all part and parcel of performing as far as I'm concerned. If you're good at one and not the other then you're not a great performer. Jack Brisco was a great wrestler, but I don't think you'd compare him to a Jim Breaks or a Negro Casas when it comes to performing. But, hey, sometimes being a great wrestler is enough. Not everyone has to be a Fujiwara or a Satanico. Look st s guy like Marty Jones. I wouldn't say he was great at character work but he had a discernible character and was charismatic partially because of how good a wrestler he was. Thesz is a guy who has grown on me tremendously because of the way he wrestled. But that's me. I have a lot of respect for wrestlers who can actually wrestle. To draw this back to the original question, if all you can do is sell or do interesting character work then you better be pretty damn good at it. If all you have going for you is offense then I hope you can wrestle. If you can do both you have my patronage. If you can only do one I hope you're a great wrestler. So while I value selling over offense if you can only do one or the other I hope you're s wrestling machine like a Keith Haward.

I don't think I've seen a Misawa vs. Ace singles bout, but I have a hard time believing it could be significantly worse than Tamura vs. Burton or Scott, especially since they're UWF-I bouts. And Misawa did have some acclaimed tag matches against Williams and Ace. The All Japan style has its flaws for sure. I'm glad you pointed out the guard rail stuff. I hate that part of All Japan matches. I don't agree that the psychology is as simple as you made out. The psychology between Misawa and Kawada is as rich as any other match up in wrestling history. I don't go as ga ga for it as I once did just like I don't go ga ga for the psychology in Akira Hokuto matches anymore, but I can't think of any match ups that out and out surpass Misawa and Kawada in terms of psychology or narrative. Regarding the mat work -- with the amateur backgrounds a lot of the guys had, I think they could have been better at matwork if it had been part of the house style, but it seems to have been a pretty deliberate and conscious choice not to make it part of the style. I liked Kawada's gritty submission work against Nakamura, which had shades of the Albright match. I'm personally not a big fan of the inter promotional stuff in Japan. Was there any promotion that came out of inter promotional feuds stronger than when they began? Maybe New Japan a couple of times. They remind me of those summer crossovers they'd do in comic books when I was a kid. Sales would spike during the crossovers and afterward they'd drop as a large chunk of folks had no interest in the regular ongoing stories. Even if Baba had cashed in, the company still would have floundered post-event. The biggest problem with All Japsn in the late 90s is that they had one new guy instead of four or five. One guy can't form the next generation. As for why they only had one guy, we can only speculate.

The Wrestling Heritage site is a good place to visit to get a sense of what wrestling was like in the halls. And the old British Wrestling Archive site. There's a lot of stuff that WOS didn't capture. Most of the title switches were untapped, for example, and even the title matches that did air were heavily clipped since the bouts would go anywhere between 12-15 rounds. Then there's the gimmick matches and blood they couldn't air on television. The famous mask matches, etc. WOS mostly aired Dale Martin shows and occasionally shows from the other Joint Promotions members, so there was stuff going on all the time within Joint that didn't make tape not to mention Paul Lincoln Promotions and the other independents. . I imagine a lot of the stuff in the halls was like your typical house show fare in the States (the house show footage I've seen certainly has been), but there was likely a lot of great stuff too. Heritage members often share memories about the best matches they saw live.

I'd want to go back to England in the 60s to see some of the British legends we don't have on tape. Or Mexico City in the early 80s.

That other match I saw of theirs was good although not on the same level.