ohtani's jacket

First up is Frank Stojack vs. Dutch Heffner, which was recommended to me by PWO poster Conker8. This was a nice bout. Heffner had the size advantage but Stojack was a slippery customer and able to escape Heffner's strength holds. There were times when Heffner was like an early incarnation of Dick Murdoch with the way he bumped and sold for the smaller Stojack's punches and there was a classic Three Stooges element to the way he sold getting stuck in the ropes and so forth. There were a couple of holds that didn't really go anyway (restholds, possibly) but aside from that it was an entertaining night out at the wrestling.

I'm kind of half sold on Bockwinkel. There's a lot of Bockwinkel I like -- the series against Hennig, the All Japan match against Robinson, the feud with Lawler and his performance against Jumbo in Hawaii spring to mind -- but there's also been Bockwinkel that I've found boring and predictable so I'm not sold on him being a master performer. I like the potential of him being a master worker so he's a guy I'll continue to chip away at, but I haven't managed to be hooked by his heel work yet and in particular his partnership with Heenan hasn't done much for me. I keep getting this nagging feeling that they're doing stuff I've seen done better elsewhere. Another feeling I have is that while he has swagger and verve as a heel he doesn't have the flamboyance that set the Buddy Rogers and Ric Flairs apart from the pack. I've seen plenty of Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat from every stage of his career, and I've enjoyed plenty of Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat from every stage of his career, but I can't really say that I love Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat. I think where the disconnect ultimately lies with his offense. I don't really have a problem with his over-the-top selling, the family man persona, or any of the other cornball aspects of his persona folks might dredge up; it's his offense that puts me off. I know some people argued during the poll that he was a great offensive worker, and argued for the artistry of his arm drag and what not, but his lack of mat skills, corny strikes and limited arsenal has always bugged me. To his credit he made his act work. People thought his mat work was good, he threw a decent chop and he got a lot of mileage out of simple moves. He also excelled at making fiery comebacks. I'm not denying his talent or begrudging his placement on the list. I just don't love him. Speaking of guys I don't love... The problem with Vader (imo) is that the only time when he's really good is when he's legitimately beating the shit out of people (or practically beating the shit out of people.) When he works a softer style it's cookie-cutter, choreographed big man stuff that takes a huge amount of setting up and payoffs that stick out in the horizon like neon light. I like Vader in principle. I love watching Vader on shitty German handhelds beating the shit out of Otto Wanz. In a parallel universe I can imagine Vader matches where that was all he ever did, but he choreographed his shit in WCW, WWF, New Japan and All Japan. And I don't care how many people like it, he couldn't work shoot style to save his life. I get why people love him so much (in every environment he worked), but to me his biggest strength was pummeling folks in the corner which is why the German rounds system worked better than his telegraphed moonsault spots. Vader coming out of the gate looking for the KO was the big man at his very best.

I dig this Billy Goelz guy from the 50s. Quick on the mat and a terrier once he gets a hold cinched, especially his spinning toe hold. Moreover, he makes everyone he works with look good so suddenly you want to see more from workers you've never heard of like Bill Melby, Jackie Nichols and Juan Hernandez. He was even good at more spectacle driven stuff like a rock solid tag against quality stooges Art Nielson and Reggie Lisowski. There's only 5 Goelz matches on YouTube but each of them is a gem. This will be a catch all thread for any 50s stuff I uncover. With no more old school WoS to watch this 50s stuff is filling my needs nicely. I kind of see a parallel between the two and it's nice to have a new avenue to explore.

This is tougher than it seems. Steve Grey Nemesis -- Johnny Saint (?) Archenemy -- Jim Breaks? Zoltan Boscik (?) El Dandy Nemesis -- Negro Casas (?) Angel Azteca (?) Archenemy -- Satanico (?) El Hijo del Santo Nemesis -- Espanto Jr (?) Blue Demon Jr (?) Archenemy -- Negro Casas (?) Tito Santana Nemesis -- Randy Savage (?) Archenemy -- Greg Valentine (?) Rick Martel (?) Rey Mysterio Jr. Nemesis -- Psicosis (?) Eddie Guerrero (?) Archenemy -- JBL (??) Chigusa Nagayo Nemesis -- Lioness Asuka (?) Mayumi Ozaki (?) Archenemy -- Dump Matsumoto

Another childhood favourite. In fact, he's probably the wrestler most responsible for my fandom. For a long time I had a VHS recording of Royal Rumble '91 that I'd made off the telly, which I later found out was the last pay-per-view to air in New Zealand before they took wrestling off TV. That was the last wrestling I saw up until around 1994 when my mates and I decided to rent some wrestling tapes from the local video store for a bit of a laugh. I remember checking out the covers and thinking "Holy shit, the dude from the Hart Foundation is the champion!" What was meant as a nostalgia kick turned into a habit and it was largely because of Bret. For a few years in the 90s he was pretty much a hero to me. I've told this story many times, but after rediscovering wrestling in 1994 my rekindled interest in it was nearly killed by the annus horribilis that was 1995. The pivotal moment for me in what's been a near lifelong fandom was Bret winning the title at Survivor Series '95. I don't think I've marked for a moment like that in all my life. I mean I waited 24 years to see New Zealand win a Rugby World Cup again and rugby means more to me than wrestling, but still I marked harder for Bret's victory. Everyone knows that Bret is a mark for himself, but at that time I believed in all of it too. I was gutted when Montreal happened the same way people are gutted when their favourite player is traded or leaves in free agency. Then his life began unraveling and the cracks began appearing in the "Bret Hart" persona, but I won't go into that. As a wrestler I think there was a period where he was legitimately great (circa '94-95.) Looking back on his matches now is a bit like re-listening to the music I was into at the time. I can't help but feel that I've moved on and that my tastes have matured, but it's not really fair to underrate the guy because he's old hat. I do think that he's one of the more predictable workers in the top 50. He clearly had his preferred way of working. He overdid injury selling, which I'm not fond of, and his matches were strangely paced at times. The house show/TV match criticisms are legend, and I think in general he could be a bit boring at times. But he was a guy who was committed to his craft, paid attention to detail and was honest (at least that's the way he came across.) I'll always contend that his best stuff was the stuff he least preferred doing (working against other top guys instead of carrying less talented guys & working the heel gimmick), and he's a guy I never need to see again due to the years I spent watching him, but in the end fond memories stop me from ragging on him going this high.

Crap.

Yeah, I've lived in Japan for the past ten years. You can survive in Tokyo or any other major Japanese city without speaking Japanese but you'll find yourself heavily reliant on people who can speak English. Most Japanese people have broken English at best but there plenty of excellent speakers, particularly those who've studied abroad. Generally speaking, Japanese people who've lived abroad have better foreign language skills than foreigners living in Japan. That's out of necessity, I suppose. The same is true of non-English speaking migrants in Japan. Their Japanese is likely better than the average native English speaker. Having said that, I know quite a few native speakers who speak excellent Japanese (some of whom have passed the highest level on the Japanese proficiency test.) I took a look at some YouTube clips of the Funks in Japan and Dory seemed to know a lot of expressions and phrases but didn't appear fluent to me. Terry didn't appear to speak much Japanese. Junior could definitely get by on a day-to-day basis but that's not really fluency.

I disagree. A lot of it feels like a glorified exhibition. So what does a non-exhibition style look like? What kind of standard bearer are you talking about?

I think it's actually the RAW from South Africa, later in the year. Nah, it was after the Germany RAW with Sid vs. Mankind and Owen vs. Davey. The South African RAW was spliced with footage from Muncie, Indiana and did a 2.2.

Not sure there's anybody who really believes this. 1993-95 AAA being not very good was an against the grain opinion at one time, but I don't think anybody claimed that CMLL was better.

The mat-based stuff bears at least some semblance to a real fight, and Saint was a short guy who did gymnastics combined with comedy. I didn't say I liked Saint, just that I find him more tolerable than most WoS. If I had to pick, I'd rather be annoyed than bored to tears. You're bored by something unless it annoys you? Does that awake you from your apathy? Snarkiness aside, mat-based stuff is probably less than one third of WoS. They do a lot of head tosses, counters, evasions, escapes, rolls and things of that nature. The limb work differs greatly from NJPW-style or US-60s style. Seems more centred on attacking joints to me, and very seldom do they lay in a hold. I think there is a heightened sense of trickery in WoS. However, I find the suggestion that it is "realistic" laughable. It isn't; as pro wrestling at its best never is. WoS just has a different absurd logic from the absurd logics found in US wrestling, Puro, and lesser forms such as Lucha or modern indie. We were talking about having "some semblance to a real fight" not being realistic. The mat-based stuff that NintendoLogic was referring to has more semblance to a real fight (or sport) than Michinoku Pro. But those pure wrestling contests, and indeed the building blocks of the Lord Mount-Evans Rules (http://www.wrestlingfurnace.com/formalities/holds/holds.htm), isn't really the cornerstone of post 60s WoS. I wish it were, but it's not. Nevertheless, there were plenty of great workers from the late 70s and early 80s that worked a more contemporary style. Sadly, the style ended becoming "Americanised" from that point on (for lack of a better word) and lost its unique character.

The mat-based stuff bears at least some semblance to a real fight, and Saint was a short guy who did gymnastics combined with comedy. I didn't say I liked Saint, just that I find him more tolerable than most WoS. If I had to pick, I'd rather be annoyed than bored to tears. You're bored by something unless it annoys you? Does that awake you from your apathy? Snarkiness aside, mat-based stuff is probably less than one third of WoS.

The mat-based stuff bears at least some semblance to a real fight, and Saint was a short guy who did gymnastics combined with comedy.

Gagne was a pretty good worker through to the early 80s. Of all the Golden Era workers to continue through to the 70s and 80s Gagne lost the least. Of course you could argue that he didn't really do that much in his latter years (certainly, he didn't bump much), but it was really only the mid-80s stuff I saw where it looked like he didn't have the physical strength to pull off the illusion of competitiveness he was trying to uphold. I can live without ever seeing another Gagne/Bockwinkel match, and Baba was awful in their '81 match, but something about Verne was sturdier than Snyder and Rogers' later stuff. Thesz wasn't the figurehead of his own promotion during his "maestro" years, but Gagne probably lasted longer than him too. Granted, he was younger. If you just wanna tip your toes stick to the black and white stuff.

These two paragraphs utterly contradict one another.

Randy Savage is a guy I could go either way on -- either the total package or totally overrated. It depends on what I'm watching. If I sat down and immersed myself in 80s WWF wrestling then I could see myself being enthralled by Savage, but if I'm watching 1950s footage of technicians like Thesz, Gagne or Goelz then Savage just wasn't that kind of worker. Savage was a childhood favourite of mine so I get his appeal. He did an extraordinary job of crafting a wrestling persona. Most workers would give their left nut to create a persona as memorable as the "Macho Man." It may have been heavily controlled, heavily manipulated and heavily scripted, but the end result was that he was able to stand out from the pack and that was no small feat in the Saturday morning cartoon world he inhabited. Hell, he even excelled at soap opera with Randy and Liz being a super-couple to rival Patch and Kayla or any daytime couple you care to name. Crucially, he was a worker who had classic feuds. Some of them were as good in the ring as they were out of them (Santana, Steamboat) and some of them were probably better out of the ring than they were in it (Hogan, Flair, Roberts.) He had his share of excellent matches too even if he was one of the early pioneers of the self-conscious epic. Everyone knows that the Titan working environment prevented him from having the same kind of matches that the guys in the territories did (at least on a nightly basis.) Whether he was capable of night-to-night greatness is highly debatable given his intense pre-match scripting, but really the knock on Savage is the way he slid into self-parody. There reached a point where everything he did was cliched, second rate and a pastiche of what he'd done in his earlier, more creative days. From the promos to the in-ring stories it got lazier and lazier. Savage at his worst would give a promo that was no better than a Slim Jim ad and work a match where his brightest idea was to sell his knee for the millionth time. There was a lot of good and bad that came with Savage but he certainly left his mark. I don't think he belongs in the top 20 but then again he was a guy who created plenty of emotional investment in folks and there's probably a justification in that mix of passion and nostalgia.

I worked my way through all of the 70s stuff I could find. I don't think it would be right to call him a maestro in the 70s just because of his age. He still saw himself as a key player in the business, and it was really only the longer Japanese match against Robinson where he looked like a maestro. (By which I mean a skilled older worker who is a step slower but still has their wrestling wits about them.) I didn't really care for his stuff against Bockwinkel. The matches were predictable and the finishes with Heenan lacked any sort of spark or originality. For my money, Gagne's work against Robinson blew away the Bockwinkel stuff. In general Gagne was still a pretty good worker in the 70s. I liked his studio match against George Gadaski and he gave a thousand times more interesting performance against Nikolai Volkoff at MSG then you could possibly imagine from the totality of Volkoff's WWF work. But there were little things like his jinking and ducking and taunting that lacked the fire of his youth and seemed kind of silly coming from an older guy. Slapping the top of Robinson's head was bad ass, but not taunting the Brain.

The match against Carpentier was excellent. Shoddy finish, but overall it was better than what Thesz was able to achieve with Carpentier. Most people already know about the 10 min Red Bastien match, but it really is another Gagne gem. The similar length Carl Myer match is fun, though Meyer is an older guy being carried as opposed to a youngster. Finished off the 50s b&w footage with a fun tag between Bobby Bruns & Gagne vs. Rudy Kay & Al Williams. Gagne showed all his strengths as a baby face and Williams was entertaining as a heavily tattooed stooge. Took my first dip into 70s Gagne in a match against Bockwinkel but need to get my bearings on whether he was a 70s maestro or a promoter-wrestler hanging on too long. The footage I saw wasn't bad, but it was nowhere near as exciting as the 50s stuff.

I would say Billy Howes vs. Jacques Lageat is the best match I've seen from the 60s, but I shouldn't talk about it too much as I'm not able to share it. Chemoul vs. Cesca would be close to that level if it had a better finish.

There's no doubt in my mind that Arn Anderson during his early 90s peak was an A-list performer. He had smarts, charisma and talent and could cover the full range from hate-filled brawls to comic bumping and stooging often within the same match. His absolute peak was from 1991-1992, and IMO he was the co-MVP for 1992 alongside Ricky Steamboat. The standard knock on Arn is that his singles work isn't impressive enough for him to rank highly on a list like this, but he has an interesting body of singles work that more than complements his brilliance in tags. My argument against Arn would be that his peak was extremely short. Most would argue that he was no less than good throughout his entire run, but I don't believe he was a great worker in the 80s and I think he faded toward the end. What that leaves us with is a stellar run from '91 to '94 or so, and even that peters out in '93-94 due to scratchy booking and less opportunities. Length of peak wouldn't ordinarily bother me, but it was repeatedly held against other workers in this project, particularly Joshi workers and to a lesser extent lucha workers and workers with footage issues. If we're holding everyone to the same standards then 19 is questionable for Arn even if he was a master performer. Talent alone, sure. Overall greatness? Jury's still out for me.

Giant Baba vs. The Destroyer (3/5/69) This is a really good match and Baba is excellent in it, but it's nothing like Baba's other JWA performances and has probably done more than any other match to mythologize Baba as one of the smartest workers ever, a great worker, or better than average. I don't think it's automatically the best match from the 60s as people had a tendency to call it in the past, nor would I really rate it alongside a classic like Thesz vs. Gagne, but it's a strong bout with solid psychology, and it's easy to see why Baba looked like such a world beater when people first saw it. At the very least it's a feather in his cap that most workers would envy.

Yukon Eric? No problem for Verne Gagne. Gagne worked a smart, logical match around Yukon's size and strength advantage that might have been a bit ho-hum if it were any other worker trying it, but Gagne kept up a brisk pace and managed to make the match interesting instead of being bottled down in Yukon's strength holds. Gagne vs. Billy Goelz is a gem. I've been impressed with Gagne as a worker but it's when he shows his wrestling chops that he enters the upper echelon of wrestling greats. This was tough, gritty wrestling. Physical, uncompromising... no quarter given, none taken... And Goelz is just as good as Gagne in the bout. The only disappointments thus far have been the Mighty Atlas matches, but Atlas was an early bodybuilder type who did little more than flex his muscles. Gagne tried to play off Atlas' strength the way he did w/ Yukon, but give Yukon some credit, at least he followed Verne's lead.

So I've started watching Verne Gagne matches and it's clear what a major talent the guy was. And not just working holds either. His bumping and selling were fantastic and he had a flair for the dramatic when it came to pacing a bout and putting it over as a marquee contest. That's not the first thing I'd associate with Gagne, but in all of the 50s footage I've watched he's probably the most dynamic guy on the scene. I saw him have a tough, gritty contest with Canadian wrestler Roy McClarity and a fun game of cat and mouse with Don Leo Jonathan. Then I saw him work wonders with Dick the Bruiser. So far the only thing the Bruiser's shown me he looked like a brute, but against Gagne he was working holds and everything was nasty and great. Even against a guy like the Great Togo Verne bust his ass, and it's damn near impossible to get anything good out of a 1950s Japanese heel. Looking forward to seeing more.

WWE is mainstream regardless of how outdated some of the references are.

There's not as much Rogers out there as I was expecting and a lot of it is against fairly crappy workers like Haystacks Calhoun and Killer Kowalski. The Cyclone Ayana match is worth watching if you're interested in Buddy. I love watching Buddy cinch on a hold. He may not have been a shooter or a hooker, but he knew how to make a hold look good in a pro-wrestling match. Unfortunately the booking is flimsy, so I wouldn't really recommend it unless you want to see more Rogers. I enjoyed the Rogers/O'Connor match more than I did when I watched it for the O'Connor thread. I still think the dip in the second fall stops it from reaching the all-time classic level, but I got a lot more out of Rogers' performance now that I'm more familiar with Buddy. The great thing about watching Rogers is witnessing how much influence he had. You watch him work and you can see a bit of Patterson, Stevens, Flair. A lot of movement, charisma and toughness.