ohtani's jacket

Wilbur Snyder vs. Warren Bockwinkel (Los Angeles) Awesome, awesome match. Warren Bockwinkel looks exactly how you'd imagine Nick Bockwinkel's dad to look and wrestles exactly how you'd imagine Nick Bockwinkel's dad to wrestle. He makes the most amazing old man wrestling noises throughout. I'm sure I've heard other wrestlers make similar noises, but I can't remember who off the top of my head. The only person I could think of was Fujiwara with his customary "fuck!" but I'm sure there are better examples. There were definite shades of Bockwinkel vs. Hennig in this. The match just ruled. Snyder has this and the Schmidt match so far and is doing very well in my estimation.

Here we go! Wilbur Snyder vs. Angelo Poffo (Chicago) Angelo is more Lanny than Randy though you can see a little Randy in him with his evasive tactics. The subtext here is fairly obvious with the All-American crew cut against the effeminate Poffo, but they really don't play it up to any great degree possibly because it was for TV and possibly because Snyder didn't work that sort of match. I don't know, that's what this exploration is all about. At one point Snyder puts on a leg submission that wouldn't look out of place in a lucha match. See, most wresting styles are more unlike they they are different. I enjoy these simpler times when a dropkick into the turnbuckle can finish a man off. And why not? It was a dropkick into the turnbuckle. Not a whole lot to write home about in this bout aside from Poffo's jacket which sparkled in black and white.

I liked his promo after the Fredericks match. His work seemed pretty standard for a guy cut from the Buddy Rogers cloth.

Aren't most usernames gender neutral? Surely, it's more of a presumption that message board posters are male and that wrestling is seen as a male hobby. Is the implication that women are hiding behind gender neutral names so as to not be outed as female? If that's the case, is it because of fear of harassment or something else? I'll admit I ignorantly assume everyone's a guy in so much as I think about whether they are not (which usually only happens when someone reveals they're a woman), but the user name itself kind of takes on its own identity and becomes synonymous with that person's opinions or maybe their style of expressing themselves and never really strikes me as being gender specific. If a girl wanted to make it clear she's a girl, what kind of user name would she use? Something colour specific? A women's comic book character? I wonder if the distinction here isn't so much the username but the fact that male posters often refer to themselves as males, eg. I'm not a XYZ guy, or I'm the type of guy who likes blah, blah, blah, which perhaps female posters don't do. At least not at first. Christ knows why I'm wading in on this.

I'm sure you're right about Bryan, but he was 117 in 2006 and trending upwards. If he'd failed in the WWE and had another strong indy run he probably would have cracked the top 100. Not sure Styles gets in the top 100 if he leaves TNA and has another indy run.

Another contender for my Greatest Wrestler Ever. I used to make the claim that he was the best luchador of the past 35 years, but I guess the consensus is that Casas, Santo and Dandy are one, two and three. Satanico is a guy who could do it all -- title bouts, apuesta bouts, matwork, brawling, every style of trios bout there are, lead man, supporting cast, stooging, acting, promos, feuds, the whole shebang. And like Casas he was a guy who could add a different wrinkle each night. You rarely saw the same Satanico performance twice. He had so much confidence as a performer and such a feel for wrestling that he could ad lib with the best of them. And the whole thing was based on the truth to his claim that he was El Numero Uno. The only thing he couldn't really do (aside from tolerate working with dudes like Octagon, and sorry elliot that Satanico performance is not good) is fly. You could probably count on one hand the number of times Satanico did a tope. There is evidence on tape that he did one, but it was rare. He'd rather stalk a guy on the outside or have someone feed him an opponent in the ring like feeding time at the zoo or a frenzy in the shark tank. If he'd had Chicana's tope it would have been mindblowing, but he probably didn't need it. He didn't need a jumper when his post game was so strong. And from an old time smark's point of view, nobody was better at working transitions in lucha matches. The man was a genius. An artist! I've tried and tried, and I'll try again, but I haven't gotten over the hump with Rose yet. One day I'm gonna watch a Buddy Rose match, the YouTube clip will finish and tears will be streaming from my eyes, And I'll flip tabs and send Matty D a message, "mine eyes have seen the glory." and I imagine it'll be like a revival meeting and folks will shake my hand virtually and say: "congratulations, son." I should like this Portland stuff way more than I do. I don't exactly hate myself for it, but maybe I need my head checked. I will persevere. It'll probably get taken down the day after I convert. Well, here he is. From memory I went super high on Dandy in 2006. When you first get that '89-90 stuff in, and I was still getting tapes at the time, and you watch it all at once, man what a hit. It's like wrestling smack. It surprises me that people don't "get" Dandy as in they don't find him charismatic. Dandy seemed like the baddest man on the planet in 1990. A supreme talent at his absolute peak, he just oozed charisma. He was an amazing two-way worker in 1990. I've seen come to appreciate a guy like Super Muneco as a pro-wrestling story, but back then when you saw Dandy make Munceo look like a million bucks it was impressive. Whether he was hitting moves or taking them, Dandy was phenomenal on both ends. Once the euphoria wore off, I started picking holes in his stuff and realised there were some pretty big gaps in his career, but for pure talent, Dandy is hard to beat. Finishing behind Casas and Santo is probably right even if I have bones to pick with them as well. If Dandy had done more in '93-95 he would have pushed them hard for the top luchador spot. Didn't fall that far. If he'd retired in 2007 rather than the murders, I think he would have fallen into the teens so this is about 20 places lower than that projection. Anyway, I have a hard time watching Benoit matches. What am I gonna do, praise him for being a great worker? Overly scrutinize him because of the murders? For years I avoided watching his matches even ones I wanted to see for projects like the Smarkschoice WCW & WWE polls. I watched a few of his matches during this project from UWA, CMLL, and against Liger and El Samurai. I thought his selling was spotty, his transitions crappy, and he wrestled like the robot he was often accused of being. But that was early Benoit. Maybe he got better. It's not something I'm gonna explore.

Do you really think he would have finished in the top 40 without that New Japan run? Especially if these TNA re-appraisals are retroactive. If he crashes and burns in the WWE where does it all go? Up in a puff of smoke? He strikes me as the only guy in the top 50 who's still active and can make or break their case over the next few years.

Watched the last bit of available Schmidt footage and it was a good 'un. Schmidt vs. Wilbur Snyder was my third favourite Schmidt match behind the two Thesz fights. Really gritty close-quarters grappling. Snyder was the perfect mix of a wrestling stud and a tough sonuvabitch who knew how to induce pain. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him to see whether it was Snyder or the Schmidt effect. I'm kind of sad to have seen the last Schmidt footage. I'm not sure how much more is out there, but I'm guessing that's pretty much it. He gave me an "in" to the Golden Age, and I'm ready to see more, so this trip down YouTube lane was a definite success.

Adrian Adonis comes to the ring against Inoki in full leathers. He looks like he snorted something before leaving the dressing room and attacks some fan who touched him. Reminds me of when I was young and would bend the ear of any Japanese rock band who came through Auckland about Japanese pro-wrestling. And these rockers would always talk about how cool Adonis was. Match has a short running time and Andre comes out to eat into it even further. Hogan attacks him from behind and the pair brawl their way to the changing rooms. Adonis vs. Inoki is fast and furious but too short to matter. Inoki vs. Pedro Morales is perfectly mediocre fare, but that should be obvious before clicking on it. I watched a full length version of Ruska vs. Inoki and enjoyed it even more the second time, but hey, I dig all those Don Nielsen works too. Ruska vs. Inoki III from Seoul is also watchable. Better than watching Inoki vs. WWWF guys bar Backlund. Watching Inoki beat Parv's boy, Hiroshi Hase, in 1992 was perversely entertaining. Hase actually did a pretty good job of respectfully jobbing. Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye. I always knew I had it in me to beat Parv's boy. I can't find any of the other Inoki matches I want to watch online so I thought I'd wrap this up by watching the 2/86 Fujiwara bout. Still a bucket load of fun. Fujiwara is the greatest. Inoki may have pushed my top 100 but it would have been touch and go. I actually think he would have been vying for my #100. Maybe 100-95.

Fair enough. He's actually a different case from anyone else in the top 40 in that he can strengthen his case in real time while prompting further re-evaluation. Kind of a unique position. I suppose the flipside to that is that he could bomb as a WWE main eventer.

Choshu was one of those guys who knew how to use a cross armbreaker as a high spot, but I agree that he was a much better striker than a mat worker. I guess you could argue that he was able to use his size effectively by leaning into guys but for a former amateur he was pretty sluggish on the mat.

Skill doesn't just mean matwork. It refers to every hold. Off the top of my head: Negro Navarro Virus Solar Satanico El Dandy Negro Casas El Hijo del Santo Volk Han Kiyoshi Tamura Yoshiaki Fujiwara Tatsumi Fujinami Pete Roberts Marty Jones Jim Breaks Steve Grey Alan Sargeant Zoltan Boscik Tibor Szakacs Billy Robinson Yuki Ishikawa Carl Greco Lou Thesz Verne Gagne Nick Bockwinkel Minoru Suzuki Osamu Nishimura Fit Finlay Terry Rudge Blue Panther Akira Hokuto Toshiaki Kawada Jaguar Yokota Jon Cortez Keith Haward Mariko Yoshida Gilbert Cesca Rene Ben Chemoul Horst Hoffman Mike Marino Mike Bennett Yumi Ikeshita Tsuyoshi Kohsaka Jack Brisco Espanto Jr Pat O'Connor Cassandro Yoshihisa Yamamoto Daisuke Ikeda Bob Backlund The Destroyer That was literally off the top of my head which explains why it's so random, but those are 50 workers who I think are more skilled than Choshu or Aguayo. Whether I would rate them above Choshu and Aguayo is another story, but I'd be weighing their intangibles against other workers' superior skill and execution.

I guess you could make a case for Styles being one of the best guys of recent times, but the 39th best guy ever? Unless something dramatic happens this is going to be one of those picks were people look at the list in 10 years time and comment on how dated it is. And folks will be saying it was a snapshot, but a snapshot of what? The brief online popularity of New Japan? How come he finished higher than Tanahashi and Nakamura if that's the case? Is it because he has some kind of indie cred? I'm legitimately curious how this guy finished up 39th. Mick Foley has about half a dozen great performances to his name. Mick Foley was my favourite wrestler in 1998. Mick Foley wore out his welcome a long time ago. I jumped on the Foley bandwagon hard back in the day and that was during his WWF run without ever seeing his ECW stuff, his death match stuff, or his WCW work outside of a few appearances on Worldwide. I even shed a tear when I found out he'd won the WWF title. I guess it's an age old story -- you root for the underdog until the underdog starts believing in their hype too much then you cut them down to size. In New Zealand we call this Tall Poppy Syndrome. I dunno whether Mick became a self-parody in the end, but I sure got sick of him, especially his inability to take criticism and his thinly veiled insecurities. It's a bit like how Bret Hart wore on you with his bitterness only in Foley's case it was a nagging sense that his Everyman persona was a bit too fake and a bit too manufactured. He has those six really great performances though and was a hell of a bumper.

One of my regrets from the project is that I didn't finish taking a look at Rick Martel, so I still don't know where I stand on him. I guess you could say I'm half sold on him. Not sure how he got the bump over Tito in the Tito-Martel-Steamboat triumvirate. Perhaps that's a prerequisite for future exploration. Ted, it's hard to separate you-know-who from Ted when you watch his matches, but I legitimately enjoy his Mid South stuff. The Magnum TA bouts, for example, are great contests that feel much bigger in scope than their running time suggests. But when you take Ted out of Georgia or Mid South, he loses something. He's not the same worker in All Japan or the WWF that he was in those two territories. Not remotely the same. The Million Dollar Man was a million dollar gimmick and Ted lived and breathed it, but Boss Man had a better WWF run. We put them through the gauntlet and proved that, and you know it. 42 seems too high for his body of work unless the Eagle has landed w/ the Houston footage. Has the pendulum swung too far the other way? There's only so much Choshu I can stomach. Yeah, he's got the aura and the intensity and everything, and his short spurts of energy and sprinting style can help to break up the monotony of Japanese tag wrestling; but even with an appreciation for minimalist construction and a truckload of great matches against everyone from Killer Khan to Hashimoto, it can't disguise the fact that he's not that good. It's the same argument I'd make about Perro Aguayo not being as mechanically good as his peers. If you like Choshu or Aguayo you're not going to care because they have the charisma and they impose their will on a bout the way that great workers do, but it's a feeling I can't shake when I watch their stuff. I can dig the atmosphere of a big Choshu fight without thinking it's technically good. Outside of the GWE prism it doesn't have to be, but inside it, skill levels matter to me. Riki Choshu would not make my list of the 50 most skilled pro-wrestlers ever and that impacts his greatness in my eyes. Would have been a number one contender for me. Easily in the argument for greatest wrestler of all-time. There's nothing about Fujiwara that I don't love. The shaved head, the mustache, the deep lines on his forehead, his small build, incredible grappling skill and legendary drinking prowess. I love the fact that he's a ring general who gets called "general", that he was trained by Gotch, that he's the greatest defensive wrestler of all-time and a carny motherfucker who loved to swear during matches and pull all sorts of shenanigans. I prefer his shoot style work to his pro-style stuff, which is a bit more cartoony, but he was great at both. Awesome bleeder and a signature headbutt that French critics once called a homage to the goof in all of us. This is not very PC, but when he was doing the late night comedy show where he directed a porno, he held an audition where young Japanese girls in bathing suits walked on stage and pulled down their bathing tops. One girl was too shy or embarrassed to pull her top down and Fujiwara scolded her for not being a professional. Poor taste maybe, but there will only ever be one Yoshiaki Fujiwara. And he was great up until 1994 too. Don't let the French tell you he fell by the wayside in 1990. 1990 was one of the best years of his career.

Nothing much happens in the Umanosuke Ueda nail death match aside from Ueda being scared of Inoki's armbreaker (and why not?) but it's always fun seeing Ueda stooge about. His alliance with Tiger Jeet Singh is more awesome than anything the pair of them could produce in the ring, but it's great seeing them hug and console each other like Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko. No-one fell on the nails. I'm not sure why that surprised me. I'm not sure what it says about me that I thought someone should fall on the nails. The Inoki & Yoshimura vs. Victor Rivera & Baron Scicluna tag from '67 has to be the earliest Inoki we have on tape, right? The comic stooging from Rivera and Scicluna would have been a life changing experience for a young Fuerza Guerrera if he'd seen it. The Japanese workers didn't seem to know how to react to it, though. Rivera took some fantastic apron bumps in and out of the ring. Psicosis would have been proud. The only reason to watch Inoki vs. Red Texas from Madison Square Garden is that it's Red Bastien under the hood. Of course, he's working a generic masked wrestler gimmick so it's not really Red Bastien Red Bastien, but you take what you can get. Some PWO poster cries "boring!" at the beginning of the bout and Inoki proceeds to work a heatless bout that didn't do much to push his credentials as the world's greatest martial artist. Nice pinning combination at the end, but as slow as the wait between paydays.

The 4/95 Street fight from the first GAEA show is better than it had a right to be. It's a sprawling mess that I think you can only really appreciate if you're a Joshi fan, but they clearly wanted to make the first show special and had the battle scars to prove it. The collar and chain work may offend some. The blood may upset others. I cringed at some of the "with our powers combined" teamwork from Chigusa and Kansai, but by and large I thought it was a fine hodgepodge of Chigusa and Kansai's shoot stuff, Ozaki's street fight style, and a throwback to the days when Devil would terrorize girls with her kendo stick. Chigusa jobbed so often in her comeback years that she must have been working a gimmick about whether she fit in with the modern world any more. Ozaki is a legendary seller in my eyes, but her timing was off post-match. She tried to sell that she was out of it during the stretch run and fighting on instinct alone. That was fine, but when she recovered after the bout, she pretended to not know that she'd gotten the three count and jumped up and down like an ecstatic schoolgirl. Nice idea, but the execution was poor and the heat was really on Chigusa for losing in the main event of her first show. Ah well, can't nail 'em all Oz.

The 4/95 Street fight from the first GAEA show is better than it had a right to be. It's a sprawling mess that I think you can only really appreciate if you're a Joshi fan, but they clearly wanted to make the first show special and had the battle scars to prove it. The collar and chain work may offend some. The blood may upset others. I cringed at some of the "with our powers combined" teamwork from Chigusa and Kansai, but by and large I thought it was a fine hodgepodge of Chigusa and Kansai's shoot stuff, Ozaki's street fight style, and a throwback to the days when Devil would terrorize girls with her kendo stick. Chigusa jobbed so often in her comeback years that she must have been working a gimmick about whether she fit in with the modern world any more. Ozaki is a legendary seller in my eyes, but her timing was off post-match. She tried to sell that she was out of it during the stretch run and fighting on instinct alone. That was fine, but when she recovered after the bout, she pretended to not know that she'd gotten the three count and jumped up and down like an ecstatic schoolgirl. Nice idea, but the execution was poor and the heat was really on Chigusa for losing in the main event of her first show. Ah well, can't nail 'em all Oz.

Brock? If you say so.. I mean there's been times when I've been enamoured with Brock and wanted to see him murder folks, particularly his first run, which I never really watched in real time but got into later mostly because I liked playing RAW vs. Smackdown. But 47th? Maybe if his career had been like my season modes on RAW vs. Smackdown. Punk was never one of my guys. Never watched him on the indies, wasn't watching WWE when he made his rise. Didn't really pay attention to the pipe bomb stuff or the Summer of Punk. When I did finally get around to seeing him, I always felt like he was trying too hard. But I wasn't there for the journey and didn't have a vested interest, so I'm not gonna judge whether he belongs or not. My overall take on Harley is that he's never as good as you want him to be. The idea that he's the greatest NWA champion of them all is great until you see the matches and find that he's not. I actually think I prefer his 80s work to anything I've seen from his prime. I'd soon watch grizzled Harley beat up a Von Erich kid and Purple Reign Harley take nutty bumps for Hogan than watch Baba and Harley trade headlocks. So unless a treasure trove of awesome Harley is unearthed I'm not sold on his rep. What happened to Tully in recent times? People don't seem that high on him these days. Maybe it's the lull before the Crockett set drops. One of the best TV match workers ever. One of the best studio match workers ever. And he has the arena stuff too. Yeah, it's annoying that he never seems to get any serious offence in and his bumping and stooging all match long, and maybe that makes his act w/ Dillon a poor man's Heenan and Bockwinkel in these cultured times, but did anyone play a superbrat better? There was something incredibly sleazy about Tully. A guy like Flair (when he wasn't getting smashed and acting like a frat boy) had class, but Tully's suits were just a little bit cheaper, his shades slightly less expensive, his watch not quite top of the line, his wrestling skills a cut below the best. Flair was an asshole but he walked the walk. There was something undeserved about Tully's success and the way he flaunted it. Flair was the man they loved to hate, but Tully was the one they really hated. Look at that mug. He just knew how to piss people off.

Saved the longest tag for last. Turns out it was Schmidt's debut match on Chicago TV -- Ivan Rasputin & Hans Schmidt vs. Rudy Kay and Farmer Don Marlin from 1952. Rasputin and Farmer Don Marlin were fun characters and Marlin tagging with regular heel Rudy Kay was also neat. Marlin had some interesting offfence based around his barefoot farmer gimmick. Match was long, and the falls didn't overlap enough for my liking, but not a bad bout.

Watched an Azumi Hyuga match from 1999 that was better than I thought it would be but fairly uninspiring. Kansai was heavier and slower than in her prime but did a pretty good job working a knee injury. Then, for some reason, she dropped the injury storyline and resumed being heavy and slow and unable to bump for an all-action, go-go type in Hyuga. After that I watched a '91 tag between Kansai & Medusa vs. Rumi Kazama and Harley Saito which was pretty bad. Medusa and Kazama were fairly awful, but Kansai didn't bring much to the table and Saito did the most unnecessary bladejob I've seen in a long time. Just a pointless crimson mask. Just to make it a trifecta of bleh, I watched the Toyota title change again. I was really harsh on it in the Yearbook thread but it's a match that just doesn't work. It's one of those matches where they do a bunch of stuff then take it to the bridge, and you're suppose to miraculously care about the finishing stretch even though you haven't been entertained by a single thing so far. I prefer matches that suck you in and keep getting better and better. I honestly liked the Takako title defence more.

But there are countless more styles in music than there are wrestling. What is the wrestling equivalent of dubstep? It's hard to draw a parallel.

That's because she has a pulse. Yiou sure stopped defending the voting base in a hurry.

That's a real list, Jimmy. None of this bloody pandering from BIGBORE.

The rape porn thing seemed completely misguided to me since the direct audience were young girls, but it's worth nothing that the first hair match was considered excessively violent/extreme In Kansai and probably other regions too.

One of the greatest wrestlers to ever live. I would have had him higher but I'm glad he finished at a robust 50 instead of something forgettable like 47. What I'd give for some of his 60s British footage. It's a shame the only World of Sport stuff we have of him is a fairly lacklustre match from one of his return trips to England in the late 70s. I'm not convinced his British stuff would be better than his 70s work in Japan, but it would be fascinating to see him in his prime and working the British & European heavyweight style. One of those overrated greats. She could be brilliant at times with her selling and match layouts, but she could also be as flawed as any other girl you care to name. She wasn't a natural at all and it took her a long time to build up her aura as a dominant female worker. She's actually not that tall so it's to her credit that she was able to come across as menacing, but I always felt she got too much credit for her work on top when it was her opponent who had her nose to the grind selling it all. Too much credit in this case means Kong being treated as the one Joshi worker it"s okay to like. The token Joshi worker for people who don't like Joshi. That always irked me because Joshi is nothing if not a collaborative genre. You could say the same about any style I guess, but I always got the feeling that Joshi wore it's camaraderie on it's sleeve. She could be great, though, and indeed had many moments of greatness not the least of which was the Satomura feud in '99, which to me was her finest hour. Did somebody mention overrated great workers? By now everybody's read my thoughts on the transformation from early Finlay to Princess Paula era Finlay and the ten year wasteland up until his debut in WCW. Some people agree with me and some people like the mighty Jetlag do not, but from my very selfish point of view Finlay could have been the greatest but he chased the green. That's his prerogative and I'm reminded of Billy from Purple Rain ("This is a business, and you too far gone to see that yet!"), but it still sucks the route Finlay went down. Some good old man stuff that we were blessed to receive given the extent of his leg injuries in WCW, but a guy I have different expectations for than his typical fan.