ohtani's jacket

I have a feeling I'm on such a different wavelength than most of you that my explanation won't mean much, but... When I made my list I had a hard time separating who I "liked to watch" and who I "thought was the best". It's not like baseball where there are pure stats to go off when saying this guy hit more homers than this guy but did so during a period where the pitching was worse and etc... So even if I look at someone like Flair (who I ranked just below Boss) and know that he's regarded as one of the best and brings a lot to the table, if I'd rather watch a Bossman match, than Bossman is "better".I can't step outside myself and go "Well Flair is liked more by people that have watched a lot more than me so he is a greater wrestler". Again, it's one of the reasons I didn't feel comfortable ranking Japanese guys despite watching hundreds of matches from those promotions. I wouldn't know where to rank Kobashi or Misawa without being completely influenced by what others think of them. And watching that stuff is like eating my vegetables. I do it because I know the classics are good to have watched, but I don't typically like them as much as appreciate them. He was super effective as both a face and a heel. Even though he was already Big Bubba in WCW when I started watching (mid-90s), I knew he had been Big Bossman in WWF and was SHOCKED to eventually find out he started out as a heel before that early ‘90s run. And that turn angle with Dibiase is a high point of character development for that era. Up there with the Savage/Hogan/Liz turn. His bumping was fantastic, not just as a big man, but as a wrestler. And for a guy with his physique, he was astounding in getting the most he could out of his character, a master of facial and body expressions. I’d rather watch his reactions during his matches than most wrestlers’ actions. I'd rather watch him in anything, be it a 2 minute squash or 25 minute slog than every other wrestler except the 9 above him on my list. All the guys I've been the high vote on so far (Ouillet, Cabana, Jacques, Steiner, Steen, and Bossman) are all guys I'd drop almost anything to watch a highly pimped match of.

Nothing on Cota? He didn't go that high in the end. It's impressive that he made that many ballots. He probably made more ballots than matches seen. .

Bossman being higher than Sasaki and Yatsu is awesome. Those muthas served hard times.

I'm kind of interested in how Navarro got so many votes last time. It must have been because of the IWRG Dandy stuff and maybe the indie Misioneros stuff. I was the high voter on Emilio in 2006 (#48). I don't think his singles stuff stacks up as well as Casas, Satanico or Santo. He has some nice singles stuff but he also has a lot of bouts that are too short, too slight, and disappointing given the talent involved. MS-1 was my #4 in 2006. I had gotten a bunch of '89 lucha and marveled at how he worked with tecnicos. I remember thinking he was like the Jumbo Tsuruta of lucha. Obviously he's not the fourth greatest wrestler to me anymore, but I do think he's somewhat underrated. Most of his non-Sangre Chicana stuff is overlooked. Even the Infernales stuff.

Emilio wasn't a good enough singles worker to finish much higher.

He was related to Emilio Charles Sr, who invented the rana, which was later used by Rey Mysterio Jr to devastating effect in a match you rated ** 1/2 stars.

Really? I thought he did quite well. I don't know who Sam DiMascio is but he must be of good stock.

Havoc.

There's a big drop off in all Japanese pro-wrestling in the late 90s. The wrestlers were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. They couldn't maintain the status quo and the audience weren't going to accept a minimalist aesthetic, so bigger and better became the mantra. Blame the promoters/television execs for not drawing new talent to upset the apple cart.

The Rey/Eddie match he's talking about is one of the best experiences I ever had watching pro-wrestling. The only thing that compares to me is Bret/Diesel from Survivor Series '95. So yes, I think it's amusingly low.

I really only skimmed over the argument, but I believe Dylan was referring to the late 90s where things started falling apart for All Japan. Specifically, he mentioned the 6/99 Misawa/Kobashi match.

I was kind of dreading the prospect of watching a Joshi broadway tag but the 6/93 Kansai/Ozaki vs. Hotta/Inoue tag ended up being an easy watch. Stylistically, it was more of a JWP tag than an All Japan one, which meant that the bulk of the match was slower than the typical All Japan tag but also less prone to excess. From the get-go it was transparent that one side would work the other over and vice versa. You could pick what would happen in each of these segments and every time the girls would make a miraculous recovery on the apron, but the bout was never boring which I think is a tremendous accomplishment for a 60 min bout. Takako reminded me of why I thought she had one of the all-time breakout years in '93 and Ozaki... I wanna talk about Ozaki for a second.The job she did here selling the top rope powerbomb was nothing short of extraordinary. It was actually kind of scary considering what later happened to Plum. I have no idea how someone could watch that and not think she's one of the all-time great sellers. Are they being disingenuous? Do they have an ax to grind? I have no idea. Of course she recovered her senses to continue with the stretch run and may lose points for that, but those moments where Kansai was checking whether she was alive, basically, were tense and heart stopping if you watched it in real time. Ozaki was carted off in the post-match interview because of how shook up she was, so if it bothers you that she recouped from the powerbomb at least she sold the bout afterward. Next up, Thunder Queen.

Ha ha, I almost spat my beer out on that Rey/Eddie rating.

I thought you claimed you weren't lowballing anyone. BIGLAV was a complicated beast.

Turns out the YouTube version only showed the first fall. The full version had more of a climax than I gave them credit for. Powers went into total heel mode after the first fall and Inoki had to fight through injury to take the title. Didn't change my opinion of the match much but at least it rounded out that rough edge.

The Powers match I saw was good but not one of Inoki's best. If anything it epitomised how a lot of people see Inoki: as a guy who lies around on the mat for long periods of time, picks things up a bit, then lies back down again. I kind of see Inoki as more of an interesting worker than a great one, but I can see why people find his style boring. His matches don't build to a dramatic climax and despite the bid for legitimacy they're not that great shoot style bouts either. I respect his single-mindedness, though.

A few things I should have added -- my opinion on WoS workers has changed a lot over the years. I've done backflips on guys and 180s. It's possible that I could be higher on Iron Fist in the years to come. There's a bunch of guys I softened on over the years and a few guys whom I hated at first that I eventually began to enjoy. The difference between those guys and Myers is that they didn't suffer the same burden of expectation. I expected them to suck and they surprised me. With Myers, I expect every match he has to be good, and all of his matches against top guys to be great, because he was my gateway guy in WoS (v. Grey) and I really do think highly of him. And even w/ the Iron Fist gimmick, I think a few of his matches w/ Grey are legit #1 candidates on the never-to-happen DVDVR Euro set. I think he had a really great match with Haward from the 80s as well. Plus the tags with Marty Jones against Finlay and Murphy that I don't think are available online but are revolutionary in terms of British tag wrestling at the time. Oh, and Skull Murphy wasn't a JTTS. He got a strong singles and tag push after everyone bailed to All-Star. He won quite a few of those rinky-dink tournaments they had. Murphy is actually a guy I grew to love. I hated him at first now I love him. Wish we had footage of his dad as he seems like a chip off the old block. And this is meant to be helpful (not snarky) since everyone seems to be struggling with it, but when you're pronouncing Hokuto it's closer to Hok-to than Ho-ku-to. And Joshi is more like josh-she than Joe-she. Mr. Saito is also closer to sigh-toe than sigh-e-toe.

I've been watching as much Schmidt as I can find. I was starting to think he was a bit of a one-note brawler whose matches were all the same until I watched one of the Thesz bouts. Loved the early technical stuff and the way things escalated from there. Loved the step up in intensity from his other bouts and the "business is about to pick up/shit done got real" feel to it. The brawling felt more vicious than in other fights and Thesz' receipts were badass. Of course there was no way it was going to end cleanly, but who cares. This one was destined for a scmozz and was a great, great fight.

Strongly disagree that Kudo is better than all but a few of the women who have dropped.

I'm about half way through the second episode and got name dropped so I thought I'd chime in. Firstly, I loved everything Jimmy said about Fujiwara. I agree with everything she said about the way he move around the ring, his defense, mannerisms, sight gags and goofy headbutts. I love everything about Fujiwara. I love the fact he's a better wrestler than everybody else. I love that he drinks harder than anybody else. And I love that he swears in English during his fights. He would have made my top 10 and vied for No.1. It warms the cockles of my heart to hear people finally praise Pat Roach. The thing about Roach is that no matter how angry he gets in the ring when he picks a mic he's this incredibly articulate English gentleman who'll deliver the sincerest, most softly spoken promos you'll ever hear. Total juxtaposition to his angry "bear with a sore head" ring style. Pirata Morgan doesn't get enough credit for being a true all-rounder. There was a period in the late 80s where he could do it all. I think that's something that hasn't been conveyed well by lucha fans and instead he's just known as an apuesta guy or a brawler. He could work any style in his prime and was a truly dynamic guy. He seems to get lost in the shuffle a bit because he doesn't have the go-to matches of a Chicana or a Satanico, but he was supremely talented. Finally, Myers. What people probably don't realise is when I think of early Myers I think of him as a West Indian. The West Indies was (and still is) part of the British Commonwealth and during the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s they produced a number of exceptionally talented cricketers. In fact, during the period where we have the most WoS footage (1974-85) the West Indies was the best cricket team in the world. Joint Promotions had a large contingent of workers they billed as being from the Indies even if most of them were born in England and had never been there. There was Myers, Caswell Martin, Bond, Kincaid, Lenny Hurst, Kid Chocolate, Jamaica Kid, Jim Moser, and probably others I'm forgetting. It's impossible to watch those guys and not think of the great West Indian cricket team. And that West Indian cricket team was full of the coolest motherfuckers you will ever see in sports. When you think of West Indian cricket, you think of Viv Richards. And when I think of early Myers, I think of a guy who must be like Viv Richards. Myers actually wasn't anywhere near as cool as Viv since he wasn't from the Windies and didn't have that cool Caribbean accent and shit, but that's the parallel I made in my head. I don't know why he adopted the Iron Fist gimmick. It had something to do with the Bruce Lee/Kung Fu boom in the late 70s and the fact that he was an arm wrestling champion. Some of his stuff from that period is flashy and exciting. A lot of it is downright disappointing. He still has great matches with Grey, but everybody had great matches with Grey. He still has moments of great selling and he had tremendous, tremendous upper body strength, but he goes from being a slick ass grappler to a guy who changes his wrestling stance to a stand-up fighter essentially and that's not cool. I mean it's cool in Japan but not in UK halls. And I don't like the pants, the shoes or the headband. I thought he was cooler in trunks. I can understand why people think he's still a good worker in the 80s because he is a good worker in the 80s, but contrary to what Matt said, Joint Promotions was a place where no-one moved with the times and he could have easily kept being plain old Clive Myers and no-one would have blinked. When promoters like Orig Williams started repacking guys it sucked. Aside from Paul Lincoln Promotions in the 60s, repackaging guys isn't something UK promoters did well. But he probably spent more of his career as Ironfist than in a regular pair of trunks so it's something that can't be helped.

Rocco and Kyoko from their peak years ('76-79 and '92-94) don't deserve to drop that far, but I guess there is a lot of dreck that comes with them. Still, I'd sooner watch a Kyoko or Rocco match than the majority of the workers who'll follow. Asuka and Samurai fall into my "don't care" basket. I probably would have voted for O'Connor and Nishimura. Haven't watched a lot of the Fantastics and what I have seen was years ago.

I actually like Shemus, but on what planet is he the 224th best wrestler ever? Have NASA built a telescope that can see that far? At least he wasn't overlooked. Thank God Chono dropped.

There's a million workers workers whose careers wouldn't have been half as good if they'd worked somewhere else. I find that argument kind of flimsy. The majority of workers are inextricably linked to the promotion they became famous in.

Man, that Inoki vs. Great Antonio work-turned-shoot was so surreal I had to watch it twice to fully get it. And read YouTube comments. And turn the sound up.

The things you guys are mentioning happen in just about every trios match. If they happened irregularly then they'd be chaotic. It doesn't take long to figure out there are three basic types of trios matches -- technical bouts, brawls and comedy matches. There may be variations on those categories but they're basically subsets of each genre. Sometimes a bout can start out as one type and finish as another but that's what is great about trios wrestling. There's a framework and once you master it you can play with the form. Matt has written in depth about the different trios patterns. Basically a fall can be dominated either by the rudos or the tecnicos. If the rudos dominate it then it's generally either a beatdown or a brawl. If the tecnicos dominate it then it tends to be cleaner (either high flying or technical.) The majority of the time the side that dominates takes the fall. Occasionally, they pull a swerve and the opposite side wins. In a tightly structured trios match, the side that wins the opening fall will continue to dominate early on in the second. I usually refer to this as overlapping. Then there will be a comeback from the side that lost the opening fall. The quality of this comeback depends on the ingenuity of the workers. The same overlapping carries through to the final fall and after the second comeback there is almost always 50/50 back and forth action until the finish. You can shorten or lengthen each fall, you can end a bout in straight falls and you can go a beat beyond the move that typically ends a fall and have the bout continue. I don't think any of this is difficult to pick up. If anything the majority of trios wrestling is generic. When t's great it's because the comebacks were outstanding or the work was particularly polished. The vast majority of trios wrestling, IMO, is bad because of how dull and repetitive it is, but that's because of how common trios bouts are. The good ones stand out like a diamond in the rough. Having said all that, I generally don't care about the rules and hardly ever notice the refs. Stuff like the finishes where guys rush the ring is like water off a ducks back after X number of trios. It's just what they do. If it's a hang up for you after a dozen trios matches then you're probably going to always have that hang up. The captains you can identify during the introductions if it really matters that much to you. I guess the rules help to understand the standoffs in the third fall when it becomes a one-on-one situation, but I honestly believe you'd have to be fairly resistant to what you're watching to not *try* to figure that out. Chaotic to me is interpreting the booking. X doesn't lead to Y in lucha the way it does in other styles of booking (when they're booked right.) And if you value continuity in your wrestling then lucha is not for you.