ohtani's jacket

Completely disagree with this review. You might have picked up on it on the commentary, but I think it's a key part of the match's story to understand that both guys were amateur wrestling greats who went to the same college. Hence, the match is basically worked like two old jocks who want to prove they're the better wrestler, it makes perfect sense that the match would be worked around matwork and one upsmanship. Since matwork was so rare in AJ as you mentioned, that actually makes the match feel pretty special when watched in context and I'd argue what they did was the exact opposite of lying in holds since both guys were constantly struggling for position and looking for submissions. Those opening minutes are what sets the dynamic for the rest of the match, so it's far from meaningless or blown. That figure four spot you ragged on isn't just mindless screaming and grunting but the match's big climax with Hase selling being trapped in excruciating pain while the jock in him can't help but egg Akiyama to do it even harder. Choshu vs. Hase had a similar narrative because Choshu also went to the same university, but even with those senior/junior archetypes in place the bout didn't do much for me. I prefer matwork that is a lot more fluid and has more movement; and considering this was just after the height of Pancrase & MMA inspired RINGS matwork, it was too static for me. I may have liked it more if it had been grittier and if I ever re-watch the bout again I may notice details I missed like them fighting for position. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I keep having to remind myself that Hase was a Greco-Roman amateur and his natural skill set was probably a bit different from most of the freestyle wrestlers. Maybe the "old jocks" thing works in the context of a part-time wrestler working an exhibition bout. Akiyama was still pretty young here, though. All Japan kind of ran old grumpy vet vs. junior into the ground, so I guess jokey alumni was a decent change of pace. I don't think going back to the mat w/ that double leglock spot worked because nobody in All Japan is going to submit from that. When you switch from legwork to throws, you usually leave the legwork behind. If you're going back to it, I think it ought to be the finish otherwise it creates an unnatural rhythm. For what it's worth, I thought the line on Hase's All Japan work was that it was disappointing. I'm kind if surprised that people have been warm to it.

What's the difference between this thread and JvK reviews pimped matches from late 90s-10s?

Hase is not some unknown guy. He's had a good rep since the moment I came online.

I certainly belong in that category, but it doesn't apply to everyone. WingedEagle wrote a great post recently about why he prefers more traditional matwork. For me, the tricked out stuff is a preference. I don't expect it from styles that never exhibited it, but I'm hard on Japanese big league matches that aren't "shooty" enough and Euro matches that are too Americanized.

Parv, I don't think anyone is going to dislike Hase because of what I wrote. And I don't think anyone will refrain from voting for him because of this thread. I don't really see this thread as a "battle." Ideally, it would be full of discourse, but Hiroshi Hase isn't exactly a contentious topic. If I hadn't replied to this topic it would have been you pimping a string of Hase matches with little or no response. Is that what you'd prefer? I think it's more suited to a review site/blog or a podcast than a message forum, but if you want to lay your stuff out there without any feedback just say. Your sudden Hase love piqued my interest in his stuff because Jerome and Williams had commented on my criticisms of him when I watched the Tenryu match. I don't agree with most of the people I enjoy reading on this site and thought we were thick skinned enough to not like the things that each other say. The results will bear out how people feel about Hase. I can't pretend to like him anymore than I do. Given my track record, a year from now I could love him.

I think everybody agrees on Hase's best matches. I just don't like him enough that his supplementary stuff is that interesting. I'm not sure who his US equivalent is because I tend to compare like with like and there are plenty of Japanese workers I think he is comparable with. I get why you like him, but like I said, my thoughts were in line with Meltzer's ratings. Even with matches I didn't love I could see how he could give that rating. You went about a half star beyond what I thought was reasonable for many of his bouts. So, that half star represents your enthusiasm for him I guess.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Kenta Kobashi (8/26/97) This was okay but nothing really special. I imagine a lot of All Japan vs. New Japan dream matches would be that way. It was pretty much your classic slow build wrestling match, and I can see how people who like that type of build would enjoy this, but to me a lot of the submission work was drawn out and the throws weren't that exciting either. I could see that they were working around Kobashi's limitations on the mat, but why bother going there if it's not a guy's strength? I get a bit restless when I'm detached from a bout and so the strikes and what not seemed ho-hum to me and the finishing stretch felt like me going through the motions of watching a finishing stretch, but on an intellectual level it as all fairly straight forward and serviceable. I think I'm done with Hase now. He was a good worker whose biggest strength was his versatility, but I wouldn't rank him as a great or even excellent wrestler. Just not good enough in any one particular area aside from bleeding, which isn't high on my list of criteria. He had the ability but didn't apply it in a way that really resonates with me. On to someone else.

The school girls were just as rabid in the mid 70s as they were in the Crush Girls era, but they lost interest after Ueda retired in '79. The late 70s to early 80s period you're talking about was a holdover from the Beauty Pair era. A lot of the time when you watch a random bit of footage from that era, they're touring Guam or Okinawa or somewhere more southern like Kyushu. You'd have to look for a Tokyo crowd from that footage to really compare it with the Crush Girls boom. Jackie was always fairly stoic, though. Chigusa morphed into the same sort of worker as well. It was only really in the early-to-mid 80s that she was an energetic babyface. Satomura was the same in the 90s through to early 00s. She used to cry and do that thing where she'd swing her arms about. I remember the Quebrada guys used to give her a lot of flak for that. Jaguar was more bad ass than any of them. She had an intensity and a fire that was unmatched by either Sato or Chigusa. Satomura never reached that level either. Early 80s Joshi brawling isn't really my thing. It's just as repetitive as the Dump's Army stuff to my mind. Asuka had some decent stuff post-Crush Girls peak but was pretty much the female version of Nobuhiko Takada. Chigusa was a great worker circa 1986.

You're a Flair man. Lou Thesz bores the tits off you. I don't give me this Hackenschmidt stuff. There's a good chance you'd be left catatonic if you were forced to watch a Hackenschmidt bout. The stuff you like is a hop, skip and a jump away from Kurt Angle. Hell, Flair was practically the Kurt Angle of his day from older fans' perspective and even some of the wrestlers.

No, I'm not, but I've enjoyed the project a lot.

Villano III was on there until the last second, when I was entering my list, and I finally decided that I couldn't justify him if pressed. He was more or less the only person I felt like that about. He was on based on glimpses I'd seen and rep. No one else on my list was like that. I just couldn't do it. My list is probably going to give you an aneurysm, OJ. Sorry. Villano wouldn't have been on mine, either. I just think he's a legitimate candidate.

That's such a skewered view of things. Watching the Brisco/Funk match from Florida the football coach specifically mentioned that older workers didn't have the conditioning or athleticism of the modern worker. The increase in the level of action in pro-wrestling matches is primarily a matter of evolution and not related to skill level. And don't be knocking cotton candy or fireworks. They're bigger institutions than pro-wrestling will ever be and matter more to people than working ever will. Hell, in Japan it's the short-lived beauty of fireworks that make them a cultural institution much like cherry blossoms.

I like a lot of those workers but only really Villano and Brisco have pressing claims for a top 100.

I like that analogy. I'm also wondering how you can spend that much on a round.

With Fuerza you've really got to go down a path of watching matches which are good without ever being great because of the type of worker he was assigned to carry. Fuerza's individual performances in those matches are often quite brilliant but he doesn't have a laundry list of great matches to plough through. I liked his 1990-91 period the best. He was a real standout trying the TV boom. I'd rate him above Parka, but I do think based on his Juarez work and other stuff I've seen outside early 90s CMLL that he wasn't a standout guy on every night.

I kind of regret that I never went to a BattlARTS show and the drinking parties they had afterward.

The 90s should have theoretically been Koshinaka's peak, though. I think Fujinami is pretty clearly a top 10 Japanese worker all-time, and I don't think he needs good stuff from the 90s to make that claim. I've also liked a lot of his tag performances from '92 and '93, but they'd feel more crucial if he needed those performances to place. He doesn't, so all they really prove is that he wasn't completely washed up in the 90s. I don't think his WAR stuff is "holy shit, this guy's still great!" level work, but lowered expectations, and flying under the "smark" radar for so long, work in his favour, and the overall feel of his stuff is that it's pleasantly enjoyable. I will say that I would rate his MUGA match with Nishimura over just about any match his 70s and 80s contemporaries had post 1990.

Man, that was a beautiful post.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Jun Akiyama (5/1/98) This pretty much bored me. Long opening mat sequence in a promotion where matwork was never a forte. Seemed the very definition of "laying around in holds" to me. Not only that, but it was blown off in the same manner that people are always complaining about in other styles. Hated the exploder vs. ura nage no sell battle even if the crowd really loved it, and thought the leg lock sequence with the push-ups was out of place in the last five minutes. Hase and Akiyama baring their teeth and grunting at each other isn't my idea of great selling, but if you're into Hase then it's no doubt a different story. In many ways these guys are similar to me -- decent mechanics with high end offence, but not that great at selling or psychology (for want of a better word.) How charismatic they are is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the nuts and bolts of what they do are wanting at times.

Devil had good matches through to '97. You could make a reasonable case that she was a good worker from '77-97. It's also worth nothing that of all the workers who defied the retirement age she was the best as a vet. She had a really expressive face but nowhere near the range of Ozaki. She was good at being Devil whereas Ozaki played a wider spectrum of roles. Is anybody docking her s point for her Super Heel stuff? Has anybody revisited it and found it interesting?

Re-watched the '93 Hase/Hashimoto match and there's a strong argument for the Chono match being better in terms of scope if nothing else. The leglock work seemed less significant than people make out, but they don't work the surprise pin into an epic finishing stretch. I dunno how flukey it is, but it's the kind of thing that nine times out of ten wouldn't come off. So it's more of a flash pin than the Chono/Hase struggle.

Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki vs. Shiro Koshinaka and Takashi Iizuka (3/14/91) House show rematch of the tag Parv raved about. Decent house show work though went a little long for my tastes. The folks in attendance got their money's worth, though. Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki vs. Rick and Scott Steiner (3/21/91) I can see folks being into this if they like high octane sprints, but the Steiners have always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine and I still thought this was superficial.

I thought it was a legitimately great match, but there's a world of difference in having it surprise you and somebody dropping five stars on it. If I'd read the same five star review going in my expectations would have been far different and rightly or wrongly I would have been super critical of it. To me it was at least a solid four star match. You can haggle about how many quarter stars you add after that, but I have a pretty clear cut off point in my mind of what I think is four stars and it's a bit different from most folks in that a match is either four stars or it isn't and there's none of this retraction of quarter stars stuff where a flawed match is still four stars or four and a quarter. You're either in or you're out.

Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki vs. Riki Choshu and Shinya Hashimoto (10/11/92) Dull bout. There was more of a focus on Sasaki than Hase, but I was hoping for some good stuff between Hase and Hashimoto and didn't really get any. The Hashimoto/Choshu tag team wasn't as compelling as you'd expect, either. Shinya Hashimoto and Hiroshi Hase vs. Tatsumi Fujinami and Kensuke Sasaki (7/31/92) I liked this a lot. The strike exchanges between Hashimoto and Fujinami I thought were exciting and another example of older Fujinami looking good. Again, there wasn't much of focus on Hase here, but I liked all of the match-ups and I thought it built to nice crescendo. It was the type of match which really only serves to set the table for bigger things later on in the tour, but effective in that respect. People said it was too long in the Yearbook thread, but it was all right with me. Hiroshi Hase and Keji Mutoh vs. Vader and Bam Bam Bigelow (5/1/92) This was a great match and another of those memorable bladejobs from Hase. I haven't watched a Vader match in ages, maybe not since I went through his Otto Wanz stuff (which I love.) I'm not the biggest fan of the match layouts in a lot of Vader's stuff and this was almost close to the sort of stuff I mean with the match layout being really transparent and obvious, but Hase put in probably one of the best performances of his career and I dug everything he did with Vader. Mutoh and Bigelow were noticeably worse than their partners, though Bigelow took some bumps that were integral to the match. This may be the only time I've really dug Hase's ura nage. His over-reliance on that throw always kind of bugs me, but here it felt necessary. I mean what else was he gonna take Vader down with? I even dug the cutesy finishing stretch. Would definitely make my top handful of Hase bouts. One interesting thing about going through this stuff is that I've generally found myself agreeing with Meltzer's star ratings. He seems pretty spot on when it comes to New Japan during his era.

Kandori shot on Sato because of the heat between them. To me, the most interesting thing about Kandori is that all anybody really knew about her back in the day involved the work shoot elements of the Hokuto feud. In that feud she pays a fairly stoic role, but when I was checking out the Fujiwara directs a porn stuff on youtube I saw a lot of her appearances on comedy shows in the early 90s and she was really charismatic and outgoing. So I think there's a lot more to her general character than meets the eye. I don't know if I agree that Kandori's best matches are suddenly the best matches that any of those girls ever had, but it's an interesting take on things.