ohtani's jacket

I knocked off the first hour. Can't understand how Mocho Cota finished that high. AJ Styles seemed awfully high as well. A few things: Smarkschoice had its own Joshi forum and he guy who ran the site was a big Joshi fan. That's largely the reason why the original list was so Joshi-centric. I personally had Jaguar Yokota at #1 on my ballot. We also did a separate Greatest Female Wrestler Ever poll which may have been lost to the sands on time. From memory, the list came out early in 2006 and the site's most active years were in 2004-05. In the early 00s there were a lot of message forums and video reviewing groups that sprung out of the DVDVR scene and they all kind of petered out and disappeared as people lost interest in wrestling and moved on. The Joshi tape reviewing groups were part of that scene that faded away. There are actually a ton of newer Joshi fans out there but not many of them populate sites like DVDVR or PWO as far as I can gather. I don't know want to say the scene has gone underground; I think it's just moved to a different sphere of the internet. Generally speaking, though, the dynamic of message board posting was much different ten years ago as people often had a lot more specialised interests due to either cost of tapes or meeting like-minded fans. Fandom today is much broader due to digital media, streaming sites, etc. Also you have guys like Loss, who was one of the first guys I remember who seemed like he wanted to watch literally everything and accumulate huge amounts of footage. Incidentally, the GWE poll in 2006 ended up kind of killing that board. There were a lot of posters there who objected to the site becoming a "serious" wrestling message forum and eventually it was spammed to death. 2006 was pre-Dustin of the Day, which is I think was highly influential in getting people to pay attention to Dustin Rhodes. And Parv, you reason you think most WoS guys don't wrestle like Robinson is because you're watching the lighter workers. Most heavyweight wrestlers in the 60s worked the same style as Billy Robinson. And Dandy being more "lucha" than someone like Casas and Cota may be true in your books, but the reason we got into Dandy in the first place was because he wasn't what lucha was construed to be in the late 90s-early 00s. Back then an AAA match from their hot period would have been seen as definitive lucha.

I finished listening to this yesterday. Enjoyed both lists. Chad's list I think is similar to a lot of us who have been around a while and branched out a bit. There was a real Yearbook influence to it, which is a nice little ode to all the work that Loss and GH put into that project. Parv's list was solid. Despite the BIGLAV system being in place (which I've been pronouncing incorrectly in my head all this time), it seemed to reflect where he's at with his viewing. Looking forward to part two.

I'm not a fan of Kudo in particular, but I think the reason her career doesn't fit the standard peak vs. longevity molds is because she really didn't have a normal career. She's a special case where it's kind of hard to draw parallels except to Onita himself, who was out of wrestling and on the bones of his arse in the mid-80s. Her FMW run only lasted six years, but that's comparable to girls who came through the mandatory retirement system, and I actually think six years is about the length of peak that most girls had even after it was abolished. I'm curious that you didn't mention anything about the Toyoda match, which is kind of her crowning masterpiece.

I love this post. As though there's a ton more Sargeant out there that you can watch

No idea, but practically every WoS worker has routine stuff like that. Someone mentioned a while back about Veidor using the same finish in his bouts. It's not something that particularly bothers me, especially when you're jumping about watching a match from 1972 then '76 then '77 and a lot of guys were only on TV half a dozen times a year.

This mugging thing is a new talking point w/ you. Actually, I'm not surprised that Ohtani's schtick would come across as overacting or hamming it up to you. That was Ohtani's thing during his peak juniors years -- getting desperately close to a pinfall and acting like a hyperactive and overly-exaggerated version of Kobashi. Some of us found it endearing in the same way that Fuerza Guerrera, Psicosis or La Parka are. i used to liken it to silent comedy. The example I used was Chaplin, someone else called him Keaton. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there was a lot of physical comedy in Ohtani's matches. My buddy and I would always laugh at his matches and mark out for his mannerisms while still digging the shit out of them as wrestling bouts. He was a special performer for me at the time and a guy I don't wanna go back and ever revise my feelings on. I did watch some of his clipped 1997-98 stuff a few years back and still found him as fresh as ever, but I don't wanna break any illusions I may have. Totally agree about early 90s, pre-WWF return Owen. He works like that in every place he visits. I think it was either a holdover from his Blazer run or something he was doing to get noticed.

That was an interesting defense of Hotta. I'm not sure how much I can agree with it in good faith, but then I'd have to watch some Hotta matches to be sure. I don't think Hotta being butch has much to do with anything. Hotta's reputation was always that she was selfish and unprofessional and seemingly thought a lot more of her abilities than hardcore fans did. People just didn't think she was that good and maybe there was some group-think in that much like opinions of Kandori or Bolshi Kid, but it was in comparison to workers with similar gimmicks such as Kansai, Aja, Kandori (once her rep improved), and Chigusa, Omori and Asuka once the 80s UWF boom started rubbing off on them. Dylan mentioned that she stood out from other women, but it always seemed to me that she was lost in the shuffle. The Matsunagas pretty much gave everybody a turn in terms of pushes, and she remained loyal to them and vice versa, but I don't think she was ever one of the bigger stars, and I'd pin that on a lack of charisma as much as ring work. She generally slot into a gatekeeper role prior to the big exodus, and was fairly good at that in tags. The Hotta/Takako tag team was really good from memory and there's no way anyone could accuse Hotta of stunting Takako's growth during the time they tagged together. Quite the opposite in fact. One thing that instantly sticks out is that Dylan is write about the matwork in everybody's bouts as well as the commitment to long-term selling. I'm not a fan of the submission work that fills up the first third of Joshi matches. I understand the psychology behind it (kind of), but Hotta's work would have to be pretty bad to be any less of an offender than Kansai or anybody else.

I'm late getting back to this thread, but I don't think that all matwork has to be deathly serious. I'm as big a fan of tricked out lucha/WoS matwork as I am shoot style. What I don't really like is middle-of-the-road matwork like wrenching on a side-headlock. It seems a lot of people who don't have much patience for matwork find that sort of work fundamentally solid or at least easier to watch. WingedEagle did a good job of explaining why. I'm not really concerned with realism. My point about luchadores is that people often say they're giving up position or dropping a hold when in fact there was a counter there. Whether it's a realistic counter or not is not something I'm qualified to judge, but nine times out of ten they're switching control for a reason. But then I'm not really sure what people are referring to when they mean overly cooperative, the actual grappling or the Dali-like submission holds. From my perspective even when a luchador slaps on a side-headlock, the counter will be more interesting than a Brisco/Funk style pin attempt & back to the side-headlock. I can understand why people are accustomed to that sort of work since side headlocks, etc., are the building blocks of the grappling we grew up on; I just prefer stuff that's far outside that comfort zone. I don't mind workers showboating in holds if I find them charismatic. I just don't find Hase charismatic.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Great Muta (9/14/90) Probably should have watched these the other way round, but I thought the body of the '90 bout was much more solid than the Muta bloodbath. The way they transitioned from the early back and forth stuff through to the beatdown, bladejob and comeback was smooth. It was missing a strong finish to cap things off, but other than that there weren't many false notes. The finish at least had some interesting imagery w/ Muta leaving a stretcher for Hase. For a guy who didn't blade that often, Hase sure did make his gigging memorable. I don't know how often his name comes up in the conversation re: best bleeders of all-time, but he's an honourable mention. His selling was good here as well, which of course it really had to be.

Michael Jordan's HOF induction speech is a good one.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Great Muta (12/14/92) This was one of the first tapes I bought when I got into Japanese wrestling. I haven't watched this match in fifteen or sixteen years. That should provide a barometer for how cynical and jaded I've become. When I first saw this I was like a kid in a candy store. The first "puroresu" tapes for a WWF/WCW fan in the late 90s/early 00s were like being a kid and discovering there were specialty comic stores. Back then I'd only seen the WWF PPV matches that were considered four stars by the smark community and Muta/Hase was like an older kid introducing you to something kids your age hadn't cottoned onto. I'm not sure if youtubers who watch this today realise what the "Muta scale" meant to know-nothings like me a century ago. Anyway,re long story short, mechanically I've liked plenty of Hase matches better, but from the bladejob onward I remembered why this was such a gateway bout. I wouldn't rank it among Hase's best, but I wouldn't blame anyone else if they did.

This a solid bout. I think I've conditioned myself toward liking this stuff. I actually have a theory that if you watch enough of someone over a prolonged period that you can condition yourself toward tolerating if not liking them. Everybody seemed fresh-faced here. Hase's individual exchanges with Muto and Chono were good and I didn't notice any faults in their work. It felt like a borderline sprint to me and I think the sprinting style helps these workers. The bout may feel slight compared to what Misawa and Kawada were able to produce with Jumbo and Taue in the same year; but just as I'm sympathetic to the Joshi mindset of pushing the tempo, I think working a slowburning style here would have exposed these guys in the eyes of the wrestling world. The finish was the ultimate video game finish before video game finishes became the norm in Japan. I'm too lazy to check whether this was booked by Choshu, but it had his fingerprints all over it.

Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki vs. Keiji Muto and Masa Chono (11/1/90) This a solid bout. I think I've conditioned myself toward liking this stuff. I actually have a theory that if you watch enough of someone over a prolonged period that you can condition yourself toward tolerating if not liking them. Everybody seemed fresh-faced here. Hase's individual exchanges with Muto and Chono were good and I didn't notice any faults in their work. It felt like a borderline sprint to me and I think the sprinting style helps these workers. The bout may feel slight compared to what Misawa and Kawada were able to produce with Jumbo and Taue in the same year; but just as I'm sympathetic to the Joshi mindset of pushing the tempo, I think working a slowburning style here would have exposed these guys in the eyes of the wrestling world. The finish was the ultimate video game finish before video game finishes became the norm in Japan. I'm too lazy to check whether this was booked by Choshu, but it had his fingerprints all over it.

I've only really hung out on the periphery of this project, but the things I've learnt the most is that what most people consider fundamentally solid matwork is amongst the most tedious stuff for me to watch, and I don't think people pick up on the transitions in matwork they claim is too cooperative. I also think people are unaware of how much more trained in amateur wrestling your classic luchador is than most other styles. I also can't understand why it's okay for someone like Johnny Saint to have a completely choreographed, unbelievable style but not a luchador. I also learnt I can watch a match two years apart and have polar opposite reactions. I don't think I'll be putting faith in my opinions from here on out. I was glad a number of people took time to watch some of the British guys and pleasantly surprised that the heavyweights were well liked. That was cool. I also learnt that I'm quite happy to keep pottering about living in my own little wrestling bubble while others seem burnt out.

Regal was trained by Marty Jones. He was sent to Funk to get into shape in '98.

I have dementia and don't remember having watched this. FWIW, I watched it this time while listening to Fat Larry's Band. This was exactly what I'd expect from Hase vs. Chono, and I mean that in a positive sense. It went from being solid to being one of the best Hase matches I've seen in the span of half an hour. The other day I praised the Koshinaka match for the effort they displayed, but the difference here was that I thought this was legitimately great, and I can see why people were frustrated from one G1 to the next. Has the worm turned on how I feel about Hase? Stay tuned true believers and find out! The turning point for me here was when Hase took off his boot and pad and threw them away. That could have been a good visual but a stupid long-term spot. Instead, it seemed to kick start a killer stretch run that felt like it had a horn section accompanying it. I mean I was rooting for Hase and I never thought that would happen. I liked the Hase vs. Chono sections in that '93 tag league semi and this was part vindication that their match-up holds up and part "fuck it, these are two workers I don't really knocking my socks off." The detail work seemed particularly good here and there didn't seem to be any generic pro-wrestling topes. Maybe I'm overly surprised that I liked this, but it delivered in spades.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Takashi Iizuka (8/6/94) Wow, Iizuka had turned into a shoot stylist here. He was like a proto version of Shibata. Easily the best matwork I've seen Hase do. If he worked this way all the time, he'd be one of my all-time faves. There was giant swing spot that didn't make a damn lick of sense and was a real "what the fuck are ya doing?" moment from Hase, but aside from that it was a kick ass quasi shoot style match before shoot style elements began in vogue in New Japan. This match told me a lot about Hase. It seems like he had all the tools to be the sort of worker I like but went in a different direction. Being a worker I like isn't a very important thing so I don't begrudge him there, but watching this helped me realise he had skills that were perhaps under-utilized, and I'm not prepared to view him as a talented dude. Hiroshi Hase vs. Masahiro Chono (8/6/93) This was exactly what I'd expect from Hase vs. Chono, and I mean that in a positive sense. It went from being solid to being one of the best Hase matches I've seen in the span of half an hour. The other day I praised the Koshinaka match for the effort they displayed, but the difference here was that I thought this was legitimately great, and I can see why people were frustrated from one G1 to the next. Has the worm turned on how I feel about Hase? Stay tuned true believers and find out! The turning point for me here was when Hase took off his boot and pad and threw them away. That could have been a good visual but a stupid long-term spot. Instead, it seemed to kick start a killer stretch run that felt like it had a horn section accompanying it. I mean I was rooting for Hase and I never thought that would happen. I liked the Hase vs. Chono sections in that '93 tag league semi and this was part vindication that their match-up holds up and part "fuck it, these are two workers I don't really knocking my socks off." The detail work seemed particularly good here and there didn't seem to be any generic pro-wrestling topes. Maybe I'm overly surprised that I liked this, but it delivered in spades.

Since this came up on the prowrestlingonly twitter feed, the reasons I would rate Bull ahead of Aja are: * She was a good worker from the time she was a rookie through to when she quit. She never had a bad period. Aja was monumentally green for the first five or six years of her career and YMMV on her freelance years. * More dynamic worker, wider variety of skills, better bumper, better on the mat, better highspots, arguably a better brawler, definitely better at the up-tempo style * More expressive, better seller, better on the mic, more emotive, better at projecting her character, greater range to her work * Better match-up for the other girls, did more to get them over. Hokuto and Kyoko in particular matched up far better with Bull than Aja. Aja was a better striker and more likely to have better matches with a Kansai or Hotta than Bull could, but the Kandori match shows how Bull could circumnavigate that. Aja has the Satomura stuff in her favour, though Chigusa's booking played a big part there. * Better tag wrestler, better undercard worker, better midcard worker. Aja was better on top, but Bull completely paved the way for that and went a long way to making Aja Bull had some selling issues like most of the girls and structural flaws from time to time. One of the biggest things in my eyes is that during the inter-promotional era where they deliberately put her in the background and out of Aja's spotlight, she still shone, she was still the spiritual leader, she was still the one that spoke on behalf of everyone and she still had great performances. I mean I'll watch a vintage Aja performance from her prime any day of the week, but a random Joshi tag where it's either Bull or Aja in there? I'd be much more inclined to watch the Bull match.

There aren't that many full Devil matches on tape from the 80s. There's the All Japan Classics stuff and the Kandori bloodbath and that's it. The TV is all clipped and mostly repetitive. I liked her tag team with Tarantula and I think their work with Mimi Hagiwara is always a highlight. The Jaguar vs. Devil stuff we have on tape is a bit of a disappointment, but it's worked along more traditional heel vs. face lines as opposed to a serious wrestling match. He workrate tag stuff w/ Jaguar vs. The Crush Girls is good, though she's clearly the Taue of the group. The '87 Chigusa match isn't bad, but it's shorter than their '85 bout and would disappoint most folks. I remember liking a JWP match she had against Yamazaki circa '91, and I'm a big fan of her match against Ozaki from '94 though I think there are some blown spots that bother people. The stuff that doesn't really hold up for me is the '93 match against Bull or that long tag with Chigusa on the second Thunderqueen show. Not sure about the Dream Slam match against Chigusa, either. She's mostly good in random tags from that era or playing the mother figure on the outside. She'd eat the young girls alive and no-sell their offence a lot, which may bug some people, but that was part of her gimmick as matriarch. I assume her Super Heel Undertaker stuff is being ignored. I dunno. I haven't thought about Devil for a long time. She was a pretty good worker from the late 70s through to the late 90s. That's a fairly long run for a style where most girls have short peaks.

I liked the 1970 Inoki/Dory match, though it wasn't as fresh as the '69 bout. I liked Dory's subtle heeling when it was done in the ring but reaching for the ropes for leverage and his heel work on the outside were charisma-less. I also liked the first fall more than the two that followed, which made it a bit top heavy. The first time I watched it I wasn't sold on the feigned desperation as the time limit approached, but the second time those beats seemed okay.

What are some of the underrated Hotta performances? She has the Aja match and the tag team with Takako, but what else is out there?

I understand what you're saying, but I think it's a slippery slope. The notion that all styles aren't created equal is the type of thing that leads to people saying luchadores are doing it all wrong because lucha doesn't look like bread and butter NWA wrestling, or they don't work their gimmicks into their matches as well as US guys, and therefore the style is inferior. What you're arguing seems to be the opposite side of the coin -- that certain workers get a free ride because "that's the style." My thoughts on the matter are that workers should be judged first and foremost on how good they were within the style they worked. I think it makes more sense to judge Toyota as a Joshi worker than to judge her style based on how people would react to it in different environments. If people don't think Toyota's work is very good within the context of every other girl wanting to work the go-go style then that's cool; but when they start applying some kind of foreign criteria that's when things get iffy. I get the idea of applying universal criteria or even cherry-picking good Joshi; but the idea that the style is fundamentally flawed or fundamentally wrong because it doesn't look the way wrestling should look to an individual person doesn't work for me. Not with the weight of history behind it, and the number of people were involved in shaping it to be the way it is. Anyway this is getting a bit off track. I think you can like or dislike Toyota regardless of how big a Joshi fan you might be or how much interest you have in it, but that doesn't necessarily make a person's criticisms fair or right.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka (8/5/94) Couldn't fault the effort here. Both guys put in huge shifts and made a big effort to build this from the ground up. There was a long opening mat exchange that spilled over into some testy and heated moments, a clear through line with a logical sense of progression, the right amount of escalation to the moves they were using, and an epic-minded finishing stretch reminiscent of the All Japan boys. It wasn't always smooth, but you were never left without a clear idea of what they were trying to do, and I think if you like Hase you'd enjoy this bout. His selling down the stretch was particularly good. EDIT: Just saw this match got shat all over in the Yearbook thread. Weird.

We were mostly talking about her work ethic and athleticism in regard to whether she put any thought into her work. I think she put a ton of thought into how she wanted to work. You could argue that she wasn't clever enough to adjust her mindset to different match situations and that there were times when she shouldn't have gone out there with her usual approach. And of course there's always going to be folks who feel she needed to be reeled in (or worse.) I don't think her athleticism and her drive are reasons why people should vote for her. They're simply some positive qualities in light of the criticism of her. They work in Toyota's case where they may not work in others; but I think if people are going to vote for her it will because they can't deny the number of good matches she had. Now if you think she actively hurt every match she was in, she's not going to get within sniffing distance of a list like this. In regard to whether she was worse than her peers, outside of the top handful of Joshi workers can we really say she was worse than Mita, Shimoda, Hasegawa, Otsuka, Cuty Suzuki, Manami Suzuki, Takako Inoue, Ito, Fukuoka, Watanabe, et al.? If she was only the 10th best worker during the interpromotional era, for argument's sake, does that really make her so much worse her peers? And honestly, if you think Joshi is a lesser style, you can pick apart the top candidates just as easily. Kyoko, Hokuto, Aja, Bull, Devil, etc. all had flaws. I can't agree with the not all styles are created equal argument. I don't like the path that takes folks down. They're all wrestling styles and they can all be done well. I firmly believe it's a matter of personal taste.

I can see the similarities between Toyota and Sabu since they were both darlings of the tape trading scene who were held up as pinnacles of workrate and later maligned for their botched spots, lack of selling and poor psychology, but I think that's where the comparison ends. Toyota, during her peak, was the latest in a long lineage of Joshi workers dating back to the late 70s whose preference was to work the go-go style and who, I believe, made a deliberate choice to work that way to distinguish themselves from the men as athletes. Toyota pushed the bar higher than ever before, but she wasn't as innovative as Sabu. Sabu took ideas from all sorts of territories and meshed them together in a new style that was unlike anything that was happening in the US at the time. Toyota was influential in Joshi as most girls wanted to be like her. Sabu had a wider impact on pro-wrestling overall with workers borrowing more stylistic elements from his matches than Toyota's, and Toyota arguably being influenced by Sabu herself by including table spots in her work. And that was at the height of her acclaim in 1994-95. I can't speak for Sabu's selling. Toyota's doesn't really bug me. I don't really watch her matches for great selling and it's not a major revelation if she doesn't sell what. What bugs me about Toyota is the amount of excess in her big matches from '94-96. I find that period of her work distinctly unenjoyable. She's not alone in that category, though. I think it was a problem with most Japanese wrestling from the late 80s through to the late 90s and would trim the fat off a lot of bouts if I could. I like her stuff from '89-93 and I like quite a lot of her stuff from '97-02 as well. I can't think offhand of what her best selling performance was. The question of whether I think she was great is tricky. I think she was one of the greats of her era and only a handful of women were better. And I think that makes her one of the best workers in the world during that time frame. But when you add in Joshi workers from other eras she starts to drop, and then when you add basically everyone I've ever seen she drops further.