ohtani's jacket

I liked the 3/94 Williams vs. Kawada Carnival bout a lot. In fact, it's probably the best Kawada bout I've seen since I started dabbling in his stuff. There were a couple of All Japan tropes that annoyed me like going to the outside early on and the even stevens, not quite my turn, your turn, flow to the bouts. But this was meant to be a bigger deal than the other Carnival bouts I've watched and Kawada's selling was several notches above his standard performance. That lift in selling seems to be a determining factor in how good a Kawada bout is going to be. A lot of back and forth in the finish, but I was hooked and I think if it wasn't a draw and had a definitive finish it would be remembered as more than just an extra in the build to the Carnival final.

I liked the 3/94 Williams vs. Kawada Carnival bout a lot. In fact, it's probably the best Kawada bout I've seen since I started dabbling in his stuff. There were a couple of All Japan tropes that annoyed me like going to the outside early on and the even stevens, not quite my turn, your turn, flow to the bouts. But this was meant to be a bigger deal than the other Carnival bouts I've watched and Kawada's selling was several notches above his standard performance. That lift in selling seems to be a determining factor in how good a Kawada bout is going to be. A lot of back and forth in the finish, but I was hooked and I think if it wasn't a draw and had a definitive finish it would be remembered as more than just an extra in the build to the Carnival final.

I couldn't find it.

The 1994 Hansen match isn't as well known or famous as their '92 and '93 bouts, and probably not as good, but it's a nice companion piece. It may be my imagination, but Kawada seemed a more assured worker in '94 than in '93, though he didn't really stamp his authority on the bout and was still deferring to Hansen too much. The Carnival match against Akiyama is a fun bout, but pretty much a redux of whichever bout of theirs I saw from '93. They even ran through the same sequences. Kawada actually has a pretty standard match pattern and it was interesting that he did similar dropkick sequences with Hansen that he did with Akiyama.

If anybody wants to see an awesome Art Barr match from Mexico I strongly recommend the 7/23/93 trios where he puts on the Santo mask and attacks Eddy.

Hamada's big runs in Mexico were during the 70s and 80s. We don't have the footage to know the extent to which he, or Sayama for that matter, influenced the style. UWA finally got TV in November of '91 and Hamada was still working matches in Mexico at that time, but there's nothing that I've seen that suggests Hamada was changing the style in any way. If anything it was more the case that Hamada adapted to Mexican wrestling than bringing new elements to it. I could be wrong, though.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 37 Kung Fu vs. Chic Cullen (Unknown location, taped 1985) Some decent action. These two didn't match up especially well, it was blue eye vs. blue eye, and Cullen wasn't as good in '85 as he had been in the early 80s, but the match was okay. Orig Williams vs. Barcud Du (Unknown location, taped 1985) The big grudge match. This was full of posturing, half-arsed brawling, kids throwing trash at the ring, and South walking out on the bout. Williams threw himself to the mat, praised the Lord above, and looked like he'd just survived the biggest match of his career. I'd rip into it more, but it's my fault for not skipping it. Johnny Saint vs. Danny Boy Collins (Denbigh, taped 3/15/89) Outside of his early 70s work, I like Saint's late 80s work better than any point in his career. He still did all his escape holds, but he'd shelved the Vic Faulkner prankster element to his work and wrestled a more straight up version of the Saint style. This wasn't the best example of it and not much of a match, but I still liked what I saw from Saint. King Kendo vs. Romany Riley (11/5/86) Romany Riley looked like he'd pinched Sangre Chicana's tights here. It's so weird seeing a grey middle-aged Riley who looks like any other grey middle-aged Tom, Dick and Harry when he had such a counter-culture look in the 70s. It really is weird, but I guess it happens to everyone. Anyway, I have a lot of time for young Riley, but he was old and portly here and the fake Nagasaki was a tough load to carry. Nothing memorable. Sid Cooper vs. Greg Valentine (12/19/84) Cooper was doing the old £100 a round gimmick here. There's a complete lack of logic to these matches as instead of trying to knock Valentine out so he lasted as few rounds as possible, Cooper works a regular two pinfalls or submissions or a knockout bout and pisses away a bunch of money. But I suppose you've got to forget out that and just sit back and enjoy Cooper throwing a £100 at Valentine between rounds. He was past his best here, but still had a great snare and was a fun character.

It happened over time as more and more luchadores got regular bookings in Japan. It was around 1996/7 that it started having a noticeable impact on the bouts. Prior to that you had Dandy who was a tape watcher and cribbed stuff, but it was really Rey, Juventud, Santo, Casas and Wagner whom ratcheted things up. I would suggest watching the Rey/Juve 3/96 Barnett handheld, the Felino/Santo match from the summer of '97, the Casas/Santo hair vs. mask match from '97, and pre-Japan Wagner matches compared to his '97 work onward. The biggest influence was on moveset, but there were also stylistic elements like suddenly introducing crucifix arm bars and what not. In Lizmark's case, I think he ratcheted up his moveset in AAA to stay relevant as a guy in his 40s in a promotion that was breaking away from tradition. He may have introduced those moves earlier, I don't remember clearly. The classic style is more about arm drags and spinning backbreakers being big time high spots, a cross body block style move off the top being a finisher, and a single dive being built to in the third caida. The matwork is less "Japanese" looking and more Euro style; heavily stylized and full of tricked out submissions.

I had a sneaking suspicion about French New Wave, but it's impossible to like everything no matter how hard you try. I can understand wanting to see and hear everything to get a full picture of what's out there, but most people are instantly dismissive of stuff they're not into and don't butt heads with it as much as you are. To your sprouts analogy, you're choking on your Brussels. I liked Matt's analogy above about limbwork being like adding sauce to a dish that's unpalatable, but if you ever look for another way in, I would suggest strong character work ala Cota and not work driven lucha.

You're not rejecting one match in the canon. You're rejecting an entire style because in your own words you're not willing to change the standards by which you judge wrestling. It's not like you're saying that Godard's Weekend is an inexplicably bad film and that it shouldn't be part of the canon. What you're doing is rejecting the entire French New Wave because it's not like the other genres that take pride of place in your canon. If there's a French New Wave film that you like, you like it, but you don't LOVE it, so it's still okay to reject the genre. The problem with this entire discussion isn't that you buck some trend and declare that Dandy vs. Azteca is a bad match. It's that you can't believe that other people find it objectively great when you find it so appalling and distasteful. No matter what you say that suggests an attitude that canon is canon and people can't be so far removed in their taste. Half the trouble is because you use such emotive language. The other half is a conservative streak. GOTW called it elitist, but I'm not sure that's the case. I just think you're passionate in your beliefs, and Lord knows I listened to Bowie because of you and even listened to all of Dylan's albums because of you, but lucha is a disconnect you've struggled over. The hip hop analogy I had a hard time with since I've listened to so much of the music that shaped hip hop, and I would happily compare it to the music it samples for starters. I also have a hard time thinking about lucha as a "thing" when it's so wildly divergent within its country of origin, but at the end of the time I came into lucha wanting to like it. My buddy, whom I watched tapes with at the time, and I wildly embraced those moments that are quintessentially "lucha" because that was the stuff we wanted to pop for. Others might be turned off by that. I always imagined I'd be turned off by Iron Maiden before I went on a big metal binge. Total immersion in a genre is what Matt was arguing for before. But you've got to want to like it. When I read Rippa and Dean writing about 1989-90 lucha, I wanted to like it. To be perfectly honest, until Loss came along and said (in his enthusiasm) that Dandy vs. Azteca was a 5 star match and a MOTD contender, nobody had much to say about where it fit into the grand scheme of things. We were just happy watching 1990 lucha. Maybe it was because it was different from what we were used to, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Anyway, I'm getting a bit tired of this idea that we should force lucha on you. I think you've sampled enough that it's not for you in November, 2015.

I don't really see how an argument of whether there was a counter or not can be subjective. Either there was a counter or there wasn't. You can always argue over how good the counter was, but not its existence.

They wrestle an entirely different sort of match because of their weight class. You wouldn't see a pair of lucha heavyweights have that same match. In regard to your criticisms, it's simply a matter of whether they're fair or not. If you claim a worker released a hold by rolling over and there was actually a counter then no matter how snug the work is that's not a fair criticism.

Parv, all your examples are of heavyweights, but Dandy and Azteca were a pair of middleweights. It seems to me that most of your standards are based on (men's) heavyweight wrestling. Surely, there needs to be allowances made for other weight classes.

It's a bummer that the Kawada match is clipped. Nishimura looked like he took his striking game to another level and I love the shoot-like quality that Kawada brings to his submissions in this sort of environment. Would have liked to have seen how they handled the rounds system. Kawada and Nishimura having a standoff at the end with push-ups and bridges was amusing.

THE ARTHUR PSYCHO HOUR Ep 36 Don Eagle vs. Steve Logan (9/3/86) This featured some Canadian guy doing a Don Eagle tribute gimmick. Walton said he'd heard a lot of good things about him, particularly in tag, and proceeded to shit on him during the early part of the match where he was giving Logan some "shine" (for want of a better term.) Eventually, Eagle took over on offence and made Walton look a bit foolish. I'm not sure who this Eagle guy was, but he was must have been related to Stampede somehow. He was on TV two weeks in a row and never heard from again. Ricky Knight vs. Flesh Gordon (Merthyr, taped 2/4/92) Flesh Gordon during is the biggest douche in wrestling history. He's such a bad worker as well. I don't think I've seen him hit anything cleanly yet. Ricky Knight was a fun comedy worker, but this is a million miles away from the classic 70s WoS I love. The Super Flies beat on Gordon setting up a tag match that Psycho uploaded earlier. Orig Williams vs. Dave Duran (Unknown location, taped 1985) Having a good match with Orig Williams was an impossible task, but Duran and Steve Fury at ringside tried their best to make this heated. Which it was because if nothing else Williams was over like a mofo. The post-match angle with Williams ripping the shirt off Fury's back showed how pale an imitation Reslo was of the US territories. Steve Prince vs. Doc Dean (3/16/88) Legend has it that this was supposed to be the TV debut of Alan "Spinner" McKenzie, but he refused to appear on TV for some reason and Prince replaced him instead. Walton forgot that Prince had already been on TV getting his arse handed to him by Dave Finlay in one of the stiffest WoS bouts ever. Doc Dean was a good worker and fun to watch every time, but didn't have the build to make it on the international circuit. The Emperor vs. Tiger Dalbir Singh (3/19/88) I think the Emperor was Big Bill Bromley under a mask. This was all right for what it was. Singh had packed on a ton of weight in the last few years of TV wrestling and I don't mean muscle. As always, matches from '88 seem drab with wrestling on its way out the door.

This season feels like one big long coronation ceremony for Steph Curry and the Warriors. What dominant championship run does it compare to?

Princess Paula and Finlay. Objectively speaking it was a success, but man did it ruin Finlay for me.

The Tanahashi bout from 2004 was good. Can't accuse Nishimura of being passive in this one as he was pissed at Tanahashi and took the fight to him. Tanahashi was pretty solid in his younger days though he was already showing the kind of mannerisms that make him annoying like the ridiculous fist bump celebration at winning where his injured leg immediately buckled. I can understand him wanting to sell that way, but it looked so lame. I suppose for Tanahashi fans it shows his passion. Fiesty Nishimura was cool.

Man, did the board hate that post.

I agree that this looks bad. I don't think it's helped by the camera work, but at the same time Azteca keeps moving his hands which doesn't help the camera man. It's loosely applied, but I'm also spending an inordinate amount of time staring at it instead of taking the whole frame into account. For me the idea works even if the execution is off, and all I can really say is that the looseness doesn't bother me so much because the timing of the hold is okay. They keep it on for the right length of time (not too long, not too short) and Dandy counters on the right beat. I can overlook the execution. I think I got ahead of you. He's not trying to work the temple. The hold is applied too loosely and he can't keep his hands steady. Might as well go ahead and finish the fall... This is an exceptionally long opening fall for a lucha title match. After Azteca's bump to the outside and the re-set in the middle of the ring that mirrors the opening of the bout, the usually pattern would be for them to run the ropes until one worker scored a pinning maneuver, but it's like they're working overtime here. Some of it works and some of it is a bit hollow. If it were a film and I were the director, I'd trim it a bit, but it's not and therefore we're left with a fall that goes a tad long. They were trying to put over the extreme competitiveness of the workers despite claims of an obvious lack of competitiveness and Azteca not really being on Dandy's level as a worker. Dandy telegraphed the move that Azteca countered for the submission, which I can imagine annoying folks, and after all that back and forth it's a straight counter that ends it, which will annoy you if you hate the hold/counter hold flow, but that was a massive primera caida for experienced lucha viewers. I can understand your dislike of the rhythm of the bout. I think your distaste for the bout clouded your judgement a couple of times and some of the language you use is a bit over-the-top, but I understand your problem with lucha now and don't think it's going to change any time soon. Again, I think you're being a bit OTT with your disbelief that anybody else could like this stuff, but at least we settled that you have a problem with the nuts and bolts of workers not staying in holds for long enough, transitions coming too easily and too fast and not enough body part focus.

This was nowhere near as bad as the example at 6:48. I can understand someone thinking it could have been worked better, but I can't fathom how anyone would find it "appalling." That's a tad melodramatic. It also doesn't allow for the possibility that maybe Dandy the wrestler made a (kaybabe) mistake, or even the possibility that he can't apply the hold properly since his arm is hurting. Quite the jump cut here. You seem to have ignored the escalation taking place, Dandy's increased selling (even focusing on a body part!), the boss work he does in the time between, the pain, the struggle and the competitiveness. You'll notice that they're staying in holds for longer and it's becoming more difficult for them to counter. I don't really get your criticism of the counter here. Dandy turns it over. Naturally it looks co-operative because pro-wrestling is co-operative. But that's a standard counter.

To me that's just a takedown. Dandy is too quickfor him. Instead of falling face first, Azteca is able to keep his balance and push off to the side of Dandy. I'd be lying if I told you I knew that's because it's a better position for him to be in as a worker or because kayfabe wise it's a better position to counter from, but it has the same effect and Azteca is able to break the hold. I don't think he paused for long and I don't think it was a serious attempt at legwork. It was a takedown into a counter. No different from a lock-up really. When I read this, it seemed like Azteca was going to do spinning motions with his arms until finally succumbing to the drop toehold, your outrageously fake gripe seems to be with the side that Azteca fell on. Azteca uses his free leg to push on Dandy's leg and arm and force the separation. I had no problem with this. They cut to a medium close-up of Azteca during the counter, but we saw enough to know that Dandy didn't simply roll over. Again, I don't see how there was anything wrong with Azteca's counter into the waistlock. The arm was there and he took it. They're just jockeying for position at this stage so there's not much need for struggle. It would strike me as odd if either of them were struggling this early in the bout. Azteca is a bit loose. He reminds me of younger Atlantis in the '84 and '85 bouts against Satanico and El Faraon. They'd only been pushing him since '88 and he wasn't anywhere near as smooth as Lizmark, Atlantis, Solar or Santo as far as similar sort of workers go. I liked the front facelock counter, though. He doesn't just let go of it. Dandy leans in on him and takes his leg. Dandy's heavy breathing shows that it's been competitive to that point and even a tad bit frustrating from, Dandy's perspective. It seems to me that Dandy would like to slap on a hold and work Azteca over a bit, but Azteca is a slippery eel and able to counter everything. It would be nice if Azteca was a smoother worker, but not all of his stuff is polished. That's a perfectly acceptable counter. He doesn't just wrap his arm around Dandy's head. He locks both hands and pulls him over. Azteca's not trying to kick him. He's trying to push against Dandy's right leg, which he succeeds in doing when he breaks the hold. Azteca not switching fast enough into his hold is just nitpicking, imo. In theory, Azteca is meant to have control of Dandy's leg, but in reality he lets go of it to move himself into position. It's a minor detail. Twice Dandy tries to take Azteca's arm and twice Azteca fends him off before Dandy grabs the arm and forces Azteca back. I don't think this was a bad counter, but in this case I think you can see Dandy feeding Azteca the transition by giving him the leg. There's almost never a focus on limbwork or body part psychology in lucha. The focus is almost always on holds and counter holds and movement on the mat. To be perfectly honest, unless it were exceptionally well done I would be disappointed to see a focus on limbwork in a lucha title match. The way I see it, two guys have been working a match, exerting a lot of energy and trying to get a score over the other guy. The irony of this is that the transition from the mat to the standing position that Dandy counters from is by far the worst thing in the bout thus far. At around 6:48 they simply stand up.

Sure. You just never hear a bad word about that match so I was curious. Nobody had a bad word for the Steamer-Flair Wrestle War match for ages. It was accepted as an all-time classic, and in some circles as *the* all-time classic. Until they did have a bad word for it. It's possible that someone was critical of Wrestle War before Jewett, but he was the first I can recall knocking it down a peg. I don't think he called it a shitty match, but he didn't think it was an all-time classic, and give it one of hit working overs. And I think was met with resistance. I'm sure you've run into that with movies: universal love/praise for something, yet someone (possibly even you) wonders, "WTF?" I think you've misconstrued me. I'm not saying "how could you not like that that match?!", I'm legitimately curious as to why it fell flat. If you don't feel like explaining then it's no matter. I just feel like dissenting opinions are important in appraising a match.

I only just saw this. I'll check it out tomorrow.

Sure. You just never hear a bad word about that match so I was curious.