ohtani's jacket

He still worked in the UK. He just wasn't on TV that much. In the 70s, he used to work the German tournaments and globe-trot a bit, but by the late 80s I think he was mainly traveling between the UK and Japan. After '86, his UK dates dropped off a bit, which I assume was a combination of UK wrestling being in the shitter and getting regular tours w/ Baba. I'm curious as to why you ask.

Literally no one has said Duncan was as good or better offensively than Bird or that he was a better passer (what?). What has been pointed to a bunch is this... 1997-98 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 1998-99 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 1999-00 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2000-01 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2001-02 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2002-03 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2003-04 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 2004-05 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2005-06 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 2006-07 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2007-08 NBA All-Defensive (1st) 2008-09 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 2009-10 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 2012-13 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) 2014-15 NBA All-Defensive (2nd) You're ignoring that other half of the game. I get the argument for Duncan. My gut feeling is that if it boils down to who I'd rather have on a team the answer would be Bird. If you're talking about longevity, the arguments make sense for Duncan. I wouldn't necessarily agree that longevity means Duncan had the better career, but many would argue that he has. Certainly a case can be put forward that Duncan was the more all-round skilled player. I get all that. What I don't get, or rather never got, was the feeling that Duncan (even in his prime) was one of the five greatest players ever. Maybe over the course of his career, but it wasn't something it seemed as though we were witnessing in the early 00s. The rest of the argument was to do with this notion that Duncan led an otherwise lottery-bound Spurs team to a 60 win season and an NBA title, which I think is silly because after the re-signed him they build the team around him to be a title contender. That team doesn't really exist without Duncan. Also, I don't think Duncan dominated those playoffs to the degree that you can say he carried a team of nobodies to an NBA title. As I said, they relied on outside shooting, and while it was streaky, they got it from a number of different players. And I'm not talking Paxson or Kerr shooting the game winner either. We're talking about entire runs (in some cases rallying for a deficit) and in several cases an entire quarter. If his team had been so shit, that doesn't happen and Duncan doesn't win the title. That, to me, is as true as the Spurs not winning the title if Duncan had gone to Orlando. It's possible that the 2003 Spurs could have been part of a three peat. The more I think about it, the more crazy it is that they're being presented as a team of scrubs.

No, they wouldn't have won 60 games without Duncan, but they also may not have won 60 games without Pops shifting Parker to the starting point guard position the previous season, bringing in Kevin Willis, Steve Kerr, Speedy Claxton and Ginobili to strengthen the bench, and moving Stephen Jackson off the injured reserve list to cover for Steve Smith's dodgy knees. They also increased Malik Rose's role to account for Robinson's health. Of course, Duncan carried the load on both ends of the court, but he was helped by Parker, who was able to push the ball up the floor, get out in transition, make open jumpers and create more space for his big men. Even in his early seasons, where both his shooting and playmaking were erratic and Pops was forever on his case, he energised the team, and I would argue he was the second best player on the team during the 2003 regular season. I wouldn't call him the second most talented. Stephen Jackson was regarded by some within the organisation as the most talented player on the roster, and although Parker had some brilliant games in the playoffs, he also had moments where Pops pulled him for Speedy Claxton. There were also the Kidd rumours hanging over him in the Finals series and it was pretty clear he was upset with how hard Pops was riding him. Nevertheless, Parker had an impact on that team as did Ginobili becoming a major part of the rotation. It was the 2003 playoffs where he really came to prominence after his early injury set-back. I don't think it was incredible that the 2003 San Antonio Spurs won the NBA title. I think Duncan was incredible against the Lakers (with some help from Robert Horry) and after they got over that hump there was every chance they would win the title. They had some luck in the form of Dirk's injury, and also Webber tearing his ACL when the Kings were considered one of the favourites, but incredible? My point about the Spurs needing fourth quarter heroics from the likes of Jackson and Kerr is that as good a player as Duncan was/is, he wasn't the type like a Jordan or a Bird that could take over in those clutch situations. I can imagine Bird taking a large number of shots in those fourth quarters. Duncan was a different type of player with a different type of skill set. I don't think he was good offensively as Bird. I don't think he was the passer that Bird was. Were they the team with the least amount of help to win a star player an NBA championship? Nobody viewed them that way at the time. They were meant to be in a transition phase from the Duncan/Robinson era to the Duncan era, which later became the Big Three era, and they overachieved in that respect, but if they were as weak as claimed they would have faded back into the pack. How do they compare to the '75 Warriors?

Look at that 2003 team again. There's not a lot of help there. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/2003.html We can presume that Bird could have carried a group of scrubs like that but there's no real evidence of it. With Duncan there is. Look at that team. I came across this great quote a couple of days ago actually about the 2003 team. “Stephen Jackson’s our second-best player. And the Nets cut him.” (Chicago Tribune) -Anonymous Spurs staffer on Duncan's 2003 MVP case. So I would reject the idea that he couldn't carry teams. Longevity is the key thing though. I admitted peak Bird is better than peak Duncan. I watched every single Spurs game of that 2003 post-season and they struggled for what was a 60 win team. It took them six games to close out each series. Duncan was double teamed a lot and often went scoreless for long stretches. In the close out game against Phoenix, Ginobili and Jackson took over in the fourth quarter. In the Western Conference finals it was that famous shooting display from Steve Kerr. Game 3 of the Finals it was Parker and Ginobili. Kerr again in Game 5. Robert Horry in Game 5 against the Lakers Duncan was huge against the Lakers and had some monster games at other times in the playoffs, but it's easy to look at a roster and say Steve Kerr 10 games, 2.2 ppg in the playoffs when in fact he was pivotal in two playoff victories, or to say that Parker and Ginobili weren't instrumental because they were better players later on. Or undervaluing their sixth man, Malik Rose, because he never won a Sixth Man of the Year award or anything of that nature. Even the Admiral had that huge double-double in the title clinching game. Duncan was the star, but it was a hodge-podge team that relied on a second scoring option from somewhere and everybody chipping in. With Bird, I could envision him taking over down the stretch more often than Duncan did. Perhaps that's an unfair comparison because Bird was clearly more of a shooter than Duncan, but it's who I'd opt for if I could switch players. I have a hard time believing Bird wouldn't have torched the 2003 Nets.

It really depends. A lot of it has to do with expectations. If I bother to watch the pre-match videos (and to be honest, a lot of the time I don't) then I expect to see a pay off, but if I'm going in cold I guess I would focus on the work. These days I watch most wrestling without the commentary or crowd noise because I want to kill two birds with one stone in regard to listening to a record and watching a match and because the WWE commentary makes the matches worse for me. So, oftentimes the narrative is whatever I pick up for the selling or the match layout. In the case of all that Mysterio I watched, a lot of the times I was enjoying the work for the work's sake instead of paying attention to what the narrative was per se. When it comes to the lead in to a lucha apuesta match or the WAR vs. NJPW feud watching the matches in chronological order definitely creates narrative expectations. The reason I listened to Owens/Cena with sound and watched the matches a couple of times each was because we were told the narrative was solid and also to make sure I wasn't dismissing them out of hand. Obviously, someone who's watching week-to-week is going to have a better understanding of the build than a guy who watched the highlights package, but I still think the narrative ought to be pretty straight forward so that anybody watching can get it. And really it's the way they delivered on the narrative that I didn't like. I don't get why they had a rematch two weeks after the first fight and I don't get why Cena went over. I'm aware of the sales hit on merchandise, but surely that match was begging for Owens to win even if it was by DQ or something. Cena winning killed the issue dead even if Owens pulled a Terry Funk in the post match. I can't imagine Liger beating Sano two weeks after their first bout, or Flair pinning Steamboat two weeks later, or Jumbo getting his win back over Misawa after a fortnight.

A match where the work they do is more important than the narrative presented. Or, in some cases, where there is no narrative present. Not trolling here. At all. But I'm not sure I follow. Are we talking about a narrative as presented in commentary? Where they hit you over the head working a body part? Where there's a clearly identified storyline heading into the match which is played out? Is this generally as a much a subjective determination as whether you dug Cena/Owens, for example? The bolded part. The narrative in this case is the angle, including all of the promos and pre-match set-up. All of the stuff that's repeatedly ad nauseam by the commentators at the start of the match. In a narrative driven match, that would have been paid off by having a long heat segment on Cena where he fights through adversity, gets cut off a few times, and makes a comeback. In a workrate driven match, they're trading offence, kicking out of finishers, and coming within a hair's breath on pins. You can wrap a narrative around that, but it's hollow because we see that workrate pattern in just about every match regardless of whether there's heat between the workers. By the same token, you can have a long heat segment in a match where there's no issue between the workers, but that's generally boring. It's subjective in the sense one person can say they didn't build on the narrative and another can write a small treatise about it. It either hits you in the gut or it doesn't. The workers have a choice in how to build off the set-up. In this case, it didn't ring true for me, but it did for some pretty big Cena fans so I wouldn't call it concrete.

Race talking into the camera like that was hilarious and the commentator's reaction looked like something out of the old Aussie comedy Frontline.

Choshu's body of work in the 80s blows Maeda away and I say that as a huge Maeda fan. I can live with people thinking he's top five for the decade because it's a cool idea, but I dunno that it's actually fair.

God, Masa Chono is the worst. Who's worse between Chono, Mutoh and Koshinaka? That should be the subject of a podcast. One of the best things about the WAR vs. New Japan feud (and man do I refuse to call it W-A-R and not War) is that you get to see Tenryu belittle these substandard New Japan musketeers. He was at his dickish best here. I loved the flick of the sweat off his pecs. Chono's selling was goofy as shit, but man did Tenryu lay those chops in, and his lariats were pretty brutal too. Of course with Chono selling so much, New Japan were bound to take this, but Fujinami dialed back to the clock with the tope to take Tenryu out and the flying knee out of nowhere to knock Hara's block off. Not one of the better entries in the feud because of Chono, but Tenryu was awesome once again.

A lot of people seem to like Tamura/Yamamoto. Volk/Kohsaka was a good series, as was Volk/Yamamoto. Tamura/Kohsaka and Kohsaka/Yamamoto were notable series, but only really produced one great singles match (two in the case of Tamura/Kohsaka depending on your how view the U-Style bout.) You should check out the three Tamura/Sakuraba fights in UWF-i, which was a rarely case of the promotion actually doing shoot style. Also you need to watch Carl Greco against anybody and everybody. Another notable series was Shamrock/Funaki, but their fights were a tad boring IMO.

Something about Duncan being better than Bird doesn't sit right with me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what Pops and Duncan have built since Timmy was drafted, and last year's Spurs were sublime in terms of ball movement and team basketball, but Game 7, who would you rather have, Duncan or Bird? Even in Duncan's prime where he was capable of putting up a quadruple double in a Finals game, it didn't seem like he could dominate a game like Shaq. jdw mentioned that 2003 side, but Duncan only carried them in terms of being the lead scorer. He needed help winning that title. He's a great, great player, but I don't think you could put as much on his back as you could Bird. Bird just seems so much more competitive to me even though Duncan is obvious competitive in his own stoic way, but Bird was at a Jordan level of competitiveness. The list of guys who were as competitive as Bird during Bird's prime NBA years (and even in his post-prime) would be a fairly short list. I get the longevity argument, though.

A match where the work they do is more important than the narrative presented. Or, in some cases, where there is no narrative present.

I thought Mysterio continued to work to a high personal standard in 2011 but the quality of his opponents took a nosedive. The Alberto Del Rio bout was the best I saw them have and a pretty good TV bout up until the cheap finish, though I guess it gave us the age old image of the manager being beaten up in place of the heel. Elimination Chamber matches are gimmick stunt fests and a poor man's Wargames, so boo to that. The Rhodes "Phantom of the Opera" shit was more cheesy than a day time soap. Rhodes did his best to get it over and the match itself was tolerable for a falls count anywhere bout, though he did keep running away from Rey when Rey was setting up spots he wanted to do off the barricade and down the stairs. I thought Rhodes took the 619 really well, fwiw. The CM Punk match was a boring attempt at having a straight match wrestling match between the two and kind of highlighted how spot reliant the modern WWE style is in that they can't really build a traditional match in such a replay heavy era. The tag was completely unremarkable and I can only imagine it's memorable because the Miz and that Riley guy have few other memorable bouts. I really didn't see how Rey carried the bout in any way. He contributed an equal share to the other workers and oftentimes wasn't even in the ring. The Cena match was good. Very good actually. I can't state how much better JR is on commentary than the current crew. Even when he has to say stock phrases like "the WWE Universe" it's a thousand times more tolerable than Michael Cole. Lawler is a million times better with Ross than he is with Cole and JBL and together they make everything so much more tolerable. Really good TV match that was super competitive without the need to go epic. Cena looked really good in this and the nearfalls, finishers and kick outs were all logical, well build and far more memorable than the spamming in other bouts. I'll probably watch a few more bouts here and there, but I'll close by saying that I can understand why people think Mysterio is a great worker. He's extremely consistent and almost always delivers a good performance in spite of injuries, booking and the general repetitiveness of his character and wrestling style. Like most wrestlers, I think he's only had a handful of truly great matches, but he's had very few lows and that was something that impressed me over the 10 years I watched. If I were going to watch any of this stuff again, my preference would be for the Smackdown Six era, 2009 and 2006 in that order. His best opponent in terms of peak matches was Eddie, but his best feud was with Jericho. I think top 10 is too high, but if I were voting I would definitely consider him for the top 30.

Never presume -- Miquel Perez Jr and the Little Prince would give him a contest.

I have a hard time believing that a promotion with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer can have such rich psychology; and even if it does, I the question the logic in using narratives that fly over the head of most viewers. There's enough context provided from the pre-match video packages and from the commentators that even if you can't appreciate the hidden layers you should still be able to enjoy the narrative on a surface level, but I can't because I think it's poorly executed. I do want to take back what I said about him not being able to work workrate matches as I just watched his bout with Rey Mysterio Jr again, which is a perfectly good workrate bout.

John Cena vs. Kevin Owens (6/14/15) This was in all likelihood worse than the first match. I say "likelihood" because I'm not sure it's worth comparing. I don't recommend Parv watch this match at all. The two criticisms coming out of the MITB show thread that I strongly agree with are that if any other wrestler had this match they'd be criticised for it and that it was finisher spam. I thought Owens' character work was good before and after the match; it was everything between bells that was a problem. I'm not sure why people claim that Cena is good at workrate matches when it's clear that he's not. His transitions are so unbelievably poor, especially his counters into the STF, and his missed punch/clothesline choreographed spin arounds are the most choreographed thing you will see in a day's wrestling viewing. How many different finishers did Owens burn through here? He used Jericho's finisher and Michaels' to name two. I thought the WWE was a bit more protective about things like that. And man do they go to the finishers/nearfalls early. A couple of shoulder tackles and you're hitting finishers on each other? Some of the finishers looked good in isolation (i.e. on replay), but it's tough to care about the ebb and flow of it if you're an outsider looking in. The big storyline of Cena claiming to the ref (Cena never does this! Wow!) ought to be more ammo for the Bret vs. Cena thread since Bret was a million times better at losing it with an official, and isn't Cena's over-acting when he couldn't get a three count the kind of thing we criticise Orton and Edge for? As for pulling out new moves, it would help if they looked good. Or if it wasn't video game button mashing. The Code Red was stupid and doesn't fit Cena's character. He already has an ugly enough moveset without adding that sort of thing to it. And why is he working a Wrestlemania type epic in an upper midcard feud anyway? Doesn't he have any sense of scale vis a vis card placement? I'll stop now. Match was around **

Can't say I think much of Suzuki's early work. To me he's like a Negro Navarro or a Black Terry in that he completely reinvented himself as something better in his later years.

I hate ladder matches with a passion. Why is there a ladder in the ring? It's stupid. A ladder doesn't belong in a wrestling ring. A cage match makes sense to me conceptually but a ladder match is fundamentally wrong. And falls count anywhere matches; god I loath falls count anywhere matches.

What did you think of Cena in the match?

Except that most people would correctly identify sport as theatre and side shows as spectacle. You can't really escape the fact that pro-wrestling is trying to elicit the same response as work we generally refer to art. The package just isn't as appealing in the same way that the soaps are just TV and the top twenty is disposable. It's low brow when it fancies us and transcendent when we want to write a glowing review. So our own treatment of it is inconsistent.

But again that's true of any form of entertainment. Just replace "money drawn" with "records sold" or "box office." Do you really think producers in Hollywood look down with envy at some indie film with a shoe-string budget that did well at film festivals? Are record executives satisfied with critically acclaimed albums that don't sell? You're right that wrestlers are preoccupied with ticket gates and the houses they drew, especially when reminiscing about their careers, and that they seem more focused on the business than talking about their craft, but I don't think that's conclusive evidence that their craft isn't an art. Since wrestlers at least put some thought into what they do, what would you equate it to if not an art? I mean they actually do have to think about what they're doing to some degree rather than obsessing over ticket stubs all the time. What do you call the learned skill that is pro-wrestling?

What about Santo?

elliott, to answer your questions simply, the original UWF was meant to be NJPW mark II but turned into NJPW-lite when guys wouldn't jump (especially Inoki) and they couldn't get a TV deal. Sayama came on board, who had been staunchly in the anti-Shinma/Inoki camp during the coup of '83 and Shinma was given the bum's rush. Then Sayama and the Gotch boys took over and introduced the idea of a promotion build around real pro-wrestling (as in the catch-as-can style that Gotch had been taught at Riley's gym in Wigan.) Fujiwara was Gotch's star pupil, if you like, and responsible for both training guys and implementing much of the stylistic changes. Sayama came from a different martial arts background and was pushing his shooto philosophies and therefore there was always an underlying tension between Sayama's MMA leanings and Gotch's hooking background. Shoot style the first time round was a work in progress and a lot of the guys still did pro-style moves like tombstone piledrivers and other crap. They struggled with cashflow and couldn't get a TV deal because they didn't run enough shows on a monthly basis, and the straight up pro-style guys like Rusher Kimura balked and quit almost straight away so they had a tiny roster outside of the touring Brits. They shut up shop after the backstage problems between Sayama and the Gotch boys boiled over to shoot incidents in the ring. This was the death knell right here: Maeda was suspended and later fired, despite being the ace, and Sayama walked out and started Shooto, which as Tim Cooke and Eduardo will agree, would latter put on some of the most exciting MMA fights in Japan. The Gotch boys headed back to New Japan and feuded with Inoki and the NJPW guys. That lasted a couple of years and then there was another famous shoot incident between Maeda and Choshu where Maeda was suspended and fired (again.) That led to the formation of what we usually called UWF II, but is more commonly known as Newborn UWF in Japan (with the old UWF being the casual name for the first promotion.) Maeda was the baddest motherfucker on the planet at this point, aside from maybe Mike Tyson, and was a massive draw. The Newborn UWF was initially a tremendous success headlined by a rivalry between Maeda and Takada. Their monthly shows sold out in minutes, they were the first Japanese promotion to run the Tokyo Dome, etc., etc. and they did it all without TV. They also ushered in clean finishes and all the other talking points people used to make about UWF II. More importantly for us, the God of shoot style, Yoshiaki Fujiwara wrangled his way out of his New Japan contract, took his two prodigies Suzuki and Funaki with him, jumped to the new UWF promotion, took shoot style to the next level, ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Lord. Funaki became the big story in 1990 when he returned from injury and started beating everyone leading to a big fight against the top ace Maeda. And it would have been fascinating to have seen what came next, but egos and mismanagement and poor book keeping led to a splintering of the three main power brokers, Maeda, Takada and Fujiwara, which was somewhat amicable and perhaps inevitable but hugely political and tremendously ego-driven. Loss already outlined the difference in the splinter promotions, but basically Maeda gave us RINGS which is like Mozart or Beethoven, Fujiwara gave us PWFG, which was like Thelonious Monk, and Takada gave us UWF-i, which was like Liberace. PWFG pushed the form the most through Funaki and Shamrock, but was a rinky dink indy promotion and increasingly needed to co-promote with other promotions to survive (especially in the era of interpromotional co-operation and cross promotion feuds.) Funaki and Suzuki were completely against that so split off and formed Pancrase, which was quasi-MMA promotion that was a bit liberal with its worked aspects but developed over time into a stylistic form that greatly influenced RINGS at its peak. PWFG eventually folded and out of the ashes was born the hybrid promotion BattlARTS run by Yuki Ishikawa. UWF-i was a farce, but it had two hugely important young guys named Sakuraba and Tamura, the first of which would go on to achieve fame in PRIDE and the second who flirted with jumping to Pancrase but eventually joined RINGS and together with Volk Han, Kohsaka and Yamamoto created bouts which are generally regarded as the highwater mark of shoot style. UWF-i eventually went out of business, briefly reopened as Kingdom and then morphed into PRIDE. PRIDE was a phenomenally entertaining MMA promotion that was the hottest thing in Japan in the early to mid 00s and hurt traditional Japanese pro-wrestling completely and literally killed off shoot style, but was easily the best thing about the Japanese scene in the 2000s and had fights that were better than any worked bouts during that decade. RINGS more or less resorted to MMA in order to survive, but Maeda was basically leaning in that direction anyone and would later promote a second MMA promotion Heroes. Tamura's short lived U-Style promotion was the last real attempt at promoting a shoot style fed aside from maybe shows under the Futen/BattlARTS/Big Mouth Loud banners barring whatever recent feds I'm unfamilar with. Shoot style still exists as a stylistic feature in matches, but there's no promotion committed to it as far as I'm aware, and MMA itself has had its day in Japan. That was extremely rough and dirty, but at least it's a starting point.

Here is my list of great shoot style bouts. These are my personal picks and may not reflect matches which are actually good, though this was an attempt at reaching consensus and I included some matches that rated well from the Other Japan set. UWF Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (9/7/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Nobuhiko Takada (10/22/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (12/5/84) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (1/16/85 handheld) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Akira Maeda (3/2/85) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (7/17/85) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger (9/11/85) UWF 2 Nobuhiko Takada vs Akira Maeda (11/10/88) Nobuhiko Takada vs Bob Backlund (12/22/88) Yoji Anjoh vs Masakatsu Funaki (6/14/89) Masakatsu Funaki vs Tatsuo Nakano (7/24/89) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Kazuo Yamazaki (7/24/89) Akira Maeda vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara (8/13/89) Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (2/9/90) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Kazuo Yamazaki (4/15/90) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Masakatsu Funaki (9/13/90) Nobuhiko Takada vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara (10/25/90) Akira Maeda vs. Masakatsu Funaki (10/25/90) UWF-i Naoki Sano vs. Nobuhiko Takada (12/20/92) Naoki Sano vs. Nobuhiko Takada (10/14/94) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Kazushi Sakuraba (5/27/96) PWFG Naoki Sano vs. Wayne Shamrock (5/19/91) Naoki Sano vs. Minoru Suzuki (7/26/91) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Masakatsu Funaki (7/26/91) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Yusuke Fuke (2/24/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Bart Vale (6/25/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Wayne Shamrock (12/5/92) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Joe Malenko (6/1/93) Kingdom RINGS Volk Han vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (6/15/95) Volk Han vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (8/24/96) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (9/25/96) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (1/22/97) Tsuyoshi Kosaka vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (4/4/97) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (4/22/97) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Nikolai Zouev (6/21/97) Volk Han vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (9/27/97) Volk Han vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (5/29/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka (6/27/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (9/21/98) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (6/24/99) BattlArts/Big Mouth Loud/Fu-ten/Misc Daisuke Ikeda vs. Carl Greco (2/20/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Alexander Otsuka (2/28/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (4/15/97) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (5/27/98) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (8/29/99) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Carl Greco (6/9/08) Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono vs. Manabu Suruga/Takahiro Oba (4/9/09) Takeshi Ono & Takahiro Oba vs. Manabu Suruga & Kengo Mashimo (5/30/10) U-Style Kiyoshi Tamura vs Dokonjonosuke Mishima (8/7/04) Hiroyuki Ito vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (8/18/04) Yuki Ishikawa vs. Hiroyuki Ito (10/9/04) Other Promotions (New Japan, etc.) Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (NJPW 1/10/86) Shinya Hashimoto vs. Victor Zangiev (NJPW 4/24/89) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW 6/1/94)

Long, rambling, overwrought, nit-picky, non-proof read review here -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-463-vintage-negro-casas-of-the-day-18/