ohtani's jacket

This was disappointing. Too much shitty crowd brawling. There are some good Shiryu vs. Sasuke exchanges throughout and the stretch run delivers some high octane stuff, but overall it's a massive step down from the multi man tags to end '96.

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

VS NON-WRESTLERS Cena vs Kevin Federline - Raw 1st January 2007 This was less of a match and more of a RAW segment. Neither here nor there really. I kept waiting for the punchline, which was Umaga interfering. Not a bad segment, but not really enlightening as far as Cena goes. I think I'll watch the first Rock match and maybe the Michaels Wrestlemania match and call it a day on Cena. If I vote for him he'll be somewhere in the 80-100 range. He's not really a talented enough performer for me to rate higher and I'd rather focus my attention on finishing the Mysterio matches Jimmy recommended as I've enjoyed all of those.

Well, you've definitely piqued my interest in Brisco, whom I don't have a strong opinion about. I will check out those matches soon.

Big Daddy had some good matches in the 70s. He was better as a heel than a face.

Tally Ho Kaye vs. Kid Chocolate (3/17/81) Only a few minutes of this aired on ITV, but what was shown looked like good fun. Peter Kaye has gone up in my estimation lately, not necessarily in terms of his wrestling skills but in how consistently fun his segments were. I've seen Kid Chocolate against a bunch of guys and his main problem was always his lack of assertiveness. Here he was dishing out the headbutts to Kaye and generally getting over well. Kaye was a really good pro. Bobby Barnes vs. Pat Patton (1/13/81) This was fantastic. Barnes was a fucking master when he wanted to be. Patton was the hometown favourite in Wolverhampton and the heat the pair got was sensational. Barnes put on a masterclass in how to switch between shitty little heel tactics and the nastiest looking submissions imaginable. He got the crowd so worked up that a woman came up to his corner and had a real go at him. The crowd were hanging on Patton's every nearfall, but Barnes kept him at bay, which I thought didn't make much sense as the place would have erupted if Patton scored the winning fall. Still, the crowd got their night's entertainment and then some. Ray Steele vs. King Kong Mal Kirk (5/12/81) Huh, Steele jobbed in straight falls. What the hell is this? Bit of a flat bout.

I wouldn't say I've been unimpressed with all of his matches. I like him in certain contexts, but when people say he's the best big match worker in US history or he's a top 30 worker I expect a hell of a lot more.

TAG TEAM MATCHES Cena & Bourne vs Edge & Sheamus - Raw 31st May 2010 Not sure if this was meant to be an example of good Cena tag work or not. It seemed to be more about Bourne than Cena. I suppose it might be an example of Cena's apron work, but if so his acting was pretty shitty. The hot tag sucked as well. The five knuckle shuffle off a hot tag? I suppose you could spin this as the Cena version of Tenryu/Kawada vs. Hansen/Gordy if you wanted to, but you shouldn't because it was about as throwaway as a polystyrene cup. **

I watched that IYH match against Jarrett and it seems wildly inaccurate to say that Jarrett carried Michaels. At no point did Jarrett push Michaels outside his comfort zone and by no means was he the one making it interesting (abdominal stretches and sleeper holds are hardly my idea of carrying someone unless it's Erik Watts.) It was a Michaels match through and through. The best part of the bout was the bump he took to the floor. It wasn't my kind of match and Michaels can't wrestle the way I like, but you'd think he was incompetent the way this thread is going. The match felt like it could have done with a longer FIP segment on Michaels or some more interesting work from Jarrett on top, the comeback was standard WWF no-selling instead of a beautifully executed transition, and the Roadie crap was a distraction, but a carry? The entire thing seemed like a Michaels bout from the rope exchanges to the pinball style bumps to both guys being knocked down and the ref starting the count.

I keep remembering random points. * Joint Promotions didn't have any tag team championships, but in the early 80s they did this weird thing where they ran an annual tournament for the tag team championship where the winners were awarded belts they never defended. From memory, Murphy and Finlay won it the first year and then Jones and Myers the next.

That's the Royals for you. I hold them more or less responsible for British tag wrestling being the shambles that it was.

Dave Bond vs. Tom Tyrone (3/31/81) A match I can hear the commentary on tells me that Tyrone's television debut was the bout against Pete Stewart, so '81 is really his rookie year as far as we're concerned out in television land. He was a good young worker with some nice arm throws, but clearly a third or fourth year man. Walton complained that this wasn't exciting enough, but it suited me fine. I'm not sure the face turn was the best move for Bond though, who was better suited to heeldom. John Naylor vs. Kenny Hogan (2/11/81) Just a few minutes of this. Didn't leave much of an impression outside of Hogan's sneer. Tiger Dalibar Singh vs. Abe Arbuckle (5/12/81) Arbuckle was a big strong weightlifter type. Really big man. Singh worked a couple of decent holds with him, but as usual was devoid of personality, and Arbuckle was never seen on TV again. John Wilkie vs. Bobby Ryan (9/9/81) Only the scoring action. Everything I've seen from Ryan's "comeback" has shown he didn't really have it anymore. Great worker in the 70s mind. Bert Royal & Vic Faulkner vs. Bobby Barnes & Sid Cooper (6/18/81) There hasn't really been any additional footage from '81 worth watching, but this was a fun tag. If you've seen The Royals before it's nothing new, but the Wembley Arena crowd were hot and Barnes and Cooper were outstanding as the bumping and stooging foils to The Royals' smart arse shit. Cooper took a bump to the floor and began jawing with this woman who was dancing in a circle and pointing to the sky. She must have been disabled or something, but Cooper slagged her off. Barnes was awesome here, which you can't always say about Barnes in the 80s. Faulkner kept making fun of his snazzy trunks and Barnes ended up taking it out on Faulkner's arm, fucking it up completely with the nastiest looking arm submission I've seen in some time. Of course, the Royals being structurally impaired, after that big FIP segment, Vic made the tag for Bert to clean house... and he moved some stuff and tagged Faulkner in after like 10 seconds... Faulkner was apparently fresh as a daisy and scored the winning fall. Forget the comedy, imagine if the Royals were actually good at this tag wrestling stuff.

One more thing, the MC in the first match was former wrestler Charlie Fisher.

I enjoyed it a lot. In the future, you should check out Brian Maxine for sure. And Sid Cooper. Tally Ho Kaye might be fun too as far as gimmicks go.

A few more points: * I don't know if Admiral-Lord Mountevans was in on the work, but the driving force behind the rules was promoter Norman Morrell. The rules, which you can read here -- http://www.scribd.com/doc/90279549/1946-The-Rules-Governing-Professional-Wrestling-All-the-Techniques-to-go-Along-With-Them -- were drawn up so that promoters could continue to get licenses from local councils and that the ban in London and Glasgow would be lifted. It was a weird legit thing like the Comisión de Box y Lucha in its heyday or the athletic state commissions in the States. * I believe McManus was a heel from the 40s onwards, but he was such a celebrity that he became "The Man We Love To Hate" and hobnobbed with the rich and famous. After he retired he became this elder statesman figure who would commentate on the matches or make guest appearances as a ref. McManus admonishing a heel and dishing out public warnings is a sight to behold. A got a kick out of Walton calling him out on his past wrestling life during a Murphy/Kilby bout he reffed. * The funniest thing about Kung Fu was that he was a Irishman from Belfast which is a far cry from Hong Kong and Bruce Lee. I'm going to assume that Parv was never big on the 70s Kung Fu boom (Bruce Lee, wuxia, Master of Kung Fu, etc.) I once took a look at a bunch of his bouts against different rudos which I called Kung Fu vs. The Five Deadly Rudos, and the McManus bout blew away what anybody else did with him. That was why I listed it because it was a hugely impressive bout to me in that context. * There's around 25 McManus bouts available on tape. The stuff we have of him from '74-76 would represent the peak of his work on tape. * While I agree that Breaks was hard, that Street match isn't a very good representation of his typical performance. He did work slightly different in the early 70s as he was still fleshing out his act, but in that particular match I think there was definitely a subtext of Breaks treating Street like a "queer." * Street always did a Gorgeous George style gimmick in the UK. The glam rock stuff was just make-up he added to it. There are three WoS bouts available and two sets of clips from the halls. Street left Joint Promotions in 1974 around the same time that Jackie Pallo did. He worked for the independents until around '81 when he left for the States. * Breaks wasn't the top guy in his weight class. Saint was the perennial World Champ. * There are some long time British fans who were skeptical of whether the Royals were actually brothers, but I believe they were. They were like the Beatles of British Pro-Wrestling in the 60s. Faulkner came across as a smart arse at times, but he had a range of performance styles including fired up babyface. * The weights were kayfabed to a large degree but the Royals were in the welterweight-middleweight range while the Saints were light-heavyweight-heavyweight range. The match you watched was a face vs. face, brothers vs. brothers, sons of former wrestlers tag match spectacular. The nearfalls at the end aren't uncommon. WoS matches sometimes have hot finishes with numerous nearfall attempts.

It was from the Royal Albert Hall so it would have been promoted by Dale Martin Promotions under the Joint Promotions banner. Joint Promotions was made up of six different promotions, some of which were owned by the group and some of which were affiliated -- http://prowrestling.wikia.com/wiki/Joint_Promotions. Joint owned Dale Martin and for all intents and purposes they were the same thing. In order to save confusion, I usually refer to WoS as Joint Promotions, but there are a lot of people (especially the wrestlers) who refer to it as Dale Martin. Perhaps John will chime in with how he thinks the matches should be labeled.

I listened to the opening 15 minutes or so. A couple of things: * The matches when they originally aired on World of Sport were usually joined in progress. The Wrestling Channel was sent the master tapes from ITV so when you're watching that footage you're generally seeing a longer version of the match than would have aired on TV. A lot of that footage begins with the MC introductions before Walton even starts talking. The reason the bouts went long at the tapings (and in the halls) is because there were only half a dozen or less matches on each show so they had to fill out the cards. * Myself and others rather lazily refer to all of the wrestling on ITV as Joint Promotions when it fact most of the television was from Dale Martin. If you're really interested you can usually see the name of the promoter on the turnbuckle. The reason for the business model Parv is talking about is because you not only had the Joint Promotions group but a bunch of independent promoters as well. Joint Promotions ran multiple shows in multiple towns on the same day and you also had a bunch of other promotions crammed into the same territory so to speak. * It's not that difficult to follow the different weight classes. Wrestlers moved up and down the classes but Walton was always on hand to explain. Each division basically consisted of a World, European and British champion although some of the World and European titles weren't defended in Britain. The World champion was obviously positioned as the top wrestler in their weight class with the European and British champions being the next tier down. The titles were important particularly in getting workers over in the magazines and the programs (which were a huge part of the business), but you can't really follow the title picture by watching random matches on YouTube. What would usually happen is that there would be a series of three matches where the challenger would win the first match, have a rematch where if they won they earned a title shot and then a third match where they got their shot at the belt. Sometimes these matches aired on television, sometimes they didn't. * The matches didn't always have rounds. Often they would have no rounds time limit bouts. One fall bouts were also common. Tag matches always had a time limit. * There were numerous heels. Heel vs. face matches is one of the most common staples of WoS. It wasn't all "another pure contest for the grapple fans" fare. A card would be made up of all sorts of bouts. There are ref bumps, weapon use, blood, angles, guys coming to ringside and distracting a rival and just about any other pro-wrestling trope you can think of. Not as much as in US wrestling because that was heathen all-in wrestling, but the halls had gimmick matches all the time such as chain matches etc. There wasn't a huge amount of continuity to the TV as it was mostly a taped houseshow, but there were ongoing storylines, feuds and rivalries and the TV built to the money matches.

I'll have to check that out later. One of my favourite unheralded guys, Johnny South, against Chris Adams' running partner Ringo Rigby; The indestructible Skull Murphy, one of the better bruisers in the industry during the 1980s:

There's something to be said for the fact that he's probably not as good a worker as people think technically speaking, but I don't really see why anyone would care otherwise. Fans only care about the output not the input.

RINGS basically couldn't draw after Maeda retired so they tried going a different route. Unfortunately, Tamura just wasn't a draw. They brought in a lot of quality foreign fighters but PRIDE snapped them up. They lost their TV deal with WOWOW and that was it.

Casas and Ultimo wrestled each other in a trios match on the 19th -- http://www.thecubsfan.com/cmll/tvshow/cmll/1993.php

I love Angle. I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure or I legitimately think he's good, but I dig him a lot. He's a machine and his intensity is off the charts. There's no way I can dislike an excessively fired up jock. I do wonder if my love for him goes back to the countless hours I spent playing RAW vs. Smackdown story mode. I remember really liking the Benoit/Angle Rumble match as a result.

That's a very good answer, but to me it comes across better on paper than it does in the matches. There's not really that many extended sequences where they focus on the psychology you're detailing. It's mostly one pair squaring off another another. Hamada's work is good, but quite a few of the guys are better. Of course you could probably say the same about his UWA work too, but he was lightning quick in those days.

FACE VS FACE CLASHES Cena vs Lashley - Great American Bash 2007 This was a good match. I liked this a lot. Lashley's selling left a bit to be desired, but his takedowns were rad and I liked a lot of his other offence. Cena's comeback attempts sucked as usual, but his counters were excellent. The FU off the top rope to end it was shitty looking and JR's commentary was like an old dog that needs to be taken out back, but those were minor quibbles. I like Cena a lot more in straight up wrestling bouts. *** 1/2

Is it just me or is Hamada's contribution to those Michinoku Pro tags wildly overstated? They could have replaced him with someone else and the matches would have been just as good. Even his best performance in the 12/16 tag is overshadowed by Yakushiji. I prefer his UWA trios work.