ohtani's jacket

Breaks and Collins had one blockbuster match and the rest were average to middling. Breaks was generally good at working with the teenagers. He has an impressive trilogy of matches with Young David (Davey Boy Smith) and the aforementioned Collins match. His match with Dynamite Kid is a short one fall catchweight bout and nothing special, but as for Collins I'm not really interested in watching him against anyone else for the rest of the television run, so for me there series was a definite carry job from Breaks. It was pretty much the last thing he did of note on ITV. Aside from their one great match, it just doesn't really compare with the best of Jim Breaks, that's all. But if you liked it then that's promising.

I think it was just Dave's way of highlighting that Taue wasn't as big a star as the other three or the New Japan guys, which he wasn't. I don't think anything pertaining to the retirement ceremony itself will play a factor in Japanese voters' decisions.

Somebody asked me recently if Sangre Chicana belongs in the HOF. Is there a reason why he's never been on the ballot?

At the risk of getting upset with Parv again about jazz, I think it's silly to force yourself to be that objective that you try to consider or represent styles you don't even like. I'm all for people broadening their horizons but there are limits. Let the fans of that particular style or worker push their case.

He's been around since '97, but he became Pequeño Damián 666 in 2005. His best singles opponent was Bam Bam, IMO.

I guess Caras is a stronger candidate than Murdoch based on the record gates he drew, though I'm not sure why a higher degree of research should go into Murdoch than it's seemingly necessary for Casas or the Misioneros, but Hamada? Murdoch seems like a bigger deal than Gran Hamada ever was.

I'd sooner vote for Demus 3:16 than any of these guys if we're being honest. The IWRG workers are all cool guys, but IWRG footage comes and goes too much for them to have a proper candidacy and they're not top 20-30 luchadores all time. With the CMLL guys, I could see people voting for some of those names. I wouldn't, but I don't think it's unreasonable.

I've seen so many disappointing Blue Panther matches that I sometimes wonder if he's overrated or if my expectations for him are simply too high. I don't think he's a great singles match worker, which would be my big knock on him.

Myers and Grey had a whole series of matches. I recommend checking out their other 70s bouts as well as their 3/5/84 and 3/20/85 bouts. It always impressed me how they had one of the bouts of the decade in the 70s and again in the 80s.

1) It's not something I've noticed to any great degree. There are dozens of throwaway Arena Coliseo matches where you wish he would have taken center stage, but this match was a little different because Cruz' match was the following week and his brother's match the week after. The post match was dominated by Casas and Felino on the mic. I really think they should have separated the two upcoming matches into two separate trios matches. 2) I had to look up receptacle and still don't get what you mean. Are you talking about Plato or something? 3) I think that's a fair summation. There is a flipside at times where matches are better than they should be because of the formulaic trios structures. For example, Super Muneco should drag that AAA trios down, but he actually adds to it.

One of the long time WoS wrestlers as both a heel and face, strongman Alan Dennison. I personally think he's a smart arse, but he was a perennial presence on British screens up until his sudden and untimely death. Another favourite of mine, the hard working Tom Tyrone. Not a flashy wrestler by any means but put him in the ring against a Terry Rudge or Pat Roach and the sparks would fly. This is a great bout that introduced a fair few people to Rudge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxIvWPPcUGc

Rather annoyingly, I have a clip of the finish to a match where he upsets the heavier Albert "Rocky" Wall, who I think was the reigning British and European heavyweight champion at the time. That's the sort of hot match that would tell us more about Marino, but we don't have it. One of the better wrestlers to debut in the 80s, the Scottish all-action star Chic Cullen in an excellent title match against Finlay's buddy Rocky Moran: Canadian wrestler Mighty John Quinn, who had one of the best runs of any foreign wrestler in British rings. His matches weren't the greatest, but he got plenty of heat for his anti-British shtick.

1) I thought it was odd, but I didn't want to speculate on the reason. I just think it was poor booking to have Casas as the third guy on his team when it's clear that a guy with his personality is going to command center stage. Cruz should have been more assertive as there are plenty of other rudos that never took a back seat to anyone, but I suppose you could criticise Casas for not toning down his involvement in the match. 2) CMLL needs to be booked well if it wants to make any money. The hot periods have generally coincided with strong feuds and better booking. 3) The matches where the story is there account for less than 5% of the total matches. I agree about the potential, but if it never lives up to the potential that means that the people involved aren't very good at it, which in turn means that in general it's not very well done. Do you get my point?

If there was ever a guy who deserved a complete and accurate it's Carl Greco.

I haven't decided which Euro wrestlers I'm voting for, but the number of matches we have on tape will be a factor as it has been for the lucha candidates thus far. I probably won't vote for a guy who only has a half dozen matches on tape. The only locks so far are Breaks and Grey. Grey has a better output than Tito and Breaks was a better performer, so I don't have any qualms over that. Satanico has better output and is a better performer to boot so I'm even less bothered about that. To answer your question, if those years represent Tito's peak, then no, I don't think they're enough for him to be a lock for my list. My comment was really suggesting that he didn't have enough good matches during his peak to compete against a stacked field. Obviously, if people think he had all-time great feuds against both Valentine and Savage they're probably going to need less convincing, but as much as I liked those feuds, I'd probably take one match from each above the others and therefore when I run through the matches he had in my head those feuds' representation is probably smaller than in other people's minds. I could easily be swayed if I find a handful of Tito matches I've never seen before and like (matches like the Bass one, for example.) I should also point out that among US guys there are only a few who are locks and a large number of famous workers whom I haven't decided about yet, but that's just my thought process. If I were making a list of the top 10 US guys in the 80s, I'm not sure Tito would make it. I'm not even sure about top 15. If he can't crack that sort of list, I wonder about his chances of making a top 100 that includes workers from all around the world and throughout history.

Matt, I expounded on the problems of lucha booking and storytelling to a greater degree in my latest entry -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-434-vintage-negro-casas-of-the-day-10/

I've always found 70s Cortez a little disappointing. I think he was better in the 80s. People really need to start exploring his stuff though as too many people don't know him from a bar of soap.

Negro Casas/El Felino/Javier Cruz vs. Atlantis/Ultimo Dragon/Ciclon Ramirez, CMLL 6/25/93 This began with Javier Cruz pacing back and forth in the ring cutting a promo in front of an empty arena. He was wearing a black (leather?) trench coat and doing what I took to be his best Bobby De Niro impersonation. At one point a valet appeared and gave him the thumbs up, then she disappeared again... was she real or just a figment of his imagination? It's like Twin Peaks. On paper this should have been a good trios match. We all know how hot trios matches can be in the lead up to a singles match, and this had all the ingredients. You had Cruz as the next challenger for Ultimo's middleweight crown, Felino and Ramirez building towards their mask vs. mask match, and simmering tensions between the Casas brothers. The rudo side wasn't that great, but the technico side was flashy, and everyone involved was at minimum a pretty good worker. The trouble was they couldn't decide whether it was a match about Cruz vs. Ultimo, Felino vs. Ramirez, or the Casas brothers squabbling. The secret to these lead in trios is that you have one match-up that's the central story line and then another match-up or two that serve as subplots, and as with a good screenplay those subplots either contrast or complement the central theme. Since they aired the Cruz vignette beforehand, ideally his title shot should have provided the main thrust to the bout, especially given they were a week out from it. Instead, the Cruz/Dragon issue was swallowed up by the Casas brothers' antics. The reason for this was two-fold: firstly, Cruz was such a passive personality that he was hardly going to stop the Casas brothers from overshadowing him, and secondly, apuesta matches tend to provide more interesting builds than a run-of-the-mill title match. In the case of the former, Casas was such an alpha male that he brought what should have been a third string story thread too far to the fore. In the case of the latter, if the focus was meant to be on Cruz vs. Dragon, they should have worked an up tempo workrate bout and saved the mask ripping and other apuesta motifs for a different bout. From memory there were a couple of neat moments in this, but sticking to my wider point about the narrative structure, there were two common lucha tropes on display here. The first was mask ripping and the second was infighting among rudos. I hate both of them. I really do. After hundreds upon hundreds of lucha matches and years watching the stuff, I detest those spots. They have to be done absolutely brilliantly to sway me otherwise they're just egregious time wasting. They're not done well here and in the case of the infighting, the bout literally stopped to accommodate it. I mentioned to new lucha scribe Matt D the other day that I don't think lucha does 'story' well. Obviously, it would make a difference if I could understand Spanish. That way I wouldn't be struggling to make heads or tails of the Casas vs. Felino soap opera or mysterious valets. But the language barrier doesn't explain away everything. You learn pretty quickly that lucha isn't episodic TV in the way that say Portland was. If you get a singles match with three weeks of good trios you're happy as Larry, but when it comes to angles, especially face turns, the promoters are about as committal as the apuesta challenges thrown out after every brawl. The mask ripping here was uninspired, though it did lead to some comical moments where Casas was tying Felino's mask back together. The squabbling between them was a distraction, to be honest. If it were American wrestling, you'd expect them to turn on each other and build to a hair vs. mask match. And while I don't expect what I'm watching to be Americanised, I don't think we should excuse or overlook bad booking because the wrestling's foreign. Lucha would be much better if there weren't so many loose threads. The booking at times is the epitome of throwing shit against the wall. Watching 1993 CMLL there are so many ways it could have been better. Too many ways, really. You don't feel like you're in safe hands. And it doesn't make sense from a business point of view. Surely, if they'd pulled the trigger on Casas turning face it would have done business. Perhaps those are the frustrations Pena had with Herrera and his faction. In any event, this failed to get me excited for either Cruz/Dragon or Felino/Ramirez, and made me wary of any other 1993 match involving both Negro Casas and Felino. So that's not vintage.

One of the strangest, weirdest, most idiosyncratic gimmicks I've ever seen, Billy Torontos: Ironfist Clive Myers... I much prefer him in the 70s with his cool Jamaican vibe as opposed to his later kung fu inspired shtick, but either way he was a cool cat.

One of my favourites, the very much underrated Robby Baron up against one of my least favourite wrestlers, Snake Pit trained John Naylor: The superbly talented Bobby Ryan, who always reminds me of Buster Keaton for some reason:

The Kamala match/angle was a heck of a beat down and another sick blade job. I'd preferred to have watched it in the context of the entire feud, but it was memorable for what it was.

Jungle Jack vs. Manami Toyota & Esther Moreno 4/29/91 is a good pick at some point.

Moreno was sensational in this and the glue that held it together. She made a real fist at speaking Japanese and I guess that helped with calling spots. I wasn't so sure whether that blade job was appropriate for the match they were working and it was a bit deep, but everything else she did was great and I thought she matched up with Aja tremendously well. Aja was like a fat kid at the pool with that plancha. Total belly-flop. The second rope power bomb to win it was vicious looking. Really fun, high energy bout. The time flew by which was a big positive.

In the 70s, they'd do a lot of showcase matches which usually went four rounds and reminded everybody of what a great wrestler a Mike Marino or Tibor Szakacs was. Marino was in a lot of these matches. I don't remember seeing him in a title match or anything special by TV standards. The finishes were more often than not screwy, which kept me from listing a few. Marino was also in his 50s at this point so it's difficult to gauge how good he was relative to his prime. He had the book at some point as well, and I assume he was booking himself in showcase catchweight contests while pushing other guys. Here are the bouts I wrote about favourably: Mike Marino vs. Wayne Bridges (7/31/75) Mike Marino vs. Caswell Martin (3/14/74) Mike Marino vs. Lee Bronson (4/21/76) Mike Marino vs. John Kowalski (11/20/74) Mike Marino vs. Bruno Elrington (12/18/75) Mike Marino vs. Roy St. Clair (2/13/75) Mike Marino vs. Dave Bond (3/23/77) Mostly positive: Mike Marino vs. Steve Logan (10/10/74) Mike Marino vs. Terry Rudge (1/22/77) Mike Marino vs. Pat Roach (5/21/75) Mike Marino vs. John Elijah (10/8/75) So so: Mike Marino vs. Man Mountain Moran (9/11/75) Hated it: Mike Marino vs. Amet Chong (12/11/74)

Shoot style belongs to a particular time and place in Japan. It would have never gotten over in the UK. Crowds would it on their hands for technical matches and pop huge for Crabtree telling Mal Kirk that Daddy will fight him anytime, any place, anywhere.