ohtani's jacket

The Package and it's not even close. Sting's gimmick sucked.

Aceman, now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time.

Okay, but I'm not sure you get that from watching an match even one in English. You've got to read, watch and learn. But perhaps we can provide a supplement for the yearbooks. An explanation of 1990 would be handy since most of the build is cut from the yearbook.

Kung Fu turned on Atlantis during the same match that Satanico turned on Dandy. It happened on the 9/30/90 television show. It's not on the yearbook or Will's El Dandy comp for that matter. Presumably, there were a couple of trios after that where Kung Fu did nasty things to Altantis. He probably ripped or pulled off his mask at some point.

There isn't the same emphasis on mic work and promos in lucha that there is in US wrestling and when they do run angles they're often quite confusing. All you need to know is that these guys are the rudos, these guys are the technicos, these two are being programmed with each other and they're going to have either a title match or a wager match. It's not that different from the Memphis you enjoy; just substitute a loser leaves town match for a hair or mask match and you'll find that they might as well have been from the same mother. Once you're familiar with how a rudo or a technico generally behave, you'll find that you don't need a lot of backstory because the importance of the wager match is self-evident. After a while, you should be able to watch a hair match without any of the build and get it.

The first Lucha match I ever saw was a cibernetico. That is the absolute worst possible way to try and start watching Lucha and kept me from going back for years. I can't even imagine. I've been watching lucha for a few years now, but I've never seen a Cibernetico match. Yet I'm still mildly concerned about being able to make sense of what's happening when I see it. They're not terribly difficult to understand. The two famous ones from 1997 are really enjoyable. They're just big, multi-man elimination tags.

If Flair's true colours are wanting to prove he's the better man then I think it only applies to the times when he was a face. As a heel, winning proved he was the better man and Flair and his group would do anything to keep the belt. Deep into a match, you were supposed to believe that all his talk was false bravado and that he was afraid of being shown up for what he truly was.

The Big Boss Man vs. The Mountie, Green Bay 5/7/91, Montreal 8/16/91, SummerSlam '91 8/26/91 Since these guys were both former law enforcement officers, I guess that makes The Mountie the Boss Man's arch enemy, right? Macho Man gives me the hard sell on the manager cam in the first match. I kind of like the manager cam as a novelty. Gives you an idea of how much yapping the managers do during the match. The Montreal match is a decent houseshow match. They do some fairly standard houseshow stuff to pop the crowd. It's in Canada so Rougeau is in civvies rather than the Mountie uniform. The heat for this match is pretty incredible even if the work is unspectacular. The SummerSlam match is disappointing. Boss Man cut the most awesome promo on Prime Time after The Mountie and Jimmy Hart jumped him, but the match fails to deliver on that intensity. Instead of having a proper brawl, they deliver a pretty pedestrian Coliseum Video style match. I was hoping for more from this feud.

Bruiser Brody/Stan Hansen vs. Harley Race/Dick Slater, AJPW 12/2/82 This could've been so much better, but I suppose that's like saying the Brody/Hansen team should've been a whole lot better. I mainly watched this to imagine how good a Race/Hansen match might be, but it was hard to tell from the limited exchanges they had. Brody and Race no-selling each other's body slams sucked. All Japan brawls seem to suck in general. I'm starting to think that I don't like watching Harley in Japan.

Hart Foundation vs. Twin Towers, Duluth, MN 5/17/89 This was your typical BS Hart Foundation match. Bret played face in peril practically the entire match, which I tried telling his fans he liked to do but they wouldn't listen. Anyway, he played FIP, but there as no double teaming from the Twin Towers, no cutting Bret off from his corner, no instances of Anvil distracting the referee or any sort of hope spot before the tag; nothing that you generally associate with FIP tag wrestling, even the WWF version of it. The finish was a count out and Bret made it count by doing his pescado. The Hart Foundation then roughed Slick up a bit and handcuffed him to the ropes. In a brilliant bit of psychology, Bret dropped the keys to the cuffs down his trunks. It's that kind of micro detail that made him such a master storyteller. Twin Tower vs. Demolition, Boston 4/22/89 This was really good. Demolition were over like mofos in Boston. Axe played the FIP in this and it was as close to proper FIP wrestling as you generally get in the WWF. They ran through all the staples of double teaming and ref distraction and cut Axe off from his corner. The work itself was pretty good. If you don't like Demolition's clubbing offence you might not feel like coming along for the ride, but I honestly thought this went beyond the blueprint of "hey, these guys are using good structure" into the realm of actually being a good match. It falls apart a wee bit towards the end, but not enough to curb my enthusiasm.

Loss - I picked them because it's not entirely clear when their prime is. Or at any rate, there are possible debates for each one. Booker T I picked for exactly that reason, when is his prime? Hogan I think therere's a real debate between his AWA run and 84-6 WWF. Similar situations for the others. Surely the debate will be reserved for Bart Gunn.

Harley Race vs. Kerry Von Erich, WCCW 6/4/82 This was really cool. Race and Von Erich worked a headlock exactly the way I think a headlock should be worked and I loved how KVE countered the standing diving headbutt with the claw. Race's counter of throwing Von Erich over the top rope was also awesome and he was laying in the shots here, which is exactly the kind of Harley Race I like. Love the headbutt, love the knee drop. Could've done with a few more minutes to really be a classic, but the brawling was good and both guys put in that extra bit of effort to transition back onto offence with a shot to the gut or something similar, putting over the fight. I'm loving early 80s Race.

Big Boss Man vs. Dusty Rhodes, Fresno, CA 8/9/89 This was rubbish. About the same length and the same amount of action as a squash. It was one of those matches where the feed the manager to the face to avoid having too much interaction between singles wrestlers. In this case, Dusty handcuffed himself to Slick and paraded him backstage while Boss Man for some unknown reason remained in the ring arguing with the ref. Hard to compare this to the Dusty/Dibiase matches since those were houseshow matches and this was a crap bit of TV, but folks weren't kidding about Boss Man trimming down for his face push. He really was heavy at this time.

Boss Man vs. Rick Martel, MSG 2/23/92 and Hershey, PA 9/1/92 These weren't very good. Both guys were capable of better, but Martel was coasting on schtick at this point. Schtick that was some of the weakest in the company. His selling was generally good, in fact I thought he made Boss Man's punches look better than anybody has so far, but he had nothing on offence. A couple of decent flurries from Boss Man and some reasonably inventive finishes as far as night stick vs. the atomizer goes, but pretty blah otherwise.

Gotta echo the love for Regal/Taylor. Some of Taylor's stuff was awkward but that was almost like watching a WCW version of a World of Sport match.

Went back and listened to part 2 after watching Flair/Race and pretty much agreed with everything you guys said. I don't think Harley was quite as bad as was made out in terms of emotion and his robe is cool.

Boss Man vs. Akeem, Saturday Night's Main Event 4/23/90 This was better than their Wrestlemania match, but instead of getting a cool "WWF is where the big boys play" bout there's a Dibiase and Virgil run-in in short order. This was more of a Boss Man/Dibiase feud than having anything to do with Slick and Akeem so we don't get the Twin Towers blood feud. For as good as WWF was at turning people, they didn't handle the tag team break-ups with the same aplomb.

Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, Starrcade '83 11/24/83 Watched the press conference before this where they announced that Jim Crockett promotions had won the bid to hold the return title match between Ric Flair and Harley Race. Shabby, shabby producton values, especially when they pretend they're crossing live for satellite reactions from Ric Flair and Harley Race. Harley Race is supposed to be in Kansas but is actually in Fort Worth, Texas. He gives a typically grim promo about Crockett shelling out more money then anyone in the history of professional wrestling to ensure that Flair gets a match in his own backyard and says he's just paid for the end of Ric Flair's wrestling career. Harley being Harley he stumbles over his words a bit. His promos always had a clear message but his delivery wasn't the greatest. Flair's babyface promo is lame and Flair going this match "A Flair for the Gold" made me cringe the same way I gringe when a character in a movie says the title of the film. Anyway, on to the match.... It's not a match I've ever paid any attention to as it doesn't have the greatest rep. This was the first time for me to really sit down and watch it. I thought it was a decent Race/Flair match, but even without the ref bullshit it would've fallen flat. Something about it isn't special enough for the setting or the build. If it were just a regular houseshow match that we have on tape I'd probably be a lot more positive about it, but to me even the post-match celebration lacked something. Only the intros were exciting, I thought. I really love Race's robe from this era. Match is a bit too divided between wrestling and brawling as well, but a lot of that was Kiniski's fault as he kept cutting off the brawling spots in the first half of the match. I assume that was planned. I don't remember the inside info on this. Not a bad match, but not the match of the century it was hyped as and not a home run as far as promoting a supershow is concerned.

Harley Race vs. Kevin Von Erich, WCCW 6/17/83 Another excellent match. I thought the structure of Harley bumping and selling for the challenger worked well here and that the armwork was a strong reprisal. I'm not sure he did enough to warrant the retaliation he received from David Von Erich, since he pretty much had his brother beat cleanly, but I guess this was the Von Erich's territory and there was a family hatred for Race so they could do as they pleased. The booking philosophy of having the World's Heavyweight champion beaten to a pulp and laid out won't sit well with people who buy into the whole Japanese "strongest fighter" video-game style ace mentality, but I can live with endings like these if they tack on a decent post-match and that's what we got here. Harley Race vs. Abdullah the Butcher, AJPW 5/13/76 Not much of a match, but something of a spectacle I guess. Harley banging his own head into a steel chair with a crazed look in his eye was something I hadn't seen before.

Boss Man turns face, 1/2/90 Fun segment. Boss Man's motivation for turning face was questionable but it was fun seeing Slick and Dibiase ham it up. Boss Man did a great job of getting across his anger. I loved how he kept spitting in Dibiase's face while serving out his righteous indignation. I also chuckled when he called him "fat face," an insult which is patently true. The shot of the heels & Brother Love crying "nooo!" when Boss Man returned to the ring was a classic and Jake was AWESOME at conveying his distrust in the Boss Man. And I loved the bump Slick took on Boss Man's way back. That was such a nice touch, as Boss Man shoving Slick to the deck severed their relationship completely. Great stuff. Boss Man vs. Bobby Heenan, 11/20/90 and ball & chain match 1/8/91 Bobby was gold here, pleading for the match to be called off in both cases. The funniest parts where when Mike McGuirk announced his weight and he ripped the mic off her and when he said he'd sent the Boss Man's mother a Hulk Hogan wrestling buddy. Amusing angle considering Boss Man drove Big Show's daddy down the highway at high speeeed. He did seem to brutalise Heenan a bit too much for my liking but I guess his face character kind of walked the line. Grabbing Hebner by the scruff of the neck after chasing off the Heenan family then letting him go when Hebner gestured he only wanted to raise Boss Man's arm was a nice touch. I don't know how over Boss Man was at the time as these clips always sound like there's been crowd noise added, but this was a memorable run.

If you were thinking mainly of Race doesn't that mean it was Race that sucked at the touring champ style?

Totally agree. The people's elbow from a spine buster was a weird finish and Punk looked stupid lying there with his eyes shut.

Great top five. One of my favourite Dandy performances from that year is the 5/90 tag tournament where he's partnered with Angel Azteca. The job he does bumping for Super Muneco is proof that he was God that year. I also loved the Fujiwara/Nakano match which I don't think made the set. Takada had some really bad stuff that didn't make the set, but I'm guessing you like Takada.

S'alright. The up and comers were Suzuki and Funaki. Suzuki had made his debut in '88 and Funaki had debut in '85 at the age of 15. Nakano was in his mid-20s and had been wrestling for about six years in 1990 and never made it past the lower card. It helps to see what Funaki did to Yamazaki, Fujiwara and Takada before this match to realise how epic a showdown it was. This was the Misawa/Jumbo of shoot style.

Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, 3/8/84 I guess this was more of an angle than a match, but it was great stuff. I almost didn't watch it because I thought "oh, this is the one with Missing Link," but after watching Harley take all those headbutts and how well he sold the beating I was pretty hooked. The match itself turns into a war and we get a good look at the headbutt as weapon. Finally, I felt like I was watching the real Harley Race. To me he looks like an ex-navy guy who should be reliving bar fights he had in Saigon or the Philippines every time he steps in the ring. Flair was great in this too and it feels like he might be Race's best match-up. The finish sees Missing Link interfere again, but as an angle it made sense for him to screw Race so I was okay with it. I liked how they had the credits foll over Race kicking ass and Flair doing an awesome turnbuckle flip with the crimson mask. Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, 8/31/83 Great TV title match. Again I was struck by the awesomeness of the headbutt. The cut-off spot that Harley does in this match with his headbutt is phenomenal. Another thing that impressed me was Flair's vertical suplex. Jerry mentioned recently that Flair had some of the best execution ever and I was a bit skeptical because Flair's not a guy I think of when I think great execution, but the vertical suplex he does on Race in this match is amazing for the length he holds him up there. It's a bout with lots of little touches like that. The ending was kind of a predictabe way to end something like this that they were throwing out on TV, but Harley laughing and twisting his moustache like a silent film villain while Flair was laid out was a satisfying way to end the show and this really made me want to watch the Starrcade match. Harley Race vs. King Kong Bundy, WCCW 8/15/82 I've never really watched any of Bundy's matches before. Was he always this good pre-WWF? Because he seemed pretty damn good to me. This was another great match from post-70s Race, which made me wonder whether this is the period of Harley's I like most. This wasn't quite as much of a brawl as the Flair matches, but compelling nonetheless. The Bundy control segments where a lot better to me than Baba's control segments and Race sold and paced the match well. The only trouble was the ending. They worked this so well that a title switch felt like a real possibility -- it wasn't because it had been pre-announced that one of the Von Erichs was getting the next title shot -- but it seemed like the title switch was on, so they had to end it with a screwy finish. Screwy finishes worked in the first two matches I watched but this one was a bit of a disappointment. Still, a cool run of Harley matches.