ohtani's jacket

First off, thanks to Black Terry Jr for shooting these matches and making them available. Terry is selling his videos here from now on -- http://tvluchadelpasado.wordpress.com/ Solar vs. Navarro is still the best mat wrestling on the planet as evidenced by their 8/17 match. The excitement of seeing this match crop up isn't the same as when we only got to see it once a year (or not at all), but that's the funny thing: as lucha fans, we're always wishing we could see more -- more from a worker, more from a specific match-up, more TV from the 80s, most of which we'll never see. It's something you have to come to terms with if you become a serious lucha fan otherwise you'll be sorely disappointed. Yet when we get more than we bargained for, such as with Solar and Navarro, we tend to get all analytical and go into critique mode. I've done it many times in the past and am by far the worst offender, but if you'd told me five years ago that we'd get to see this match-up on a regular basis and people would get fed up with it, I'd have told you they were looking a gift horse in the mouth. That's not to say that this match-up is perfect. Despite the fact that they're able to organise the events in the match into a reasonable narrative structure and that there are clear stretches of one worker in control and the other selling well, they don't make much of an effort to create the same sort of drama as Casas/Panther or the Santo tag. If you were to label their bouts as exhibition matches you wouldn't be too far off the mark. I tend to prefer their work in trios because of the speed they work at, and I'm still hoping that one day (just one day) we'll see a Black Terry vs. Navarro match in full, but... this is still the best mat wrestling on the planet. Casas and Panther are nowhere near as quick with their holds. Virus and Valiente are slicker, but don't have the same submission knowledge. Navarro still looks like the best worker in Mexico to me and I don't think Solar gets enough credit as a worker, a mat wrestler or for being one of the three or four best masked technico workers in modern, taped, lucha libre history. The familiarity that people have with Santo or Atlantis should be extended to Solar, in my opinion. The lifeblood of lucha is its masked technicos and few have been better for longer than Solar I. The 4/9 Gran Apache/Trauma I/Mari Apache vs. Negro Navarro/Trauma II/Fabi Apache trios was a blast. One of the things I love about lucha the most is that it can be so off the cuff and fun. This was only a single fall, but it was a great ensemble piece. Loved the quick exchanges between Gran Apache and Trauma II, thought the father and son stuff was really good without being overbearing and that Fabi and Mari's stuff was a nice change up. To my mind, rhythm is the most important thing when watching wrestling. If you can't get into the rhythm of what the workers are trying to do or the rhythm of a particular style, you're going to struggle. You often hear people say that a lucha fall was rushed because it wasn't long enough or shorter than the falls surrounding it, but I sometimes wonder if those people haven't gotten into the rhythm of lucha libre yet. This match had rhythm. The exchanges built on top of each other and it was worked at a fun pace. The ending was the kind of mano-a-mano showdown that I love in IWRG matches and I came out of the whole thing as satisfied as I would've been had it been three falls. Gran Apache is so underrated. I always forget him when it comes to judging the best workers in Mexico. If you asked me tomorrow who the ten best workers in Mexico are, he'd probably slip my mind. I don't even know how active he is these days, but man is he good. Those opening exchanges I mentioned were so much snappier than the usual IWRG matwork and like the match in general made a nice change from the norm. I went into the 12/20 Fuerza Guerrera vs. Black Terry match with low expectations as I'd read it wasn't the type of match they could have had if they'd put their minds to it and that it was basically an angle to further the hostilities between their two wrestling schools, but it was Fuerza and Terry in a singles match. It wasn't a Black Terry special like some of the carry jobs he's done in the past, but there was plenty to like from the point of view of it being two of the biggest legends of my time taking off the gloves. Would've been nice to see them settle it like men, but the interference was what it was. Can't say I blame them for trying to give the rub to their students. Another match I really enjoyed was the 4/28 Black Terry/Negro Navarro vs. Solar I/Super Astro maestros tag. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't watched a maestros tag for a while and was watching with fresher eyes, but this seemed to have a better flow to it than the last round of maestro tags I watched. The Navarro/Solar exchanges were excellent without being overbearing, they changed dance partners more often and the match had more of a three part rhythm than usual. I'd read all the comments about Super Astro's decline and while he does have trouble doing his signature spots these days, the fact that I'd braced myself for it made it less jarring than I expected. He's the guy I'd most like to see everyone in the lucha world wrestle and for that reason takes my top spot. This was all pretty fun stuff, and again, thanks to Black Terry Jr for making it possible.

Watched an old Robert Mitchum movie tonight where he gave the standard Robert Mitchum performance. Reminded me that nobody worked the same match night after night more than old-school Hollywood actors. There were exceptions like Lon Chaney, Sr. and Paul Muni, but by large I think the old adage about stars and actors doesn't even really apply to the actors in the studio days. May have been a result of the star factory, but even guys like Kirk Douglas who tried their damnedest wound up getting pigeonholed. Casting probably had a lot to do with it.

I still don't get why albums are the metric. The Zombies' singles weren't commercially successful which denied them the opportunity to record LPs. Does that mean their singles don't rub shoulders with the Beatles or the Beach Boys? But if we're talking albums, a quick look at All Music Guide reveals: Bob Dylan -- 9 five star albums Miles Davis -- 18 five star albums Now there, that was no contest.

What about Pillman? I would also consider Tully.

Is it blowing your horn to say you are a big geek/nerd/whatever of something? I don't know. There's always someone who knows more, for sure. I like The Kinks too. If you're using it as a defence for making contentious statements, I think it is. I'm sure you didn't mean much by it, but there's plenty of people here at this site who are heavily into movies and music. I don't think anywhere here is special in that regard. They won't say so, but there's a few people who posted in this thread who really know their stuff. Don't know that any of us really compare with Dylan, though. Not unless there's someone else who can read a book, watch a movie, do a podcast and write a review at the same time. And he even finds time to watch some wrestling.

Is that really true? WWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - April 24, 1989 (16,000) Greg Valentine (w/ Jimmy Hart) vs. Blue Blazer Hillbilly Jim vs. Honkytonk Man Dino Bravo vs. Hercules Paul Roma vs. Boris Zhukov Ted Dibiase vs. Jake Roberts Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect Bushwhackers vs. The Brain Busters Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage Perfect and Bret Hart had a thing going on at the time. Roberts and Dibiase had a thing going on at the time. The Bushwhackers gimmick was over. The undercard is forgettable but you know what you're getting with the gimmicks. Weakest guy on the card is Roma in terms of gimmick and presentation. Maybe I'm blinkered by my memory of this era as a kid where we devoured wrestling magazines and knew everything about everyone. The cards may have been top heavy, but most guys had a program. That's how I remember following wrestling back then -- program to program, who was feuding with whom.

What do you mean you're one of the biggest fans going? One of the biggest fans on this board? One of the biggest fans born in Wales? I don't get it. I'm sure there are several of us here with large hip-hop collections. Most hip hop acts make one great album, usually their debut album, then struggle to replicate its success thereafter. Some go on a three or four album tear like Boogie Down Productions, EPMD, Kool G Rap and DJ Polo, Big Daddy Kane, Ice Cube, Gang Starr, Scarface, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and whoever else I'm forgetting, but why are albums the metric? Bob Dylan can't sing very well and isn't an amazing guitar player. What you're left with is his songwriting. Is it not possible that there's an MC with better flow than Dylan's singing and (shock horror) better lyrics? I happen to think there's a lot of hip hop beat that are far more killer than freewheelin' Bob Dylan, that's for sure. You never said that Dylan was your choice for the GOAT. You said it was an open and shut case. I think it's great that after discovering everything there is to know about everything you came to the conclusion that nobody can touch Dylan. You say you don't want to talk about Dylan but you keep making the Beatles/Dylan analogies. I also think you're shitting on jazz. Whether you like jazz or not there are at least twelve major jazz artists who are comparable to Bob Dylan in terms of importance and output. I don't own a single Beatles album or Dylan album. I'd rather listen to the Kinks than the Beatles and I'd rather listen to Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, David Allen Coe and other country artists than Dylan, but GOAT doesn't mean shit if you exclude styles you don't like. I loved your film nerdery comment too. If there's one thing I've learnt it's that there's always someone who knows more about something than you do. Let's not blow our own horns too much.

Personally, I don't find the GOAT argument to be very satisfying. I think the discussion and debate can sometimes be worthwhile and the recent podcast was awesome, but I usually find the outcomes about as exciting as the results of a movie poll. I like Terry Funk. If I find a Terry Funk match I haven't seen before, I'm happy as Larry, but the argument for Funk as GOAT doesn't help me much. It doesn't help me discover who the best British wrestlers were, what the overlooked lucha is or whether a match is better or worse than it looks on paper. If I like Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue album I can instantly find other hardbop or guitar recommendations. If I enjoy the noir D.O.A I can instantly find other noir recommendations by year, decade or all-time. I think wrestling is sorely lacking in this regard despite people's best efforts to work on databases. I don't know that I'd trust myself to take part in a GOAT poll these days because I've barely seen any Buddy Rose or Crusher Blackwell. I've never seen a High Flyers match, only seen a minimum of Lawler, barely watched any MidSouth, World Class, Georgia or other territories and I kind of think my favourite styles are overlooked too. In 2006 I pushed all my favourites. In 2013 I don't really feel qualified. However, I would set my own personal bar as the best at what I like. I wouldn't limit it to a fixed number, the more the merrier, but I would make it an exclusive club. Satanico would be there, Fujiwara too. McManus, Breaks at his best, Casas at his, Ozaki at hers. Anybody who's good enough to put a plural in Greatest of All-Time.

The idea that Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Louie Armstrong, John Coltrane, Sam Cooke and a host of other artists can't compete with Dylan is bollocks. If other genres could produce a Dylan? Dylan wouldn't have existed without other genres. To argue that popular music begins and ends with Dylan and the Beatles is like arguing that wrestling begins and ends with Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.

Dylan and the Beatles... That's ridiculous. That's like claiming that there's never been a better pair of actors than De Niro and Pacino. If you wanted to take this to its obvious extremes, Dylan doesn't have anywhere near the record sales of other artists. Elvis Presley and other 100 million sellers would have to be in the discussion.

Many of them do, but a match can be technically good and not tell a story. After all, the work is that it's an athletic contest not a piece of fiction.

I kind of thought Jerry was referring to Plato's critism of relativism as being self-defeating.

Wrestling matches rare tell complete and meaningful stories. They rarely tell stories at all. I think people get confused between narrative and story when trying to describe storytelling in wrestling, but anyway, a match should at least have a beginning, middle and an end. The Ted Dibiase matches I watched recently almost universally had a poor middle. They could have tightened up the middle, done better moves and sold more, but ultimately the matches felt too short. The beginning and the end are the easiest parts of a story to write and the middle is always the hardest. So too with wrestling, I think, but skipping or truncating the middle as so many Dibiase matches did is the worst approach. I think having the rounds system in Europe and the two-out-of-three falls system in Mexico is a big advantage when working match structure because there's naturally a middle.

Did Memphis fans ever get sick of Lawler? Did Japanese crowds tire of Funk? For guys who have reneged on their retirements, Funk is far less annoying than Flair.

Why buy a book that reads like a series of message board posts and bad news site reviews?

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/have-no-truck-with.html I can't wait to use this today. "I hold no truck with you sir."

Bock is creating excitement because he's new, just like the other 70s guys did when the All Japan Classics footage first began circulating. There was a time when people were excited to see Harley title matches from the 70s. After a while, people began picking holes in them as they do with most pimped workers. I'm not sure if there will be a backlash against Bock, perhaps there's not enough people re-evaluating him for it to matter, but any time a worker is pimped there's always people who will resist. Workers get pimped as the best ever, the excitement and interest in them reaches a peak then dies off as people move onto other things. I'm not trying to make Harley out as some kind of major deal because I don't think he was a big discovery, but I do think Harley is waiting to rebound. He'll be back.

If he was one of the best during his era then he's at least a contender for the GOAT, which is more meaningful in my eyes than finding a winner. In fact, I'm more interested in whether a guy like Race was the GOAT up until that point rather than "all-time." And you can talk anybody up or down in terms of all-time calibre. I could talk Jumbo down as a talker or list 25 workers that were better. We could all start praising the fuck out of Harley today and tomorrow he'd be an instant candidate. A year ago nobody was talking about Bock like they are now, so I find that a bit arbitrary. Anyway, I should probably start a Harley thread instead of derailing Dylan's project.

I would say that first of all you'd have to work out whether he was one of the very best from his era, because I think a lot of the GOAT arguments ignore more than they consider. Don't even get me started on best in the world claims. If someone watched all of the available footage from everywhere in the 70s (and this should be possible in the future when the 70s yearbooks are released) and then came away with the conclusion that Harley wasn't top tier I could understand that, but if they think he wasn't one of the best simply because somebody had a better match with Baba or Jumbo I think that's a bit weak. I don't think he was that bad on the mic during his run as champ and he sure drew in New Zealand. Maybe I'm getting a bit defensive because the last Harley I watched was the Hogan feud which is excellent.

Were you as high on The Destroyer as the rest of us when his Classics stuff started circulating? What about Harley? On the podcast you mentioned Mysterio Jr. How far off the top tier is he?

Very true. I actually thought about starting a thread for the time frame in question where I would try and formulate a top twenty-five but I got lazy. Breaks of course is someone who would do very well for me during that period. I'd like to see that top 25. There probably isn't enough footage from the era for anyone to compete with the status that Funk, Flair and Lawler have, but there were at least 50 good-to-great workers in Europe at the time which adds depth to the argument.

I think the big issue is the clipping. If New Japan classics had covered the Liger, Samurai & Co. vs. Kanemoto, Ohtani & Co. era in full I think it would have been re-evaluated by now. I think a lot of the repeat match-ups aren't as good as the peak year for juniors ('96), but the division appeared to be strong through to the end of '98. Wagner's run is really underrated, IMO. Arguably, the best a luchador has adapted to Japan. In fact, he looked like he belonged in Japan more than he did in Mexico.

I guess you can't be. I just thought it was weird because it wasn't as though he hit Virgil off the apron or did the spot where the face bangs Dibiase and Virgil's heads together. And it wasn't after the bell either. Bossman pulled him into the ring and did this extended mini-sequence with him during the stretch run. It was a drop in the bucket really.

Ted Dibiase vs. The Big Bossman, MSG 4/30/90 This was a decent enough match. It was a rare match in Dibiase's ouevre in that it saw him going after an injured body part (in this case the ribs.) The payoff to Dibiase working the ribs was that Bossman ended up beating the shit out of Virgil (more than I can ever remember someone beating up a manager without being DQ'ed), making it to the ropes before submitting to the Million Dollar Dream and surprising Dibiase with a small package. Not a bad TV match. That pretty much marks the end of my Dibiase viewing. Some general thoughts on WWF Ted: I think WWF Ted was a good worker without ever really being a great one. He was extremely dependable and I can't imagine Vince ever envisioning firing him while he could still work. His promo work was great and he played the Million Dollar Man character better than just about any wrestler played their role during the same time frame. That character work didn't always come across in his matches because of the abbreviated heel control segments that we've mentioned many times and that was the biggest surprise for me because I remember Dibiase as being a guy who had cool offence. In reality, he was more of a Flair guy who had his spots he loved to run like sliding backwards on his ass begging off and missing his top rope move and getting a shot to the guts. I hated the Virgil apron spot that was the finish to so many of his matches and his headlock was one of the worst mid-match restholds I've seen from this era of the WWF. But he was reliable. He didn't have a tremendous amount of good matches but he didn't have as many turgid matches as I originally claimed, at least not from this limited sampling. I vehemently disagree with Loss that every match can be good and I think he was handicapped a lot by match length and the finishes to his matches, but he was a solid performer despite all that. I would have liked to have seen him get a proper 25 minute match against Savage or work in a little more workrate friendly environment, but at the same time he seemed like a bumping and selling kind of a guy and I'm not sure he would have benefitted so much from a longer match if he wouldn't have been able to make his offence both focused and interesting. The Bossman match I just watched showed he could do it, but who knows. On a final note, if you fancy watching some WWF Ted Dibiase try the Savage matches and the first Jake match. That should scratch your itch.

I've only listened to the first half so far, but what I've heard has been truly outstanding. One thing I want to chime in on is Dylan's best in the world from the late 70s to the early 80s talking point. He mentioned the lack of lucha footage, but I think the European workers and even Joshi girls get overlooked in that time frame.