ohtani's jacket

Marty Jones doesn't belong anywhere near the Hall but that still sucks.

The majority refers to the majority of people reading and writing about this type of wrestling now, most of whom weren't WON subscribers in the 80s, weren't influenced by the backstory you've provided, hadn't seen a large chunk of the footage the Death Valley Driver provided and for the most part had little exposure to prime Fujinami and Choshu due to a gap in pimping from 1987 to 2009. Nobody's saying that Fujinami and Choshu were never pimped or that there was never any positive consensus about them as workers. Nobody is saying that the post-2009 consensus is entirely new, simply that they were out of vogue and then "rediscovered" or re-evaluated, so to speak. I cannot believe that anyone would honestly say in the ten year period from 1999 to 2009 that Riki Choshu was a highly regarded worker among internet users. If we consider the Smarkschoice poll, Fujinami was #58 and Choshu was #100. Of the 50 odd people who voted, Choshu only received 13 votes. I think it's possible that both Fujinami and Choshu would receive a bump from the Death Valley Driver sets if a poll was to be taken tomorrow. How is Dylan saying Fujinami had a better match with Dynamite Kid than Tiger Mask proof that the rest of us thought highly of Fujinami? All it tells us is that Dylan thought highly of his juniors work. I don't know that Dylan had seen even half the Fujinami stuff that was on the Death Valley Driver set, but he can tell us for himself whether his own opinion of Fujinami was reappraised. Of the 80s Fujinami matches that I would consider widely seen prior to the set, that match did fairly well but there were a number of new discoveries [for people who were not WON subscribers in the 1980s] that did better.

Hey, Mick McManus. Nice one. How did Pallo do?

Dylan pretty much covered everything. A lot of his Dream Team work is solid but it pretty marked the beginning of the end of him being one of the WWF's top workers.

There's always going to be people who say something's good before the majority cotton on. Just because a few people were writing positive things about Choshu before the New Japan set hit doesn't mean people were tripping over themselves to see his stuff. How many people watched Choshu because Jewett wrote some Gordy List about Ishingundan? As many people who watched his stuff because of the New Japan site, Ditch's site or even youtube? It doesn't matter whether the consensus is new or old hat, the only thing that matters is what the consensus is now. As Will continues to release sets, people will come round to plenty of workers. Let's say Will releases Portland and people start claiming Buddy Rose is a great worker. Then the consensus becomes that Rose is an all-time great or at least in the discussion. Dylan has written tomes about Buddy Rose, Will always talks about what a great worker he is, John D. Williams gave us an opinion about Rose... are people going to turn around and say this consensus is nothing new, we've been saying it all along, blah, blah, blah? What a load of crap. It's all just words on paper or a computer screen until people watch the matches.

It's the pre-Crush Girls 1980-83 era that could use more complete footage.

Tell me more....is there Japanese media with this written out somewhere online? Not really sure what you're after... The kanji for Ishu Kakutogi Sen is 異種格闘技戦 Inoki didn't coin this term as such contests existed long before his fights. These days MMA is usually called 総合格闘技 (Sougoukakutogi.) A Japanese source tells me that they have been referring to mixed matches as Ishu Kakutogi Sen (異種格闘技戦) since Inoki-Ruska in 1976. Do you believe it to predate that bout? What I'm looking for is maybe a poster or VHS tape cover or some piece of media showing Japanese promotions were using this rough translation (mixed martial arts) before the UFC or Extreme Fighting, or even the Pittsburgh Penguins! I think the root term is Ishu Shiai (異種試合). I will have a look for any media.

That's what his Japanese Wikipedia page says. The sources it cites are an All Japan TV special and an article in Weekly Pro-Wrestling, neither of which are online. And for what it's worth, the Jumbo stand-in is the strongest character in the Fire Pro Wrestling games. On the pyramid of Japanese wrestling Jumbo wasn't at the top. There may have been people post-humously giving him props, but for the most part New Japan was the Yomiuri Giants to All Japan's Hanshin Tigers. I agree that Fujiwara was closer to proper revisionism. He did attain a certain level of popularity in his home country, mind you. With Fujiwara it was a matter of taste. Matwork based matches became in vogue amongst a certain segment of fans and then it was discovered that the carney crap that Fujiwara was so good at translated superbly to the pro-style as well. I'm not sure his look helped either. People generally preferred flashier wrestling through the 90s.

Making a best of list for films or records isn't the same as these type of wrestling discussions. Very few people would argue that only the Beatles knew how to record songs or that only Hitchcock knew how to make movies to the extent that people praise (or used to praise) All Japan Pro-Wrestling. There is far more leeway in other forms of entertainment because despite the fact that there are seminal figures people don't go around claiming Hitchcock and Kurosawa are the be all and end all unless they've just discovered Hitchcock and Kurosawa. Those directors are the jumping-off point for most people not the end point like All Japan Pro-Wrestling. All Japan was seen as the perfect way to wrestle and therefore nothing could better it. I don't think that's completely analogous with the way people treat other forms of entertainment despite there being people who think the Beatles made perfect music or that the '87-88 Lakers played perfect basketball. The Smarkschoice poll was in 2006 a full six years after Jumbo died. Plenty of people who participated in that poll had not seen a significant amount of Jumbo prior to his death as Jumbo was not a gateway to Japanese pro-wrestling when many of us first began watching. Just because he was talked about among WON readers in 1990 doesn't make a difference to those people, most of whom were in elementary school in 1990. What Meltzer thought of Choshu in 1983 is also irrelevant to these people. There were a group of people who began writing about wrestling and joining discussion post-2000 who got into things much later than the first wave of people online. If you want to squabble perhaps more than 90% of them were aware of Jumbo prior to his death. I think the first time I heard about him was when he retired and I think it was on 1wrestling. I doubt very much they were watching Jumbo prior to his death, though they may have seen the Tenryu feud or the early 90s All Japan opposite Misawa and Co., but even that became more widespread with the DVDVR best of the 90s results through the early part of the 2000s. There are people for whom the GOAT was Bret or Shawn and then suddenly became Misawa and Kawada and then Jumbo and never really moved past the jumping-off point. That's all right, it's not really a criticism, but like this Choshu and Fujinami thing which Graham Crackers spelled out, to act like it didn't happen because x and x knew about it all along is way off. We're not talking about x and x.

Jumbo has never been regarded as the strongest Japanese wrestler. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I have heard that at the Feb 1990 Supershow he got the loudest reaction and at that point was considered the MVP of Japanese professional wrestling, but I don't know if it's true. Anyway, we're really talking about what English speaking, Western fans think not Japanese fans. I don't buy Jerome's '98 memory. He's probably thinking of Other Arena or Frank Jewett or something. They were obviously ahead of the curve in that (from memory) Jewett had the Tenryu/Jumbo comp tape made that ended up circulating and being sold by people like Lorefice and Scott Mailman, etc., but I don't know whether that comp predated Jumbo's death nor do I think it's really important. It was the memorial tapes that kickstarted the Jumbo boom and I think Dean's Jumbo vs. Harley review in the DVDVR was more influential than the Other Arena crew as DVDVR had a greater reach. After that people got into AJPW Classics and Williams' DVDVR 90s pimping post and ballot were also highly influential. If people are lifelong Beatles fans that's their business, but do people go around touting the best ever in other fields of entertainment? It seems a particular obsession of wrestling fans. If pushed I would name what I think is the greatest of all time in any other field, but it's not some badge of honour like it is with wrestling. I wonder if it's because wrestling fans spend more time talking about wrestling than watching it. Or maybe I don't move in the right circles in regard to my other hobbies. Wrestling sure has its sacred cows, though. Regarding Fujiwara, neither shoot style nor 80s New Japan were widely watched by the swarm of new fans who got into Japanese wrestling late. They may have been watched by hardcores previously, but those people didn't make up a vocal presence on the internet from 1999 onwards in my experience. Fujiwara was not well regarded in real time, so to speak. You only have to look at Lorefice's site to get some idea of the dated opinions about shoot style and Fujiwara from the late 90s. I always kind of dug Fujiwara but began to seriously re-evaluate him with the failed Smarkschoice best matches ever initiative around five or six years ago. That was some glorious revisionism. Revisionism is a wonderful thing even if it may be disrespectful or sacrilegious at times. Returning to your original point, I actually think we caught up with what Japanese fans already knew in regard to Fujinami and Choshu most recently.

Here's 50 of them -- http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/08/the-...rences/#gallery

I bet you the bell time was longer especially if it was a draw.

Jumbo as the greatest of all-time was a revisionist trend in the first place. Ninety percent of the people pimping him as the greatest didn't even know who he was until he was dead and even then it took a few years for the memorial tapes to circulate. There weren't too many people around from when his matches originally aired in the 80s and early 90s and those who were ahead of the curve were a small minority compared to the ever expanding newer, young fans getting online and discovering foreign wrestling. I don't know what it was like in the mid-90s as when I first started using the internet I was only interested in WWF and WCW news, but if Jumbo had been pimped from the mid-90s onwards he would have been one of the first guys to be immediately pimped when people turned to "puro". AFAIC, he was some way down the list from juniors and Misawa and Kawada and garbage wrestling. Without trying to put too much of a historical bend on it, Jumbo as the greatest arguably peaked with the Smarkschoice poll after which many of the people involved slowly stopped watching wrestling and the newer fans became (inexplicably) more interested in the newer stuff. But I thoroughly agree that if Lawler and Fujiwara had been consensus picks for a long time that people would look elsewhere. Who doesn't crave new footage or new workers or new footage of old workers which suddenly sheds things in a new light? Everyone went through their Misawa and Kawada phase (or whatever) like some kid discovering an old rock band and thinking he's found the greatest band of all-time, but c'mon... move on, discover new things... It doesn't matter whether Satanico or Fujiwara are better than Flair or Jumbo or anybody else... the idea that somebody has to be atop the mantle is what's really boring.

Nothing on AJW TV in the 80s aired near complete. WoS is largely incomplete as well.

Tell me more....is there Japanese media with this written out somewhere online? Not really sure what you're after... The kanji for Ishu Kakutogi Sen is 異種格闘技戦 Inoki didn't coin this term as such contests existed long before his fights. These days MMA is usually called 総合格闘技 (Sougoukakutogi.)

Inoki's fights were called Ishu Kakutogi Sen, which is MMA in concept but not in direct translation.

Finlay is in the first crowd shot of them walking in the street next to the Dutch Mantell looking guy. I saw Klaus Kauroff, Franz Schuhmann, Mile Zrno and Dave Taylor.

How am I going to watch these matches? Do I have an unlimited supply of batteries? If I was on a desert island for the rest of my life wouldn't I want a woman instead of wrestling? Hmm? 80s AJW is so heavily clipped that it becomes frustrating after a while. I'd give all my non-essential organs for the complete 80s EMLL TV.

Living in Japan for six and a half years will cure you of that exoticism. I don't see the point in comparing Tully with a lucha worker or a Brit or whoever tickles my fancy unless that worker happens to remind me of Tully in some way. I know Tully is awesome, just like I know which lucha workers and Brits are awesome. A lot of consensus opinions are boring and need taking down a peg or two. I'm not whether Tully being awesome is consensus, but it isn't boring.

Isn't that Barthes example a bit like saying the UK has no film culture because nobody's ever written about it like Andre Bazin? Barthes was captivated by wrestling as a modern mythology and I believe he made some interesting comparisons between American wrestling and French wrestling as well as a bunch of comparisons to French literary classics, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say because a French literary theorist and philosopher wrote about French wrestling that somehow it was more ingrained in French society than in the UK. How much money did Wanz draw? What makes you think the German tournaments were successful? Regal claimed they weren't that successful on that recent podcast he did, at least not every night of the week. Perhaps the foreign talent that passed through Germany had more to do with Wanz' talent-sharing arrangements with AWA and NJPW than the paydays, I don't know. The paydays probably were better than in England for however many weeks the tournaments lasted otherwise they wouldn't have drawn so many Brit heavyweights, but it wasn't some big secret that the heavyweights were out of the country and not on TV much. Walton used to give a run down on what each wrestler had been doing since the last time they were on TV. I don't really see how working Germany, Wales, India, South Africa and Japan (for example) was any different from moving around the US territories; it's just more travel and a tad more international. For what it's worth, I don't think they went from the UK to Germany to Canada. The heavyweights worked the route I mentioned. The lighter weight guys went directly to North America. Wanting to leave the UK for America is hardly remarkable. The same thing happens with UK actors and again I hardly think that means the UK has no film culture. I also think you're overstating the number of guys who left. Robinson, Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith, Adrian Street, Ringo Rigby and Chris Adams are the only guys I can think of who made permanent moves while Joint Promotions still had TV. There's probably a few I'm forgetting. Regal, Finlay and Dave Taylor left much later. In my home country (New Zealand) there was a wrestling television program on air from 1975 to 1984 and prior to that pro-wrestling was extremely popular particularly in the 1950s, but it died before the promoter could take any sort of advantage of the WWF boom in the late 80s. Once they took wrestling off the air in '91, there was no way you could say it was part of popular culture in New Zealand, but it had still been extremely successful in its day, much like Saturday Afternoon wrestling was an institution in England. In both countries it died, but that doesn't mean it never was.

Does anyone know much about Korean wrestling? Was watching a Korean movie from the 60s recently and they went to a wrestling match.

Of course it's not part of British culture now, but in its hey day it was. It didn't spring up out of nowhere with Big Daddy. Pro-wrestling isn't really part of any country's culture (pop culture maybe, but that's transient), however I'd love to know why you think France and Germany have deeper wrestling traditions than the UK. Seems like exoticism.

"Pimping" wasn't the right choice of words. What I meant to say is that some of us were made aware of it from this rspw post linked off Cubsfan's site -- https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups...aI/HTIKRzO0MZUJ

Adam Copeland? I really believed his name was Edge.

Actually, the source of pimping for this was none other than David Scherer. A few years after the DVDVR poll Dean reviewed some 1989 CMLL and Rippa wrote about some 1990 CMLL. From there guys like Tim Cooke and Kevin Cook did some awesome pimping of early 90s CMLL. Tim used to write these awesome reviews of his Lynch purchases on the DVDVR board that were some of the best "what are you watching" style posts I've ever come across. Prior to that lucha was mostly viewed as the AAA hot period and the Santo turn and Casas feud. This was mostly due to tape trading trends, AAA being hot during the early stages of the Internet and perhaps more of an interest in the sheets and access to Galavision in the late 90s. I don't know how long Lynch and Alfredo had early 90s TV available for but it's more than a decade since I first bought it from them.