ohtani's jacket

Sounds like the second UWF or RINGS.

I don't think anyone who watches lucha seriously cares about any of this stuff. I mean, face in peril is stupid as shit if you think about it. How dumb do the babyfaces have to be to get themselves stuck in the same situation against the same opposition night after night? They must be thick as shit, not to mention the referees. And how can you work the next night with the injuries you were supposed to have sustained in a FIP match? Some of these guys have some miraculously fast healing bodies. If you hold FIP up to the light, heels should have gotten away with it for a while before action was taken to stop it from happening. All the NWA would've had to do is follow Gorilla Monsoon's old bugaboo about having a second ref at ringside. The first two falls in lucha aren't always rushed through and the finishes are often elaborate. The first two falls being rushed through is not always a bad thing, either. There is good lucha and then there is bad lucha. There is more bad lucha than good lucha. And there is a lot of bad lucha on Galavision. By the same token, sometimes FIP works and sometimes it doesn't. Watching all those 80s WWF tags where the entire FIP structure is shortened to about 10 minutes, FIP becomes worthless. I would rather watch a sprint then watch a 10 minute WWF FIP match.

You're missing the set-up to the double hair/mask vs. hair/mask match: El Hijo Del Santo y Negro Casas vs. Bestia Salvaje y Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 2/5/99) El Hijo Del Santo y Negro Casas vs. Bestia Salvaje y Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 2/26/99) El Hijo Del Santo y Negro Casas vs. Bestia Salvaje y Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 3/12/99) In the first match, Santo and Casas win the tag titles but refuse to accept them as it was on a DQ. The second match is a title match for the same vacant titles. The third match I can't remember anything about.

It was long and drawn out, but the actual turn happened around these events: El Hijo Del Santo, Scorpio Jr. y Villano III vs. Negro Casas, Pantera y La Fiera (CMLL 7/17/98) El Hijo Del Santo vs. Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 7/31/98) El Hijo Del Santo, Fuerza Guerrera y Villano III vs. Negro Casas, Atlantis y La Fiera (CMLL 9/11/98) El Hijo Del Santo, Negro Casas, Atlantis y La Fiera vs. Fuerza Guerrera, Villano III, Bestia Salvaje y Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 9/18/98) There were some brawling trios later in the year that further set up the Santo/Casas vs. Bestia/Scorpio matches that will feature on the '99 yearbook. These were neat matches: Olimpico vs. Halcon Negro, 10/23/98 Olimpico vs. Halcon Negro, mask vs. mask, 10/30/98

1998 was a weak year for lucha, but since it's a yearbook don't you want to include the Santo face turn?

Cena is a Marky Mark wannabee, but it was cool when he got potatoed on RAW.

I've always viewed a post match angle as part of the match. Personally, I don't see how a great match can do anything but add to a post match angle. A more interesting question might be whether a post match angle can be great if the match was poor. I imagine it can. Has anyone ever shed a positive light on the BATB '96 mainevent or the King of the Ring '96 final?

Added -- Jon Cortez vs. Steve Grey (7/27/81) This was awesome. It was everything you'd expect from Grey vs. Cortez with the added bonus of being extremely heated. Grey was British Lightweight champion at the time and Cortez European Lightweight champion, and the winner was due to get a shot at Johnny Saint's World Lightweight title so the bout was super competitive. Cortez wound up playing the subtle heel and Grey got testy as well, particularly when Cortez attacked after the bell. Later on, Grey threw a forearm smash which Cortez was unhappy about and this built until an injury finish that actually worked. Cortez claimed it as a KO victory and got some nice heel heat for doing so (usually the faces turn down the win in this situation and the match is ruled a no contest.) Really great stuff this. One of the best World of Sport matches I've seen

Tito Santana and Steve Grey spring to mind.

WCW Worldwide 12/5/92 -- http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhq9az_er...rick-rude_sport WCW Saturday Night 12/26/92 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJiC8-X0wb0

Roma's Pretty Wonderful run was solid stuff.

Added -- Steve Grey vs. John Naylor (4/10/75) I'm not sure whether I'm made this clear or not, but I hate John Naylor. This match, however, was too good to leave off as Grey was an excellent catchweight match-up for just about anybody including Naylor. Some really good wrestling in this bout. I'll have to watch their other match again and see if it was my prejudice against Naylor that caused me to dislike it. Didn't like the Naylor/Rickard match, but thought Saint/Hassouni was fun. I'm not a fan of Johnny Saint's style of wrestling but the match had a good Cup Final Day atmosphere.

Someone finally uploaded the Rick Rude vs. Eric Watts match in full. Probably not one of the greatest matches in WCW history as the clipped version had me thinking, but a quality piece of TV nonetheless and a must watch for Rude fans. The rematch from a week later has also been uploaded but it doesn't have the same dynamic. What it does prove, however, is how much better Jesse was at getting Watts over than JR.

Inoki only became directly involved after Dream Stage Entertainment took over PRIDE. They reached a business agreement prior to PRIDE 9 for Inoki to supply New Japan wrestlers for PRIDE fights. That was in May or June of 2000. PRIDE basically started when a guy named Xavier Cullars promoted a fight between Rickson Gracie and Nobuhiko Takada in October of 1997. Takada and Anjoh had called Gracie out several times back when UWF-i was at the height of its drawing power and Gracie was Vale Tudo Japan champion, which led to the infamous "fight" between Gracie and Anjoh in Gracie's LA gym where Anjoh got his ass kicked. This turned Gracie into a sensation in Japan and eventually Takada and Gracie had their fight which Gracie won. Sakuraba's rise happened by accident. At the time he was wrestling with the other UWF-i workers in the Kingdom promotion that rose out of UWF-i's closure. Anjoh and Kanehara signed on to compete in the UFC Japan show in December 1997, but Kanehara was injured in training and Sakuraba took his place. His fight ended with a ref mistake and to make a long story short he got a rematch as the final of the tournament they were particpating in due to an injury to the other finalist and he manged to win the rematch. And that's how Sakuraba got started. Pro-wrestler vs. shooter was very much the drawing point of the early PRIDE shows and in particular pro-wrestling vs. Gracie jiu-jitsu. Later on it became more of an MMA promotion and shat all over Japanese wrestling with its superior matchmaking, title fights and production values.

You'd think he was the World's Greatest Entertainer reading this. The trouble with Henry fans is that they go so overboard in praising him that when people go to check him out they can't get past the notion that it was supposed to be amazing. That can be true of anything that people praise, but Henry fans overcompensate for whatever bias there is against him.

C'mon, it went from being the best WWE TV match since Rey vs. Cena to being a US MOTYC in any given year and one of the best TV matches in the past decade. You'd expect a match like that to be pretty damn good. I watched it again and it's a good match, but it's missing a finishing stretch. If there hadn't been two minutes or however long cut for commercials and they'd done a proper finishing stretch instead of aborting the match for a Jericho angle then I could understand the hype, but as it is I don't see how it was better than Benoit/Finlay or Rey/Finlay to name two WWE TV matches I really liked. Punk/Henry was a tight little match with an obvious story thread, but it seems to me that little things like Punk selling the back or Henry trash talking are receiving excessive praise. Now since we're often guilty of excessive criticism that's no bad thing, but I just didn't see anything above what you'd expect from the booking. I mean, wasn't the whole point of the match for Johnny Ace to book Punk in a tough match where he was going to take a beating because Punk called him a toolbox or something like that? It's a hop, skip and a jump from a great territorial studio segment and they were never MOTYCs. I dunno, maybe it is semantics, but I was expecting something along the lines of the good WWE I watched from last year but it was only two thirds of a match. But yeah, if he'd said it was the best TV match so far this year or even the best WWE match so far and put it in his top 10 for the year we probably wouldn't have this thread.

I don't see a MOTYC as the best match to have happened thus far. To me, a MOTYC ought to be good enough to still be in consideration at the end of the year. If the best match thus far is a three star match then there haven't been any match of the year contenders yet.

I don't think it has anything to do with standards dropping. The lucha matches Dylan has listed in his top 10 would all be legitimately good matches from 1998 onwards and in some cases before then. Lucha is having its best year for matches in quite some time. I just think Dylan overreacted in his excitement over the Punk/Henry match possibly because of his disappointment in WrestleMania the night before, possibly because he really likes CM Punk and Mark Henry or possibly because he really liked the match. Is there anyone else calling it a MOTYC? I always enjoy reading what Dylan has to say about wrestling and have done for more than 10 years now, but if Dylan says that Punk/Henry is a MOTYC why am I supposed to name something that's better? When people claim something is a MOTYC it's not only a match rating but a recommendation as well. There are some of us who didn't watch it live who will check it out based on that MOTYC tag. When I watch a MOTYC I expect to see a match that would be a MOTYC in any given year not just this one. If the best matches aren't MOTYC level then they're not match of the year contenders, does that makes sense? And if I don't agree with the MOTYC tag or can't quite see it, surely it's worth having a discussion about.

Early Finlay is awesome. I mentioned the other day that he was a better Dynamite Kid than Dynamite Kid but perhaps I stole that subconsciously from Walton. Everything about John Naylor annoys me. I can't explain it. Boscik always winds up disappointing me. I watched a Rocco/Cullen match from Screen Sport yesterday that was completely different from the traditional WoS freestyle style and it sucked like the majority of Rocco's work. All that Screen Sport/ASW stuff is an abomination.

Well, I just watched the Bret Hart vs. Jean-Pierre Lafitte RAW match and I don't see how anyone wouldn't put it in the same ballpark as Punk/Henry including the post match Lawler/Yankem stuff v. the Jericho angle. It was a typical sort of Bret gets beaten up but finds a way to win anyway bout and nothing special in that respect, but Lafitte didn't look blown up or confused at any point and who shits on a guy doing a Pirata Morgan gimmick?

Sakuraba's brain says hi.

I like Bret v. Lafitte, but as I noted when I watched it for the SC poll it's a match that really revolved around Lafitte's big spots and Bret bumping. Nothing wrong with that but the dead time in that match was REALLY dead time, with Lafitte sucking wind and just laying around with holds applied waiting to get to the next spot. I like the match a lot and don't want to slag it, but Lafitte is not Henry when it comes to keeping "dead time" entertaining. The Vader tag is a really awesome match that is even less consequential than Henry v. Punk. I actually thought Henry v. Punk was a great way of re-establishing Henry as a killer/monster type and while I generally don't like Punk as Ricky Morton type, that works v. Henry. I would have to watch all the matches back-to-back-to-back to into a ton more detail, but I obviously liked Punk v. Henry a lot and I know I'm not alone in that regard. How does Henry keep dead time entertaining? By trash talking? Henry looked slow and lumbering in the Punk match. Isn't he recovering from an injury or something? Punk/Henry only really worked for me because Punk's offense is literally too useless to beat Henry. I think I would've enjoyed it more if it had been stiffer but those elbows to the head and some of the other strikes were weak.

I remember liking that Kendo Nagasaki/Wayne Bridges match and Bridges is one of the WoS guys I dislike the most along with Mal Sanders and John fucking Naylor. I take it you haven't watched the Nagasaki/Myers match or any of the Screen Sport stuff?

Punk/Henry was a match of the week type match. What is it about the match specifically that makes you think it was better than any match wrestled in the US in 1995? Was it really better than say Bret vs. Jean Pierre Lafitte or that Vader tag?

Watched Punk/Henry and don't see how it was a MOTYC. It was okay as far as little guy tries to chop down a pine tree goes, but I didn't buy the finish whatsoever and the whole thing was overshadowed by the post-match crap. If they were going to do a countout finish, Henry should've gone out over the rope too. But regardless, why would you rate a match that was basically two thirds of a match without any finishing stretch? The match was pretty much aborted so they could fit the Jericho crap in the quarter hour. And what a dumb angle that is. Can't they do something better with Punk than this straight edge shit? I mean, I kind of admire the guy for cementing himself as a WWE performer as it seems like he did it against the odds, but who the fuck wants to watch angles about alcoholism or drug addiction or anything like that?