ohtani's jacket

Watched the Bryan Daniel vs. CM Punk champion vs. champion match. The match was okay but decidedly non-epic for a champion vs. champion match. There were no real moments of drama even by television match standards and neither guy seemed to play to character. Couldn't understand the set-up, either. Does anyone care about being vegan or straight edge or the best in the world? I couldn't figure out whether Danielson was a heel or not, but I've read people praising his acting of late and I can't see it. He's obviously charismatic to his fans but he lacks star quality. His wrestling style seems wildly out of place as well. Maybe it's because I watched the Cena matches first but Punk looks like a much better WWE worker. This is the way it seems to me. I'm probably completely wrong.

That Ohtani/Tajiri match was cool. I'm not sure how much mileage the Ohtani character had left in '97, but it was fun to see another match from before the run ended. Finlay/Tajiri didn't really click with me. It was good in parts but I thought Finlay was showing his age.

Fujiwara had a couple of tags against Roberts in UWF. He didn't have a singles match against Finlay in UWF but he did wrestle Marty Jones, Dalibar Singh and Keith Hayward. Finlay had singles matches against Maeda, Sayama and Yamazaki.

Whoa, Nellie! was one of Jaime's weaker pieces of work, IMO. I liked it better when the wrestling was in the backdrop of the Maggie and Rena stories. The wrestling matches are well drawn, though.

He wasn't a Navy SEAL. He was a frogman in an Underwater Demolition Team and never saw any combat.

I've seen that, but also Teddy Ruxpin and the Transformers listed. I'll admit that GI Joe was bigger than I thought. I will also point back to: Sarge joined them in 1986, after Hogan got the belt at the start of 1984, and after Sarge left the WWF. It's not a lock that Vince would have let him have the tie-in if Sarge was the WWF Champ. In fact, there's about a 0% chance Vince would have let it happen unless the majority of the money was going to Vince rather than Sarge. John I dug a little deeper and found Toy & Hobby World's Top 10 list for December 1985: 1. Cabbage Patch Kids and Transformers (tie) 3. Masters of the Universe 4. Pound Puppies 5. GI Joe 6. Voltron by Matchbox Toys (USA) 7. MASK 8. My Little Pony 9. Teddy Ruxpin 10. Princess of Power (She-Ra) November 1986: 1. GI Joe 2. Pound Puppies 3. Barbie 4. Teddy Ruxpin 5. MASK 6. Cabbage Patch Kids 7. Transformers 8. Lazer Tag 9. WWF Action Figures 10. M.U.S.C.L.E

GI Joe was the top selling toy in America in 1985.

Nothing says WCW more than Rey Mysterio's creepy Omen music -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW096ZkxLQo

Not really. Outside of Japan and North America, the NES was actually outsold by the Sega Master System. But the SMS only moved 13 million units worldwide, so even in areas where it was big, it wasn't that big. I had a Sega Master System, but a lot of my friends had Nintendos. I don't think we even knew or cared that they came from Japan. Mario and Sonic and Alex Kidd don't exactly scream "Japan."

Super Nintendo and Playstation were big everywhere, but that had more to do with Japanese technology than culture. New Japan being popular in Italy was quirky, but I'm not sure it fits the bill in terms of what Dave is talking about.

Pero Aguayo was a guy who people used to think sucked. Hogan wasn't as good as Aguayo. I better stop now before I ruin the thread.

Snuck in two more -- Regal vs. Ambrose from the WWF development territory and Cena vs. Mysterio, Jr. The former was a pretty good performance from Regal and the latter a solid mainevent for TV. Cherry picking modern WWE I think it's watchable stuff. I wouldn't want to watch it on a weekly basis or anything but the best matches, but I'd rather watch it than Japanese pro-wrestling or most lucha.

You'd think Hogan was Pero Aguayo the way people are going on about him as a worker. Something positive... when I was a kid my dad had a private client who was the splitting image of Hogan (minus the 24 inch pythons.) He even got a t-shirt made that said: "No, I'm not him." Anyway, my parents were forever talking about how much he looked like Hogan and finally I got the chance to see him when he dropped something off at our door one night. My dog always went nuts when someone came to the front door and usually peed everywhere. So, he knocks at the door and I creep out of my bedroom to get a peak at him, and sure enough he's a dead ringer for the Hulkster. I'll never forget the time the Hulkster was in my hallway and my dog peed on his leg.

The point Dave is making is right. It's a pretty well known point and not a major relevation, but Japan does a poor job of exporting its cultural products. I'm not sure Dave could name the American cultural products that are big in Japan, but he knows that American movie stars and musicians are big draws here. As Dave said on the radio show, Japan doesn't even do a good job of exporting its cultural products inside Asia. Korea does laps around Japan when it comes to film, television and music. It's a common talking point here as Japan needs something to revive its flagging economy. Anime and video games are still seen as something of an embarrassment in terms of cultural exports, at least by the older lawmakers.

He was talking about Japanese entertainers. The biggest stars in the Japanese music, television and film industries are not very well known outside of Japan.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #35 -- w/ Virgil When people talk about the greatest tag teams of all time, they somehow manage to neglect the team of Virgil and "El Matador" Tito Santana. These guys had some really solid, fun TV matches against the likes of Money Inc., the Headshrinkers and the Beverly Brothers. It probably wasn't what Tito wanted to be doing, but I thought it was a nice little coda on his WWF career, and he looked great in just about all of their matches. Does anybody know why Tito didn't have a WCW run at this point of his career? Did they even approach him? Everybody else did, why not Tito? TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #36 -- "The Bad Guy" Razor Ramon I'm not a fan of the way Hall works as I think the things he tries make him look clumsy for a guy his size, but this was a match-up that had potential. To exploit that potential they had to go longer than five minutes, however. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #37 -- The Dream Team, Greg "the Hammer" Valentine and Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake Tito and a rotating cast of partners vs. the Dream Team, Valiant and Hart. Folks probably know about the Steamboat and Santana vs. Dream Team match, but the other bouts are fun too. Mainly it's a chance to see more Tito vs. Greg, which is probably the best thing Tito was ever involved with, and their exchanges at MSG in particular are memorable, but you also get to see Beefcake on his roll and watch Valentine beat up David Sammartino. Heck, you can even watch Oprah commentate wrestling. Fun stuff. I thought Sammartino would be worse than he was, but maybe Greg was that good. The whole time I kept thinking I need to watch more Dream Team. Morales had some fun exchanges against the heels as well. I always kind of dug Morales.

I only saw the one Christian/Orton match, but the counters seemed to happen faster and smoother than I expected. The last Orton match I watched before this one was his 2006 match against Mysterio Jr. that was really spot sequence heavy. Another thing that struck me was the commentating. It was far from great, but an improvement over Cole trying to put over how emotional everything was.

I liked the work better in Christian/Orton, but I thought it needed another four minutes or so to be a truly great match. It seemed like they were just getting into the stretch run when the match ended but that may have been a result of the finish being clean. Cena/Punk was more of a main event spectacle, had the hot hometown crowd and all the BS with Vince was well laid out, but there were some weak periods because they were going long-ish. Modern WWE is really heavy on counters and the longer the go the more of those type of spots they do, but compared to a lot of WWE stuff I've watched both these matches felt less telegraphed.

CM Punk vs. Cena from Money In The Bank was another strong match. I think you're losing this one, Jerome.

All of those movies he made, as crappy as they were, made him a better promo.

Randy Orton vs. Christian from Over the Limit 5/22/11 was an excellent match from two workers I've never really cared for. Orton in particular was awesome.

I don't think it matters what your name is if you become a star. If you get over, they'll give you a bunch of nicknames. Nobody wants plain workers, but on the other hand they don't want stupid gimmicks. The problem is that guys look cheesy as shit as that picture depicts. Calling him Nick "the Hammer" doesn't work in 2012, but he can stop smiling like a dickhead.

Japanese wrestling was screwed long before Hashimoto ever fought Ogawa.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #34 -- The Islanders This was the feud that gave birth to Strike Force, with Tito Santana leaving his position in the Spanish broadcasting booth to rescue Martel from an Islanders beatdown. The Islanders attacked Tito in the booth at some point and the pair got together and coined the name "Strike Force" in a cheesy backstage promo. From there they wrestled the Islanders a million times, half of which I watched. I can't tell you which was the best as they all blurred together with the same people, places and faces. The standout may have been one of their MSG bouts but only because it was a 2/3 falls bout which left a more indelible impression. Given that they were WWF tag matches with only half the psychology of a regular US tag match from the time, the things I liked most tended to be spots. The Islanders in a way seemed to be a quasi Samoan Bulldogs with Haku playing DBS and Tama Dynamite Kid. That may not be quite true, but there was a definite workrate element to their matches and Tama's flying was cool even if it was more direct than spectacular. Strike Force also brought a lot of strikes to this feud as well, actually "striking with force" as Tito promised. That was cool. They also mixed it up a bit with Martel playing the FIP in a few of the matches. On the Gorilla front, they finally did the second referee at ringside stip that he was forever moaning about; and wouldn't you know it, he wouldn't shut up about how poor a job of offciating the second official was doing and kept getting into arguments with Nick Bockwinkel about it.

It's not only WWE that has this problem with all the young wrestlers looking alike. CMLL has been that way for years now and Japan isn't much better.