ohtani's jacket

A ref bump as a cut-off for the "hulk up" is not a good example of going back to selling. The whole spot was just a teased comeback.

At some point you have to accept that you're watching a wrestling match and that it's just a staple spot.

Tito, Steve Grey, Chigusa Nagayo and Kyoko Inoue stand out to me.

For me it's workers like Perro Aguayo and Los Hermanos Dinamita, though with the latter I think their 90s work and beyond was better than their prime 80s stuff. My appreciation for big theatrical workers does not extend to Konan, however. I think Tony St. Clair despite not being a great worker was an awesome foil for the best heel workers of his era, and I'd rather watch him over a multitude of British heavyweights.

The most important category should be least nauseating.

The British TV stars like McManus and Pallo belong in the HOF before Johnny Saint.

I've never really thought about this before, but why didn't they run the Flair/Funk "I quit" match as the Starrcade '89 mainevent?

Ha, great thread. Jerry Estrada. I could write a whole page about how much I hate Jerry Estrada. There's a number of guys I think are overrated to a certain extent -- Santo, Casas, Panther -- but these things tend to go in cycles. Ten years ago we all thought Jumbo was the greatest worker of all-time and now people want to pick holes in him. How much does that have to do with Jumbo and how much is it people getting bored? If you're looking for more Santo matches like his UWA stuff, you'll end up disappointed and eventually he's not that great anymore. Or you find better guys, like a teenager finding more serious music. Mark Rocco's a guy I used to love until I found there were dozens of better Euro workers. Steve Wright was another. Johnny Saint. Most people are sick of Liger these days, but there's always a chance of coming back round like I did with Misawa. You just need a new take on matches you hadn't seen. Perhaps fickle appreciation is a neat thing about being a wrestling fan and something to embrace. At least it means you can change your mind every ten years.

I think the answer to this is clearly Black Terry and Negro Navarro since they've been better in their 50s than in any of the younger footage we have of them. Some of the Euro guys were awesome vets as well, but I can't be bothered working out how old they were when they were good. Casas' work post '97 is overrated.

They were simply doing what everyone else did in the bubble economy. Whatever they invested their money in, it wouldn't have much much difference in the long run.

Yes, I was acknowledging the point.

Well, that's not quite every houseshow match. Fair enough. Cheers.

They should have, but I'm struggling to think of an example from the same era where houseshows were acknowledged or referred to in any way aside from being broadcast material. There's also the chance that it wasn't some sort of intentional story progression. Perhaps it just fits when you watch the matches as a series. They do, however, do the early "Steamboat's got to be careful not to be DQ'ed" bit in Wrestlemania III.

I always thought it was a known fact that Steamboat had been DQ'ed in all the houseshow matches leading up to Wrestlemania III. I could never understand the criticism of that match from a booking standpoint, similar to the Bret/Owen cage match which didn't make sense to have any blood in the context of the feud. 1997 was arguably the best year in CMLL history in terms of what we have on tape. Either '97 or '90. '88-97 works for me.

I managed to find that Orton/Mysterio match. It was a good match considering how limited Orton is, but it was spot driven and choreographed and followed along the lines of the typical WWE match patterns. These things are okay if they're executed well, but it's blatantly obvious that they're executing them in terms of following the patterns. This is especially the case with transitions. All WWE matches have the same kind of transitions that are replayed again in slow motion and lead into commercial breaks. That's obviously part of the overall production, but it makes it seem like the matches fit too neatly into the overall package. I think the quality of matches is definitely higher than at any other time in WWE history, but I'd rather watch great matches from the 80s no matter how scare they were than the current Hollywood-ish formula for blockbusters. Of course some of the better 80s stuff was formulaic and staged looking as well, but with simple camera set-ups at an arena and the lack of commentators screeching about angles and the workers' gimmicks it simply feels like professional wrestling, which is always staged looking to some degree. With the WWE everything is so planned and carefully orchestrated and they're all so focused on working the WWE way that it definitely seems homogeneous.

Can anybody give me the date on the famous Mysterio/Henry match? And isn't there a Orton/Mysterio match worth watching?

I'll have to watch it again at some point because I don't remember the opening falls being a problem.

Since when did the first two falls being short in lucha matter?

Sting/Flair matches suck. Even the worst Luger/Flair match is better than a Sting/Flair match. Sting was never a great worker but he reached that point where he "got" what he was supposed to do and did it well. Luger was awesome in '89 and even into 1990 and is so ridiculously fun to get behind.

Piper was awesome on commentary when Virgil won the Million Dollar belt. The best heel commentator among active wrestlers was definitely Owen. Never heard anyone in WWF or NWA/WCW who compared.

Akira Fukuzawa says hello. I don't speak japanese, and as it is I would rank him pretty much at the top along with Lance. Ross over excitement during finishes post 1999 just makes him unbearable to me during big matches, he sounds like he's having a panic attack and it's just as ridiculous as Joey Styles infamous screamed lines (and I like Joey as much as anybody). Basically Ross ranks that way to me : WCW Ross > WWF (1993-1998) Ross (at his best, really great, and excellent most of the time) >> UWF >>> WWF post 1999 (could be just plain terrible and annoying, oversells everything by gawd!) Fukuzawa does the same thing as Ross and Styles only it's cool because it's like a crazy Japanese TV commercial.

What is all this crap? Tony was a million times better than Ross in WCW and Tony and Jesse were the best WCW commentating pair of the 90s. Jesse was better in WCW than he was in WWF, and Gorilla with Jesse or Heenan was much better than the montones of Vince in WWWF. The winner in all this is Lance Russell who I will stauchy argue was better than Kent Walton in the battle of the all-time greatest announcers.

Cerebro is 39 and made his debut in 1996. The Traumas are good, but hardly constitute the "young guys coming through."

Off the top of my head, Clive Myers, Honeyboy Zimba, Johnny Kwango, Johnny Kincaid, Dave Bond, Kid Chocolate, Lenny Hurst, Jim Moser and Caswell Martin. That's not counting the Indian and Pakistani wrestlers they pushed, either, which you don't see much of in other territories.

Los Infernales and Los Brazos. Trios wrestling is after all tag wrestling.