ohtani's jacket

The three channels part is pretty significant.

I don't understand where Dave's British readers are coming from. The last two sentences aren't true at all.

Man, I wouldn't pay that much to watch the WWE.

To hell with this, Dave is awesome. I wanna see how good this gets. Big Daddy was a summer lifeguard y'know.

I don't think there's been a massive upswing in appraisal of Rayo, Caras, Perro Aguayo or any of the heavyweights. I bet Dave and his ilk still have the same opinions about them that they had during the early 90s.

Lizmark/Kung Fu/Siglo XX (The Killer) vs. Los Infernales (El Satanico/MS-1/Masakre), CMLL 1987 I've been in a funk lately and haven't liked anything I've watched. I can't be bothered writing about any of that stuff, since this blog is negative enough as it is, so here's something I know and trust -- Classic Infernales. At first glance it seemed like the Infernales were taking the night off, but I should've known better. The Infernales knew exactly how to pace a fall. They were masters at the "change-up:" switching from a slower, methodical pace to sudden bursts of action. They knew how to put over a "rudo" fall, and never skipped a beat. The match started off with a bit of comedy as Masakre picked Kung Fu up with one arm and placed him back in his corner. Masakre was clearly the least of the Infernales, but he had this shit eating grin on his face, and it's always a great rev up when the least talented member does the most amount of shit talking. The technicos tried a bit of matwork, and Siglo impressed with some of his armlock work, which just goes to show you can never underestimate anyone's technical prowess, but the Infernales took over and won with the ease of their shitting eating grins. What the match needed next was a technico comeback, but I liked the way the Infernales cut off the technico's first drive. When the technicos stormed back into the match, there was plenty to enjoy. I dislike karate gimmicks immensely, but Los Fantásticos have always been an exception. Kung Fun had put on some beef since his Toreo days, but his schtick was still top notch, and I doubt readers out there will have too much difficulty imaging Satanico or MS-1 bumping for it. There were a lot of great sight gags in this bout. My favourite was Siglo suggesting that Satanico was too short for him. Satanico run to the turnbuckle and backed up onto the second rope to make himself taller than The Killer. Naturally, the great one started charging in like a bull terrier and anytime Satanico gets a full head of speed up the results are hilarious. In fact, anytime they get the ball rolling like this, you're guaranteed a laugh or two. Lizmark was on hand to provide some actual quality as the rudos bumbled one, and a good time was had by all as the rudos were kicked in the ass repeatedly. This wasn't a classic, but most nights the workers don't go out there to have a classic. Instead, it was perfectly entertaining and more than enough to pull me out of my rut.

I don't think you're wrong, strictly speaking. That said, I'd wonder how many crap things that a wrestler could do are impossible to be done in a non-crappy way. It's why I'm a little hesitant to name specific traits in this thread. Unless you go in really outlandish directions (I'm hard-pressed to think of a way that a wrestler could shit himself during a match in a really effective way), most of your notable wrestler "qualities" can be done well or poorly. A lot of wrestlers rely on schtick. Some people dig their gimmicks, but I think if you're an average worker you've got to have at least some redeeming features that make you entertaining. A guy like Rayo can bring that when he's feeling it (which is about once a decade), but has there even been a good Jimmy Valiant match?

I think "it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it" is overrated. I'd actually it's what you do AND the way you do it. I can't think of two many wrestlers I like who do crap stuff in a charismatic way. If I like a worker just because they're charismatic, generally it has a flow on effect that what they're doing is pretty good.

Atlantis suffers from timing more than anything else. He broke into the business to late to benefit from the UWA/CMLL cross promotion. By the time he was further up the card, business between the two was all but dead. He had a couple of main even programmes, but I don't think you can call him a consistent draw like Cien Caras for example. Lizmark is already in the HOF, so that hurts him workwise. Jose did a Gordy List for Atlantis that was pretty good -- http://www.luchawiki.org/index.php/Atlantis

Has anyone seen stuff from Funk where he dogged it?

Fuerza, but I seem to be the only guy who can't stand Jerry Estrada. Mark Rocco or Jimmy Breaks? Johnny Saint or Steve Grey? Pirata Morgan or El Dandy? Yuki Ishikawa or Daisuke Ikeda?

When you're talking about Goldberg, you're only really talking about one year right?

I honestly don't see the appeal of Nagasaki, but he was a pop culture icon if you wanna spin it that way. As for Rocco, I guess people liked his "all-action" style, but I can't see the case for Rocco over Breaks. McManus wrestled after '77. He retired in 1982.

BTW, I recommend watching at the beginning of the Big Daddy "This Is Your Life" show to see how gimmicky WoS truly was.

I think it would be odd to have a worker as bad as Big Daddy in the HOF, but to say people look back on that era and laugh is not particlarly relevant to the discussion. Most people who watched the WWF during their late 80s boom would have a chuckle about the workers. Maybe not to the extent of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, but it's not like Hogan is revered. If you want the total package, I'd go with McManus. Even in his 50s he was a great worker. Rocco needs more than peer recognition. Isn't peer recognition what people rail against come voting time? If you let Rocco in, you have to open the door for guys like George Kidd, Johnny Saint, Jim Breaks, Steve Grey, Marty Jones, Clive Myers, Alan Sarjeant, Vick Faulkner and a host of others. The way Dale Martin's TV worked was that everyone was showcased even guys without reps like Alan Kilby, Mal Sanders, Bobby Ryan, Robbie Baron etc. I actually thought the Rocco Gordy List could've been a hell of a lot better because the TV did run angles and it did have storylines. It was a promotion that was heavy on gimmicks and had plenty of injury storylines, rematches and build-up to title fights. It's kinda like saying lucha TV has no booking or storylines. It does, it's just confusing. Not every match was built around an angle, but often the matches that aired were months old. There's sort of a misperception about WoS that comes from skipping between years and decades. If you narrow it down to what was happening in 1975, for example, there were some clear feuds and some clear booking patterns.

You'd have to induct long time stars first like Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Nagasaki, Pallo, McManus and probably a few others if you go back to the early days of wrestling on TV. Dave just doesn't seem interested in it as a territory despite the fact wrestling was on ITV for 33 years. I guess it wasn't on his radar when he started the Observer and it's unlikely that he's watched much British or European wrestling. I don't see the argument for Rocco. It seems like he's on the ballot because he followed Dynamite to overseas territories. There were a ton of great workers in the 70s and 80s that were as talented and over as Rocco.

It was an interesting career move from Sano. Funny how it all turned out in the end. I wonder what would've happened if he'd stayed in New Japan.

Once you get into the Rude/Rocco territory, it just seems like people want their favourite workers in the Hall. I realise Dave has set some bad precedents, but if you let second tier guys in it opens the floodgates. There's a metric shitload of luchadores you could put on the ballot. I'm not even sure what separates Rocco from all the other great WoS workers.

I still think he lost the blow-off match, but let's not go there. It was eight years ago. A comment I made the other day: "Sano's like a great character actor showing up in all kinds of different films. The impressive thing about his worked shoots is how he picked it up straight away. Guys like Funaki and Tamura had serious growing pains, but Sano was awesome from the beginning." If the comp ever gets made, it's impressive how good he is on debut in PWFG. Do you remember why he was lured away from NJPW? Was it to be the anchor for the SWS junior division?

This is true, though I just watched him get more out of '93 Tamura than anyone else was able to. I also thought his two fights with Takada were the best matches Takada had in UWF-i. He was fairly good in Kingdom too. UWF-i had a really shitty style, but Sano was probably the best worker in the company.

OK, so I've been watching a ton of Sano's worked shoots lately and the guy is completely awesome, which leds to me to the question -- is Sano one of the all-time great Japanese workers?

El Hijo Del Santo vs. Negro Casas, NWA World Welterweight Championship, 12/1/95 This was the final of a 16-man tournament for the vacant World Welterweight title. It wasn't a particularly long match (about 10-12 minutes), but felt longer due to how slow it was. I guess the most striking thing about the match was how different it was from the style Santo worked in AAA. Whether that was a conscious decision on the part of the workers or a Japanese influence, I'm not sure. There was a definite hybrid feel to it, but it would be wrong to say it was new since they were leaning that way in their January '92 match. Anyway, I didn't like this at all. Maybe it's because I've been up to my eyeballs in mat wrestling lately, but I found it completely uninteresting. It wasn't that the holds were uninteresting, more the way they applied them. And I thought they completely effed up the hybrid elements. There was a lot of worked shoot stuff that they didn't know how to sell, and the ref had no idea what they were doing half the time. Mat wrestling has never been Casas' forte. He's more of an "all-action" worker, to quote the legendary Kent Walton, and I guess I've been overrating Santo's mat prowess on the basis of some pretty limited footage. That doesn't mean I think they're poor mat workers all of a sudden, I just think as an "all-matwork" match this was a colossal failure and somewhat ill-advised. The crowd was pro-Casas, and I don't think they wanted to see a third rate shoot hybrid. Or perhaps I don't want to see that in my lucha? The best thing about mat wrestling, when it's done well, is that both guys look like tough motherfuckers. Neither guy looked tough here. There wasn't enough struggle, nor was there any kind of maestro wrestling.

Sting's '92-93 is getting under sold. There was more to Sting in those years than the Vader feud and the Cactus match. Even from '94-96 he was capable of having fun TV matches. Has Cena ever shown as much as Sting did in the various Regal matches? I don't wanna get into a Cena argument but that guy works in a heavily controlled environment. Cena pimping always reminds me of Rock pimping. I don't buy the Volk didn't have opponents argument. Volk had Kosaka and Tamura, two of the better shoot style workers Japan ever produced, and a bunch of fiery young natives like Yamamoto and Nagai. Sure, he had to work with a bunch of choads, but that's part of shoot style. I'm super high on Volk at the moment because I just watched a match against Yamamoto that had me marking out more than I've done in about five years, but the point I wanna make is that shoot style's not a style where you fuck around until it's time to have your latest shitty opus. Every performance counts. Anyway, Volk was an untouchable genius like Fujiwara, Satanico or Navarro. Dunno if he was a better worker than Hansen because Hansen worked pro-style, but Volk was incredible. It really is touch and go between him and Fujiwara. Oh, and there wasn't great mat wrestling in that Jones/Dynamite match nor was it all Dynamite. Dynamite put in an awesome heel performance in that match, but it was Marty Jones. Nobody delivers like Marty Jones in WoS. Cherry picking one DK match from WoS is a bit cheeky. He had some crap performances in England.

I reckon they're barking up the wrong tree with Rocco. Goodhelmet was on Dean & Noel's podcast saying his Black Tiger stuff isn't good. I've been watching a steady amount of WoS lately, and I dunno if he was top 5 in the available footage. Good worker, probably the type Dave would like, but I think people will come away from the Euro set a little disappointed by Rocco.

C'mon, MJH that Takada/Backlund match was the UWF guys trying to shit on Backlund's rep. I like that match a lot, but it sums Takada up completely. Takada was a guy who was totally reliant on his opponent to make the match interesting. This is why Takada was never a great worker. You can't just watch a Takada match and know that his side of the match is going to be outstanding. Every single thing that Takada could have possibly been good at, Maeda was better at. Takada just comes across as a jock to me.