ohtani's jacket

This is such a beautiful match. I was 100% with Nishimura all the way. With matches like this, Taue vs. Nagata and Hashimoto vs. Kojima, Japanese men's wrestling is on the rise in 2003. Definitely the best year for Japanese men's wrestling since the turn of the decade.

Chain Match: Finlay vs. Schuhmann (CWA WIEN'97) I felt like watching some Finlay after listening to Regal's podcast. This was from right near the end of Finlay's time in the CWA. He had shaved off his moustache and was letting his grey hair show. He lost some of his aura when he shaved the mo. He looked like such an asshole with that stache. Schuhmann looks unrecognizable without his mullet. The match is okay. They couldn't go the whole hog with the chain presumably because of the cameras.

Fancy entrance for the champs. They're decked out in full Aztec warrior headdresses. Vampiro and Lizmark make a regular entrance. The Mega Powers combine! There was a time when you wouldn't have been able to pay me to watch this match; now, I'm eagerly anticipating it. The first fall is rubbish. The second fall is a quick equalizer. The third fall is where the action is. They do a good job of making this seem like an important title fight. For all its flaws, the modern lucha style is still good at delivering a dramatic third fall. The match swings back and forth, and there are some exciting nearfalls. Arena Mexico is rocking as it usually does for Vampiro fights. There's a guy in a huge bear costume. It's amazing how Lizmark can disappear in a match. It happens all the time in trios matches. There will be these long stretches during a trios match where he's off camera. It's almost like he's hiding from the camera. It's not that he doesn't do anything. He hits some big moves. He just has the magnetism and charisma of a replacement level player. The match comes down to Vampiro vs. Ultimo, which is fitting, and the matchup everyone wants to see. Vampiro is sucking in the big ones, and I don't think it's because he's a great seller. I was unashamedly into this. I thought for all money that Ultimo was gonna cheat, but the bugger went over clean. Vampiro did a nice job of selling it afterward. The match ended up being pretty good. On paper, it looked like it needed to be an all-time great carry job to be anything special, but Rey and Ultimo didn't need to go the extra distance. It all kind of fell into place with the booking, and the fans were happy to get the Ultimo vs. Vampiro showdown. Good stuff.

I was surprised when Last couldn't recall any history between Yokozuna and the Hart Foundation.

Bert Royal has passed away. https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2022/08/20/british-star-bert-royal-dies/

Quiet Japanese crowds are real. Rowdy Japanese crowds are real too.

I'm not sure if the crowds were different for tapings vs house shows. I imagine the tapings must have drawn people who didn't routinely go to the house shows, but I can't say for sure. At its peak, Joint Promotions ran around 40 shows per week. I'm not sure how the TV was scheduled. It's never been clear to me whether it was scheduled from ITV's end or from Joint Promotion's end. They filmed matches from around the country. Mostly, they were Dale Martin shows, but occasionally, they'd show matches from the other promoters as well. There's almost no continuity to the television. You occasionally see a rematch from a few weeks before, and every now and again there's a match that's announced in advance, but it's nothing like American wrestling television. The halls were a bit different. They'd set up return matches for the following week much like the US territories did, and would add stips to matches. From memory, the wrestlers received their schedules from the Joint offices, which included TV dates. I'm not sure how the wrestlers got booked on TV. I'm not sure if you made TV because the taping date matched your travel itinerary, or because you were popular and in demand. Basically, the cards would have around 6 matches and they'd tape the entire show and split it into two broadcasts. They didn't show every match (and the matches were generally clipped), but the full shows exist in the ITV archives. There is some debate about how much footage survives, as some people claim some of the footage was destroyed in some sort of accident. I know for a fact that late 60s footage survives. There's also more 70s and 80s footage in the archives that wasn't shown on The Wrestling Channel. The hope is that someday the footage becomes cheaper and more accessible.

There were rules about what they were allowed to show on TV. In the halls, they often had blood and gimmick matches, but they weren't allowed to show these things on ITV. This type of wrestling had been prevalent before they introduced the Mountevans Rules in the late 40s/early 50s. They call it the "all in" style. Rival promoters Paul Lincoln and Brian Dixon often booked "all in" matches, billing it as the wrestling you couldn't see on television. The US worker Chris Colt had a match with Mick McMichael that they wouldn't air on ITV because it was deemed too violent, and once Dixon got his hands on Colt, he began promoting him as the man they wouldn't let you see on TV. What we consider classic WoS from the 70s was actually a down period for British wrestling. It had a brief shot in the arm from Daddy's popularity, but the early 70s stuff is a down period. The crowds vary from region to region, but they were always more interested in seeing the entertainers than the pure grapplers. Walton often puts over the grappling matches as matches for the purists, but if you listen carefully to Walton you can tell when he's frustrated by a wrestler's performance or a bad match. He had a subtle way of burying wrestlers when he wasn't impressed. The crowds are generally loud for the Big Daddy stuff, and for the loud mouth American heels like John Quinn. What's interesting about 1960s wrestling is that the crowd wear formal evening clothes. You get the impression that wrestling was so big in the 60s that it was like going to an evening show. The 70s crowds are much more casual. The uncut ITV vault footage often starts rolling the cameras pre-match and you get banter from Walton where he discusses the evening's crowd. There's one match where he talks shit about some eccentric woman who has brought some homemade gift she made for Wayne Bridges.

So, apparently Nicho no-showed this match and decided to take a Tijuana booking instead. CMLL decided to replace Nicho with Violencia from Los Boricuas. As you can imagine, the match was pretty flat without Nicho. Satanico is one of my all-time favorite workers, but he's not carrying a feud at this point simply because he's Satanico. I mean, he still has an incessant hatred for Damian 666, but it's not the burning hatred that he felt for Tarzan Boy or GdI. Perhaps a bigger problem is that we haven't really seen any chemistry develop between the Infernales. You cannot compare this incarnation of the Infernales to Satanico's pairing with Rey and Ultimo. There's nothing really exciting about Averno and Mephisto. That's kind of surprising given that Averno becomes one of Mistico's main rivals, but he's barely receiving a push here. Averno and Mephisto are almost on a hiding to nothing considering that Satanico had just won a hair match with Negro Casas as his partner. If they can't help Satanico take the trios titles from LFdT, they're gonna look pretty bad. No pressure, then.

Now that Satanico's dealt with those mouthy Japanese, he has a bone to pick with La Familia de Tijuana. He's got a memory like an elephant that Satanico. This match was an elaborate set up for an Infernales vs. La Familia de Tijuana feud. I'm not sure why Casas and Porky were even involved, but we did get to see Casas vs. Nicho, and who doesn't want to see Casas vs. Psicosis? Nicho works a different style from prime Psicosis, but it's still pretty cool. The match is mostly a slow burn. There are a lot of false starts in terms of the action. Casas appears to fake a hamstring injury, which I guess was meant to write him out of the feud. LFdT do a bunch of DX schtick before beating Satanico up three-on-one. Averno and Mephisto make the save, and we have a new storyline to sink our teeth into. Unfortunately, Nicho wound up no showing the following week's Arena Mexico show, which threw a spanner in the works. I was kind of hoping for one great Satanico vs. Nicho showdown. He does end up returning, so we'll see how it all plays out. Not a hot start, and far less polished than I'm use to from LFdT.

This was a fun piece of business. It was actually a return match from the week before (a match we didn't get to see.) It wasn't clear at first why Vampiro had a bug up his ass about Ultimo, but a replay from the week cleared things up. Ultimo had pinned Vampiro with his feet on the ropes ala Ric Flair. Vampiro was pissed and slapped Ultimo about, ripping his mask open. Lizmark scrapped with Bucanero, and Atlantis put up his dukes against Tarzan Boy. It was pretty fun. I thought Vampiro was feuding with Tarzan Boy, but I guess he has a beef with all three Guerreros. Looks like we're getting a tag title match, and look who Vampiro's partner is... freakin' Lizmark! The Mega Powers! Holee crap. Are you excited?

I'm not sure we needed to see this match up again, but both guys put in a decent shift. It was worked in a super simple style, but they ripped each other's masked open and made a go of it. I can't really complain too much about a throwaway Arena Coliseo match between heavyweights. There were certainly worse affronts in CMLL. There was a time when I probably would have expected more from Mr. Niebla, but it is what it is with Niebla.

And here we go, the match everybody's been waiting for. I liked the entrances for this. It was nothing like a traditional apuestas match. In fact, it was pretty much worked like a regular tag match. Still, there was a lot to like. The crowd was super into it because it was Mexico vs Japon. The fans in the tecnico section kept holding up their babies for everyone to see. I dunno if exposing your infant to that sort of noise is the wisest choice, but God bless 'em. It wasn't a vintage performance from either Satanico or Casas, and not something you'd use as evidence that Satanico was still a smart worker in '03 or that Casas was on fire for this little mini feud. But, if you were going to choose two dudes to represent Mexico then you could do a lot worse than Satanico and Casas. I liked that the continued the heat between Casas and Masada, and I also liked that there was a callback to Nosawa tying Satanico's leg to the ropes, which was what started this blood feud in the first place. It would have been nice if they'd been given more time, though it's always hard to tell how much gets cut in the edit. The work was tight, and I didn't have any complaints about it. Masada fouled the barber, which I don't think I've seen before. Casas wound up cutting his hair and screaming in his face. Chalk up another one for the good guys.

Phil Schneider mentioned the other day that he prefers Homicide to work bloody brawls, and can take or leave workrate Homicide. I haven't watched nearly as much Homicide as Phil or others, but personally, I was introduced to Homicide through his JAPW matches against Low Ki, and I kinda prefer East Coast representing, indy invader, Homicide to brawling Homicide. Ian Rotten refers to Homicide's work as "strong style," which may grate on people's nerves, but let's accept it for what it is -- hard hitting, stiff wrestling. Chris Hero is a cool dude, and a fine professional wrestler, but it felt like he was trying to wear too many hats at the same time by incorporating so many of his influences into his matches. He was this dude with an early Barry Windham build who was trying to copy all this cool stuff he'd seen on tape whereas Homicide felt like the finished article. Everything about Homicide, from his move set to the way he moved in the ring, matched his in-ring persona and the identity he'd cultivated for himself. That said, this was still a really good match even if Chris Hero was a bit over-exuberant about his stylistic influences. If it had one flaw, it was probably Hero's resurrection after Homicide killed him, but that's a hard thing to pull off unless you're a wrestling Jesus. Aside from the miraculous comeback, this was solid.

Eddie Guerrero defends the WWE United States Heavyweight Title I used to hate it when they'd announce a Triple Threat or Fatal Fourway match for a PPV, and I think it's worse when midcarders are involved. Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn't PPV matches be better than the matches you see on television? I know folks in 2003 weren't waiting three months to see these guys square off, but give us SOMETHING to distinguish it from a Smackdown match. Eddie's performance was disappointing. The Latino Heat stuff really undercuts his ringwork at times. Benoit worked his tail off. As usual, no-one bothered to tell him the match he was in was fucking useless and that he shouldn't work so hard. I would have preferred any variation of a singles match to this overbooked mess, but the match up that caught my eye was Benoit vs. Tajiri. It's a shame those two only ever met in a short RAW match. Eddie vs. Tajiri would have made sense too. That was a house show match up at the time, but of course they had to add all the bells and whistles for the cameras.

According to this article, Hall had some dirt on LeBell -- https://www.covertbookreport.com/judo-gene-lebell-was-once-charged-with-murder-intrigue/

I Quit Match: Barry Windham vs. Dick Slater (July 8th, 1984) @Eddie Graham Sports Stadium -- Windham was still a shitty talker here, but he had improved tremendously in the ring. This was closer to the '86-87 Windham I'm familiar with than the skinny ass version from the early 80s. Interesting booking too, as the face broke the heel's arm and put him out of wrestling temporarily. Good stuff. Barry Windham vs. Harley Race (Windham Pins Race!) (1983) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- this is a fairly well known match. Just the mention of it alone immediately makes me think of John McAdam's tapes page. It's a brilliant studio match. From Race's promo at the beginning through to the ending where he takes out Windham and Rhodes, it's as good a television segment as anything Flair ever did. The match is fantastic. Both guys blade. Great finish. Tremendous post-match. This is one of the highlights of the Florida footage. All-time great stuff. Barry Windham vs. Yoshi Yatsu (Harley Race Blows His Top) (Championship Wrestling From Florida 1983) -- Man, Yatsu is raw here, but full of energy. This was after Windham had pinned Race. Race spends the entire bout putting Windham over, then loses his shit when Windham approaches him after the bout. I haven't heard a commentator lose it that bad since Kent Walton got fired up at the Fleet Street magazines. Good stuff. Ric Flair: "I'm The Best Wrestler Alive Today!" (1985) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- Flair cuts a brilliant promo on Luger. “I’ve walked over better men at a bar to get to the restroom!” Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger (June 9th, 1986) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- I love me some Flair vs Luger, but this was a pretty wild angle where Luger pinned Flair to win the first fall and was beaten up by a bunch of heels during the rest period. Windham came to ringside on crutches to help Luger, but was attacked by Outlaw Ron Bass. Luger couldn't continue the match, which would have pissed me off to no end had I been in attendance. Flair cuts a promo in the locker room afterward. OK footage.

This was very deliberate, very slow paced, and very minimalist. I wonder if there was an edict at the time to tone things down, or if they were simply looking to avoid another Brock Shooting Star Press moment. It was extremely intense. I couldn't quite work out how the heel/face dynamic was supposed to work. Lesnar had done some awful things in the weeks leading up to the match, including brutalizing Zach Gowen, but he worked the match as an ultimate competitor. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear he was a babyface. It's funny because later on he became a lot more sadistic in the ring, but he clearly wasn't there yet. The wrestling was ok. I really want to like the Angle/Lesnar matchup more than I do, but it's not because of their wrestling. I don't think they bring out the best in each other persona-wise. Angle's not as interesting against Brock as he was against Benoit, and Brock is more fun wrestling big guys like Undertaker and The Big Show. At least that's how I see it.

This is nowhere near as good as the first Elimination Chamber. It's not bad given the talent involved, but the original match had much better performances from Jericho and Michaels and was far more suspenseful. It was notably shorter thanks to the early elimination of Nash and Goldberg going on his eliminating spree, but while that may have hidden some of their deficiencies as workers, it didn't help the drama much. Especially with Triple H hiding for most of the bout. Ordinarily, I'd be the first guy to defend The Game, but I thought the way Triple H and Evolution were booked here was extremely lame. I don't care about Goldberg going over. It would have made a nice finish to the bout, but I don't give two craps about him winning the title. What I do think is lame is the champion hiding for the majority of the bout and then delivering a post match beatdown to end the show. That's some lame ass NWO shit right there. I'm surprised Hunter didn't spray paint the bout and tell Goldberg the power lies with Hollywood. I can't understand finishing a RAW or Smackdown like this, but why would you want to end the PPV on such a sour note? Not a match with a lot of staying power post SummerSlam 2003.

The Great Bolo and Louie Miller vs. Wild Red Berry and Bud Curtis On any other night, I think Red Berry and Bud Curtis would have been the heels here, but the crowd seemed to hate Bolo more .This was almost like a handicap match since Bolo was tagging with his manager, long-time California promoter, Louie Miller. Bolo was no Destroyer, but he was a half-decent brawler. The match is a bit long for what it is, but Berry and Curtis do their best to keep it interesting. Berry cuts a promo afterward with the announcer, Bill Welsh. If you're never heard a Wild Red Berry promo before, it's basically verbal diarrhea. I'm not a huge fan of it myself. I actually preferred the clever interplay between Welsh and Bud Curtis, but if you like Berry's promo style, you can check him out on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. Lindsay Luther vs. Fred Atkins I've always wanted to see a Lindsay Luther match. Unfortunately, this is more of a boxing match than a wrestling match, as Lindsay gets a bit pissy after spending the better part of the match trapped in wrist and hammerlocks. I've never understood babyfaces who get upset because they were outwrestled by heels. Luther is pretty good at the boxing stuff, but between the headbutts and the bearhugs, I'm not sure that he was the wrestler I imagined him to be. It's hard to tell in a match like this where he spends the majority of the bout giving the heel a little payback. but aside from a great looking build, I didn't see a whole lot of wrestler in him. Not saying he looked bad, it's just that this style of match was a dime a dozen in the 50s.

I finished reading the complete 1960s Doom Patrol run. It gets a bit inconsistent towards the end, as most runs do when they're coming to a close, but remains a much beloved series. I still maintain that the backup origin stories are better than the lead features. In fact, I'm not sure the lead stories ever live up to their true potential. I'd be hard pressed to name the best story over the course of the entire series. They all blend together into a stream of wacky Silver Age goodness. In that respect, I don't think you can compare Drake's work to what Lee & Ditko or Lee & Kirby were doing. It's clearly a better series than second tier Marvel, but it's the characters that are the hook more so than the stories. Kirby's OMAC starts off with a brilliant first issue, tapers off after that, and goes out on an absolute whimper. That first issue is phenomenal, though. Fleisher and Aparo's Spectre is a lot of fun waiting to see what gruesome way the Spectre will kill the bad guys this month. It's a shame that DC didn't have the balls to keep publishing it. Make sure you check out the Wrath of the Spectre series to read Fleisher's final three stories. I read a couple of Gene Colan projects from the 80s. The 80s wasn't really the best time for Gene Colan work, but I was hoping to find some gems. First up was the Phantom Zone mini-series he did with Steve Gerber. I'm not entirely sure what the point of having a Phantom Zone mini-series was. It's entirely unrecognizable as a Gerber story, aside from some of the mystical elements. Superman is strangely aggro once he's released from the Phantom Zone. There's even a scene where he laments the fact he has a code against killing. It was interesting seeing Colan draw Superman, and some of the other DC superheroes, but largely pointless. Nathaniel Dusk seemed like it had more potential, as a pulp detective story is right up Colan's alley. It was okay, but I didn't like the coloring. The Shadow is not Bill Sienkiewicz' finest work. There's a reason why people don't talk about Bill Sienkiewicz' Shadow work. In six whole issues, there were only a handful of panels that impressed me, and the story is confusing as hell. Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such is much worse than the first Vertigo Jonah series. Felt completely pointless to me. I didn't appreciate the crude humor at all, even if I'm sure the West was more than likely full of it. Truman's version of Jonah is really ugly. There are times in the Fleisher run where Jonah would get filthy, and was in need of a bath and a shave, but he was never as grimy as Truman's Jonah. But again, it's an aesthetic they were going for. I did love Truman's old 1800s style photographs, though. I also finished Hellboy: Wake the Devil. I still don't get the appeal of Hellboy. I'm sure it gets better later on, but the writing isn't very strong in the first few series. Finally, Daredevil: End of Days. I'm not sure if this book is still canon. It was at the time it was released. Anyway, Daredevil is killed by Bullseye in the first issue, and Ben Urich goes on a long crusade to uncover the meaning of Daredevil's final word ala Jerry Thompson in Citizen Kane. The series has some ugly, but visual striking, artwork by Klaus Jansen and Bill Sienkiewicz. Unfortunately, the meaning of Daredevil's final word isn't that interesting, but it's a decent coda to Bendis' work on the character.

That Hogan/Kamala match is so good. I really need to watch the Killer Khan match.

This was pretty cool while it lasted, but it was mostly an angle to set up Lawler being Funk's partner in the MLW Wargames match. Lawler, unfortunately, was pulled from the Wargames show when the WWE caught wind of him appearing on MLW TV, which is a shame for us fans since this version of Lawler is far more interesting than commentator Lawler. Funk bleeding like a stuck pig while Lawler tried to take his eye out, and Lawler and Funk choking the life out of each other, were the highlights.

This got pretty good once the bleeding started, but I'd be amiss if I didn't point out Homicide's lousy selling. The dude was like a popup book on some of the major transitions. If we're going to take workers like Angle to task for that sort of behavior then I need to hold my boy accountable as well. Corino's selling was better, but I guess Corino is a better seller in general. Cool finish. It's a shame the ROH cameras couldn't catch it properly with too many bodies blocking the hard camera view. Not a bad match. I could go another round of these two.

Manami Toyota defends the AAAW Title Wow, this was really good. I thought Manami Toyota was washed up in GAEA, but nuh-uh. This was a really aggressive match with an element of spitefulness to it. To be fair, a lot of the credit should go to Satomura as that felt like more of a Meiko influence. Toyota vs. Toyota-clone matches generally aren't known for their aggression, though Toyota had ramped up her bitchiness and worked on her heel act over the years. I really liked Toyota's performance in this match. When she first started acting like a bitch in matches, it often felt like she was copying Mima Shimoda and Takako Inoue. Here, she was far more ruthless. Satomura's challenge for the title was different from a lot of the challenges we saw Meiko make as an up-and-comer, presumably because she'd been there before and was now challenging as a former champ. Toyota was hellbent on putting Satomura in her place and showing everyone in GAEA who the Queen Bee was. Prior to this, I would have said that Manami's jump to GAEA felt a bit like Bret in WCW, but she at least has this resume stuffer.