ohtani's jacket

The 5/91 Chono match is also very good, and a straight wrestling match too. Is it time to rewrite the narrative on 90s Fujinami?

Smarkschoice was very pro-Joshi. There was an entire forum devoted to Joshi and we wound up doing a separate list for women. I remember one poster working the forum by pretending to be Debbie Malenko. He told this great story about sneaking out of a birthday party to share a cigarette with Kyoko Inoue. Between '06 and '16, Joshi fandom became increasingly niche. The voters in 2016 weren't overly positive toward Joshi and there was no 80s set. It seems a lot of people are pro-women's wrestling these days. It looks like women in general will do better than in previous polls.

Breaks was versatile. He could wrestle technical bouts, work the light heavyweight style, brawl, do the cry baby act, and there were few better at carrying teenagers. If we had more footage of his early days, I think we'd see a more serious side to him. I am pretty sure he was a babyface when he got his big win over Mel Riss in '63. I would like to see some of his heel vs. heel stuff as well. Breaks vs. McManus sounds pretty wild: "They started wrestling, went hammer and tongs, ignored the ref, ignored the bells ending round one and two. And then I think they both got disqualified."

I recall her being very good at the Dump role during her time in All Japan. I liked her feud with Jackie Sato.

Omori is hurt by there not being a Joshi 80s set. Needs a reappraisal. Actually, she needs an appraisal before that. I have the vaguest of memories about her work against Chigusa and Lioness, but I can't remember if I was pro-Omori or not. I seem to remember her tag team with Hori being good as well. It's a shame that she wasn't interested in coming out of retirement in the 90s.

The only Miyahara match I've seen is one I saw live. He got the building to pop.

Beautiful wrestler. Every match of his is a gem. I wish we didn't have to rely so much on German handheld footage to see his matches, but from the stuff we have on tape, it's clear that he was good for a very long time.

This guy is absolutely phenomenal. Watching his matches was how tape traders must have felt in the 80s watching Tiger Mask and in the 90s watching Rey Mysterio, Jr. Absolutely one of the all-time great juniors, and not only because of his spots. He was a complete worker, a tremendous babyface, a brilliant seller, and he had a fantastic series of tags, six-mans and singles matches that are the high spot of 70s Catch. If he doesn't rocket into the top 100, I will be very surprised.

KAORU? Maeda Kaoru? The Aja match is amazing, I'll grant you that, but KAORU?

This ruled. How often does CMLL have two MOTYCs on the same show? And it wasn't even a PPV. This started off with a bunch of Mexico vs Japon cosplay with the entrances and turned into a high octane brawl. It was a mix of old school apuesta match brawling mixed with the more modern move oriented style. I was over the moon when Shocker bladed. I didn't think that was possible anymore in this era of CMLL, and I loved how committed everyone was to seeing things through to the end. The match never lost steam and Magica ended up having a star turn. I'll never doubt the Japanese guys on excursion again.

This was a hell of a match. Easily the best wrestling I've seen in the 2002 CMLL season aside from the Wagner vs. Shocker singles match. In fact, it was some of the best tag wrestling in lucha history at least in the televised era. In many ways, it was less about rudos vs. tecnicos and more about rising stars vs. lucha legends. It was wrestled clean with none of the bullshit that usually accompanies a GdI match. The momentum shifts were earned and the match was hard fought. The focal point was the excellent Santo vs. Guerrero match-up, but the heart and soul of the match were the emotional reactions from Casas and Bucanero. Santo was great in this. Guerrero was arguably better. They were smart in the way they traded falls and teased nearfalls, and created a match where there was legitimate suspense in the deciding fall. The finish wound up being fairly dramatic, and the impression I was left was that this was Ultimo Guerrero's breakthrough match was a future headliner. He looked like The Man here, and while his apuetas challenge with Santo never materialized it was a cool moment nonetheless.

I've been trying to watch as much Flair vs. Valentine as I can find as I freakin' love The Hammer. I generally prefer Flair as a heel, but I liked the segment he did where he ripped off Valentine's suit, and I thought he cut a good promo after Valentine broke his nose. They match-up nicely as well. Their work together reminds me of Flair vs. Garvin, although we have a better picture of the latter due to the amount of footage that's available.

That match with Hashimoto from '94 is pretty badass. Fujinami takes a hell of a beating and sells it beautifully. I would have liked to have seen a bit more offense since the offense he did get in looked great (especially the strikes), but Hashimoto's onslaught was a tough thing to stop. I'm guessing there are more cool old man performances from Fujinami that have slipped through the cracks.

I watched the 4/96 match against Asuka. Really good match despite it featuring the dreaded Asuka, although comeback Jaguar doesn't have quite the same aura as Yokota in her heyday. It seems to me that Jaguar is what you'd get if you took Manami Toyota and Akira Hokuto and meld them into a single wrestler, though I have to say there are also times where I think Itsuki Yamazaki is her true heir. I guess that shows her influential she was on the girls she had a hand in training or who learned from her. I learned today that she actually clashed with the Matsunagas over how to train new recruits. The Matsunagas didn't think it was necessary to train everyone and thought it was adequate if 1 in 10 became a star. Jaguar felt that everyone should receive the same training. I also learned that she competed in amateur wrestling after retiring the first time, which I thought was cool.

Can somebody recommend the best Rey matches since 2016? Thanks.

Devil had a solid twenty years or so as a good worker. She had good matches at each phase of her career and was excellent at the roles she played. I think my favorite era is when she jumped to JWP and became a matriarch of sorts. On regular JWP shows, she'd bully, stretch, and terrorize the girls, but when they competed against AJW there was no way she wanted her girls to lose to her old team. I also quite like her early heel run where she bullies Hagiwara all the time.

The Hennig match is good, but it's nowhere near a classic. I will say that I thought Hansen did a great job of selling for a guy, who to my mind, is not the most credible brawler. I also loved all of his little adlibs. I didn't like the finishing stretch much, and I thought Hennig was kind of mediocre overall, but it was a pretty good studio match. To consider it a classic, it would need to have something that elevated it over other great studio matches and I didn't see that at all.

This was the first time I've seen Ian Rotten. I loved how hard fought this was. It was rough around the edges and a little bit amateur at times, but you couldn't fault the intensity. Both guys put a huge emphasis on the pain being inflicted and there was some great selling both vocally and in applying the holds. This is the kind of stuff I like to see from the indy backwaters.

This began with a contract signing for a hair vs. hair match and turned into an excellent match. Easily one of the best lead-in matches to an apuestas match that CMLL has ran since probably the big cage match at the end of 2001. Blue Panther was on hand to expertly guide the Japanese guys through the match, but I'm gonna eat my words here -- I talked shit about the Japanese guys touring Mexico, which was something I didn't wanna see at all, but these guys have taken to lucha like Fuchi and Onita took to Memphis. I am super excited for the hair match, which I hope doesn't lead to huge disappointment. Shocker is starting to stake his claim for 2000 Lucha WOTY. He's really begun flexing his working chops the past few weeks. If he keeps this up, there's no stopping him. Magica is doing okay in his role too, and like I said, the Japanese guys get it without having to play sneaky, stereotypical Japanese heel roles. And as an added bonus, we get a little Satanico vs. Panther, which is like two galaxies colliding. I'm amped.

This was an excellent match. Honestly, it's night and day between this and their return match, I guess that boils down to the circumstances. Toyota was going over here so she was happy to let Ito shine whereas in the return match was dropping the title on her way out. The return match is odd because they usually have excellent matches together. One thing I've noticed about Ito recently is that although she put on weight over the years, she wasn't very tall and not really that big in the traditional sense. She just wrestled big. I swear her footstomp is one of the most brutally effective moves in the history of professional wrestling. It doesn't matter how many times I see her do it, it always leaves me in awe. Toyota brought her usual bag of tricks. Don't expect a leopard to change its' spots this far into its career. If you can appreciate the totality of a Manami Toyota match and don't get caught up in the details then you'll enjoy this. Coupled with the great Momoe/Maekawa match from the same show, this show makes the highpoint of the 2000-2001 AJW revival with things going downhill from here. Great pair of matches to go out on.

Well, we can safely add 'fun TV match worker' to Low Ki's resume. I could have done without the Mike Tenay treatment, but the action was top notch.

I have a thread in the Microscope covering 70s and 80s New Japan. I recommend checking out his matches against Strong Kobayashi and Sakaguchi. To me, Sakaguchi is one of the most legitimately underrated workers in wrestling history. I also recommend his work against Thesz and his worked shoot matches. If you liked the Markoff match, check out his matches against Killer Karl Krupp. I am pretty sure he has at least one decent Andre match as well.

Fit Finlay vs. Alex Wright (Wein '94) This was a year removed from their other Wein matches. Wright has grown as a wrestler and gets the better of Finlay during the early exchanges. Finlay takes over and does his thing, but it's aborted due to a run-in from Schumann. I was hoping for something better.

I was curious about that KAORU match from '94. It was okay, but a little rough around the edges and very much in the vein of midcarder trying to have a great match.

You need to watch the Yagi matches pronto. I think there's another Fukawa match as well. You also need to see the Megumi Fuji match.