ohtani's jacket

Indeed.

Steady on young fella! Jaguar was a phenomenal pro-wrestler, who is completely overlooked these days, but she had contemporaries. Not only in Joshi, but look at some of the other talent from that era -- Fujinami, Hara, Marty Jones, Marc Rocco, Fit Finlay, Dynamite Kid, Mile Zrno, Franz van Buyten, Steve Grey, Jim Breaks, Jon Cortez, and God knows how many luchadores. In Jumbo's defense, those were all lighter wrestlers. The primary comparison for Jumbo ought to be heavyweights, and the big tick he gets there is that he had a much bigger arsenal than a lot of his contemporaries because of how many suplexes he was allowed to use. Which is great if you like suplexes, but if you prefer mat wrestling then you're out of luck. I'm an outlier, but at this point I'd rather watch some worked BS MMA match between Inoki and a martial artist than watch Jumbo channel the NWA heavyweight style. But in all honesty, it probably comes down to Jaguar's glare vs. that dumb look of disbelief that Jumbo always has.

SWS was fascinating. The amount of money Tanaka spent was sickening. Most folks' natural reaction is to suspect it was a tax write-off, but whatever it was, it was exorbitant. At first, it seemed like Tanaka wanted to create a rival to the UWF (perhaps when he couldn't buy the existing one), then it morphed into some kind of idea where Japanese wrestling would merge into one entity. From a personal viewpoint, Tanaka giving Fujiwara a loan was one of the reasons why UWF split up, which pisses me off because the UWF was one of my favorite all-time promotions. But, on the other hand, they would have split up anyway, and Tanaka helped bankroll PWFG, which we're forever grateful for. Another rumour I read was that SWS were targeting Fujinami.

This was Manami Toyota's final match in AJW. It's fitting that it was against Ito as she was Toyota's last major rival. It's not the best or most exciting match the two had, but it more less delivered down the stretch. The match layout was a bit funny with Ito dominating the majority of the bout and Toyota trying to work heel against a crowd that was clearly in her corner. Since she was leaving, it might have been better for her to drop the heel façade and embrace the crowd reaction more. Ito had this really ugly colour scheme going on, which I personally found off-putting, and basically large chunks of the match felt awkward until they hit the stretch run. After the match, Toyota cut a promo telling the crowd she was leaving, which was a shock for the folks in attendance. Then she limped to the back in what was an unceremonious end to one of the great AJW careers. I don't know how management or the other wrestlers felt about Toyota leaving, but Ito and Toyota did not acknowledge each other at all after the bout, which I thought was odd. It makes me wonder if the match was off because of conflicting emotions.

I'm glad Satanico is still active. I was kind of bummed to find out about Tenryu's health problems.

It's all hearsay, but Tenryu offered to double Misawa's salary and when Misawa said he was happy with his current situation, Tenryu told him to forget about it because it was discussed over drinks. Another story is that when Baba was willing to work with WAR on the condition that Tenryu apologize on his knees to Misawa and the other wrestlers. Tenryu was willing to do so for Baba but not the others.

In 2006, I voted for Jaguar Yokota. I abstained last time round but it probably would have come down to Satanico, Fujiwara or Jim Breaks. If you asked me today, I would lean towards a more historical candidate like Thesz or Londos. When the results came out last time, I realized I had seen very little older footage so I devoted a lot of time to watching 30s-50s footage. But to move a bunch of those guys onto the list, I'd have to take a bunch of guys off. I like the idea of a list that grows and changes depending on viewing habits. I see it more as a personal statement than a carefully considered, well-reasoned ballot.

To me, a more interesting story is the rumour that Tenryu tried to get Misawa to leave All Japan. Imagine how that would have changed the course of things.

There should be a rule where you vote in reverse, so Bryan is your #100 and Porkchop Cash is your #1. I would freaking love that.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the way I remember it was that after Jumbo died there was a renewed interest in his work, particularly among my generation who had come to All Japan late (around '99 or so.) I don't remember the timeline precisely but there were some Memorial tapes released and people began sharing the Classics footage. I remember Dean reviewing Jumbo vs. Harley in DVDVR, for sure. jdw had written his pimping post and there were people going through the TV based on his advice. Jewett had also made a Tenryu vs. Jumbo comp covering their '88-90 matches. So basically there were people watching Jumbo matches from all eras and a lot of us discovering his work for the first time. My recollection is that it leaned strongly towards his 70s and 90s work, but I could be wrong. In any event, people were watching Jumbo.

Well, every Thesz match that is uncovered is a big deal regardless of how good the match is because of the scarcity of footage whereas the impact of Ishii having so many 4 star matches is diluted by how many high rated matches New Japan has in general. Personally, I don't have a problem with someone pushing Ishii as a candidate. That's something I'd expect. But I think you really need to tell folks, "Here are his five best matches, go check them out" instead of raving about how much stuff he's done. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what the best Ishii match is. You need to lay it out for folks the way Jimmy did with Cena and Rey Mysterio Jr during the last poll. At the end of the day, people are still going to compare their impression of Ishii to their impression of Thesz. I'm not if volume of matches will sway folks one way or the other. I would actually kind of dig a list that Thesz and Ishii on it. That would be cool. I really hope Jumbo doesn't finish number one, or Flair, or Funk, or any of those boring choices.

Baba was aware of the decline of the territories by the late 80s. If I'm not mistaken, AJPW, NJPW and SWS were all courting the TV and SWS won out in the end. NJPW then struck up a working relationship with WCW leaving Baba with the foreigners who had no where else to go.

Wakamatsu city government refers to Ichimasa Wakamatsu.

I found an article about the Mutoh situation and ran it through DeepL for y'all:

Sakaguchi was the president of New Japan at the time. He has a sterling reputation as New Japan president. He basically cleaned up the financial mess the company was in. He learned bookkeeping, mortgaged his own house, gained the trust of financial institutions, and began paying off the debt that occurred under Inoki. He also had a strong relationship with TV Asahi. So strong, in fact, that they didn't reduce New Japan's broadcast spot until after Sakaguchi retired as president.

This was Benoit's first match back from his neck injury. It's impossible to overstate the impact that Benoit and Kobashi's injuries had on the wrestling landscape during the time that they were sidelined. They were two of the most important clogs in wrestling before before getting hurt. You don't get a feel for that here because they slot Benoit into a midcard program, but he shows plenty of intensity, particularly in the way he dismantles the Dudleys after the bell. He'd go on to do more important stuff before the year was out. Eddie still looked awkward here. It's amazing how long it took for him to be a confident WWE performer. it's easy to blame that sort of thing on the environment, the politics, and the backstage manipulators, but there are also times when a guy's confidence is shot, and Eddie had that look about him to me.

This was a very good trios match. I liked the way it opened with two solid falls of action instead of having the rudos go through the motions. There were no weak links here and the pairings were extremely good. At one point, Tarzan Boy appeared to botch a spot. If it was botched, then his recovery was one of the best I've seen in a while as he turned it into a brilliant comedy spot. My favorite sequence in the match was when Casas and Ultimo forgot where they were and started potatoing each other as though it were CMLL Japan. This was well on the way to being one of the better matches of the year when they opted for a crappy finish. Ultimo Guerrero and crappy finishes are pretty much synonymous in this era, so not a huge surprise. I wasn't super excited about CMLL going back to this match-up again, but this was high quality stuff.

It's not every day you see Dr Wagner wrestle Nishimura in Arena Coliseo. They wrestle for a bit, like you'd hope, but it's not very polished. Eventually, Nishimura is forced to start acting like a rudo, and the match turns into a brawl between Shocker & Magica vs. Masada & Takemura, but I guess there is some novelty in seeing Wagner vs. Nishimura in a CMLL ring. I just wished their exchanges had been slicker.

Aside from the obvious ones like Andre and Carpentier, the big bodybuilder types had runs in the USA -- Drapp, Duranton, Mortier and Voiney. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. From what I understand, most French workers worked in France, Spain, Germany, England and a few other countries like Belgium and Switzerland. I'm not sure how many of them made it to Japan. UK heavyweights worked countries like South Africa, Iraq, India, Pakistan, etc., but the French guys mostly struck to Europe. They regularly worked in the UK at least through the 60s to early 70s. One of the most famous UK matches we have on tape is actually Jacky Corn wrestling under his real name against Billy Howes.

Fujinami is like one of those classic sports anime characters that will stop at nothing to reach their dream. As a rookie valet, he was obsessed with Inoki to the point where Inoki would joke that Fujinami knew more about him than his wife did. When he came back from abroad, he instantly rose to the number three star behind Inoki and Sakaguchi. He was young, handsome, had a good body, did flashy moves but was also grounded in Gotch's technique. He was a truly impressive wrestler in his youth. He was not only a stylish junior, he worked strong style, he could brawl, fight, bleed, you name it. What makes the Fujinami vs. Choshu feud so great is that even though Choshu is the rebel who's hellbent on tearing down the system, and Fujinami comes across as Inoki's lapdog, or what have you, Fujinami shows some balls by using Choshu's finisher, which was considered rule-breaking at the time. You also have the narrative of his title matches against Inoki from the 80s, and the fact that NJPW probably would have collapsed if he'd jumped ship along with everyone else. He won the Tokyo Sports MVP in '85 for that very reason. The biggest criticism I could make of him is that he changed very little about his persona or even his wrestling style from the moment he debut until whenever his most recent bout was. He has some fun post-prime performances in the WAR feud and the classic MUGA bout, but he didn't adapt quite the same as guys like Jumbo, Mutoh or Kobashi.

The best pure wrestlers are Leduc, Drapp and Jacky Corn, and the best showmen are Delaporte, Inca Peruano, Jack de Lasartesse, and Liano Pellacani. Le Petit Prince should absolutely be on the list and is a contender for the greatest junior of all-time. Other top wrestlers include Modesto Aledo, Jean Corne, Rene Gerber, Michel Saulnier, Al Araujo, Ami Sola, Albert Sanniez, Georges Cohen, and Isha Israel.

I thought this was pretty damn great and made me want to check out everything else these two did during 2002. Hoshikawa seems like he should have the size to smother Sakata, but Sakata picks him apart. Great finish.

BTW, check this out:

Jumbo and Yatsu were called Gorin Konbi, which directly translated means Olympic Combination. In Japanese, the kanji used for the Olympics is "Gorin", which stands for five rings. As NintendoLogic mentioned, they were partnered together because they had both competed at the Olympics (Jumbo at Munich and Yatsu at Montreal), hence why they wore the black jackets with the Olympic symbol and moto. Jumbo needed a new partner after his tag team with Tenryu broke up. I believe they tried to stick him with Wajima at first and then he had a run with Tiger Mask. After Japan Pro Wrestling dissolved, Yatsu joined All Japan and began tagging with Jumbo straight away.

Wagner, Casas & Shocker is a hell of a trio. They could have easily overpowered the 'Japon' trio here, but credit where credit's due, I was actually impressed with how well the Japon team did. My first thought was that Tarzan Boy wasn't good enough to hold up his end of the stick like Black Tiger had been doing, but he was good here. Not only that, but the Japanese lions were perfectly good foils. They kept up with everything the superstar luchadores were trying to do and their timing was on point. This turned into a pretty exciting match with the Mexico trio trying to outdo each other with every exchange. If Shocker keeps up this form, he'll take out the 2002 Lucha WOTY without question. The match broke down into a huge pier six with all of the Japanese rookies brawling with the CMLL locker room, but even that felt fresh and something you don't see every episode. The Japanese rookies were really good at mugging and acting tough just like a Japanese high school gang. I guess this tour is better than I expected.