ohtani's jacket

Really? I love WCW Jesse. He had tremendous chemistry with Schiavone and personal, legitimate animosity with Ross. I can't think of a moment where he was bad. I love Heenan, but he had zero charisma with Schiavone. I feel like different people want different things from their commentators. It's almost like folks having different tastes in their standup comedians. I like Vince by himself. I hate him later on. I like Gorilla with Heenan. I hate him with anyone else. I love Jesse with everybody. I'm indifferent towards Solie. I have a love/hate relationship with JR. I adore Lance Russell and Kent Walton. I can't stand Akira Fukuzawa, but I love David Crockett. I also have a soft spot for Bob Caudle. We've had Spanish speakers in the past shit on Dr. Alfonso Morales and some of the lucha commentators. Announcing is an acquired taste.

It’s a Kinks album.

I finished up the Dark Ages storyline in Astro City. The Silver Agent special was really moving. Not ashamed to say I got a bit teary-eyed at the end. The next series was really jarring, though. That Broken Man character and the manga chibi character that I can't say I really appreciated (felt like a stereotypical representation of manga/anime to me, though I'm sure it wasn't meant as a swipe at the culture.) For all the talk of Dark Ages being difficult to get through, the new series is the one that has caught me off guard. Still going strong with Starman. It drifts from time to time with crossovers and flashbacks, but when it focuses on the core relationships between the characters and doesn't try to be too hip, it's as solid a superhero title as I've read in a mighty long time. It's interesting because I'm still not sure if I like the lead character or not, but I love the world around him. Jonah Hex has been enjoyable. When Michael Fleisher came on board, he fleshed out Hex's backstory a bit, but the title is still largely episodic. I can accept that, though it does become repetitious if you binge read it. I try not to read too much of it at a time. Buscema is starting to get into his stride on Conan, although I sometimes feel like his Conan looks too old. I felt the same way about Buscema's Wolverine, who looked ancient when he drew him in Marvel Comics Present and the solo title. I wasn't aware of the backlash over Buscema taking over from Smith. For a guy who is largely accepted as the definitive Conan penciller, he wasn't well received in the beginning. Roy Thomas even addressed it the letters page, giving a lengthy response to a fan who complained bitterly about the change. Micronauts kind of fell off a cliff. Apparently, there was some type of conflict between Shooter, Mantlo and Golden over whether Micronauts should be set in the Marvel Universe. Golden lost interest in the book when Shooter and Mantlo got their wish and had Marvel characters appear. The book lost some of its intrigue after that, though I didn't mind the Man-Thing appearance, and Man-Thing is a title I have been struggling to get through. It's really hard to get into a book where the main character can't think or feel. Gerber's satire does nothing for me at this point, and I honestly wish the book was a creepy gothic horror like the Man Thing story in Savage Tales. I guess I wish it was Swamp Thing. Speaking of Gerber, am I a philistine or is Howard the Duck not very funny? I began reading All-Star Squadron again, sort of inspired by the use of Golden Age characters in Starman. I know it's a loving tribute to Golden Age characters, but I can only read a little bit at a time because of the tone. I guess I cut my teeth on grim superheroes and have never really warmed to more wholesome stuff. I've been slowly making my way through Mark Waid's run on Flash. So far I've really enjoyed the arc where Barry Allen returned and I also liked the storyline where Wally had a meltdown over not being able to save that woman from horrific injuries, but aside from that I don't really see what's so special about Waid's run. I enjoyed the Baron and William Messner-Loebs' runs far more. That is partly due to nostalgia as I used to hunt for those runs in secondhand bookstores when I was a kid (my primary means of tracking down back issues before I discovered that comic book stores existed, which incidentally was a glorious day in my life.) Waid's run feels generic in comparison and the art has become really cartoony. Aside from that, I have been re-reading 60s Doom Patrol, which is one of my favorite titles from the Silver Age, and I am making my way through the 5 Year Later run of Legion of Super-Heroes, though I still don't understand what's going on. That book used to intrigue me whenever I'd go to the comic book store and pick up that free Direct Currents newsletter. It was a book I also wanted to get into, but it was one of the expensive titles. I cannot understand what is going on from one issue to the next. The last time I read it, it was after going through the famous Legion runs, and I don't remember being this confused.

This was my first time to see a Super Dragon match. I thought the match was pretty weak, choreographed, and unconvincing, and I don't get the Super Dragon gimmick. What is he meant to be? An American guy trying to dress like Great Sasuke?

Cheri Bibi & Pierre Bernaert vs. Rene Ben Chemoul & Mic Charre (aired 7/22/60) Fairly standard long form tag. This isn't my favorite style of catch. It gets better when Bibi and Bernaert start delivering a beating, but I got more enjoyment out of crowd watching than the action in the ring. I think this was our first look at Mic Charre. It was hard to get a gauge on him since it was a formula match, but I guess he played his part all right. Some of the spectators needed cooling down so I guess you'd have to chalk this up as a success. Better heel work from the Convicts, but again, Ben Chemoul was nothing special.

A match against Kimura would have taken place in the 80s. Outside of the WWF, how many good matches did Bret have in the 80s? I've never seen a good 80s Bret Hart match from Calgary, WoS or Japan. From memory, Bret started to have good singles matches against the likes of Steamboat and Savage in '86-87 and then started to break out in '89 with matches against Hennig and Dibiase. It's possible that he could have had a good match with Kimura around that time, but I wouldn't bet on it. Bret didn't really come into his own until his IC runs where he really started developing the Hitman character. Bret Hart the worker, with no Hitman character, was pretty boring. Calgary Bret Hart. on excursion in New Japan, is gonna have an exciting match with Kimura? I don't see it. Ironically, the best Calgary match I've seen was Dynamite Kid vs. Fujinami. Even if you're talking about Bret in his prime vs. Kimura, it's still far removed from the WWF environment that Bret was so entrenched in. We used to have these discussions back in the day about whether Bret would have been great in WCW if he'd jumped in '92 and I have my doubts. I think he was a real dyed-in-the-wool WWF worker. I've never had a problem with Fujinami's fire or character work. He's always been a pretty emotive worker dating back to his juniors days. I can see it being boring for folks, I guess. Bret wasn't hugely emotive, either. He was more subtle and nuanced than a lot of acclaimed workers. Sometimes it felt realistic, sometimes mechanical. It's not like we're coming Fujinami and Terry Funk.

I remember enjoying St. Valentine Day’s Massacre, but I hated it when Vince won the title.

No, Fujinami couldn't have pulled off the double turn or the feud with Austin, but he had equally famous rivalries of his own with Inoki and Choshu. If you put Bret in a Japanese match, it would suck. I have no faith in the idea that Bret would be interesting in Japan.

Japon vs. Mexico. This was pretty weak. It was something different, I guess. At least it gave Casas something to do. He seemed more energized than his usual second wheel in a midcard trios appearance. His exchanges with Black Tiger were good, but the trouble with Casas is that you expect something special.

I am a fan of hers. I also like Yumi Ikeshita from that era. If you watch enough of it, you pretty much get into everybody -- Victoria Fujimi, Nancy Kumi, Mami Kumano, Lucy Kayama, and a little bit later girls like Mimi Hagiwara, Jumbo Hori, Tarantula. You should definitely check out Jackie Sato vs. Jaguar Yokota. One girl that has a big rep who we have almost nothing from is Mariko Akagi.

It's too bad there was never an 80s Joshi set. Girls like Nagahori, Ogura, Condor Saito, etc. need more exposure.

What's the word on this Andre/Terry Rudge match?

Cap is disturbed.

I chose Fujinami because I think his 70s and 80s stuff is better than what Bret did in the 80s and 90s. I also think Fujinami's NJPW vs. WAR and MUGA stuff is better than Bret's final run in WCW. If you were to offer me a newly discovered Fujinami match over a newly discovered Bret match, I would take the Fujinami match any day of the week. I love Bret. He was one of my heroes growing up, but I feel like I've closed the book on him. It's difficult for me to imagine a new Bret match that would excite me. Perhaps a newly discovered Owen match or something with Hennig. I guess an Austin match, but less so.

Thanks for that info, Beast. I finished Red Nails. It's a classic no doubt, but what I really want to draw attention to was Roy Thomas saying it might be the last issue of Savage Tales. It really does seem like they had trouble publishing these magazine format comics, which is a shame because they are a clear precursor to the rise of independent comics, graphic novels, and comics for mature readers. If that trend had begun earlier we would have seen some amazing creator driven stuff in the 70s.

Does the book say Jumbo entered Chuo in '69? Jumbo was born in March of '51, so he should have entered University in April of '69, unless he failed his exams and went through a year of prep school. Assuming he finished his degree, and I've never heard anything to the contrary, he should have graduated University in March of '73. He left for Texas on March 22nd, 1973, which would have been shortly after his graduation ceremony. I have no idea what was going on with Chuo University club politics from 1969-73. I have read that Jumbo didn't think he had a future as a professional basketball player, which was one of the reasons why he ditched the sport. It seemed he was interested in making a living from sport at the time. The reason I suspect he faced some opposition from the wrestling club, regardless of what his teammate says, is the fact that he had to join the Self Defense Forces club, which was in Saitama and unaffiliated with the University. Just to save face with the Chuo basketball club? I have my doubts. Ultimately, he proved good enough to make the Olympics despite picking the sport up a few years out from Munich, which is extraordinary if you think about it, but by the same token, he wasn't as good a basketball player as people make out. Meltzer, in his usual overblown way, tries to compare Jumbo to top US college basketball players of the same era. I am pretty sure Jumbo realized he had no future in basketball, at least to the level that he wanted to pursue it. The Japanese basketball team actually ended up making the '72 Olympics, which is one of the few times Japan has qualified for Olympic basketball. What I would like to know is that if Mr. Pogo wasn't Jumbo's rival on the wrestling team, who was the wrestler who opposed Jumbo? Some sources say Pogo dropped out of Chuo after the first year, so it can't have been him.

I'm pretty sure that Jumbo didn't attend Chuo University on a basketball scholarship. Wikipedia says he entered The Faculty of Law at Chuo University through the entrance examination. My understanding is that he was rejected from the wrestling team because he was seen as a quitter. Jumbo didn't see basketball as a viable pathway to the Olympics and thought wrestling offered him a better chance because there was less competition for places. You can imagine how that went over with the wrestlers.

I finished up the Squadron Supreme mini-series today. Lots of interesting ideas about superhero comics in keeping with what a lot of the British writers were doing in the 80s. I can see the parallels with Watchmen except that the writing and artwork is obviously superior in Watchmen. The thing that kept bugging me is that even though I enjoyed the way Thomas used the Squadron Supreme in the Avengers, what's the point in introducing these DC copies into the Marvel Universe? If the DC characters are so iconic, and you want to work with them so desperately, then why not jump ship and work for the opposition? I get that Gruenwald used the characters, and their alternate universe, to tell the kind of story he couldn't with the Avengers or the Fantastic Four, but the entire concept of the Squadron Supreme is strange to me. And I say that as someone who loves Astro City and all of the homages/tributes in that series.

When they brought Savage Tales back it was as a Conan mag, and then a Ka-Zar mag. They didn't continue the stories that they'd started in the first issue.

The first few issues of John Buscema's run on Conan the Barbarian were a bit rough, but I liked issue 27 enough that I decided to keep reading the book. I was still hankering for some Barry Smith Conan, though, so I read the first issue of Savage Tales. I'm pretty sure the Frost Giant's Daughter story was printed in Conan the Barbarian, Savage Sword of Conan and Savage Tales, but it's a nice short story. What really impressed me was how good the rest of Savage Tales was. An anthology with Barry Smith, John Romita, Gray Marrow, Gene Colan, and John Buscema doing non-Comic Code art? It's a travesty that it was cancelled after the first issue. It could have been an amazing outlet for Marvel's finest to do mature comic book work. Sure, the stories are full of scantily clad women, and Stan Lee has some weird sexual politics going on in his stories, but I don't think Man-Thing was ever better than the origin story in Savage Tales #1. Maybe I'm a sucker for the black and white art, but it felt closer to Bernie Wrightson's Swamp Thing than the Man-Thing stories that followed. I also started reading Michael Golden's run on Micronauts which has been supremely fun. It doesn't feel like a Marvel comic at all. I feel like I'm reading an 80s independent publisher like First or Comico.

I liked this a lot. Mutoh is a divisive figure in wrestling, but there's plenty of worse shit out there than shaven-head, no-knees Keiji Mutoh. It's kind of interesting to look back on these matches without caring about the split and what All Japan had become. What may have been lamentable decades ago comes across, at times, like a bright spot in a dead wrestling scene. I loved the arm work in this match. I'm not a big limb work guy, but I thought the arm work here was really engaging. It gave Mutoh something to target with those relentless dropkicks of his, and of course, Tenryu sold it beautifully. I actually don't mind Mutoh's nonstop dropkicks. At least he goes all out and pummels guys. To me it's no different from nonstop elbow strikes or lariat-based offense. Speaking of which, Tenryu made a cool comeback with the lariat after Mutoh blew his chances of winning the match by thrashing his poor old knees on pointless moonsault attempts. Should have kept working on the arm, Keiji. Opinion on this match doesn't seem to be very high, but I liked it more than their Tokyo Sports MOTY headscratcher.

Black Tiger is back. Haven't seen him in a while. This was billed as CMLL vs. New Japan. I'm not sure which is worse, Japanese guys trying to do lucha triple-team spots or the posing they do afterward. I was kind of hoping that Shibata would do some shoot style stuff, but actually, the match was much better when the Japanese guys did their regular spots instead of trying to play at lucha. This was better than the first match with Takemura. I was at least a little bit interested in seeing Shibata in CMLL since he's a guy whose work I've liked in the past. He was over-emoting the entire time, but he had some fun exchanges with Niebla. I thought Shocker would be slightly better against the Japanese guys with all of his experience working the Super Juniors, but he didn't shine. I really expected Shocker to be my lucha WOTY for 2002, but aside from one or two matches, he hasn't impressed.

Some young Japanese guys were on excursion in Mexico during this month. I don't like seeing Japanese guys in my lucha, but I'll try to keep an open mind about it since they're here all month. This rudos trio had no chemistry whatsoever. Takemura spent the entire match following the others around, trying to figure out what to do. Third wheels can usually make do in a trios match, but the Mexican guys seemed uninspired. Rey Buncero phoned in it, Casas as a tecnico is starting to bore me, and even Atlantis vs. Wagner failed to deliver. Wataru Inoue attacked Casas at the end of the match, which Wagner and Rey weren't happy about, so I guess Japan vs. Mexico will be the theme for the month with rudos and tecnicos teaming together to defend their country's honor.

Robert Duranton vs. Michel Chaisne (aired 6/3/60) Duranton is doing a Gorgeous George gimmick here but doesn't go all in. There's not even a hint of anything promiscuous. It's pretty tame really. Duranton wrestles the same as he did before. Personally, I think he's an average worker. I guess he's decent for a big man. It's a notion worth entertaining, but compare this to the Lasartesse showcase. Duranton's holds look better than Lasartesse's, but who delivered the better match? Chaisne wasn't great here, but his comeback centered around a weak spot with the valet. The match fell apart from there and turned into a squash. It was hard to say anything good about it when there were other workers doing the same gimmick better, and big men with more talent than Duranton.