[WRESTLING ON THE INTERNET NOT FROM THE NOW]

Now, pre-Colonel DeBeers locking up with young boy Takashi Ishikawa is some good stuff. Wiskoski's booked as a fairly big deal there but whenever I saw him pop up in Mid-South during 1982 he was nothing more than a jobber. Kinda curious to track down more matches of his from that 78-85 stretch to see how he fared in other territories.

On that note, this also ruled:

 

[JUNE 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION]

On 6/9/2020 at 1:33 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

The term Shitenno itself comes from Buddhism and was later used to describe famous groups of retainers and Samurai generals. Later on, it was used for judokas. I think it's a bit silly referring to wrestlers as Shitenno, but apparently the fans and media have done it since the 60s when Inoki, Baba, Oki and Yoshimura were considered Japanese Pro-Wrestling Shitenno. The Japanese magazines do love naming everything. They had a name for the Tsuruta vs. Tenryu feud -- The Tsururyu Confrontation (or Crane Dragon Confrontation) based on the nickname for the Tsuruta/Tenryu tag team (Crane Dragon Combi or simply Crane Dragon.) 

Were they Tsururyū Combi at some point then? I've only ever heard the name as Kakuryū Combi (same Kanji, I know)

Edit: read their Wikipedia page to find out more info, and found this. Forgive my translation:
 

Quote

なお、鶴龍を「かくりゅう」と読むことについて鶴田は当初不満があったらしく、TVやプロレス雑誌のインタビューで「俺は鶴田（つるた）だから『つるりゅう』だ」と言っていたが、語呂の良さから「かくりゅう」が定着した。
Regarding Kakuryū being read as Kakuryū, Tsuruta seemed initially dissatisfied by the name but stated on TV and in wrestling magazines "because I am Tsuruta, I was calling us Tsururyū but since Kakuryū sounds nicer, I've decided on that instead".

He's not wrong.

[Puroresu General Discussion for 2020]

That Kiyoshi Tamura clip is magnificent. What a pop! I love Tamura's deep bowing. He always came across (and still does in his YouTube videos these days) as a very humble guy.

[Puroresu General Discussion for 2020]

I wonder why Hayashi did not end up in NOAH/DDT, but I wish his new group well. There aren't really any big names left from the Wrestle-1 closure that haven't already been snapped up. I expected guys like Koji Doi and Ganseki Tanaka to wander around the indy circuit but it seems they might have a place to land after all, so that's nice.

[Puroresu General Discussion for 2020]

1 hour ago, Oyaji said:

As I said, this is largely arbitrary but the difference was never whittled down to black trunks v Tanahashi hair, it was more about mentality and approach to matches. Even Tiger Mask seemed like an ornery bastard on the best of days and wrestled a flashy yet aggressive style. Compare that to high flyers of today who are often times more gymnasts performing thrilling exhibitions of athleticism rather than trying to hurt their opponent and I think you get more to Suzuki's original point. Showa era wrestlers, according to his argument that I'm sure I'm butchering, saw wrestling as a job, largely did not grow up as fans, and wrestled with anger and violence. Compare that to wrestlers from the Heisei era, particularly with wrestlers who were trained well after the transition period of the early '90s, and almost all of them grew up wrestling fans (Nakamura speaks in his book to so many of the amateur wrestlers in high school and college being pro wrestling fans and it being a natural course to go from amateur to pro) and work a style more built around dramatic stories building to finisher dances instead of a simulated fight. 

There are holes in that thesis, of course, but as a general look at the zeitgeist of wrestling in Japan, I think it works. Again, look at Kensuke Sasaki and compare him to Tenzan and Kojima. It's not just the garish costumes, it's the goofy mannerisms and character work. Kojima is a lovable bread dad now but his nickname is Cozy (yes, I understand "Koji" -> "Cozy"). There is nothing cozy about Kensuke Sasaki except his flowing mullet I imagine would've been cozy. The Mongolian chop vs. an actual chop.

Could it be that the general mindset of the average Japanese fan at this time was losing faith in the idea that pro wrestling was as legitimate as they had initially thought? Thus forcing the competitors to adapt, in this case taking greater influence from outside actors such as the WWF and to a lesser extent JCP whose business was in using pro wrestling as a chassis for over-the-top live action dramatics. When you consider how much effort was put forth by Maeda in '88 to denounce the legitimacy of the other two companies, I imagine that would have dented the perception of the "sport" in a lot of fans' minds, although I've not read anything explicitly stating as such.

Thinking about the start of the original UWF as well as Choshu leaving New Japan, the focus on entertainment over conveying legitimate competition moves gradually from that point onward, becoming particularly obvious in the Takeshi Gundan angle, for example. As a wrestler entering the industry during the change of eras, this paradigm shift must be more than apparent; and for those who eschewed U-style and joined one of the big two dojos would've surely absorbed the influence that late 80s US wrestling had on AJPW/NJPW around that time, excursion or no excursion. Another thing is that wrestlers coming in around this time would've been a young child during the Inoki/Tiger Mask stretch, where the appeal of pro wrestling began to really expand. This would have likely meant more people applying to the dojos for that reason, drowning out the field of codgers who, as you say, looked at pro wrestling as a job first. To parallel this thought, consider the number of AJW dojo applicants at the height of Chigusa's popularity, as she influenced so many schoolgirls to want to become pro wrestlers.

Hopefully I'm making some sense!

[Puroresu General Discussion for 2020]

On 6/1/2020 at 1:44 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

I would imagine that wrestlers who were born in the Showa era, and trained and debut in the Showa era, would identify themselves as "Showa wrestlers," but I'm not sure how wrestlers felt who debut at the tail end of the Showa era and became stars in the Heisei era. I'm not even sure if there was a feeling like "this is the Heisei era!" I suppose there was since a lot of young wrestlers like Misawa were pushed at the beginning of the era, but there was so much shit going on at the time during the "Lost Decade" that I'm not sure how significant the Heisei era was at the time. I've lived in Japan since 2006, and I feel as though the Heisei era didn't really become a "thing" until people born in the era starting coming of age. To me, the real Heisei era wrestlers were guys like Okada. Even now, Reiwa means very little in the grand scheme of things because the Heisei generation are are still in their 20s and 30s. Looking at 90s wrestling, I don't see a remarkable difference in the gimmicks or the character portrayals from Showa wrestling to the stars of 90s All Japan, New Japan and All Japan Women. The promotions were run by Showa promoters with Showa ideas and Showa thinking. The business fortunes followed the pattern of the Japanese economy. The wrestling styles certainly evolved, but they were beginning to do so in the 80s. One of the hallmarks of the Heisei era was that the rigid socio-economic structure began to crumble. I wonder if that is the truly legacy of 90s wrestling -- the AJW women refusing to retire at 25 or 26, the rise of freelance wrestlers, and the sudden rise in independent promotions.

Of course, that doesn't have anything to do with the stylistic differences between Showa wrestling and Heisei wrestling. Personally, I've always felt the stylistic changes in Japanese wrestling were brought about by a constant need to top what they had already done. And the only way to do that was to go longer and do bigger and riskier moves. That's not the whole of it, but they wrestle each other so often in big singles matches that they feel like they have to add more. I don't know if that is a Heisei specific mentality or simply the way business evolved in that era. 

Sorry if that makes no sense. 

I too consider the Heisei/Showa divide as relatively arbitrary. If "Heisei style" is to be defined by the adoption of entertainment aspects (thinking entrance stage, pyrotechnics, colourful wrestling attire and the like), the seeds were planted long before Hirohito popped his clogs. I look to events such as Tiger Mask's popularity, the Hogan/Inoki feud, Choshu's federation flip-flopping and the popularity of Newborn UWF as key indicators towards this trend, since each of them displayed a heretofore unseen vibrancy that was sorely lacking in the sport... well, that is if you discount Mighty Inoue's trunks in the 70s. In my view this shift reflected the rapid modernisation of Japan brought on by the bubble period, and while the rapid economic downturn at the beginning of the era had its' own impact on the profitability of the industry, by this point these modern facets were already indelibly etched into the style.

In other words, to measure the development of the style against the change in imperial eras serves to complicate matters more than it does clarify. I think of 1984 as the year that really catalysed this shift in styles, and tend to separate wrestlers based on this divide instead.