Gordi the former AEW fan

Was THAT a Groundhog Day reference? If so, good one!

w/r/t Naito on top, I was at New Beginning in Osaka and holy moly were there ever a lot of people wearing Naito and/or Ingobernables gear! KENTA had his pockets of supporters throughout the arena, and Nakanishi got a huge goodbye pop and people were there for Mox v MiSu and Hiromu v Lee... But it was at least 75% Naito supporters and they were all wearing hats and shirts and jackets... That's 8000 people sporting his merch! Dude will definitely make them some yen if he's still on top when all this is over. (Assuming it's not just an Osaka thing).

Imgur is not great, but it's miles better than what photobucket has become. The time I was on the cover of Osaka Pro's program/magazine (in the bottom right corner): The newspaper supplement after Misawa's in-ring death:

If Kawada had left AJPW early, everyone's All Time Greatest Matches lists would look so different!

@Curt McGirt Next they set some old dude down in the ring for an interview, give a ten bell salute and he starts crying. What's up with that? That was the retirement ceremony for Kintaro Ohki, who was one of the three big rookies under Rikidozan (along with Kanji Inoki and Shohei Baba). IIRC, he ended up a bigger star in his native Korea than he ever was in Japan. He was famous for having an iron-tough head. His big spot was running full speed into the ring post, head first.

Kenny Omega Gave too much to a jobber Some folks lost their shit

North Dakota State. What do you have to do there to graduate? Milk a cow with your left hand?

The V was apparently Don Sanders https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=14240&page=4 He holds a singles victory over Kenta Kobashi!

My first pick would be Baba. Beloved promoter, probably the greatest booker ever, super solid and over babyface as a champion and as a comedy mid-carder, and a distinctive and recognizable voice on colour commentary. I'd recommend a 32-person active roster, at least 6 of whom should be women, 1 promoter, 1 booker, 1 ring announcer, 1 to 3 commentators, 2 or 3 referees, and between 2 and 12 "miscellaneous" personnel (such as managers, valets, agents, dojo training staff, corner men, ring boys, music producers, video staff, or what have you. Everyone picks 1 home arena. Total roster size: minimum 40, maximum 50. Active wrestlers limited to 32 so everyone has a chance to grab some stars and some favourites. People like Heenan or Baba can fill multiple roles while only taking up one roster spot. Everyone has a time machine and unlimited funding but once a person is picked they are totally off the board going forward. So, for example, if somebody picks Super Strong Machine then Junji Hirata, Sonny Two Rivers, Makai #1 etc are all off the board as well. I'd also recommend really stressing patience, as wilh everyone in different time zones you'd need a 12- to 24- hour window for making picks, so the draft would likely stretch out for weeks.

Here's another damned good Piper brawl: And I am sure there will be more Hansen and more Gordy posted here soon enough, too.

Hey @Edwin what I've done here is translate some of the commentary from the legendary Kawada vs Misawa June '94 match. My Japanese is good enough for most daily life situations, but listening to news or sports commentary at full speed is still tough for me. It's likely I've missed some of the nuances of what the announcers are saying. At the top of the show: Fukuzawa: If you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not., because we've learned that at our competition, Yoshiaki Fujiwara is going to wrestle Shinya Hashimoto for their world title! Heh. That's gonna put some butts in the seats.. Hah. Baba: Will you stop! Wakabayashi: Fans, we've got a great night of action here for you here on Super Power Series! Abdullah The Butcher and Giant Kamala are here! In tag team action, we've got Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Akira Taue & Tamon Honda... and what a main event we've got for you this evening! Baba: A Triple Crown Title Match. Wakabayashi: Champion Mitsuharu Misawa takes on top contender Toshiaki Kawada. It should be a real slobber-knocker! Fukuzawa: Both of those ham 'n' eggers attended Ashikaga Institute of Technology in Tochigi. What do you have to do there to graduate? Milk a cow with your left hand? Baba: Gimme a break! Fukuzawa: It's the greatest night in the history of our sport! At around the 25-minute mark, Kawada crushes Misawa, whi is bleeding from his ear, with a dangerous backdrop followed up by two folding powerbombs: Baba: Oh! Right on the external occipital protuberance! Wakabayashi: Will somebody stop the damned match? Baba: Good Gawd almighty! Wakabayashi: Buh Gawd! Count faster! Put them out of their misery! Fukuzawa: You know what's at stake? A man'll do anything! Wakabayashi: Pulling out all the stops, Toshiaki Kawada doing whatever necessary to hang in there. Fukuzawa: I'd do that to my own grandmother if I had to. Baba: I'm sure you would. Misawa puts Kawada away with the tiger driver '91: Fukuzawa: Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! Tiger Driver '91! Wakabayashi: As Gawd is my witness, Kawada has been broken in half! Baba: What a maneuver! Wakabayashi: He gave us everything he had in him, tonight. Baba: This was the greatest night in the history of our sport. Fukuzawa: The pleasure was all yours, Baba.

The Buffalo Bills had a handsome and popular running back who rushed for 2000 yards in one season and started in national TV commercials. Maybe he could have been a celebrity guest wrestler in the '70s!

Oh hell yeah this is a great choice for me right now. I assume that almost everyone on these boards has seen Beyond the Mat and is familiar with the context of this match from that documentary. I've also been re-reading a bunch of my favourite wrestling books to kill time during the crisis, and both Bret and Terry talk about this match in their books. Funk goes into more detail but there were three interesting tidbits from Bret's book that made the match even more interesting for me: 1) Bret was ill with the flu and working a busy schedule, and 2) this was their first time ever working together, both of which I think help explain the deliberate pacing of this match and 3) Dennis Stamp was Bret's first opponent when he worked in Amarillo as a young boy, which adds even more emotion to the story of Stamp working as the ref here (he does a fine job). This was a Terry Funk retirement match, and there are too many possible jokes here so I will just let you choose your own. In his book, Funk says that the match was in fact billed as his last match in Amarillo, not as his last match ever. What is most interesting to me, on watching the whole match separate from the documentary, is how much this is worked like Bret is the touring champion, putting over the local hero while scraping out a win. As I said, the match is worked at a pretty loose pace, but I think that works really well with the structure they are using here: After some really lovely chain wrestling (they were very clearly doing the dance), Bret pretty much dominates the wrestling portion of this match. He works over Funk's leg in a wide variety of ways, while needlessly throwing in cheap shots to Funk's eyes and throat (taking advantage of the no-DQ stip... but also doing most of it when Stamp isn't looking). Then, when the crowd is nice and riled up Terry starts firing back while on his knees and even, at one point, flat on his ass. When the brawling goes outside, Funk finally takes the advantage. Funk slips on a banana peel during the big (and arguably unnecessary) table spot and that leads into a hot finishing section where both men get near-falls off of reversing the other's finishing hold. The actual finish is perfectly appropriate for the "touring champ" type of match that they were working here. I guess I could have done without Bruce Hart trying to draw so much attention to himself, but it was neat seeing Stu in Bret's corner. In fact, even more than the in-ring action, what I love about this is that it is two of my absolute favourite pro wrestlers of all time showing a deep and abiding respect for each other. whether it was Bret selling his fear of the spinning toe hold or Terry doing the honours, this came across as representatives of two of the great wrestling families showing their mutual esteem. It felt good to watch this.

In his book, Flair says that he and Perfect had to go to Savage's house to practice the match. He says that because of that he doesn't consider Savage to be a great worker, although he respects him.

New post on the thread How cool, I might learn something Nope. It's just DZ

Oh hell yeah, @Edwin that is a modern classic of a brawl. It gets pretty crazy at the end with these two guys rolling around in the gravel winging potatoes at each other. Hard to believe that a guy in his 60s can dish out and take that much punishment.

100 % OK with me! Bryan Danielson, Johnny Saint, Mexican Minis, Dick Togo, Terry Funk, Dynamite Kansai, Jim Breaks, The British Bulldogs, or John Tenta, please. EDIT: yeah, I'd be down with a squash match grab bag, too.

Man, what a pure joy it is to be able to watch something like that. Just yesterday I watched one of Andre's last matches, a 6-man tag with Baba and Dory Jr. And now today to see one of his earliest matches. So nice. Damned good pro wrestling, too.

It's interesting that they repeated the mistake at WM13, putting Sid vs Taker as the ME over Bret vs Austin. You think they would have learned their lesson here. Also, I am not sure if "she's damaged goods!" would really have worked to enrage any man. I think at least some men realise and accept that their significant other has had some experience elsewhere. It sure works for an overly possessive lunatic like Savage, though. Just the two perfect characters to play out this particular angle.

@Goodear I enjoyed the analysis you did of that sitcom 6-man tag with Vader (that, I believe, Octopus recommended to me) a while back, so I thought I'd give you a 6-man tag to review. A lot of the famous/classic ones are pretty long so instead please choose one of these two shorter not quite classic matches, each of which is pretty interesting in its own way.

Now. This. This match right here. This one. It is NOTHING BUT CLUBBERING. Seriously. Not one move. Not one hold. Pure uncut clubbering. It is glorious.

So your post made me curious and I found some clips of that segment on YouTube and... Yikes! That was rough to watch. I can't imagine who - other than maybe HHH, HBK, and Vince - that was meant to amuse or entertain in any way. I felt deeply embarrassed for them. I couldn't even get any schadenfreude out of it. Good Lord that was awful.

That punch! Sangre Chicana-esque! And (I have made this joke before, but) Masked Superstar later in his career was literally a super (wrestling) Machine. Anyway, the logarithm keeps giving me stuff that I somehow had no idea existed. Today, it's absolute wrestling machines Toshiaki Kawada and Ricky Morton in the same ring as Footloose take on The R'n'R Express!! I have seen (and loved) The Fantastics in Japan, but this match-up very much surprised me. We actually, happily, get a sequence where Kawada & Fuyuki trap Morton in the red half of the ring and beat him down while Gibson fires up the Japanese crowd... and we get a double noggin knocker and a do-si-do spot in an All Japan ring!

Letting the wrestlers find their own way seems to be working out better than I might have expected. I can remember late last year being impressed with how they were getting Private Party, Sammy, and Darby over but at the same time complaining that Hangman Cowboy, Doctor Baker the Dentist, and the Brandi & Awesome Dark Whatever were not working for me at all. I was far from alone in those feelings. Now: Baker and Page are two of the hottest acts in the company, and they moved on from the Brandi missteps. They are certainly not batting 1000 but they really seem to be hitting more often than they miss.

Hitman vs Hot Rod is absolutely one of my all time favourite matches. Not every match has to tell a story, but that particular match is one of the best examples of how good pro wrestling can get as a story-telling medium. Excellent character work and in-ring acting by both men.