Gordi the former AEW fan
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Posts posted by Gordi the former AEW fan
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It was a "Bring Food OK" party. One nice couple brought the famous 551 pork buns, gyoza, and shumai. These nice young ladies brought chicken wings. I love chicken wings:
There were tequila shots, chugging contests, much challenging and chanting...
Things got even warmer and nicer. Ebessan almost cried as he talked about how he wished he and I could have had one fight. I don't talk about it much, but back in 2011 I made a real attempt to get back in the ring for that mythical One Last Match with my friends. But even just basic training had me limping around with a bruised tailbone, sore Achilles, and other minor damage. It just wasn't in the cards. Kind of broke my heart. Can't really express how much it means that Ebessan kinda felt that, too, and made the effort to let me know about it. There were a few moments like that.
The greatest thing, though, was when the crowd thinned out near the end and it was down to just the wrestlers and their close friends and Kondo and me. Kuuga stripped off his mask to wipe his face, then put the mask down on a table and went back to drinking with us as...
After seven years of drinking together...
... any kind of attempt at a metaphor would be way too on the nose. But that was a great moment for me, to not just be drinking friends with Ebessan and Kuuga, but also with the guys behind the masks.
God, I love life in Japan.
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So, it was clearly time to go drinking again! On Wednesday, I met up with Kuuga and Ebessan at A-Toys Cafe and Bar in Shinsaibashi. A-Toys' Master is the MMA fighter and promoter Tetsuo Kondo.
Man, I am really glad I went there. It was so great to have drinks with my boys again!
It means a lot to me that I've been drinking friends with these guys for almost seven years now... but what surprised me was that it also means a lot to them. Kuuga was showing people pictures from that first drinking party and telling them how long ago it was and how many good times we've shared... As much as I tell Kuuga stories, he also tells Gordi stories. The people at A-Toys were mostly good friends with each other, but I only knew a couple of them. However, pretty much everyone there knew OF me. "OH. so you're THAT guy... Go-di! Hey, this white guy is Go-di!" kind of stuff. An incredibly warm feeling, as I've said.
That's Taiyoto Kamen. We've had drinks before, but this was my first time drinking with him in this persona. It's a crazy thing having drinking friends who wear colorful masks when you go out for a few. I sometimes suspect (correctly, as it turns out) that other people at the party might even be wrestlers who normally wear a mask but have shown up to drink incognito-by-unmasking, if you get my drift.
You often attract a LOT of attention as well. A-Toys is kind of an exception. I think it's mainly wrestlers,. fighters, fans, friends, and hangers-on who go there. It's in a complex of bars in the crazy-busy Shinsaibashi area. The complex is awesome, but in the early stages of decay. There's an 80s hair-metal theme bar on the fourth floor, for example. A-Toys is one of a handful of smaller bars on the fifth floor. The walls are covered with wrestling and MMA show posters. You'd probably love it. I sure do.
This unmasked man is Ebessan. Not Kikutaro, but the guy to whom Kikutaro officially passed the mantel. Maybe gaijin puroresu fans are more comfortable calling him Third-Gen Ebessan or Ebessan III... but I was there when Kikutaro passed the torch, so he's Ebessan to me... except now he's Osamu... So I guess it's OK to post this pic...
It was an adjustment, getting used to seeing him like that in public. So, to adjust, we did a LOT of drinking:
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I saw that DEAN posted a review of Kotoge vs. Harada (Pro Wrestling NOAH Global Junior Heavyweight League finals) and I had to reply to that... figured I might as well update this thread as well.
First time I went drinking with Asian Cooger and Ebessan (III) was back in 2009!!
Though Kuuga (as he is now known) and I have remained in touch, I hadn't seen either of them for a year. I've got a second kid now, so that really cuts into my spare money and free time. Not that I'm complaining.
But, really, it was time to check in on my pro wrestling friends again. It had been way, way too long. I went to the 7/20 Doutonbori Pro Wrestling tournament show.
Neither of my long-time partners in crime Kenji and Kae were going to be there. Very few of the faces people might remember from this thread on the previous board were going to be there. I hoped I'd see some friendly faces. I hoped a few people might remember me.
Well... of course they did. Everyone was just as happy to see me as I was to see them. Mihara actually cracked up laughing in happy surprise when we bumped into each other outside the arena. It was, as you might imagine, a very warm feeling to be welcomed back like I'd never been away.
And it was great to see some live wrestling again after all that time.
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BUT...
Right from the start (and probably the main reason we have always got along) it's been clear that these guys just DEEPLY LOVE pro wrestling, to the bone, and that they truly care about being the absolute best pro wrestlers that it's possible for them to be. They were always down to talk pro wrestling, to watch a match, to get into the details.... And you could literally watch them grow and improve from month to month as their abilities increased and their psychology deepened.
I... No... WE have missed them SO MUCH since they moved on, but it's been a real pleasure to watch them grow and flourish in their new expanded environment. If they were just great guys, it really wouldn't matter to anyone who isn't lucky enough to know them... but... maybe... maybe they are on their way to being great pro wrestlers. Everyone here ought to care about that.
The two of them making the finals of The Global Junior Heavyweight League has me busting with pride. It's genuinely gratifying to read that they did that opportunity justice. Thank you very much for posting this, DEAN.
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I'm so happy to read this review. I've been talking these guys up for 6 or 7 years now. They were superbly entertaining and likable as a young speed (Kotoge) and power (Harada) tag team in Osaka Pro. In addition to being exciting young wrestlers, they were flat-out great guys. I mean, Osaka Pro at that time was filled with fine human beings but Kotoge and Harada often went above and beyond... making a huge effort to reach out to me despite the language barrier, having my back in social situations, and so on. They would sign autographs and pose for photos all evening long if that was what the fans wanted. At various Osaka Pro drinking parties, parents who brought little kids and wanted a few minutes to drink and joke around in peace would just drop their offspring into Harada's lap and he would laugh and smile as they crawled all over him. He was unfailingly gentle and patient, with the kids.
One time, a dumb fat racist drunk was trying to start something with me in Namba and I was kind of in a no-win situation considering that odds are very good that hitting him would end up with me in trouble with the law. Out of nowhere, here comes Harada. He stares the guys down, says a few soft words... the would-be troublemaker slinks away, pays his bill, and leaves.
Last time I saw Kotoge was at a NOAH show, in the gimmick area, and he seemed pretty busy so I decided against going over to say hello. A minute later there's a hand on my shoulder. He'd made his way through the crowd to greet me, warmly and sincerely.
So, I mean... even if these guys were typical skinny indy juniors... I'd still have their backs.
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Hey Kyle, where in Canada are you from?It definitely feels like home to me at this point! My hometown of Vancouver seems a little strange to me now, when I visit.It's been an amazing experience so far, and I hope it will be for you, too.It's hard for me to give an accurate guess about how much money you'd need. I have a job and an apartment... it's a lot different from being a visitor. For three months you'd need at least $5000 CDN, probably more. It depends on how you wanna live and what you wanna do over here, I guess. It's easy to blow LOT of money in one night in Japan if you're not careful, but it isn't necessary... A night out for me is usually 20-30 bucks, around 50 if I go to a wrestling show... Accommodation isn't cheap, I usually spend about 50 a night for a tiny room. I guess someone who has visited here recently could be of more help with that question.Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge those early posts are all gone forever. I wish I could read the again, myself.
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Me too, please.
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I saw the huge German announce table team.
I saw Lesnar throwing a lot of German suplexes.
My vision was sadly not realised.
They weirdly showed a lot of respect for the German announce table both at Summerslam and at Raw. I was expecting someone to go through that table as well.
It's almost like they're afraid of the Germans. What's up with them having their own table anyways?
German announcer: [threatingly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.JBL: [recoils in mock horror]Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans![hiding behind Cole] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!German announcer: Stop it!German announcer 2: Stop, sir.JBL: Don't let the Germans come after me.Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.German announcer 2: Please stop the `pretending you are scared' game, please.German announcer: Stop it! Stop it!JBL: [brief pause, then resumes]No! They're so big and strong!German announcer 2: Stop it.German announcer: Stop it, JBL.German announcer 2: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.JBL: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans...German announcer: JBL, STOP IT!-
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Great write-up, Evil Otto. Catching a show at Korakuen is still on my to-do list. I envy you that experience.
It probably goes without saying, but Doering is an absolutely huge human being. I've taken pictures with everyone from Akiyama to Zeus to Suwama, to Bob Sapp, to Abdullah... and Joe Doering is the only guy who, when I look at the picture, makes me feel small. I was a bit over 250 lbs when we took this pic, and I look tiny next to him:
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http://grantland.com/features/antonio-inoki-japan-politics-pro-wrestling-ric-flair-saddam-hussein-iraq-north-korea-kim-jong-un-hostages/
Pretty well a must-read article from Grantland, about Inoki.-
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Big Country going back to the true roots of the UFC!
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I'm not being in any way facetious. It brought me a HUGE wave of joy today when I noticed this:
You remember that episode where Bart skipped school and witnessed the Freddy Quimby/French Waiter incident? Remember when he made some fake bids at the art auction? Remember the guy sitting behind him in glasses and a bow tie?
Again, no fooling, I felt genuine joy when it hit me that the man in question is in fact:
Joey Joe-Joe Junior Shabadoo!!
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Louie
in MOVIES & TV
Man, that has got to be right up there with season 4 of The Wire among the greatest single-season runs any TV show has ever put together. I maybe didn't laugh as hard or as often as I did watching past seasons of Louie, but I was genuinely moved - again and again - throughout this run. So many ideas and moments just hit home with me. That was great TV.
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"Dull" is just about the strangest adjective to try to apply to this movie. I could see saying it looks like it might be terrible. awful, atrocious, cheesy, crappy, execrable, overwrought, ill conceived, preposterous, overdone, unintentionally hilarious, fatuous, asenine, puerile, laughable, imbecilic... "dull" is pretty much the one thing this doesn't look like it has any chance of being.
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Rockules cares not for beans!
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Zues & The Bodyguard? That would be kind of a shitty team to challenge for the All-Asia titles let alone the big boy tag belts. For shame AJPW.
Your hatred is misplaced and baseless here, ultimoDANK. Zeus is coming off of a fine run in the CC, and bodyguard is probably the most improved wrestler in Japan over the past three years. They work together really well as a team, and they match up nicely with Suwama and Doering. There is nothing, whatsoever, for AJPW to be ashamed about.
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Louie
in MOVIES & TV
Eszter Balint?! Whoa! Great casting!
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If you're going to Spain, DEFINITELY try Cava. Cava is Spanish sparkling wine. It's easy to drink and very reasonably priced. The most famous producer is Freixnet (pronounced like "fresh-net"). Their Cordon Negro comes in a black bottle and has a nice earthy flavour, with more than a hint of mushrooms.
What area of Spain are you planning to visit? Raziel403 is absolutely right about going with the house wines. Certain areas of Spain have famous local wines. You might get a pleasant surprise if you ask about them. Asking about local sakes often opens social doors for me in Japan.
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Louie
in MOVIES & TV
We're 4 episodes into the new season, and already Louie has hit GREATNESS twice. Looks like taking a year off was the right strategy. That long-take monologue was trendous.
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Sorry about that. It was more or less a copy-and-paste from a series of articles I did for insidepulse in 2004 and 2005. Uncle Coaster's awesome post reminded me of that, and I wanted to read it again. I'd forgotten that I'd written so much about it.
Anyway, I returned to Canada in 2001, just in time to catch the gradual rise of Benoit and Eddie to the top of the card. That totally drew me back in again, and watching the WrestleMania 20 "live" broadcast with friends in the cinema and subsequently making the drive to Alberta with my All Star Wrestling senpai Vicious Verne to watch Backlash 2004 and the subsequent RAW were big highlights of those years.
I was also just in time to catch the last years of the wonderful tape-trading community that flourished back when it took hours to download a ten-second .gif file. Through guys like Tabe, Rob Hunter, Dan Ginnety, my good friend Verne, and quite a few others I amassed a huge library of tapes and later DVDs of indy and classic and Lucha and - particularly - Japanese Pro Wrestling.
And it was a great time to finally get a decent internet connection. There was a ton of great discussion about pro wrestling online at that time, perhaps culminating in the epic Greatest Wrestler of All Time argument, discussion, and poll on the old Smarkschoice boards.
Another highlight from that time was watching WrestleMania 21 at a sports bar in Surrey, British Columbia with a huge group of indy pro wrestlers, including at least one you have probably heard of:
By the end of 2005, I had started to drift away from watching WWE (yet again) in favour of MMA and puroresu. I still got together with some old wrestling friends to watch the occasional PPV, often at Verne's place... but I found watching great matches on DVD and going to local indy shows was just way more fun for me than sitting through stuff like the xenophobic Hassan storyline, or the rise of Heidenreich.
I also visited Japan for the first time in '05, and had the thrill of seeing legends like Fujinami, Liger, Choshu, Muto, Kensuke, Tenryu, Koshinaka, Kobashi, and - a particular thrill for me - Misawa, live and in person. It was awesome. Japanese crowds were amazing. The atmosphere, the action, and the experience were everything I'd hoped for.
I ended up moving to Japan and becoming a regular at Osaka Pro shows and seeing many more legends and favourites (from Dump Matsumoto to Fujiwara to Kawada) live and in person. I even became drinking buddies with some of the Osaka Pro guys, and also friends with Jumbo Tsuruta's son Yuji. The experience of being a gaijin fan of Japanese wrestling has been way better than I ever could have imagined.
I rarely watch wrestling on TV or DVD or on my computer these days. I get most of my fill from live shows.The rise of Bryan Danielson, though... like the rise of Bret and the rise of Benoit... that has managed to drag me back in. Watching WrestleMania and the subsequent RAW were mind-blowing. It's great to see a genuinely good person reach the very top of the mountain.
Thanks so much for sharing your story, Uncle Coaster! I hope you don't mind me sharing mine on your thread. Thinking about how wrestling has given so many of us an escape, and outlet, and a hobby over so many years is making me kind of misty, to be honest.
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I'm still proud to say I'm a wrestling fan, and I don't hide it. I'm not embarrassed to wear my Macho Man shirt in public. I'm not scared to admit to new people I meet that I love "the business". It's always been there for me.
Damn straight, brother! -
Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin made me a wrestling fan again after years of apathy. The match made a real impact on me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I grew up in Western Canada watching Stampede Wrestling so the wrestlers who got their start there were pretty much guaranteed to be among my favourites. The Hart Foundation, for example, were my favourite tag team when I stopped watching in the early 90s. I still though of Bret Hart as a tag specialist, so it was a real surprise to see him fighting in a key singles match at the biggest show of the year. Another thing that caught my attention was that Stunning Steve Austin had morphed into Stone Cold Steve Austin, complete with a shaved head and a goatee. I grew my first goatee in 1991, and started shaving my head in ’93. Back then, my wrestling friends teased me for going with the Nikita Koloff look. I was actually a little torn over whether to cheer for the Canadian or for the badass brawler who shared my grooming habits. That slight conflict played pretty well into the story being told in the ring.When they took the fight into the stands, I marked out because it was clear that the WWF were no longer putting all of their eggs into the “Cheesy Saturday Morning Cartoon” basket. I could remember seeing Abdullah the Butcher and the Sheik brawl through the crowd on videotape and thinking at the time that it was something I’d never see in the WWF. When Bret slapped on the Ring Post Figure Four, I just about lost it. After seeing that, I was 100 per cent behind Bret, up until Austin got busted open. There was something about the way that Stone Cold refused to give up, even when the Hitman trapped him with his Sharpshooter. Watching Austin pass out face first into a pool of his own blood, I am sure, made many of us bigger fans than we’d ever been before.I was ecstatic that Bret won, bit I also wanted to see Austin get another chance. The trouble was, there was really no way for me to keep up with what was happening in the world of Professional Wrestling while I was living in the Czech Republic.There was also the bizarre experience of watching the rest of WrestleMania 13, being bitterly disappointed by the boring Undertaker vs. Sid Main Event, and realising that I honestly didn't know a single person in country where I was living who might have wanted to discuss that with me.In 1998, when an opportunity arose for me to go back to Canada and work for a year, I took it. I knew that I would miss Europe, but I wanted to see my friends and family again, and I also wanted to watch football, eat chicken wings, drink huge cups of good coffee, and catch up with everything that had happened in the world of wrestling.One of the fist things I did was to pick up a copy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. It blew my mind to see that both the WWF and WCW had bald, goateed World Heavyweight Champions. My job involved running recreational programs for “special needs” kids. It made me so happy when, on my first day at work, an argument broke out among the kids over whether I looked more like Stone Cold or Goldberg. It seemed that Pro Wrestling was more popular than it had ever been before.I caught my first episode of RAW that evening. The last time I’d seen wrestling on free TV the shows had consisted of nothing but squash matches, and the rules of Kayfabe were strictly enforced. For example, my “insider” friends and I knew that goofy commentator Vince McMahon was in fact the owner of the WWF, but we only knew that because of the connections I’d made while I was working for All Star Wrestling. If you can remember those days, then you can probably imagine my shock when I turned on the TV expecting more of the same, only to catch the Monday Night Wars, and the Austin vs. McMahon feud, in all their glory.Obviously, I picked a pretty good year, wrestling wise, to come home for an extended visit. I saw DeGeneration X invade Nitro. I saw Ric Flair return to WCW. Damn near everywhere I went, I met fellow wrestling fans. If anything interesting happened on one of the shows, there was always someone who wanted to talk about it the next day.I went back to the Czech Republic in January, which was also pretty good timing wrestling wise. I avoided having to see the Finger Poke of Doom, for example. I didn't know what I was missing, though, and it drove me crazy to be cut off from wrestling again. Some of my friends from the Pilsen Tornadoes American Football team were wrestling fans and I got to watch an occasional show with them, but we never got into arguments or even discussions about wrestling. This was partly because of language difficulties and partly because they tended to believe that the matches might be genuine athletic contests.I bought a second hand computer with money that I’d saved while working in Canada. A small mountain of paperwork later, I had a dial-up internet connection. I was pretty happy to find that there were so many sites devoted to Pro Wrestling, at least until I started reading them. The first few sites I tried seemed to be written by people who fit pretty well into the unfortunate stereotype of 14-year-old idiots with limited understanding of the rules of English grammar who were using their parents’ computers to complain about things that they don’t understand. I also found a few wrestling sites and message boards that seemed to be populated entirely by people who took themselves and their opinions far too seriously. The writers on those sites and the posters on those boards seemed to believe that wrestling should be written about in absolute terms. They seemed to be utterly committed to a very narrow and specific definition of what comprised good wrestling, and there didn't seem to be much willingness to discuss any ideas or opinions that were even marginally different from their own.I found the Wrestling Observer website, but it was just too expensive to get a subscription delivered to where I was living.It took me a while, but I eventually found the PWTorch and then the 411 Wrestling websites. It was worth the effort, though. At that time both sites had columns and reviews that were written with humour, personality, and something like genuine insight. I not only got to keep up with the latest wrestling news, but I was able to compare my thoughts on what was happening with those of several reasonably talented writers who, despite their frequently sarcastic and cynical approach, clearly enjoyed watching, thinking about, and writing about wrestling.Of course, that eventually led me here.
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I don't know if this will make sense, but when I stopped watching wrestling in the early 1990s it wasn't because I had outgrown wrestling, it wasn't because wrestling wasn't cool any more, and it wasn't because I had developed different interests. It was because the specific version of Professional Wrestling that was then available in North America no longer appealed to me. The main storyline in the WWF at the time had Sgt. Slaughter taking the wrong side in the Gulf War. The National Wrestling Alliance was basically dead, and to be honest, WCW didn't exactly rise phoenix-like from the ashes to save wrestling from itself. Check out the card for the 1991 Great American Bash:Non-Televised Match: Junkyard Dog pinned Black BartFlag Match: PN News and Bobby Eaton defeated Steve Austin and Terrance Taylor in a scaffold match. (Sooooo bad! How can you waste those guys this way)?The Yellow Dog defeated Johnny B Badd by DisqualificationRon Simmons pinned Oz. (Yikes, this was bad)!Big Josh pinned Blackblood.Elimination Match: Dustin Rhodes, Tracey Smothers, and Steve Armstrong defeated The Freebirds (Badstreet, Jimmy Garvin, and Michael Hayes) in an ”elimination” match. Rhodes was the only survivor. (Possibly the best match on the show, and IMO it was not good).The Diamond Stud pinned Tom Zenk.El Gigante pinned One Man Gang.Ricky Morton pinned Robert Gibson. (So disappointing, this should have been a great an memorable match)Russian Chain Match: Nikita Koloff defeated Sting in a ”Russian chain” match. (Terrible pacing, terrible finish)World Heavyweight Title Match (Steel Cage Match): Lex Luger pinned Barry Windham in a ”steel cage” match to win the vacant title. (This match was the result of Jim Herd firing Ric Flair for refusing to drop the strap to Luger. One of the most disappointing matches ever, IMO).Steel Cage Match: Rick Steiner and Missy Hyatt defeated Arn Anderson and Paul E Dangerously in a steel cage match when Steiner pinned Dangerously. (A decent candidate for The Worst PPV Of All Time ends with a two-minute abortion of a Main Event. The crowd pretty much only popped for Sting's entrance, and they chanted for Flair like a Chicago crowd chanting for CM Punk. It's possible that many of the wrestlers were deliberately wrestling badly to protest Flair's firing).I missed the 1991 Great American Bash, but I had friends that watched it and called me to tell me how bad it was. I missed WrestleMania 7, but I had friends at University who made fun of me for being a wrestling fan because the Hogan vs. Slaughter storyline was so blatantly exploitative. I wasn't watching any more, but I didn't feel like I had turned my back on wrestling, I felt that (once again... dramatic pause) wrestling had turned its back on me.The house my friends and I were renting had a TV, but it didn't have cable. The local stations that we could pick up with the antenna didn't carry any wrestling programs. I suppose my friends and I could have scraped enough money together to get cable but this was the era that brought us The Chamber of Horrors match, and it just didn't seem worth it.We got a Super Nintendo. At the start of the 1992 school year, my housemate's brother gave us a box of tapes that contained every episode of the first three years of The Simpsons. The bands that we used to see at small punk rock clubs started breaking on a national scale, and music became interesting again.After a while, I didn't even miss wrestling any more.In a way, that was too bad, because it wasn't until 2003 that I got to see Ric Flair\’s run with the WWF title, Hogan putting the Ultimate Warrior over cleanly, or Cactus Jack being power bombed on the concrete. My favourite wrestler, Bret Hart, made his big singles run without me watching. I missed Pillman vs. Liger, Hitman vs. Perfect, and the Monday Night Wars. On the other hand I never had to suffer through Spin the Wheel Make the Deal, The Shockmaster, Arachnaman, King Mabel, or WrestleMania 9.From time to time a friend from the old days would come up to visit, and sometimes they\’d bring a wrestling tape with them. I was re-introduced to puroresu in this way, and although I was resistant at first I eventually became kind of a fan of Misawa, Kawada, Hansen, Tsuruta, Muta, Tiger Mask and Liger. I might have gone on to become a full-fledged puro nerd in the early 90s, but in 1995 I moved to Europe, and it would be two years before I saw my next match.In one of those coincidences that would seem too good to be true if it hadn't really happened, I went to visit some of my then-wife’s relatives in March of ’97, couldn't get to sleep, and turned on their television. They just happened to have satellite, and one of the German sports channels just happened to be showing WrestleMania 13. Vader and Mankind were double-teaming Owen Hart outside of the ring! After getting beat on for a few minutes, Owen nailed Mankind with a belly to belly on the concrete floor. He made the hot tag to Davey-Boy! I was blown away to see the two former stampede stars as WWF champions. Even though the match ended in a double count out, I was glued to the screen waiting to see what would happen next.What happened next, of course, was that I marked out like a little bitch as Bret Hart and Steve Austin brawled into the crowd, Bret broke out the ringpost figure four, Austin dripped blood on the canvas, Bret got superplexed, and Austin eventually blacked out from the pain.By the end of the match, I was a wrestling fan again.
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All Star folded before the 80s were through, but I still worked occasional spot shows for local legends like Rocky Dellasera. The crowds were small for those shows, however, and they seemed to get smaller every month. Wrestling's Main Event, the magazine that sent me the first cheque I ever received for writing something, also folded. The wrestling landscape had drastically changed, and there were essentially only two successful promotions left in North America.The Brain Busters, Earthquake, Bad News Brown, and the Hart Foundation were tearing things up in the WWF, and Sting, The Steiners, The Great Muta, Terry Funk, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, and of course Ric Flair were putting on great matches for the NWA. It was still a good time to be a fan. My friends and I were all getting a little sick of Hulk Hogan, because it was painfully apparent that all of his matches followed the exact same pattern. Still, when we heard that he was going to star in a movie, we made plans to be there on opening night.Seeing No Holds Barred in the theater was an experience that I will never forget. It changed the way I felt about Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, and the WWF. The movie was terrible. It wasn't even enjoyable in a campy, Wrestlecrap kind of way. No Holds Barred was irredeemable garbage. I felt ripped off, and so did the people I saw it with. To make things worse, Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon lied through their teeth about it on TV. Heenan claimed that people were lining up around the block to see the movie. Monsoon actually hinted that Hogan's performance had been Oscar-worthy. This was still before the invention of irony, so our only available reaction was to get angry. We had been looking forward to hearing Heenan rip into Hogan's piece of crap movie, and to hear him pathetically shilling it was almost more than I could take.A tape of The Great American Bash ’89 was enough to rekindle my interest in wrestling, but I was pretty much an NWA fan from that point on. I didn't watch the WWF again until the fall of 1990. They recaptured my interest by putting Earthquake in a program with Hogan, and they held my attention by coming up with an interesting gimmick for that year's Survivor Series. The gimmick took the form of a giant egg that they dragged out on TV and at arena shows for months. At Survivor Series, we were finally going to get to see what was inside the egg. Our hottest speculation was that it might be Lex Luger.I had to work the day of the show, but my then-girlfriend's younger brother went to see it on closed circuit. I dropped by their house the next day, and I was more excited about hearing what was inside the egg than I was about visiting my girl. When he told me, it took a while for me to accept that he wasn't pulling my leg. What was in the egg, what we had been waiting months to see, was some guy (Hector 'Lazer Tron' Guerrero, as it turns out) in a giant rubber turkey suit. He ran around the ring flapping his arms, and danced with Mean Gene as the fans booed like crazy and the announcers tried to claim that the kids in the crowd were loving it.The Gobbledy Gooker pretty much turned me off the WWF for years. I was tired of being lied to, and tired of having my intelligence insulted. (Again, ironic appreciation just wasn't something I was into back then) I was sick of Hulk Hogan, I missed the British Bulldogs, and I just didn't care any more.I was still a fan of the NWA, but McMahon\’s empire had pretty much squeezed them out of Canada, and it wasn't always easy to find their shows. I remember how excited I was in early 1991 to get hold of a copy of StarrCade 1990. The show featured the culmination of the Black Scorpion story line! I couldn't wait to see how that would turn out.Those of you who already know may not be surprised to hear that Starrcade 1990 pretty much destroyed the lingering remnants of my wrestling fandom. The story of what happened is covered pretty well on pages 197-198 of Flair\’s autobiography. What it came down to, essentially, is that even the NWA were now running angles that flat out insulted their fans’ intelligence.Later that year, I moved away to go back to University. The local TV station in my new home didn\’t carry wrestling, but I didn’t mind.(Dramatic pause...) I was no longer a fan.
Life in Japan / Osaka Pro Wrestling
in JAPAN
Posted
Indeed, Kuuga is a big Lucha Libre fan. His tag teams with Tsubasa and Great Sasuke were both known as Mucha Lucha. Interestingly, though, his favourite non-Japanese wrestler is Sabu.