Graham Crackers

I always liked this one: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1kstr_rey-mysterio-jr-vs-super-calo_sport

Yes, Martian Timeslip and Clanes of the Alphane Moon don't get enough love. Neither does Our Friends from Frolix 8, but I was limiting myself to ten. Actually, other than some posthumous stuff like The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, you really aren't wasting your time with ANY PKD book. Only posthumous Dick I've read is Radio Free Albemuth and it is one of my favorites. I will say that while admitting that I've actually never read VALIS which has a similar plot and is supposedly much better.

I remember Akira Maeda & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Bad News Allen & Steve Williams (7/25/86) on the NJPW set being decent fun but not living up to those names.

There were some kids sitting near me at Final Battle 2008 who were referring to all of the ROH wrestlers as if they were big name WWE guys. I don't remember all of the connections they made but I remember them referring to Davey Richards as Batista and Go Shiozaki was Kung Fu Naki. It was pretty fucking funny.

Obviously it's not as immersive as pro wrestling but this discussion reminds me of this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel The podcast Welcome to Night Vale is fiction told through the framing device of a fake local talk/newsradio broadcast. I've heard there is also a book in the works and I wonder how that will fit into the universe. Will it be written as if it were nonfiction?

I'm going to guess it's Duggan vs Sawyer from 11/11/85 which was my favorite match from the Mid South set.

Seriously, is that Duggan/Nagasaki match on tape?

It just came out and I probably won't get around to it for a while but I like Brown so I have a feeling that it should at least end up being an enjoyable read.

The first match between them is better but this is still an awesome Midsouth style gimmick match:

The Canek matches on the lucha set were just alright. I did like his match with Tiger Mask on the NJPW set though. Crazy as that may sound.

Now this is the best Velocity match ever: And speaking of house shows, I saw Noble carry Snitsky to a good match at an MSG house show where Noble won via armbar.

I didn't watch a ton of wrestling last year but I did watch a few CMLL shows. Rush vs Casas was a consistently awesome feud but Virus had better matches. I went Virus because those title matches give a better picture of why he's great whereas many of those Rush trios just suggest potential greatness. If the Rush vs Casas singles match had a little more meat on it I think this would be a different conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kIPaTXjCG4 One of the best junior tags of the 2000s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX8BrNy6Tlg My favorite match from Togo's last big run leading up to his retirement.

That's Danny Hodge.

Man, Gringos Locos are my least favorite team in this whole bracket.

A great match from U-Style: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hzy0_hiroyuki-ito-vs-alexander-otsuka-u_sport?search_algo=1

I'm taking a little break from this set. I've watched a bunch of matches a second time (a few have even been watched a third time) and that's lead to a bunch of rankings changing from when I made MOTY lists earlier in this thread. I think I will come back to this after more people have watched and commented which will also help me figure out what I need to watch again. I'll post my full list when the whole process is done but for now here's my working top 20. The order of the top 3 is still up in the air and something I won't finalize until I send in my ballot. MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana (Hair vs Hair) 9/23/1983 Gran Cochisse vs Satanico (NWA World Middleweight Championship) 9/14/1984 Espanto Jr. vs El Hijo Del Santo (Mask vs Mask) 8/31/1986 And the rest: Los Brazos vs Hombre Bala, Pirata Morgan & El Verdugo (Super Libre) 11/10/1989 Solar, Ultraman & Super Astro vs Sergio El Hermoso, Bello Greco & Rudy Reyna 2/26/1984 Mocho Cota vs Americo Rocca (NWA World Welterweight Championship) 1/27/1984 Pirata Morgan, Hombre Bala & Verdugo vs Atlantis, Angel Azteca & Ringo Mendoza 3/1988 Emilio Charles Jr, Fabuloso Blondy & Pirata Morgan vs El Dandy, Atlantis & El Faraón 7/21/1989 Sangre Chicana vs Perro Aguayo (Hair vs Hair) 2/28/1986 Super Astro, Atlantis & El Faraón vs Fuerza Guerrera, Blue Panther & Emilio Charles 8/18/1989 Sangre Chicana vs Satanico 5/26/1989 La Fiera vs Babyface (Hair vs Hair) 8/15/1986 Jerry Estrada, Pirata Morgan & Hombre Bala vs Atlantis, Alfonso Dantes & Rayo De Jalisco Jr. 2/1987 La Fiera, El Faraón & El Egipico vs MS-1, Satanico & Pirata Morgan 3/29/1985 El Satanico & Espectro Jr. vs El Faraón & La Fiera 8/12/1984 Babyface, Cien Caras & Mascara Año 2000 vs Lizmark, Rayo De Jalisco & La Fiera 1986 MS-1 & Masakre vs El Dandy & El Satanico 8/11/1989 El Hijo del Santo vs Negro Casas (Mask vs Hair) 7/18/1987 Pirata Morgan vs El Dandy (Hair vs Hair) 9/23/1988 Tony Salazar vs Herodes 3/2/1984

Box Brown (who has a graphic novel about Andre the Giant coming out this year) is selling some really cool drawings of wrestlers. http://boxbrownart.storenvy.com/

My rankings have changed so much since I started watching things over. This was the number 9 match of 1984 in my original rankings and now it's my fourth best match of 84 and in my overall top 15. It's such a sick match.

Malanko vs Fujiwara is probably my favorite Joe Malenko match. Those 1989 AJPW midcard workrate tags are really fucking fun. I think Malenko and Kobashi vs the CanAms is on ditch's site and it's one of my favorites.

Yeah, both of those definitions can work though it's not automatically a bad thing. I'm comparing these matches because they are similarly fast paced and rely more on strikes, takedowns, and moves than on matwork. Using Morgan vs Dandy as an example: it's an apuestas match so it obviously has more striking than matwork but it also has all of those big suplexes and nearfalls at the end. I was trying to compare this match with other matches on the set that combine aspects of lucha and what I associate with junior heavyweight wrestling as well as matches like Santo vs Casas that are purely lucha in style but feature a lot of workrate like this one. I think that for some reason I am struggling to find a way to put those thoughts into words that make sense.

Morgan vs Dandy is definitely worked differently (violently) but I'm alluding to the juniors style influence on that match which I think you can also see in this match. On my second viewing of this match I didn't think that influence was as strong as it was the first time I watched it but it's still there.

It's hard to rank a match like this based upon what we do see and not what I hope happened. A lot of the work is really awesome. On my second viewing I was popping for every punch that Dr. Wagner threw. I just need a little something more from the match's narrative. I kept watching it and thinking that one really great transition could push this up my ballot but we never really see one. The only one I remember is Solitario reversing the abdominal stretch which isn't really that spectacular. This is right in the middle for me right now.

Two random thoughts while I work on my rankings this morning: 1.) 1989 EMLL was fucking awesome. 2.) I'm starting to think I like Los Bucaneros more than I like Los Infernales. I have three Bucaneros matches in my top 20 right now.

I was working on my rankings this morning and thinking about how much I loved this feud but how disappointed I was by this match. Admittedly, my expectations were out of control and definitely set me up for disappointment. That pre-match hype was inspired by how engaged I had been with their previous matches but also the knowledge of other Dandy title matches. I was picturing the epic matwork of the Casas and Angel Azteca matches married to the intensity of this feud. I was picturing a top 5 match, maybe even a number 1 contender. I decided to watch this again along with a few other matches and it compared to them rather favorably. In my first post in this thread I compared this match to Atlantis vs Charles and Dandy vs Morgan and I felt that this match failed to combine juniors style wrestling and lucha the way that those matches did. Well, it felt much more like a lucha match to me this time around, particularly in it's rhythm. In a lot of ways it's very similar to the Santo vs Casas match from 1987. I feel as if I'm constantly talking about other matches on this set to explain how I feel about this one but for whatever reason that's the only way I can put this into words. Anyway, Santo vs Casas is a great lucha match and in particular a lucha match that really moves forward. The matwork is fast and the exchanges are often built around what the wrestlers do on their feet before they can take an opponent down to the mat for a submission. It's high workrate lucha but definitely still lucha. Some of the moves in Dandy vs Charles resemble New Japan juniors but most of their exchanges and the space between those exchanges feel like lucha. Atlantis vs Charles is great and the visuals in that match are certainly more spectacular than those in this one but I don't feel as emotionally invested in it as this match. That's partly because this is another chapter in a rivalry I've already been following on this set but also because this match has a better title match atmosphere. Dandy and Charles just seem so determined to win this match. The Atlantis match is great but there is something kind of sterile about it. It's still great and isn't that far behind the other matches I'm talking about in this post but it's definitely ranked lower than the others. That leaves me with Dandy vs Morgan, Dandy vs Charles, and Santo vs Casas. All three are great matches but don't precisely deliver what I love about lucha so that keeps them out of the top 15 but they are still great enough that all three are hovering around the number 20 spot at the moment.