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Renee Pacquette's recipe book is out now. And apparently she's not the only author in the household, as Jon Moxley has a book called Mox coming out this year. The cover looks good.

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3 hours ago, Phil Schneider said:

That is definitely me!!

There's something about blood that can take a routine professional wrestling match and turn it into a work of art. Blood spilled, pooling on the mat or painting blonde hair red, immediately raises the stakes of any match. In the business, they used to believe red turned into green—when the blade emerged from its hiding place to scrap the forehead, box office receipts grew right alongside the scar tissue. It's visceral and inarguably real, a physical repudiation of the age-old heckling every fan has heard a million times—"it's all fake, isn't it?" In Way of the Blade, Segunda Caida's Phil Schneider, a leading wrestling critic and internet wrestling pioneer with the Death Valley Driver Video Review, looks at 100 of the best, bloodiest matches in the sport's history. Starting in the 1950s and spanning the decades and continents, Schneider tells the story of a very weird sport. You'll meet wrestling chickens, Nazi doctors of philosophy and Japanese death match specialists. You'll relive classics everyone knows and discover some hidden gems previously witnessed by a mere handful of fans lucky enough to have been in the building the night the carnage went down.  Gorgeously illustrated by Chris Bryan, this book is destined to become a classic in the burgeoning field of wrestling criticism and a handy guide for fans looking for insight into their favorites and to be introduced to new matches, complete with the context necessary to explain why and how they became legendary.

 

Man, I ordered it as soon as I saw it. You had me at "pooling on the mat"...

- RAF

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Comando Negro vs. el Pollo was an inspired choice. I'm surprised the Gypsy Joe vs. Mighty Inoue (or maybe it was Rusher Kimura) match you put on one of the last comps isn't discussed. Also, and yeah it has been discussed to death, but no KOTDM final. 

EDIT: Rose/Somers vs. Midnight Rockers isn't on there either. I'm sure that can't be a decision based on one of the participants, haha.

Edited by Curt McGirt
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2 hours ago, AxB said:

Renee Pacquette's recipe book is out now. And apparently she's not the only author in the household, as Jon Moxley has a book called Mox coming out this year. The cover looks good.

41tJwpZZgjS._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Photograph by Nick Karp, who took *that* Moxley photo.

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On 5/18/2021 at 6:56 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Comando Negro vs. el Pollo was an inspired choice. I'm surprised the Gypsy Joe vs. Mighty Inoue (or maybe it was Rusher Kimura) match you put on one of the last comps isn't discussed. Also, and yeah it has been discussed to death, but no KOTDM final. 

EDIT: Rose/Somers vs. Midnight Rockers isn't on there either. I'm sure that can't be a decision based on one of the participants, haha.

Over the last few days, I've been trying to remember what Comando Negro vs el Pollo was. I remembered at some point Black Terry pulled the video and made handheld IWRG matches as a pay per download service. Does he still do this?

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I think he is still selling footage, some of it is on IWTV, but Pollo vs. Negro is not. Pollo vs. Negro is a bloody match mask match with one guy in a chicken suit. It rules. If folks buy the book and want to watch anything let me know and I can lead you to it

 

 

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13 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Over the last few days, I've been trying to remember what Comando Negro vs el Pollo was. I remembered at some point Black Terry pulled the video and made handheld IWRG matches as a pay per download service. Does he still do this?

It's on DailyMotion:

I'm geeked that this got included as it's one of my favorites in a "wrestling is a weird spectacle" kind of way.  

I'm still waiting on my physical copy of the book from Amazon.

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Me too, even though that style of match is generally not my thing.  But the subversion of expectations and the image of the beaten, bloodied chicken man make the whole package amazing.

E:This is fuckin' pro wrestling right here:

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Edited by Zimbra
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Just got the book in the mail and already reading about and watching a few matches here and there; good stuff, Phil. Just watched that Johnny Valentine/Bull Curry match and it's terrific.

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My Way of the Blade tome was delivered yesterday, and I have already dove into it. I was stymied by the absence of a table of contents or index, but quickly settled into the chronological format - it works. It is so much fun. It's written in a format for the exact audience for the book - it's assumed you are hip to the whole rasslin' scene and have some knowledge of history and working BUT it's not smarky or smary or ironic at all. So many wrestling books are written for the lay consumer and often I find myself reading the same explanations and definitions over and over. I promoted it on my podcast recorded yesterday (up soon, The Rock and Wrestling Connection). A job well done, Mr. S - I would assign it to all high school readers and leather up some of these pencilnecks we are churning out into This Scary World.

- RAF

p.s. - monstrously picayune pet peeve of mine: "grizzly" means grey-haired, or maybe a flavor of bear. "Grisly" is repulsive or disgusting, or even "gristly" to describe The Original Sheik's forehead.

Edited by thee Reverend Axl Future
so sorry, I am a petty pedant
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I figured anyone who would buy this book wouldn't need their hand held through professional wrestling. I tried to be pretty informative and go into historical detail, but I no one needed me to tell them what a babyface and a heel was. I also tried to be mostly positive, this was a love letter to pro-wrestling, and while I occasionally took a shot or two, this was about greatness in many forms, and no one needed another book full of snark.

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@Phil Schneider

Honest questions intended sincerely:

Is it an even hundred matches? If so, was it more like you had 90+ great ones and had to shoehorn a handful of matches in to make it round number, or (as I suspect is more likely) that you had well over a hundred and had to make some heart-breaking cuts to round it down.

When finalising the list, how much thought did you give to balancing out various kinds of blood matches, from various styles, eras, and places?

 

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On 5/19/2021 at 8:09 PM, odessasteps said:

I have that Prisoner book. Or at least an old one with the same cover dress. 

It came in the mail same day as the Limitless record book. Meant to crop Prisoner out of the pic but forgot.

Learned a month or so ago my girlfriend had never seen or heard of The Prisoner,but had been watching Danger Man reruns on something .  So I found it on Amazon Prime and we watched one a night for a few weeks.

 

 

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19 hours ago, El Gran Gordi said:

@Phil Schneider

Honest questions intended sincerely:

Is it an even hundred matches? If so, was it more like you had 90+ great ones and had to shoehorn a handful of matches in to make it round number, or (as I suspect is more likely) that you had well over a hundred and had to make some heart-breaking cuts to round it down.

When finalising the list, how much thought did you give to balancing out various kinds of blood matches, from various styles, eras, and places?

 

I really wanted to touch on as many different eras and styles as I could, and try to intro new cool matches to people that hadn't heard of them. Honestly I had a bunch of matches which I clearly forgot, or tried to add too late (Chris was faster on the art then I was with the writing), it was never meant to be the 100 greatest bloody matches, more like 100 of the greatest, so I wasn't too upset at making it super comprehensive. It's a snapshot of neat shit.

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On 5/23/2021 at 11:33 AM, Phil Schneider said:

I really wanted to touch on as many different eras and styles as I could, and try to intro new cool matches to people that hadn't heard of them. Honestly I had a bunch of matches which I clearly forgot, or tried to add too late (Chris was faster on the art then I was with the writing), it was never meant to be the 100 greatest bloody matches, more like 100 of the greatest, so I wasn't too upset at making it super comprehensive. It's a snapshot of neat shit.

My copy arrived today. Apparently Amazon Japan has it in stock because I ordered it two days ago. Indeed (and unsurprisingly) it covers all kinds of eras, styles, and bloody violent matches. It's (again unsurprisingly) well-written and nicely laid out. Like @thee Reverend Axl Future, I think a table of contents would have been nice (sometimes you might want to find a particular match quickly, like if it just popped up in your YouTube feed or something).

Strongest possible recommendation, from me. Very glad I was able to get a copy.

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