Loss

The best example of this I've seen was in the opening minutes of Misawa/Kawada on 10/21/92. Misawa grabs a headlock and Kawada immediately does a backdrop driver, which completely throws Misawa off and he has to briefly distance himself to rethink his approach. From there, the match is a beautiful example of good transitions, with each sequence building to the next sequence and that reactionary style being the theme of the match. It's not until Misawa decides to stop reacting and start being proactive that he's able to sustain any momentum and keep things in his favor for any length of time. This also serves to put Kawada over, because Misawa wrestles like he's waiting on Kawada to make a mistake, which he finally realizes isn't going to happen. I've seen many better matches than this, but this is such a great example of taking a relatively simple story arc and getting it over as something elaborate, and it all happened the way it did just because Kawada pulled a big move out of his hat almost instantly. Would you be interested in posting this blog entry as a new topic at NMB? I think it would make a great discussion.

I doubt if the royalties are going to be all that substantial, considering that so many old guys are giving up royalty rights for a $10,000 deal.

Opening match: Jushin Liger v Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW 02/94) Not a "great" match, not a particularly long match, but a very, very good match and one that contains some great work to pop the crowd early on without burning them out. Really strong big man, little man story going here - perhaps the best I've seen in that formula. Midnight Express v Fantastics (NWA Clash I 03/27/88) 10-minute brawl for US tag team titles that would have the crowd absolutely electric. Kurt Angle v Big Show (WWF Backlash 04/30/00) After two really fun, but really serious matches, I feel the show needs some comedy and this is probably the best place to put the first part of it. More later. Brian Pillman v Johnny B Badd (WCW Fall Brawl 09/17/95) Gives the IC/US title match later in the show a sense of importance and also gives us our first extended match of the night. Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama v Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue & Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW 07/02/93) Great six-man tag, and there won't be another match like this on the show anywhere. Shawn Michaels v Razor Ramon (WWF Summerslam 08/27/95) Ladder match for IC title that sees the babyface go home victorious. So far, we've had a "heel" (if you want to call him that) going over in Hash, another heel team in the MX, a babyface win in a comedy match followed by another babyface win ... and a really heated six man tag. The babyface is going over here as well, so I think it's time to throw a really good "heel wins" match in the mix. Lex Luger & Barry Windham v Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard (NWA Main Event 04/23/88) Nice 14-minute match that features a huge angle at the end with career babyface Barry Windham turning heel and joining the Four Horsemen. Show should be about 2:20 at this point. Hacksaw Duggan v Ted DiBiase (Mid South 03/30/85) Duggan wins the blowoff his fans have been awaiting for a long, long time in another great match. Main event ... Ric Flair v Ricky Steamboat (NWA Chi-Town Rumble 02/20/89) Steamboat wins to send the fans home happy. This would be the only match on the show where the entrances would have a lot of pomp and circumstance. Nine matches, runs about three hours, and you have seven matches clocking in at **** or better without taking anything away from each other. For the rest, you have a hilarious comedy match making fun of a guy who is nowhere to be found on the show and an awesome opener. Overall, four title matches and two championships change hands.

I wonder if that card is almost too good. I think that fans may be too exhausted by that card and may not be able to get into it. You almost need some low-end good stuff (***-***1/2) to give them a chance to breathe, and maybe a few short comedy matches as well.

ROH didn't create it, but they're as much to blame as anyone for further perpetrating the Great Divide between good matches and good storylines. There's this really bizarre outlook I see all the time that the two are mutually exclusive or diametrically opposed, or that a promotion focusing on wrestling can't possibly have good storylines to drive that wrestling. Content is valued over presentation when honestly, good pro wrestling places a much higher premium on presentation than content. ROH has no clue how to contextualize their own booking, even when they do something right. I blame Paul Heyman for starting the trend of providing a "good match" on every ECW undercard that wasn't intended to connect with an audience. I blame Vince Russo for burning out the wrestling audience of the modern era on so many bad angles and bad storylines that a small group of fans somehow came to the conclusion that wrestling wouldn't be so bad if angles didn't exist at all. I blame Eric Bischoff for destroying an empire and giving us a wrestling scene where Heartless Gymnastics Disguised As Wrestling is considered a high standard by a group of egomaniacal fans who don't know as much as they think they do. And I blame Vince McMahon for arrogantly attempting to tweak the moral structure of his most loyal supporters when he should be focused on selling his next pay-per-view. It's a combination of egos, injuries, back scratching, life destruction, greed and Corporate America that put the current wrestling scene in the lifeless hellhole where it currently resides, and until people ask tough questions and truly grasp how we got here in the first place, getting out of that hellhole will remain impossible.

I keep thinking of more things to include. It's important to note that Kawada had been working with a knee injury for months that IIRC, he got in the '93 RWTL finals. Misawa had avoided going after Kawada's knee in all their encounters prior to this and here, he actually went after Kawada's knee, which got a strong reaction from the crowd because it was the first time he had done so. I love Doc's role in the '94 part of their feud also. Misawa lost the TC to Williams, someone Kawada defeated twice that year -- once to earn the title shot he got here and once to defeat him for the TC. It made Kawada's loss all the more frustrating, because he could beat others who Misawa couldn't, but for whatever reason, he couldn't defeat Misawa.

Also, re: Misawa and Kawada fighting over the powerbomb That's actually my favorite part of the match, because you have Jumbo's protege and Tenryu's protege finding themselves in the exact same position Jumbo and Tenryu were in five years before. Misawa had been The Man for about two years at this point (some would argue longer, as everyone knew it was only a matter of time after he beat Jumbo in 1990), a role Jumbo knew too well. Kawada broke away from his longtime partner and friend because he felt overshadowed, a role Tenryu knew too well. If you compare Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi/Ogawa to Choshu/Yatsu/Saito/Hamaguchi where both Jumbo/Tenryu and Misawa/Kawada were aligned, and then you see the falling out happen afterwards ... I just think that's really beautiful storytelling all around. Misawa/Kawada almost transcends wrestling - it's as much a coming of age story of two men as it is a worked athletic contest.

Need to rewatch a lot of the more heralded matches, and even see a lot of them for the first time, but as of today, here are my ***** matches. 03/05/69 - The Destroyer v Giant Baba 12/15/75 - The Destroyer v Hiro Matsuda 06/11/76 - Jumbo Tsuruta v Terry Funk 01/28/86 - Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu v Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu 07/18/87 - El Hijo del Santo v Negro Casas 06/05/89 - Jumbo Tsuruta v Genichiro Tenryu 11/26/92 - Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada v Mayumi Ozaki & Dynamite Kansai 04/02/93 - Akira Hokuto v Shinobu Kandori 06/09/95 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 12/06/96 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue That's of the matches I've watched this year, so there's obviously a lot of stuff missing. Here's a list of the matches that come very close, but don't quite hit the mark: 05/22/84 - Jumbo Tsuruta v Kerry Von Erich 08/22/85 - Chigusa Nagayo v Devil Masami 04/10/87 - Ric Flair v Barry Windham 03/27/88 - Midnight Express v Fantastics 03/18/89 - Ric Flair v Ricky Steamboat 06/05/89 - Doug Furnas & Dan Kroffat v Toshiaki Kawada & Ricky Fuyuki 07/07/90 - Midnight Express v Southern Boys 02/29/92 - Barry Windham & Dustin Rhodes v Steve Austin & Larry Zbyszko 04/30/92 - Jushin Liger v El Samurai 05/17/92 - War Games 02/21/93 - Vader v Sting 01/21/96 - El Samurai v Shinjiro Otani 06/12/98 - Toshiaki Kawada v Kenta Kobashi

I'm way behind on my Puro viewing and have only made it to 2003 ROH at this point (almost in 2004 when things picked up), but I'd probably give the nod to the following two matches. Eddy v JBL - Judgment Day '04 Rock v Jericho - No Mercy '01 Both in the ****1/4-****1/2 range for me. I'll copy/paste what I've wrote about each one in the past. Re: Eddy/JBL Re: Rock/Jericho Lots more matches have been discussed at my board. You're welcome to post there sometime if you like. Not as much traffic as here or DVDVR, but the discussion quality is really strong. http://www.nmblues.com/

I definitely look forward to this. While I know the general direction you're going and the stars you'd want to spotlight, I'm interested in seeing everyone else's reaction to you doing so, and you said you added some detail, so even I might end up surprised.

I love the mindset in that folder of finding one weakness a wrestler has, harping on it to death, and then arguing that *that alone* is enough reason for the wrestler to never get a push into the main events. Funny, funny, funny. Please go on TSM Radio and bash them by name. Perhaps we can call it RavishingRickRadio that day.

Possibly too late to ask this, but if I made a promise to you that you could go crazy being creative and post whatever you wanted, would you come back to NMB?

I saw that thread. He has his head up his ass. Steve Austin, a friend of Shawn Michaels, has mentioned in many interviews that Michaels did not want to lose all the way up until showtime.

I'm saying this in all seriousness, and yes, the jokes of me recommending this to you are hilarious, but I have to wonder if you've seen Queer As Folk. Get past the BUTT sex and you have some really awesome storytelling with fantastic characters.

Loss: The Next Generation. You make consistently good posts in the wrestling forums, and raise the quality a great deal. You seem like an intelligent person, so I'm guessing any posts you make in other forums are just as good. *tears* I have a successor. I'm so proud.