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Before there was Kim Chee there was Madame M'boba

There are mitigating factors like ad breaks, but doing a year-long analysis of how the Bucks' quarters perform would be interesting, because in real time, in the last year or so, they have almost invariably lost viewers, often a massive number of viewers. Some of the drops in the Bucks' quarters are BRUTAL

You ain't packing Ryogoku with this. Korakuen Hall was the way to go. Card looks pretty ok, although Bloodsport is always very hit and miss (the last one was the most fun to me).

Pat Patterson vs. Sgt. Slaughter (WWF, 4/18/81) I'm not even sure I knew his match existed before but this is a heck of a Spectrum match. Slaughter does a brilliant job of jawing with the fans at ringside. He calls a couple of them maggots then mocks their attempts to front him. He beats Pat up a bit then threatens to jump from the top turnbuckle to the floor, which of course he was never going to do. Once he gets Pat n the Cobra Clutch, the crowd shout "Gomer!" at him. Then they transition nicely into Sarge trying to jump off the top rope in the ring and damaging his leg. Patterson tries to take advantage of Slaughter's miscue with a figure four and Slaughter gets himself DQ'ed instead of tapping. After the bout there's a great interview with Pat where Kal has his arm draped over him and Pat is cutting a promo about how much he wants to hurt Slaughter. This pro-wrestling 101 as taught by Sgt. Slaughter and Pat Patterson.

Isn't Oklahoma the first state to ban abortion when they could ? The entire state is a ridiculous anachronism.

Windham is great at this point of his career and is his usual self here. But Dusty in the early going of this gives so much more effort and works much harder than he normally does in this period. The fucking crossbody off the top caught me off guard and is awesome. The claw is definitely long but I think Dusty does a great job when he's in it of making it feel like there's always something happening, he's always trying to fire himself up out of it or falling deeper into it risking defeat (and does both of these things in an very very Dusty Rhodes manner). I really thought this was great until the shitty finish ***3/4 Also Barry Windham couldn't have dyed his roots before a PPV, c'mon

On paper, two shoot-stylists being dragged kicking and screaming into working a southern style tag is not a recipe for success, but Fuchi and Fujiwara are good enough to make it work. The opening matwork is solid and Fuchi looks to have some fun mixing up his style of matwork with the shoot style guys. When it gets going is during the heat segment on Nagai. Fujiwara and Fuchi instantly become deliciously smug working him over. Even a mundane spot like the heels switching without a proper tag becomes a hilarious moment for how charismatic the old guys are. An unfortunate clip (thanks GAORA) means we miss the hot tag, so we just come back to Fuchiwara continuing to dominate but with Kakihara in the ring instead of Nagai. It's still pretty fun for to see him get stretched out. Kind of whatever on the shoot style guys winning after getting in like a minute of offense, though at least it was a submission instead of some lame flash pin.

I've started looking through their TV and I kind of get what you mean. So many cool sounding match-ups which get cut for TV to only a few minutes airing. I wouldn't say it's not worthwhile to look for hidden gems, but it's very disheartening.

I see that this match happened and I am happy. I see the length of the video and I am slightly less happy. I see the massive cut made on this match from the 5 minute mark up to the final minute of a 20 minute draw and I am absolutely enraged. I can't fathom why GAORA would so heavily cut what looked like a great match between two of the most important guys to the promotion at this point. The matwork in those 5 minutes does look really good, though. We got a neat leg lock sequence, and I loved the struggle from Hase in preventing Fuchi from applying his STF. Them trading giant swings at the end was also fun. Just hard to enjoy it when you know so much has been clipped out. Edit: Looks like the last 9 minutes were included on a commercial tape. Obviously still not ideal and the quality on the upload is terrible, but if we combine it with the GAORA version we can get a pretty good feel for the match. The comm version shows some awesome struggling for leg locks and some hilarious Fuchi selling.

Antonio Inoki vs Tiger Jeet Singh - NJPW 1/9/76 What if I told you a match had double juice, one dude getting busted open by a sword, the other by a glass bottle or some sort of tank, punches to the cut, biting the cut, steel chairs, guard rails, choking. Sounds killer. These two I don’t know what it is but they just don’t have it together. I love Inoki so it seems like a Singh problem. Does Tiger Jeet ever wrestler anyone else? The What and Why are there but the How is just heatless and no vim or vigor. It is weird because a verbal description would sound badass but it was anything but. There would be glimpses of that could be great but nothing sustained. The biggest pop was a fan nailed Tiger Jeet with a paper ball. Inoki was brutalized for the first ten minutes, made his comeback, double countout and then sent Tiger packing by kicking his ass. Maybe if it was more back and forth. It is probably just everyone is right, Tiger Jeet just kinda sucks.

I really enjoyed in the Orange Cassidy match every time Brody King hit OC he just fell straight down.

Survivor Series 87 is where they started having the Big 4 shows. Royal Rumble was only a TV special the first year, but starting in November they had Survivor Series, Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, and then Summerslam from Fall 87 to Summer 88. So that would be a fitting breaking point between the 2 eras.

Looks like AEW is working with artist Rob Schamberger. I love this because wrestling companies having a staff artist reminds me of the 60s New York Jets. He's a really cool guy and I'm sure he and his wife will be active with AEW's philanthropic efforts. I was only an acquaintance of theirs but ended up a huge fan.

Have you seen the extended clips that the UofSC posted of Londos/Steele some years back? For me it's probably the most tantalizing bit of clipped footage that exists out there. Keep putting off an extended write-up of it, but "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" sounds right as a quick summary. The newsreel clips of their other matches also look quite great.

Wrestling has always been about freak shows. Starting a post about Jim Londos with that probably sounds weird, but I think I haven't missed the mark. I think I get it. The appeal of Jim Londos is that he is a human ant - a small, but freakishly strong dude who goes and slams the bigger wrestlers. He even uses his size as an advantage, working a gimmick with the premise that his low center of gravity, alongside his incredible core strength and positional awareness makes him incredibly hard to take down. Maybe it won't win him a Nobel prize, but it is a very commendable amount of thought and creativity put into the basis of his working psychology, almost unimaginable in the era of "six star matches" and the "greatest wrestling ever". Now, for a word on the historical evolution of the dominant wrestling style. I am weary of making big claims like "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" and "Jim Londos invented cool wrestling", but I am not convinced they are untrue. Watching the available pre-1920s footage of pro-wrestling, obviously a big point is how amawres inspired it is, but to me the biggest takeaway is how much it feels like an exhibition. At this point prowres essentially feels like amateur wrestling flow rolling, with the only difference being that pro-wrestling had Snapmares. From what I've gathered, the 1920s are the decade of transformation, while in the 1930s the new working style is already formed. You could point to this era as the time that the first highspots, like the Tackle and the Dropkick, were introduced - but the main difference lies in the style itself. Strikes are added, matches feel grittier, more intense and violent. Essentially, what seems to have happened is that pro-wrestling evolved to make matches feel more like fights and less like grappling exhibitions, and it did so by increasing the violence and dramatizing the struggle of the grappling, instead of copying the logic of real fights which is "escape the hold as soon as you can and immediately improve your position". And by doing that it actually acquired the tools to mimick great real fights, where moves and styles are connected to individual fighters, given meaning, played up in the build-up and so on. Londos is at the forefront of all this. He is the legendary champion having great matches we at least have clips of on tape in a style that I absolutely adore watching. The rabbit punches/slaps/forearms we get intentionally have no wind-up, which is like the inverse of 80s American brawling, you can easily miss some of them. It's basically a paradox - they are doing it for flash, but in a way that is as realistic and unflashy as possible. But in turn, it makes the whole thing feel more organic, it glues you to the action and makes this wonderful pastiche dramatic and exciting without going overboard in the silliness. Maybe only paradoxical logic could have worked in a medium that was a paradox itself? Anyway. I'll have to figure how to compare him to those born in times of affordable widely available advanced video technology, but there's no way I'm submitting a "best wrestlers" list without Jim Londos on it.

Man, what a mindfuck to watch a fully formed southern tag from 1959. Signature spots like ref distractions, double teams, and saves are all present here in basically the same form as you'd get from 80's stuff. About the only sign of this being a 50's match is a body slam being treated like a finishing hold. That aside, I liked this a lot. I usually watch 50's stuff to see guys trading holds, but they did a pretty good job working a striking oriented match. They kept a good pace and all the stuff looked snug. The FIP section was also pretty entertaining due to the guys on the apron being almost as active as the wrestlers in the ring in trying to help their partner. I also liked how the FIP was constantly trying to go back to his corner and needed to be held back by the opposing team.

Ha, I've always said Earth 1 Hogan starts when he goes exclusively to yellow trunks. The last non-yellow trunks Hogan on tape I'm aware of was vs Race @ MSG, June of 87. Maybe the first Survivor Series is the beginning of Earth 1 WWF? Then you could explain the nonsensical teammate issues (Steamer w. Savage and Roberts, Hogan w. Orndorff) as not mattering because they only feuded on Earth 2

Card looks very interesting. Not surprised it's not selling well though. Sumo Hall was a very ambitious goal to begin with.

Some roster moves for UWF: Osamu Kido has been released. Lou Thesz has been named honorary chairman. Andy Hug and Maurice Smith have joined the roster

If they think that's bad, wait until they find out that some of the fights on the card might have been fixed. Athletic commission regulation of pro wrestling is such a ridiculous anachronism.

I always wonder if WM 4 is the real dividing line between Earth 1 and Earth 2 WWF. It’s somewhere around there.

He's become the Doc Hendrix to the new generation of Hardy Boyz. Hell no.

there was also a new intro and studio design for Prime Time post WM 4.

In doing research of the match, one of the edits is because Ozaki legit fainted while Kudo put her in a swinging sleeper and Kudo covers her and referee Go Ito counts 1....2...and he had to stop the count because it wasn't the finish but Ozaki was not about to kick out, so he stopped the count and took a few moment to try and revive her and she regained consciousness they continued the match.

Loved the finish of that women's match! Nice brawl to the back for the big guys in the US title match! Ric Flair versus Ted DiBiase is an amazing main event, love seeing Dr Death look so strong at the end! Looking forward to WrestleWar!