OK trucido, I’m gonna follow Zaphrods example on this one.
but just one thing.
I’ll be Mike Awesome. You can be Tommy Dreamer. I’ll lift you up onto my shoulders, extend my arms (thereby raising you higher up. ) carry you forward, and then throw you 12 foot or so to the ground. Oh, and through a table too.
Then tell me how it didn’t hurt for you, because its fake, and then say I’m not an athlete, because I trained long and hard to be able to lift and carry, and throw you.
Plus, you have to weigh about 260 pounds.
And if thats not what you would call an athlete, better start lobbying to have those weightlifters thrown out of the olympics.
I hate to see people referencing Mick Foley and his injuries as some sort of validation of pro wrestling. Mick Foley is a glory mark who damn near crippled himself whoring to get a pop from the fans. Personally, I don’t think that’s all that admirable. The moves are supposed to “look” like they hurt, not actually injure. But thanks to people like Foley, Sabu, The Great Sasuke, and Kenta Kobashi, that’s been lost on most of the new generation of workers who think the key to getting over is big bumps and have little idea how to build a story into a match.
Anyway, I think pro wrestling is like most other forms of entertainment - it had some good and some bad. I’m not going to dismiss music because of some crap I hear on the radio. LVB still wrote the 9th. Similarly, just because the WWF does something stupid like “HHH drugs and marries the owner’s daughter” or some garbage fed in Japan did that Anal Firecracker thing, I’m not going to ignore the intelligent work of people like Toshiaki Kawada & Barry Windham.
Simon,
long time lurker, first time poster
Hey Margin Walker, welcome to the Straight Dope!!!
I might have a little quibble about what you said about Foley and Sabu, but I understand where you are coming from. You think that he and Sabu took too many unneccessary risks on their own and their opponents’ bodies, and broke the forth wall concerning looking/being injured, in order to please and gain sympathy with the crowd. That is perhaps true. But they are also two of the best in-ring storytellers in pro wrestling (and Mick is almost certainly, if not the best, one of the best at cutting promos ever). It is too bad that many newer wrestlers of today, with the exception of the Rock, Angle, and HHH, don’t pick up on the storytelling part of the business. It might make wrestling more fun again.
That being said, I sure appreciate a fan who enjoyed the contribution that Blackjack Mulligan’s son made to wrestling. Remember his match against Lex Luger, where Barry broke his finger yet still pulled off two superplexes on Luger? They don’t make guys like him and Bamm Bamm Gordy anymore.
Of course, not. You know why? Because they’re not in a competition with scores or “winners.” Grade school kids playing tag are athletes because they are competing. The individuals you have mentioned, despite being exceptionally gifted fucking athletically, are not athletes.
And thank you Ian Fan for pointing out that he doesn’t know how to use a dictionary. I would’ve posted a response, but I had inadvertantly rolled my eyes so far that I was staring at my brain stem.
Though I also see where you’re coming from, let me be the second person to disagree with you on this point. I think Foley is not only a great promo-cutter, but he also knows how to tell a story in a match.
I’m not saying Foley himself didn’t know how to tell a story in the ring (though I think he’s light years behind people like Akira Hokuto & Jushin Liger - yes, I’m a puro snob :)), but that the legions of new wrestlers he’s influenced didn’t pick up on that. Most of them don’t understand psychology or selling or charisma, and their matches suffer (IMNSHO) because of it. I’m more interested in someone who can weave a nice story in their match than someone who simply takes big bumps.
Simon
There are tons of tape traders and/or dealers around, but many of them are sketchy. My advice would be to go to http://www.deathvalleydriver.com and ask for suggestions about where to buy. A bunch of people there sell tapes, and they can let you know who is reputable and who isn’t. FWIW, I’d also recommend that you avoid RF Video like the plague.
The best way to go would probably be to buy a compilation tape. That way you can get a sample of the various styles (the lucharesu of Michinoku Pro, the rapid fire workrate stylings of Joshi, the hard hitting psychology style of All Japan, the barbed wire death stuff in FMW, the shoot style of UWFi, etc.) and see what best suits your tastes. There’s something for damn near any wrestling fan in puroresu - you’ve just got to find your niche. I really dig the All Japan stuff (KAWADA~!), but YMMV.
No. He was better, but not great. Honestly, I don’t think he was all that bad for a big guy in the early 80s. He was no Terry Gordy, but he was decent. Too bad that once he got his shtick down, he stopped working hard and became so saccharine and formulaic. The better gaijin of the 80s (Gordy, Bruiser Brody, Dick Murdoch, Stan Hansen) smoked him :).
Simon
Grr. I was hoping you say something like the Japanese TV, channel 88 on Cablevision or something like that. Oh well, time to lurk for more VHS’s…
For NYers, they are showing some old-time wrestling on channel 68 at 9pm several days a week. So if you find Raw to suck on a particular week, turn to American International Wrestling.
Hey, they made over the Deathvalley driver page than from what I remembered.
I think in larger cities some Japanese grocery stores carry puroresu tapes for rental. They’re probably current tapes, though, and the current puro scene kinda sucks :(, but it might be worth looking into. Otherwise, you gotta buy the tapes. Fortunately, you can get them relatively cheap, and if you get into trading you can score all kinds of stuff without spending too much $$$.
Simon
