(Editor's Note: Yes I know I said I was going to keep this blog active and didn't. I had a retail job from December to January that kept me from this blog, or doign anything other than sleeping. That changes now.)
A lot of times, especially on Twitter, the current big-box WWE corporate product draws grunts of annoyance over this bad booking decision, or that sophomoric promo by John Cena over there. It's understandable. I've done it myself too. The trick is, when you feel yourself starting to walk down that road of annoyance, crack open a DVD or turn on your Real Player or VLC Player and watch wrestling you know you enjoy. Wrestling that speaks to you. That is what this series is designed to do.It's the stuff I'm watching, the matches I turn to and download the second big-box wrestling gets under my skin.
Now, with that said, another small note before we get into this. This is what I, ME, am watching. Perhaps, once I show you these, something about the style here won't speak to you as it speaks to me. If that's the case, then by all means, you don't have to stay here. Delve into the magic of youtube, or Ditch's Wrestling Page and find something that you know you'll like more. The point here is not to enjoy what I enjoy, because I know some of you won't. The point is rather to find the things you enjoy.
Let's start with maybe the greatest era of pure workrate for any company in my lifetime. From 1990-1997 in All Japan Pro Wrestling, it was a style that was so brilliant it has been mimicked repeatedly, and mimicked poorly. (Sorry, Davey Richards and Ring of Honor.) What people miss when they talk about King's Road, and even Strong Style (and its myriad of apings, which we will get to shortly.), is that at its peak, it wasn't about head-dropping for head-dropping sake. It was about the tiering of offense, and the belief that when the kings of the firmament battled each other, it would require more from both of them than it would for one of them to dispatch a lower-ranked opponent. That is what wrestling misses now a lot of the time. Not squash matches, although those would be bad-ass to see come back on big-box televised wrestling. Rather, what I mean is the knowledge that not everyone can compete head-up with the champion. Some people aren't ready yet. Some people aren't that good. But enough of my soapboxing. Let's get to the wrestling~!
My first pick is from Mitsuharu Misawa in 1994. In the great years of wrestling, we have Flair's 1989, Bryan Danielson's 2006, and Misawa's 1994. It is as awesome a year to watch as exists. And yet, the match I picked is the time when his 2-year title reign ended. Why did I pick this match? Simple. A: because it's really good in a different way than we remember the classic against Kawada just a month before, wghere that was layered with buckets upon buckets of history, call-backs to stuff that had happened in previous matches, and the distinct kind of desperation that comes from watching Kawada trying desperately to escape that hard-luck reputation.
This thing, on the other hand, is all about Misawa defending Japan against the American monster of his day. From the championship proclamation being read in English, to all of Williams's cornermen being English, this clearly was "Japan vs USA" but not without any of the gauche flagwaving you would see if this was done now. And that brings me to point B: Steve Dr. Death Williams.
There have been bad-asses in professional wrestling, and then there was Dr. Death. Perhaps the greatest "hoss" ever, to quote the kindly writer of the Wrestling Blog, Thomas Holzerman. Somewhat ignored in America due to our need for explosive charisma, Dr. Death became a terror in Japan. Teamed with Terry Gordy, Stan Hansen, Johnny Ace, or simply by himself, Dr. Death carried himself like the man you knew him to be behind the scenes: Impossibly tough, and yet equally as skilled. This was not some meat-fisted Texan who needed to brawl. This was a guy who could wrestle, and did when he wanted to, but was the kind of tough guy that carried off the nickname of "Dr. Death" believably.
Watch this match. Enjoy it.
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