THE NEW JAPAN 175 Options

[goodhelmet]

If you aren't participating in the poll, why are you complaining?

[KrisZ]

This is going to be the problem with Tiger Mask because he has been so romanticized over the years due to everyone loving him when he first came out because of him being a "trendsetter" and honestly a lot of his stuff hasn't aged well over the years.

[Log]

When do these start shipping?

I can't wait to get started on this. My wife calls these 80's sets my "nerd project".

Need to get to nerdin' again.

[goodhelmet]

Give me a couple of weeks.

[Phil Schneider]

And who said he didn't have any good stuff? First of all, you're bringing his UWF stuff into it. I don't think anyone said he was shitty there. About his NJ run, I'd say he was a spectacular athlete who was paired with great opponents often enough that some excellent matches resulted. But he was not a guy like Fujinami who could be counted on for great performances week after week. People will probably come away from this set with a higher-than-merited opinion of Tiger Mask, because they didn't have to slog through all of his work. But the truth is that he was a spot-oriented wrestler who blew a fuckload of spots. He struggled with match structure. He serially no-sold. Does that mean he was without his uses? Of course not.

There is a bunch of Tiger Mask matches on the set, but we really have every above average match he was in nominated. Virtually everything else was pretty fucking shitty including bad matches with superworkers like Solar and Villano III.

[DylanWaco]

Over at SmarksChoice we are running a best of ECW poll. Sabu is a guy who was a trendsetter, almost was a WON WOTY in 94, was regarded as a "superworker" for several years in the mid-90's, has several well remembered feuds, angles, matches, et. Sabu also was to some degree the embodiment of the style ECW came to represent. Hard to imagine people bitching endlessly about the lack of "high end" Sabu matches on any best of ECW discs (though to be fair I think Sabu is going to have some well placed matches on the final ballots).

Sayama is a guy who's reputation benefits greatly from being a pre-net figure. He didn't suffer any real time backlash so now he is a saint in the eyes of many and beyond criticism. Still I've watched enough Sayama to know that his best stuff was shootstyle and he was not as good a worker as Sabu. But that won't keep people from bitching.

[goodhelmet]

Nothing wrong in liking a good Tiger Mask match. The difference is being able to criticize the bad ones and not make excuses for their shittiness.

[rainmakerrtv]

Going back to that musty old wish list I had, a small number didn't make it on, just wondering what was the reasoning (not that I have a huge emotional investment, it was a pretty old list) :

84/04/19 Takada vs. Yatsu (part of the gauntlet?)

84/07/01 Inoki/Fujinami/Cobra vs. Dynamite Kid/Davey Boy Smith/Dave Schultz

87/09/21 Takada/Maeda vs. Yamazaki/Fujiwara

Sad to see that Black Tiger didn't hold up in the cold light of day, but glad to see some Junior era Fujinami made the cut, his was my favorite part of the History of the Jr. Title.

[Phil Schneider]

]\
87/09/21 Takada/Maeda vs. Yamazaki/Fujiwara
]

We have a match between these teams which we have listed as 9/1/87, where did you get this match from? There is nothing listed from TV or Classics

[rainmakerrtv]

]\
87/09/21 Takada/Maeda vs. Yamazaki/Fujiwara
]

We have a match between these teams which we have listed as 9/1/87, where did you get this match from? There is nothing listed from TV or Classics

I'm forgetting the exact origins of how I came up with that list, that pairing is listed twice ... possibly the broadcast date of the original match? That or maybe a typo from the original source.

[Ditch]

84/04/19 Takada vs. Yatsu (part of the gauntlet?)

Correct. The whole gauntlet is there as one match.

87/09/21 Takada/Maeda vs. Yamazaki/Fujiwara

Per Phil, this is on there with the correct date (9/1)

[Tsurutaman]

Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (2/8/80)

Stanley's only NWF title win over Inoki! Excellent. This set has everything you could want from a study of the Fed in the 80s. My thanks to the committee. Looking forward to some all-nighters

[TigerMask666]

This will be my first time participating in this and looking forward to receiving this set.

[theintensifier]

No, but you can always try to youtube/sendspace/megaupload a match and generate support for it. For any set, feel free to nominate matches from here and we'll take public support into consideration. Worst case scenario, it gets enough support to put on the errata set.

9/19/85 thoughts when watching with Phil

Will...

Man, that was fucking torture getting through that match. Phil and I synched up the TV and early on, Phil was defending the matwork as respectable, blah blah blah. After the 10 minute Figure 4 fight, I think they lost Phil and I was already comatose at that point. Some shitty execution down the stretch including an awkward German and a finish that made no sense to me, but made the crowd go batshit and this is an enthusiastic no. Phil was explaining the required matwork for Lou Thesz reffed matches and I can only say that I hope I never watch this match again.

Phil...

Man this was dull as spit. I liked some of the early matwork, but that endless figure four was just brutal. I thought the ending had a ton of crowd heat, but the execution wasn't great and the finish kind of sucked. No from me.

I like Phil & yours comments, would it be too much to ask for the comments on most/all of the matches? I think that would be very interesting, to see what you guys see in these matches opposed to what I see in them.

Good job to all who helped complete this monster set. Although there a few questionable matches included, and a few key matches that are absent, it basically covers the cream of the crop for NJPW.

[goodhelmet]

On matches I feel strongly about, I usually post my comments in the Too Short thread. I usually won't copy Phil's comments unless it is to prove a point like that one.

[EricR]

All that really says to me is that you guys like Liger more.

Hating TM is just the latest DVDVR phase, like the two Mark Henry is a superworker phases and the we love Gene Snitsky phase.

Tiger's had too many good matches with too many different opponents to discredit him so much.

What a fucking whiny little post. Did you bother to watch the Other Japan Men's 80s set? 15 fucking Super Tiger matches! Out of only 75 TOTAL matches! Put together by the same people that put this set together.

I am confused how you're implying that they're almost pretending to dislike Tiger Mask, or just going through a phase, when Super Tiger made up 20% of one of the previous sets....that were put together by the same people. So, Phil genuinely enjoyed his shootstyle work, yet is now saying his pro-style work is shit just to sound cool?

Phil and Will have quite different tastes in what makes a match great, and both of them (and plenty others) thought a lot of the Tiger Mask matches were shit. So go make your own New Japan ballot and nominate every Tiger Mask masterpiece you want.

Also, by and large, the people who really dig Mark Henry were not the ones who were digging Gene Snitsky's run.


Eric

[mookieghana]

By my count:

THE LOT
Tatsumi Fujinami - 56 matches. (9 in 1980, 3 in 1981, 4 in 1982, 8 in 1983, 4 in 1984, 5 in 1985, 6 in 1986, 8 in 1987, 7 in 1988, 2 in 1989)
Antonio Inoki - 37 matches. (4 in 1980, 2 in 1981, 1 in 1982, 2 in 1983, 6 in 1984, 5 in 1985, 5 in 1986, 5 in 1987, 6 in 1988, 1 in 1989)
Riki Choshu - 34 matches. (7 in 1983, 6 in 1984, 5 in 1987, 8 in 1988, 8 in 1989)
Yoshiaki Fujiwara - 30 matches. (3 in 1984, 10 in 1986, 13 in 1987, 3 in 1988, 1 in 1989)

THE MANY
Kengo Kimura - 29 matches. (3 in 1980, 1 in 1981, 1 in 1982, 2 in 1983, 2 in 1984, 5 in 1985, 5 in 1986, 5 in 1987, 2 in 1988, 3 in 1989)
Akira Maeda - 27 matches. (3 in 1983, 1 in 1984, 11 in 1986, 12 in 1987)
Nobuhiko Takada - 26 matches. (2 in 1984, 11 in 1986, 12 in 1987, 1 in 1988)

THE SEVERAL
Keiichi Yamada (Jushin Liger) - 19 matches.
Shiro Koshinaka - 18 matches.
Tiger Mask - 17 matches.
Dick Murdoch - 15 matches.
Kantaro Hoshino - 14 matches.
Kuniaki Kobayashi - 11 matches.

THE NOTABLE BUNCH
Seiji Sakaguchi - 10 matches.
Masa Saito - 9 matches.
Big Van Vader, Super Strong Machine, Osamu Kido, George Takano (The Cobra), Dynamite Kid - 8 matches.
Stan Hansen & Hiroshi Hase - 7 matches

CHOICE BITS
Naoki Sano, Andre the Giant, Keiji Mutoh, Kazuo Yamazaki, Higo "Animal" Hamaguchi - 6 matches
Akira Nogami, Shinya Hashimoto, Adrian Adonis - 5 matches
Yoshiaki Yatsu, Gran Hamada, Hulk Hogan - 4 matches

A FEW
Hiroshi Saito, Tatsutoshi Goto, Abdullah the Butcher, Chavo Guerrero, Steve Keirn, Black Tiger / Mark Rocco, Bob Orton Jr., Killer Khan - 3 matches
Billy Crusher / Masked Superstar, El Bello Greco, El Signo, Isamu Teranishi, Victor Zangiev, Bruiser Brody, Masaharu Funaki, El Canek, Negro Navarro, Babyface, Buzz Sawyer, Bob Backlund, Takayuki Iizuka, Owen Hart, Don Nakaya Nielsen, Shunji Kosugi, Sergio El Hermoso, Bret Hart, Scott Hall, Salman Hashimikov - 2 matches

THE ONE-SHOT STARS!
Kensuke Sasaki, Ron Starr, Don Arakawa, Rene Goulet, Greg Valentine, Bam Bam Bigelow, Pete Roberts, Perro Aguayo, Stan Lane, Steve Armstrong, Bad News Allen, Steve Williams, Steven Wright, El Texano, Pat Tanaka, Osamu Matsuda, Tatsuo Nakano, Jerry Lawler, The Grappler, El Solitario, Tony Londos, Tony Rocco, Tony St. Clair, Tracy Smothers, Umanosuke Ueda, Norio Honaga, Yoji Anjo, Masa Chono, Manny Fernandez - 1 match.

Let me know if I counted anyone as two seperate people. I'm not very knowledgable about 80s Japan. For instance, I am assuming that "Missionaries De La Muerte" are El Signo, Negro Navarro and El Texano. I am assuming that Masaharu Funaki and Masakazu Funaki are different people. (EDIT: They are not. FIXED.)

Dick Murdoch (1982 to 1988) & Kantaro Hoshino (in matches ranging from 1980 and 1989 matches) appeared in nominated matches from seven different years. Tatsumi Fujinami, Antonio Inoki, Kengo Kimura appeared in nominated matches from every single year. It will be interesting to see how these guys essentially will be competing against themselves in the set!
1987 is all about Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Akira Maeda, Nobuhiko Takada who are in 12+ nominated matches that year. Naoki Sano makes himself known in 1989 with all of his six appearances! Similarly, Tatsutoshi Goto has all three of his in 1988 and Steve Keirn & Chavo Guerrero have all three of their appearances in 1980.

[Phil Schneider]

The two Funaki's are the same dude. You are right about the MDM. Also did you count the guys in the two Gauntlet matches?

[odessasteps]

might this be the only 80s set done without Flair? (I guess EMLL probably won't either).

[Phil Schneider]

There was no Flair in the Other Japan or WWF sets