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Match: Magnum Tokyo & Dragon Kid & SAITO vs. Shiima Nobunaga & Judo Suwa & Sumo Fuji Taped Mexico Arena Naucalpan |
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This was a good match, that could eventually become a great match as Ultimo's students gain more experience. Shiima was easily the best on his team. He will be great because he's so smooth and athletic, plus he's so natural as a charismatic dickish heel. Magmum showed flashes of greatness, while SAITO showed a lot of potential. Dragon Kid was by far the most exciting performer, trying a few of the most incredible moves in existence, but at this point he can't pull those few off with any consistency. He has the potential to be the best flyer in wrestling if he can invent a few breathtaking moves and get his execution down. His quebrada over the top to the floor was awesome, but the spot where Nobunaga catapulted him to the second and Dragon jumped off backwards into a huracan rana, which is called the Dragon's ray, was far more unbelievable! The final fall between Shima & Magnum was the most consistently good part of the match, and they were the most solid and consistent workers in the match. Nobunaga eventually pinned Magnum with the "Magnum death drop," which is basically a gutwrench suplex. The execution in this match certainly could have been better, but you have to be really happy with these guys progress. "I love the Toryumon guys, but see, I have to work guys who watch
the tapes and then think they can do their spots. This leads to such
poor highspot, highspot, highspot matches. That makes me sick, in that
people seem to do matches for themselves now and not the fans,"
wrote Sam. So basically it comes down to them having the option to not try things until they can do them right, but they want to show off or whatever, so they do them even if they aren't that good at them? "Exactly. Some guys just go half nuts and do all these things in their match," wrote Sam. How does your style differ from this? "I'm mainly concerned with having good fundamentals. Fujinami, Kobayashi, and now Dory have had the biggest influence on the way I wrestle. I've never tried a rana because I know my limitations, and I think I look better being a technical brawler. I'm more of a Dick Togo-esque guy, I can bump and fly, but you wouldnt know it until it happens," wrote Sam. Do you use many highspots in your matches? " I have a few high spots, but I have practiced them until they
look perfect. I never do a spot unless I have pre-tried it to the point
where it should come out perfect," wrote Sam. "Some guy tried to do a Frankenstiener against me my first match into a new promotion and when he fucked it up, we both looked like shit. He talked to me about it before the match and said, 'oh yeah, I can do it,' so I said, 'well, ok...knowing it would be botched. It was a squash to put me over, but he wanted to do a million spots," wrote Sam. What percentage of your opponents are the try a lot, blow a lot types?
"Probably 75%," wrote Sam. That's one reason why it's hard to find good independent wrestling. These days it seems like you either get old farts living off their name from 80's (if not before) that do nothing or young guys that try to do way too much. The later is obviously more entertaining, but this kind of one-dimensional wrestling is only good to watch if they are quality workers that hit a very high percentage of their spots. "On one hand, I think its good to see workers actually watching those sort of tapes and trying to do emulate that style. On the other hand, I agree with Sam. Wrestler's egos are the problem, I think.You want everybody to see all the cool spots you can do, and you want to make sure that all the right people might see them as well. The problem is exactly what Sam said, big spotfests that have no real meaning. The match winds up being two guys trying to show off as much as possible. Not only that, but it can be pretty dangerous too. Some workers may want to get their spots into a match as soon as possible, so they don't polish them as well as they should. This leads to sloppy spots and possible injuries. When I was training in Denver, a buddy of mine, Charles, had to work with 2 Cold Scorpio. This was before a lot of new Japanese spots came over to the US, and most of the guys I knew were old school wrestlers anyway. During the match, Scorpio decided to try a powerbomb. It's a simple move now, but Charles had never done it. He thought it was a piledriver. Scorpio picked him up expecting Charles to sit up for the powerbomb. Instead, Charles stayed set for a piledriver and Scorpio dropped him right on his head. Charles wasn't hurt, but he could have been. Scorpio never talked to him about doing a powerbomb, he just assumed Charles knew it and that assumption could have turned out very bad. Before you try new spots it is vital to not only make sure YOU know them, but to make sure the guy you will be working with knows them as well. If Chuck Austin knew how to take the rocker dropper right, he wouldn't be paralyzed now," wrote Chris. "Nowadays fans in this country want matches with drama, but they don't have the patience to watch a match build for 20 or 30 minutes. Realistically, not many wrestlers anywhere can effectively work that long anyway. Generally speaking, I don't think fans in this country really care about cool highspots though otherwise guys like Psicosis and Blitzkreig would be really over despite not being pushed," wrote Michael. I think that, for the most, part they care about whatever the promotion(s) they watch tell them to care about. ECW tells the fans to care about spots, so spectacular moves and insane bumps get big reactions, it's just that for the most part not much else does. The foreign guys have to deal with racial jokes that don't even relate to the right race half the time, but they "win the fans over during the match with their cool moves. All the top workers that came through ECW were able to get over even though most of them were working against wrestlers of similar style and/or ability instead of the top ECW guys. The thing with ECW fans is that most of the time they won't react very much to the junior style guys until they start taking chances, and even then the reactions are likely to quickly taper off if they don't continue doing big spots, so it seems like they are less over than they are. "Most fans anywhere don’t care about the match until you nearly kill yourself. I know that in my first year in the business, I would have matches where I was doing a lot of technical reversals and lucha style spots that required timing and lot of knowledge of how to control the opponent on the mat, but people just sat on their hands. It would be like, lets get out all the flashy stuff and if it doesn’t get over, let’s go to the floor and kill each other with weapons and brawling. Now, I have learned how to get those spots over somewhat in that fans have to be told a story. It might not be the story you want to tell, but you can sneak some of your own "subplots" in, so to speak, to keep yourself interested," wrote Sam. These days there doesn't seem to be any concept in the US promotions of less being more. The wrestling shows are becoming a constant barrage of random images. Most everything is either meaningless or does mean something only is you can afford to hire Dave Meltzer as your interpretter. People say wrestling is a soap opera, but as lame as their stories are, at least they have some concept of where they are going and present them in a manner that encourages you to try to figure out where that is. They know if you start guessing, you'll have to tune in to see if you are right. On the other hand, the main things you can guess about WWF and WCW is if the angle will ever be mentioned again, and if it is how will it have been altered from it's original state. That's not the kind of guessing that is going to have many people at the edge of their seat or even bothering. Yet for some reason people keep tuning in, and it's certainly not for a good old wrestling match because they are only supposed to mean something when it's time for us to buy the next PPV. Sam wrote, "The actual match itself is rendered a nonissue, as is the idea of being a winning wrestler meaning anything. No one contends for anything because why should they? The belts are meaningless. The only important thing is ratings and pops, but see, those don’t translate into drawing money all the time either. The mouth of wrestling has started eating its tail…by that I mean that nothing about the business aspects of US wrestling makes sense anymore!" It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the most important
things from a business perspective are Getting back to the point about what the leagues tell the fans to care about, WWF and WCW constantly tell the fans that work and spots is meaningless. They just talk about something else, and have even been known to make jokes when guys are out there killing themselves. Since the quality workers are nothing but glorified jobbers, the fans have no reason to like them. It's not so much that they lose, but it's that they aren't allowed to put up resistance. They don't get to show heart or fighting spirit before they go down. Instead, someone just interrupts their match and leaves them laying so they can ramble on about nothing for five minutes. No matter how talented a wrestler is, it's hard to root for a guy that is nothing but fodder for Sid's "undefeated" streak. "No matter if I was being squashed or not when I wrestled on NWA TV tapings, I would always manage to get in a spot 'no one' had seen before, do something so out there, or take one crazy bump so that people wouldn’t remember who won or lost, but they remembered me," wrote Sam. Back in the day when there weren't many cool spots being done in the US, I would remember the WWF jobbers that would get one cool move in. For instance, Bob Bradley would always do something of a space rolling elbow. I have a hard time believing that todays fans will remember the jobbers because they have become so desensitived to the spots and the matches themselves have been rendered totally meaningless. I'm sure people would remember if you did something totally incredible. Still, unless the promotion pushed it by showing a bunch of replays or putting it in their opening, which wouldn't happen if you were a jobber (Benoit wasn't a jobber, but people still thought his last diving headbutt off the top of the cage was his first because WCW didn't show it 1000 times like WWF would have done), it would probably be forgotten by the end of the week because these days a million things happen during the shows but hardly any of them have any real purpose, direction, or lasting meaning. It's mainly a bunch of hotshotting to keep the fans from changing channels. "I am suprised though to see a worker comment that guys are doing matches for themselves now as opposed to doing it for the fans. Obviously it doesn't apply to everyone, but I had thought that most guys realized that American fans don't understand psychology and care more about trademark spots and gimmicks so the workers decided to go that route in hopes of being noticed," wrote Michael. American wrestling sucks because the fans have been conditioned by the promotions and wrestlers to be mindless. As long as the fans can't think logically for themselves, the promotions will continue to make good money off their illogical, repetitive products. "My line of thinking as an indy worker though would be to do the match for myself and my career more than doing it for the couple of hundred people who showed up and could probrably care less about me," wrote Michael. "Maybe it would help if I explained how I view wrestling. I don't see it as an individual pursuit, but as my contributing to an art form. I look at wrestling as something sacred, and feel I have to give it as much as it has given me. It has gotten me through the worst experiences of my life and basically, it gives me reason. The whole reason I got into the business was I was that kid in the crowd who would be bored by bad matches. I want to reach out to those kids and show them that this is fun and inspiring. It’s theater, it’s comedy, it’s tragedy. It’s the most pure entertainment there is because it’s acting and being in a role and not breaking character, and hurting, and still acting. Find me anywhere else where you can see that. So I’m part of a greater whole and I feel that working for yourself and not the crowd is selfish. I’m old school in that I came in before this boom when it was all about 'how do you draw?' Now it’s like skateboarding, I can do an ollie, a kickflip, etc., but I don’t ride for fun or transportation. Maybe its just jealousy in that all I have is a bit of charisma, good timing and the ability to take punishment and make it look like a good asskicking," wrote Sam. In regards to what Michael said about doing the match for yourself and your career, even if you were a childhood friend of Shane or were able to befriend Hogan and take away Ed Leslie's job of carrying his bags, you aren't going to succeed without eventually being able to get over. That doesn't mean you can't find a sucker to sign you to a sizable contract, but I think Sam's main point was going out there and blowing a bunch of spots isn't going to impress the fans or anyone in the industry that might consider taking you out of the league's that play before 200. "I see these spot machines and hear people on the net rave and rave about them, but in person their matches are met with silence. When I see spot machines work it’s like…silence…heat for highspots…silence…groan for blown spots…silence… I try to get a slow build, get them into the story, let them into the match. Bill Eadie (Demolition Ax) explained to me that these guys are having a match where you say 'wow, what a cool spot,' and 'wow, these guys are great athletes,' but do you ever care about who wins? I can get more heat building into a sleeper, the spots, the comebacks, and the different ways you can get out of that sleeper and back into it. I can get fans into a ten minute match based around that one hold, make them feel it's exciting and entertaining, without having to call spots, spend hours thinking and thinking, and having this choreographed match. My goal is to reach that kid in the audience, not someone who is like, why did you do that spot and not this spot and dissect the match. If those kinds of fans enjoy what I do, and they usually do, that’s a bonus. However, I get no greater thrill than when a ten year old comes up and wants a picture with me because they loved my match so much," wrote Sam. "Most indy crowds just go because it's cheap and they don't know who most of the wrestlers are anyway, so I can understand a worker worrying more about how the match will look on a tape that he'll send to WCW, ECW, and/or the WWF then how some guy who spent $10.00 or $15.00 to watch the show feels about it," wrote Michael. Most of the indy leagues are regional though, so even though there's only a few hundred fans, it's a lot of the same people coming to the same buildings. The WCW, ECW, and/or WWF aren't going to take the time to watch 20 hours of film on a wrestler like you or I would before making a decision on whether they wanted them. They'll probably watch one match, and that match will come off a lot better if the fans are into it. "Most indy guys work in several promotions anyway, so I think they feel that it's more worth it to go to the easier, spot-oriented, style (though it might not actually be easier physically) then it is to learn how to build a match and work the crowd right, etc. However, that's what has kept Flair around for 25+ years, he knows how to build a match and how to work the crowd, but he also can work with almost anyone and adapt to their style to make the match good. Obviously he can't throw Frankensteiners and moonsaults, but he can work with the guys who can," wrote Michael. "My partner, Ken Jugan, has been a wrestler since 1974, and was a JTTS (jobber to the stars) in WWF at one point. When I was very new to the business, he got with me and taught me how to work a crowd. He taught me what to do and when to do it. I remember him on the apron screaming 'slow down,' and 'calm down,' telling me to only do a few highspots because then the fans will appreciate them more. I have seen the guy work 20 minute matches out of one hold, then I have seen him amaze the crowd with high spots. They are truly amazed that he just did that move because they didn't expect it. He’s always, always over. He’s taught me that it’s how you carry yourself, the fun you have, and if the match is entertaining, rather than just the spots you did," wrote Sam. In regards to Flair, I disagree that he still adapts to their style. Maybe that was true 15 years ago, but if that was the case in the 90's then his matches wouldn't look nearly identical outside of the one difference of whether he was a face or a heel. He can do the same tired set of spots whether his opponent is 6'8", 380 or 5'6", 170, but that just means opponents are plugged into his worn out routine. "I think it's probrably easier to get into WCW, ECW, or the WWF if you work like Super Crazy or Kidman as opposed to Kawada or Misawa," wrote Michael. It's easier to try to wrestle like Super Crazy than Kawada, but ECW would push either style if the guy was good enough. I don't see why WCW or WWF would sign a guy that wrestled either style because they obviously don't intend to push either style and already have Super Crazy or Kidman types that they have no use for. If you aspire to be in WWF or WCW, I suppose you may was well do the same two moves and repeat the same line over and over again. Even then, they'd give you a new goofy character and a new lame line. "I’ve already achieved all I hoped to in wrestling. I would love to get a chance to go to one of the big groups even though I have no interest in their products because it would give me a chance to actually make a living off doing what I love. Plus, it would give me something to look back on in my old age. My goal has been getting my character over and not having a catch phrase or just one finisher, and I’ve done that so far. I think this actually could work in one of the big leagues if I did all character at the expense of style. At worst, it would be an interesting experiment," wrote Sam. Special thanks to: Sam Panico & Michael Smith 26:25
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