All Japan Pro Wrestling - 2/3 Falls NWA title - Jack Brisco vs Dory Funk Jr.

All Japan Pro Wrestling - 2/3 Falls NWA title - Jack Brisco vs Dory Funk Jr.

Dory takes the first fall...at 43 minutes in.

Jack grabs the 2nd fall with a figure four at 10 mins into the 2nd

This went to an hour draw when time ran out. The first 40 minutes were all mat wrestling. And a lot of it could be missed because they were clearly doing a lot of rest holds and never looked like they were trying to finish the match. After the first fall, they picked things up and looked like they were going for it, but it was a bit too late. There wasn't a ton of great story here and a lot of it was just killing time. It wasn't that bad though despite that and for the most part, they worked a pretty safe match. It could have been better, but it could have been a lot worse and I think this match is a good example just of how much times have changed and how the purpose of matches have really changed. There's worse 60 minutes out there, but I wouldn't watch this one again.

All Japan Pro Wrestling 7/21/1986 - Riki Choshu and Yoshiaki Yatsu vs Super Strong Machine and Killer Khan

All Japan Pro Wrestling 7/21/1986 - Riki Choshu and Yoshiaki Yatsu vs Super Strong Machine and Killer Khan

Choshu and Yatsu won by DQ when Khan brought in a rope and started choking people. The match was fine. Nothing too special and nothing bad, but certainly enjoyable enough with a finish that really came out of nowhere. I thought this match was really just getting started after about 15 minutes when the DQ happened. The story of this match was Khan and Choshu both wanting some of each other and everyone else just doing basic heel and face roles. There was nothing too worthwhile going out of your way to see here.

All Japan Pro Wrestling 7/25/1975 - Fritz Von Erich vs Giant Baba

All Japan Pro Wrestling 7/25/1975 - Fritz Von Erich vs Giant Baba

This is under Texas Death Match rules.

Baba stomps the claw hand

 

Here's some other gifs that I couldn't put in the original review:

 

 

Giant Baba hit Fritz with a chop to the chest and he fell to the outside and couldn't answer the count.

They started brawling early here but the camera's couldn't catch it well and it was hard to see. Fritz ended up bloodied but rode the claw. They had Fritz get the advantage early with claws and stomps before Baba started to get the advantage and hit some chops for the win. Not a ton of moves or anything here and the work and story were decent, just hate filled matches aren't the best thing for Baba to be in with his light offense. The 10 counts here got a little boring after a while and I would have rather seen a finish where Baba chopped Fritz over the head and he fell hard to the floor, but it wasn't the case. The two continued to fight after the bell with Fritz putting the stomach claw on Baba. Fritz wasn't bad at all here and had pretty good offense while doing his best to put over Baba's weak offense.

Thoughts on the WWE Women's Tag Titles

Thoughts on the WWE Women's Tag Titles

WWE has announced that they will be having tag team titles for the women.

This isn't the first that they will be doing this, as they did this in the 80's for a brief period of time. The division consisted of two whole teams, The Glamour Girls and The Jumping Bomb Angels.

What happened? Well, it doesn't seem like the division had much thought put into it and it seems like the goal for it was to try and copy the successes of All Japan Women, as Dump Matsumoto, Bull Nakano and The Crush Girls were brought in for MSG appearances. I think it also pretty clear at the time that the non-Japanese girls the WWF used, minus the Glamour Girls, really just weren't up to speed in any aspect.

What has changed?

WWE isn't building this off of totally nothing anymore. They have some decent talent, homegrown and not, such as Charlotte Flair, Asuka, Rhea Ripley, Becky Lynch, Alexa Bliss and others. Some of these girls are more over than some of the men and Asuka at one point was my pick for the best wrestler in the world, while Flair is the complete package. Rhea Ripley has tons of potential and Alexa Bliss has definitely surpassed late 2000's expectations.

The whole landscape has also changed. Pushing women wrestlers is seen as progressive and scores a lot of brownie points with various groups. It also has helped WWE get a lot of mainstream press they probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. It still gets the old T&A audience, but it also gets a female audience as well.

But here's what hasn't changed - WWE still doesn't really have the foundation for a women's tag team division and still has not fixed its issues with booking tag teams.

You can slap any two wrestlers together and make them a team, but does anyone really want to see Asuka and Naomi? Or Alicia Fox and Mickie James? I don't, and I haven't really encountered anyone who wants to see it either.

Even of the established teams, there's not much that excites me. The Iconics and The Bella Twins don't really do it for me, Nia and Tamina don't really do it for me, the Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose team doesn't do it for me and Sasha and Bayley don't really do it for me. I do like the Riot Squad though, but I'm tired of seeing Sasha, Bayley and friends vs The Riot Squad every week and I don't really see that endless feud going anywhere anytime soon.

How many matches are really going to be there? And how many of them are going to be matches people really want to see?  Yeah, a women's division will score points with some groups, but not if it's terrible and it really looks like it will not be very good at all.

The other issue that I mentioned above is that WWE has a lot of issues with booking tag teams. Tag teams exist in WWE to pair random people together that they don't know what to do with and to seemingly put over feuding singles wrestlers, who no matter how much they hate each other, can easily destroy even the most established teams. It's hard to imagine that the women's tag team division won't be handled the same way when they need some type of twist to get interest in the next big match.

Tag Teams are hard enough to deal with as is because you need to have two wrestlers, which doubles your chances of injuries and doubles the egos involved. And like the singles division, you have to constantly add and remove people to keep it interesting, and I just don't think the talent is there for that in the men's division, yet alone the future women's tag team division.

Overall, I'm not very high on this idea. It sounds great on paper, especially to people who aren't that into wrestling, but in reality, I don't think it's going to work out as planned. I think it's just going to be another prop and further decrease the meaning of titles.

Thoughts on All Elite Wrestling

Neither The Elite nor the Khan's have any record of promoting wrestling full-time. Yet so far, they are claiming to have all of the answers to frequently unsolved issues in wrestling, despite being complete rookies at this game. These people are in over their heads already. Maybe they will succeed and maybe they won't, but I'd have a lot more faith if they had been running shows on the regular on a smaller basis to see how everything works.

They want to have healthcare, while letting people hold their own shows and possibly even be on other people's shows. Are they going to be okay with losing a star for perhaps up to a year when they inevitably get injured on personal shows or with non-contracted wrestlers? No one's going to think, "if we didn't allow this, we might have saved ourselves an injury"? And from what we've been told, the guys from top to bottom are going to be allowed to do whatever they want in matches, which is recipe for injuries as people will end up doing too much and taking unnecessary risks.

Next, let's talk about running less shows. There's a reason almost every wrestling company ever has ran a lot of shows. It's not because they necessarily wanted or needed to, but it's because more shows mean more money. Yes, WWE might have trouble making money off of house shows right now, but WWE has a whole host of other issues and this isn't WWE. Knoxville isn't considered a huge city in the US, but promotions in the past were able to run that 52 times a year and make a lot of money off of it. Obviously, I'm not saying they need to run somewhere that much, but if they can make money running off of smaller places multiple times a year, you think they are really going to say "NO"? I don't. And with the big money contracts they are talking about, they are going to have to be running, because there can really only be one or two big shows a year.

Next, they want female salaries to be equal with mens. I said this in another thread, but I cannot think of a single unsigned women's wrestler who is worth 6 figures right now. My best guess as to who that could be would be someone like Arisa Nakajima, who would clearly not be worth it despite being very good and even better than someone like Cody. And I and others have asked if these salaries are really going to be equal with people like the Bucks and Omega, and I think I saw Dave consider it a trolling comment, when it's not.

The women's roster is also something of concern. Who is really out there that is ready for the national stage for female wrestlers? Between WWE, ROH, TNA and whoever else, a lot of the better talent is already locked up. Yes, there's Japanese women, but places like Stardom are running on bare bones rosters as is. I don't want to see various joshi promotions be destroyed by talent losses and no one else should either if they are truly fans of the promotions.

I think they've gotten ahead of themselves so far and have put the cart before the horse. It's one thing to make big promises in private and not deliver, but they've made these publicly. And if they end up not working out, there's going to be a lot of questions. I really think they need to chill out and stop thinking they have the road to El Dorado on the first try.