Big Night In Wrestling

I'm still sick, sitting at home unable to do much more than cough a lot and stare at YouTube. Normally, I wouldn't bother to share that with the blogging world, but I did think this little moment was amusing: I just realized that the biggest night of the year in wrestling is happening tonight, and I had completely forgotten about it. Instead, I've been getting major enjoyment out of watching the 1997 edition of All Japan Pro Wrestling's traditional Real World Tag League tourney. I've gotten more excited while watching this event than I have from watching anything WWE has put out in the eleven years since. I don't even speak the language, and I'm still popping hard for the near falls in these matches. The whole show is booked to perfection, making great use of both the amazing talent (Kobashi, Misawa, Williams, Kawada, Hayabusa, Shinzaki) and the not-so-amazing talent (Wolf Hawkfield? Kamala???) and the performances in the ring really draw you in and make you care about who's about to get pinned. No sledgehammers, no overblown egos, no cartoony blustering...just amazing wrestling action.

I haven't looked at the results yet, and am only halfway through the show, but I'm rooting for Hayabusa and Jinsei, although I'm sure they won't get the win. So I'll cross my fingers for Misawa and Akiyama. I love Kobashi to death, but just find it hard to root for a team that has Johnny Ace on it. Interesting that Bradshaw is in both this event and Wrestlemania.

I'll dig around tomorrow and see how they treat Flair's final show on Wrestlemania, but as far as being entertained, I'm sticking with the Japanese product, thank you.