No nationalism but Terry Nationalism

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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

2 Comments

  1. Jacob Nanfito
    May 28, 2014 @ 8:24 am

    Great stuff. Japanese women's wrestling is something to behold — it's on a completely different level from the US version of "lady wrestling."

    A couple of times, Japanese women broke through in the WWF and made an impact — although it was usually short-lived. I always loved it whenever it happened because not only were the performers great, but it raised the stakes of women's wrestling, and always caused the division to be treated seriously (for a minute). Most notable in my memory are The Jumping Bomb Angels (Noriyo Tateno and Itsuki Yamazaki) whom, after a famous rivalry with the Crush Gals in Japan, made a splash in the WWF in 1987. Never mind the other women wrestlers, the Angels did stuff that most of the male tag teams couldn't do — some very innovative high-flying, hard hitting stuff.

    In 1994, Bull Nakano was brought into the WWF to be a monster heel for Women's Champ Alundra Blayze — and the two had an incredible rivalry with some amazing matches. Their bout at Summerslam 1994 stole the show, and caused a resurgence in women's wrestling.

    Reply

  2. Josh Marsfelder
    May 28, 2014 @ 9:38 am

    Thanks as always for your fantastic insight!

    I'm pleasantly surprised to hear there was some crossover with the US wrestling scene, and intrigued that the key dates here are 1987 and 1994 (dates which will soon reveal themselves to be meaningful for many other reasons). That might be something I'll have to return to when we get there.

    Hope you get a kick out of Friday's post: It's the entry all of this has been building to 😉

    Reply

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