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An Illustrated Guide to Masked Wrestlers (pudding.cool)
107 points by feross on May 13, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 18 comments



I cannot read some of the stuff on this site in the "around the world" section, I don't understand if it's a JS bug, a CSS issue or just plain missing content.

Other than that, it looks nice and it's interesting!

As an Italian who was a kid in the '80s we got exposed to two things: US Wrestling TV (Hulk Hogan, André the Giant etc) and Japanese wrestling but only through the Tiger Mask anime[0].

This was an interesting contrast because the live action was visibly silly while the anime was extremely violent and serious, and we still lived in an era when animation was considered "for kids".

Anyway both things were considered "bad for kids", which obviously made them even more sought after.

I think everyone ended up wearing a tiger mask at some point in their childhood, and I did end up breaking a friend's arm while wrestling (I was Koko B. Ware[1]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Mask

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_B._Ware


> […] Japanese wrestling but only through the Tiger Mask anime[0].[…] This was an interesting contrast because the live action was visibly silly

If you take the WWF (now WWE) as the base yes I can confirm that the silly comment is right. It was their product a more cartoonish-gimmicky style of wrestling. But especially when we look at the Japanese wrestling I would challenge the silly part. Puroresu (Japanese wrestling) had always a more stiffer kind of wrestling and put more weight to it that it looked more like a legitimate competitive sport [1][2].

Also in the USA you had the NWA at that time which always had more the vibe of a real competitive sport with more real characters.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2uQvLlgW5A [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCpkKtyyG0Y


Depends on which promotion to some degree. The big Japanese pro wrestling promotions (New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling) definitely lean into the legitimate sport side of the art form. On the other hand, light heavyweight oriented promotions like Michinoku Pro and Dragon Gate draw massive inspiration from Mexican lucha libre and tend to be more goofy[1].

But the great thing about Japanese pro wrestling for me has always been the variety. You can watch hardcore death matches involving barbed wire, if that's your thing. You can watch masked wrestlers doing ridiculous high flying. You can watch actual competitive MMA, sometimes with the same wrestlers who participate in worked/scripted matches.

However I am mostly nitpicking because I love this stuff and also I am showing off a bit. You're correct for 95% of Japanese pro wrestling.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RnaIzuVt4g


Yes im completely agree with you that's why I tried my hardest to not use absolutes.

My answer showed probably also that I had some interests in pro wrestling. It's not exaggerated that it's my biggest hobby.

And just to show off a little bit more I'm active in the wrestling business as a co-promoter and also as a manager! I mean it's just a hobby mostly even costing more then it makes but hey it's a lot of fun.

I'm a little bit skeptical of the modern wrestling I'm more of a 80s' 90s' wrestling guy.

I grew up loving WCW and I still I love it and by gosh this promotion is dead almost 20 years (and yeah they did a lot of goofy stuff too…).

Sorry for the babbling! ;)


Yes. However, I still remember how much the "tiger mask" anime last episode was intense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqeTXzoBAfQ


The first introduction of the Shockmaster (the stormtrooper helmet stood out to me in this list) was AMAZING:

https://youtu.be/Fahljd_0xjA?t=74


Nice job on the comprehensiveness of this.

Seems to be missing the Black Scorpion, a gimmick of the Horsemen and Ric Flair in the early 90s.


Unreadable on Android Chrome. Absolute position elements cover part of scrollable region donuts impossible to scroll all the text into view.

Web devs, not everyone uses the same small font size as you young kids.


This is fantastic. I was just talking to someone yesterday who had no idea who La Parka was. Come on!


Love this - but moderately confused by the distinction between "English" and "British", since the two Brits listed are English! :)


fixed!


Excellent. And I hadn't even twigged that Marty Scurll was absent at the time :)


I cannot read descriptions until the end. The text is out of sight and unreachable.


this is amazing!


blazing fast


I guessed it was built in Svelte, I was correct.


yes, how do they do that pour-in effect? (I know I could look at the source)


rendered the sprite to an offscreen canvas to grab the pixel values. then created rects to represent each pixel and move around on a canvas with a speed based on y position.




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