An Illustrated Guide to Masked Wrestlers
pudding.cool
pudding.cool
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]).
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
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.
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! ;)
Seems to be missing the Black Scorpion, a gimmick of the Horsemen and Ric Flair in the early 90s.
Web devs, not everyone uses the same small font size as you young kids.