>>7242345A lot of those early 2000s indy marks knew about those guys by name and maybe like saw 3 matches or something but didn't really know the era. It's like how Manami Toyota is seen as the GOAT because she was hyped up by people at the time but those deep diving on tape knew assloads more joshi. Like Jack Evans talks about watching GAEA tapes and, like, ARISON tapes sometimes. The indy wrestlers were unironically the nerdiest tape traders, which kind of makes sense, they're the only ones obsessed enough to actually endure the shit show that was indy wrestling for like 10+ years back then. It's why Excalibur can just whip out obscure 80s/90s puro references from companies that were like 6 or 7th in terms of popularity in japan back then.
