Jingus

Gangrel maybe, although it didn't carry him any farther than a European Title shot. He had that awesome music, the entrance with flames, the blood-spitting, his own stable, and the bloodbath routine, and people seemed into it. I can't remember anything that he did, though. He had no memorable matches (maybe a product of the time), and I don't know if he ever got to cut a promo. Let's be fair, Gangrel is nowhere near as shitty a worker as Beefcake often was. He didn't have any really memorable matches, but that's pretty hard to do when you rarely get to go longer than three minutes per night. Depressingly so, yes. Most of the biggest babyfaces in wrestling have been total fucking assholes who viciously preyed upon weak helpless victims on many occasions. Not exactly a good message to send, but the bookers never seem to care.

When people are talking about "biggest black stars ever", why does Abdullah so often get left out of the mix? Certainly he drew a metric fuckton of crowds in the 70s and beyond. He was certainly a much more consistent and long-term draw than JYD ever was.

Maybe, but I still maintain that Styles did fine when he was by himself. I doubt he was being carefully produced when he did his little stints for indy companies like XPW and MLW, yet he still sounded like the same old Joey. And like I mentioned before, there's moments such as this one. Watch how easily Joey shifts from his intended talking point about Balls to a completely unplanned yet completely relevant talking point about Sandman, it's at around 8:40: That reminds me, is there a way to post Youtube videos on this board? And the whole commentary is worth listening to. With four announcers, there's no way that Paul or Vince or anyone is orchestrating the entire thing, yet Joey still sounds pretty much the same as he always has. Plus, he knocked out JBL with one punch that one time. That's like some "George McFly knocks out Biff Tannen" shit right there. For all of us long-abused announcers in wrestling, that pretty much makes Styles into our permanent idol. I know it doesn't make the tiniest difference on anything regarding the product or his performance, but still, just tell me you can say the words "Joey Styles knocked Bradshaw the fuck out" and not have a grin on your face by the end of the sentence.

I've heard that before, but firstly: I don't know if it's true. By all accounts, Heyman was always running around backstage doing a million different things at once, so it would've been hard for him to constantly play Joey's ventriloquist. Away from Paul E, Styles did okay announcing in the WWE... at least whenever Coachman wasn't talking over him or Vince wasn't screaming in his headset. And even if he was fed the lines, he still deserves credit for speaking them in a compelling manner. Having good material to work from isn't the same thing as being good at fulfilling its potential. To etch a comparison: you could have some untalented backyarders go out to the ring and do a move-for-move cosplay of 6/9/95, but it probably wouldn't be any damn good. Even if they devoutly followed the script for the greatest match ever, it doesn't make them great wrestlers. Styles has had plenty of great calls (the first One Night Stand may be one of the best announcing jobs I've ever heard), and I don't think it matters to the finished product whether those lines were scripted for him. And like I said, he's been in plenty of live situations where he had to instantly invent an explanation to cover something up and he usually shined in those moments.

Regarding Solie, Scott Hudson once told me something interesting. Apparently the backstage reputation on Gordon is that he's a lot better at calling canned matches in a studio than live matches at ringside. Solie supposedly always wanted to be prepared for what was coming, to know where the match was going so he could plan out his talking points ahead of time. It is. By yourself, you have all the time in the world. There's no collaboration; you control the entire commentary all by yourself. It's harder to fill time without a partner, but it's infinitely easier to craft the psychology of a match into any shape you want. Just look at Joey Styles solo versus Joey Styles with any color commentator. In fact, there's a guy who doesn't get enough props anymore. By himself, Joey was a master at getting over gimmicks and personality in an incredibly efficient way. He could talk for about ten seconds and make the audience completely understand the goals and mindset of any worker on the roster. He was incredibly efficient, using just a few well-chosen phrases to imbue large amounts of exposition and information (and also noteworthy is that he's one of the few announcers who is sometimes willing to just shut up for a minute and let silence reign during the action). Yeah, a lot of his psychology was pulled out of thin air or his ass or anything other than what's happening in the ring, but he had to cover up for a lot of illogical bullshit and blown spots in ECW. He's one of the better improvisers I've ever seen at covering up or explaining something on the spot. Here's a fun example. At one point in that ECW/WWE rivalry, Joey and the Raw announcers were all calling a battle royal. Lawler or Cole or someone starts ragging on the ECW "athletes", and how they don't stand a chance against real superstars. Joey responds and is clearly about to go into one of his old prepared spiels, talking about Balls Mahoney's amateur wrestling background... but right then, Balls gets eliminated. Without missing a beat, Styles switches over to a story about Sandman beating up guards in prison, and uses it to illustrate why he's got plenty of experience in fighting in a closed environment where you've got a chaotic brawl with no room to maneuver like a battle royal. It was such a little thing, but so smoothly and seamlessly done that I've always remembered it. That is indeed one of Gorilla's biggest flaws. Sometimes he just wasn't paying any damn attention, and would stubbornly insist that a guy got disqualified long after Fink said it was a countout, or whatever.

Well, it worked for Wrestlelicious. Wait... whatever happened to Wrestlelicious? Seems like it just kinda went away.

Big Show had kinda already been ruined before he ever hit his prime. Debuting in the goddamn Dungeon Of Doom in the midst of what might've been Hogan's worst-ever face run sure as hell didn't help the fledgling Giant, nor did monster trucks and a complete inability to ever pin Hulk in anything even resembling a clean finish. In fact, looking at his bio, it seems like he wasn't treated like any kind of unstoppable monster in his freshman year. Lotta DQs on that list, plus a few jobs to Sting and the like. His few title defenses tended to be squashing such luminaries as Craig Pittman, and let's not forget that stellar minifeud with Giant Haystacks. And then he stepped into the WCW/nWo Revolving Face-Heel-Face-Heel-Turn Door OF DOOM and never stepped back out again. And despite his remarkable displays of relative agility, he never quite figured out how to put it all together and have consistently good Big Man Matches. Then he went to the WWF, and we all know how that went. Debuted in a hot angle, but was almost immediately shoved back down the card into a do-nothing role. He turned no less than 3 separate times within a six-month span (yeah, it was 1999 and Russomania was running wild, but still: 3 times?!), and feuding with Kane and teaming with Taker felt more like killing time than anything else. His first title win was a fluke outta nowhere, being a poor substitution for Stone Cold in a 3-way match. Which of course was in the middle of a fucking endless feud with a way-past-his-prime Big Bossman, which resulted in months of Wrestlecrap and Botchamania fodder. And then he was abruptly turned heel again and needlessly added to the Wrestlemania main event, before promptly getting turned back face and now doing the comedy impressions gimmick, before being shipped down to OVW to lose weight (which he seemingly never did). After all that, is it any wonder that nobody gave a damn about him by the time he really managed to find his groove? Kinda like the Red Rooster did for Terry Taylor (although admittedly nowhere near as badly), the stupid bullshit which filled up his early years made plenty of fans just not give a shit about the guy.

...Obama is Sting? Huh. Now follow that parallel with Republicans = Horsemen (and heck, maybe Tea Party = nWo), and it actually makes way too much sense.

Lawler sometimes seems like he works an indy show every single night of the week (except Monday, of course). Why does he keep doing that, at his age? He's been under WWE contract for twenty years now, not to mention all the years being the top guy in Memphis; you'd think he would've made more money than he could ever spend by now. Certainly he doesn't seem to have the usual money-sucking problems like drugs, cars, or divorces which seem to drain many celebrities' wallets dry.

I thought of another guy I never understood the appeal of: Kanyon. For years, we kept hearing about how awesome this guy was and how much potential he had. But, where are the matches? For a guy who seemed physically talented, he had the unfortunate problem of having no idea of how to lay out a structure.

That would probably come down to your opinion on if anyone in the Alliance except for Austin and McMahons had a "dominant role". Booker was certainly used more strongly than anyone else they got from WCW at the time; compare him to the disastrous career-wrecking treatment that DDP got, for example. Booker looked like Choshu invading NJPW compared to the rest of his can't-beat-any-WWE-guys-ever chump teammates. He even got to main event Summerslam; yeah, that was so the crowd could have the feel-good moment of Rock beating him at the end of the night, but still. He did have those "main event on the B house show" mini-feuds occasionally, against the likes of Andre or Yokozuna. Nothing tremendously exciting, but it happened. I recall seeing Andre getting a shockingly fun match out of him in some spot show (in Italy, of all damn places), which is not what you'd expect from either man in 1989.

My vote for Nash's best match ever. Just a surprisingly intense war, one which made both guys look great. And was that the very first ever Spanish Announce Table spot? I can't remember an earlier one offhand.

It took me a long time to "get" Fujiwara. I still vividly remember the first match I ever saw him in, against Dan Severn in 1996. I remember being unimpressed, since Yoshiaki looked so old and Severn was repeatedly planting him with endless "pick up your girlfriend and playfully toss her onto a mattress" sort of back suplexes. It looked awful. I'd seen him once or twice in multi-man tag matches afterwards, and he never seemed to stand out. It wasn't until I read Phil's columns about him over at Segunda Caida that I finally understood Fujiwara's way of doing things. That crazy match he had with Choshu in '87 was one of my favorite NJPW heavyweight matches of that decade. He can effortlessly go between crazy bloody brawling to the goofiest of comedy to mat skills so damn good that he holds is own against Volk Han. Not many people have that range of skill. And he's got an amazing punch, something that too many good Japanese wrestlers often seem to lack; and an amazingly expressive face for showing either pain or glee.

That happens, there's always embarrassing lopsided gaps in everybody's entertainment consumption. I've never seen any of the Liger/Sano matches, but I damn sure have seen Rock/Hogan at least a dozen times.

Aw. Not surprised, those dream matches which happen years too late are often pretty disappointing, but still. When/where did it happen?

Fuchi is fun, but you've got Fujiwara sitting right there doing all the exact same stuff and doing it better. Kinda hard to get excited about the Nise version when the original is still going strong. Fuchi had a great run with incredibly strong opponents in the early 90s, which helps him look better... dammit, now I've gone and had the thought "what would a Fujiwara vs Kawada match look like?", and I fear I shall never know the answer. One guy I've never given much of a damn for is Tito Santana. He does everything right, and doesn't do anything to actively annoy me, but somehow I find myself just not caring one little bit about any of his matches. Same thing with Alex Wright too, come to think of it. I'm not even sure why I don't give a fuck about them; in theory I should, but they simply don't do anything for me at all.

That's actually a good point. College football hereabouts often has nearly as many followers as the professional variety. Heck, out here near Dallas, every high school has a gargantuan football stadium which must have cost eleventy zillion dollars. And football and wrestling do have plenty of crossover audience. Before the rise of MMA, there weren't very many slightly-trashy full-contact sports which were very popular; boxing appeals to a much older crowd, hockey never got tremendously popular in places where it doesn't snow much, and that pretty much just leaves football as the premiere real sport where guys hit each other really fucking hard.

Citizen Kane is actually more relevant to this thread than some may realize. In the first decade or so after its initial release, it wasn't considered one of the greatest movies of all time. George Hearst's vendetta against the film hurt its theatrical run, with many newspapers refusing to advertise it and many theaters either not showing it for long or not showing it at all. Wasn't until the film was rereleased in the 1950s that many critics got to see it for the first time, and thus a legend was born.

How are we seriously supposed to quantify any of this? There are no hard numbers for this sort of thing, outside of the not-always-helpful lists of live attendance and TV ratings/PPV buyrates. Demanding a percentage of influence is a rhetorical question at best, because there's no possible answer. Jerry already made a great case for Jesse on a quality level. But there's more than that. He had tremendous influence in the business as well. He popularized the entire "heel color guy who makes excuses for the villains, and berates the babyface play-by-play man" announcing model which has dominated the industry ever since then. Yeah, Piper and Hayes et al did it earlier/at the same time/arguably better/whatever, but they certainly didn't do it on anything close to as BIG a stage as Ventura did. The first six Wrestlemanias, all the early SNMEs, and so on. Hell, he was arguably their most prominent announcer, considering that the company never quite made up their mind about whether Vince or Gorilla was the main anchor in the booth. He defined what a color commentator is supposed to be like in the viewpoint of the modern fan. That's not a small deal. Also, wasn't he the first guy to get an agent and a manager and a lawyer and let them handle all his business negotiations? That's not a small deal either, it represented the beginning of the modern contractual era and the end of "the promoter hands the wrestlers an envelope containing however much money he feels like giving them" way of doing things. Finally, iirc, Dave's HoF also counts mainstream fame as a quality to be considered. (I asked for a list of his official qualifications for induction earlier, but nobody responded.) Hard to think of many workers more famous in this country than The Body. Governor, movie star, reality TV host, radio talk show host, author, political pundit, conspiracy theory nut... he's done it all.

When I was a ring announcer, a good 75% of my verbal schtick was stolen directly from Fink. He's the only emcee I thought was ever good enough to be worth ripping off. Plenty of others were competent, but he's the sole example I would argue was legitimately great at his job. And no, the ring announcer doesn't mean dick to the overall bottom line. But it's still part of the overall presentation, and you can't run a wrestling show without one. (Well I guess you could, but it would be pretty confusing to lots of the marks.) And hey, question. Does anyone have a list of what Dave's official guidelines for qualifications are? Like what sort of qualities are supposed to count, how much some count more than others, that sort of thing.

I don't see how Warrior is that much better a candidate than guys like Angle or Brock. His run on top was awfully short, and wasn't he drawing a bunch of shitty houses as champion in the latter half of 1990? Add that to inconsistent-at-best ring skills and a work ethic which was infamously shitty even by the standards of rassling, and his case isn't so good. The only major thing in his favor is that Jake The Snake Syndrome deal where a really disproportionately high number of former casual fans still remember him fondly long after he hung up his boots. (Hey, that brings up a notion: is Goldberg in the HoF?) Also would like an explanation of Tiger Jeet Singh. He's one of the worst fucking wrestlers ever, a sixth-rate Sheik knockoff, and is notoriously selfish and unwilling to put anyone else over at practically any time. But I'm admittedly pretty ignorant on his 70s heyday and exactly what difference he made to the fledgling New Japan's bottom line.

Nowhere, because Hogan didn't throw him off the building. They were brawling near the edge, and Giant just lost his balance and fell. Hulk even tried to reach out and catch him, but missed. The segment was pretty clearly designed to indicate that Giant falling was simply an accident.

Locking this thread would be a god-damned crime against humanity, so let's try to refocus the discussion in a non-soccer-direction. I got to thinking a little bit about flips and dives. Typically these are termed as "high risk moves", with the logic being that the flippy diver willingly accepts the tremendous risk of crashing and burning in return for the possibility to inflict unheard-of punishment upon their opponents with such a maneuver. But in most matches, if you step back and look at it, that "unheard-of punishment" is almost always blown off and forgotten quickly afterwards. Especially the lucha or indy dives to the floor, which usually have both men back up and fighting again within a matter of seconds. Why is that? You'd think that after a huge dive this is the perfect time for both men to lay down and sell for a minute, putting over the pain they're enduring while also getting a quick breather. This happens sometimes, most notably in big multi-man scramble matches like Money In The Bank where most of the participants tend to spend a lot of time laying around selling until it's their cue to get back up and do a spot, but most of the time it's just "dive, face gets back into the ring and celebrates, heel gets back up and scowls at him from the floor". And you'd certainly think that such a spectacular move would be the finish, or at least play into the finish in a "if Taue chokeslams you off the apron, you might try to come back but you're probably fucked" sort of way. But most of the time, that's not even remotely what happens. Jeff Hardy will jump off something really tall and put you through a table, but then it's forgotten afterwards and either he loses the match or pins you with a glorified neckbreaker. Why does the counter-intuitive nature of these spots rarely get mentioned? Is it just one of those "Sabu knows the fans will pop huge, no matter how long it takes him to set up this contrived spot" sort of deals where the visual thrill of bodies flying around is so great that it overwhelms the more logic-based part of our brains?

Could peaking early count? Because, Kurt Angle in 2000-2002 certainly comes to mind. Even aside from the big hyped matches with Austin and such, his inconsequential little time-fillers with the likes of Kane and Big Show were a hell of a lot more fun than his Epic Best Worker Ever show-off marathons in later years. Yeah. Rude around early 1988 was godawful, having shit matches with practically everyone. When neither Ricky Steamboat's workrate nor Jake Roberts' psychology can get anything worth a damn out of you, that's pretty terrible. But in those Ultimate Warrior matches just a year later, he looked like a completely different guy; let alone his WCW work around '92.

Yeah, when Zeke did it the crowd seemed to enjoy it. It was almost like a 911 type of angle, where Zeke kept hitting his move more and more times in a row. Kinda like how Benoit used to do the German suplexes, except with much less spinal compression and encephalitic trauma.