Al

They add $25-400 apiece.

Studd

It would be nice if WWE gave Sara Del Ray a cameo.

They have no television deal, no cities selected, no team owners or outside capital, no players signed. So far all Ive seen is one man and his $100 million. Thats a little less than it cost to pay the Cleveland Browns this season.

Given the failure of Pro Wrestling USA, I doubt the territories could've worked together to stop Vince in any concerted effort.

Ditto on Gene Anderson. I can't believe he kept wrestling. He looked Mike Von Erich levels of bad.

Note in the most recent Observer about oddsmakers placing an over/under on the Tokyo Dome main event being five stars. For anyone with any kind of involvement in journalism, having gambling on their opinions seems like a bad, bad thing.

The Observer top 100 book had Brody at #18. Ranking him over the Funks, Race, Brisco etc. seems utterly insane.

Norman Smiley and El Dandy are the first that come to mind. Good wrestlers whose greatest exposure came as C-show workers.

Absolutely. I can tell you which returning candidates will get elected right now (Vlad and Hoffman). This ballot, Lewin wasnt on my radar at all.

"We better rush this guy in before people forget how good he was" seems like an absurd principle to apply to a Hall of Fame. If your body of work is forgotten five years later, either it probably wasn't HOF quality or you need a completely new set of voters. The problem though is that if you change the format (let's say five years later), you then have five years with no new modern candidates hitting the ballot. That's a tough pill when a Hall of Fame by nature needs fresh discussion to thrive.

Misioneros fell four votes shy. They need a push to just get them in the HOF already.

I'm two chapters into Graham's book. The one criticism I have is that it's so obviously ghostwritten. It doesn't ruin the story, it's just a bit distracting. The stuff about some Christian sect finding him in a magazine and recruiting him is batshit crazy.

That Andre book is still overpriced. Let me add that I also have the Regal book and while it's not perfectly laid out (at least to my recollection), it's certainly readable. For that price I would bite.

I've gone on about this before, but the ballot is just way too crowded. Dave models his HOF off of baseball, which gives voters 10 selections max. The problem is that Baseball's Hall ballot typically carries about 32 candidates. The Observer ballot has 74. So the ballot ends up in practice working out like baseball in 1945 where 95 different candidates got votes, 56 of them future Hall of Famers, and the Hall elected no one. If I had a vote, I would game the ballot. Pick a category where there is a need for more inductees (Mexico), and use all ten selections in that category. It makes it more likely to get someone inducted. Not ideal, but it's the way the system is designed. Brazos Cien Caras Karloff Lagarde Huracan Ramirez Los Misioneros Villano III Blue Panther L.A. Park Mistico/Carastico Dr. Wagner Jr. The top six are clear. The latter four I feel comfortable with as candidates, but I expressly choose based on their prior voting patterns. Panther in particular had 50% last year. Electing him clears him from the ballot. NON-WRESTLERS Jim Crockett Jr. Jimmy Hart Howard Finkel Don Owen Jerry Jarrett Crockett took a regional promotion and made it into a second national promotion. He failed in the end against Vince, but EVERYONE failed against Vince. Hart is the best managerial candidate. Finkel was the best ring announcer, and Jimmy Lennon being in creates a precident for inducting announcers. Owen promoted nearly 50 years successfully. Jarrett, he held up alongside Vince longer than any other promoter. With Heyman in and others like Hisashi Shinma, I don't think the promoting bar is particularly high. ------------- All that said, thoughts on the ballot/candidates themselves... HISTORICAL There are a few candidates I really like in this group. Mr. Wrestling II should be in and others like Morales, Wright, Torres I wouldn't go out of my way to push, but they would look right in a Hall of Fame. The trouble to me is if you had to rank this group 1-20, you would have a hard time coming to a consensus on the middle 15. That really makes it hard for any individual candidate to garner support. MODERN What would the Hall look like if you broke it down by decade of birth? Unknown: 1 (Francisco Flores) 1840s: 1 1850s: 1 1860s: 2 1870s: 5 1880s: 4 1890s: 11 1900s: 16 1910s: 21 1920s: 32 1930s: 22 1940s: 28 1950s: 31 1960s: 37 1970s: 9 1980s: 2 There's a spike in the 1920s (television golden era) and the 1960s had the most Hall of Famers born. It seems to me that either a lot more candidates from the current era will get elected, or wrestling fell off a cliff. Business-wise wrestling faltered, but is the quality of wrestler that much lower? I would suggest that Edge, Orton, Punk, Stratus and Styles may need to be evaluated by a different standard. JAPAN Not knowledgeable enough, except to say that the Sharpes should be in. How many tag teams would the Hall of Fame have ideally? MEXICO See above. Mexico is underrepresented, they need more inductees. MISCELLANEOUS Almost impossible to set a standard. King Curtis is in. Which of these guys were better? Lewin and Arion were good enough in their prime to also headline MSG. EUROPE Big Daddy. He was 47 years old when he became a star babyface in the UK. How many wrestlers are in the Hall of Fame who were shit wrestlers in their 40s? Was Daddy that much worse than Dick the Bruiser, or the Sheik? Or Martin Karadagian? When you've chosen the star of Titans of the Ring it's hard to hold realism against Big Daddy. From the rest, I'm inclined to like Otto Wanz for the same reasons. Star value trumps workrate to me as a (theoretical) voter. Pallo is probably most deserving of the rest. NON-WRESTLERS See above. The only bookers in the Hall of Fame are those who were also main event wrestlers, so I see little hope for George Scott, Blears, etc. There are no writers in so that makes life tough for Apter and Weston. I can see a case for Apter but I'd rather see the actual workers in first.

I'm certainly pessimistic about the NWA having any value. But on the other hand, that means there's really no downside either.

He's so wonderfully condescending through all that

Yeah. Few wrestlers move the needle anymore. But I don't think wrestlers have gotten worse. We may need different metrics to evaluate them.

Not pimping him for the HOF, but I'm curious to see what the last 18 months have done for AJ Styles' candidacy.

I'm about a third of the way through disc three. This really is a fun set. The good stuff is new matches with childhood favorites. The lowlights aren't long enough to completely kill your interest. Thoughts on various matches Dingo Warrior vs Jose Estrada Owen Hart vs Barry Horowitz I agree with a poster above. Owen didn't look that good. He had some impressive moves, but he looked wooden. Lacked charisma, lacked crispness. It's a shame that it took Owen five more years to make it, but I don't think WWE missed the bar on him early. He needed polish before he could rise further. Savage vs Warrior ('89) I know it's '89 because Savage had Sherri. But it almost felt like the 1988 version of the Warrior. He really improved between WrestleMania and Summerslam. Earthquake Evans vs Paul Roma How many wrestlers have succeeded in WWE with as much as an atypical look as John Tenta? He really stands out here from everything else WWE was presenting at the time. Hulk Hogan vs Earthquake I started watching wrestling in 1990. It's no wonder I grew to dislike Hogan quickly. He would take finishers and his kickout was the transition move. I usually don't have a problem with the superman comeback, but it felt like someone entering a cheat code and it wasn't possible to beat him no matter what you did. Hogan in '85 was better at his comebacks, I feel. This felt lazy. Ted Dibiase vs The Big Boss Man Speaking of atypical. Ray Traylor was a top heel after about four months in wrestling. Except as a prelim guy, did he ever work face? Yet this 400 lb. behemoth becomes a babyface and was quite good at it. The Ultimate Warrior & Kerry Von Erich vs Rick Rude & Mr. Perfect One of the best matches of the set. Hennig is the perfect foil for two guys who wear tassels to make them look faster.

The Wrestlemania X celebration was fine. They were celebrating a new champion, not a great match.

The praise I see most often for Graham is for his finishes (I guess making him a good "producer" in the modern wrestling vocabulary.)

My question. If Strowman wins the title from Brock in two minutes, how do you go about selling realistic challengers for him?

The early '80s were a weird time for interpromotional cooperation. That's when we got the Backlund/Flair matches, a lot of guys working each other's cards. Have you heard of the Wayne Shaw scandal? https://www.google.com/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/02/22/sutton-united-goalkeeper-wayne-shaw-resigns-tears-pie-stunt/amp/

And I think we realize now that there's a real Law of Diminishing Returns to jobbing a legend. He can only give 1-2 guys a rub before it completely loses value.