Loss

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

I wonder how differently things would be had Bret taken up Shawn, Diesel and Razor on their offer to be the ringleader.

I was rolling my eyes at how Miz and Truth worked their first match back on the show. After doing an angle like they did at HIAC, working a traditional old-style tag with holds to build heat for a hot tag seemed out of place. It seems like a wild brawl would have been more in context.

Really great article, and a more compelling setup for a match than just about anything in a long time. One point that seems to have been forgotten, maybe even by Morton himself, is that this started with Nash. (Nash may have even forgotten that he said what he said.) Morton was on ESPN's Outside The Lines back in '99 and said something about being broke. Nash wrote an article picking apart the entire ESPN special, and in that article on his web site, he said that it wasn't wrestling's fault Morton put all his earnings up his nose and down his throat. Morton was unaware of this until the guy doing the shoot mentioned that Nash had buried him. At this point, it's obviously all angle, and none of that matters. It's just worth pointing out that Morton didn't just wake up one day and decide to hate Kevin Nash. It is a little sad to me that Ricky Morton doesn't have a lot of money to his name. He doesn't really fit in with Vince's vision of wrestling, but he would have been a great Pat Patterson type in WCW laying out matches and coming up with finishes. He also could have been helpful in putting together a tag team division and teaching some of the smaller guys in the company how to sell/draw money.

I think it's amusing how Raw has become D & D advertising agency. (If you get that joke, you rock.)

What do you mean exactly ? I mean that in 1990-1991, the Steiners were red hot. They really lost something during this time and were never the same after Watts brought Williams and Gordy into WCW.

Also, jdw has touched on this before, but this is really the narrative I want to capture with the 1990 Yearbook -- out with the old, in with the new. The WWF was trying to phase out Hogan and put Warrior on top. WCW was trying to phase out Flair and put Sting and Luger on top. The Steiners surpassed the Road Warriors as stars. In Japan, Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Muto, Chono and Hashimoto were creeping closer to the top. In some of those cases, the goal was met and led to some prosperous times and in others ... not quite. Still, it's interesting to look at this yearbook in that context.

That's a really short-sighted, emotional way to look at the situation. Bret had a clause in his contract that allowed him control for the last 30 days of his deal. He was completely within his rights to exercise that. Besides, they had a plan -- Bret was going to drop the title. It was completely unnecessary.

The 6/18 Liger/Pegasus match aired on NJ Classics, so we have it from that. I suspect it has better VQ than the local TV as well. Probably a good idea to pick up all the local tapes, try to make sense of them and then go from there. There are also things like Kawada/Pete Roberts that sound interesting on paper, but may not really be yearbook-worthy in the end.

Now now, you that's not fair and not the case. I just called him great a couple of weeks ago in the Flipped thread: That sums up my current thoughts on him as briefly as possible, with great tossed in. That also was in the middle of other discussions where the board (i.e. me) was taking about tossing around the word "great" a little loosely, for example in myself not being able to say Arn was up there in what I consider "great". I reserve it for guys like Ric. John I missed that post, I'll apologize for that. I know "I think Ric was a very good worker in the 80s" is a line I had seen you toss around a few times.

When the poll was done at SC, the only two wrestlers to appear on every single ballot were Benoit and Guerrero.

Anyone happen to know the real dates for these matches from the Local TV shows in AJ & NJ? LOCAL TV: (Try to find date) Steve Williams vs Bam Bam Bigelow (LYNCH LOCAL TV #3) Jushin Liger vs Pegasus Kid (LYNCH LOCAL TV #3) Owen Hart vs Pegasus Kid (LYNCH LOCAL TV #3) LOCAL TV: (Try to find date) Toshiaki Kawada vs Pete Roberts (LYNCH LOCAL TV #2) Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Mighty Inoue vs Stan Hansen, Eric Embry & Scotty the Body (LYNCH LOCAL TV #2)

The point is that most of the people saying someone other than Flair in this thread are people that I suspect would have said Flair 10 years ago.

Yes, but there's no way HHH is a weaker candidate than Curt Hennig. He's overrated as a draw, but he has posted some big numbers which are really difficult to deny. Angle ... yeah, probably among the worst HOF entrants. If he was just eligible for the first time this year, I don't think he'd get in so easily, and I'm curious if Dave would even push for him.

Owen at least was successful on top in Stampede.

Less people watched the AWA in 1987-1988 than Smackdown at any point.

Edge is a stronger candidate than Hennig, if only because Edge in his role worked. Hennig didn't draw as well as other challengers to Hogan. Hennig also had such a bad match with Misawa on an All Japan tour that Baba never invited him back. It amazes me that Hennig still gets enough support to stay on the ballot.

Lots of really interesting news, thanks for posting. Timely.

It is completely insane to say either guy had a better career than Flair. I'm sorry, but there's just no way around that for me. I see zero argument. I don't see value in comparing wrestlers at their worse. Using Flair getting old and breaking down against him would be like saying Jumbo isn't the best ever because his undercard matches later in the decade were disappointing. Whether you think Jumbo is the best ever or not, the place to have the argument is in his prime, not after it. Same for Flair. Anyone who is going to use anything after 1989 as a reason he's not the best ever is making an argument that has already lost me before it has started. Flair in his 40s had some good moments and way more disappointing ones. Flair in the 00s is creepy. (I know some like him at times, but seeing him that old does nothing for me.) The stuff about Flair being repetitive or whatever else has been around for a while. Dave himself even said it a few times in 1988, and then there was the semi-famous WON at the end of '89 where he said Flair was starting to resemble Jimmy Carter in office. But those points never really gained traction because they were just touched on occasionally. jdw can't even bring himself to call Flair a "great" worker. He uses the term "very good". At DVDVR, people (weirdly, I thought) viewed Flair matches on the Mid South set as the molasses of the set because they were longer and had more matwork. Flair is still The Man with the vast majority of hardcore wrestling fans, and I'm not disputing that. But there are chinks in the armor that weren't always there.

It's hard to on one hand really push the "Ric Flair was a spot-fu inventing routine man who made great wrestlers limit themselves to Nikita Koloff's ability", get others to see that point, and then on the other hand deny that anyone agrees. I agree that the WON readership is at large still the "consensus", but to say Flair's rep hasn't taken a hit the last few years is simply not true. On the SC poll, not only was he ranked beneath Jumbo Tsuruta (which is an arguable point whether you agree with it or not), but he was also ranked behind Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero, which is just insane any way you look at it.

I like how randomly, every few years Dave will blame HHH for everything that happened, that point will pretty much go no-sold by everyone, and it won't be mentioned again for a few years.

It's not *that* crazy to call Ultimo one of the best in the world in the last half of 1996. If someone wanted to make the case for him as the very best, I wouldn't agree with it, but I wouldn't think the person was crazy either. But even if you assume that's completely true, on its own, it's just not a really compelling HOF case. If you're looking at influential trainers, there are quite a few guys that could be listed above Ultimo. I guess the method would be to figure out who trained all the best workers and biggest stars in wrestling history. Hiro Matsuda trained Hulk Hogan and Lex Luger, which, like it or not, had a greater combined impact on pro wrestling than Ultimo Dragon's trainees.

Terry Taylor was the co-booker during what was the most successful period arguably of any wrestling company in U.S. history up to that point in time, at least when it came to profit margin it was. WCW drew more people and averaged bigger gates when Taylor was booking than WWF did in the Hogan boom period. It was later surpassed by WWF post 1998 but it's still the best period for WCW. The mid-card guys were getting incredible checks. He was also the guy who moved Russo to TNA, and while some in the U.S. decry that, the fact is Jerry Jarrett was going to fold the company, and while TNA is no great shakes, it has lasted nine more years.