Loss

Not so much that being a great worker is the number one criteria. The way he phrased it is more that having the respect of your peers as a good worker is the number one criteria, which I guess has always been there and unspoken. It's a bunch of carnies voting. I have no expectation that guys who could hold their own at the bar or scored good ring rats plays no part in voting, but it's weird to hear Dave basically come out and admit it in a roundabout way. Some may think I'm reading too much into that, and I might be, but he's been pulling the "respect of your peers" card pretty often on the message board, which is pretty loaded when you consider all the reasons wrestlers like/dislike other wrestlers.

Is Edge really a better worker than Chavo? Chavo was always one of the most underrated wrestlers around, I thought.

Finally made time to listen to one of these. Really enjoyed the latest episode. I'm really looking forward to the DVDVR AWA set so I can see the Bock/Saito tags. Rose/Somers vs Leon White/Jesse Hernandez sounds really interesting too.

Sure he was. Luger did eventually get good. I don't think that would apply to him in 1988 and after, but I think it would definitely apply in 1986 and at least the first half of 1987. I don't even really like the Luger match in '86 all that much, but it's a decent one, and there aren't exactly a lot of decent matches from Luger's initial Florida run. If you can't narrow it down to one, that's fine. The point was that I was wanting an example. You provided them.

Buddy Rose for one. Where is the Buddy Rose/Lex Luger broadway? I realize smkelly's question was "Who could?", but we could wax hypothetical all day and not really have a discussion that means anything. I'd rather point this in a different direction. What's your favorite Buddy Rose performance taking a really green/clueless/immobile wrestler through a really long match where the guy looks much better than he really is?

I'll admit there is something frustrating about any wrestler being considered as being better than Flair in the 80s. Flair being the unquestioned king is a long-held belief. But that's not where the frustration comes from. I think the frustration is that because most of us have seen the big Flair matches so many times, because these days we'd rather watch stuff from guys who are still being discovered, that means the guys whose catalogs are still being worked through are "better". There's nothing wrong with wanting to watch stuff that is fresh, but I think it's important to keep that separate from "who is better?" arguments. That's not to say that's what is happening here. I'm looking forward to jumping on the Buddy Rose train at some point. I like Slaughter. Lawler in my mind gives Flair a run for his money, because almost all of the positives you can point to for Flair also apply to Lawler. There were many great wrestlers in the 80s. But for the sake of looking at Flair's case on the merits, and not being bored with him because his greatness isn't really a secret, I feel the need to walk through his decade. There are most certainly good things outside of it, but to me, Flair's GOAT argument was made from 1983-1989. I want to take some time and get this right, so I will start working on something to walk through each of those years.

Edge may be really good in the ring for all I know. He was such a terrible promo and had such exaggerated facial expressions that I could never look past it. I enjoyed him as an upper midcarder who did comedy though.

This was my thought too. Mass walkouts over not having a championship to compete for would have been great. As for this time, I need to watch it before I form an opinion. I've been on a work trip and living in a bubble for a couple of weeks, so I want to see it before I comment.

This.

One thing that Michaels was better at doing (and you kind of touched on this by referring to his quantity of good matches) was shortish matches, matches in the five-to-fifteen-minute range. It's hard to say how much of that is from Hart's phoning it in and how much of it is that Michaels' style was more geared toward sprints. I don't know if I can think of a really good 1990s Bret Hart match that didn't reach fifteen minutes; Michaels has quite a few. I don't think that Michaels has very many advantages over Hart (and I'm a Michaels fan), but I feel like this is one. Valid point. I've heard Scott Hall talk about how Bret liked to break down his matches into five-minute mini matches then tie them all together, so when you have 8 minutes on TV, that's a little tough.

I will add something else about Steve Austin. I think late 1993/early 1994 was when he really started to come into his own. I guess it happened before that, as he improves tremendously in 1992, but I think Austin could have carried PPV main events by the beginning of '94. Even as U.S. champ, it seemed like he was always working a style where his place on the card limited him. He has a match with Sting on the 1/1/94 WCW SN that is tremendous, and 10 of the 15 minutes are just really solid matwork and doing some great counters off of a side headlock. It felt like the first 15 minutes of a classic world title match, but the problem was that Austin wasn't world champ. He had a match with Pillman early in '94 that is the same way. He needed 30+ minutes to get the most out of that style, and it's a shame he didn't start getting that much time until he had to change his style due to injuries. Before the injuries (well, even after), he was a really willing bumper.

Bret was a big show performer through and through. I don't say that as an insult, but I do think it's important to point out that most (not all, of course) of his matches that aired on Coliseum Video exclusively are really bland. There are quite a few disappointing Shawn Michaels matches, especially the cage match. He delivered when it counted, but he's not a hidden gem kind of guy. But I guess there aren't many major league guys in the 90s who are hidden gem guys, unless you count random great Barry Windham matches on early 90s WCW TV.

Not someone who has a case, but someone who might have a case if not for a long series of what-ifs: Brian Pillman. Had he been booked closer to the top of the cards, not had the car accident and not been the target of burials for much of the decade in WCW, he could have potentially had a great decade.

I think Bix and I have talked about Sting's inconsistency before, and decided that he needed to be challenged in order to have a good match. If you watch the Vader matches, he's anything but a piece of luggage. He is a "great wrestler" in those. The two complemented each other well, and Sting performing at that level all the time would have been awesome. I don't think it's unreasonable to consider Sting somewhere on a list like this at all, but I do agree that he doesn't have a place near the top. And the argument against him is that he never had a single great match after 1994-1995, at least that I can recall. Did he ever have a great match as Crow Sting? Still working my way through the yearbooks, but Scorpio has looked excellent in 1992, 1993 and 1996. Steve Austin is more a sentimental pick I think than someone who has a legit shot of being the #1 guy. He started as a very green, but physically capable wrestler who found himself through the decade. There's a compelling story there, but it's not of being the best U.S. wrestler of the 90s. I don't think Shawn is a ridiculous answer either. Say what you will, but the sheer body of work he has is pretty impressive in comparison to his peers. If you're looking at quantity of good matches, he's in the discussion for sure, even if his best matches were probably a little overhyped. Vader is a good pick. Foley is not a bad pick for being somewhere in the upper middle of the pack. Owen Hart needs some love.

Vader is the best superheavyweight of all time. He was also a star in Europe, Mexico and Japan. Much more of a first-class pick type than Sting.

Modern indy wrestling = The Lenny Kravitz to the past's Prince?

Most awesomely preposterous entrance music ever?

Not sure exactly what the timeline was for Herd leaving. I had always heard it happened in the fallout to the Flair firing, but I've also heard it happened months later. So I'm not sure if it was '91 or '92. Frey definitely didn't come on until Jan of '92, but I'm not sure if there was a transition period where there was no Executive VP or not. I want to say there was a transition period between Watts and Bischoff too. Bischoff gained power when Watts left, but wasn't The Man In Charge immediately. Bill Shaw ran things during the interim I think, but I'm not sure how long of a time period that was. As far as head bookers go, Flair controlled the world title as part of his deal with Turner, but I'm not sure if he was actually booking the shows at this point. I've heard everyone from Cornette to Sullivan to Gilbert to Jim Ross as part of the mix. I know Cornette and Sullivan were assistants to Flair, but I also know Jim Ross and Eddie Gilbert had a say in the direction at certain points throughout the year and I'm not sure if they reported to Flair or not. I know Flair and Ross supposedly butted heads a few times during this time period, and before Flair returned to the WWF and had to make amends, he went on a rant once on the old WCW Live show where he said Ross was constantly burying him to Herd, and saying Flair was too old to be on top. That seems to have been forgotten. Not sure if Ole was on through '94 or not. Flair was actually on as head booker through the first half of '95 and seemed to clash with Hogan and Savage quite a bit. I think at some point in July, he was swapped out for Sullivan, who initially wanted there to be "two WCWs" -- one focused on the Hogan/main event stuff, and one focused on the in-ring guys like Benoit and Malenko. I could never figure out if that was literal or figurative. The Sullivan run lasted through the end of '98. Terry Taylor was a co-head booker during that time, but Sullivan tends to get credited more for most of the big ideas that were successful. Nash was head booker from the end of '98 (Right after Hogan left following Havoc, although to hear Nash it didn't happen until after he ended the streak ... he's lying) through the summer of '99 in one of the worst booking runs of all time, only surpassed with the ones that followed it. Nash didn't book in 2000. In late '99 through 2000, Russo and Ferrara were in, then in January they were replaced with Sullivan and JJ Dillon. A few months later, Russo was back in with Bischoff, then Bischoff left with Hogan. Russo was in charge through the end of the year and Johnny Ace closed up shop. Sullivan didn't book in 2001.

Seven or eight years ago when I was the smarkiest smark that ever smarked a smark, I would have said something ridiculous, like that no one over the age of 40 has any business wrestling because they need to pass the torch and step aside, and that even if they can still perform at a high level, they're hurting the business by going on. Now, I'm all for people continuing as long as they have something positive to contribute. Wrestlers slow down as they get older, and if the fans are still into a wrestler, that can sometimes be disguised with good booking and using the older guys properly. When it gets to a point where no amount of booking in the world is going to disguise anything (a point guys like Flair and Hogan passed a looooooong time ago), it's past the time to hang 'em up. Ideally, wrestlers would go out on top more often so we don't have to see them break down over time, but I also see the human side of it. In the U.S., if you were ever a star, promoters seem to treat you like a star for the rest of your life, no matter how long it's been and how much the world has changed since the big run. It's foolish to leave big money on the table because of dedication to the art form, when most people who run pro wrestling don't respect it anyway.

Seems like if they're going to toy with this, they've got it backwards. The Big 4 should be PPV, while the B-shows could move to the WWE Network. I'm not even sold on that, but the buys are so much higher for these shows, so there's no reason to muck it up. I can see taking some risks with the B-shows to see how they pay off, but I'd leave the Big 4 alone.

It did, in Memphis in 1981, in a fairly famous match. Morton teamed with Eddie Gilbert, while Fuchi teamed with Atsushi Onita. The third Tupelo concession stand brawl.

They made so many terrible booking decisions around that time. I'm not even sure why they turned Flair heel. Fans wanted to cheer him, and his face turn was way overdue when it happened, as he had gotten really stale. Yet they turn him back 9 months later. It also took the steam off Luger. Even if Luger hadn't turned, he was destined to be the #2 heel with Flair around. It was in the WON that at one point, the plan was for Ole to turn on Flair and manage Luger. Arn and Tully coming in and siding with Luger and Ole, leaving Flair, Sting, Pillman and a newly turned Muta would have been great stuff. Really, heel Luger versus face Flair had some milage. While they ran that match quite a bit on house shows, they never really met with that dynamic in a major match outside of Starrcade '89 (which gave away the match in a completely meaningless way).

I love the moment during the Luger interview where the Horsemen come out and Flair trips on the steps coming into the ring. Flair covered by selling his humiliation! The crowd pops huge for that and Luger even has trouble keeping a straight face.

Sadly, the '91 turn when they put the title on him killed his heat off for good in WCW. By that point, he had just turned too many times for it to matter anymore.