Loss

As promised ... The Flair/Steamboat matches are great. I will never deny that. I'm obviously tired of them, but that's not a reflection of the matches. Technically, the Steamboat matches may very well be Flair's best. But his most enjoyable? Not really. The Flair/Windham matches are every bit as sound as the Flair/Steamboat matches, and in some ways, I think they're better, just because Windham's offense was better. The wrestling in the Flair/Morton feud is probably not quite as good as in the Flair/Steamboat feud, although it's not far behind. It also has a far better and more effective face/heel dynamic, and because Morton was such a sympathetic babyface, Flair seemed like a killer. I've never seen Flair look like a threat in the way he did in that newly released Horsemen DVD cage match match. Also, because for so much of the feud Morton was selling the broken nose and him wearing that huge noseguard, it really resembles a Liger/Sano match or a lucha match at times with all the mask ripping and blood. The brief match with Morton getting the pinfall that occurred on TBS (the one where Robert Gibson did the counting) is a really fun match worth seeing, and has a different feel than the Pro match from a few weeks later, which sees Flair do some nasty face work. The handheld that shows the last 30-35 minutes of a 60-minute draw has unreal heat and is loads of fun. The old cage match from World Pro, while not as good as the newly-released one, is still excellent. I need to watch it again to contrast the two, and see how different they are, if they are at all. I think that would fit in nicely with the theme of this thread. Even the 1990 match -- while neither guy is what they were in 1986 -- is worth seeing. The problem with the Flair/Morton feud is that most of the matches which have circulated for years are either really short, have no finish, or are joined in progress. That said, I do think in each case, we've seen enough of the match to fairly judge how good it was in comparison to other Flair matches. The cage match released on the Horsemen DVD a couple of years ago was just awesome, which I've written about before.

It's something that maybe doesn't get talked about it like it should, but considering how much hype the rivalry received and how many times they faced each other as each guy was climbing the ladder, Bret/Shawn was not a particularly great feud. I like the Ironman match more than most people, and I thought some of the brawling at Montreal was fun, but Michaels had far better matches with Jannetty in 1992-1993, and with most other people in 1996-1997. Some of the 1996-1997 can just come down to two guys who really hated each other, but they got along fine in 1992, and those matches just didn't really click. Shawn was still finding his way as a singles wrestler at this point, so it's not even a case of me assigning blame. But you'd think even then, Bret and Shawn could put together better matches than they did.

Date on the left, commercial release title in parentheses. 6/2/92 (Rampage 92) 6/23/93 (Invasion of the Bodyslammers) 12/1/93 (Bret "The Hitman" Hart) (Cage match) 1/12/94 (Bret "The Hitman" Hart) And there's also the available handhelds.

Every singles match Bret Hart had against Shawn Michaels (barring Survivor Series '92 and I guess that ladder match) was inoffensive, but not particularly good until 1996. Both guys were very much on auto-pilot.

An important distinction on that that I think people who have lobbied for Bill Dundee and his ilk to go into the HOF have maybe overlooked: No one is in the HOF on "work alone", even if that's what said. There are, however, many people in because they were loved by everyone and people were raving about them at the time they were in their prime. It's not about actually being a great worker, it's about everyone thinking you're a great worker, to a point where you're highly revered by smarks. That's why Benoit, Liger, Angle, Dynamite Kid, DiBiase, and Steamboat are in, and Dundee (and Buddy Rose) are not. Good or bad, that's what the rule is. I don't think Dave cares about whether someone is actually good, he cares about whether or not others think they're good. That's been the crux of almost all of the "better worker" and debates over star ratings arguments he and Bryan Alvarez have been a part of the past few years.

I can think of about four dozen things I'd rather happen.

Thoughts on Jumbo Tsuruta? How was he to train, how was he in the ring, where would he rank him among all-time greats? Was he ever approached about coming in with brother Terry in 1989 to the NWA during the Flair feud? Does he consider the Jack Brisco match from Japan their best one, or are there others that he thinks are better? Thoughts on Jerry Lawler and Memphis in general? Thoughts on Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba as wrestlers, who did he enjoy wrestling more? Questions about the politics at the time of the JWA split could be cool too. What's his take on The Destroyer?

Just wanted to remind everyone about the Blogs function here. Anyone can start one, and I think it would be really cool if one day, that was kind of a calling card for this board. Kudos to Ohtani's Jacket for writing so much about lucha that's worth reading in his blog, which has gotten up to 15 pages worth of material now. I encourage others to use that page as well. Maybe I'll even start updating mine regularly.

Yeah, this is not the When Worlds Collide match, this took place one year earlier, and I think it's much better. I think When Worlds Collide was great for opening the door for a lot of people to see wrestlers and a style they may not have seen otherwise, and I think all the matches are good, but I wasn't really overly enamored with that tag match either. This one is awesome, I'm looking forward to watching it again.

It's on the newest PWO DVD Club disc, available now! PM Goodhelmet for details. It only became available in entirety recently. Before that, there was an edited version (40 of 60 minutes) which aired on TV, but never in full. It never aired on Classics, so anyone who had it had it from the original airing on TV where it was clipped. G+ recently aired the match in full. I can't wait to see the whole thing. Edited, it was a fantastic match, definitely the best Flair/Jumbo there is.

Ricky Morton. I will elaborate more later.

I watched a HHH/Benoit vs Rock/Jericho match from RAW in 2000 last night, which took place right before Backlash. Really awesome, fast-paced, heated match, worth seeing and talking about. This was fresh off the fake title win, and if Jericho was less popular than Rock, it wasn't enough to be noticeable. HHH wasn't necessarily "better" then, but he sure seemed a lot fresher, and was much more enjoyable when he had a pair of really over babyfaces to play off of.

The primary purpose of the DVD club is to talk about these matches. I have heard a few people say they probably won't pick this up because they already have all the matches. That's understandable. However, I would encourage you to still watch the matches you have and comment as much as possible.

4 hours

And this is certainly their right. I have no issue with jdw criticizing Flair. He's someone who I know has seen enough Flair (probably more than enough Flair) to form a valid opinion. I will even say in his defense that because some people are so over the top in their praise for Flair, which even I as a huge Flair fan think goes too far at times, the fact that he views Flair reasonably sometimes gets misinterpreted as Flair bashing. I've seen John engage in his share of Flair bashing, just as I have engaged in my share, but I've also seen him praise matches like Flair/Luger at Wrestle War '90, Flair/Race from All Japan, Flair/Steamboat from Clash VI, and Flair/Garvin from TBS. I really should have prefaced my previous post by saying that there is a type of Flair fan that's just unwilling to look at his stuff overall to see how it holds up. He becomes the greatest ever because he's been ordained, and it's been said for so long that people just roll it out without thinking about it. What's sad about that is that I think those types of people do more to turn people off of Flair than they do to get people hyped up to see his matches. I said it before, and I will say it again because I can't stress it enough -- I am so sick of people talking about the same handful of matches when talking about Flair. The Steamboat matches are great, but I don't even think he was Flair's best opponent. Flair/Windham, Flair/Morton, Flair/Garvin, Flair/Kerry, even Flair/Luger ... I find all of those matches much easier to watch. I think if someone wants to see what the fuss over Ric Flair is about and pops in Wrestle War '89, they're really not going to get it. A Flair match with no cheating, very little trash talking, and a clean win? Same for Clash VI. Pretty great match, but the Steamboat matches are a bit ... stoic. Is that the right word? This is a byproduct of the crappy online culture built around people only seeking out the most highly recommended stuff, maybe not realizing that it's hard to appreciate a ****1/2 match if you don't know what a ***1/2 match looked like by the standards of the time. My counterpoint to Flair criticism has never been that the criticisms aren't really valid, as much as they have been that the criticisms ultimately seem almost meaningless. How would working the leg more than he does to set up the figure four or adding a DDT or cross armbreaker to his offense have made a difference? I'm asking that question not as a dismissal of it, but because I really don't know. Watching the Flair shoot done by Highspots was eye-opening. I said this to Bix on AIM after I finished it -- the guy is pretty dense. He had his persona, and was concerned with living it in and out of the ring, which is honestly what made him a superstar far more than his wrestling ability. He had his sequences down -- I believe "I had my match down" is a direct quote if I'm not mistaken -- and they worked, so he saw no reason to change them. He also said multiple times in the shoot that he did things all the time that didn't make sense, but they got a great reaction, so he didn't care. If someone likes Jumbo Tsuruta, or El Hijo del Santo, or the AJ 4, or Liger, or Eddy Guerrero, or someone like that better, I can't fault them. All great wrestlers, all who have things they do much better than Flair. If anything, I think the biggest reason I rank Flair just above them is because he had some great matches with some really green steroid freaks on a regular basis, and while I'm sure there are isolated cases of that for others, who else did it so regularly?

Sean Hannity was in the WWF? Also, long time no see, good to see you back.

Just wanted to add that by "not picking a side on this", I meant not having an opinion on whether others who had so much footage available would hold up to that level of scrutiny. I clearly picked a side on the Flair formula talk.

I acknowledge some of the good points being made, and agree that Flair was far from perfect. You're likely to find someone better than him at lots of things. But seeing too many Flair matches and being tired of him due to overexposure is not a reflection on Flair as a performer. It's a reflection of him having an incredibly long career working at or near the top for almost all of it, and probably having more televised matches than any wrestler in history, by a substantial margin. I'm not picking a side on this, but it would be interesting to see if anyone else would hold up to the level of scrutiny Flair often gets if they had so much volume.

Just wanted to make a quick announcement about this, since I have received quite a few requests for passwords through PM. Unless I know you from another board, if access is requested and you do not have any posts, I will most likely not provide you with the passwords until I see that you are posting regularly. I used to provide the passwords liberally, and then I noticed a lot of people who never posted anything had them, which concerned me, because those folders are locked for a reason. We have a good board here. While we do have a trading/shilling section, I don't really want that to be the primary focus of the board. I'd rather keep the focus more on discussing wrestling than collecting wrestling. If you happen to do both, that's great, and I think you'll like it here. At some point within the next few weeks, I will probably be changing the passwords to all the locked folders, and this will be done periodically just to ensure that access stays limited. At that time, anyone who would like access would just send another request to me through PM. DVDVR, Kayfabe Memories, and probably other boards have had problems with their trading folders that I am attempting to avoid by keeping access limited. DVDVR, for example, no longer even has a shill folder. I definitely don't want that to happen here. If I don't respond to your PM, or wait a while to do so, it's definitely not anything personal, it's just that I want to be cautious so that the folder doesn't go anywhere. Thanks to everyone for understanding.

Kneecrusher to counter side headlock Stomping on the knee Placing leg on the bottom rope and dropping all weight on the knee Clipping the knee What else do you need? I think the whole idea that all submission holds need to be "set up" needs to be challenged.

I would guess the latter. That match is pretty embarrassing.

I wish he had said something like mayor of Rantsylvania.