Loss

I kind of agree with that. I'd rather see someone try to take on Andre and walk through his career, challenges inherent with doing so and all.

I'm a little skeptical of any world title that is defended in a promotion that has no national television exposure, but that may not be something we can apply in every case. It's just what my gut tells me.

How are modern Korakuen Hall crowds? Still assholes?

I'd probably only say it to other wrestling fans. For example, I think describing an argument where you just drop it for the sake of your sanity as "doing a job" sort of works, but I'd never say it to someone who wouldn't get it.

I remember the status of the ECW title being a huge point of contention in PWI. PWI finally recognized their title as a world title in 1999 when they landed the deal with TNN.

Something happened on that tour between Kawada and Gibson too, IIRC.

Akiyama vs Ogawa from 9/11/98 is actually what inspired this thread more than anything! I'm looking forward to watching the other matches mentioned here too.

I think it's that at some point between Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber (we could probably pinpoint it if we went back and looked at each show), both HHH and Stephanie suddenly got it - it's like it clicked that it didn't matter if they agreed with what their detractors thought, that their best bet was to play that perception up as much as possible. Feed the monster instead of resenting it. Since then, both of them have been terrific TV characters and have seemed much more secure. The difference between Stephanie now and Stephanie even in December is pretty staggering. The difference between Stephanie in recent months and Stephanie a decade ago is that I don't get the feeling she's working out her psychological and body image issues on television anymore. She seems much more confident and sure of herself as a woman, resulting in a much more comfortable viewing experience.

The Rock & Rolls did have a brief run shortly before the Fantastics, so yeah, probably them.

M-Pro I've seen, yeah. Seems like it would be hard to do much cheating in 70s and 80s Joshi since rules are never enforced.

I've always had a soft spot for Norio Honaga and I have really loved some of the late 90s Yoshinari Ogawa performances I've seen recently. In both cases, you had guys working as American style heels and sneaking in eye pokes and low blows in a style where that doesn't happen very often. I haven't seen the match for myself but I know people made similar comments about The Cobra vs Don Arakawa on the New Japan 80s set. I've also always popped for Chono sneaking in the low blow behind the referee's back. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could get some recommendations for the best cheating performances in Japan. I'm not thinking modern New Japan as much even though I know there's plenty of it now (too much, which makes it seem less special), and I'm not referring to outside interference as much as I am eye poking, low blows, using ropes for leverage, positioning the referee in an advantageous way, etc. What do I need to see?

I think Undertaker has been a very good big show performer for most of his career, but I also think he's a little on the overrated side.

You've made your point.

Thanks for understanding. I was a little unintentionally feisty.

Yeah, and that's kind of my point. You can say that for a lot of guys. There's a lot of stories about Flair getting naked on planes and running up crazy tabs at bars, but there's also tons of debate and discussion of him as a worker, and not just in our corner of the Internet. I haven't seen that for Andre. It's possible if there was a deep dive into Andre's matches that he'd come out looking better than Vader. Any perceptions can change with additional viewing. I just haven't really seen a coherent case made for Andre the worker that has gotten traction.

Point taken that additional watching has been favorable to Andre and unfavorable to Tiger Mask. But really, the segment of people that considered him bad was pretty small, wasn't it? Either way, I don't think Andre's work is something that has been discussed all that much. Most of the talk about Andre is about all the beers he could drink in one sitting.

I think the re-examination has been minimal though. Has anyone really watched and commented on a ton of Andre matches? I've seen occasional ones, yes.

Has anyone here watched a lot of Don Leo Jonathan? He seems like a name that should at least be brought up and batted around, regardless of where he ends up. Just based on his rep, he seems like he was stylistically closer to Vader than Andre, but I don't know how accurate that is.

Meaning that he has the advantage of being first so he's kind of considered the default best. I really think a large part of Andre's legacy is smoke-and-mirrors stuff about drinking so many beers and not being very giving for guys he didn't like. I don't feel like anyone has really tried to make the case for him as an in-ring performer, or if they have, I haven't seen it. I think he was better than I gave him credit for at one time in my fandom for sure, but I haven't seen anyone try to tie all of his matches together and really compare him to other wrestlers that would make a good comparison, like Undertaker or Vader. So he becomes the best because he was the first and because "he's Andre".

Jumbo was a big guy but he didn't really incorporate spots getting over his size relative to others very much, so I wouldn't put him in this category. Similar to Barry Windham in that Windham was pretty tall but it wasn't really a part of what he did in the ring.

I would call the best big man worker the big man that had the most distinct great performances. I sort of like Vader's tendency to fly around. I consider it a huge credit to him not only that he could do it, but that in doing so he still had the monster aura because his offense was so good. Most aren't good enough to get away with giving away so much.

Threads are often framed like this and I know for a fact it discourages some people from participating because they are afraid they will get the answer wrong. That's why I would rather not frame it as best. Does it matter so much which one person is best?

Are you talking about the guy making the hot tag or the guy coming in and cleaning house? As a side note, I honestly don't care for threads like this too much because I don't understand if we're all supposed to be taking guesses at the "right" answer, since only one person can be the best, right? Are we trying to build a consensus? Is there any way we could reframe it as "Great hot tag wrestlers" where we make the case for lots of people?

There's also the argument that Vader was probably at times (1992-1994) as good as anyone in the world. His style was incredibly portable. How many guys could work the same match in WCW and UWFI and have it get over in both places? His athleticism helped him, but he was also a great bumper and could keep up with anyone he was facing in the ring in terms of pacing and offense. The more old Andre I see, the more I like him, but we can only go based on what's on videotape, and aside from the Hansen and Kobayashi matches, I'm not sure how many Andre has at the level of Vader's matches with Sting, as just one example. On the surface, Vader to Andre comparisons strike me as very similar to Rey to Tiger Mask comparisons.