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Wait... Kris doesn't have a ballot? Someone send me Kris e-mail via PM. I don't see it on Kris' fb page. I'm more than happy to talk to Dave... John

I'd have to go back and look at how Dave wrote it up, but I think the "taking credit for launching Birds vs VE's" was an item where Dave thought Gary was taking way too much credit. Perhaps my recollection is off, but I thought Dave contested Gary's claims on the he was behind that to the degree that Gary claimed he was. John

I think we watched the Brody-Bockwinkle with Dave & Corney at one of the KOC's. I don't recall it being terribly interesting. John

I could have sworn that he downplayed the role of Mantell to the point that it came across that Gary was responsible to the Boom. John

One would hope that prime Cena is held to a higher standard than '94 Baba, who was capable of being fun/entertaining but was not in legit MOTYCs (WON ratings aside). I'm not sure what Cena is in reference to since I didn't mention him. But to run with that, yeah... I agree that Tenryu when he was on top should be held to a higher standard of execustion than 1994 Baba. I think that's why Tenryu's sloppiness tends to jump out at people. John

I actually liked the Shawn-Taker matches a good deal. They happened after the SC voting, so they probably fell under your radar of matches I liked. I also liked the Taker-Batista match a good deal, though not as much as stuff I had on my SC Top 50. People disagree on matches. Three Kobashi-Misawa matches took the WON MOTY. I don't like any of those three. I look forward to seeing where the 1995 MOTY ends up on Loss' list of 1995 matches when that yearbook comes out. Odds of it finishing #1 are probably 100-1, and in the Top 10 are probably 20-1. I liked Rock-Hogan, you liked Taker-Flair. Pretty clear difference. John

That would be the match. 5 legdrops to the back of the head at the finish, the last off the top rope for a nice non-standard Kobashi finish. One of the things that made it watchable by the end is we didn't get the standard moonsault finish, and instead Kobashi was a bit ruthless with those legdrops. I like Wada giving the impression at the end that Bossman might be "out". An average ** (in the non-1993 Kobashi standards) watchable match isn't unreasonable. That's pretty much exactly what I was pointing at. No one is claiming that all 1993 Kobashi matches need to be at the level of the Hansen match to be watchable/quality. I also suspect that if people watched the Taue-Bossman one earlier in the year (as one would be watching week-to-week), they'd see the difference between watchable/quality here and one that was duddy/not-so-watchable. John

I'm not against short matches. I've pimped the short Pillman-Barry taped fist match forever. I just want to make sure that 6 minute of match is enough for quality. If that's the case, it's tough to argue that 10:26 of a 23:44 Kobashi-Kawada match doesn't count as quality, or all those JIP Juniors tag matches in NJPW that have a boatload of fun down the stretch for seven minutes isn't enough time to slap a "quality" tag on them. Just trying to wrap my head around what counts for Greatest TV Of All-Time. John

My comment on Dave was a short part of a longer post and gave context. I don't think I'm the only one in this thread talking about matches that are more than a year old. If I went back through this thread do you think I'd find references to Rey's work in the 90s? John

On Gary Hart, I seem to recall that when his book came out that he took a lot of credit for things in WCCW that weren't really things he should get credit for. That in turn called into question some of the other things he took credit for outside of WCCW. It was less that "Gary was a big fat liar", but that the book stretched his impact too much. John

My toughest choice every year is if there's not a Japanese candidate that I think is worthy, to pick at least one to make sure Sakaguchi doesn't get in. Volk Han is my usual safe choice, and it makes Yohe happy that someone else votes for him. I'm not enthused about any of the Modern Wrestlers. BTW - Edge on the ballot means that Dave is still going with the 35 year old rule? I didn't think he had 15 years in the Bigs. He didn't debut in the WWF until 1998, and I seem to recall that Dave ignored all of Rey Jr.'s wrestling before he made his big time debut. John

You get the feeling that Dave doesn't understand that PR is a US territory in the Caribean Sea (i.e. part of the Atlantic Ocean) rather than over in the Pacific... or anywhere near the Aussies? Did he confuse it with Guam? John

God... please... no. John

Didn't say you did. I said we're moving in that direction. What you said: It's not completly, but... mostly irrelevant? Largely irrelevant? Quite a bit irrelevant? I suspect that you'd admit that it's rather stripped down / minimalist now. Hell, I don't even think it's Best Ever guys. These discussions have gone on over people like Mark Henry and Taker and Cena, let alone the top guys. I'm willing to bet that more words have been spent online about whether Henry or Cena are any good that on people defending Jumbo or Kawada or Kobashi as a consensus Best Ever. Seriously... is anyone spending anywhere near the words to defend Jumbo against any sacred cow criticism as compared to people going on benders when Cena gets knocked? Just looking at the Yearbooks threads for an example: there's criticism of AAA in the 90s. Is there anyone running in to defend the honor of AAA as the best lucha of the 90s? You're on more boards than I am, and I certainly don't spend any time posting regularly about 90s lucha. But I'll take a wild ass guess that the overwhelming majority of posts in circles you roam in are putting over the stars of CMLL and poking nice holes in AAA. People are coming up with strawmen to defend AAA? On the other hand, knocks of AAA even in the Rey thread include that it was sloppy / botched / spotty. The point of my post was two fold: * We raise complaints to knock down the wrestlers we want to knock down, then ignore them if applicable to the wrestlers we like. I gave the example of All Japan guys, and it's pretty well known that of the four guys I listed, I REALLY love at least four of them. It was an admission that even wrestlers I like are sloppy at times and warrant it being pointed out. * we are stripping back analysis Some of that is perfectly good. I've even joked in a post that the worst thing I ever did was point out the Misawa's Bad Neck storyline in a match because I then had to read another two years of similar comments that ran it into the ground. I'm pretty confident that the spawn of the spawn of the spawn of *my* spawn are still carrying the curse around the net. Some of it is... frankly pretty laughable. There are times where it reads like a self parody, no doubt like some of my posts by 1999 (and beyond) read like a self parody. I could point to one on these boards where I was tempted to ask: "You're working parody post, right?" But thought better of it because reading another post made me think, "No... that's just him." So I ran with the laughable tangent to it's hyperbolic conclusion: We really are heading in the direction where someone can make an very easy move of just a couple of degrees and end up with Hogan being reasonably argued as the GOAT. I actually think far fewer words are being spent defendng Old GOAT Candidates (with two very obvious exceptions... and they ain't Japanese) who are now criticised than: * offering up New Sacred GOAT Candidates * defending those New Sacred GOAT Candidates when people don't instantly march lock step John

Don't these tend to be mutually exclusive, though? Aren't those who pooh-pooh the importance of selling and things making sense the ones placing all the emphasis on MOVEZ and execution, and vice versa? No. Seriously... no. John

I never go the sense that Tenryu was belting anyone with something painful. Not that you really want people punting opponents in the back of the skull stiff... but it didn't really come up to the level of even Inoki's in Inoki's prime... and it's not like Inoki was going stiff ones. Just decent theatrical ones. Tenryu's enzuigiri was usually as light as Baba's Northern Chop. Except that the Northern Chop was suppose to be delivered to the top of the dome, and that was the visual Baba gave. Tenryu's enzuigiri was suppose to be to the back of the head... and is was instead in the neighborhood of the head... neck... upper back... sorta. Tenzuigiri = People's Elbow Except the People's Elbow was cooler. If you want painful and physical limits, keep an eye on Baba's chops to the "chest" in the Carny '94 matches. I kept getting the feeling that too many chops were sliding up past the chest and into the *throat*. People weren't selling them to the neck, but I got the sense it was because they were *suppose* to hit in the chest and you have to sell for Baba where he "intends" not where he hits. I can't remember which match it was that it caught my eye, but it was one of the early tags, and it kept being noticable... and sort of made my throat all achy every match he was in. So there's an example of suspending disbelief. John

Dave set the tone for people who (i) who read the WON at the time, _and_ (ii) watched it *after* him. By that I mean *both* of those things. He certainly didn't set the tone for me: I watched it before he did, and before he wrote it up in the WON. Lord knows there were plenty of matches we disagreed on: I liked Baba & Hansen vs Misawa & Kobashi more than he did, and his review of the Kawada-Williams Carny Final had a little disagreeing shout out to me that I'd forgotten. I'd go further than that: I doubt he set the tone for people like you who have watched AJ '93 without having his reviews and star ratings in front of you. Dave's views can't have meaning if you don't know them. It's a lesser match. Haven't argued that it was anything more than watchable and decent, while trying to get a sense for what "quality" means. Perhaps I'll make this easy. Here's Raw this week: John Morrison pinned R-Truth in a falls count anywhere match at 10:48 Kelly & Eve defeated Nikki & Brie Bella at 3:08 Jack Swagger pinned Alex Riley at 4:23 Kofi Kingston & Evan Bourne defeated Michael McGillicutty & David Otunga at 4:43 Alberto Del Rio pinned Rey Mysterio Jr. at 12:50 Which of those matches go in the "quality" column? I assume ADR vs Rey. But is it 5 out of 5? 2 out of 5? Are we at the level where 5-6 minute matches can go into the quality column, in which case a lot of JIP matches get to make the cut in AJPW and NJPW? John

I was trying to get a feel for what "quality" means when it's tossed around so freely. Bossman-Kobashi struck me then, and struck me on rewatch, as a pretty watchable match. I could tick off the reasons, and did with some of them in the earlier post. It's a watchable match. Great? No. Good? In the context of 1993 AJPW? Probably not. But pretty decent, it didn't feel like a wasted 12 minutes of my life, and since I like Bossman and really like Kobashi 1993, it was overall fun to watch. Is *that* the standard of what we're talking about when we say that 2006-2010 had shitloads of quality matches? Stuff that's at least at the general level of, in the context of its time, 1993 Bossman-Kobashi? I simply was tossing out Dave's opinion as an example of how it was thought of at the time. In the big picture of AJPW in 1993, it wasn't thought of as much of anything... a match that anyone needed to go out of their way to see. I actually liked it more than Dave, but it's not like I put it on the old Pimping Post... and lord knows there are a lot of matches on the Pimping Post. So when we toot the horn of the shitloads of "quality" WWE matches from 2006-2010, including the shitload of quality matches that Rey's been in, do we end up with a lot of matche like Kobashi-Bossman that really aren't all that important other than while watching the tube that night you're thinking, "That wasn't too bad"? I was interested in the above. I'm also interested in the notion that the WWF in 2006-2010 tossed out more quality than any other TV in pro wrestling history. That I tossed out what is the Usual Suspect for that title (1993 AJPW), a match including the Usual Suspect for Best TV Wrestling Year Ever (1993 Kobashi), and even provided a youtube link to make it easy to get a response out of you... I'm kind of scratching my head at why I can't get an answer what 2006-2010 "quality" means and how it racks up against a baseline of 1993 AJPW quality, if in fact Kobashi-Bossman is at the level of what you see as current WWE quality. I'm certainly not trying to offer up high end, by pointing to 12/03/93 Kawada & Taue vs Misawa & Kobashi and where it fits in with Rey's best 2006 match. I'm tossing out a very mild level of "watchable" in 1993, and wondering if it fits in with Miz and Alberto Del Rio having a watchable/quality 7 minute Raw match that you go, "Hey... that wasn't bad. Raw gave me another decent match". John

Tenryu blew shit all the time, and the Tenziguri is generally an article of faith. And it's hardly like Jumbo never was sloppy, Hansen could get sloppy as well, and Kawada could be all over the place. I think we all are more than happy to ignore sloppiness in our favorite, or see sloppiness in our non-favorites that isn't quite there to the degree we're railing about. I'm still really interested in all the blown spots that Phil saw in Race-Backlund that I missed when watching it above and beyond the one(s) I noted. In turn, I loath going back and rewatching early 90s AJPW in full to see all the times where Misawa looked not-so-good-at-all in spots / segments / matches that we all pretty much ignored / missed / accepted back then. On the other hand, we're reaching the point of removing everything from the match. Moves don't matter. Execution doesn't matter. Sustained selling doesn't match. Things adding up in a sensible fashion don't matter. At which point we'll be left with: Did the crowd pop? Did the crowd enjoy the match? Which obviously is really important... the most important thing. But we do all grasp where that leaves us with as the GOAT? See... the thing is... even as we remove all the stuff like Moves and Execution and Sustained Selling, etc, etc... we are still pointing to elements of those things: Lawler's punch's are executed better than X Fujiwara sells damage better than X It's Cake & Eat It territory, knocking off just enough to benefit our favorites while trying not to go too far down the slippery slope so that we end up with: The GOAT: Hulk Hogan Yeah, we're not terribly far from the "Keep The Government Out Of My Medicare" zone where you look over at some of the GOATiness arguments and think, "Wait... how doesn't that apply to Hogan?" John

"Best Era of TV Wrestling By Any US Promotion" That's one of the reasons I tossed out the Kobashi-Bossman match, which got no sold. Would that be "quality" / "good" in the current WWE standards. Hardcores love Kobashi work. Hardcores like Bossman's work. There was some slow stuff. There was some real cool stuff in it. It was rocking down the stretch. Kobashi is a master of working those matches. It was on FREE TV~! so it's cool! Or a different way: Folks love Rey's work. Folks like [let's toss in] Mark Henry's work. There was some slow stuff. There was some real cool stuff in it. It was rocking down the stretch. Rey is a master of working those matches. It was on FREE TV~! so it's cool! I'm not saying this was better than say the best Rey vs Mark Henry match... though one suspects that the Doc & Bossman vs Misawa & Kobashi / Kawada & Taue matches later in the tag league probably top anything that Rey-Henry have done together. But one gets the feeling that Kobashi and Bossman working a match on free TV that was rated ** back then and crapped on by Dave would be something that if you dropped the equiv on Raw/SD! in 2006-2010 would be considered quality /good / etc. To the point that people would be regularly knocking Dave for giving it only **, much like his Cena-Umaga stuff is about as run into the ground as "Jumbo Was Lazy" by folks like me. John

07/17/11 (1) Punk pinned Cena to win WWE Title 07/18/11 Vince strips Punk of WWE Title 07/18/11 Trip fires Vince for abuse of power; unclear what this means for Punk 07/25/11 (2) Rey pinned Miz to win World Vince Title 07/25/11 (3) Cena pinned Rey to win World Vince Title 08/01/11 (4) Trip recognizes Punk as still the WWE Champ 08/14/11 (5) Punk over Cena to win World Vince Title 08/14/11 (6) Del Rio over Punk WWE/Vince Titles John

Yeah... what Jingus says: it comes across as a Junk Drawer grouping. I'd also think there's more to Lewin's career than being tossed in Aussie/Pacific. Is that really 50%+ of his candidacy for the HOF? John

Well... I think the 12th post on the first page of that thread is you coming into the defense of Taue. I also think it's reasonable to toss out issues with Taue: he wasn't so hot with the Gaijin. I'm not sure it's even limited to the Big Gaijin. I think he worked quite a bit worse with Kroffat & Furnas that the other natives, not just MKK but seemingly most of the other natives. I haven't recently watched Taue's 1990-93 stuff with other lower ranked guys on Stan and Gordy & Williams' teams, but he never struck me as being very interesting / solid / good with them. It's not like Misawa was fab with most: he seemed to like working with Kroffat & Furnas, so worked a little harder with them than others. It's not a massive knock of Taue: any number of natives weren't as good with gaijin as with other natives. Just something to keep in the back of the mind when thinking about why Taue was abused by hardcores back in the day. John

I'm a guy who thinks when the word "great" is tossed around like water in the Pacific, it has no meaning. There were a lot of things in the 1994 Carny matches that would certainly qualify as "great" under the 2006-2010 Raw/SD! standards. I could have tossed it out a ton. To have some impact on the word, I used it emphatically for one specific match and across several matches for one specific worker: * Hansen vs Taue * Hansen as a worker On Hansen as a worker, I focused the notion of"great" on him to try to get across that while we often think of 1993 as a career year for him and then him instantly hitting the wall, he actually was in terrific 1993 form as late as the 1993 Carny. It's would be a worthwhile side thread on Hansen at some point to ponder what happened after that (cause / effect / etc), which is another reason for the focus: "Okay, if he was great here... what happened?" On Hansen-Taue, it was to draw attention to a never has gotten run but really does have some strong elements of greatness. Best match in the Carny? No... of course not. A match that stands out as something different... a different type of great from the usual AJPW suspects? Yes, that was the point. I tossed the word great at Doc as a worker in an off hand fashion which implied/invited something for more consideration: he was good/improving in 1993 after Gordy went out, and we all know he got *really* good at some point. That point was no later than the Kawada-Williams draw... he was a helluva worker by that point, and it's not Kawada making him look good. But again, that was an off hand hint at something more. Hansen in general and Hansen-Taue in specific... if there's anything that I wanted people to come out of that thinking about in terms of "great" when they're looking at Carny '94, I wanted them to *not* miss the greatness in those two thing compared to other wrestlers and matches that are the usual stuff. I used other ways to put over other matches, and other workers. I really tried to avoid using the word "great" for Misawa-Kawada, though I suspect there were a lot of elements of the match/work that I could have sprinkled it on. I wanted people to think of it in a different context: a Flair-style match. Why? It's what popped into my head for the first time ever when watching it this time around. Pretty early in the match, didn't go away, had more stuff pop up supporting that bouncing around in the head, and thought I'd toss it out for others to ponder. Create a different context for people to consider the match rather than just "great" or "not as good as 06/03/94" or any of the other Misawa-Kawada matches or as a comp to the other matches available from that Carny set. Take it out of the context of just All Japan and drop it into the context of the gold standard of guys just going out there to do stuff to get the crowd going... well, that's Ric. I think all of us toss it would too much. I suspect if we do a search on any of us for the word great, we're not just limiting to the guy we would have ranked #6 all-time, or just is 10 or 20 or 50 greatest matches. I think we all know that. In 2008 at the time of the poll? Yes, I'd watched everything post-2002 seriously pimped in the thread. And no, I never was as much of a fan of 00's (or even 90's) WWF/WWE as you are. I've written a ton about Hogan. I don't consider him to be a great worker. Never will. But I do think it's worthwhile for people to shift from the old "Hogan sucks" meme we saw in the 80s to something along the lines of "He was a pretty effective worker" that I've tossed out quite a bit. Backlund is somewhat similar. His rep was crap among hardcore fans. Frank started pointing out that perhaps he wasn't so crap, and I ran with it... arguably into the ground. But I've done it to point out different areas of Not Suck, Good, and even things that he does "great". Do I think he's a great worker? Beats the shit out of me. He's a good worker who was in some great matches, and a fair number of good matches. Do people really need more out of me to get across that I think the old meme about him was utter bullshit? He also entertains me. I don't think only "greatness" entertains me. I like Leverage, but wouldn't argue that it's great. I do think it's a fairly well thought out series, which is confirmed by the commentary tracks: Leverage Creative puts a fair amount of throught into the shows, even if they know they're making Entertainment and stick with a lot of it. I like Castle, but admit it's just light entertainment. Again, it's a reasonably well thought out series from a light entertainment standpoint. But I watch it more in the sense of it being enjoyable, and fun to watch with my girlfriend. I watch The Mentalist, and I actually think it's a pretty mediocre show overall but the lead is moderately interesting and there was just enough pull on his Red John arc to keep me going. It was something of a make/break season where if they didn't deliver an satifying advance in the Red John storyline, I would have ejected from it. They delivered, in some ways more than I had hoped (Red John!), and it's enough to get me to tune in next season for a while. But it's still a pretty mediocre show for what are obvious reasons if anyone slows down to think about it. I've written more about Castle and The Mentalist in the past two years than I've written about Prime Suspect or Cracker, both of which I rewatched in the past year... and are REALLY FUCKING GREAT TV~! Let's get real. We all wrote a shitload about Russo, and I don't think there's a one of us here who think he's great. Most of us think he's dog shit. Greatness isn't the sole reason to write a lot about someone. Perhaps it's for you... but I actually doubt that everything you've written a lot about over the past 10+ years of being online was "great". John

The "better than people give them credit for" thread is probably where you want to drag that to: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=11814 Then delete out of here. John