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I think people were watching Jumbo prior to that, including the Rusher and Race matches. I know the Race and Terry NWA Title matches were ones Frank pimped as MOTD Candidates from about as soon as they hit Lynch's list off Classics. The Terry match wasn't complete on the Legend... I wonder if the Monster 10 came out before Legend. Some, not quite. Again, I think the Jumbo general drum roll started a bit earlier. The Jumbo-Tenryu was pratically a 1997 comp, no later than 1998 with Q-Mike then trading it all over the place. Terry Nuts and Kerry Nuts were really early: I know I pimped Kerry-Jumbo and Flair-Harley as one of the best TV shows for like forever, along with Choshu-Hash, Hase & Sasaki vs Mutoh & Chono and Liger-Pegasus. And Terry-Jumbo was a drum that Frank beat over and over and over again. Jumbo Love was in full force before Backlund Love, and that one goes back a long time. Pimping Jumbo Classics matches goes back before Baba-Billy... and that review of Frank's was really old. This is true. My question would be: was there enough stuff on Lynch's list (and other collectors at the time like Munari and Freelander) to determine that Jerry was Really Really Really Great? One of the complaints about Destroyer Luv is that he got pimped off a small number of available matches. But there is the flip side of that: the small number of matches hasn't gotten in the way of people breaking down Jumbo-Baba or Jumbo-Mil and arguing that Destroyer was a high end worker for the style of the era (i.e. comp him with other workers who also have limited stuff as well, and with the overall available work from the era). I don't think it got in the way of Phil having that discussion with Frank. It was over one of the classic matches, and I think he offered up other ones as well. The mass let people make the "Body Of Work" argument. John

Lawler Luv does go back, and I suspect some of us remember Frank and Phil having a pier-six brawl over Lawler. 95% of the MOVES~! discussion since then seems to have sprung out of that discussion/period, though I also suspect that since so few of the MOVES~! crew came along later that they don't know it. That said, my read on it back then was that Lawler Luv was more along the lines of "Man... Jerry was pretty Great" than "Holy Fucking Shit!!! Jerry's Might Just Be The Best Ever!!!" That seemed to me to be a few years down the road. Wouldn't disagree with that. But there are levels of all-timers. Steamer is considered by a lot of people an all-timer, but the number of folks advocating him for #1 is... lite to say the least. It struck me that it was in those days more along the lines of getting people to see that Jerry should be up there with Steamer and DiBiase, who were pretty much taken for granted as clearly being ATG at the time. Agree on all of that. John

That is probably around the right time, though more than just the KAFZ. tOA and I think Wrestling Classics. Again, I think the start of it was in a sense going back to the "If not Flair, then Who?" question. It really is in that period when almost all of who we think of now as a Usual Suspect started bubbling up: 3/4 of the Four Corners, Jumbo, Terry, Bock, Joshi workers, etc. There was a generation of fans who got in via the WWF and had it stay their core who advocated Shawn, but folks tended to be pretty brutal to that and the notion was marginalized. His return, the new era of Shawn Luv and the rise of Lawler/Fujiwara, several luchadors and some European Luv have expanded it since then. John

This is a tricky one because there was only one GOAT at the time among harcores: Ric Flair There were some older fans who pointed to their own favorites, or who just didn't Flair was the best every so didn't agree while not really offering up a clear alternate candidate for #1. Yohe would be an example of someone who didn't think Flair was the GOAT, but wasn't in the early-to-mid 90s saying alternative wrestler X is GOAT. You'd get other people offering up the "better in his peak" argument for someone like Dynamite, then quickly admitting that his career blew up extremely short to be the real GOAT. You'd get other GOATs like Lou but that was as GOAT "wrestler" rather than "worker". There just wasn't any strong alternative position. I think it one goes back to the that WON book of wrestlers that Dave did in 1986, you'll see the phrase "one of the best of all time" tossed around a few times, and for several different types of things. But Flair tended to get a special variation of it: Considered by some/many to be the best wrestler/worker/performer in the history of the business. The "one" tended to get dropped out, removing Flair from a list of guys and instead putting him up at #1, and if not that, a really strong candidate for it... while no one else got quite the same tag. As I touched on in the prior post, it was only as Flair started declining (at least to the point where even his boosters finally had to admit he was declining) that folks started looking at people who might challenge him for GOAT if they kept doing what they were doing. Kobashi got that "he might end up" run in 1993 because people were thinking his 1993 was better than Flair's 1989... and Kobashi was 27 at the time rather than 40/41. Jumbo had just run to 40+ as a top worker, so people even cautiously projecting Kobashi out were thinking "HOLY SHIT!!!!" Even a little banged up in 1993, I don't think anyone was projecting how banged up he would get. Still... he did end up getting GOATy consideration as his career went on. So that's one major reason why there was no Jumbo talk when he was active: he was parallel to The One True GOAT among hardcores. The second reason is that Jumbo's career is in thirds: 70s Jumbo, 80s Jumbo, Grumpy Old Jumbo. The 70s was much like Flair's: it didn't (or barely) exist on tape. Unlike Dave and old Mid Atlantic folks banging the drum for the greatness of Ric (and all things Mid Atlantic) from the 70s, there wasn't much to go on for Jumbo. There was the regular refrain of "he took to it like a duck to water" in terms of how quickly he learned it. But the WON didn't have vocal readers from Japan like it did from just about every territory in the US. In turn, the 80s was a mixed bag on how it was written... see all the other discussions about Jumbo in the 80s. All that said, when he was done there was talk that Jumbo was one of the all-time great workers. It was simply ill defined, had a large hole, and there already was TOTGOAT and we should accept no False GOATS. That was the same boat as the other "one of the best workers/performers" of all-time at that point. The one exception to that would be Jaguar, who Dave tended to write up in the 80s and every early 90s the same way he wrote up Flair "considered the best womens worker of all-time", or words to that effect. Did Jumbo move from "one of the..." to a candidate for "the..." after AJPW Classics came out and started circulating more? Yes, no doubt. It was a general time when people started to wonder whether Flair really was the GOAT, and if not him than who. And in contrast to the sort of ill defined Flair Alternatives tossed around in th 80s and early 90s, people were more direct in pointing to other people and arguing why. John

Co-worker with a copy of the 1988 Tag Leauge final night from a Japanese Video Store. Then being taken by him to it, setting up an account, and renting the tapes every week / two weeks. This was before I subbed to the WON. John

Misawa may have cracked a Top 10 list as early as 1985 roughly a year after he put on the mask and started appearing on TV regularly. He had a stretch where he stagnated under the mask, at least as far as hardcores caring a great deal about him, after he moved quickly up into the heavyweight division. But he was pretty much back in the Top 10 when the mask game off, and stayed there for the rest of the 90s barring injury time. Kawada, if I recall correctly, was getting Top 10 run (are very close to it) in 1988 with the Footloose and teaming with Tenryu after Hara got booted. He was an anchor in the Top 10 starting in 1990, and the upper end of it by the next year... and was there the rest of the decade when healthy. In a sense they are similar to Shawn and Liger: they were seen by some as getting up to a certain level and then chugging along year after year after year. Some higher than others, but up there. Benoit and Eddy fit in here as well when they were/are talked in GOAT levels. That's a rather normal path for GOATdom in most genres: up at the top for a while, at a certain point people wondering "maybe this guy is the best ever _____." Think of the sports you follow, or even entertainment, and that's a common way it happens. As a said note, I think we can all look into the future and see that this is the fashion that Bryan Danielson / Dragon / Daniel Bryan will end up in GOAT discussions. He's been a thought of as an excellent worker since 2001, and topped the old DVDVR poll by 2003. Five straight Most Outstanding Awards, and at the age of 30 is getting a regular push in the WWF. There really aren't any other workers making their mark among WON opinion makers / voters to that degree. Unless someone else comes up and sustains a run like he did, Bryan almost by default will end up in the discussion. Not saying it's right, simply predicting it as following that same path to GOAT discussions that most have followed. The other common type: Rocket Launcher Up The Ass version of that. Kobashi and Angle were that type. Kobashi debuted in 1988, and got positive vibes as soon as he ended up on TV. He just wasn't on TV much. Didn't appear until 1989 if I recall correctly, and was in perhaps a dozen matches. There was a push, but it wasn't yet a star worker making push. But the next year with Misawa & Kawada opposite Jumbo, the buzz got big. But 1991, there was "best in the world" talk... a lot... massive. "Rookie Off TV" to "Good Looking Young Worker" to "This Kid Can *Really* Work" to "Is He Now The Best In The World" pretty close to his *3rd* anniversary. Angle was similar. Owen was someone who was on a similar path for hardcores at the time, but that first WWF run snuffed it out. That's a rared path to GOATdom. I don't recall when the talk of "Angle May End Up The Best Ever" started popping up, perhaps because I was one of the folks laughing at that notion. Blocked it out of the mind, or something like that. With Kobashi it was during 1993... maybe there are some examples of it in 1992, but for sure by 1993 there was some talk. Lawler and Fujiwara don't fit into either of those. I would have to think of any sports analogy that would fit them. You might find it at lower levels of a position: Everyone thought X was the best Catcher of All-Time, and if not him Y or Z... but when better analysis came along and could weed through the noise of the stats to the true signal, it turned out the G was maybe the best. While G might have been thought of as good, and bagged a few all star games, he wasn't even a Hall of Famer. Wow... this is a major shift. Hall of Famer in the sense that Jerry isn't in the HOF for his work, and wasn't really thought at that time to be a "Hall of Fame Worker" akin to say Steamboat (who no one at the time was thinking of as a GOAT Worker). I can't think of that in Baseball. At every position, the GOAT is either a Usual Suspect or one of the people who were thought of in the same range. Who knows if the best MLB catcher is Bench or Berra... but they've both been in the discussion for ages. Or if Pizza's offense is so wide and clear the best ever at Catcher that it renders the defensive part moot... well, it's not like people weren't talking about Piazza being the best hitting catcher of all-time *during* his career. You get that at every position. People can point to nutty stuff like Ripken getting named the best SS in a fan poll when it's obviously Wagner... but it's not like Wagner hasn't been one of the candidates for GOAT SS since forever. Basketball? Bill Simmons did a #1 best seller where the meat of it was a GOAT List. When we got to the Top 12, was there anyone in there who hadn't been talked about for GOATiness a hell of a lot before? No. Hockey? Someone who knows hockey would have to jump in, but if someone said Orr and not Wayne was the GOAT, would that exactly be new? Gordy? In futbol, if someone said Alfredo Di Stéfano was the GOAT rather than Pele or Maradona or Cruijff... this isn't new. Even if someone was delusional and said Zidane was the GOAT, the guy did when a trio of POY, two major Copas and runner up in another... I really hate the guy, but it's not like he wasn't seen by some as the Best In The World (delusionally) several times in his career. I can't think of a sports equiv to Lawler and Fujiwara. It's possible that music might have some. Velvet Underground has a rather hardcore following of folks who argue that they are GOAT. The thing is, I could swear that I've seen examples of the Meltzer and us of the era who pimped the shit out of them. Robert Christgau: The Velvet Underground http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist....vet+underground There's the Meltzer of Music from that era... and he thought The Velvets were great shit. That said, there probably are other clearer examples, more likely in the Blues, where posthumus GOATdom has been handed down on rethink / re-discovery. Posthumus in the sense that Lawler and Fujiwara's GOATiness is being forwarded after their careers were long effectively over. Again, and as always: I'm not defending those positions of the past. Some of them aren't mind, and some of them that were mine certainly have the ability to draw cringes from me when facing them now. I think the difference is that in 1990 & 1991, there were people saying Jumbo might be the best worker in the business. At Jerry and Fujiwara's "peak" within the newsletter years, no one had them that high or were arguing for them to be that high. Jerry got a lot of positive talk for mic work, psych and working his crowd. Fujiwara... not as much. Jumbo got praise in 1990 & 1991 by some for being "better than Flair" at a time when Flair was still winning WOTY (1990 & 1992) and people were still thinking he was the best worker in the world (check out his Most Outstanding placements in 1990 and 1991). Jumbo went from "this guy was an all-time great worker" when he got sick in 1992 to "this guy may be the best worker of all-time". Jerry and Fujiwara started from a lower level. They aren't the 180 that Backlund is. But the gap from what Jerry and especially Fujiwara were thought of to how some see them now is vastly wider than the gap that Jumbo moved. They are pretty unique. Moreso because they were in plain sight, and even the fans of their styles / promotions weren't pimping them at the time to the levels that folks now are. The folks who've led the charge should pat themselves on the back: they've done a rather amazing thing. John

"Rack him." -Jim Rome

"Pro football isn't hot. The NFL is hot." -Dave Meltzer "Uh... isn't the NFL... er... pro football?" -Pro Football Fans in the US John

I would disagree with this. It's a bit like saying Hogan being a star had very little to do with Hogan's ring work. We may not like Hogan's ring work. It may not fit into our ideal of pro wrestling. But it was very effective for his fans, across a variety of promotions. John

That was part of my point: All Japan head drops are no easier to watch now, especially as the add up. John

I'm not big on the first one but I think the second is underrated. Shoot punches to the face is not something that gets less brutal over time. I don't know... I tend to think they get less impressive as time goes by. I'm not a lightweight about stiffness, but the shoot punches strike me as big of jerk offs as the unprotected chairshots. It's easier for me to watch two guys who died in ugly fashions working a chinlock-centric match than watch Tanaka and Awesome plonk each other in the skull... or Foley eating punches in a masturbatory quest for realism. Hokuto bleeding all over the place in their first matches is easier to watch than Kandori and Hokuto being dipshits in the rematch. "Punched Him/Her Right In The Face" is one of those dated that's a goofy to read now as "Droped Him Right On His Head" has become. John

It's been a long time since I read Coey's AJW pieces, but I think what people pointed to as the "Hokuto is Great" period started before Dream Rush. John

There is that famous clip of Lou with the dog bone. I don't think anyone rating UWF-style stuff thought it was what real pro wrestling looked like. It was known to be a work forever. I think anyone who has seen real strikes (which was literally *everyone* back then) knew quickly that it was a work, and it's not like Dave played along with it being a shoot. I always thought it was odd that Dave didn't snowflake it... don't recall if he used them for the UWF 1.0 show he saw in his 1984 trip to Japan. John

Not bad at all in an era when (i) books are spotty in selling, and (ii) WCW has been dead for a decade. John

Is that over the lifetime of the product? It was released back in 2004, I think. John

Yeah... this is crackpot stuff. They're the same sport. The promotions and the fighters are different. NFL and NCAA Football are both football. Of course the NFL is on a different level in terms of talent and business. No one would argue any different. But they are both football, and there's actual talent in the NCAA that will eventually shine on the NFL. Did Ichiro take magic beans when he got to MLB, or did he happen to be that good while over in Japan? Cecil Fielder? This is one where Dave has a reasonable point (UFC > Strikeforce on a ton of levels) that gets murdered by a string of his terribly analogies. One wonders why he doesn't just stick with the relatively easy point: UFC > Strikeforce on a ton of levels. John

UWF 1.0 didn't have tags? They never did suplexes in UWF 1.0 and 2.0? The UWF gang didn't go back and work with New Japan when their company failed? UWF didn't work with gaijin "shooters"... like at their biggest show ever? I think the problem with assigning "founding ideas" onto UWF is that the whole concept was continually evolving. I think all of our heads spin when we look at the original starting roster of UWF 1.0. It was a company that eventually found a place for Sayama because they wanted to make money. Gerard Gordeau? Bob Backlund? Bart Vale? Dolman? Willie Wilhelm? Duane Koslowski? I think we want to hold up Maeda-Takada or Maeda-Fujiwara as the perfect example of the founding idea of UWF, but we need to accept that the founders, even the most Orthodox among them, weren't as narrow as we'd like to portray them. John

UWFi got noticed before Vader showed up. After the split and in the US with hardcore fans: * Rings didn't take off It really didn't hit on the radar until Tamura got there. People like Yohe were talking to the wall in putting over Volk Han. The hardcore bloom was off Maeda before he even left UWF 2.0, and there was very little love for his Rings work. * PWFG was largely stillborn Hardcores that followed UWF-style loved Funaki in UWF 2.0, were interested initially in PWFG but it didn't thrill folks. There was next to zero love for Fujiwara back in the day. They got attention for going on SWS dome shows, and their own Dome show... and not in very glowing fashion. * UWFi took off here no later than the first Takada-Gary match Prior to that, the two Backlund matches got some attention based on the prior one and also the goofiness of the first rematch. The Takada-Berbick got attention before 1991 was out: Dave was a mark for Wrestler-Boxer history back then, and it was a goofy match as well. Takada-Gary I was May 1992. The rematch for the Thesz Belt was in September. Kitao the next month for another goofy match that drew attention. To hardcores in the US, UWFi was ahead before the first year after the break up was done, then ran away in 1992. When did Vader show up? May of 1993? It was already over by then, and Vader was icing. By 1992, UWFi was the king of the three spawn of UWF, Rings was considered a disappointing promotion to everyone but Yohe, and PWFG was thought of as largely a joke and people wondering why Funaki and Suzuki were hanging around that bumb Fujiwara. The two ended up getting much more attention when they left, and creating something different. I'm not justifying those as "correct" views that people took at the time. Just stating that those *were* the views at the time. John

Don't think new-to-them is a factor. Take Meltzer and Sayama. He watched everything in the 80s from New Japan, week after week after week of it. Got both of the original Sayama commercial sets, which would have included a few matches he might have missed in 1981... though I suspect he already was watching puroresu in 1981. Doubt there's much of anything of Sayama's that he didn't see back in the day, nor the juniors who followed him in the 80s. It's highly unlikely that he would agree with current online opinion on Sayama. Same goes for Dave still thinking Toyota was the best womans worker of the 90s. He watched Toyota from here debut. Zavisa and others would have sent him all the commercial tapes of AJPW, and all the interpromotional tapes. If there's anything "new" to him, it would have been the non-big stuff on commercial or cable TV after 1997. It's not a matter of failing to watch "new-to-him" stuff from the 90s that is the reason that Dave still thinks Toyota is the best joshi worker of the 90s. It's because (i) that was the opinion he formed at the time, ii) he hasn't gone back to watch that stuff again, and (iii) even if he did it's unlikely he'd change him opinion. Toyota's style of work appeals to him. Perhaps if someone sat next to him through 100+ hours of joshi and pointed out to him the flaws of Toyota and put over other workers, it might change his opinion. Doubt it. Far more likely that he would throw the person out after two hours. Same thing with Takada. He saw all of Takada's stuff in New Japan before any of us were watching puroresu. He watched all the UWF 2.0 stuff before we did. He watched the available UWF 1.0 stuff before we did. He watched UWFi stuff before most of us did. There's a very small amount of Takada stuff that's come out retro that would be new to him, mostly UWF 1.0 stuff. As a percentage of Takada's work it amounts to what... 5%? 10%? That's the case with any number of fans. You're not going to convince the biggest Shawn hardcore mark and collector that Shawn wasn't a great worker form the 80s through the 90s based on stuff that's new-to-him. There's some new stuff that has trickled out of the WWF vaults with 24/7 and WWE.com and DVD. But the majority of stuff that wasn't the well known stuff (i.e. TV and PPV) actually was in circulation: house shows, CHV and non-US stuff. A hardcore Shawn fan who collected stuff would have tracked most of it down. Add that with the TV and PPV, and we're down to a small amount of new-to-them stuff. That new Savage vs Steamer matches where Ricky is defending looks really interesting. But in the scheme of Savage or Steamboat in the WWF, it amounts to what? 0.5% of their available matches? 0.25%? It's nice to have "finds" of new stuff. But for wrestlers who've been in the eye to a great degree, and whom people watched a ton of their stuff, it doesn't amount to a ton. The reason you're not going to change the opinion of the majority of people is because they're set in their ways. They've watched what they watched long ago and are set in their ways. We all know this. John

Not a prostiture crack. John

Nice lesbian crack by Dave. "Stay classy..." John

At this point the emphasis is on 'were'. But the same thing can be said about Sayama. In 1996, Sayama was an icon. If you asked a lot of people who in 1996 thought he was an all time great in the ring, the majority of *them* would probably still hold that belief. It's hard to shake a dog off their bone. Takada would be in the same boat from 1996. John

Daniel and Herodes posts are pretty good reads. What they touch on isn't limited to pro wrestling. We're seeing it with "opinion" in all sorts of thing. Old school major opinion on movies means little these days. Sports and political opinion has changed since I was a kid in the 70s. Music opinion? Wrestling is just one of many. There's a mass of cheap/free information/content avaliable. You actually can easily sample stuff before "buying" (or downloading) it. John

I'd have to see a quote of Frank saying this, and then look at the context because it doesn't sound like him. We were the guys joking about Lou Thesz wrestling NWA Heel Champ Style against Verne: bitching, stooging, begging off. I tend to think that if people really paid attention to what Frank would say about what was needed to be an NWA Champ, they'd likely find it lines up closer to Flair (who he wasn't really a fan of) than Harley (who he clearly was a fan of). Dittos on the DDT thing. I suspect most people who read Frank's comments on Flair can recite the theme: it wasn't that Ric didn't add "new hot moves", but that Flair threw away a lot of his old stuff to narrow and further narrow what he did in the ring. Irony? He said the same thing about Jumbo in the 90s: Grumpy Old Heel Jumbo that we all loved (including Frank) cut back on the volume of MOVES~! that he did in a match. Frank talked a lot about moves. But I think that people made the same mistake in reading him that they did with Bill James in baseball, thinking that all James did was talk stats and numbers. It wasn't the case. Frank's the guy who wrote a long piece on the Stinky Face Match, putting over how well it was layed out. He's the one who loved Flair bitching out for Tommy Young while I groaned about it. He walked through full version of Patterson-Patera, which was hardly a high tech match even for the era, but he went over in detail why he thought it was a really well laid out, smartly worked match. It's not a match that grabs me, but he certainly gave me something to think about when rewatching it. People have their reasons for not liking and dimissing what he wrote. He was an asshole, and admittedly I was (and still am though I continue to try hard to tone it down). I think people let the assholishness get in the way of reading what he had to say, and often their own defensiveness about contrary (to their own) and detailed opinions make them look for a way to eject out of thinking. It's easier to pigeon hole what he wrote as Asshole MOVES~! Mark rather than think about it. The equiv would be to dimiss everything Schneider writes as Lawler & Fujiwara Mark, as if it's the sum total of what Phil has written about over the past two decades. Or people still holding what Daniel wrote about Joshi more than a decade ago against him as a reason to ignore what he's written about Lucha. The rebellion against NJ Juniors? I think if people had access to what Frank wrote about them in 1996-99 on AOL, on tOA, in e-mail and other places, they'd likely see that the Grand Rethinking Of Juniors isn't terribly far removed from what he said back then. It's also entirely likely that some of the current Juniors Haterz were Juniors Luvers on the other side of some of his discussions. And no... I don't have easy access to any of that stuff. Just have a pretty vivid memory of him pointing out lots of NJ Junior goofiness, and not just on Tiger Mask long before everyone else started shitting on Sayama. Again, that gets lost and/or forgotten in the "He's an asshole", and him (as was I) being rather combative in discussions. Hard to see what Destroyer has to do with any of that. As people have become more aware of the Destroyer, Dave has also said more positive things about him. It's not like Dave ever said anything critical of him: Beyers was simply a name on lists, including the WON HOF. Really don't even think Beyer is a comp for Flair as they're entirely different generations. I know people have made comps, but it's little different from comps between Flair and Shawn: they're just workers in a line. Putting over Beyer has nothing to do with Flair, anymore than putting over Shawn has anything to do with Flair... unless there are Flair fans that are defensive of any wrestler in that line being put over. Don't get that one. Jumbo is an odd one: Dave thinks he was a high end all-time great work, I think he's great, most people think he's great. Putting over Jumbo doesn't change any of that. There's really just one are of disagreement on Jumbo that's been strange and/or fun and/or annoying, depending on how you look at it. In a sense, it's like Derek Jeter. People who think Jeter's defense has been rather overrated through the years also happen to think that Jeter is a HOF. In other words: a great player. They just disagree about how one aspect of him is portrayed. The Jumbo Was Lazy discussion actually started *before* there was a falling out. It goes back to 1997-98 originally, though the best moments of it (such as Bix's call into the old WOL show or the funny references to Mick Foley) were later. It's been out there for so long that I think people lose track of just how far the scratching of the head goes back. Bob no doubt has lots of elements of cracks at Dave. They're also cracks at me, since I hated Bob as well and was completely wrong on him. If in 1996 I happened to think about Bob what I even thought of him in the early 00's, he would have gone in the WON HOF. I would have advocated strongly enough to get him begrudgingly in. I aspect my fair share of the blame for that, so considered the knocks mutal and my penance for the error of my ways. John

I continue to talk about Backlund because he had a lot of matches in the territory/era that I've spent most of my time talking about in the past 3-4 years: WWF 80s. If you watch and write about that, you're going to talk about the guy who held the belt for the first four years. I have another 21 matches in hand of his two watch from that period, and another 20+ may be in circulation. That's a drop in the bucket compared to 150 or so Hogan Matches that I need to sit through. And the Savage spreed sheet looks to be long, with quite a few matches popping up that I still need to add (like the Steamer IC defense that popped up on WWE.com). That doesn't even take into consideration the WWF tag division, which I've largely ducked/not focused on. Is there anything more for me to say about Backlund? Suspect there is. There's a knock on Will's set that it was culled to make Bob "look good". It was a Best Of, so you are going to get the good stuff. I've written up some of his matches with weaker opponents or lesser matches that didn't make the set: Khan (not a bad worker, just a bad match), Ventura and some others. I've got more of the same in the cue, like Duncam, Mosca, Steele, Superstar and Studd. I've written up some good matches that didn't make Will's set. There's still some out there than might fall into that category, such as some Valentine matches (including the full version of the Philly cage match) and some Slaughter matches in Philly. There's also some things that are of interest not just for Bob, but the opponent, such as the series in Philly with Snuka. I really want to see the full match with Mike Sharpe that was in Philly, even if it's a stinker. So get them all and watch them all as part of the WWF 80s process. Is it repetative? No doubt. Watch and write up 36 Flair matches that took place in a 4 year period (let's say 1986-89 since it would be in a closed promotion of Crockett/Turner) or Savage (1986-89 WWF) or Lawler and it's going to get repetative in the comments being made if you're writing at any length. There are times when you want to be repetative to get across elements that are common to what Flair or Savage or Backlund do in the ring, with simply in terms of spots/moves, or in terms of how they work. It's hard to talk about a Hogan match and not reference the Hulking Up. Or Lawler with the Strap. It's part of what they did. There are other things that are clear points that you as a writer might want to get across as a continuing theme: how Flair, Hogan, Lawler and/or Bob engaged/worked/sucked in the crowd. Or simply jokes you enjoy, even if no one else does (such as Bob taking two counts). Anyway, that's the overwhelming majority of Backlund that I write about. I have a chunk of 70s Backlund that's I've never really written up like the 80s WWF stuff (including two of my favorite matches of his). There's a lot of stuff with New Japan that I've barely scratched the surface of, some of which never aired on Classics but Dan G has tracked down and is sitting over an a shelf. At some point I may watch that and write about it. Some of it gets watched at KOC's, and gets talked about in brief... but that's akin to watching a Jumbo match at a KOC and tossing off a few sentences. He's a good worker that I enjoy watching, so I'm likely to watch whatever I can get my hands on down the road. I tend to write about what I watch. The lack of writing about matches over the last two years is a pretty good indication of how little I'm watching stuff, even what I like. John