jdw

He's always been an interesting candidate. I'm not one who has pushed him, and kind of think that the old summary bio on him needs some more stats / data to help it. The prime is about a 2.5 year run, with a tail of about another 2 years. To get him over it needs to be clearer just how big he was in that run, and where around the country he was drawing big relative to the other top guys. John

The things I've said in this thread are along the lines of what I've posted for a decade, and I still get a ballot. Dave really doesn't care about people having differences of opinion with him when they submit a ballot. More than that, he's listened when I've suggested someone being put on the ballot, and pinged me a couple of times on wrestlers other people have suggested. John

Basically "well he got in, I saw him live and he was okay, but nothing special a all. His kid is better." Obviously not a direct quote but that was essentially the gist of it Sr. was born in 1936. One wonders how old he was when Dave saw him "live", and if it was in any setting to show whether Wagner could work or not. I can't find him on any California cards I have so maybe he just saw him in AJPW. Seems unlikely, doesn't it? Ángel Blanco and Dr. Wagner won the Americas Tag Title in Los Angeles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NWA_Americas_...am_Championship Worked a little over a month in LA: http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/31391.html It was Jul-Aug, so maybe Dave was down here in the Summer. He may have worked Los Angeles in other years, but I didn't see any in 1976 & 1977 which popped up at the same site. He doesn't appear to have worked for Shire: http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/18208-1.html http://sportsandwrestling.mywowbb.com/forum2/31838.html Primo was a "name" coming in from Boxing, so kind of a superstar already. Maeda developed into a superstar. Maeda was like Stone Cold: he'd been around a while, then exploded to a different level. The difference between Stone Cold and Maeda is that: * Maeda anchored a smaller promotion prior to that 1984-85 UWF 1.0 after leaving NJPW * Maeda was on top as a non-Ace when returning to NJPW 1986-87 Then Maeda exploded in UWF 2.0, and after that anchored Rings as an Ace. We don't need to go back to Primo. * * * * * Another analogy for Maeda: He's what Sabu, Douglas and Tazzzzz would be collectively if they actually got over to a big degree nationally. A small promotion theoretically with a pot to piss in against to long established national promotions, having no TV themselves, and doing things that neither of them were doing at the time: selling out Budokan, then popping a massive Tokyo Dome crowd. Think of how we'd lose our shit of Sabu or Douglas or Tazzzz sold out MSG (several times), and then sold out the Silverdome... or say popped a PPV number as big as Wrestlemania in 1996 or 1997? That was Maeda. And to a degree Onita. We don't really have a US comp for either of them.

I think this is a key point. How can he be compared to other wrestlers from the past decade or so like Akiyama, Sasaki, Nagata or Suzuki when the numbers have been so heavily worked? With that NOAH Dome Show in 2004 that drew 58,000, the rumour was that the real number of ticket sales was 20,000, so how do you wade through all that and figure out whether Akiyama was a better draw than Tanahashi? Screw Akiyama... what the hell does it say about Kobashi if that show really sold just 20K tickets!?!? Anyway, I would be interested if Dave talked about the paper at the time for that card and the Dome show the next year. I do recall that he talked a lot over the years about paper and inflated Dome numbers over the years, going all the way back to SWS and PWFG. So if it was a 20/32 split in sold/paper, it's likely that he would have talked about it. Confess that I don't recall because Noah always bored the piss out of me, and I always thought the Kobashi GHC Dynasty run was overrated so I've blocked most of it out of my mind... other than the Suzuki match that I enjoyed.

I think I just said that above.

As an Ace? I would be hard pressed to find positive drawing items for Sasaki as an Ace. As an opponent, sure. As the guy just lucky enough to be NJPW's representative against Kawada rather than the more over Mutoh or the "Inoki's just fucking killed his NJPW Career because he's a fucking idiot" Hashimoto? No... I really can't give Sasaki any credit for those two Dome shows drawing. Which is similar to having a tough time giving Kawada a shitload of credit for those two Domes drawing: he carried the flag for AJPW, but we all know that Misawa if he were still in AJPW would have been a bigger deal vs NJPW, and Kobashi in 2000 still in AJPW would have bigger deal vs NJPW than Kawada. That's the problem with Sasaki. It's tough to find acey things for him that are positives relative to what others did in the ace role, or what others could have done in the role he was in at the time. With Tanahashi, while I don't find his drawing mind altering like some do, I think we would agree that the current uptick *is* a positive. He is the Ace in the company, unless we think he's passed it on. So there is a positive. It's quite possible that it's similar to Hart drawing in the Hart-Taker-Diesel feud, or against Yoko, and those good draws here and there against Lawler: they're good relative to the crap around them. They're not Hogan level before him. They're not Austin level afterwards. They're a positive for Bret's candidacy, but not a Major Positive. Which is why I was in that wait-and-see camp with Tanahashi. There are positives in the NJPW drawing at the moment. They're not really earth shattering yet on a historic level, and we don't know how long they'll be sustained. But it is a positive at the moment. Of course there's that 2007-2011 (or however long it went into) where Tanahashi was the co-Ace with Nak, and the company drew for shit. That's a negative. Not a short one either.

The one positive of him handing out so many ballots are that the candidacies of Moolah and Ventura are effectively dead without some major push... like Jesse dropping dead (which might get him in).

That's interesting in how the non-wrestlers are counted. I don't think that was clear in prior years, was it?

As an ace? Sasaki's is spotty as an ace. Bret's was spotty as an ace. Tenryu's was actually shitty as an ace. Excellent as an Outsider Opponent (going into New Japan) or Top Rival (to Jumbo in All Japan since Jumbo really was the one Baba pushed as the Ace regardless of what we want to project onto it), but just flat out dogshit as an ace in SWS and WAR. So Tenryu has just about the oddest drawing record of any guy up there: a crapload of good drawing, which a lot of can be pointed to him as a guy worthy of a lot of the credit. But as an Ace he didn't really draw well at all. To a degree similar to Savage, though at least Savage had that stretch where Hogan was out and Savage was Ace for a brief period. That period isn't as long as we think since Hogan did comeback and pretty much be the Ace when he was back on the house shows, and that Hogan-Bossman feud was doing big business even without Hogan having the belt. Savage might have been Ace for 4 months maybe. The PPVs between the two Manias while Savage was champ pretty much reflected that Hogan was the Ace. Taker's case as the Ace is probably pretty weak. We can point to a lot of things where he Drew, and to a degree we might be able to say that he's been the Ace-Draw of Mania a good number of times once The Streak took off. But he hasn't been an Ace a ton. His run after Mania in 1997 wasn't good. I don't think his brief runs as Ace of one of the programs after the Brand Split were that successful. His best stretch was as an opponent for Austin at the peak of the company. He'd be an interesting one to find. Savage, Tenryu and Taker are all interesting in that sense. There's a lot we can point to as drawing, and that "they" (or the circumstances around them like Mania+Streak or Tenryu vs New Japan) were key in drawing. But a lot of their drawing was as a terrific opponent, and not much of it was as an ace. Don't even get started with Kawada. And Akiyama's is largely the same thing.

Back in 2010, Steve told me who would vote for Los Hermanos Dinamita. He was a little more right guy in the right place in the right time with respect to Cien Caras. Seriously... I think you two could do epic work on Los Hermanos Dinamita because collectively there's a lot of shit there for the three. If you've got Steve's endorsement when publishing it, you're likely going to get a ton of support. Of course I think we all agree there are some other trios who should get in as well, and it's really something you and Steve should put your heads together on.

With Lucha voters? Why? Add what they've done as a group along with what Universo and Mascara Ano have done to what Cien Caras has done, you'd think it would be a lock. :/

Basically "well he got in, I saw him live and he was okay, but nothing special a all. His kid is better." Obviously not a direct quote but that was essentially the gist of it Sr. was born in 1936. One wonders how old he was when Dave saw him "live", and if it was in any setting to show whether Wagner could work or not.

The WWF's house show business was the shits when Diesel was champ, continuing a long mostly downward trend since the Hogan-Sid program at the beginning of 1992. House show business went up suddenly when they programed the Bret-Taker-Desiel feud. The related PPV's (Taker vs Bret at the Rumble and Bret-Nash at the Feb IYH) also show growth in buys. People like to give Shawn credit for much of that. Problem is that Mania didn't grow from the prior year, and Shawn-Nash did less than Bret-Nash, and Shawn's PPV buys overall through the year were kind of... well... shitty. Shawn as Champ did continue the house show turn around, and build on it to a decent degree. But... The turn around started with Bret-Taker-Diesel. It then faded eventually under Shawn's watch, and as WCW grew. On a level it's similar to Flair-Savage in WCW that year. The turn around for WCW's long house show issues started with the Savage-Flair program after Starcade. It wasn't lights out business, nor close to what they when they eventually hit their peak. But it was the start. John

Excerpt: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/993188...acism-wrestling

He made it for the Current rather than the Past. Any moreso than any Dome show? There wasn't much thought at the time that Pro Wrestling benefited at all from MMA in Japan. Quite the contrast: it damaged it externally and internally. Puroresu was hot before MMA. It was was in the tank for the most part when MMA hit its peak. Soccer in the US has a small made audience. Yet the Seattle Sounders averaged 43,124 fans a game for their 17 home games this year. It's not the only sport in town. The Seahawks of the NFL will average 67K+ for their 8 home games, and the Mariners of MLB averaged 21K+ for their 81 home games. It's a metro of 3.6M. The horrible Chivas USA averages 8,381 for their 17 home games in MLS, with no one else averaging less than 12,765 per game. So I get the concept of the fan base of puroresu being small. But it's *extremely* small, not just small. Why? Because it was interpromotional? Yep. It is for pro-wrestling in 2013. This is true. So why do you think it's ironic that Tanahashi can't draw what Akiyama did a decade ago when you know the business isn't as good as it was a decade ago? Is the business really worse now than it was in 2003? If it is, given the fact that Tanahashi and Nakamura have anchored New Japan for almost all of the time since 2003 (2006-2013), what does that say? That on their watch it went to shit? That doesn't account for anything in addition to a 1-2 spike that you're saying doesn't even get it back up to 2003's shitty numbers? Bret vs Taker vs Desiel turned around the WWF's business in 1996. To say it's not a HOF worthy turnaround doesn't cheapen the turnaround. It just says that it wasn't a mind number turnaround. John

The pie is 57M households, which is is 50% of the estimated 114M TV households in the US (in 2012): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/n...ift-to-web.html Where they go from those Households to Fans is via calculations based on: 50% HHs = WWE Fan At Some Point = 108M people 50% HHs = Non-Fans = 181M people (i.e. everyone else in the country with TV) When that 114M HH number was come up with (2012), the number of total people with TV was 289.3M. John

Agreed that Colon would get hammered in a NA category: he would never get this close to getting in. The category he's in now is essentially an "Other" bucket, with the major Others (Japan and Lucha) and a minor Other (Euro still is at this point) pulled out.

Vince was doing things differently with MDM? These guys would say differently: They debuted while Ted was still in the UWF. Oh... 1987 is too "close" to MDM? "October 1984 is calling, Brother." Vince always had various ways of don't things. There was a 3. before Ted, and a 3. after Ted. John

The only important thing is the concept coming first and then casting the worker. We don't need a third category. Jerry That's what you said an hour after the post that I quoted, which is the one where you said what Vince did when he acquired "most" of his talent. One where you were in "Let me spell it out explicitly to make sure there's no doubt at all about what I'm saying" mode and then listed 1. and 2.

It was more than Aja was a Dump knockoff & she wasn't as good as Bull were the central comments Dave made about her for several years. Which was more than a bit annoying since when one watches Aja as the Big Red Champ, you're not seeing a Dump. You're seeing something along the lines of a female Vader (Big Worker who can to a lot but can bump and sell their ass off when the time is right) with a decent amount of Jumbo mixed in (The Women who can go over clean & decisive while making the challenger look good for being in there with her). I'm not going to say Aja was a better worker than Bull, since Bull was terrific. I will say that Aja was terrific as well in her prime, and really felt like the perfect Champ in that 11/92 - 12/95 interpromotional period. I'm 100% certain that Bull would have been perfect in it as well if she had come along later... but there's also a sense that Bull in 1/90 - 12/92 was helping lay the foundation for the promotion became in those six years. To a degree, they were the perfect champs for their respective periods, and Aja was strong as Bull's rival prior to winning the belt. Again, I don't think I'd call it "drawing record". It's more in how she opened Male eyes to the promotion. She helped slap the haze off men's eyes. It's a bit like Rhonda with MMA. I don't think in 15 years that were going to look back on Rhonda as one of the 5 best women fighters ever, unless she has more growth in the tank than I think... and the women's game fails to evolve and develop as fast as the men's. But I do think we'll look back on her as really import: she got Dudes to watch Womens MMA and get it over. That's important. Aja was kind of that, though it's almost certain Rhonda will be the much bigger draw unless she starts getting her ass kicked in every fight starting with the next one.

Sasaki getting in is funny. Mutoh-Hash-Chono-Sasaki Misawa-Kawada-Kobashi The big main eventers of that generation. Even Doc got in. Taue is hurt that his 1996 TC reign got cut off by the quick transition to Kobashi. I think if they did this at the Budokans: 04/96 Taue over Williams to win Carny 06/96 Taue over Misawa to win TC 07/96 Taue over Kobashi 09/96 Taue over Hansen (12:00 tops) 10/96 Taue over Kawada 12/96 Taue & Kawada over Misawa & Akiyama in the Tag League Final 03/97 Misawa over Taue to win TC It's one of those "career year" things that puts down a marker in the Achivements line. It also saves Kobashi's TC run for later. Are there any tricky matches in there? The first three matches happened, with the Misawa match happening in Sapporo in May rather than at Budokan. Taue-Kawada happened at the 06/96 Budokan rather than 10/96, and was pretty disappointing. It's likely one that would have been better if built to. The Tag League Final happened that way of course. The one that didn't happen was Taue-Hansen, which was a long Kobashi-Hansen for the TC and pretty damn good. If you keep Taue-Hansen to a 12 minute brawling war, and given them a good semi (Misawa & Akiyama vs Williams & Ace actually headlined above Kobashi-Hansen on that card), then you've got a card. They also had a Albright-Kawada in the 7/96 card, which instead could have been moved to 9/96 as a "#1 Contenders Match", which likely would get the fans well behind Kawada since Kawada-Taue is what they'd want to see. 3/97? Misawa-Taue for the TV happened in 7/97. It already had the bloom off it because of course Taue had long since lost the TC, but also because Misawa pinned him in the Carny earlier in the year in some skullfucking booking. Anyway... they easily could have run it on 3/97. How does it draw? Hard to tell. AJPW was selling out Budokan anyway at the time. Give the cards a quality SF with the likes of Misawa, and would have been fine? Then flip it: going back to 1995 has "Taue Getting Good" and a role in a number of key Budokan main events, and not just as someone along for the ride: 04/95 Misawa over Taue in the Carny Final 06/95 Kawada & Taue over Misawa & Kobashi in El Super Clasico 09/95 Misawa over Taue in a TC defense 12/95 Misawa & Kobashi over Kawada & Taue in the Tag League Final (3-3-3) You take that, and you could have made the argument that 4/95 - 3/97 AJPW featured a storyline with Taue in a leading role (in addition to Misawa), and knocked out a number of terrific matches. How possible? These happened: 04/95 Misawa over Taue in the Carny Final 06/95 Kawada & Taue over Misawa & Kobashi in El Super Clasico 09/95 Misawa over Taue in a TC defense 12/95 Misawa & Kobashi over Kawada & Taue in the Tag League Final (3-3-3) 04/96 Taue over Williams to win Carny 06/96 Taue over Misawa to win TC (happened in 5/96) 07/96 Taue vs Kobashi for the TC 10/96 Taue vs Kawada for the TC (happened in 6/96) 12/96 Taue & Kawada over Misawa & Akiyama 03/97 Misawa vs Taue for the TC (happened in 7/96) This one didn't: 09/96 Taue over Hansen (12:00 tops) Match quality? 6/95 and 12/96 are legendary for quality. 4/95 & 9/95 were highly rated at the time, and collectively are still praised. 4/96 & 7/96 were highly rated at the time and are still well thought of. That's a base of great matches. It's likely that 5/96 would have been better at Budokan being forced to be a Budokan main rather than trying to get across a flash finish. Pretty certain Taue-Kawada would have been better at any point in the year than in 6/96 when Kawada was at the height of his doghouse. Match quality is pretty damn decent in there. So... I think we can blame Kobashi for Taue not having a better HOF candidacy. That was one where you and Sims disagreed. I think we need to get Dave to put the Dynamite Brothers on the ballot as a group, since it's the only way Cien is going to get in. :/ I thought this would be the year, but my guess is that the increased number of ballots isn't helping him.

Which is funny since I doubt there are 120 voters who know much of anything about Europe. I passed on that group because I don't feel remotely qualified to vote in it. Not just in watching the stuff, but in reading and conversing enough with people on it. John

Tanahashi is 7 years into being pushed as a World Champion. When he was first pushed as Champ, we were a day less than NOAH packing the Dome for the second straight year. Two years from Jun being able to hold up his end of the bargin as an opponent for Kobashi to pack the Dome on that 2004 card. So yeah, Tanahashi in 2013 is quite removed from days when the business was strong. A large chunk of the period, 5-6 years of it, was when Tanahashi and Nakamura were anchoring New Japan. I don't think there was a lot of positive leaching by New Japan off of MMA a decade ago. It actually helped lead to the fall. In turn, NOAH really didn't give a crap about MMA. But setting that aside, it kind of misses the obvious reason why Jun drew better in New Japan in 2001-03 than Tanahashi has in New Japan. New Japan wasn't hot in 2003 when Jun popped in. The promotion was already in the crapper by that point. He made it hot. Again, for obvious reasons. Small market? Tokyo isn't a small market. The promoters all got credit in the 90s. As did the stars. As far as once hot wrestlers no longer drawing what they once did, look up Hogan in 1994 and 1995. Did he draw what he did in 1986? No one expects Misawa to draw in 2002 what he drew in 1992, or that signs of rot wouldn't set in from running the same thing for a decade. But here's the irony: We've talked over the years about Kobashi not being a massive draw in All Japan, to the point that Baba forced the belt onto Misawa at a time when Misawa had just said he wasn't going to be challenging for the title until the following year and that it was Kobashi's time. I've been the one who several times has said that one could craft a very credible-on-the-surface argument that Kawada was a big and important draw for All Japan, only to point out that it would be a flawed argument. I use that as a regular example of people giving too much credit to certain draws: it's easy to do if you don't slow down to think about it. For years many of us have pointed out the repeated failings of Akiyama and Sasaki when pushed as aces. So I'm trying to think of who you think we have been unfairly complimentary in terms of drawing power in Japan? It's less that she was a Hoganesque draw. It's that she went and worked on *mens* show and was the key worker than Men in the audience saw and thought, "This Joshi is more than we thought it is" and thus started going to Joshi cards. That flipped the fan base from what it had been in the 80s (and earlier) to what it was in the 90s. It's less that Aja got over "Aja", but that she was a key element in getting over "Joshi". When those fans went to see a Joshi card, they saw a whole host of workers who could go and do tremendous things. It's a different thing than just "draw". It's "impact", which opened eyes and led to a big change. She wasn't the only one, but she was the one cited at the time. It's 2013. Aja and AJW hit a peak together in 1992-95. It would be like anyone looking at Arnold's box office bomb earlier this year and thinking it's a negative for Terminator or Terminator 2. No... those movies did numbers, and a failure now doesn't really matter. John

Well, someone had to point out that some of the biggest guys Vince got didn't fit into 1. or 2. I mean... 80s WWF, you'd think if one slowed down to think for 30 second before posting they'd go: "Hmm... where do Hogan & Piper fit into 1 or 2? Oh, shit... there's a #3!" John

Yeah, Honky was already a Ferris creation but I don't know of any foootage of him using the gimmick prior to his WWF debut. Hercules was Hercules in Mid South, long before he hit the WWF. Koko Ware and George Steele weren't really that different from their pre-Rock N Wrestling personas. Ferris was doing the Honky gimmick ("Honky Tonk Wayne") in Stampede when I first started watching in the summer of 86. Can't find any Stampede footage online, but here is footage of him in All-Star Wrestling in Vancouver from probably around the same time: Wayne: HTM before the WWF: Clearly Wayne changed himself into the HTM well in advance of the WWF. In the case of HTM, Vince didn't repackage the "worker" nor did he create a "character" and then look for someone to play him. It's a bit like saying Vince repackaged Hogan, or came up with Hulkamania and then went looking for Hulk. In both cases he took and existing worker with a character and got it more focused and improved. Same for Savage. As Bix says, Vince went to 11 with some aspects... but that's was one of Vince's strengths at the time. So there was a third one: 3. took an existing worker and/or character and enhanced him/it Arguably, most of Vince's major successes in the period were #3: Hogan, Piper, Savage, Orndorff, Jake (he was the Snake before the WWF, and Vince went to 11 with Damien), Bulldogs, Valentine, Tito, Andre, Heenan, Rude, Warrior (long a Road Warrior knockoff before getting to the WWF), Bundy, Sheik, Volkoff, Junkyard Dog (though I suspect Mid South fans would say Vince unenhanced Dog). There were some like Kamala who did big money with Hogan without really changing anything. Studd and Muraco as well. Duggan was Duggan of Mid South, with just the goofy aspects dialed up and the kick as aspects muted (though a guy carrying around a 2x4 and saying "Tough Guy" does imply a certain kick ass nature, even if in a cartoon fashion). Anyway... John