jdw

Understood. Just saying it's unlikely that in those four months he *only* worked New Japan, and likely worked some place we don't have his results for. Just too many open dates in those four months.

It's consistent with what Dave wrote a number of times during the 80s, that can be paraphrased: "Hogan is drawing, nothing else is." That's wasn't a 100% rule. At times Hogan had light shows. At other times a city and/or the WWF was hot it would draw without Hogan. At other times something like Savage-Ted drew... then again, Hogan was kinda gone in that stretch. But overall... sounds about right. The trickier thing is to do comps. Hogan probably wasn't working Bakersfield much, or other two bit smaller arenas. He has a bit of an advantage because he was working large buildings for the most part. So Hogan MSG vs Non-Hogan MSG, Hogan Boston Garden vs Non-Hogan Boston Garden, Hogan Houston Summit vs Non-Hogan Houston Summit, etc. are likely interesting data sets to look at. * * * * * I'd also flip it, thought it's harder data to get at: Dave did tend to talk about JCP cards drawing more with Flair than without Flair. I'm not sure that the difference would be as large, but it would be interesting data to look at. Again, same building vs same building is likely the data to look at. There does some a point where pretty much every JCP card of note ends up having Flair on it as (i) he became a House Champion, and (ii) they didn't tend to run Big Arenas with split crews like the WWF did (i.e. Hogan working MSG 5-6 cards a year while others headlined the rest of the shows). So at a certain point, there really aren't comps to draw good data from. John

Anyone who has followed the McMahon-Ross relationship also knows that Ross probably won't burn the bridges, and will be doing stuff for the WWE down the road. John

These are examples in his 70s run: WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - January 17, 1977 Ken Patera defeated WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino (w/ Arnold Skaaland) via count-out at 19:54 after hitting Bruno with a chair as he was climbing onto the apron after they briefly fought on the floor (Patera's MSG debut) WWWF @ New York, NY - Madison Square Garden - February 7, 1977 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino fought Ken Patera to a draw in a Texas Death Match after the referee was knocked out WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - March 7, 1977 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino defeated Ken Patera when guest referee Gorilla Monsoon stopped the match due to blood loss WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - August 29, 1977 WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham defeated Ivan Putski via count-out at 18:01 after the challenger was backdropped to the floor Bruno Sammartino (w/ Arnold Skaaland) pinned Ken Patera in a Texas Death Match at 12:13 by kicking off the corner, as Patera had a full nelson applied, and falling backwards onto his opponent WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - May 22, 1978 WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund pinned Ken Patera at 21:06 with an inside cradle ------------------ WWWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - April 16, 1977 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino defeated Ken Patera via disqualification WWWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - September 19, 1977 Bruno Sammartino defeated Ken Patera via referee's decision in a Texas Death Match WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham defeated Chief Jay Strongbow in a steel cage match after Strongbow threw the champion against the fence near the door and turned away just long enough for Graham to slide out the door WWWF @ Boston, MA - Boston Garden - March 6, 1978 WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund defeated Ken Patera via count-out ----------------------------- WWWF @ Philadelphia, PA - Spectrum - June 4, 1977 (13,797) Bruno Sammartino fought Ken Patera to a double disqualification when both men began to box one another WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham pinned Chief Jay Strongbow at 10:07 WWWF @ Philadelphia, PA - Spectrum - July 9, 1977 (15,602) Bruno Sammartino defeated Ken Patera when guest referee Gorilla Monsoon stopped the bout at 15:27 due to loss of blood WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham pinned Tony Garea at 18:52 WWWF @ Philadelphia, PA - Spectrum - March 25, 1978 WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund fought Spiros Arion to a double disqualification at 17:49 after Arion's leg knocked referee Dick Whorle to the floor as Backlund lifted the challenger up for the atomic drop, with the two men then brawling until other wrestlers - including Chief Jay Strongbow, Peter Maivia, Stan Stasiak among them - came out to break up the fight; moments later, Whorle was taken backstage on a stretcher; Backlund and Arion then continued to fight until it was again broken up by the other wrestlers Bruno Sammartino fought Ken Patera to a double count-out at 16:24 ----------------- So 08/29/77 in MSG, what's the draw: Superstar against Putski, or Bruno finally getting his blow off win against Patera after not doing it in the three title matches earlier in the year? The 09/19/77 Boston Garden match, we could toss that up: title match in the cage against a second tier babyface or Bruno Match against a Patera that he didn't beat cleanly earlier in the year? That's really a double main event. In the Spectrum, Bruno vs Patera never happened in a Title Match. It happened twice on cards where Superstar defended against 2nd and 3rd tier babyfaces (good god... Tony Garea?!?!), and once where new champ Backlund was defending against a Arion. This is a bit like the 06/92 Budokan where Hansen vs Kawada was for the Triple Crown and Jumbo & Taue vs Misawa & Kobashi was for the World Tag Titles. Which was the main event? Patera is hardly the only one who benefits from that, as others were in that spot. Bruno vs Larry was the drawing match in their feud. If in 1980 you had a card with Bruno vs Larry and Bob vs Patera for the WWF Title, it would be fair to call it a double main event because Bob vs Patera *also* was a drawing feud that had a lot of heat. But Bruno vs Larry supported by Bob vs a Samoan? We all know what the main event was there. It's a bitch to go card by card and do that, and there are times when we just might not know what was hotter: a 1986 card with Savage vs Tito and Dream Team vs Bulldogs, both title matches. That... I'd kind of go double main since they were both "hot" in a sub-Hogan sense within the promotion. But either of those matches on a card beneath a Hogan Match? Of course the Hogan Match was the main event. Like I say, it's a bitch do sift through them, and the WWF in the later part of the 80s was running so many cards that you had a C-show type of a main event, and figuring out which feud was the top one of the bunch could be even harder. Anyway... point somewhere in there... Patera probably hard 33% to 50% more true main events / co-main events on those major arena cards that we'd get to by just adding up title challenges. In turn, guys like Strongbow, Putski and Garea... if we really looked at the cards where they were they are credited as the "main event", we'd find collectively 33% to 50% in the major arena cards being as suspect as the examples above.

These were his well documented tours with New Japan: 10/24/75 - 12/11/75 New Japan 08/27/76 - 10/07/76 New Japan 10/29/76 - 12/09/76 New Japan 03/03/78 - 03/30/78 New Japan I'd have to pull out some of the reference books to see if he worked those full series. I do know that he joined the 1975 one midway through. It's not clear that he worked the second half of the first one in 1976, or the first half of the second one in 1976. That wasn't uncommon back in those days, especially for longer series: gaijin would work part of it, though some might work the whole thing. My guess on the last four months of 1976: Ivan was working other shots in addition to New Japan. That's just what guys did: work as many dates as they could. He may have worked a month-and-half in Sep-Oct with some promotion that lined up nicely (i.e. close) to Japan, such as Pacific Northwest, Los Angeles, San Fran, NZ, or even working dates in Korea for Ohki... who knows. For everyone like this, there are always going to be lots of missing dates, not just within promotions (we are missing a ton of his WWWF dates), but also promotions missing entirely.

I don't think that amateur credentials count for anything in the WON HOF. Even with the pros? You didn't think Angle got in, in part, because he made the whole fraternity look look good and more legitimate? It had nothing to do with it. Angle got put in because people thought he was one of the greatest workers of all-time that early in his career, and thought he had enough top of the card stuff with the WWF.

Singles runs for the WWWF/WWF Title: Tanaka 1967/68 vs Bruno 1972 vs Pedro Ivan 1969/70 vs Bruno 1971 vs Bruno/Pedro (winning/losing Title) 1975 vs Bruno 1978 vs Backlund 1983 vs Backlund One is not like the other.

Kobashi and Taue came at a time when: * the territories were dead There really weren't as many places to send someone off. New Japan kept sending guys away (like Kojima and Nakanishi), but it got harder to do so. The places Baba would send guys pretty much dried up. * AJPW / SWS split That was April/May 1990. Just over two years into Kobashi and Taue's career. Somewhere between 2-4 years in is when Baba would send guys away (with the exception of Jumbo who went away at the start). When Tenryu & Co left, spots opened up, Taue and Kobashi moved up, then Kabuki jumped too, and they moved up yet again. There never was a time after that for them to leave. Combined, there were fewer places and they became "stars" before the time came to leave.

Hard to tell. He'd run on top a lot in the WWWF from late 1969 through early 1971 when doing the title change. He seems to have headed out. They kept Stasiak around to put over Pedro on the MSG after losing the title to Bruno. Graham was a different beast since he held the belt so long: he stuck around to put over Dusty (who failed to take the title from him), and eventually Bruno (who he took the title off)... but seems to have bailed when getting phased down from that. We're obviously missing a lot of Ivan results. He looks to have gone "somewhere", then did a tour of Japan for JWA, then turned up in Vancouver for a run before settling in the AWA for that long Oct-1971 through Jan-1974 run. My recollection is that folks seemed to like the AWA as a good territory to work, money not bad and travel not too much of a pain in the ass say relative to Mid South. Someone like Beyers (The Destroyer / Dr. X) was perfectly happy to opperate out of there from some point in Aug-1967 through Dec-1972. He worked some other places, like Japan and hitting LA for short stretches, doing a world tour from late 1970 through mid-1971. But his home base was generally the AWA. He certainly wasn't a main eventer the whole time. There were other guys who stuck around working for the promotion rather than bounce all over the place. So Ivan's run in the AWA tended to line up with Pedro's run with the title.

I don't think that amateur credentials count for anything in the WON HOF.

There are a good number more than 6+10 historians+reporters. While there are quite a few more wrestlers & insiders, I think we know more than 16 wrestlers and reporters who voted in 2010... in the sense of we probably could name that many.

Few.

Ivan wasn't a Destroyer / Fritz / Funks / Hansen / Brody level star in Japan, but this is a rather interesting trifecta in the 70s: 06/29/71 NWA Intl Title: Giant Baba (2-1) Ivan Koloff 07/01/71 NWA Intl Tag: Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Dutch Savage 04/18/73 IWA World Tag: Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (2-1) Strong Kobayashi & Great Kusatsu (title change) 04/30/73 IWA World Tag: Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (2-0) Great Kusatsu & Rusher Kimura 05/14/73 IWA World Tag: Great Kusatsu & Rusher Kimura (2-1) Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (title change) 05/15/73 IWA World Title: Strong Kobayashi (2-1) Ivan Koloff 12/04/75 NWA NA Tag: Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Greg Valentine 09/03/76 NWA NA Tag: Seiji Sakaguchi & Strong Kobayashi (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Superstar Billy Graham 12/02/76 NWF Title: Antonio Inoki (1-0) Ivan Koloff That's JWA, IWE and New Japan's primary singles and tag titles. To a degree, All Japan replaced JWA: when Baba left, the promotion was effectively dead. Ivan didn't get a second bits at Baba was he was effectively a NJPW guy with his 1975-76 tours. Again, Ivan wasn't huge~! over there. But that's not something without substance.

Not really the reason I listed the matches. As was pretty clear in the post, I was trying to point to the Andersons and Ivan being of the same era, not different ones. That were just pointing to when his high points, the big things point to when starting an Ivan case, would point to. Pretty much what people do about most candidates: what are the high points, then what else is there.

I gott your point. I was going more to BrickHithouse's question, which is why I kept it in the quote. "5 more deserving" isn't a criteria. It's whether the voter things Gene himself is worthy or not.

I don't disagree with this at all as I'm not a Gene fan, but who would you rank above him? Jerry Jarrett Don Owen Takashi Matsunaga Stanley Weston Jimmy Hart Those are all people I think are safely better candidates than Okerland. And it's more than that: We as voters aren't forced to vote for 5 guys. If we think there are only 4 guys worthy of a vote, it doesn't mean we have to pick Gene as #5.

According to Barry, he left when Jack and Kendall got busted because the feds were trying to tie him into the operation too. Barry convinced Vince to release him to save the company face. Blackjack and Kendell got arrested in 1990. Kendall was Florida Tag Champ all the way to May 9, 1990. Now maybe he was on probation and wrestled until sentencing. But other than Barry's shoot ("1989 or 1990"), most of the stuff I can find online is 1990. Anyone want to rummage through the WON's to see when it happened? Barry sort of wandered off before Survivor Series, and had surgery for a tumor in his pec. He wrestled Jumbo at the Budokan in March 1990. He made his return to WCW in April of 1990. Timing isn't adding up too well. Sound more like Barry used another injury to work his way out of a company he was unhappy with for one reason or another. He did the same thing when leaving WCW in Feb 1989.

Sting's was pretty minor. Just two PPV, and let them turn Lex back face. Sting got his belt in July. Maggie... it's one of those "shit happens" moments. John

I thought the Dragon outfit and the fire breathing was a lot cooler than Steamboat the karate kid. That being said, the jump back to WWF in 91 was totally ill-advised. The execution of the return to the WWF (i.e. the Dragon nonsense) was ill-advised. But the return itself wasn't. He hadn't worked in 1990. He only worked Feb through Jul in 1989 for WCW. Before that, he hadn't worked since Mar 1988 for the WWF at Mania. Before that he had worked very sporadically since taking off for his son's birth. The amount of matches he worked from say June 1987 through March 1991 were pretty small considering it was nearly 4 years. Now it's possible that Ricky was really good with his money, and his Gold's Gyms had been doing great~! But considering he he didn't stopped working roughly from March 1991 through August 1994 when his back went out, one gets the sense that there was some need for an income again. I wonder if he had one of those Lloyd's deals like Rude and others did.

Dusty didn't like Taylor going back for years. We need to remember that Taylor when to World Class before going to the WWF: that's how badly he was run out of JCP. The other guys... I generally agree. I thought Arn & Tully did fine since they weren't getting paid what they were owed by Crockett. They ended up doing okay in the WWF. I feel for Tully since a bad test for what everyone in WCW was doing or had done a good number of times was a bad break to eat. Also, if Arn & Tully had just hung on for a few more months, they would have been there when Turner bought out JCP. They would have settled the ballon payments, probably similar to the MX and Cornette. The Horsemen would have stuck together, Dusty would have gotten axed... would have been interesting. For the Steiners, Watts wanted to give them to take a big pay cut. Just a bad time to stick around. The WWF didn't know what to do with them, but in a sense they had already peaked.

He wasn't making any progress. His matches around the horn were with Roma, Koko and Tim Horner. I know there are legends of stories about him eventually bring programed with Hogan in 1989 at some point, but if they did, they gave up on it even before Barry left. Hennig's "Hogan, YOU can't do that" taped promos on Hogan started airing no later than 10/08/89, which was to set up Hogan's next major program after the Savage one. Barry was working in the WWF the taping the week before that, and worked that same weekend. He started getting subbed for the following week. There also was talk that Barry had surgery as well for a tumor. If the story now is that he left for family rather than work a main event program around the horn with Hogan... well, his family would have told him to stay and work the program to make loads of money. Since he was back in WCW by April 1990... yeah... major grain of salt that he walked out on a major push in the WWF.

Which never got him much by way of votes. It's the MSG stuff. They also think of Ole as a Horseman. :/

He was the Most Outstanding Wrestler five straight years. Not only has no one else won that award five straight years, no one else has won it five times *period*. He will go in easy. Perhaps not in the first year, but very soon after.

Ole and Gene started teaming in 1969. Ivan started working the WWWF in 1969, and was challenging Bruno before the year was out. Ole & Gene's peak was 1969-81. Clearly Ivan's peak was 1969-81. His return main events in 1983 against Backlund really weren't among his top ones of the year. 08/25/42 Ivan 09/22/42 Ole Ivan and Ole are direct peers. I get that Ivan continued to work after 1981. But the core of his HOF candidacy is this: WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - December 9, 1969 Ivan Koloff defeated WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino when the match was stopped due to blood at 21:34 WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - January 19, 1970 (16,858) WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino pinned Ivan Koloff at 18:10 after a double reverse back flip body-hold WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - January 18, 1971 (21,666) Ivan Koloff pinned WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino with a bodyslam and knee drop off the top rope to win the title at 14:55 after kicking the champion in the face as he charged into the corner WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - February 8, 1971 US Champion Pedro Morales pinned WWWF World Champion Ivan Koloff to win the title at 23:18 kicking off the top turnbuckle as Koloff had him in a waist lock, with both men falling backwards and having their shoulders down, but Morales lifting his at the count of 2 WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - October 13, 1975 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino fought Ivan Koloff to a draw when the match was stopped due to blood at 21:59 WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - November 17, 1975 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino defeated Ivan Koloff via disqualification at 21:14; Gorilla Monsoon was the special referee for the bout WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - December 15, 1975 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino defeated Ivan Koloff in a steel cage match by escaping through the door at 9:39 after sending the challenger into the corner of the cage (the first cage match held at MSG) WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - March 29, 1976 WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino & WWWF Tag Team Champion Tony Parisi defeated Superstar Billy Graham & Ivan Koloff in a Best 2 out of 3 falls match at 26:57; fall #3 - Sammartino & Parisi won via count-out Note: this was after Bruno had blown off the initial feud with Graham two cards earlier, and the third Ivan go around the prior December. Kind of a filler match before the Hansen feud started. WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - August 28, 1978 Ivan Koloff defeated WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund via referee's decision at 30:11 when the referee deemed Backlund unable to continue due to facial cuts WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - September 25, 1978 WWWF World Champion Bob Backlund pinned Ivan Koloff at 17:09 with the atomic kneedrop That's really the meat of Ivan's candidacy. 4 runs on top in MSG, with a major iconic moment. It's difficult for me to see Ole & Gene in one, when Ivan is in the other. :/