jdw

People thought Billy Robinson was colorless. I'm not shitting you. It would pop up in Meltzer's writing from time to time. Plenty of us disagree with that having seen more of Billy's 70s work. So, yeah... plenty of Benoit fans in the 90s and into the 00s liked what Benoit flashed. Not everyone has to be over-the-top theatrical like Flair or Kobashi to connect with people who enjoy their work. Hell, Bobby Eaton was a less emotive worker than Arn Anderson. A JCP fan like myself could like both of their work in 1986-88 when watching the promotion.

The 10/93 match is the least of their 1992-93 matches. The Carny Final in 1993 wasn't terribly interesting either. I felt the 1992 title change was more interesting than both, though admittedly it's not one of their best.

The 1977 match is *the* Mil vs Jumbo match. It's also far from a carry job.

I remembered Hogan even juicing in a press conference, and sure enough it's out there:

Go back and read the stuff Scott Keith used to write about 1992-93 WCW, which was more or less parroting what he'd read on rspw. It wasn't parroting what he read on rps-w. There was a big split in the early days on the group between hardcore WWF Fans and the hardcore WCW Fans. By and large they liked their own shit, and didn't like the other shit. SKeith was originally in the WWF Fan camp, and he showed up right at this time slotting right in with other WWF Fans. WCW Fans in rsp-w loved their shit when it was great like in early 1992. They were happy when Watts took over. They became less happy when Watts did what Watts did, but they still loved stuff like Vader vs Sting or Dustin & Steamer vs Barry & Pillman. There were some fans who watched all sorts of shit like Kunze and Scherer. There were the folks who grew fed up with both Feds and eventually became the ECW Fans, who were loved their promotion even more than WCW Fans and WWF Fans. Was it as polarized as it became in the Monday Night Wars era? Eh... hard to tell, especially with the explosion of the group in 1996 thanks to AOL. When reading old archive stuff when very early Google first showed up with a (much better than now) Usenet archive, I tended to go back and read people who were broad in what they watched. But you'd see them weigh into a WCW or WWF topic, and all the other posts going on back and forth between partisans. * * * * * The complains of WCW being up and down in 1993-94 can even more easily be found in the WON (and Torch for that matter). Everyone loved the Frey era. Everyone was excited about the Watts era. Bloom came off, and the promotion was inconsistent. I'm looking at Halloween Havoc over here: http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/wcw92.htm Only three matches reached Yearbook level, and only one was rated above ***+ by Loss: Barry Windham & Dustin Rhodes vs Steve Williams & Steve Austin (WCW Halloween Havoc 10/25/92) ***3/4 A WCW PPV with just one match above *** is pretty brutal. Starcade had two matches he liked a good deal: Vader vs Sting (WCW Starrcade 12/28/92) ****1/2 Barry Windham & Brian Pillman vs Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas (WCW Starrcade 12/28/92) ***3/4 But a Starrcade where only two matches are Yearbook worthy is one that's top heavy with two good matches and kind of a strange mess underneath with BattleBowl not really booked well to kick out good matches. Compare them with the next PPV SuperBrawl, and one runs into a deeper quality card. Slogging through the TV at the time, you'd have stretches of nothing interesting... then something popping up that was cool on Saturday Night or Main Event or Worldwide that was nifty. Then stuff that wasn't. WCW in 1992-93 makes for a very good Best Of. At the time as an NWA/WCW fan rather than a WWF fan, WCW could deliver the goods then frustrate the hell out of you. Battle Bowl did it all in one show with those two really fun matches, and then the wasted chance to book BattleBowl in a way that was either interesting or kicked out good matches. 1993 could kick out something as awesome as SuperBrawl (first PPV that I watched with Hoback and we dug the heck out of it), then something as pedestrian as Fall Brawl.

I understand. My comment is that a fair number of people would go back to 90, while a fair number would go later. The consensus on Benoit was clear at a time, and has gotten fuzzy since due to (i) Juniors Revisit and (ii) Dude's a fucking murderer. * * * * * Edited comment: I'd add that there is rarely a black/white with any of these guys. People have Flair's "prime" going to 1994, and starting in 1974. On the back end, I wouldn't go past 1991 and would probably have to fight my "I'd just as soon never watch one of his matches again" feelings to include 1991. On the front end, none of us have seen enough 1974 stuff to firmly state that May 1974 to Dec 1974 Flair was already "prime" Ric Flair as he was cutting his teeth in Mid Atlantic. It's frankly hard to believe that he was "prime Flair" by that point. 1975? 1976? 1977? Probably in that period, and probably closer to 1976 than 1977. I like Jumbo's match with Brisco in 1974, and like what he's shown up to that point a good deal. But I would call 1973-74 Jumbo "prime". It's promising for a young wrestler. I'm not sure he's in his prime in 1975, though he's perfectly good. On the other hand, there's enough stuff to point to in 1976 with some variety to say the kid is pretty damn good by that point. He's good enough in 1976-78 that by the time one comes across a mediocre match like the 1978 one with Flair that it jumps out at you as, "Holy shit... this is a pretty substandard match involving Jumbo... and it sure as hell isn't Jumbo making this mediocre." Just to be clear: that doesn't mean that Flair is a bad worker, but instead is poor in that match against that opponent in that setting. So some might see prime Jumbo as 1973-92 or 1974-92 or 1974-92. I'm more a 1976 starting point, with 1991 being clearly still terrific and 1992 bearing closer scrutiny on any fading due to the health. That last that I looked at some stuff in 1992, he was still working good in most of it. Some might see Flair as 1974-94. I don't see past 1991, and find 1974 stretching things. That's not to say he was awful in 1992. Someone can be past their prime and still be good or useful. Tim Duncan has been past him prime for years, but he's still a very good player.

He was thought of as a top worker at the time in that time frame. But whether his work in that period would still be thought of highly by some in this post-juniors-revisist era where a chunk of juniors stuff isn't rated as highly, and also post-murderer era where a lot of people (myself included) have a tough time watching his stuff... who knows. Looking at Loss' Monthly and Top 100 lists for 1990-1993, here's what pops up for the period: Jushin Liger vs Pegasus Kid (NJPW 08/19/90) ***1/2 (#94) Jushin Liger vs Wild Pegasus (NJPW 11/01/90) ***1/4 Pegasus Kid vs Norio Honaga (NJPW 04/30/91) (less then ***) Jushin Liger vs Pegasus Kid (NJPW 07/04/91) *** Chris Benoit vs Dave Finlay (CWA Vienna 08/18/91) ***1/2 Pegasus Kid & Negro Casas vs El Hijo del Santo & Villano III (UWA 01/19/92) ***1/4 Pegasus Kid vs Villano III (UWA 01/26/92) ***1/2 Jushin Liger vs Pegasus Kid (NJPW 02/10/92) ****1/2 (#26) Wild Pegasus vs 2 Cold Scorpio (NJPW 04/16/92) ***3/4 (#95) Jushin Liger vs Wild Pegasus (NJPW 08/12/92) ****1/2 (Loss appears to have missed in the year end ranking) Chris Benoit vs 2 Cold Scorpio (WCW SuperBrawl III 02/21/93) **** (#69) Jushin Liger vs Chris Benoit (AWF 03/04/93) ***3/4 Chris Benoit & Bobby Eaton vs Marcus Bagwell & 2 Cold Scorpio (WCW Slamboree 05/23/93) *** Wild Pegasus vs El Samurai (NJPW Top of the Super Juniors Final 06/14/93) ****1/4 (#49) That's pretty far from blow away ratings/rankings. The 1990 stuff, for example, he thought were good in writing them up, but wasn't blow away by them. I don't think how Loss sees them in inconsistent with how a number of others would these days. In contrast, one could roll out the Meltzer snowflakes for these, which would be "overall" higher. Dave's ratings would be pretty consistent with what the consensus on Chris was at the time.

I think Baba worked quite well with both Funks. We're a bit "robbed" though in regards to their matches. Inoki's draws with Dory in 1969-70 are out there available, but Baba's draw the night after Inoki's 1969 one isn't available, nor his 52+ minute match with Dory a few nights before Inoki's second draw in 1970. There's zero doubt both were taped, and several years back on Youtube there popped up a pretty decent quality clip of the 1969 match that I was never able to find out where it came from. One of those has to be in the vault. In addition, Baba had several big matches with Terry that have never seen the light of day: 12/12/71 NWA Int'l Title: Giant Baba vs Terry Funk (9:57, 7:18, 6:52) at Tokyo Metropolitan Gym 10/30/72 PWF Title Challenge: Giant Baba vs Terry Funk (19:15, 4:24, 5:00) at Nagoya Aichi Prefectural Gym 08/09/74 PWF Title: Giant Baba vs Terry Funk (12:18, 6:40, 1:44) at Kuramae Kokugikan, Tokyo The middle one might have been before they got the NTV deal. It is one of the two big card and matches on the first series, with the only bigger one the Baba-Bruno at Nippon University Auditorium. The other two had to have been taped given the buildings and the titles being defended. If we had those matches, we'd have an even better idea of how he worked with them in his prime in singles settings.

On Baba-Race, I think they were still having interesting matches into the 80s. I don't have as clear of a recollection of Harley's PWF win in 1982 as Baba winning it back the following year. For years we'd read about the two having a stinker in St. Louis. It's actually well laid out match similar to the 1979 Baba NWA Title win, with them throwing bombs down the stretch and actually getting crowd response. It's methodical, Baba is another three years older than in 1979, but if one accepts Baba and his limitations then it's a entertaining and watchable match. I'm not super high on the 1975 match, and probably a broken record on it at this point. It's a 30 minute draw with quite a bit of pedestrian stuff on the mat / in holds where Harley just isn't as interesting as other people Baba could work holds with. It's lower tech than their later matches, and frankly if there's anything that the 1979 Baba title win showed it's that they match up best when throwing bombs at each other, Harley bumping big, and maybe mixing in some juice. Low tech just isn't the type of match Harley worked well, in contrast to Baba's work with The Destroyer in 1969 which was low tech love.

As Elliott guessed, I prefer Backlund's matches with Inoki more on a consistent basis than any other opponent of Inoki's. Their first draw is clunky, but the month after they went 60 again and had the best Inoki match that I've seen. The trio of re-matches in 1978 & 1979 all good, with them comfortable with each other and able to boil down what they did in the 60 minute matches to less than half the time. Those didn't have as satisfying of finishes as the second draw, which oddly was one of the more fitting/satisfying "time runs out" matches there is. On the other hand, it was cool to see Inoki win a real World Title from Bob, even with the post match goofiness. The Tiger Jeet nonsense on the switch back took away from what was a pretty damn good match. I love the 1980 rematch in Miami: the two took their match on the road to a neutral site where Bob wasn't even the regular World Champ (Harley was), worked their asses off and got good response from the Florida fans. They work really well together. I haven't watched the 1980 rematch in Japan in ages. I don't recall it popping me as much as the second draw in 1978 or the 1980 Miami match, but I also don't remember it being disappointing like say the 1980 Backlund-Slaughter match or the Backlund-Hansen cage match. As far as working together, they matched up well. Inoki was an opponent where Backland could work a more technical style than against a standard US heel, someone who was quickly on the same page with him. For the era, they worked pretty high tech rather than the more limited stuff you'd see Bob do in the US. In turn, Inoki could go and answer most anything Bob threw at him, and return it in kind in tossing Bob into Bob In Peril sequences and be on that same page. Just a lot of fun to watch when they were clicking.

Someone might want to dig up the 1990 WON Yearbook Worker poll. Suspect Benoit / Wild Pegasus was on it. He certainly was by 1992 when the Torch took the Poll over with pretty much the same voters. People liked Chris a good deal before 1994, and you'd seem him very comfortably in a Top 30 in the World listing. Granted, Lucha didn't do well in those polls, and certainly not in a way modern (i.e. This Board and other Lucha Re/New Watchers) would rank lucha workers in 1990-95.

I don't think they ducked it. After all, recall the announcers going batshit when Stan Hansen showed up in All Japan? They weren't going "Who is that with Brody & Snuka? I've never seen that guy before?" Dude was going all "STAN HANSEN!!!!! STAN HANSEN!!!!!" on the mic.

http://www.penguin.com/author/david-shoemaker/231377 Like I said, I think his wrestling work is a side gig.

I didn't say he was making $50K. I said someone was stupid to pay him more than $50K for roughly 35-40 columns a year and near-weekly podcasts on Pro Wrestling that aren't being monetized well. As far as monetizing, there was a report recently that Simmons on his new podcast ($5M a year) will make almost as much ad revenue revenue as the entire Grantland operation ($6M a year). Given how poorly nearly everyone says the Grandland podcast were (and that revenue number certainly reflects it), it's kind of hard justifying throwing a large chunk of change at a guy who isn't generating revenue. Could he? Like I wrote above, I think that Shoemaker gets high listens/clicks if it's cheap content. His the most high profile wrestling writer in the country. Doesn't mean a lot in the big picture, but wrestling fans do listen to podcasts.

We might have talked about it earlier in the thread, but my guess is that: * Shoemaker writes for exceptionally cheap money compared to other Grantland/ESPN writers * he gets an above average number of clicks given he's one of the few writers on the topic with that level of exposure So he probably has a high clicks/revenue vs cost ratio. What he isn't is very prolific. But that might also drive up his cost. Feels like the wrestling writing is a side job, unless someone is dumb enough to pay him more than $50K a year for that level of content.

Misawa wrestled without the mask in All Japan from his debut in 08/81 through 03/84 when he was sent off to Mexico to "grow up" with Koshinaka. That lasted a few months, and he was brought back as the second Tiger Mask. That he was Tiger Mask II wasn't a massive secret, similar to Keiichi Yamada being Jushi Liger. There were two possibilities for TMII: Kosh and Misawa. People who had been watching them could figure it out, and Kosh working outside of All Japan (never worked there again pre-split) gave up the ghost for people who couldn't tell by the work and body type. As fxnj mentioned, Misawa had wrestled Jumbo (and others top guys) before in singles. He wasn't really challenging Jumbo at the June Budokan. Jumbo had dropped the Triple Crown a few days before, and Hansen was the one challenging for the Triple Crown. Misawa-Jumbo was a "special match". I'll have to go back to see if either the WON or JWJ indicate what was planned for Budokan before the series started. Pretty sure it was re-done as the series was a bit of a mess, including Yatsu going AWOL (you'll notice he isn't on the Budokan).

We're they're really weak right now is in faces. The faces are all pretty much boring. Cain. Werdum... I can't tell if he's a face or a hell, he's just boring. Jones was a terrific face who turned into a terrific heel before getting derailed by the coke, but as likable as Cormier is out of the ring, he really isn't a great face opposite a potential monster heel in Jones. Anthony Johnson is a real life heel, but obviously the UFC isn't going to touch that. Weidman was a bland, boring underdog face, but you hold the title for two years and you stop being an underdog. Hendricks was kind of a throwback "everyman" persona babyface, but going up against GSP didn't make him the face. Then he fell flat to Lawler. Robbie is a good story, but hasn't really found his face vibe. They push Rory as a face, but he hasn't had the ability to take the final step. The lower divisions... other than Mighty Mouse, does any division even have the level of face that Frankie was when he was champ? Frankie couldn't carry a card (in terms of draw, rather than having good match quality), so was more akin to a good semifinal / co-main event champ... maybe like a Tag Title under a World Title as the draw. Faber is a good face, but is 0-for-Years in title matches. The promotion loved having McGregor drop into their laps, and then are creaming all over themselves over him beating Mendes.

Tito was a clear heel, pretty much the best of his era. Hughes was a dick, so even as they pushed him as a great champ, he kind of was a heel. Goofy guys like Trigg weren't strong good enough faces to let Hughes' heeldom dominate the build up, but he was a Matt's dick nature came through. It really was against GSP and Serra where he got to go heel. But if you see his stuff prior to that, he's an old school arrogant cocky heel who was so good (for the era) that he didn't need to go all bullshit Sonnenville to talk himself into getting title matches. I always thought the fans took Silva to be a heel, especially in matches where he just dogged it and showed up the opponents (often when he was bored). Fans really wanted to see him get beat at various times. Of course Chael Sonnen was a bigger heel, but even in that first match there were plenty of people as it went on hoping Chael would pull the upset. Silva pulling it out of his ass is probably one of the few true babyface moments he had. BJ was kind of a dick, and a lazy dick to boot. But didn't really know how to play heel strongly. The Crazy Diaz Brothers have been heels forever. Koscheck was a heel, and embraced it. Dan Hardy was a dick heel. Brock was pretty clearly working as a heel, but (i) fans loved his dominating, and (ii) he didn't really have a good GSP-style face to go against, so... Brock kind of was a heel the fans turned face. They've long had heels. Most of the heels didn't have true title ability, or ran into dynastic champs like GSP who they couldn't beat. In turn, most of the heels who were who had true title ability were guys that the promotion wanted to push hard as Iconic Historic Champs (Hughes, Silva, BJ) or couldn't work effectively doing heel promos (BJ) that their heeldom was muted by the promotion of their own promotional skills. I'm surprised I got this far before mentioning Tank Abbott. Who does capture the 90s and 00s heels pretty well: didn't have the ability to back up his heel bullshit at a main event level.

"Thanks! I needed that!" -John Crowtasky

Didn't see Pete's question before. The injury wasn't legit. It was a closely guarded secret at the time, to the point that once he found out, Dave wouldn't talk about it for quite some time in the WON. I don't know the first time Dave let the cat out of the bag. It certainly was in the Furnas obit. Might have been in the Misawa obit. Might have been mentioned earlier, but not much. I recall doing vague references online to it being worked, and at some point putting the quote marks around "injury". I think Dave talked about in the Furnas bio that it was done because he wasn't going to the finals and to avoid having him to do the jobs needed for in the math. The math really isn't a problem in the sense of avoiding the jobs. Just have him job to Hansen, and draw Kawada, Williams, Kobashi and Taue and he ends up with too few points. It actually would be a fine storyline as well: Misawa had a really shitty Carny where he couldn't put away any of the top guys. Other than Hansen, they couldn't beat him. But the killer Misawa of the past two years looks a little shaky. The math for the other guys isn't too hard either. I do think he was banged up a bit. His work in the series wasn't up to snuff before going out, and even with the rest it wasn't all that great later in the series. He seemed to be in better form come May and June. To me it was Baba taking an easy route to do two things: * Give Misawa a less intense Carny given he was banged up That's an assumption, but Misawa happened to be banged up all the time through the 90s, so it's not really a stretch and is consistent with his poor and indifference work in the Carny series. * eliminate Misawa to make for a simplified booking for Kawada & Williams getting to the Final It made things fairly easy: all the big boys got 2 points off Misawa via default, so you don't have to worry about who gets 2 or 1 or 0 points off him. Just easier to deal with given no one other than Hansen had a singles win over him at that point.