pantherwagner

To give a different view: Atlantis was pretty bad, he'd stutter and stumble over his words. Octagon is also terrible. He is supposedly a lawyer so it's a good thing that he made it in lucha. He seriously speaks like somebody who couldn't finish high school. Rayo de Jalisco Jr. also talks like a dumb townie. And, this may surprise some, but Perro Aguayo was also awful. Good thing that he was such a loveable old geezer and it's Mexico so he didn't need the promos. He spoke like a countryside farmer though so it was a somewhat good character fit. In the end it's a moot point as all these gentlemen had great careers without having to flap their gums too often (got to love Steve Austin).

How far back does the PWTorch online archive go? I'm thinking about subscribing for a couple of months to download all the content that I need (I don't care/need their current newsletter, podcasts, etc., with the Observer I have enough.). I remember they used to have pretty good interviews back in the 90s but I haven't seen a Torch in perhaps 13 years.

RIP El Brazo. This one really has made me sad as I grew up watching Los Brazos. Juan was a kindhearted but troubled man who had a really bad alcohol problem two decades ago that killed his career as a main event star dead. At one point he was so bad that he'd drink antiseptic alcohol when there was nothing else to drink. I know that he got his life back together at some point in the early 00s but I haven't followed lucha libre for a long time so I don't know if he'd fallen off the wagon. Here's a fun picture of Los Brazos with Billy Anderson, a simple shot that really captures their goofy and charming nature.

Don't know the back story but as the legend goes Nash as Oz started being an asshole to Fujinami and he got knocked out by a palm blow or strike. Time ago I also read a story about Scott Norton getting his ass handed by Fujinami.

Amazing how Goldust can walk in from whatever he was doing before this run and he's a top 10 worker (pretty much unarguable) and you can argue top 5 in WWE.

Yeah agree with Kris, they got the results they wanted for sure. They didn't even risk putting The Rock on the Hogan poll. Will they really get rid of Dunn just like that? That's the one guy who knows which skeleton is in which closet and there are plenty of those.

Bobby Heenan. I was kind of using WON HOF as the measuring stick for All-Time Greats. But if Hennig is included then also must mention that Owen Hart did several clean jobs for Warrior in 96 too.

Vader did a lot of house show one minute jobs for Warrior. DiBiase lost to Warrior on the AJPW/NJPW/WWF Wrestling Summit in a crappy match. If you want a better match, even with a DQ finish, watch the one from The Main Event in 1990.

Not my scale but pretty sure the answer is anywhere from 1 to 4.

That would be Headhunter B for you, sir. B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! B ! In Mexico they wrestled as 1 and 2, which isn't nearly as awesome as A and B.

1. That's not what a false finish is. A false finish is a near fall.2. So you want Snowden to alienate Dusty and WWE? These can be re-worded to have more appealing language but are still valid questions. Not every interview has to be a list of reasons why the subject is awesome. Snowden knows that as well as anyone. I don't mean the negativity. I mean that there's a delicate line of what is and isn't too "inside" for a WWE PR interview. Not only that, but these questions are "Southern rasslin' shit" that in their world is pretty much irrelevant.

Actually, right after posting, I remembered reading how Rene Guajardo (who was by all accounts an excellent worker) and El Solitario (who also had the reputation) got in trouble a few times for rushing through Sunday matches to comfortably make their three shots a day.

Whatever other motivations were behind it, it's actually not a stupid training technique. Working that kind of gimmick would seem to assure more fans thinking they are tougher than the guy working as a transvestite and thus want to challenge him. Hey, lucha was pretty rough back in the day. The company had many guys like Wagner doing that: Mendoza, Guajardo, Lagarde, Guerrero, Scorpio, Angel Blanco... The promoters were looking for their own interests to make sure their pushed stars had the durability to keep up with the schedule. I know wrestlers love to exaggerate about this (especially the American ones but all of them do in general) but it was pretty common for guys in Mexico to work 7 to 9 shots from Friday morning to Sunday night. Double and triple booking still exists to this day and is verifiable as most lucha aficionados can tell you, though nowadays wrestlers can get away with 10 minute main events and/or running through the first two falls in four minutes. By reading Box y Lucha magazines from 40 or 50 years ago I could gather that the media, which carried a lot of weight, would rip you a new one if you mailed it in during the big weekend events. Commissions could actually fine you for double or triple booking yourself though they almost always overlooked it outside of Mexico City, and how about this one, you could be suspended in an entire state during weeks for coasting during a main or semi main event if you were a big star. I couldn't give you any examples off the top of my head but I know it happened several times to big stars. Same can be said about wrestlers showing up "in no condition to perform". But back to the original subject, some of the first exoticos were grizzled shooter veterans like Bello Greco who were straight. The later ones were mostly gay or real transvestites and many of them didn't look tough at all. I have never heard any stories about fans or local toughies picking on an exotico but always hard that Pimpinela was a skilled amateur wrestler.

Yeah - I assume that voters are smart enough to understand that whenever they essentially vote for one person in a category, they're in essence casting a no vote anyone else excluded. For categories that have less than a hundred voters (Europe and Pacific Islands - maybe Mexico) your non-vote are essentially 1% to 2% off the total count which isn't an inconsequential amount. That's assuming a lot. Jokes aside, I have a similar approach to yours. However, whenever I think that a candidate is unjustly not in (Colon and Daddy would be two good examples, Cien Caras is another puzzling one to me) I vote for them knowing that I may penalize other deserving candidates. In the end I believe that the system is fair and most people that deserve to be in will eventually get in.

On the lucha front Ray Mendoza and Gori Guerrero were the guys that would go to the local bar to ask who the toughest guy in town was and when a challenge ensued then proceed to beat the shit out of him in a very graphic way. Mendoza, while being described as a very kind hearted family man by fans and those in the business, was especially vicious with those who dared question the integrity of lucha. Dr. Wagner was a pretty big guy for his day and was one of those wrestlers who was given freedom by the Lutteroths to beat the crap out of prospects to weed out the ones that weren't cut for it. All I have heard about him makes me think he wasn't the nicest human being in the roster. He was extra tough on those with transvestite gimmicks. But if you could take it and didn't complain he'd respect you and "work" with you as opposed to beating you up. And just to show how old timer reputations sometimes don't mean all that much. Alfonso Dantes was considered by many to be the best pure shooter in Mexico during his prime. He was already old but sometime in the late 70s he tried to tool with skinny young boy Satoru Sayama, trying to manipulate his finger joints. Dantes was immediately reversed and tied up like a pretzel and basically out of respect was given the option to keep working or to go for real.

Pretty sure that's where he had the word "Goodyear" dermabrased off.

Jindrak too. I assume that picture is Flair and HHH walking them out of JCPenneys and to an Armani Exchange? At least Jindrak is a big fucker so he fills it in. Randy looks like he's a teen wearing his dad's suit for his first job interview. Actually, his dad's suit in his case would probably fit him better, but you know what I mean. I guess they just asked them to bring their best suit and that's all they had home. You can see the difference in cut and style, the details such as the pockets, the shoulder fit, sleeve length, etc, between HHH/Flair and the other two. But if you want to get geeky then you can see how Flair has got a perfectly lined up pocket square while Hunter doesn't. Pretty sure at some point HHH got a personal stylist. I haven't watched pretty much any WWE from 2007 to Feb 2013 so I couldn't say when, but he used to look like a gorilla wearing a suit. A nice tailored suit but he'd look wrong in it, and he'd be lost in the details, like tie knot and length, but you can see he's rocking them like a champ now. He's also smaller though so that helps, but Batista used to be able to pull off the pinstripe look. I wonder how many suits does Flair have. Considering his spending habits probably a few hundred. Let me finish this post about suits with this image.

Fame and longevity. I know the arguments against him, they have probably been discussed here as well as other places dozens of times. I feel he's just too strong of a figure not to include. For whatever it's worth, I'd have also voted for Martin Karadagian, whose career is fairly similar.

I believe I posted intermediate ballots but not the final one. I ended up voting for Atlantis, switched Koloff with Bastien, and read enough on Weston to be sold on him. I FOLLOWED THE HISTORICAL PERFORMERS ERA CANDIDATES Red Bastien Enrique Torres I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN MEXICO CANDIDATES Atlantis Cien Caras Karloff Lagarde Blue Panther Villano III Dr. Wagner Sr. I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN EUROPE CANDIDATES Big Daddy I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS/PUERTO RICO CANDIDATES Carlos Colon NON-WRESTLERS Jerry Jarrett Takashi Matsunaga Stanley Weston

Looks like Randy used to buy his suits off the rack.

I remember being puzzled about Robin Hood back in the day. I think the original Tortuguillos were Rocky "Onita" Santana, Robin Hood, Gallego and Danny Boy. All of them pretty good workers. Then I think Lasser got the gimmick when Robin Hood went back to that name. Pretty sure about 30 other guys were under the mask at some point or another, though.