Dylan Waco

I completely disagree with Loss on this, and think Wyatts v. Shield was a MOTY level match and completely in keeping with the match that was built. Rollins looked like a star on the order of every one else, Ambrose was great as the reckless pitbull, Bray was the violent nutcase, Reigns was awesome as always, Rowan served his role, and Harper continues to look like one of the best over all workers in wrestling. The psychology of the match was outstanding to, with The Shield eventually falling to their own tactics.

Titus and Darren worked hard, but to little effect. Still I'm glad they at least got a ppv spot. Bad News is fucking awesome, I hope this goes on between every match

Usos v. NAO was shockingly good. Really a sprint, but it's the first time the NAO didn't look like a complete disgrace. Usos work hard, I hope they get the titles soon

Love Bad News Barrett. Opening tag was fun, and I dig Rybaxel as a team, but that commercial shit annoys me to no end. Big E v. Swagger actually felt like a big match which added a ton to it. I'm really not sure the match was all that good, but I enjoyed it anyhow as the big spots looked good and both guys came out of it looking like stars, which is something almost never happens in I-C title matches. Loved Zeb's pre-match promo.

Who was a member of the Black Panthers. To my knowledge no one in wrestling has worked a David Hilliard gimmick, let alone a Huey P. gimmick

I can't believe people are still falling for the aceman gimmick

Henry is officially meng for better or worse

I would listen to an argument for XPW being worse, but when you consider the relative opportunities and chances both have had, I don't know that I could be convinced. TNA has been around for a long time, so it stands to reason that they have had some good stuff. I would say from 05-07 they had some very good periods and/or matches, but I can't remember any point where I thought they were consistently having good matches, good storylines and good overall presentation. Since Don West left they have been nearly unwatchable to me.

Great show. I am loving 2014 WWE t.v. where Bryan and Cesaro compete every week to have the best match. I would have liked Henry to get a little more against Reigns, and it would have been nice to see a Cody/Goldust match, but hard to nitpick a show that fun

Township in Columbia SC was an awesome, awesome venue for wrestling. No bad seats, crowds were always hot even if the shows were underwhelming (almost never), felt like a bigger building than it was, et.

Joe, you are missing the point. If this was a "workrate" poll I would have no problem with the leaving off Lawler on the grounds that he had never been viewed as that sort of great worker. But to say he has never been viewed as a great worker by a significant portion of fans is something that I know to be false. Meltzer who is hardly a PWO type (if such a thing even exists) recently said Lawler was a great worker himself on an audio show. Various fans on the net have pimped him as a great worker for years, including guys I rarely agree with. I will say that Lawlers profile has risen in recent years with the rise of available footage, but as with Buddy Rose(and even more so in the case of Lawler), there were plenty of people calling him a great worker before this site ever existed. I still don't think it was odd that he wasn't on the poll on that site, but I also wasn't shocked there were no Lucha workers in the poll, and I can't imagine anyone believing that's a sign that the style has produced no serious contenders (or that the style lacks any "workrate" candidates)

Highspots are very much dependent on the style and era in which they are worked. In DGUSA a top rope splash isn't necessarily a high spot because of the nature of the style, meanwhile there are Nishimura matches where butterfly suplexes are not only highspots, but extremely well built to and worked ones

Of course it was. It wasn't a list of biggest stars. It was a list of guys generally considered great workers. Yes, and as clearly stated before workrate is not a synonym for work.

I am somewhat shocked that Joe doesn't like Joshi. I'm still not sure the purpose of that poll was to get at peoples "workrate." Is Bret Hart really a workrate guy? Tenryu?

I don't advertise it really, but I tend to be an open book, and everyone who knows me, knows I'm a fan. I don't own wrestling t-shirts because they are largely unappealing to me, but I will read wrestling books in public without a second thought. My boss listens to my podcast, so it doesn't hinder me at my wage job, and editors who have employed me and know about it generally think it's novel. Hell even the parents of kids I have tutored knew and didn't care, though more than one has chuckled and rolled there eyes. Just the other day I had the head of the African American Studies department at the college I attend, and another distinguished prof. in my general field of study offer to help me get grant money for a wrestling related project I mentioned in passing (largely as an aside to illustrate a broader point). I don't see that happening, but the point is that I have never been closeted and I honestly can't imagine being closeted. I would stop watching before I would go to the trouble of hiding it

I voted for Cesaro v. Bryan. I will grant that Orton v. Bryan had more good stuff, great drama down the stretch, and a bigger feel. But the legwork being completely meaningless bothered me. I can handle that sort of thing to a degree, but when it was as impactful and vicious as it was I want it to go somewhere. Still a great match, but Cesaro v. Bryan was a real showcase match for all the things that make Cesaro great, against a guy who is really good at adapting his game to other great workers.

There is a reasonable possibility I can con my best friend into a road trip to Philly, but not sure a road trip to a lucha show will be an easy sell.

This has potential to be a great thread. I have said before that the most important aspect of working to me is selling, but I sometimes think that is a poor way to talk about the bigger way I view wrestling. Part of this is just that "selling" is an easy thing to point to that I think is fundamental, but selling in and of itself is really meaningless. The key to me is that a match has some sort of heat section and some degree of build. There are exceptions to this. Despite my rep in some quarters as a guy who hates on spotty guys, I enjoy a good spotfest. But I almost never think spotfests are great matches, and I generally think matches should have a sense of escalation to them, but escalation that is more about the response of the spots, than the spots themselves. That is where selling is critical to me. Selling is essential to establishing momentum in a match. It is what makes moves have their value, but it is also what determines if a match has a story or not (generally speaking). It is what makes hope spots, comebacks and cut off spots interesting. It is what distinguishes "stretch runs" that I find to be dramatic, from "stretch runs" that are all about the runs themselves and are essentially only concerned with collecting near falls for the sake of near falls. A match does not have to have body part selling to fit any of these themes, just something resembling a heat section, or some effort by someone to convey vulnerability in a meaningful way. Action and workrate are not "bad things" to me, but I generally find the most boring style in wrestling to be the spot running Davey Richardsish style where everything is about execution and doing stuff and nothing has any real significance.

I actually don't care if it does turn into a Lawler bash session, but the next step is to say what you prefer about these guys to Lawler. Though I have been crazy enough to make such lists and literally defend EVERY single name on it, I don't expect that out of you (or anyone else really). But I would be interested to see what you prefer about say TJ Perkins to Lawler as a worker, and I would also be curious to know how much 80's Lawler you have seen. I am a list guy of course, but it's usually the discussion that fuels or comes after the lists that makes the lists worthwhile

I don't know if I agree that you are going to find little overlap between Dragon Gate fans and Memphis fans. I don't have a fixed opinion on that one way or the other because I don't see people as falling neatly into one group or another. Obviously there are tendencies and trends and styles that don't appeal to some people. But I know people who like modern DG and like 80's Memphis. I see no reason to believe that fandom of one means you won't be a fan of the other, just because I am a fan of one and not of the other. But moving beyond that I'm not sure the point of discussion about workers is to find a middle ground, but rather to discuss your views, likes, what you see as important in wrestling, what you see as worth going out of your way to see, et. Breaking down/walking through what you like can and does often lead to middle ground, or at least understanding a perspective, but I don't thin that's the key reason we do it. To be honest I'm not sure what the purpose of a board like this even existing is for if it's all about a few people preaching the gospel of a handful of favorites over and over. I mean I wouldn't want to be in the position of defending Lance Storm against anyone (honestly he's a horrific wrestler, almost amazing how bad he was when I watched back all the ECW stuff and notably this opinion was shared by others who disagree with me on tons of things) let alone Jerry Lawler, but I also don't see anything innately wrong with the discussion just because the assumption ahead of time is that no middle ground can be reached

I don't think I would point to Bret's carrying ability as an indicator that he was better than Flair. Also I think that match is an example of DBS showing up, as opposed to the SS 92 match. Also not sure what moveset has to do with the big picture, and I'm not entirely sure prime Bret even had a better/more varied moveset than prime Ric

A few things. 1. There is a difference between work and workrate. They are not synonyms. Having said that Joe is someone who is on record saying all he wants is "action." I'm not saying this to be dismissive, I'm saying this because if we are talking "style preferences," I think it's fair to say a guy who only cares about action is probably not going to be as high on Lawler as I me or Will or whoever. This isn't to say Lawler matches don't have action, but rather if that is all you care about, or the main thing you care about, and if you do see workrate as the most important aspect of work (and based on how Joe is using that term here I think it's fair to say he does), chances are Lawler is not going to be in your top class of workers. 2. On the flip side of that, I think invoking "style preferences" is often a way to avoid meaningful discussion. More importantly than that I don't think style preferences entirely account for why someone wouldn't have Lawler in their top 1,000 of all time, or even see Lawler as a relevant option in a poll like this. I mean I'm not sure I would have Joe's favorite guy in my top 5,000 of all time, but I absolutely understand why he was in a poll like that, particularly one on the Observer site where Dave has been beating the drum for the guy for several years now. My own view of him doesn't prelude me from seeing that others are huge fans of him. 3. In many ways this reminds me of the earlier Tanahashi discussion where Buddy Rose came up and Joe said that it was obvious Buddy wasn't considered an all time great worker because if he was he would be in the Hall of Fame. I thought then, and I think now, that that argument presumes all sorts of things about how voters actually vote, that probably aren't true. In the case of Joe (and some other voters, particularly a few newer voters), he may have voted for Tanahashi on work alone even if he wasn't on top of a major promotion for a decade, and being talked up by Dave for the last few years as the centerpiece of a resurgent promotion. But in the case of many older voters and Japanese voters it was clear that stardom/perceived stardom was at least as big a factor as work. Buddy not getting in had little to do with the perception of him as a worker - which has always been at worst positive, and more often than not extremely positive - and everything to do with the perceptions of his stardom. 4. My point in saying that is that I think there is a tendency we all have to see what we want to see. I can agree that Buddy was not a huge national or international star, or that Lawler was not a workrate guy, or that Tanahashi is at worst the second biggest star in Japan right now. But that does not mean that Buddy wasn't viewed as a tremendous worker in his time, or that the perception of him hasn't been (generally speaking) very strong forever. It doesn't mean that Lawler is only viewed as an all time great worker in tiny segments of wrestling fandom, or that the perception of him is that he was a legend for reasons that have little to do with in ring work. It doesn't mean that Tanahashi was voted into the Hall of Fame as a "work" candidate. Having said all that I wouldn't expect people like Lawler, or Hansen, or Negro Casas to be in an Observer poll like that, even if I think the idea that Bret Hart or Tanahashi is better than either of them is laughable. It's just not going to happen over there. What's important to note though is that Dave's voice does not speak for everyone, and if anything speaks for an increasingly smaller segment of hardcore fans as time goes on.

Dave converts to Henryism: "Henry may be the most underutilized guy on the roster, since the only time he was pushed, a PPV main event coming off his great retirement interview segment, he did what only Punk, Lesnar and Ryback have been able to do in recent years, which is genuinely pop a “B” show number."

ECW would have sold out in a day