Dylan Waco

99 WWF/E was a cesspool. You can literally take any year in the history of the company and compare it favorably to that year. You can literally take the Smackdown Six era and compare it favourably to just about any other era in the company. Then do that and don't compare it to the widely recognized low point. I liked the SD Six era at the time, especially in comparison to RAW at the time. Haven't watched a bunch of it in years. My favorite period of SD was probably 06 with the first big Henry heel run, Rey, Regal, Benoit, Finlay, Matt Hardy, Booker, JBL, a lot of fun tag matches, et. But that is by no means an argument against the SD Six period.

99 WWF/E was a cesspool. You can literally take any year in the history of the company and compare it favorably to that year. Except for all the millions of people who were watching then that aren't watching now. Pretty obvious this thread is not about business. I've never heard anyone - I mean seriously no one ever - claim 99 was a good year for the WWF/E in the ring.

99 WWF/E was a cesspool. You can literally take any year in the history of the company and compare it favorably to that year.

Nine times our of Ten my wife does right by me, but a few years back I got a Gary Hart campaign biography.....

How can they discuss it if they haven't seen it? How do you know they haven't seen it? I admit I don't watch a ton of TNA, but I've still seen several Angle matches from this year. If we looked at his post-WWE career I've seen a ton of Angle matches, including many praised ones, the vast majority of which I strongly disliked. Dylan, will you at least explain why you don't like them? Half because Dave Meltzer does, and half for unnamed reasons..... More seriously my favorite Angle matches tend to be short. I don't like Angle in long matches, definitely not from about 03 on, with a few notable exceptions. A big part of this is the fact that his matches are primarily about doing "stuff" and not building heat. I prefer matches with well developed heat segments and selling, unless they are balls out spotfest sprints. I also don't think Angle has any real depth or variety. He works Sonjay Dutt the same way he would work Chris Benoit. This is a pet peeve of mine, and my favorite wrestlers tend to be those who have approaches that are much broader.

How can they discuss it if they haven't seen it? How do you know they haven't seen it? I admit I don't watch a ton of TNA, but I've still seen several Angle matches from this year. If we looked at his post-WWE career I've seen a ton of Angle matches, including many praised ones, the vast majority of which I strongly disliked.

You say most of the people haven't watched him regularly in years if ever, right after the "half" line. So I took it to mean that those who don't think Angle is a great wrestler base their views in part on Dave's pro-Angle view, and partially on other unnamed things. Generally I would prefer to discuss the unnamed things, though I'm open to the notion of a bigger discussion about "trends" in wrestling so far as people are willing to discuss it seriously and not use it as method to insulate preferred people from criticism.

Ugh. I think you are on the wrong board if you think I am not getting a shill in. So is this what the thread and our discussion were all about? From what I can tell the discussion was basically about your believing people only disliked Kurt Angle because Meltzer likes him, which isn't exactly the best way to drive serious debate

I can't get through modern TNA shows as a rule and I watch virtually everything. So I have not seen a bunch of recent Angle. But I have seen enough to know that I don't think he's any good. Also the "sheep" argument works both ways. How many people would talk about Angle as an all time great if Dave wasn't beating the drum for him? The answer? We don't know, which is why I would rather discuss the particulars

Oddly I loved Orton v. Cena...

Just got home to find out the tag was tremendous. Fucking pissed I missed it. I need to find it ASAP

There is a huge difference between being supported and liked by all the wrestlers and people he worked directly with on a daily basis (I think this is likely based on all accounts fwiw) and being liked by everyone involved in making decisions.

I have nothing at all against Rob, but the source for Rob being universally liked is Rob. If any other person in the interesting were talking about himself that way we would all doubt it seriously at BEST. It's hard to believe he was loved by all, when he was let go the way he was. That's not a knock on him, but just a general observation

Oh shit, there goes the planet

Not sure if this has been posted here yet, but WWE.com did this oral history of SMW for the site today: http://www.wwe.com/classics/oral-history-o...26165186/page-1

There will be a royalty rate for fear of lawsuits if nothing else. At this point the best hope for U.S. based talent is that NJPW stays fairly hot and AAA's expansion efforts into the U.S. actually materialize.

I think you are going to see a lot of changes with the coming network.

The issue isn't whether or not you can run an occasional squash, but rather you could run a show or shows where a bulk or the majority of the matches were squashes. The issue of over saturation is a real one, but it will require a total different way of looking at things for that to change. Yes you can say at points in the past WWE has had as much (or close to as much) tv, but there were major differences in the over all landscape, not the least of which was the fact that there was a direct competitor for much of the time period which not only drove innovation and risk taking, but also had the added benefit of being a place where talent could "rotate" to and from. There is also the fact that the Attitude Era was "early" in the wave of changes in t.v. wrestling. We are nearly twenty years in now, the model is old.

That was my initial thought to, but if you read the thread, it's an odd thing to say in the context of the conversation over there.

Yohe just posted this at Classics: I'm never going to do another project like this because I'll never be able to get top people like this to participate again. A lot of these voters were in it because they were my friends. I don't think I could ever pull strings like this again. A large percentage of the really smart wrestling minds can't make the judgements need to do the list or be willing to strip themselves bare so people can criticize how they think...or think the idea of a list is...goofy...and not worth the time loss. There are a lot of reasons for not wanting to play with this list & it's understandable. Some are just not simple minded enough. Before the project started and after, I believe that Jim Londos was the greatest wrestling star of all time. Nothing that took place changed my mind. Londos was #1 on 12 lists...but that wasn't enough support to over come one ballot having him at #63 and the respect people have for Lou Thesz. Someone who learned there history thru the book FALLGUYS, may think the little pretty boy was #63 and didn't deserve support. But no one was going to list Lou Thesz #63 or #51. And people, who vote for Londos at #1, will have Thesz at #2 or #3. That being said, it was a shock when I realized Londos wasn't going to be #1. But I set the rules & I was going to have to live with the limitations of the system. If we had a larger sample of voters, maybe it would have worked better...but you find the type people needed. They are hard to find. I could have gotten some insiders...but lets face it...they would have been voting for their next door neighbor. I'll stick with fans. Or people I still consider as fans with objectivity intact. I thought the voters I got were great. All major guys, who for the most part had done major work or showed they were worthy. That being said...this was my project...and I made one judgement call...for the integrity of the list. I'm not going to say what that was...but I did it. If some math genius figures something out...sorry, but I'm not talking about it. Find another list. I made the rules and I picked the people and anything wrong is my fault. All in all, it's a good list that incorporates all the country's, styles and time periods. Maybe it doesn't pin point the #1 spot like it should, but the top 10 or even 15 spots are pretty well defined. By the end, most of the lists had the same groupings of people thru out. To say it was impossible to put this type of list together is wrong. There does seem to be, if you have the knowledge, a way to figure or think it out. And a lot of the thinkers came to the same conclusions. There are a number of names on the bottom part that I had to look up. Old time shooter and hookers from around the world. You can learn from it. I'm a little upset that it didn't print as well as what I had on paper. The WC machine removes spaces. I'm sick of computers in general. Very happy we got Dave. I can't post his list. He'd have to do it or tell me he wanted it posted. It's the same with everyone. It was normal. Well thought out. All the right names. I was happy with the treatment of the Japanese wrestlers. If it was off, it wasn't by much. Lucha did well, but Mexico has a wide range of talent. Europe, I don't know...we tried. Present day is about right. It is, what it is. Considering the age he wrestled in and his style. Muldoon did great. I didn't see anything wrong with #36. Thanks to everyone. It was fun. So as I said the ballots will not be made public unless someone wants their ballot to be public. Also that comment about him making a judgment call for the "integrity" of the list is cryptic. I really hope Steve didn't take Hogan off of his own ballot to keep him from finishing first.

Thesz was a huge star. He wasn't in the league of the guys I mentioned. Thesz hated Rogers and said himself (in thinly veiled ways) that Rogers was a bigger star than him. Thesz was more like his eras Flair, than his eras Hogan or Londos. He had great longevity and I think that's his best case for the top spot, but then it's not like Hogan or Londos were weak in that department. On Bruno he was a driving force attraction. Rocca is the closest comparison in the New York market, but Bruno was hot all over the territory and was hot WAY later than people remember. Hell a lot of Backlund's run was co-featured with Bruno feuding against guys like Larry and Patera to sellout houses all over the territory. Bruno was a huge draw for decades.

I understand what you are saying, but I think the term "star" is fluid to a degree. Honestly if star isn't fluid than Thesz has zero business winning, because not even his biggest fans would argue he was ever the star that Santo, Londos, Hogan, or even Austin was. Hell Thesz himself all but said he wasn't the star that Rogers was and Rogers was a peer.

I have no clue if Dory's penetration was as big as Bob, but I would guess being in the magazines and working everywhere on earth in the main events, would give him a solid case. More to the point, I'm not a huge fan of that line of argument in general as the endgame of that approach makes Brutus Beefcake a bigger "star" than Yvon Robert.

Cliff notes and not terribly complete but... http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/Burns/burnsindex.htm

He was a draw more places than any of them. All of those guys had really hot peaks in various places. Of those I actually think you could argue that Bock was the "least" as a true drawing card, though that's not something I'm completely fixed in thinking. Dory was considered a very strong drawing card as NWA champion, to the point where even Dory critics are often amazed by his record on top. Some of this is attributed to the way Terry worked as a front end "test" opponent at times to heat things up.