Dylan Waco

If that's the case you are sheltered.

I just don't see the Bulldogs or Steiners as being all that influential. I think guys like the Briscoes were probably influenced by them in a sense, but it's not an obviously traceable influence like you see with the RnR's or the Fabs before them.

Main event never had a chance. I have no desire to see Cena v. Orton 9.0 to unify the titles either.

Much like Del Rio v. Cena, that was a solid match I didn't care about. Agree that it got noticeably better when Bryan tagged in.

I think Del Rio is a very good worker, but it's hard to argue on his behalf at this point as his character is completely flat and the booking only makes it worse. Of course I feel like that about a lot of guys, including Punk who has been change the channel level horrific as a promo/character for the majority of this year

Completely agree with this, though I thought it was better than good as a stand alone match. Speaking of matches I don't care about even though there are guys I like involved, here comes the Wyatts v. Punk/Bryan

Del Rio v. Cena was real good for the type of match they worked. Lots of big spots, but there was enough selling in between where it didnt' feel like over kill. It built well to the finish and I thought Cena was real good in it. I just wish Del Rio wasn't so flat as a character

Well, I am doing a top 500 this year

Also Henry doing the JYD headbutts and that weird cross body thing was great.

Ryback should not be doing that splash when Big E is right there doing it ten thousand times better. Decent match, but the important thing is that Mark Henry is back. Honestly if he was going to win that decisively he should have just come out and squashed Ryback in less than a minute

I tried to pay attention to the woman's match, but i just couldn't. I just do not care about anyone involved at this point. From what I could tell it was okay for the match they were trying to work.

I think The Steiners are one of the weaker teams on the list. In a sense I see them as the "Sting" of tag teams in the sense that they were remembered as being big deals and often booked against stars so people assume they were bigger deals than they were. And I say that as someone who was a HUGE mark for them as a kid. I feel the same way about them as I feel about the Bulldogs, though I think the Buldogs have even fewer positives (people cite influence, but I see no evidence of them being influential). Youngblood and Steamboat is a good call, I should have included them as a possibility. I love The Rockers as a team, probably more than the vast majority of people actually, but they would be "work" candidates and I don't really think anyone should get in just for work to any hall of fame. That's just my own bias and perspective, but even if I believed someone could get in solely on work, they aren't high enough up the charts if we count international teams for me to feel comfortable backing them. I actually think as an "overall" act you could argue they are worse "candidates" for WON criteria style HoF than MNM

Axel tries. He's just not over and I dont think he ever will be. They need to get Big E away from him fast, because he has shown that he can get over and works well for a guy of his build. Decent enough match, but zero heat

I liked the elimination match a good bit, but I wanted more from Goldust and Cesaro who both looked awesome when they were in. I thought the crowd went a bit flat over Cesaro was eliminated, though the Usos did a good job working them back into it. I love Reigns so I was happy with all of that and I thought the match as a whole was good, maybe even very good, but great? Didn't feel that way on first watch. Also I have no clue how Will doesn't love Zeb. He's about the only guy in the company at this point that I actually look forward to hear cut promos.

Zeb is so far ahead of everyone else in the company as a promo it's hilarious

Also, did they do a graphic for Mad Dog Vachon on the pre-show? I really think a guy like that deserves some mention

I walked in on the Miz getting slapped and now the game is talking.

This is a great post. As someone who is going through all the Puerto Rico footage, with the benefit of a good guide in Boricua, it seems obvious to me that Invader is at worst a pretty good HoF candidate. I get why Dave says he could never put him on the ballot for essentially political reasons (though as noted before that strikes me as a tacit admission that he's easily a good enough candidate to put on the ballot), but this is a ballot with a guy who is very likely responsible for the death of his girlfriend, a death that was allegedly covered up by an HoF promoter. This is an HoF where a guy who killed a kid as part of a vicious training culture is in, and got in in a year when a similar scandal involving him (absent death this time) broke again. The sad reality is that Invader can't get on the ballot because even though any honest assessment of the situation would note that it is at least possible that the murder he committed was self defense, he killed a "star" and worse yet he did it on Puerto Rican soil and "you know how those people are" (that is an almost verbatim quote from an HoF voter talking about the details surrounding the trial). If he had killed a woman or a trainee, he'd have been on the ballot years ago. This was touched on earlier in the thread, but watching the PR, I think Loss second point is definitely true. There are certain niche's that were promoted, talked up, represented very well (maybe too well in some cases as has been discussed in this thread as well) in the HoF, but then you look at Mexico and there is no trio unit in. The Duseks were in via fiat which is fine, but the Birds being the first trio voted in seems really nuts when you think about it. Fuck a Mexican trio has never even been tested on the ballot. Sticking with PR you have a guy like Hugo who was a manager of note for years, produced the tv and was an announcer and Dave doesn't even think he's worth mentioning as a theoretical candidate in the HoF issue this year. You've got Jovica, who I wouldn't necessarily argue for, but he had some massively impressive numbers for a promoter. You've got Chicky Starr who was basically Jimmy Hart, if Jimmy Hart had to also wrestle (often in good or even great matches), while getting over new talent and angles, except in Chicky's case half or more of his charges didn't even speak the common language in the area (worth noting that Starr was in the main event v. Invader of the second highest drawing show on Earth in 1987 behind only Mania III). You've got TNT which was an enduring believable gimmick, a guy who got over elsewhere (this is something I don't care a ton about, but it is often touted when guys talk about Lucha or even Japanese candidates), was a good worker and was involved in several big money drawing angles and programs. Hell, I feel like The Sheepherders have a career that is much more interesting than I previously would have thought after watching this stuff, though I'm not holding them up as a team I would support. If there were voters from PR I wouldn't be surprised to see guys like Ayala, Profe or even Ron Starr at least get Owen Hart/Curt Hennig level support. The point isn't that these guys are all HoFer's, or even that they should get the consolation prize of a trip to the ballot for their careers, it's more that when I read Dave basically say "no one from PR is a decent candidate other than Colon, the guy who killed Brody and maybe Perez, but only for the time he was teaming with Rocca who is already in), it makes me wonder how much of the context he really gets. I think Dave has done a good job trying to get more credible Lucha voters involved based on what I've heard from Steve and Jose. He has definitely done a good job trying to get more credible voters for Europe and Australia, though I do wonder if there are guys from those regions that realize they can push for other candidates. Still there are places that seem really under explored, including much of Mexican wrestling history, South America, Australia, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Europe, et.

Over at Classics Yohe mentioned how he disagrees with the way Meltzer has the Sharpes categorized for the WON HoF while also mentioning that he thought they would fit in any tag team Hall of Fame. The idea of a tag team HoF has come up a ton of times in the past, so I started thinking about who the teams and candidates would be if you applied the traditional WON criteria to tag teams. This is the list I came up with. I left off Japanese teams, not because there are none that are deserving (Kawada/Taue are no worse than my third favorite team of all time, and possibly number one), but because I wanted to see what other people could come up with from Japan since my perception of Japanese teams is weird (i.e. they all seem more "makeshift" to me than they probably are). I also left off Lucha teams and trios because A. I'm underqualified to talk about it and B. Part of the purpose of this post is to troll Jose into publicly talking about some of the better trios in history, including at least two that I know he thinks should be in the WON HoF. Dusek Family Riot Squad Miguel Perez/Argentina Rocca The Golden Grahams The Sharpe Brothers The Funk Brothers The Freebirds The Fabulous Kangaroos The Midnight Express The High Flyers Pat Paterson/Ray Stevens Ray Stevens/Nick Bockwinkel Crusher/Dick The Bruiser Harley Race/Larry Hennig The Fabulous Fargos The Torres Brothers The Tolos Brothers Don Curtis/Mark Lewin The Vachon Brothers The Hollywood Blondes (original) The Road Warriors The Rock N Roll Express Black Gordman and Great Goliath The Andersons The Assassins The Von Brauners The Von Erichs The Blackjacks The Flying Scots The Heavenly Bodies (Don and Al Greene) The Valiant Brothers The British Bulldogs Rip Hawk/Swede Hansen Johnny Weaver/George Becker Red Bastien/Billy Red Lyons The Sheepherders Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson The Fabulous Ones The Steiner Brothers Dan Kroffat/Doug Furnas The Hardy Boys The Dudley Boys Now some of these teams have weak arguments in my view (Bulldogs, Dudleys) under a WON metric, others suffer from really short peaks, others I would argue are weaker than they might originally appear when you scratch the surface (Tully and Arn, Steiners) and others stronger than their reps and/or a quick thought might lead you to believe (High Flyers, The Sheepherders). In general I am interested in which of these teams the people on this board would see as WON HoFer's, but also what the standards for a tag team HoF would even be. I'd also be interested to see if people wanted to subtract or add any teams to the above list, or a discussion of individual teams as "candidates." If the term HoF turns you off, just think of this in more general "list" terms.

Fair enough, though the obvious reply of "Moolah wasn't in the wrestling business, she was in the prostitution business" was right there.

I don't have a twitter account and really don't ever want to have one (though it's increasingly likely that I will go that route), but if it was me I'd point out that he is unquestionably wrong - Linda and Stephanie McMahon have FAR more power than Moolah ever did by any sane metric, so if that's his standard it's time for him to intensely lobby Dave for them to be included on the ballot.

Merchandising, which I would argue is already as good a metric as anything.

Dustin was a lot better at Cody's age than Cody is now. Honestly I think Cody is the most hot and cold guy in wrestling. Every now and again he will have a period where he looks like he is starting to get it...and then it's like he falls off a cliff. The normal thing to do here is to blame WWE booking and I'm sure that's a factor, but in the case of Cody I think it's as much him as it is the writers. I have liked him as part of this team with his brother more than any other time in his career and even still the disparity is so noticeable that it can be distracting

I liked the match, but it is actually kind of sad how much better Dustin is than Cody. Even worse is that the fans clearly know it as he is vastly more over than Cody and it is obvious in all of these matches. I am sure this will come across as looking for something bad to say, but honestly it is jarring how big the difference in the Rhodes Brothers matches is when Dustin is in v. when Cody is in.