Dylan Waco

Torres record books were just emailed to those who wanted them.

Longevity is something that gets talked about a lot in HoF discussion but I'm not all that sure what people mean by it. I don't think it's a meaningless term mind you, but I do think it's a term that means radically different things to different people. I want to respond in a longer form to W2BTD, but I think it's worth exploring exactly what longevity means in this context.

For me there is a flaw in the poll itself because when I first saw this I thought we were meant to be excluding non-Goldust Dustin Rhodes.

Sabu is a guy like Necro or Abby where even when he's not at his best their is a great novelty to watching him. The more random an opponent the more I want to see the match even if I suspect it will be a trainwreck. Van Dam I could care less about unless he's working a match around big bumps which he rarely does anymore

I am working til about 8 tonight, but anyone who wants the Torres record book hit me up with a PM and I will pass it along. Most everything else I have on major candidates is stuff saved off of boards or sites, but if people are curious about details on a particular candidate I may have something saved so just ask

Moonsault press. Morton would have an outside shot at my all time top 25. Eaton would be more of a top fifty guy.

Karl Stern on his last F4W podcast was openly asking for listeners to provide him with the case for Patera. Posted a link to the Wrestling Culture profile show and a link here. I will probably be back on the The Board early next week. Is it worth the trouble for me to drag over all of the Patera stuff to his forum or not? There's a two page ironic thread in the Pro Wrestling section. Start a thread in the Classic Wrestling section. My worry is that the Classic Wrestling section gets much fewer eyes on it. On the other hand the regular wrestling section over there isn't exactly a decent spot for any serious discussion and if last year is any indication most HoF talk there consists of people trolling and/or whining about the fact that their heroes who drew sub-1986 AWA numbers as aces aren't considered stone cold locks. Maybe Alan's board?

Karl Stern on his last F4W podcast was openly asking for listeners to provide him with the case for Patera. Posted a link to the Wrestling Culture profile show and a link here. I will probably be back on the The Board early next week. Is it worth the trouble for me to drag over all of the Patera stuff to his forum or not?

I would like to hear people's thoughts on Kinji Shibuya and Wilbur Snyder. I think both are interesting candidates but neither get talked about all that much. I've done a good bit of digging and research on both over the last couple of years and I'm pretty confident I would vote for Shibuya, but less confident about Snyder. I'd be curious if anyone here has paid much attention to them and what conclusions they have drawn if they have.

I think it's odd that Eaton is winning this so easily right now. I think Eaton is a great, great wrestler and perhaps could have been great in singles had he been given more shots. But Morton strikes me as someone who absolutely would have been great in singles matches if that had been the bulk of his career. Eaton had better offense to be sure, but it's not like Morton's offense was a joke and in fact he was a guy who had a handful of really interesting spots that he developed and used deep into his career for great effect. Morton on the other hand is the guy people point to when talking about great selling - "yeah that guy was playing Ricky Morton in this match" - and selling is the most important thing in wrestling to me.

W2BTD was one of the other people I thought might have a ballot from this board which brings the number up to twelve. I still suspect there are a couple of others. I completely agree with you on Colon being in the wrong category, but I think his case is so compelling that it wouldn't matter to me if I had a ballot. The Sharpes are also in the wrong category in my view. Do you have the Enrique Torres record book? I can email it to you if you are interested. Beyond that I would just say "Ken Patera"

Even when I didn't watch near the amount of wrestling I watch now I was up late/out all night doing something. I would guess that during the school year I average about three to three and a half hours of sleep a day, but part of that is my thirty minute power nap in the afternoons

I multi-task a ton and rarely sleep so it's tough for me to gauge but I imagine if I really thought about I average on the low end two and a half hours a day and probably more realistically four and a half hours a day. I would guess my average week is around 25-30 hours, and it is rare that I watch less than fifteen hours in a week. This will sound like bullshit but it's not terribly uncommon for me to watch forty hours a week.

You have to be careful about how you define "main events" in general, which is one of the reason I think it's useful to see who people were working and whether or not there were angles on tv that set up the house show matches. Places like MACW which ran multiple crews every day make this even harder.

Joe Gomez working Afa's promotion against Dan Maff is one of the great gifts of 2013. I have no earthly idea how much I watch a week but it's a fuckload and only gonna get worse because at weeks end up jumping back into PR and Portland hopefully.

Yeah, I guess so. Okay, I'm interested then, where does Graham fall?

Is Tanahashi really influential? How so? I think Tanahashi to Cena is a bad comparison in an HoF discussion because even if they have been on top of their respective promotions for roughly the same time there is a big difference between those promotions. Even if I thought Tanahashi was an outstanding worker I don't think I'd be advocating for him now because how many years of good business has NJPW had under those seven? I can give Tanahasi a big part of the credit for the strong turnaround in the last couple of years, but I don't think that is enough to get into the HoF as a draw.

So to be clear your position is that Bruno>Pedro>Backlund with the last two not being Hall of Famer's in your eyes?

Where is the evidence that Backlund didn't get over on his own? It sounds to me like the main difference is that Cena's developmental stage was on t.v. which gives him a bit more "cover" if someone is trying to push the self made star line, but I find it very hard to believe that the general criticism of "guy with a desired look/style was plugged into a pre-existing role and pushed hard, while essentially maintaining a successful business model" is something that doesn't apply to both guys. I think both guys should clearly be in, but to me results are generally speaking more important than anything else. I'm hardly the biggest Backlund guy on the planet, but it seems odd to me to argue against Backlund (or really Morales I guess) on the grounds you are arguing and not Cena.

Much of your Backlund/Morales criticism could be applied to John Cena. Is Cena a Hall of Famer? If so why?

Yohe on Pedro two years ago at Classics: I voted for Pedro Morales. I watched him in Los Angeles for 3 years & he was a very good worker. A good person too. He drew a ton in MSG as champion & a lot of the guys he was fed weren't what you would consider major stars or workers. Too me is he didn't have major contenders to play off of most of the time. Example: 2-8-71-Ivan Koloff--well Koloff was major but he drew 21,812 & $86,885 3-15-71--Blackjack Mulligan 21,000 $88,865-I never thought of Mulligan as a good performer or a major draw. 5-24-71--Tarzan Tyler 6-21-71--Luke Graham--Terrible worker & had been in the area many times 7-24-71--& Monsson vs Graham & Tyler--21,912--A $103,458 gate for a tag match. 8-30-71-Stan Stasiak--16,720 $70,684 I always thought Stan sucked. Not major for sure. 10-25-71-Stan Stasiak--22,070 $104,456 WOW 11-15-71--Fred Blassie 22,000 Well Fred was major..but old..well guess Fred was born old. 12-6-71--Fred Blassie 1-31-72--Prof Tanaka 22,076--Tanaka was a good main eventer 2-21-72--Prof Tanaka 22,090 3-13-72--Baron Scicluna--Scicluna I never saw but I think he was a OK or good worker but not a star outside of the WWF 4-17-72--Curtis Iaukea--15,549--Iaukea could talk & was a brawler type--I've seen him look really bad in matches. As a worker I don't see him. 5-22-72--Pampero Firpo--19,367--Firpo wasn't a major star. Was this the largest crowd of his career. 7-1-72--George Steele-19,512-Maybe Steele was over in NYC but... 7-29-72-The Spoiler--Without his mask, Don Jardine was a mid-card worker in LA. I know he has his fans. 9-2-72--Ernie Ladd-21,819 $101,000 Can't complain about Ernie. 9-30-72--Bruno Sammartino-22,508 $140,923--Pedro goes against the most popular wrestler in NY history & has to wrestle a clean match in a town that never sees face vs face matches. It lasts 1:15:00. Try that. Good luck. 10-16-72 & Sammartino vs Tanaka & mr Fuji Sorry but Fuji is terrible. 11-27-72-Ray Stevens-18,183 Well OK. 12-18-72-Ray Stevens 22,906 1-15-73--Moondog Mayne 22,000 I saw his interview & brawling but have no idea how good he was. Don't know if he was much on selling for Pedro. Guess I can't complain. 4-30-73--Don Leo Jonathan--22,000 6-4-73--Don Leo Jonathan--22,146 6-30-73--George Steele--21,987 Only in NY. 8-27-73--Stan Stasiak--18,666--Again. 10-15-73--Stan Stasiak-22,102-the 4th time 11-12-73--Larry Hennig-16,148--Hennig was a stiff. From want I saw, hard to get a great match out of him. But I didn't live in Minneapolis. Loses title to none other than Stan Stasiak. Will Stan even make the WON ballot? So point is: Pedro drew tons against guys who couldn't work or were freak types. To a serious fan, it doesn't make him look good, outside of the Stevens, Ladd, Blassie, & Jonathan matches. When Billy Graham became heel champion he got Bruno, Rhodes (twice), Mil Mascaras (twice), Peter Maivia, and Backlund in a town hunger for a cool heel champion. All great draws & most HOF'ers. It makes a difference who your in with.

Jose, KrisZ, Harrington, evilclown, Musgrave, jdw, kjh, Bix, Lister, Ditch are all for sure. I am pretty positive Brian Elliot has a ballot. I feel like I'm forgetting at least one other person I'm sure does. There are a couple of other people here who I suspect may have a vote.

A few things responding to my podcasting brother. 1. There is actually no one on that ballot that I consider a bad pick though there are a few I would not vote for. 2. I always forget about The Sharpes, but I do think Dave's (Musgrave that is) write up does a good job illustrating their strengths. I could go either way on them but I hate that they are in the Japan region. It just irks me to death. 3. Sasaki is probably the guy I care least about getting in one way or the other. I don't think he is a bad pick, but I don't think he's a particularly strong pick either. He's a case of a guy where I think you can sort of spin the stats to make him look much better than he is, but even if you don't spin the stats he was still a star of note and I tend to think his freelance period provided some interesting moments and money drawing opportunities. I'm sure I will talk about him more when I do my inevitable full ballot run down everyone will scroll past 4. Tanahashi...I just don't see it yet. I'm not averse to him as a candidate at all, and I think if you are going to put a guy in based on the current era of Japan he is the obvious pick, but I don't think he's done near enough. If I thought he was an all time great worker I might feel differently but even then I'm not sure. He deserves credit for helping get NJPW back on track, but I would like to see at least one more full year, possibly two of what has been going for the last couple before I could really consider him a real good candidate. I think Meltzer's coverage and appreciation of NJPW is likely to get him in this year, but I wish people would wait. Tanahashi is also the perfect example of why I can never vote for a guy just on work alone. 5. I go back and fourth on Pedro. More on that later. 6. I think Dave is wrong about one thing - Carlos Colon was a great worker. At worst he was very good, but honestly I would have no qualms calling him great. His reputation is something that doesn't fit the reality of the matches he was producing. I get that working guys like Hansen and Flair is going to get you a certain number of quality matches, but the Hansen feud is one of the best feuds in the history of wrestling (and drew tremendously too), he has maybe the best Brody's singles match I've ever seen, he probably has the best series of matches Abby ever had (this won't be for everyone, but their absolute best brawl is outstanding), and he was able to carry extremely limited guys like Steve Strong to good series' of matches that drew money. If I were thinking about a top hundred workers list I would consider Colon for top fifty at this point.

A few thoughts on these data dumps (thanks a ton to Chris and Hollinger) and how they relate. One of the reasons I explicitly made my focus major market main events (with a conservative interpretation of what qualified as such a thing) is that I didn't want to give the impression that all title shots are created equal. For example it is novel and interesting that the WWWF booked heel Graham v. heel Patera in Portland, Maine but that's ultimately what it is - novel. I don't want to trash the idea that the smaller show title defenses had no meaning because that would be false, but you expect those to be filled out a lot of the time by place holders or steady hands or homesteading heels (not that those guys didn't get their big market runs as well). In any case I think people need to keep that sort of thing in mind when they are thinking about why certain names pop up so much. Monsoon and George Steele are homesteaders and their totals should be thought about in that light. Not saying dismiss them, but that has to be noted. My recollection is that Tanaka was basically a homesteader too, but I could be wrong. Guys who come out of this worth thinking about studying more Waldo Von Erich, Don Muraco, Greg Valentine. I'm not advocating for any of them (well not here at the moment anyway), but I think it would be useful to study and look at their best runs more closely. Don and Greg having two really solid runs in non-consecutive years is interesting to me (and really always has been) and Waldo's monster year opposite Bruno looks really impressive in the year by year breakdown, without diving into the context. One thing about Patera that this doesn't show up here is that he worked Bruno an awful lot in main events that occurred when Bruno wasn't the champ both in the 77 and 80 runs. The 77 run looks more underwhelming than it really was as a result. In fact if you look at Graham's main challengers (Jay Strongbow? Putski? Garea?) one can make a reasonable argument that Bruno/Patera was much better "support" and helping carry the territory a lot more than the popular narrative suggests. The 80 run is actually even better than it looks on paper which brings me to.... This illustrates really well just how epic Patera's run in 1980 was. I don't want to say that it was unprecedented are beyond the pale - Killer Khan topped his total number of title matches the next year and Orton nearly equaled it two years later (though it would be interesting to see how many of these were major market matches). But consider the following. - When Patera wasn't wrestling for the title he was in a hot feud with Bruno that played in the big markets. - He won the I-C title that year and defended it in main events around the territory as well. - He worked the Kiel seven times, headlining four times and winning the Missouri title. Two of the headlining matches were against Race, one for the NWA title, another was a title defense against Kevin Von Erich and the fourth was when he dropped the title to Ted Dibiase. The non-headlining matches were semi-mains against Von Erich and Backlund in a WWWF title match and a match third from the top against Ted the month before Ted took the belt from him. In any case the point was that he was a major deal in St. Louis that year. - Backlund and Patera went on the road to Maple Leaf, St. Louis and Greensboro for title matches. - Look at how he compares to others. During the territorial era exactly two guys got more title shots in a single year then him - Waldo Von Erich in 65 and Killer Khan in 81. Monsoon equaled his total in 64. But it's not just that. Look at the distribution of title shots. The only guy who is above him is Waldo again with 39 total shots, to Bill Miller's 20 in second place. Patera had 34 title shots to Duncum's 17. No other spread surpasses 12 in the territory era and during Backlund's era nothing is even close to that. I don't think that means a ton without knowing the context, but knowing the context I think that is extremely impressive. I still can't figure out how the fuck I was so far off on Patera title shots. I have no clue how that happened, but it only helps his case

Koloff's matches with Patera were a spin off of Patera's feud with Graham which was considered fairly hot and significant. I'd call it a semi-main feud.