Dylan Waco

There is no serious question that Hogan was the ace and that he was the person positioned to draw above and beyond everyone else. One could argue that someone like Savage was eventually elevated to a slot of great value, but he was still not Hogan. Warrior bombed for a reason

No he's not.

Poor man's Santino.

Objectively speaking HHH is a good worker? By what objective metrics? I'm not in the business of lobbying for HTM one way or the other, but I don't think it would be impossible to name several hundred guys I would rate over HHH. 1000 doesn't seem impossible either.

My personal view is that Taker should never wrestle gain at Mania unless it's against Cena

I haven't watched Corino on indies, Corino in PR, Corino in Japan, et relative to his ECW stuff. In ECW his best match was the Tajiri mauling from Hardcore Heaven 2000. He had a lot of matches in ECW where his performance was great, but the match was ruined by run-ins.

No. He was really skinny when he first started out in ECW, but that never bothered me. I always thought he had the same general look as a young Barry Windham

To be fair, he's from Texas

I actually think one of HHH's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he really doesn't have a ton of memorable/quality tv matches for a guy that was wrestling week-to-week for as long as he was. It's not that he has none. It's that he has remarkably few, far fewer than any contemporary I can think of offhand.

Which twenty hours of wrestling matches and promos would one put on an HHH comp if they were trying to build a rep for him as an all time great? Actually enough of the HHH talk in here. That's what The Microscope is for

I don't care that HHH is an asshole backstage. I just don't think he's very good.

Invader III v. Chicky Starr - 1988 I really loved this match. Chicky Starr is like a scummy as fuck Bobby Heenan - a totally weasely motherfucker who will bleed, bump and cheat in every match. He gets busted open early in this and eats a couple of post shots on the floor that generally made me uncomfortable as I was afraid he was going to face plant in the mud on the ground and end up with some horrifying staph infection. Invader III can throw a mean punch and some of the shots he throws right at the cut on Chicky's head barely look pulled at all. Starr fights back just enough where this doesn't feel totally one-sided. In fact he gets more offense in this than Embry got against him in the match I watched yesterday, lots of nasty kidney shots included. I imagine some people will hate the finish, but I bought it entirely as Chicky had crushed him with a belly to back a few minutes before and Invader III sold the headbump on the blocked monkey flip really well. Eric Embry v. Super Medico - Hair v. Mask 1986 What was shown of this was pretty awesome, but I have no clue how much is missing. I suspect not very much, but it's hard to say. Whatever the case may be, this is a balls out sprint, with both guys looking really good. There is a punch exchange in this that is as good as any punch exchange I've ever seen in a wrestling match. Just two dudes tagging each other on jaw and Embry's head whipping around from each shot. They go to this really nice rope running spot and Embry takes an insane bump basically tope'ing himself onto the ground. Embry ends up stealing the fall, but the fall he gets stooged off for cheating and the fall gets reversed, with Medico winning in short order. Crowd is pretty insane to see him get his haircut. This is maybe five minutes of in ring action at most, but what is there is great.

I hope you're joking. I don't think I would have any of those guys definitively over HHH, but I don't think HTM is an outrageous pick to go over him.

I'm not sure he would make my top 1000.

Eric Embry v. Invader III - 1986 Watching this I was reminded of Ron Garvin v. Tully Blanchard from the same year which is an outstanding tv match that suffers a bit from commercial breaks. I was also reminded of Steve Corino v. Tajiri from Hardcover Heaven 00, as this match had a similar feel with Invader as Tajiri and Embry as Corino (actually there are a lot of parallels between those two but that's a subject for another day). I thought this was a pretty great competitive squash, but make no mistake - this was a competitive squash. Embry gets his ass kicked for virtually the entire match, his one heat section is eaten up by a commercial (where we also miss how he got cut) and even though he does stuff like the sneaky, snap, piledriver it's really more as a way of surviving than it is of getting anything in for himself. I'm not even tossing this out there as a criticism of the match, because Embry is tremendous in this role and that is really the story of the match. It starts with him stalling and his valet going into a cage and sort of logical follows from there. His leg selling is outstanding even when climbing or running the ropes. His initial bump off the first dropkick was great and established the them of the match. The way he positioned himself for the final tope was outstanding also. Invader III was good, but Embry was on another level. Rarely do you see a guy being squashed for twenty minutes and come away thinking he was the genius in the match but in this case he was.

Actually it clearly does, because there is a very reasonable argument that Regal has NEVER had a big match in the way the average fan and even many hardcore fans usually use that term. No it's not. I think Regal could and at times did have great longer matches. I also think he was wildly underused probably because of the drug issue mentioned earlier. But when most people here use the term "big" matches I don't get the impression they mean it as a synonym for "long" matches.

I feel the exact opposite. There is no credible way for Punk to go over Taker in a singles match at this point and no way for any sane person to suspend their disbelief. If he were to win in a singles at this point it would be incredibly idiotic and probably damage him going forward. Brock v. HHH is a match I have no interest in seeing as a singles match. As elements in a tag? I could live with that.

First off congratulations. Second off Will's advice is good advice. Third off when you are up at 4AM feeding the newborn, have whatever 80's Set is up on the ready.

I know he worked Southwest and the WWF to little effect.

I think the Brody murder is a major factor. But I do not think it is the only factor. I think there are some that just say "eh, he was a star in PR and PR wasn't all that big a deal." I think that's bullshit because WWC was a territory that drew a fuck ton of people for a long period of time. There are also people who say "Colon was never a star anywhere else and thus he shouldn't be in." I've heard several people say that in the last year. That's a large part of the reason I find the Onita comparison interesting.

What the hell is going on in that picture?

The Hansen feud is the best stuff of his I've seen, but he is very strong in gimmick matches in general, regardless of opponent. And even in non-gimmick matches he has impressed far more than I would have guessed before I started watching this stuff.

Jersey shore is South Jersey

On the particulars of Colon as a worker.... I actually think he was very good and at times great. I have actually been fairly shocked by how much I've enjoyed him so far. Even in matches that don't quite work, he does interesting things and the fact that he would go the route of trying to work psychology against someone as unimpressive as Steve Strong really interests me. For guys known for their charisma, gimmick match work and comebacks, Colon really does come across a ton better than Shawn Michaels or Edge.

I'm probably not going to post reviews of his matches here, because I have the PR thread for that, but if others want to do that in here I am all for it. Instead I'm going to cross post this from the WON HoF thread where it was no sold by everyone other than Johnny. I'd be interested in hearing from critics of his candidacy on the point I talk about below and I do believe there are critics on this board. I realize it's not WON HoF season and this is sort of an odd time to be bringing it up, but I am watching all this Puerto Rico so I've been thinking a lot about Colon as a candidate. I have no clue how complete the attendance data is from Puerto Rico, but I do know that PR did pretty massive business on the regular throughout the 80's. Even in 89 the attendance on the shows has been strong and the Colon headlined matches in the 90's have been far from bad (actually relative to what U.S. feds were drawing during same rough period you could argue they were impressive on some level). Of course you can't tell what paid attendance is from looking at a crowd, but you can tell that the crowds are still hot. But I'm not interested in arguing for Colon on the relative strength of post-89 drawing power. I think his resume during his peak as a draw (seems to be late 70's-late 80's) is enough to get him in. I am more interested in getting those not sold and/or critics of Colon as a candidate to compare him with somebody who is in and who I think most of us believe should be in. I mentioned the comparison to Backlund earlier almost flippantlly because one of the big knocks on Colon was that he was only a star/draw one place and meant little to nothing elsewhere. It's fair to say I sold Bob in St. Louis and perhaps other places (Toronto for one) short, but it was a more general criticism of the "have to be a major draw more than one place" viewpoint that I think is a generally good idea, but has clear exceptions. The person who I would like to see critics of Colon compare him to is Onita. First things first - I really like Onita. I think his act is very expressive, I think he was a great promoter, I think he was a perfect wrestler and figurehead for what he was pushing. I think what he did in managing to turn an indy with far fewer resources into a promotion that could consistently draw well and draw huge a few times a year (for matches with him in the main event more often than not) is really incredible and I don't know if it will ever be replicated. I think you can make an argument that Onita had a big influence on broader wrestling landscape going forward. I think Onita should be in WON HoF. What I am not sure about is why Onita should be in but not Colon. I understand the promotional dynamics are different - Colon had an island to himself and FMW was one of many promotions in Japan. On the other hand the peak of FMW as a major promotion seems to have coincided with the hottest point for wrestling in Japanese history. At Onita's peak FMW shows did better than just about any shows on earth and larger numbers than Colon's biggest shows. Having said that at Colon's peak his shows did better than just about any shows on earth and he appears to have had more big shows a year on average than FMW ever did. WWC also had a longer peak period as a company with Colon on top. Colon was not as influential as Onita, but in watching WWC it's impossible to ignore the fact that in many respects the FMW formula was established in WWC first. I think it would be wrong to argue that Colon and WWC weren't influential - they were. It's just that there influence wasn't nearly as broad as Onita/FMW's. As workers I enjoy both guys, but don't think either is an HoF level in ring performer. Having said that - and perhaps this is just because it's fresher in my mind - I think Colon was the better worker. I don't think Onita has anything like the Hansen feud, and I think in many ways Onita was a second generation copy of Colon. I'm interested if I am misreading this when I say that I think Colon is at least lateral to Onita as a candidate. This is not meant as a "gotcha" comparison, but a serious one that I would like to see people add to. If there are flaws in my thinking I'd be more than willing to have them pointed out to me as I haven't read Bahu's big FMW write up in some time and unfortunately I only have attendance/results listings for the biggest of the WWC cards. I just hope the arguments can stay away from "Death of Brody" and I hope they don't consist entirely of "Puerto Rico is Puerto Rico."