Dylan Waco

Alex Porteau peaked as a heel in Global. J.T. Smith peaked in 95/96 as transition from "you fucked up" collector of concussions to black guy who thinks he is Italian has strong internal consistency. Hack Myers prime was the squash match where he killed Donn E. Allen (his entire career should be assessed on this, which puts him in the argument for GOAT). Not sure about Bart Gunn though.

I love both guys but I don't buy this. Flair came across as almost comedic in getting his ass kicked by middling guys and jobbers at points.

Andre was a huge draw everywhere, especially Andre in a Battle Royal. That card did huge because it was Thanksgiving. That's not to say the other things weren't factors.

Looks like a clear up turn with Wahoo/Valentine to me, but I wasn't looking super closely. A couple of other quick points... On nationalization the only two attempts I know of in the 70's had little to nothing to do with MACW or traditional U.S. promotions. The one most people know about is Enhorn's IWA. This had a little to do with MACW, since the IWA tried to invade that area - and got there ass kicked. If memory serves Eddie Einhorn realized this was a bust, realized syndication power didn't mean shit when they couldn't get into the main arenas and sold his interest to Pedro Martinez/Johnny Powers who used to run Buffalo/Cleveland IIRC. The point here is that even favorable accounts of the IWA will conclude that the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster. The other semi-attempt I know of was made by Paul Vachon during the promotional war in Montreal in the 70's. Even here to argue that Vachon was attempting a national expansion is a stretch - what we do know is that Vachon secured tv in Montreal in Frence and English. He sent the tape of the English tv all over Canada, which effectively made it a promotion that had national viewership reach - in Canada. Why the hell would he want to do this during an era where everything was based on house show attendance? My guess is Vachon had plans to expand to other parts of Canada if he was able to succeed in taking Montreal. Grand Prix did great business for a while, but for whatever reason, both promotions in Montreal effectively killed each other and Vachon got out of Grand Prix before anything close to that happens. This is all covered in the new Montreal book and the questions I have about the details of this will be asked to the authors on Saturday when Dave and I have them on Wrestling Culture. In any event those are the closest things I know of to nationalization schemes during the 70's - neither even really got off the ground. One other final point to follow up on Flair and "national stardom." One could easily argue that up until Flair won the NWA title for the first time Ken Patera was the bigger "national star." I don't say this to score any points for Patera or get in a dig at Flair. Just to illustrate that "national stardom" is something we shouldn't think about through the prism of where individuals ended up, nor should being a major regional draw be trivialized by comparison.

I think this board is fairly diverse actually. There are definitely consensus opinions here and some that are outside the standard. But generally they come from watching footage. Having said that if someone makes a blanket statement about disliking Lucha there is a good chance what they enjoy in wrestling and I enjoy are going to be so incredibly different that I'm not going to be able to bridge the gap on any level. Of course I don't just visit this board either even though I spend most of my time here. On Michaels I was all ready to write an absurdly long comparison post to Carlos Colon, but I don't want to waste it on a thread that is spiraling into troll talk.

I firmly believe Punk needs to take time off after Mania. He got 434 days as the champion and the end result is that there is no convincing/compelling match they can put him in at Mania, barring some unusually good storytelling from the WWE over the next couple of months.

If you are really interested my advice would be to get a hold of clawmaster's or KrisZ's MACW results (or both) and look at the Mid-Atlantic Gateway site at minimum. When I do stuff like my research on Patera I comb through tons of stuff and I'm half assing it compared to more serious researchers. The point is there is tons of stuff out there and while you may not get a complete picture you can find enough to piece together a general idea. My personal view is that Flair was the perfect talent, in the perfect place, at the perfect time - that is usually the story with the all time greats in wrestling

There are individual matches I like during the second run, but by and large I don't like Michaels at all during that period. I also tend to think his first run as a singles star is overrated. Tag team Shawn is my favorite Shawn. Also despite WWE promotion I never saw Shawn as a "Lucha style" guy. Not then and especially not now that I have seen a lot of Lucha

Chicky Starr, Hércules Ayala, Abdullah The Butcher, Iron Sheik & Grizzly Boone vs. Carlos Colón, Bruiser Brody, Invader #1, Dutch Mantel & TNT (Savio Vega) - The Great War 1987 This was a clusterfuck but largely an entertaining one. Honestly this would have been ten thousand times better as a true Wargames tag with guy coming in in 2 or 5 minute intervals. In any case I loved Chicky Starr in this but that is a reoccurring them and to be expected at this point. The goal of the gimmick is that all five guys from a team have to be chained to a cage and then the winning team gets five minutes alone with them. This leads to a lot of awkward moments and a whole lot of nothing happening after an initial wave of stuff. I thought this got pretty good as it broke down the final four and Sheik was a lot of fun as the last man standing, destroying Colon with a foreign object he'd kept in his boot and then unchaining him and locking him in the camel clutch during the five minute beatdown period. Colon was a bloody mess and this was a decisive and crushing win for the heels which is something that allows impresses me in a match like this. This isn't even close to a great match - I'm not even positive it's a good one. But it the violence and angle at the end made it worthwhile.

Carlos Colon v. Leo Burke - 12/89 Good, basic match, that had some pretty neat spots and built to a very surprising conclusion. I could see some people not liking the opening portion a whole lot, but I was a fan of Leo's stalling and I thought the work with the arm was well done as a base. They would come up for a spot here or there and then settle back into the hold, with Burke taking control by hair pulling. It's simple, but its a standard that works and allows for enough "action" where you don't feel like guys are just laying around killing time. I really loved the criss cross/monkey flip spot in this. Not at all what you expect out of a Colon match, and watching him counter Leo's attempt with a leg drop was a nice spin on the standard. Burke through some really sick looking forearms in this. I thought Colon's comeback was a little weak, but it wasn't distracting and may have been hurt by the unusual middling PR setting and response. Colon had tried to work Leo's leg early, so I thought it was neat when Leo went to it later in the match and he had several cool ways of getting to Colon's leg from different positions. I absolutely loved the spot with Colon slamming him and Leo using his downed position on the mat as a way of getting straight to the leg. Pretty amazing finish to this as Burke locked on the figure four mid-ring, Burke's second pulls the rope just a wee bit out of the reach of Colon and he is forced to submit. A virtually clean submission finish for the heel is not how you expect this to end. TNT v. Original TNT - 1991 This was an extremely fun, bomb throwing, fight. My only real complaint about this was the placement of the first commercial break which cut out the transition from Savio (TNT) on offense to defense. I don't think I've seen a great deal of Action Jackson (Original TNT) but the guy had a great way of going totally lifeless for the big times strikes he was eating, which included some really great looking kicks. They didn't spend the whole match on the floor, but when they went out there they made it count as you had guys getting bloodied and slammed into shit in really sick ways. Late in the match Savio almost kills Jackson with a high kick. Also thought the spot with Jackson catching Savio in mid-air for the Rick Steiner style powerslam was pretty great. Surprising finish as Original TNT locks on the Cobra Clutch and chokes TNT straight out. Really good for a match of this type. Carlos Colon/The Invaders v. Chicky Starr/Abdullah The Butcher/Ron Starr - 1986 This match is mainly notable for the angle at the end where Abby throws ammonia in the eyes of Colon. It's a rare occasion where a PR crowd almost comes across as scared instead of pissed which is what they were going for but has a real eerie feel to it. Match itself is solid, if unspectacular. The exchanges with The Invaders and the Starr's were the highlights, particularly when Chicky was bumping and selling. Chicky Starr v. Invader I - 1/6/86 This is pretty awesome as a spectacle. Apparently Starr ambushed Invader pre-match with a mic and busted him open. The first three minutes of this is just Starr circling him as he bleeds on the floor, taking a shot here or there, as the crowd gets more and more intense. It's insane but I couldn't spot a single person seated for the entire duration of this match. At one point Chicky is screaming profanity on the floor and you start to think shit might get out of hand but it never does. It's like they are just waiting for the big Invader comeback to happen. I'm not sure the use of the armbar in between shots was the best heat building hold, but it didn't seem to hurt and Chicky tossing him over the top for a big bump when he started to make a comeback was a smart spot. Invader finally starts to make a comeback, as he slowly gets going and then pumps himself up full tilt with the crowd going bananas to the point where the building looks to be shaking. He goes in for the kill and Starr just bolts and leaves for the countout. That sounds disappointing but it really wasn't. This was the start of a feud and the fuck you effect of bloodying a guy and then casually leaving before he can get any real damage on you was sold really well by Invader.

Weaver, Scott and Jones worked many places, but were generally regional stars. Most wrestlers were regional stars during that era. Aside from NWA champions and a few other traveling novelty types, the bulk of people we view as major stars from that era were not "national" stars. Certainly not in the sense we would use that term now.

Then it must look good.

I think this is filled with the most obvious cherry picked criticisms of a wrestler I've ever seen.

I think it's harder to sell tickets in the same place week-to-week up to a point. But being presented as the literal king of a territory has it's obvious benefits. That's not to say what Lawler did was easy - far, far, far, far from it. But in a sense I think Buddy had it harder (he had no Dundee or Lance Russell) and I do think Flair had a lot of value to MACW, in large part because he was able to step in when Johnny Valentine's career ended. The real guy I want to know more about from MACW is Jardine.

That's really questionable. Geographically MACW covered as big a base as anybody other than the AWA and the WWF. You could argue that during points of the 60's and 70's other territories were hotter or had bigger big shows. But places like Detroit, San Fran, LA and Montreal all died out or were in the process of dying out by 78. Even if you wanted to argue they were "above" MACW for points of the prior decades, it wasn't as if Flair caused a drastic boom that changed things - it was that those places shit the bed. A team like George Becker and Johnny Weaver is virtually unknown even among wrestling obsessed geeks like us and there are still towns where they hold the consecutive main event sellout streak in the Carolinas and VA - my home town among them. That had nothing to do with Flair.

I don't know why I'm surprised that Memphis metro was that big back then but I am

Memphis was not a massive city at that point IIRC. More importantly they ran weekly. Anytime you run a building that size weekly it's gonna be hard to pull a sell out week-to-week

I never would have mentioned anything about it had Dave not invoked it as some sort of proof that Patera's record wasn't particularly impressive. Certainly wasn't meant as a shot at you Chris.

Speaking for myself I've said multiple times that I had zero problem with Punk losing and in fact I believe he should have lost in a far more "clean" fashion with the context of the original match, with no run-in. I also don't think he should be getting a rematch at EC, though I understand the storyline rationale for it.

I don't think it's wrong to do either. I just think if you decide you are going to pick a hard standard you should try and apply it uniformly. Most of the debate that sparked in this thread was about the fact that I didn't think things were being applied uniformly. Part of that was because I was misunderstanding and misreading points Loss was making. Part of it was because Loss points weren't fully fleshed out. I tried to be pretty up front with my biases in this thread which I guess opens me up to charges that my entire framework for viewing the GOAT debate and wrestling in general is all about trying to score points for guys I am known for being a huge fan of. But at the end of the day I prefer that to living in a fantasy world where huge chunks of time never happened and/or don't matter at all.

Bock v. Rheingans was a match meant to build Rheingans as a legit challenger. It was a studio draw and the goal was to make him look like someone who could beat Bock. In many respects it was Bock as Flair (see Bock v. David Schultz from Stampede for another clear example of this). To an extent one could say the same thing about the first Martel challenge, though I don't remember it being nearly as egregious in that match. The Hogan match is self explanatory. There were Bock matches on the set before those. Love them or hate them I don't think you can make the claim that Bock was swallowed whole in those matches. Maybe the Verne match I guess, but Verne isn't a guy who sells for anyone for very long at that point. I've never seen Bock give a George South ten minutes to put him on the ropes and work near falls. Not saying it doesn't exist but I haven't seen it. Bock could be a wuss - no question about it. But I don't think it was an established norm of his style and I don't think that is reflected on the set at all. In this thread alone I've pointed to matches where he works control segments and leads from on top. Not hard to find them really.

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."

I changed it as a birthday gift to Musgrave. I find your Martin avatar creepy as shit for some reason. It is creepy as shit

Steve Strong v. Carlos Colon - NO DQ 1989 This is the blow off to the feud as Colon puts his career on the line v. Strong's career in Puerto Rico. Chicky Starr is banned from the building and this is No DQ, No Time Limit. On paper you think "this is gonna be an out of control brawl" and you get the feeling that if this was held in a stadium it would have been. But this is at an in door arena and my guess is to avert a riot nearly the entire match stays in the ring. Even weirder this is actually worked as a pretty straight match for the most part. First part is dominated by Colon who is targeting the leg. The implication is that Strong can't compete with Colon absent Starr or gimmicks so he keeps bailing. Everything he tries back fires. Colon gets him in the figure-four mid ring, but that ends up being the turning point as Strong reverses it. Now this part probably goes on FAR too long, but as an interesting way to do a reset it actually works. At first both guys come up selling the leg and it's unfortunate that got blown off down the stretch, because it would have been a nice story. In any case Strong's offense looked better than normal here (actually Colon's did too). Strong is actually dominating when he throws Colon to the floor. Much like Colon thinking the figure-four was his ace in the hole only to be proven wrong, Strong trying to turn it into a fight ends up back firing on him Colon takes advantage and makes a run, but he gets cut right back down. There is a great spot in here as Strong gets a near fall and Colon just barely gets his foot on the bottom rope. Strong just stares at it for what feels like forever. Comes across as a total "this was my chance and I fucked it up" moment. Strong continues his run and goes to an overhead back breaker. Looks to be going for a second one and/or a second jumping piledriver, when Colon floats him over and pins him. Post-match the fans swarm the ring and Colon which was a really cool visual. This is not the match you expect on paper and in some respects it was probably asking too much of both guys (especially Strong). Still this really works in a lot of ways and if you had told me these guys would have a match like this, with psychology that worked as well as this did, I wouldn't have believed it.

I changed it as a birthday gift to Musgrave.