Dylan Waco

Most good matches I actually think Regal might be the answer as pretty much any time he was on tv and got a chance he had good matches, but I don't think anyone really sees him as an "upper tier" worker for that decade. I don't know if they are underrated in the sense we often use the term, but Christian and Matt Hardy had an awful lot of good matches that decade.

Regal is a good pick in the sense that once he got clean he got really over with the crowds and there was a period where you could reasonably have seen him breaking into the main events and doing well there. The fact that he's a great wrestler is almost an aside in his case. To me Corino is the best answer. He should have been a huge star and wasn't because of timing and the era in question. Awesome I think would have been a bigger deal in the old territorial era where he could have come in as a special attraction type various places without staying around too long where his flaws would be exposed. Tajiri is awesome and should have gotten an ECW title run. He's rated as a wrestler, but not as highly as I would argue he should be. I like Averno as a heel, but don't like much of his 00's work that I've seen. Having said that the answer to this is almost certainly a Luchadore. I'm just not sure who.

There really wasn't that much good at his role talk. Khali isn't even close to the focus of the thread. In 13 pages there is more talk about Khali being poor or needing to be carried than anything else.

It's very good and as a MACW kid who still hears old timers talk about Hawk and Hanson I find it especially enjoyable. Having said that a lot of it is directly cribbed from Mike Mooneyham's larger piece on Hawk that was published in the Post and Courier (my local paper) earlier this year.

I think you can make a very reasonable argument that Stu Hart got in largely because of training. He's a fiat candidate, but I think the perception of Stu was (and still is in many circles) "guy who spawned this family and famously tortured other guys into being good wrestlers." His career as a promoter wasn't really discussed in any real detail until things like Bret's book and Pain and Passion came out. I don't think anyone would really argue he got in purely as a wrestler. It was his stance as a patriarch and trainer that got him in IMO.

If you want to pretend those posts were touting Khali's ability as a good wrestler you can, but I don't see how anyone can really read them as an endorsement of his abilities in the way we generally talk about those things in discussions like this. Reading the whole thread through - which I did last night - there were one or two people who said he'd improved and Dukes (who was clearly trolling) arguing what he does above - Khali's freakshow status made him a monster foil people wanted to see opposite Cena. There is no discussion of Khali the great worker in that thread. No discussion of Khali the good worker in that thread either, unless one wants to run with the above quote as an endorsement of that sentiment which is a massive stretch. Honestly I've probably come closer to praising Khali than that in pointing out that I think he is perfectly inoffensive as a guy people like Ziggler and others can work spots around and a guy who doesn't try to do things he clearly can't do. I know I once posted that I thought he smoked Davey Richards as a wrestler and I still feel that way. But I don't think he's a good wrestler in any meaningful sense of the term.

I'm not even saying the 80's were unquestionably better. Just that I don't think it's clear the 90's were. And I would much rather watch 80's wrestling at this point, largely because 90's wrestling is something that has been horribly overexposed by comparison.

Never

Bumping this. Someone make a compelling argument for me not to abstain from voting for someone for the Thesz/Flair award. Also I've seen a lot of Callihan sense I wrote this and I'd now have Sami in a neck and neck race with Casas for Most Outstanding.

Call me crazy but I thought The Gangstas were a perfectly serviceable team. Great? God no. Good? I don't think that's a major stretch. They certainly could work solid control segments and had more tools than they did in ECW.

AJW being better is arguable, though I haven't watched much Joshi in years and am in no position to make a detailed argument myself. 80's JCP is better than 90's WCW and I'm a guy who grew up on 90's WCW. I actually don't even think it's all that close. We don't know about Lucha, but we do know there is plenty of great Lucha from the 80's. Memphis was clearly better in the 80's. Portland was clearly better in the 80's by a massive margin (though you could argue that Portland was better in the 70's and I'd listen to it). Mid-South you mention and is clearly a huge plus for the 80's. There was no AWA in the 90's really so the AWA was clearly better. What we have I would argue Puerto Rico was better in the 80's. Texas wrestling was better in the 80's based on what I've seen. Then there are the myriad of territories that didn't exist in the 90's. I mean if you take indy wrestling from the 90's, ECW, SMW and the USWA do you think it's even close to the equal of 80's territorial wrestling? As a guy who worked on the SMW and ECW Sets, I would say "no fucking way in hell" and I'm about as big a fan of those two promotions as you'll find online. 80's wrestling was better in the States in my view. We don't know about Mexico. European wrestling was best in the 70's, but definitely better in the 80's than in the 90's. Japan is arguable, though unlike with the States there were more promotions of note in the 90's so you could give it the edge on that and I wouldn't argue. In any event "virtually every promotion was better in the 90's" is not something I am buying.

I have guys who are my absolute favorites that will never really change (Terry Funk, Arn Anderson and Brian Pillman are the three that are consistent across space and time), but at any given moment I might get attached to Tajiri or Blackwell or Buddy Rose or researching Ken Patera's career or wanting to know tons more about the history of Lucha or whatever. It's usually dependent on what I am watching at the time or who I'm talking to but in that sense my favorites constantly evolve. Matches is about the same with me. There are a few constants (Funk v. Flair GAB 89, Savage v. Warrior, 96 tag league final), but as I watch more things I acquire new favorites and things of that nature change over time too.

I'm not interested in turning this thread into a discussion on Meltzer's match positions, but having just read that thread from beginning to end I couldn't find a single instance in it of anyone pimping Khali. Couple of references to improvement, but no one really touting him. If anything there was a lot of talk about how Cena wasn't given enough credit for carrying him

I totally agree with that. AWA is also a weird set in that you could argue the majority of the super high end stuff is after the company was tanking business wise.

I'm not going to argue with sentiment about the top forty matches, but one of the things that really hit me with the AWA was that I thought the depth of matches I considered really high end was awfully high. Not as high as NJPW or AJPW, but much higher than Texas and probably lateral with Memphis at worst (and I'm about as big a mark for Memphis as you'll ever see).

Emilo Charles Jr. died at 56 according to Dave. Really sad. One of my favorite Luchadores and a great wrestler.

I like it okay, though I've only seen it once. I also like Santino more than a lot of people though he's not one of my favorites. The difference is that I don't think the heels and faces are "in on it together" in those instances. The faces are confounding, annoying, pissing off the heels with their bullshit. In Chikara all to often it is open choreography between two willing dance partners.

That's one man's opinion

Mike Bennett/Young Bucks v. The Sendai Girls This was uncomfortable at points and had one really awful, but well intended spot. Still this was an extremely fun match over all. In part this worked because Bennett and The Bucks both look like the type that would have no problem beating a woman in real life. So when Bennett slaps the shit out of Satomura it's really uncomfortable but it also "works" on some level. And the heels to their credit are absolute bump freaks in this. Each one of the Jackson's takes a couple of lunatic bumps and Bennett is all over the place too. Satomura looked sharp as fuck and came across as a real star during one sequence where she had to go it alone v. the men. At slightly more than ten minutes this was pretty much the perfect length for a match of this sort and I have to really give it to Team ROH who busted their ass to make some suspect non-Satomura offense look brutal. Very fun sprint. F.I.S.T. v. The Spectral Envoy I'm not sure I would call this a good match, but this was way better than I expected. Again this benefited from not going super long as there was enough time for everybody to hit their spots, but not enough time for one of the turds involved to completely run it off the rails. I usually find F.I.S.T. completely intolerable but the strategy of attacking Frightmare and going after his leg made sense and was well worked. Of course it had no real tease involved in the run to the finish and in fact Frightmare blew everything off so he could hit his big spots, but at least he sold the knee post match. I'm not really a fan of any of these guys, but the story of Ultramantis surviving and pulling one out for his team was something that even registered with me. Ophidian v. Saturyne Holy shit this match literally had a babyface announcer arguing that the woman asked for her beating and should take it. This match also saw Ophidian throw about ten chops to the chest of Saturyne presumably for no reason other than to show that Chikara is breaking taboos about a man being able to slap a woman's tit repeatedly in public. In all honestly I thought this was a near miraculous performance by Ophidian as despite the fact that Saturyne is backyard as fuck, this was actually a decent match if you can get over the extreme man on woman violence. Ophidian bumps really well for her stuff, ties himself into pretzels to get over her offense and hits some really sick looking offense. Then the match ends when he chokes her out, which is either a bold vanguardist move by PC trailblazers, or the creepiest finish imaginable in a post-Benoit murders wrestling world. Take your pick. Tim Donst/Jakob Hammermeir v. Green Ant/Fire Ant This started out okay and quickly devolved into a complete disaster. To be fair if you are looking for a match with some impressive spots, this has a few and the Ants suck a little less than I remembered. Still the second half of this was just a bunch of reasonless nonsense, with bizarre tempo changes, poor transitions and silly looking spots. Donst is such a weird wrestler. Half the time he his offense looks really tight and half the time it makes Lance Storm look like Stan Hansen. Hammermeir's "Secret Service guy taking a bullet for the President" spot was clever, but this was pretty poor. It's the first match in a tag gauntlet so it led directly to... Green Ant/Fire Ant v. Devastation Corporation Quick squash with the big guys busting out a few impressive offensive moves. Devastation Corporation v. Paul Simon/Art Garfunkle Another quick squash. This time the taller of the Devastation guys almost killed himself and a jobber. Devastation Corporation v. Jolly Roger/Lance Steel This was actually pretty fun. Short "match" with the Corporation showing a little bit of vulnerability and Roger/Steel basically doing Santino-esque spots around that. Corporation win and advance. Devastation Corporation v. Johnny Miyagi/Ralph Maccio Jr. Another quick squash, this one ending with the DC nearly murdering one of the jobbers. Seriously brutal finish. Devastation Corporation v. Demolition Here we have my personal hell fusing with goodhelmet's personal hell as Dasher Hatfield sings Demolition to the ring for a Chikara match. Man this is really stupid booking. I get that bringing out Demolition is good for a cheap pop, but they have spent the whole first half of this gauntlet getting over the fact that the DC can't even be knocked off their feet and then you've got the man sunk by shellfish Bill Eadie and father of a wrestler named Dakota dominating them. At one point the tall guy takes a fucking insane leaping bump over the top for Eadie. Then Demolition wins with a really lame looking standing Hart Attack clothesline presumably because Eadie can't run the ropes. Yuck. Demolition v. The Powers of Pain Now I'm even more pissed by the result of the previous "match" as this could have been booked as a stand alone encounter and would have worked just as well for the WWF fetishist pop. It's actually treated as it's own stand alone as the ref pats down the teams before they lock up which is just bizarre in this sort of setting. This was okay for what it was, but it's not something for the Demolition canon. The Powers of Pain v. 1-2-3 Kid/Marty Jannetty Really short match that they tried to work a short heat segment into. It didn't really work. Jannetty's initial flurry looked good - after the hot tag he looked like shit. The finish probably sounded like a good idea on paper, but wasn't in practice. 1-2-3 Kid/Marty Jannetty v. Los Ice Creams Marty took a pretty nice crazy bump early and the Ice Creams had some okay tag offense, but this kinda sucked. At least they won with the Rocker Suplex thingy. As a whole the gauntlet wasn't that long, but felt really long and the booking of the DC annoyed the fuck out of me. Maybe I would have liked it better live. Darkness Crabtree/Colt Cabana/Johnel Sanders/Swamp Monster v. Ebessan/Takoyakida/3.0 Maybe the most ridiculous comedy match I've ever seen and it goes on for fucking ever. I would have hated this no matter what, but at 20 minutes this might be my new Worst Match of The Year. I'm sure Chikara fans would lecture me for hating fun. Commando Bolshoi/Tsubusa Kuragaki v. Manami Toyota/Kaori Yoneyama There were a lot of things I didn't like about this and Toyota looked really sad at points, but this was a match I'm sure would have sucked me in live and I found myself really biting on the action down the stretch. I really thought they were gonna go with with Toyota/Yoneyama working over the leg of Kuragaki and I was a bit annoyed when that was blown off, but then Toyota's figure-four was poor so you can sort of buy it as totally ineffective. In any event I think Kuragaki deserves a lot of credit because she really held this together. I'm not going to say the other ladies brought nothing, but Kuragaki's big spots were the most impressive, cleanest and most impactful. And even more importantly she took the offense of Toyota and Yoneyama so well and reacted to it so strongly that the finishing stretch - which really saved the match in my eyes - really felt super important. The whole "what can take down the monster" vibe was pretty nifty and it felt less like spot running, than building to the big finish. I wouldn't call this a great match, but I do think it was a good match. Probably as good match as you can have in a tag where only one person really looked like a solid worker. Tadasuke v. Jigsaw I liked this a lot aside from Jig's strange pop up sell job of the piledriver right before the finish. Really both guys looked good in this. Good story as Jig tires to hit a dive early and gets fucking killed with a punch on the attempt. He sells this by hanging upside down in the ropes and the shot looked about as nasty as you can get without someone being seriously hurt. Jig is able to make a comeback and gets in some big time offense of his own, but makes the mistake of trying to turn this back into a striking war and ends up getting knocked the fuck out. Good match. Mike Bennett/The Young Bucks v. The Spectral Envoy You could find major flaws with this if you wanted to. This match had some of the most egregiously telegraphed spots I've ever seen, there was a spike tombstone on a ramp that didn't lead to a finish and the cluster right before the stretch run arguably detracted from what was going on in the ring. But as a whole I find it hard not to argue this was a good match and about as good a match as these two teams could possibly have had. Bennett and The Bucks were really the stars of the tourney as they played their roles well (oh god not that dreaded mantra!) from bell to bell in every match. Here they were really great controlling the match with extended heat segments on Frightmare and Ultramantis Black. The Frightmare section in particular was good as they attacked his leg, cut off the ring on him and worked in some good hope spots. With Ultramantis it was more about the heels unloading their biggest spots and him surviving, but the story is supposedly that Black hadn't been able to win on the biggest stage, so him surviving the biggest stuff thrown at him on Chikara's biggest show of the year doesn't bother me all that much in the grand scheme of things. Stretch run was a wild cluster, but at entertaining one even if I only nominally knew what the hell was going on. I really enjoyed the fact that they bought in Delirious for the sole purpose of taking one lunatic bump off the ramp. The big superplex wipe out spot was hurt by the fact that the guys on the floor were blindly milling around waiting for it to come off, but Ultramantis giving up himself for the better of the team fit the theme of the match and the spot with Maria getting superkicked on accident as she was trying to cover for Bennett tapping out was well done. I also really liked the fact that Hallowicked was the guy who made the big run at the end as he was the only one of the Envoy who hadn't been majorly worked over and beaten on in the match. This was a very satisfying end to a series of shows that I didn't exactly enjoy.

I don't think there are all that many wrestlers who fit into neat little boxes at all. Even when trying to create rough categories there are probably as many guys who are tough to define as there are guys who more or less fit within the confines of a generally descriptive term.

There is less footage of Jack as a singles guy than Dory

I could have included him or Michaels. Both are flawed wrestlers, but I think better brawlers at their best (and even on average) than Brody. Having said that I was trying to stick with relatively non-controversial picks. I was making a joke, bro. As in you not wanting to cross contaminate both of your giant lists of everyone. You didn't think my "non-controversial pick" line was a joke?

I could have included him or Michaels. Both are flawed wrestlers, but I think better brawlers at their best (and even on average) than Brody. Having said that I was trying to stick with relatively non-controversial picks.

Rose's best stuff was before he got huge. I'd listen to an argument that Blackwell is the best over Vader. Not sure I'd quite buy it, but I'd listen to it.

Since people called him a technical wrestler which is something I have seen affixed to him at various times for years. You could argue that it is a "misused" term in his case. I would argue that it's meaningless because of the fact that it's applied to a ton of different sorts of wrestlers.