Dylan Waco

Holy shit, that is a post that very closely reflects my own views to the point where I am almost jealous I didn't make it myself.

Then you are posting at fantasy land and maybe this place isn't for you because we actually watch the matches, we don't rely on rose-colored glasses and faded memories. I watch the matches as well but to be honest I'm all Mid South right now ansd I have to break from that to re watch Brody. I watched my Brody Disc last year and I remember still being impressed by him. If you guys can't handle a veiw point that disagrees with your small world then I don't know what to tell you but I don't go along just to get along. Dude, we have tons of threads here where people disagree and continue to disagree. We just want you to either stop posting as if your word is gospel or actually break shit down. Right now, you are speaking in platitudes and I am the king of platitudes. Give us some examples so we can see what you are seeing because after watching close to 100 Brody matches for the 80s project, we actually gave you specific examples of why we think he sucks. Dude I have admitted that I need to rewatch Brody, but me liking him has nothing to do with faded memories long gone by, I just watched this cat a year ago and in my recollection he was awesome. I will watch this guy again hopefully by the end of the weekend. I never said my word was Gospel, again quit emotionalizing the argument. Re read my posts as I admitted I can see where people think he is overrated but to say he was terrible is a huge stretch. Again stick to what I said not what you think I meant. For me he is top 20 but I understand if others don't rate him that way but to say he sucked is kinda a credibility loser. Best not to accuse others of emotionalizing things when you are claiming others have no credibility because they think one of your favorite fake fighters sucks. Especially when the people in question have watched as much or more of the guy in question in the last couple of years than anyone on the earth. I would like to hear your thoughts on those St. Louis matches though. I watched all the Brody v. Flair St. Louis matches about a month ago. The best of the bunch is an okay match. The other two are pretty mediocre by the standards of Flair matches from that period. Brody is over as hell in St. Louis and the matches benefit dramatically from that and even still I left feeling that Brody was one of Flair's worst opponents from the era that we multiple matches of footage from.

I don't see any reason we should restrict it to 200. People can keep adding on to my baseline.

Technical wrestler is largely a meaningless term. It's a gimmick term that really means nothing. Dibiase's gimmick at one point or another was technical wrestler and as Jerry noted he had a submission finish (in the WWF) so that was that. If Tech means "guy who uses lots of suplexes, backbreakers well, has a basic understanding of holds and has a submission finish" it could be applied to Sheamus, Sgt. Slaughter, Terry Gordy, Greg Valentine and even Roddy Piper. But they never worked a "technical" gimmick so they aren't remembered that way.

I feel exactly the opposite. Brody, whatever his other faults, always felt to me like he did a good job of selling that he was in a fight rather than a cooperative performance. But Abby? From the first time I saw him until today, I never understood his supposed appeal. An obese man who pretends to poke you in the forehead with a tongue depressor? Seriously? Never jobbed, rarely sold, rarely bumped, and usually did a horrible job of attempting to blade inconspicuously. Every single second I watched him, I was well aware that I was seeing a guy in a consciously-crafted performance. Back in 2007 they sure did. I don't think that's true at all. I was one of the guys defending Khali a bit from the claims that he was beyond belief awful, but I never touted him as a good wrestler. Never saw it anywhere either. On Abby I think you can make a lot of criticisms of him but "matches felt like cooperative performance" is not one I get at all.

That is true to an extent. Blackwell was pretty giving in general, but was far more giving as a heel than as a face. Part of that is the fact that he had to get over the offense of old farts. Another part of it is the fact that a lot of what we have are pay off matches on major feuds

I would note that I'm not even that big a fan of a lot of the guys on this list. 151. Robert Fuller 152. James Storm 153. Chris Harris 154. The Briscoes 155. Kevin Steen 156. Brodie Lee 157. Dick Togo 158. C.W. Anderson 159. Mikey Whipwreck 160. Curt Hennig 161. Rey Mysterio 162. Psicosis 163. Chavo Guerrero Jr. 164. Preston Quinn 165. AJ Styles 166. Fuerza Guerrera 167. Jake Roberts 168. Chris Hamrick 169. The Babarian 170. Meng 171. Bill Eadie 172. DDP 173. Sting 174. Low Ki 175. Ray Gonzalez 176. Matt Hardy 177. Doug Somes 178. Chuck Palumbo 179. Bull Nakano 180. Aja Kong 181. Mike Shaw 182. Megumi Kudo 183. Rick Steiner 184. Scott Steiner 185. Hisakatsu Oya 186. Matt Borne 187. Jerry Estrada 188. The Dream Machine 189. Balls Mahoney 190. Monsta Mack 191. Samoan Swat Team 192. Hayabusa 193. Too Cold Scorpio 194. Super Strong Machine 195. Jamie Dundee 196. Ed Wiskowski 197. Chris Benoit 198. Bruno Sammartino 199. Javier Cruz 200. JBL

I think I can hit 150 with little problem. I'll start by picking from Bix some and go from there. 101. Masato Tanaka 102. Super Dragon 103. Koko Ware 104. Jackie Fargo 105. Doug Gilbert 106. Jeff Jarrett 107. Billy Travis 108. Tarzan Goto 109. Atsushi Onita 110. El Hijo Del Santo 111. El Hijo del Solitario 112. Villano III 113. Blue Panther 114. Tramua I 115. Trauma II 116. Dick Slater 117. Jushin Liger 118. Gedo 119. Perro Aguayo 120. Bob Sweetan 121. Austin Idol 122. Bam Bam Bigelow 123. Norvell Austin 124. Kazunari Murakami 125. Rip Oliver 126. Buddy Roberts 127. Brian Christopher 128. Derrick King 129. Kantaro Hoshino 130. Pirata Morgan 131. Chris Adams 132. Steve Williams 133. Sheamus 134. Dave Taylor 135. Gary Young 136. Riki Choshu 137. Daisuke Ikea 138. Takeshi Ono 139. Robert Gibson 140. Sabu 141. Chris Hero 142. Bobby Bass 143. Kengo Kimura 144. The Big Show 145. Bret Hart 146. Naoki Sano 147. Buddy Landell 148. Kevin Sullivan 149. Jamie Noble 150. La Fiera Granted I extended this a bit to guys who build matches around hitting each other hard as fuck, but I think that falls under the general "brawl" metric

Another guy who was a better brawler than Brody at least.

I could keep going if you want.

I agree with all of this and this is easily one of the best things written on this board.

"overanalyzing and overthinking" generally means "someone disagrees with my point of view and will defend their position with examples."

No and none at all. Sorry but I'll take a Wrestler's opinion over a fans a lot of the time. They worked in the industry and breathed it. Their opinion carries more weight than a bunch of guys overanalyzing and overthinking the room on message boards. In football we call that Monday morning Qaurterbacking. There is a reason Color announcers are mostly former athletes rather than Joe Blow from the Internet Message Boards. This Brody bashing seems way too over the top to be taken seriously. I can see people saying he's overrated and I can deal with pointing out the flaws but I mean by hearing some on this board, Brody was a good for nothing Jabroni that wasn't worth crap. It seems as tho some of the hard core fans try to be contrarian for contrarian's sake and then go and rewrite history. If you don't like message boards or opinions you will read on them a good strategy is to not read them or post on them. A poor strategy is to argue that people talking on message boards are dumb assholes who know nothing about wrestling - while posting on a wrestling message board. I've watched the matches - Brody sucks. I want to like him, but it's really hard to like a guy who is so transparently poor. If this was pure revisionism there wouldn't be such a vast consensus on Brody sucking among people who have actually rewatched the matches recently, particularly among those of us who have radically different ideas about what does and doesn't make a good match. I don' think wrestler's opinions are irrelevant in the sense that I find them interesting. But I will NEVER say "boy I thought that match sucked cock, but Ric Flair said it was great so it must be true."

To me with Taylor it is patently obvious that everything he does is about getting laughs and not heat. I do agree that The Bucks use comedy fairly well at times and I'm not even a Bucks fan.

I've watched a ton of Brody in recent years from St. Louis, Montreal, Puerto Rico, AJPW, NJPW, Texas and the AWA. You can find islands of selling and even some good matches (for example I really enjoy the Abby match from the Texas Set). But they are rare, rare exceptions.

I would expect him to have a basic idea of how to bump. There are a few guys who appeared to basically have no clue how to take a flat back bump. Brody is one. David Von Erich is another. I'm not a big DVE fan, but he made up for it because he would at least show some vulnerability, which is something Brody almost NEVER did. Granted it's apples and oranges because one was a face and the other a heel, but those are the two guys that come to mind as far as not knowing how to take basic bumps. On Abby I think Childs said it best - Abby delivered on his character. Brody didn't. Will and I have both talked about this many times but Brody would come to that ring swinging that chain like a nut and you were thinking you were going to see this totally out of control nutcase. And then the match starts and that's not what you got. With Abby you got what you expected to get - a guy stabbing you with shit and running around like a lunatic. It's also worth noting that Brody was booked in more straight matches than Abby and yet despite this if you asked me to list big or meaningful bumps I've seen from either guy, my first thoughts would be Abby taking a brainbuster or Abby taking monkey flips. I'm not sure I could name a single bump of note in Brody's entire career. Abby was portrayed as an even wilder version of Brody than Brody and yet I can recall many instances where he at least looked vulnerable. Not that many with Brody. But more importantly saying "X does this more than Y, so how can you say X is bad" is a shit argument. In this instance it doesn't work because while the characters were fairly similar, Brody was a guy that was often booked in "straight" matches or matches that required more traditional heat segments, comebacks, et. I can't imagine anybody disputing that, and I think it follows that if you believe that argument to be true you also must acknowledge that there are different things different sorts of matches require. Not bumping at all in a straight tag match is a lot worse than not bumping at all in an all around the arena brawl. I assume this would be a universal point of agreement. And in this instance that point is relevant. The problem with argument in parentheses is that's it's not true. For starters no one really touts Khali and in fact I've seen guys play "chop down Khali" with Khali "selling" many times. Secondly Mark Henry shows FAR more vulnerability and bumps far more than Brody to the point where I can't see how any one could make an objective argument to the contrary. Now I'll listen to it if someone can provide the matches. But someone is going to have to do that. Because just off the top of my head I can point to stuff readily available from Henry. Hell the Cage Match last year with Bryan was built in large part around Henry's injured leg. Show me Brody doing anything even close to that. Brody would often sell the initial impact of a move, but was generally horrid at long term selling and was not good at changes his speeds either. That's one thing you will often see out of bigger men who are still working on top in a match after taking a big spot or shot. They'll stay on offense, but they will sell the damage and the tempo will change. It's the notion that the offense of their opponent is dangerous and can have some sort of impact that the vast majority of Brody matches lack. Brody has pretty good big offensive spots for a guy his size. He does not have very good strikes for a guy his size. Especially a guy with his gimmick. Baba is a guy who's biggest strength was psychology. He also wasn't a guy working a brawling gimmick. We can argue "well strikes looked way better than Baba's" but that's a bit like saying "Tiger Mask offense was a lot faster/flashier than Fujinami's." It may be true but it tells us little about who the better worker was or the relative weaknesses and problems of TM relative to Fujinami or other guys working a style more similar to his. How do Brody's strikes compare to Lawler, Dundee, Dutch, Savage, Tommy Rich, Buzz Sawyer, Dibiase, Blackwell, et, et.? Saying he had better strikes than guys who's strikes you think sucked tells us even less than "well he doesn't compare well to Stan Hansen."

We are taking him in the context of his time. The denizens of this forum have probably watched more wrestling from that era on average than virtually any other forum on the web. It's Brody's direct comps to guys from those places at those times that makes him look so bad. I'm not kidding. Comp him to Blackwell as a brawler - it's not a favorable comp for Brody. To Hansen? Not a good comp. Tommy Rich? Not a good comp. Abby (which I'll get to more in a second when I respond to Jingus) - well you could maybe argue Brody's best matches were better, but if you asked me whether or not I would rather watch a "best of Abby" comp or a "best of Brody" comp it would take me about a tenth of a second to pick Abby.

It's just not to everyone's tastes. I have more a problem for the hate Chuck Taylor is getting in this thread though. How can you hate a guy that makes children in the audience cry and is just otherwise an awesome douchebag heel. Though I admit, the weirder and wackier they get with shit during the matches the more I love it. The match where UMB and Taylor started brawling through a playground and Taylor came down the slide and got chopped was hilarious. But then I love the weird shit that DDT does like the campground brawls and ladders/dogs winning championships. Trying to think of five guys I hate more than Chuck Taylor. Not sure it's possible

I can't watch a show full of that stuff. I will grant that it has it's place and an audience and I am a guy who has been on record as praising Chikara - despite how much I dislike it - as the only indy that is really thriving and expanding in the depressed market. I REALLY hate the alternating between "serious business" and hipster comedy jam stuff the most. I also hate the fact that the comedic spots are meant just as pure "lol isn't this so funny!" stuff instead of ways to build heat or make heels like asses which is how comedy spots are typically used in the wrestling I enjoy.

1. "No Class" Bobby Bass - If you listen to the Wrestling Culture Podcast you know that I tend to think this guy is the best guy that never got a real break anywhere. He's a guy I enjoy so much I will scour the internet and random dvds I have for the feint hope of him popping up on the jobber end of a competitive squash match. Totally sleezy looking guy, who is great on the mic and extremely entertaining in the ring. Everything he does is theatric but in an engaging way as he will jaw with the crowd, scream in pain from holds, take wild big bumps where the impact is milked to death, taunt the shit out of his opponents, et. Him waiving an American flag in the face of Sunny War Cloud during ring introductions is probably the funniest thing I've ever seen in wrestling. There is no one I would rather find a random match of moe. 2. Jim Breaks - I had allowed my love of WoS to fall by the wayside, but watching some recently I was reminded how much I love Breaks and I now want to watch ever match of his committed to tape. I know some people seem to think he's a one trick pony, but I don't really buy it. Yes he has a schtick but he incorporates it well into his matches and things always seem a bit different depending on opponent. Viewing his gimmick as being just the crybaby guy is short sighted. I see him more as the legitimately good athlete who thinks he's a lot better than he actually is and acts like an asshole when someone is up to the challenge. I love all of his little touches and if we were ever to do another GOAT poll I could see him doing really well on my ballot. 3. "Crusher" Jerry Blackwell - When I first started researching and looking into Blackwell I just saw him as a good worker, who was really over and didn't seem to be getting his historical due. Now I see him as an all time great wrestler, good in virtually any environment, against virtually anybody. Despite the fact that his peak run was from a relatively short period of time, if you pay attention to youtube you'll see more and more Blackwell trickling out. He is obviously a major presence on the AWA Set and I think he acquits himself well there as both a brilliant babyface and a big bumping maniac heel. But watching smaller samples online recently - little stuff like undercard WWF matches, tag team matches from Japan, a match v. Harley Race from St. Louis, the really good tv match v. Mulligan from MACW in 78, garbage tape matches, et. - you can see this is a guy who has much more in the vault than we originally thought. I could honestly see him as a top forty guy of all time. 4. Negro Casas - Very possibly the best wrestler in the world right this second and a guy who I have really enjoyed immensely as I have gotten more and more into Lucha over the last few years. Casas is possibly my all time favorite douchebag, as his jig dancing and shit eating grins are about as "I wanna fucking murder this guy" inducing as you can get. Like all the great Lucha workers he is someone who can brawl with the best of them, work really smooth athletic spots, and work give and take with the crowd. I also think Casas is about as good at carrying weak or poor workers as anyone I have ever seen. One of the more charismatic wrestlers I've ever seen and someone who even now will surprise you with some incredibly sharp exchange or spot you wouldn't necessarily expect. Can't wait for the Guerrero Maya Jr. match that takes place today to show up on tape. It's him or Sami Callihan for best in the world this year IMO. 5. Kantaro Hoshino - The ultimate of the "lost great workers" finds. The NJPW Set is my favorite of the 80's sets and Hoshino is a huge part of the reason why. What is not to love about a guy that looks like the hybrid, mutant child of Elvin from the Cosby Show and Gran Hamada, running around and throwing these short, nasty, cruel intentions little punches while holding his body in this crazed T-Rexish posture? The guy was great in every possible setting you could have put him in on that set, whether it be working comedy spots with Andre, nasty old bastard beating down Liger, or holding up his end with spots/energy in one of the elimination tags. Despite being such a small guy he was totally credible against anyone and capable of playing any number of roles. I will still occasionally youtube him and see what else is out there and I've never seen him with a performance that I thought was less than fun. Really a ton of guys could make this list. Honorable mentions off hand would be Buddy Rose, Greg Valentine, Terry Funk, Barry Windham and Virus

I am pinning this thread for now. I want to see everyone who post here contribute. Not that it's mandatory, but it would be nice. I'll post my five (if not ten) later.

Austin's little rapid fire punches from a mount really did look bad more often than not. They did not look as bad as the average Brody shot, let alone the average Brody "bump." Don't even get me started on when Brody had to eat offense from someone and he would do anything possible evade something bordering on contact.

Brody has the weakest strikes I can think of of anyone known for being a "great brawler." By a wide margin.

Dreamer pulls out a remote in both matches. In the first match that do the awful slow mo shit among other things. On Night Two he hits the pause button on the Young Bucks. It's idiotic.

King of Trios Night Two Quasi-Review Team JWP v. F.I.S.T. Holy hell this was a complete pile of shit. I hate Taylor and Gargano as a rule, but man alive Icarus looked like the worst wrestler in the world here. Just a total turd. I mean he is wearing the ironic "Best In The World" t-shirt as part of his slowly shedding clothes gimmick (which I don't get - sure his tattoo sucks, but this is wrestling, land of shitty tattoos) and a part of me could imagine Chikara running some awful gimmick where a guy is "supposed to suck" like all those Shawn Michaels uberfans claimed was the point of his character back in late 08/early 09. But I don't really buy it. At one point he throws one of the worst looking elbows I've ever seen, he takes a Lance Storm level "bumping seconds before contact" flatback bump, everything he does looks weak, he can't even base well for the JWP ladies. He's just awful. Really no one in this was good, outside of maybe the JWP woman working the powerlady gimmick (her name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment). The Asai spot was comically bad from set up to finish, and pretty much killed an already dead match to me. When Chuck Taylor is almost certainly the second best guy in a match with six people you know I'm not going to be a fan. Mr. Touchdown v. 1-2-3 Kid I like the Mr. TD gimmick more than virtually any other gimmick in Chikara, but this was pointless and sucked. Not sure if Kid's post match "sorry this sucked speech" was a way of covering for an obviously shit match or what, but that didn't help matters. Only goes about four minutes, nothing happens and neither guy looked good. The Batari v. The Spectral Envoy I imagine this was the sort of match where if I gave a fuck about the promotion or the teams back history I might have enjoyed this on some level. As it was this wasn't very good. Hallowicked looked pretty good at points, but at other points the match was just a string of really weak and sloppily executed offensive, albeit pieced together in a fairly well structured way. Finishing spot looked fairly sick, but that may have been artificially enhanced by the amount of otherwise weak stuff in the match. The Batari looked far better on night one. Ebessan/Takoyakida v. Green Ant/Fire Ant God awful comedy match. I am actually a fan of comedy in wrestling, but not when it is done this way. The Osaka guys are all schtick. I also hate the idea of guys doing an "LOL" match with the occasional "serious business" spots like crazy dives, postings and foreign object spots. One of the worst matches I've seen all year, but I could say that about several matches from the first two nights so far. The Sendai Girls v. Manami Toyota/Jigsaw/Mike Quackenbush This was sloppy as hell in parts and some of the set ups for the big spots were contrived even by indy standards (the Toyota dive especially saw the Sendai team just cluster together for no reason on the floor and wait for her to leap). On the other hand this was the first match on this show that had lots of good stuff too. On some level this reminded me of a Raw or SD six-man where you have someone like Kofi in their throwing awful looking shit, but the other guys hold things together well enough. This also had the decent psych element of Quack going for the palm strike and eventually delivering an accidental strike to Jigsaw that saw Quack end up isolated and eating a ton of stuff to lose the fall. Toyota's whole bit being "lady who does a dropkick a lot" is kind of depressing and this needed more Jigsaw, but I really enjoyed the opening Satomura/Quack exchange for what it was and the weak execution was not universal enough for me to call it a poor match. Not great, maybe not even good, but perfectly watchable. Sugar Dunkerton v. Tatanka Yeah this went on too long and yeah Tatanka got gassed early but it was clear that the worst two parts of this match were Chuck Taylor's god awful commentary and Dunkerton's selling. I assume Dunkerton's gimmick is supposed to be some hip parody of racial stereotype gimmicks, but then you've got Taylor making shitty jokes about how black he is on commentary and it just feels like I'm watching a promotion booked by David Duke. Dunkerton had a couple of really nice punches on offense, but other than that I thought every good thing in this match was due to Tatanka. He didn't look great but his chops were stiff, his offense was well executed and was pretty good playing off the crowd. If this had gone ten minutes instead of fifteen it might have been a good match. Particularly if I had watched it on mute. Mike Bennett/Young Bucks v. Too Cold Scorpio/Jerry Lynn/Tommy Dreamer This was a very enjoyable, fun and quality match, up until the god awful remote control spot right before the finish. I will never stop hating that stupid shit, which once again is FAR worse in a match that is being sold as a big deal, where there was a long heat segment and where guys are working like they completely hate each other. Setting aside that pretty massive black mark, this is the sort of match that you would hope for out of a trios tourney like this. The heel team worked well as over confident, brash, young assholes and the old men showed up with their A game. Scorp seriously looks like he would be a top ten in the world guy if he was a full timer as his big spots are still really smooth and even more impressive than the stuff the Bucks busted out. He also worked really well from underneath as the FIP. Lots of fun counters in this throughout actually. Dreamer worked really hard and looked good, to the point where I thought it was clear the worst guy in the match was Lynn. Big wipe out sequence was fun and there were some good near falls. The fucking remote control spot keeps me from calling this a really good match, but it was still well worth watching. Eddie Kingston v. Tadasuke There were part of this that were a bit "your turn, my turn"ish for my taste, but over all this was a really good match and easily the best match of the first two nights. It's kind of funny that Kingston who is the ultimate serious business wrestler is the champ of Chikara. Tadasuke is a guy I'm barely familiar with at all, but he looked perfectly respectable in this. Some really great punches in particular, including one that led to a great near fall. I liked all the early spots with each guy working basic holds feeling out each other and Kingston's dive being the tide turning moment that ended up leading him going on the defensive worked well. The story of the match with Kingston's neck getting worked over and his arm going numb as a result was really well done. Eddie is great selling a body part and I enjoyed the touch that he couldn't even execute a true cover or some of his bigger offense because of the numbness. Also really thought the bit with him dropping the strap and trying to loosen his wrist tape to regain feeling was a great touch. Fun finishing stretch, with some big bombs and Eddie winning with a sweet combination that absolutely should have been (and was) the death blow for Tadasuke. One of the better "super indy" matches I've seen from 2012.