Dylan Waco

What's funny is that I always find Jumbo unbelievably bland, even when he's trying to fire up. In any event a lot of the Tenryu I really like is post-90. I think the awesome singles match with Hashimoto is on youtube to take point to one example of a Tenryu match I absolutely love.

What 90's Tenryu have you seen?

To be fair Bock was a really good athlete who could cut a quick pace up until he quit as a full timer in 87...and I have seen 70's Bock that is not as "go, go, go" as that Verne match

I don't mind people pretending Jumbo is the best wrestler ever and I don't mind being called a fool because I probably am one. But don't EVER wish me a Merry Christmas you bastard.

I would never say Jumbo isn't a great wrestler. Ever. I just instinctively dislike something about him. He's one of the only guys I've ever seen where I can watch a match, know it's good and still consider it an absolute chore to get through. It's one of the reasons that while I liked the AJPW Set, I found the NJPW Set much easier to get through and enjoyed it more.

Just to be clear, the first person that says "Buddy Rose" gets banned.

This might come off as a troll of SLL, but I really don't like Jimmy Garvin. He had some good matches on the Texas Set, but even some of his stuff that I expected to be better felt really flat and the motherfucker can drag a match to a screeching halt quicker than just about anyone I've ever seen in wrestling.

If we are going this route, I could and have said basically the same thing about Jumbo. Great wrestler that I am totally disinterested in on any level.

I don't like Credible at all, but he really did try hard almost every night out. He's a guy I expected to suck a lot worse than he did in the ring, though as a character he was useless. Really the guy I hate the most is his partner Lance Storm. Just an awful, awful wrestler.

Actually I just thought of another and I feel bad saying it because he was always an interesting interview. But I really think Bad News Coage/Brown sucked. He was a good promo at times, at other times middling. As a wrestler he was boring as shit and often unconvincing for a guy who was a legit badass.

I agree that Casas hasn't been put under the microscope because frankly virtually none of the Lucha greats have. To be honest the only person I ever see be critical of the guys usually regarded as strong Lucha workers is you. I don't mean that as an attack on you either. In fact one of the things I enjoy about your contributions to this board is that on things like Lucha and Euro wrestling you have an eye that is both critical and appreciative. I've probably seen a lot less Casas than you have. What I have seen has been overwhelmingly strong, to the point where I don't know that I have ever seen a performance of his that I didn't enjoy on some level. That's not to say such a thing doesn't exist. In fact I'm sue it does. I just haven't gotten there yet. Or the relative freshness of Lucha is still something that makes me blind to the weaknesses. Or both. Probably both. At the moment I have Casas as my highest rated Lucha worker. I think in some ways Dandy and Satanico are better and this may be a case where implied longevity for Casas is elevating him to a slot higher than he should be. I love Panther, but I see him as a slight step down. I like Santo a lot more than you do but wouldn't rate him ahead of either of those four offhand, though if I ever buy Will's comp I could be persuaded. Not sure who else would even be in the discussion after those guys. Agree on Davey Boy in Europe. I love Breaks, but he is fresh(er at least). I wouldn't argue he's better than Flair for a multitude of reasons, though Breaks does strike me as a guy that could have been great in the States and I can even envision him being a very good touring champion. I would say that peak Breaks is right up there with my favorite peak runs. He's not as impressive as Buddy Rose to me or El Dandy, but there aren't many others I'd rate clearly above him during the period/nights when he was really "on."

The nature of Joint makes it tough to say and I'm not sure All Star was ever successful enough to merit someone's inclusion, though I could be wrong there. I would say that I think Norman Morrell is an interesting figure, though I'm not sure he has enough there to be a real hall of famer.

Adonis is fucking bizarre in that I go back and fourth on him. I think he really dragged Murdoch down in North/South, but I like him a lot in East/West with a vastly inferior partner. I love his stuff v. Rose, but then Buddy is god and could have a good match with literally anyone. Fat Adonis is someone I have actually enjoyed more than I would have guessed, but I don't think he has many great performances from that period. He is a guy I would have said was a for sure top hundred wrestler ten years ago, but now I really doubt he'd get there.

I actually agree with this, even though I sort of accidentally ended up making a "hard sell" for Casas in my initial post. I do think we need to be careful about those sort of things, which is kind of the purpose for the thread. We hear about how Flair has unbelievably longevity often - but we can't really document it. Your point about him being at the absolute highest level for the longest consecutive stretch is an interesting way of looking at longevity and maybe a better way to look at it. I'd rather people focus longevity talk on things like that than pointing out that Flair was active for a long time and had a good match here or there through 2008. With a guy like Casas or Jim Breaks, the sampling size is really unfortunate. In the last several years a lot of Casas has made tape and even in his old age he's an incredible wrestler near the very best in the world (probably my pick for WOTY this year for those who care). But there are gaps and period where we have very little. Breaks got more tv appearances than almost any Brit in history, but it's still a smattering of matches compared to what we have from his American counterparts. Yes they are spanned over a pretty lengthy period of time but it's a very, very incomplete picture and he is a guy who won't benefit from more found footage because non exists. In any event my point about Casas was more or less that he is a guy who has a long run of greatness, much like Flair. I.E. Flair is not really "unique" in that regard. He may be unique in the regard you mention - perhaps. I'd have to think about it more, though even on the casual level I can already see possible arguments for other guys including some that might be dismissed because they weren't traveling the road like Flair.

Exempting the low hanging fruit, I completely agree with Pete on Koshinaka. I've been told his 90's work is better, but dear god he was a pile of shit on the 80's NJPW Set and the few 90's matches of his I've watched since have done nothing to redeem him in any meaningful way. I also really don't like Takada at this point. There are matches he is in that I enjoy and even performances of his that I think are good, but as a whole I find him boring as fuck and for guys with the rep of "great" he's easily the one where I have the biggest disconnect.

"Longevity" is a notion that gets tossed out a lot in wrestling discussions on the web in both discussions of stardom (see the Sting thread at Classics) and in ring performance (see...well every thread ever on in ring performance). I was thinking about Ric Flair today and the debate that has sort of jumped around from thread to thread on the board about him over the last several months and it struck me that in terms of available footage the longevity of Flair as a high end worker is actually lateral to or LOWER than a lot of guys who we would generally presume have "less" longevity than him. Unless I'm forgetting something the earliest we can really get a decent sampling of Flair stuff is around 81/82ish. Depending on how generous you want to be, most people on this board - including many of his bigger supporters - would probably give him through 94 at the longest as a truly "high end" guy. Perhaps I'm wrong in that assumption and I think he had some matches/periods after that that were very good (I like a lot of 05/06 Flair for example), but generally speaking that's his "run" that we can document in a meaningful way. That's a lot of time as a high end guy and we have a ton more televised/taped high end Flair matches than with virtually anyone, but my point is that the "run" of time for high end Flair that we can actually document is really not THAT extraordinary. For example Negro Casas has DOUBLE that (albeit with a much smaller sampling of footage). To some degree the same could be said for Tenryu. Hansen is basically lateral with Flair. You could easily argue that a guy like Dundee has a longer "run" and even guys who are seen as having had brief/unfulfilled potential relative to others like Eddie or Barry Windham you could easily argue aren't far behind. My point here is not to diminish Flair. It's not his fault that we don't have much 70's MACW in full and what is out there hasn't really been reviewed much or talked about a lot. My point is that I wonder A. to what extent "longevity" has just become a meaningless talking point B. what length of time really qualifies as a substantially "long run" and C. whether or not we generally overrate "longevity" as a trait when looking at both workers and stars. Perhaps I'm just being an obtuse, nitpicky, bastard, but I would be interested to hear others thoughts.

Spin off question for Will. Where would you rate Murdoch all time? I assume you'd have him no worse than top forty, but does he make a top twenty?

I think Hansen is a guy who some would consider as a GOATC (I wouldn't see him as an outlandish pick and he'd make my top ten for sure) and while I think he was more varied than people give him credit for, I would guess the general perception of Hansen is that he is less versatile than anyone mentioned so far. Just throwing this out there as a guy who I would argue IS on that tip top level, but where the general consensus is that he's a tremendously great one trick pony.

I thought Flair sort of did reinvent himself for a while in the WWE as an American Onita and it led to some good matches after a period where I legitimately thought he was one of the two or three worst wrestlers on earth.

Murdoch didn't invent that move, but man I do love that move and he was great in those elimination matches. Have you seen the Blackwell v. Murdoch match from the Cornette tapes Will? It's by no means great, but it's a solid arena match built around a build to a body slam.

My recollection is that there were NJPW and Mid-South handhelds Phil, Will, Childs, et. watched and they could find nothing approaching that level of lazy.

I was upset about the lack of Breaks and Saint, but what are you gonna do with a character driven doc?

It's actually not his finisher. I'm sure it's happened, but offhand I can't recall any case where he pinned someone immediately after it.

I have said this before, but you don't have to think Dick is the best wrestler on earth or even a top tier guy to disagree with the "Murdoch was lazy" stuff. I agree with Matt - I've never seen a match where I thought is performance was lazy.

Possibly the funniest thing I've ever read on this board that wasn't in a tomk TNA workrate report.