Dylan Waco

http://www.puroresu.com/newjapan/results/nj198405iwgp.html This page has his 84 results. He was in for the tourney. He has a couple of non-tourney main event tags, but I don't know if any are in markets/arenas that would merit inclusion for this

I couldn't care less about the 10k metric for the purposes of this. I care about relevance of arena/market size. Yokohama, Osaka and Nagayo clearly fit, but unless I missed something I don't think he headlined shows any of those places on the tour you just ran down other than Yokohama. I'm open to arguments for other towns and the sumo/boxing hall buildings being used is a good thing to look out for, especially when I'm expanding things into the "second tier."

I've added the Yokohama result. I am going to leave this open before I post it elsewhere for another day or two. If OJ or John want to look at his 84 Japan tour and see if anything there justifies inclusion please let me know. I've excluded it up until now, but if there is a real argument that something should be included I want to make sure it makes the cut.

I'm going to count Yokohama for sure. The others feel like stretches for the the major market/major arena metric, but will definitely be on the second category I'm starting on this week. Thanks again for doing this.

OJ, this is great stuff. I plan on posting the bigger thing I wrote above at Classics and at the Figure Four board this week, but I want to wait until you get all these results up. Please let me know if you think any of them should qualify for the "major market" list.

If people were scoffing at my KENTA fears I see no way in hell Low Ki can get in.

If you've got them I'd love to have them.

Massive disappointment is Sting. Punk is something else. I wouldn't vote for him at this point, but his best matches are all time great level, as are his best angles. If you are someone who puts a lot of weight on the "artistic end" I could see you seeing him as a fairly good candidate, particularly by modern standards. I don't really at this point. Five more years like the last eighteen months? Maybe. Especially if he has a few Mania main events.

Now that Ken Patera has been placed back on the Observer HoF ballot, I wanted to do something to present a more focused case for him as a candidate. Eventually I will get around to a Gordy List, but first I wanted to do something coupled with the much larger data dump I’ve already done that would give people an idea of Patera’s degree of stardom, relative value to various promotions, positioning on cards, relevance, et. Ultimately I’ve decided to do three different things. Firstly I’m going to list the name of each major title match in his career, including opponent and location if possible. I imagine it is possible people may have things to add or clarifications to make and they are welcome. I should clarify that by major title I mean exclusively titles that were or are considered “World” titles or absolute top tier championships for The United States and Japan. This means the WW(W)F, AWA, NWA, PWF and NWF titles were included. Top singles belts specific to territories like Memphis or Georgia were not included. Neither were valuable secondary titles or tag titles. The second thing I’ve decided to do is to note all the main events Patera had in major markets and/or top arenas of the territories he worked in over the years. This was a much more difficult task because depending on how you want to use the term “main event,” “major market,” or “major arena” you could come up with a ton of different numbers. Precisely because of the fact that I have a point of view coming in, I decided to try and be as conservative as possible. For cities/markets/arenas I stuck to A. obvious major markets and wrestling venues (Kiel, MSG, Spectrum, et.) B. top towns of a particular territory (Honolulu, Tulsa) or C. towns that are considered “wrestling towns” or that I specifically had people argue should be included as representatives of largish markets (in the case of “wrestling town” the only inclusion that arguably would not get on the list otherwise was Charlotte – suggested towns included Columbus, Winston-Salem, Richmond and Norfolk). I left several arguable towns out of the equation including Raleigh, Roanoke (one of the larger arenas in MACW from what I can tell/have heard), Omaha, Las Vegas, Springfield (a pretty large venue for the WWF), Green Bay and any smaller shows held in major metro areas. For main events the criteria was equally tricky. Because the data dump is already included in the thread, I did not recopy and paste every card in question. Instead I made note of the total number of main events Patera had in a town, followed by a parenthetical listing of possible qualifiers. Specifically, every tag match is noted, every time Patera worked for a World/top title is noted, every WWF expansion era match is noted and every time there is a possible “co-main event” it is noted. The co-main event issue was tough, but due to the nature of WWF booking during the era it was virtually unavoidable as there are lots of shows where you will see things like Bruno v. Patera in a Texas Death match on the same card as a Backlund or Graham title defense against someone like Tony Garea or Afa. Sometimes it’s even “closer” than that in terms of star v. star and harder to call (for example Bruno v. Sarge and Patera v. Pedro for the I-C title on a Backlundless show in 1980). Rather than pretend that Patera should get all or none of the credit, I erred on the side of listing the other possible major drawing card on the show. It is worth noting that I applied this rule to the WWF, but barely at all to any other promotion where Patera worked. I did not apply it at all in Toronto (other than WWF expansion era matches) or St. Louis where he was often in co-main event slots. I did not apply it at all in Mid-Atlantic. I applied it maybe once or twice in the case of Memphis on loaded shows where he would work Lawler in title matches. I did not apply it all in the case of Georgia, Houston, Hawaii, Tulsa or Dallas. Most importantly I applied it only a few times in the case of the AWA – a place that was not terribly dissimilar from the WWF in terms of having cards with possible double (and even sometimes triple) main events – and a place where Patera’s numbers could have been heavily padded if I had applied anything close to the same standard I used with the WWF. I also did not include one of his three major title shots in Japan because it did not take place in a major arena (nor did I include any of his matches from his tour in 84 which was part of a tournament for NJPW). The final thing I have decided to do is a follow up post building on the major market/main event model. For that “metric” I will try to include all Patera main events in secondary markets (the towns I listed as exclusions above and perhaps a few others), all title shots and defenses of major secondary/tag titles, and all previously excluded “semi-main events” in major towns (for example Patera v. Andre in Toronto or Patera v. Dusty at the first SuperBowl of Wrestling card). I have not started on this yet and expect that it will be even more time consuming than the major market/main event model. Still I feel it is important and I don’t think a person can make a fair assessment of Patera’s career without it. For the purposes of this post I will include the first two pieces of the project, while acknowledging that it may be sometime before the third becomes available. All data is drawn directly from the data dump already amassed in this thread and credit should be given to Clawmaster, Graham Cawthon (thehistoryofwwe.com), Mike Mooneyham, Gary Will, The Mid-Atlantic Gateway, Puroresu.com, John Williams, Khawk, Goodhelmet, Loss, Bix, Dave Musgrave, Kris Zellner, Ohtani's Jacket, Prowrestlinghistory.com, GeorgiaWrestlingHistory.com, George Schire and anyone else who has provided me with research tools, results, suggestions, criticisms, or merely served as a listening board for my possibly somewhat whacky Patera related ranting. Major/World Title Matches: Patera had five known NWA World Title matches, in four different territories, against four different champions. He challenged Terry Funk in Tulsa, Harley Race in Toronto and St. Louis, Dusty Rhodes in The Omni in Atlanta and Ric Flair in St. Louis. The first of these matches was in 1976, the last in 1982. Patera had thirty-seven known shots at the WW(W)F World Title, against four different champions, with all but a handful of the matches occurring in major markets/arenas. He challenged Billy Graham once (small spot show in Portland, Maine), Hulk Hogan three times (Denver, Miami and the Philly Spectrum) , Bruno five times (three times in MSG, once in the Boston Garden and once at the Nassau Coliseum) and Bob Backlund twenty-eight times (four times in MSG, four times in the Boston Garden, three times in Landover, three times in Baltimore, two times in Toronto, two times at the Philly Spectrum, two times in Pittsburgh, two times in Springfield including a Cage Match, one time in Greensboro, one time in Providence, one time in St. Louis, one time in Albany, one time in New Haven and one time in Portland, Maine). The first of these matches was in Jan of 1977, the last in June of 1985. Patera had one AWA title match against Otto Wanz in Green Bay in 1982. Patera wrestled for the NWF title in New Japan Pro Wrestling twice, both times an opponent of Antonio Inoki (1980 and 1981). Patera wrestled Giant Baba in a PWF Title in All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1977. Major Market/Arena Main Events 199 total – 100 singles, 99 tag team Yokohama - 1 main event (tag match) Budokan Hall – 1 main event (NWF title match v. Inoki, same show as Backlund v. Hansen) Osaka Prefectre Hall - 1 main event (NWF title match v. Inoki) Calgary – 1 main event (1 tag match WWF expansion era) Honolulu – 1 main event (tag match) Indianapolis – 1 main event (tag match WWF expansion era) Miami – 1 main event (WWF title match v. Hogan) Cleveland – 2 main events (2 tag matches, both WWF expansion era) Columbus (Ohio) – 2 main events (2 tag matches, both WWF expansion era) Charlotte – 2 main events (1 tag match) Houston – 2 main events Richmond – 2 main events Montreal – 3 main events (2 tag matches) Edmonton – 2 main events (2 tag matches, both from WWF expansion era, one with Tito/Greg also on card) Vancover – 2 main events (2 tag matches, both from WWF expansion era, one with Tito/Greg also on card) Atlanta (Omni) – 2 main events (1 tag match during WWF expansion era with an awful house, 1 NWA title match v. Dusty Rhodes) Nassau Coliseum – 2 main events (1 WWF expansion era tag match, 1 WWF title match v. Bruno) Los Angeles – 2 main events (2 tag matches both during WWF expansion era, one with a poor house, the other with 15k plus) Detroit – 2 main events (2 tag matches both during WWF expansion era, both sellouts including first Cobo Hall sellout in over a decade, first show also had Tito/Greg for I-C title) San Diego – 3 main events (3 tag matches all from WWF expansion era) Greensboro/Winston-Salem – 3 main events (1 tag match) Norfolk (Metro) – 3 main events (1 tag match) Providence – 4 main events (1 tag match, one title match v. Backlund) Denver – 6 main events (3 tag matches, one WWF title match v. Hulk Hogan) Winnipeg – 6 main events (6 tag matches, two on shows with Andre The Giant/Battle Royals) Baltimore – 6 main events (one WWF expansion era tag, 3 WWF title matches v. Backlund) Landover/Capital Centre – 6 main events (one WWF expansion era tag, 3 WWF title matches v. Backlund, one co-main event v. Atlas with Monsoon as ref on same show as Backlund title defense v. Afa) Pittsburgh – 7 main events (3 WWF title matches v. Backlund one as co-main with Bruno/Larry, one WWF expansion era co-main v. Andre on show with Sammartino’s v. Orndorff/Heenan and JYD v. Piper, one double main v. Andre on show with Dusty/Graham, one double main v. Bruno on show with Backlund v. Sarge title match) Dallas/Ft. Worth – 7 main events (5 tag matches, one during WWF expansion) Chicago – 7 main events (5 tag matches, one on a show with Andre/Battle Royal, another on heavily gimmicked all tag match show, two matches from WWF expansion era) St. Paul/Minneapolis – 8 main events (6 tag matches) Bay Area – 8 main events (8 tag matches one on show with Battle Royal, one from WWF expansion era) Salt Lake City – 8 main events (8 tag matches, one on show with Battle Royal) New York (MSG) – 10 main events (4 title matches v. Backlund, 3 title matches v. Bruno, Texas Death Match v. Bruno on same show as Graham v. Putski title match, I-C title match v. Pedro on same show as Bruno v. Sarge, WWF expansion era match v. Andre on triple main event show with Tito/Greg for I-C Title and Piper/Orton v. Snuka/JYD) Toronto (MLG) – 10 main events (3 tag matches all during WWF expansion era one in Cage as co-main w/ Tito v. Greg, the other as co-main with Snuka/Orton. One WWF expansion era singles main event w/tag title co-main. 1 NWA title match v. Harley Race, 2 WWF title matches v. Bob Backlund) Boston Garden – 10 main events (2 tag matches during WWF expansion era one w/Tito v. Greg co-main, 4 WWF title matches v. Backlund, 1 WWF title match v. Bruno, 1 Texas Death Match v. Bruno on same show as Graham v. Strongbow Cage title match) Philly Spectrum – 10 main events (3 WWF title matches, 2 v. Backlund and one v. Hogan during WWF expansion era. Two shows headlined v. Bruno with co-main event Graham title defenses v. Strongbow and Garea also on the show. Two shows headlined v. Bruno with co-main event Backlund title defenses v. Zbyszko and Arion. One co-main event I-C title defense v. Monsoon with Zbyszko v. Putski Texas Death Match) Memphis (MSC) – 10 main events (3 tag matches) Milwaukee – 11 main events (10 tag matches, one singles main event v. Hogan in the AWA on the same show with a Battle Royal) Tulsa – 11 main events (6 tag matches, one NWA title match v. Terry Funk) St. Louis (Kiel) – 11 main events (one tag WWF expansion era, 3 NWA title matches two v. Harley Race, the other v. Ric Flair)

Bruce Mitchell was on the podcast with Bryan and Dave talking HoF. Interesting listen. He took Larry to task in the nicest possible way for his anti-tag team stuff and was about as hard on Sting as I've heard anyone be. Dave's shitting on Bryan for trying to play the "what if" card was great. I also thought the discussion about modern candidates was interesting with Bruce arguing (correctly in my view) that if there are no candidates coming down the pike who meet the established criteria then no one new should get in and Dave seeming to take the older Todd Martin "affirmative action" argument whereby you have to judge by the era and it would look silly to have only one or two guys in from the modern landscape. Other stuff of note Dave argued the old "Edge carried a promotion" thing again unchallenged. That's something that NEEDS to be challenged. If you want to make an argument for Edge make it based on what he did fine. But he never "carried a promotion" anymore than the RnR's carried a promotion because they headlined all of the Crockett B Shows for a couple of years. Speaking of the RnR's Bruce argued against them and in doing so argued that a negative was that SMW ultimately crashed with them on top....except it didn't. The RnR's split when Morton and Smothers gf's couldn't get along and Ricky left the promotion on the night of the biggest show in the promotions history. During the months of the hardest decline Morton was actually working for an opposition group in the area that cut commercials during SMW tv. I wouldn't argue that the loss of the RnR's is what put SMW out of business, but it's unquestionably that their absence left a huge void and that the steep part of the companies decline hit when Morton left the promotion. Also worth noting that Bruce's argument for Koloff was very similar to my argument for Patera. I wouldn't say that Patera was as good or better as a candidate (though I don't think that's impossible either) but the case he laid out was built around the same premise.

It doesn't seem like it would be hard to find or use this method but it would be. Even bigger arenas like the Philly Spectrum often don't have attendance listed for card results. Then you have the issue of timing - some guys take over from one hot hand and continue a streak of success. I don't hold it against them as being able to carry the ball is important. But if there is no gap between point A and point B what conclusion can you draw? Then there is the issue of card support. If a venue is used to getting title shots on every card and often draws 21k, but has no title shot and/or less star power on a show and draws 19k do you hold that as a "negative" against the main event? What if a promotion is running split crews one day and does good but not great attendance in both cities? What if an undercard is terrible on one show and good on another. What if the "main event" is a title match, but the hottest, most well promoted feud coming into the show is second or even third from the top (this is not uncommon in the WWF or AWA IMO and very possibly other places as well)? I'm not saying it's impossible to draw any conclusions from that sort of research but it usually will not be anything close to concrete proof unless you find a way to adjust for those other things. Yes there are guys like Londos who would CLEARLY spike cards dramatically when he came in and the gates/attendance would fire down when he was gone only to come back up for his next appearance. But the number of guys out there like that is not very large or at least I wouldn't expect it to be. My guess is that there would be a lot more "success carrying the ball" types, than "game changing" types, particularly if you are talking over the course of a full career. This is why some historians have started to point to things like world title shots and being in demand all over as good metrics of drawing power. It's not "real" data, but generally speaking if a guy is in demand all over - particularly in the biggest, hottest promotions - he's probably a guy who has a reputation of being "hot" at the box office to one degree or another. My view is that you need all of the above to really draw hard conclusions and different guys have different angles which you would look at and apply things.

I'd be shocked if Ted wasn't on that list above Patera. He benefits from the fact that he was around during the WWF boom period/after expansion. I think Kane's appearance so high on the list is telling.

I can tell you from going over the AWA results, that Andre coming in was a guaranteed spike in attendance every time.

It's a faulty metric I like Matt and think his research has value. But he has never come out and published all of his research. And the 10k plus metric has obvious flaws. Having said that I don't think it's out of the question to put peak Sheik in the same league as peak Bruno. It was an act that was hot in some big markets. My immediate thought would be similar to yours - "this can't be right, Bruno has to be the bigger draw by a wide margin" - but that may have as much to do with personal bias/how the business has evolved as anything else.

That's a faulty metric for obvious reasons. I still think Flair is the "safe" number two, but you've got a top fifteen with Big Bossman, Big John Studd and Orndorff but no JYD or Lawler.

This is really awesome. Definitely one of the "holy grail's" that I had assumed would never emerge.

Not so sure about that. For example Flair drew much better out of The Carolinas than Lawler did out of Memphis. Of course Flair was the NWA World Champion and was promoted as a huge deal in many of these places. Lawler's job was to draw good/great numbers in the same building every week - which was not Backlund's job because they didn't run their "primary" buildings weekly. JYD turned around a totally dead city and probably drew more fans in a single place in a single year than any wrestler in history has done in any single town. But he wasn't as consistently hot around the rest of the circuit. Bock was on top of a lot of cards that did well, but because of the way the AWA was booked you could argue that on a lot of that shows his match really wasn't the most heavily pushed match on the show. Et. Et. Et. I'm not saying it is not worth trying to put together some way to look at all the data, but there is no way to adjust for all the factors. I do think there are good ways of determining value/stardom relative to others, but drawing power is much harder.

10k metric is heavily flawed. There is no hard and fast answer because someone like Backlund had much bigger buildings around his loop than the MACW guys (to take just one example).

So Jumbo vs Tenryu from 1989 would count because it was in the "territory days"? Really? Was the criteria really too complicated? Most of the complete matches available from the '70s are from the WWWF, the Japan promotions, and Great Britain because that's mostly who kept the footage or even had long arena footage to start with. The Mid-Atlantic "garbage" tapes are all fascinating even though very little is complete. Kind of repeating myself, but there is a solid amount of 70's Portland out there.

Thanks for that John. Found this over on Mid-Atlantic Gateway today http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/resource...Richmond_15.htm It's an article on the top fifteen cards in Richmond. Obviously they are opinion pieces but they include some nice history in them. Patera's name pops up on a list that has a pretty broad scope (Dec. 74-April 83). FWIW Patera is in the semi-main v. Johnny Valentine on the card he ranks 3rd and in the main event v. Jim Brunzell on the card he ranks 13th. He is also in an undercard six-man on the show ranked 8th, which was a stopover show for him between Tri-State and New York.

If you are looking for high end 70's matches, a lot of the best stuff is outside of the U.S. Or you could just watch any 1970's Portland

John (or anyone else) I'm looking for more complete results of Patera's run in Japan. The 84 tour results are easy to come by, but I can't find anything from 77, 80, or 81 that gives any real detail. Mainly I'm looking to see if A. all three of the above title matches would qualify for the current main event metric and B. if there are any other matches from these stints that would qualify. With 84 he's got some main events, but he was really brought in as part of a tourney and from what I can tell he didn't main event any of the bigger venue shows. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong there as well.

I don't disagree with what you are saying Johnny, but I can't be the only person who thinks it's odd that they felt the need to feed anyone to Show at this point in Show's career. I also think it's really odd that they appear to have used Tyson Kidd as a way to completely bury Tensai rather than a way to elevate Kidd. That might have been the weirdest thing they've done on tv all year actually.

I'm going to post a ton more later and will be working on a second batch of stuff (second tier market main events, semi-mains/feature matches on other A-market shows and then possibly title defenses of his various championship runs), but with the major market/arena metric here is one thing I've found that is interesting and deserves to be pointed out. Patera main evented the Kiel in St. Louis, the Philly Spectrum, The Mid South Coliseum, Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens, Madison Square Garden and The Boston Garden at least ten times a piece. I don't know this, but I suspect he is the only wrestler in the history of the business to do this. That in and of itself is not grounds to get a guy in and is admittedly a somewhat arbitrary metric. However it is worth noting that these are probably six of the ten buildings people think of when they think of major wrestling buildings. At absolute worst they are six of the top fifteen people think of. I imagine if you looked at guys who have headlined any 6 arena combo of those top tier of buildings ten times or more you'd be looking at a list of Hall of Famer's.