Dylan Waco

To me there are two types of draws in wrestling. The first is your touring guy/traveling hand who can pop a territory due to his gimmick or due to being over as a strong character with broad exposure. He is often times brought in as a "big" or special opponent for a top star in a territory or is brought in for programs against the biggest stars without having to "work his way up. This category would include guys like Andre, Abby and even Patera among others. The second category is a person, group, team, et that can be said to have set up or sustained a notable hot period in a territory or promotion, with extra points if something is record setting or important. This would apply to obvious guys like Hogan or JYD who drew huge houses in their respective promotions, but it also applies to people that were red hot within their existing business model, which to my mind includes Big Daddy, Buddy Rose, The Beauty Pair, et. Does this mean Hogan = Rose as a draw? God no. But I do think he unquestionably qualifies as a draw of note. Does everyone fit neatly into those categories? No. But most people that can be shown to be draws fit into one of those two categories.

Bret's drawing power or lack thereof has been little discussed. I made the comparison with Dibiase and Patera in the other thread, but if you compare Bret to Patera I suspect you get about the same result - very little gap between candidacies.

Terry Funk had some good matches with Morales. Patera had a borderline great match with Morales in 1980, but Patera was like the second or third best wrestler on Earth in 1980

Actually comping those three series might be more interesting than comping those particular guys...

I know Dave at least reads the Classics threads where I have brought up Breaks numerous times. But I have no pull with Dave. I'll respond to NL after work.

I'm cross posting this from the WC thread in the other forum because frankly it deserves its own thread. Episode 25 of The Wrestling Culture Podcast is up and it is probably the most important podcast we have ever done. My friend John Philapavage and his life long friend Kevin Kiernan have been working on a documentary on ECW for 12 years (yes this means interviews that go back to the very tale end of the companies existence and pre-date Forever Hardcore and Rise and Fall by years). After multiple ups and downs along the way the project is nearing completion but they need our help. I know what you are thinking - ANOTHER ECW documentary? But everything I know about this tells me this will be radically different. This is not a storyline/angle driven doc. It is not a documentary with an agenda. It is a documentary that includes members of the wrestling media, fans, lesser known promoters and behind the scenes figures. It takes a look at the impact the promotion had not just on wrestling but on the wrestlers themselves. Most importantly it is something put together by an ECW fan who is candid about how this project started, the twists and turns it has taken and the fact that it will not be a hero worshipping or "those were the days" piece. We cover all of this and a ton more, including our shared near death experience at Ag Hall in Allentown in 97, behind the scenes details of the chaos at Extreme Reunion, Steve Corino as (one of) the nicest guy in wrestling, John's "stalking" Tod Gordon and how that got the project started, and tons more. http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkC...2658&cmd=tc If you are interested in donating to get this important project over the hump, here is the link to the kickstarter page. Every little bit helps. At minimum check out the great video they have posted there. If that doesn't convince you I don't know what will. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bwcfil...nship-wrestling

Episode 25 of The Wrestling Culture Podcast is up and it is probably the most important podcast we have ever done. My friend John Philapavage and his life long friend Kevin Kiernan have been working on a documentary on ECW for 12 years (yes this means interviews that go back to the very tale end of the companies existence and pre-date Forever Hardcore and Rise and Fall by years). After multiple ups and downs along the way the project is nearing completion but they need our help. I know what you are thinking - ANOTHER ECW documentary? But everything I know about this tells me this will be radically different. This is not a storyline/angle driven doc. It is not a documentary with an agenda. It is a documentary that includes members of the wrestling media, fans, lesser known promoters and behind the scenes figures. It takes a look at the impact the promotion had not just on wrestling but on the wrestlers themselves. Most importantly it is something put together by an ECW fan who is candid about how this project started, the twists and turns it has taken and the fact that it will not be a hero worshipping or "those were the days" piece. We cover all of this and a ton more, including our shared near death experience at Ag Hall in Allentown in 97, behind the scenes details of the chaos at Extreme Reunion, Steve Corino as (one of) the nicest guy in wrestling, John's "stalking" Tod Gordon and how that got the project started, and tons more. http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkC...2658&cmd=tc If you are interested in donating to get this important project over the hump, here is the link to the kickstarter page. Every little bit helps. At minimum check out the great video they have posted there. If that doesn't convince you I don't know what will. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bwcfil...nship-wrestling

I don't think wrestlers from any place can be held to some flat standard. It's not possible because context matters. There are general guidelines that you've got (drawing power, work, influence), but there has never been a rule anywhere, at any point that said "you have to have headlined a bunch of 10k plus houses." If you can find such a standard I will apologize and withdraw my support for Buddy Rose as well. You have to account for the realities of the places where the people worked and the period where they worked there. I noticed you clipped the comment about the Flyers v. Midnights. I don't blame you because most people would scoff at the assertion that the Flyers are better HoF candidates, including people who don't think the Midnights should have been in. Yet if you look at Raw numbers drawn I doubt very, very seriously that the Midnights have a record like the Flyers. Having said that I do agree with you that there is no reason the UK HAS to have anyone in the HoF. I don't think voters should feel compelled to vote for anyone out of some sense of equity. If people look at the details and say "I really don't think there is anyone here that belongs" I would get it - based on the information would currently have there isn't a grand slam from the UK and the business model makes it extremely murky to parse out the details. But I don't think "well no one ever drew 10k plus a week!" is a valid reason to dismiss all of the UK. I also don't agree with the sliding scale thing (at least not completely) but I'm not sure that's really a major point of what we are arguing here. This is an interesting theory I've seen tossed out before but there are obvious problems with it, not the least of which is that it presumes to read the mind of promoters. To some extent we all do this, but I'm not sure it's the best way to tear down or build up an HoF candidacy without more information. It also strikes me as a very odd criticism to make given the history of special events in wrestling. To someone from the States it might seem odd that a special event would be a building with an 8k capacity, but in the UK that appears to have been the case. As noted before they weren't going to fuck with a model that worked often and I've seen arguments before that said they would have lost there ass on the bigger shows EVEN IF they drew big money because it would have alienated all of their local audiences and the overhead was higher. Portland is a similar situation. I assume you would oppose Buddy Rose's induction for the same reason and that's fine. But the assumption is generally not that Owen couldn't have drawn bigger houses. It's just that he owned his own building where he could control concessions and had very little overhead. It wasn't worth the risk to go into a bigger building (I've spoken with a few people who have said to me that his profits would have diminished dramatically if he averaged anything less than 7-8k in a bigger building and that does not seem out of line - in a town/area the size of Portland that would have been very difficult to do during the period even with a tv show getting massive ratings as the history of Memphis tells us) because of the more conservative nature of the business model and unique circumstances of the product. It's not as simple as "they were afraid to run big buildings!" It's that they were making money and had made money for decades on the existing model and it made little sense to radically deviate from it. In fact most believe Daddy's success actually HURT the over all business because it crushed the prevailing model, and while I don't think it's a major reason for Portland sliding, the period where they ran a bigger building on rare occasions coincides closely with their rapid decline around the loop. Do you support HHH being in?

I wouldn't rate Daddy over Colon because Colon effectively created PR wrestling, he was actually one of the biggest draws in the business for years, and he ran/promoted the territory with great success (hell it still does reasonably well). But your point is the point that is hard for anti-Daddy people to shoot down. If you don't take the most well known, culturally significant guy from the country, who also happens to be universally regarded as it's biggest native draw in history, who do you leapfrog over him, why and how? It's a tough situation

Never, ever gets old

The best argument against Daddy is that in his "success" he killed traditional and unique Brit model for effective promoting which eventually led to the decline of the business over there. The extent to which that is true is something I would like to see explored in more detail. It may be that the best draw in British history is not as meaningful as it sounds on paper and in fact may have been a net negative in a way that is impossible for us to understand. I am skeptical of this, but willing to listen to a serious argument with more details explaining it. Saying Daddy didn't draw a bunch of 10k houses is irrelevant - they didn't book 10k buildings - not even close most of the time. They didn't want to for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the fact that the dispersed multi-show model was more affordable to run and brought in good money at much lower risks. I mean if you subscribe to the theory that financial viability of promotion/setting records for promotions is not as important as raw numbers that is your choice but I don't want to live in a World where Edge is a better HoF candidate than Ricky Steamboat. Put another way I like The High Flyers and actually think they should be on the ballot, but how many people would treat the notion that they are better candidates than the already inducted Midnight Express seriously? They were certainly on or near the top of more 10k plus drawing shows than the Midnights I would guess. On some level I am impressed with the Euro voters because they went with Walton as the first inductee from the region and beat down the looming scourge that is Johnny Saint. That's not to say Saint is a totally absurd candidate, but he would strike me as another Ultimo type getting a bump from U.S. visibility, rather than what his supposed strengths are. Walton was a "safe" pick, but a good one as he was a big part of getting over the various talents for a promotion that truly relied on various talents. Beyond Walton is tough because the people arguing against Daddy are effectively saying "the biggest known draw in British wrestling should not be in, but X should." To those less familiar with the Brit scene it seems weird even if there is merit to the argument and while one could argue that Pallo and McManus have reasonably strong claims to getting in over Daddy, I know of no one who says they were known figures the way Daddy was. For what it's worth I'm happy Jim Breaks was added to the ballot and if I had a vote would be very tempted to vote for him.

I totally reject the Farmer notion that 10k houses is the only way to measure a draw of HoF stature. If that is the metric NO ONE from the UK ever gets in.

What are you reading about Daddy? I strongly disagree that someone needs to be Hogan level to offset his shit level of work, but that's just a personal view of how I weight those sort of things. Does anyone dispute that Daddy was the biggest cultural figure and draw in the history of native produced British wrestling? I'm seriously asking as I don't know. I'm hardly an expert on the Brit scene, though I have studied it some.

Is there a good starting point for reading about him? http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimate...ic;f=7;t=000393 Good thread that runs down the general case pretty well. We also covered him some with Montreal historian Pat Laprade on a recent Wrestling Culture podcast also

I understand the argument against him, but I don't see how he's a "horrible" candidate in a World where guys like Jericho and Saito are getting in

Danny The Jobber in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecen4az1W7g

I feel like this is quickly heading in the direction of Danny The Jobber talk. Having said that I never got to see any of that LA stuff because I'm an idiot and forgot to save it. If anyone has a link post it or PM me with it.

That match is brilliant and one of the best matches I've ever seen. Finding a ton of French wrestling from that period would be a miracle

You may be right, but I'm skeptical of that because if anything the general impression of Memphis seems to have gone up over the last half dozen years. On the other hand you still see "big fish, little pond" arguments all the time at Classics and elsewhere. Of course it could be a combination of both things.

I would rate Hardy as pretty lateral to Edge as a candidate, perhaps slightly above. The former wrestlers/Jarrett thing is a fact. You may say "but wrestlers voted for him in higher numbers than other groups!" but the point is that Jarrett's over all standing is more negative because of the consistent refrain that he didn't pay worth a shit.

If Punk & Danielson can manage a few more years as top or near top guys in WWE I think both will have great chances of getting in. With Danielson, several years of being a good pick for best in ring worker walking the planet makes him a lock for the crowd that values work rate. Add in another run as World Champ or atleast a while longer as a main event lvl guy in the WWE and it'll get him over the hump with enough of the voters who value star power/drawing/championships/other non wrestling related criteria that I think he'll make it in. With Punk he has more star power then Danielson as he's been among the top 3 most popular full time guys on the roster for a while now and he's a good enough worker to get points with the work rate crowd too. With Mistico I thought he was awesome before he left Mexico and saw him have enough good/great matches vs a wide enough amount of oppoents to know it wasn't just him being carried. His disapointing Sin Cara run might hurt his chances unless he turns things around though with Konnan getting in maybe not as the precedent is thear. I didn't say I didn't think they'd get in. I think they will all get in, probably all on the first ballot. Bryan will get in as a worker even if he slips down to the mid-card and never wrestles another main event again. No one with his resume of WON Awards as a worker isn't getting in. Punk will get in as the first indy darling to really get over as a major star in the big time and being a Jericho type guy when it comes to getting over big time feuds/angles. He'd have to have at least one really strong run at the box office for me to vote for him, which may happen. But I have my doubts because of how shitty the booking is. Mistico will almost definitely get in first ballot

I think Han is a very tough candidate to peg because he's totally unique. A master of a style that is incredibly difficult to master and a guy who is widely regarded as the best within that style. RINGS was a successful promotion for years and though Han was the top gajin the promotion was structured differently than other promotions in Japan and it's hard to call him a drawing card in any real sense of the word. Then there is the fact that the guy has probably worked fewer matches in his career than Vince McMahon which just complicates matters. Yohe has all the RINGS attendance stuff up at Classics and I remember looking over it last year and thinking you could make a skeleton of a case for Han as an all time worker, who was at least near the top of a lot of successful shows. But having so few matches and working in such an esoteric style is something I can't completely overcome. If I had a vote and Hamada wasn't on the ballot I'd vote for him just to give someone from the Japan category a vote and offset the other guys who don't deserve to be in. Jarrett is screwed because wrestlers hate him because he paid shitty. I am convinced that's the only reason he's not in already. Sarge is someone I am actually less high on as a a candidate after watching the AWA stuff as he was really a non-factor there for the most part even if he was still a great worker. His peak as a draw was incredibly high though and you could point to the SD's as draws in the AWA before his initial departure, though not on a massive level. To me Sarge is the cut off guy, with everyone under him out and everyone over him in. Totally agree with you on the RnR's and Cena. Andersons are tough to me. I can see a case, but I want to know how unique there run was and how special it was at the box office. Buddy Rose was the biggest box office draw in Portland wrestling history and no one - including key rivals of his and people who hate him - denies that. Were the Andersons better draws than the Scott brothers or Hawk/Hansen? I'm not saying it disqualfies them if they weren't, but I'm curious and don't know the answer.

I don't think you should give it any weight myself, but Dave clearly leaves that up to the individual voter. To me wrestling is wrestling and MMA is MMA. There was a period in the early 90's where there was overlap and of course Pride was promoted a certain way but Lesnar has nothing to do with any of that.

I don't think Punk or Danielson is a particularly strong candidate. Mistico is a terrible wrestler, but what I know of his drawing power it would be hard to argue against him.

Glad you will be voting for Hamada Ditch. I think he is easily the best of the Japanese candidates and while I don't think he's an unquestioned lock, it seems wrong for him not to be in when guys like Hase, Saito, Ultimo and Funaki are. Don't think there is anyone else from Japan I would vote for, though I do love Han