Dylan Waco

Mike Jackson v. Jack Hart from Florida tv in 85? is fucking awesome

Flair in 05 was post Evolution. That was from early on in his "American Onita" run which I liked.

I still cant' get over the Finlay rehiring which was the worst thing for wrestling in 2012

Then most of the "great" heels were pretty lousy

I don't think that's the role Flair played. Flair was dogshit during that period. Evolution Flair is one of my least favorite wrestlers ever, blowing his signature spots all the time, regularly calling spots on camera, limited offense even more limited than any period before, et. He was absolutely awful on every level. I can't think of Flair long term selling matches, but I'm positive they exist. I just haven't watched a ton of Flair recently like I have with Bock

We can't learn anything from Flair/Batista if you are interested in comparing their strengths. Flair was the worse wrestler on Earth during that period

I don't know there is a lot to say about Flair as a tag worker. Flair's "prime" as a tag worker is an era we don't have much footage of.

Flair is clearly above Bock in "energy" and "manic bumping" though you could argue those as negative traits at times. During his prime and even big chunks of his post-prime he rarely had boring matches. I did not think AWA Bock had many boring matches to be honest but that was a criticism of him for years and the guys who watched for the AJPW Set have told me he was very boring at times there. Flair's big bumps - while more cartoony - were generally higher impact which was a good fit for the guys he was often paired off with (Sting, Luger, Barry, et). No way in hell Bock was a bad bumper or even "worse" than Flair, but Flair style of big bumps was a good fit for the guys he was working. I think Flair is a better face than Bock. That's not to say Bock is a bad face - he's not. In fact watching the stuff now he's better than I remembered in many respects. But I think Flair was better at drawing out sympathy than Bock, at least on his best days. Part of this may be that Flair was always "our guy" to a certain segment of fans, but then it's possible AWA fans felt the same way about Bock. Anyhow it's hard to explain, but I feel like Flair emotes better as a face than Bock. To be fair the face Bock we have is generally performing in front of smaller crowds and his "conquering hero" reaction at Wrestlerock was pretty great, but still I would put Flair over him. I think Flair at his best got more interesting stuff in to the early portions of matches that built and went longer, but again I am going on a limited sampling of Bock by comparison and who knows what Bock was like in his physical prime. I like Flair as a garbage match wrestler and think his second career as American Onita was actually really good, but you can't really hold that against Bock.

Hey Matt, you don't have to pick a fav, but I bumped this in part so you could make a lengthy post about Bock v. Flair without having start a thread solely for that purpose.

Speaking for myself, but at the time Foley winning really didn't feel like THAT much of a shock. I was FAR more surprised to see Eddy beat Lesnar for the belt

I get Dave's point (I think), but this reads like Eddy was a more deserving champ than Foley. I know that's not necessarily what he intended, but it sort of reads that way

Where did anyone in this thread say people in the undercard were trying to draw more heat than the main event?

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest. Every match is supposed to be worked to garner heat? Or at least the vast, vast majority? I mean aside from the one a show "popcorn matches" - most of which had standard heeling designed to draw heat in them - I'm not sure what other goal promoters would have in mind. "Hey guys don't draw heat. In fact do your best to alienate the audience if possible. We don't want people coming back."

To be honest the older I get the less interested I get in who was or wasn't a draw in WWF/WCW. That is not to say I don't see value in a project like that, but it's not something I could get terribly motivated to work on. I'm far more interested in looking at territorial era draws/stars.

House shows with Cena draw better in my experience - by a wide margin. Guys like JYD, Dibiase, et were draws around the WWF loop to one degree or another, but they were not the people who made the brand cool/hip in the first place. They were pieces of a puzzle. You can and should give them credit and I think Loss of all people knows this given how he has pimped the value of acts like the Hardyz to the Attitude Era. But you should be careful not to exaggerate or inflate their importance. In many ways the big value guys like that brought was addition by subtraction from competitors.

That second thing you said. Kinda

I'm not arguing Patera was the draw over Bruno or Backlund. I'm arguing that Patera got shots against Bruno and Backlund (actually multiple runs against both) because he proved to be extremely effective against them and the office saw him as a money making challenger. That's not surprising since virtually every office in the country and Canada thought that way about Patera from 72-85 which explains why he also got main event feuds and programs for in the AWA, Tri-State, Memphis, Georgia, MACW, Montreal, Toronto, Hawaii and Dallas. Also I'm not arguing Muraco wasn't hated and it's even theoretically possible he got more visceral reactions than Patera did at his peak (though I have never seen him touch off a near riot like I have seen Patera do v. Steamboat in MACW...). But I don't remember an angle he was involved in getting over like the White Wolf angle did or the Watts angle in Tri-State for that matter. He was almost certainly a "cooler" heel than Patera ever was, but that doesn't make me more over and it certainly doesn't mean he was a bigger money maker or had more of an impact on the business. Finally if we are reducing things down to "Bruno and Bob were the draws" than the same argument applies to Snuka and Muraco was just a guy filling a slot. I don't buy that in the case of Muraco or Patera.

Actually PWI is a remarkably good indicator of who the top stars were during that period ESPECIALLY in New York. It would be wrong to ascribe some scientific value to them (or any other wrestling accolade really), but it would also be wrong to dismiss them as "lol kayfabe lol." But I would tend to agree that they should be seen as secondary....to the fact that Patera was booked and promoted in a position where he was clearly seen as the bigger/better heel by the office.

My point is that Bock toured a lot more than people remember or than the popular myth around the AWA v. the NWA would suggest. There probably aren't THAT many more Flair v. challengers in other places matches than Bock v. challengers in other places matches on tape (there are a lot more, but not by the magnitude often suggested). We just know more about Flair's history. I know Snuka/Muraco was a big feud. But Patera/Bruno was a huge feud that drew more money and got huge responses. So did Patera/Backlund. The Patera/Billy White Wolf angle is still remembered as one of the most vicious/nasty angles of that era and fast tracked him to a PWI Most Hated Award - something he won twice, finishing in the top three two other times. Muraco finished as a runner up for that award once - in 81. The winner? Ken Patera.

I will have more to say about Bock and Flair over the next couple of days (and even weeks probably) but I do want to say that it's a misnomer to say we don't have Bock as traveling champ as we have available matches with him in Stampede (v. Bret, really fun studio match v. Schultz), in Japan, in Texas and v. Lawler in Memphis which was a running feud similar to Kerry v. Flair, with matches of comparable quality. What we do lack (besides prime Bock) is as much Bock in the studio stuff. It's not that it's not there and the glimpses are great, but you'd really like to have more for a comparison like this.

Patera v. Muraco I have the exact opposite view of Johnny and think Patera smokes Muraco, to the point of lapping him a few times. To my mind Muraco has proven to be one of the most overrated guys in wrestling history. A guy who could show up and have a great match here or there but by and large was pretty uninteresting in the ring, if not boring. I liked aspect of his character a lot and can certainly see how someone would prefer him as a personality to Patera, but bell-to-bell I really don't see an argument for Muraco as even post-prime Patera - while pretty bad for the most part - was not as bad as post-prime/lazy Muraco. Going a bit further I don't think Patera was a heat leach. In fact I know he wasn't. I don't think Muraco was ever even close as over as a heel in the WWF as Patera was during his prime periods feuding with Bruno, Backlund and Morales. I can't envision Muraco carrying guys like Atlas or Morales the way Patera did and while it is possible Muraco's best match is better than Patera's, I don't see the volume of quality matches there. For years the theory on Patera even among his supporters was sort of that he had one great year and that was that. Well his 1980 was pretty fucking great, but his AWA run that followed that was really good too even if he was a clear "second" to Blackwell as the worker in the Sheiks. The glimpses we have pre-80 show a guy who had fundamental talent, could work a crowd, was a good stooging bumper and had very good heel timing. I don't think either guy is really a top class worker, though Patera had at least one year in that category and I don't think Muraco ever did.

I don't know if I would hold up those Cactus matches as anything more than super entertaining ass beatings. I actually think the Havoc match is a really BAD match to point to if you are pushing Vader over Blackwell as Blackwell has the Death Match with Mad Dog right there and well...Foley had a lot more to offer at that point than Dog did and I honestly can't see any argument for the Vader/Foley match being better. I don't hate the match, but I actually think it is disappointing. Blackwell v. Mad Dog is a "holy fuck I can't believe this is this good" match when you consider the limitations of Dog at that point. I wouldn't argue too much against any of the other particulars, I just don't think that series is really a super strong point for Vader's career, particularly in a comparison with Blackwell

Wiskowski v. Dutch This is sort of an oddball one on paper, but I've been thinking a lot about how Buddy Rose didn't have a Dundee "other" at all the way Lawler did. Probably the best semi-constant guy from Portland was Big Ed Wiskowski who was more comparable to a Dutch in terms of tenure, placement on the card, value to the promotion et than he was to Dundee. So that's where the comparison comes from. Well that and the rad facial hair. I am a pretty huge Dutch fan and I was the only guy to rank him in the originally SC GWE poll. Very unheralded in ring talent, who was more of a general than he is given credit for and was more than just a straight brawler thought that was where he excelled and where his most memorable moments came. But I think Wiskowski was probably better. As an over all act Dutch may have been better because while Debeers promos were fucking hilarious and Wiskowski was good on the stick in Portland too, Dutch had more versatility on the mic and was more of a serious, straight shooting type, which is a style I tend to favor. He was also a great color guy in the booth for SMW not that that matters. Still in the ring I tend to think Wiskowski is one of the real diamonds in the rough of the 80's. Excellent theatrical bumper, particularly for a guy of his size. He was able to do that without ever coming across as less menacing. Great offensive wrestler too as everything he did was done with major force and and an extra degree of violence. As Debeers he was one of the great squash match workers of the decade, but was also really good in longer competitive affairs. In the late 70's and 1980 he was really outstanding at the Portland style, which is a style heavily dependent on psychology and a style that required a great deal of stamina. I would take Dutch's best two or three matches over Wiskowski's - maybe. But I don't think the over all body of his career is as impressive.

Blackwell v. Vader To my mind these are the best two super heavyweights ever. If someone wanted to argue for Andre I wouldn't consider it whacky, but I don't know if I could personally rate him above either of these guys absent a lot more quality Andre footage bursting to the surface. Up until the rewatch of the AWA Set I'm doing right now I would have picked Vader pretty easily. Now I'm not so sure. Vader does have a longer run as a quality worker or at least a longer run as a quality worker that we have documented. In theory Vader has more stylistic range, though I'm not sure how much of a reality that actually is. Yes he could work effectively in UWFI's version of shoot style and WCW at the same time and they were clearly different promotions. But with Vader it was always the Vader show to one degree or another and I don't think there is nearly as much variance as there looks to be on paper. Vader also had the huge advantage of working his best matches against other good workers in their prime or guys like Inoki or Flair who may have been passed their prime but still had physical skills and talents that could be deployed for memorable spots/moments in a match. Meanwhile Blackwell was working guys who were passed their prime (Robinson, Crusher, Mad Dog, to a lesser degree Eadie) or guys who outright sucked (Brody, Kevin Kelly), while generally avoiding the best guys in the company with a few exceptions here or there. When he did get chances against guys like Lawler or Butch Reed he had truly great matches and his match v. Mad Dog Vachon is arguably an even more impressive "fat guy leads old man to great match performance than Vader v. Inoki. It's perhaps unfair to note that Blackwell was a better face and a better tag worker, though both things are obvious. Vader didn't get the chances either place, but I see little to suggest he would have been better in either role. To a large degree Blackwell's face work is almost amazingly great considering the character he had portrayed for years and the way he was able to retool and still use his great body language but in different ways. I don't think Vader could ever sell the way Blackwell could. Both were great bumpers, but Blackwell seemed crazier AND less over the top all at once. Vader was stiffer, but it's not clear that he was a better brawler. Vader did have more incredible highspots and was very good at building toward them, but I don't think his highspots were THAT much more incredible than Blackwell's. In a lot of ways I think this is a perfect case of output v. input. Vader has more meat because of footage issues, longevity, opportunity. Blackwell I would give the edge (albeit not a huge edge) on the particulars of the game (bumping, selling, timing, versatility, et). I don't really think I could justify Blackwell over Vader because Vader has at least twice as many high quality matches on tape - probably more. But this is a real test for me when it comes to the question of what you value more output or input

If any of these are rehashed forgive me, but with the AWA Set and the discussion on Flair/Bock in the other thread I'm bumping this with a few more.... Jerry Blackwell or Vader? Ed Wiskowski/Col. Debeers or Dutch Mantell? (This comparison seems weirder than it is, but I'll explain it when I post my reply a little later) Ken Patera or Don Muraco? Nick Bockwinkel or Ric Flair?