Dylan Waco

I like Eddie v. Scorp. Think it is a good match. Very good even. But I don't think it's a great match by any stretch and would not make my top fifteen Scorp singles matches. Of course last time I watched it it was back to back with The Matter of Respect match which I thought was blow away great, would be my number one Scorp singles match and you didn't like so who the hell knows.

I am not saying this to dispute Flair but.... Hennig had great matches with Buddy Rose, The Assassin, Nick Bockwinkel, Wahoo McDaniel, Jerry Lawler, Greg Gagne, Stan Hansen, DJ Peterson to say nothing of being a great tag wrestler while not given the same push/opportunities as Flair. Bockwinkel had great matches with Hennig, Hansen, Martel, Wahoo, Lawler, Jumbo, Terry Funk, Larry Zbyszko, Hulk Hogan, Mad Dog Vachon, Pat O'Conner, Verne Gagne, Billy Robinson, Flair, Col. Debeers, et. (including borderline matches v. Manny Fernandez, Boris Zhukov, Jim Brunzell, Brad Rheingans, et, to say nothing of tag matches) years after his physical prime. Lawler had great matches with Dundee, Dutch Mantell, Tommy Rich, Kerry Von Erich, Eric Embry, Crusher Blackwell, Flair, Terry Funk, Austin Idol, Bockwinkel, Hennig, Savage, Bundy, Martel, Bigelow, et. and for most of this was having guys imported to challenge him, rather than being farmed out, which arguably makes it more difficult to have stand out matches week-to-week. Fujinami had great matches with DK, Vader, Kimura, Maeda, Choshu, Chavo, Teranishi, Killer Khan, and was an ace of two weight classes, plus was tremendous in multi-men gauntlet/elimination matches and tags. Hansen had great matches with Tenryu, Backlund, Andre, Baba, Inoki, Slaughter, Hennig, Funk, Blackwell, Martel, Jumbo, et. Who knows how many more would be on the list if he had stayed anywhere Stateside for any meaningful period of time. Rose had great matches with Marty Jannetty, Hennig, Martel, Chris Adams, Roddy Piper, Backlund, Matt Borne, Rip Oliver, DK, Steve Regal (shitty ass Mr. Electricity variety), Brett Sawyer, Jay Youngblood, Steve Pardee, Butch Miller, et. to say nothing of his many great tags/six mans (and this is ignoring his run from 77-79 which is as good or better and where several other names could be dropped on the list). Jumbo had great matches against Tenryu, Hamaguchi, Bockwinkel, Kerry Von Erich, Flair, Dick Slater, Misawa, Martel, et and this is coming from someone who isn't even THAT high on Jumbo. You could drop laundry lists for others as well. Not trying to diminish Flair but this is common with great workers. Even guys like Tenryu who had a lot of his great performances of the decade in tags or Funk who was "hear today, gone tomorrow" for a huge chunk of the decade have great matches against a variety of opponents. Some one like Dick Murdoch who is not always considered "upper tier" probably has as diverse a list of opponents he had high end matches with as anyone. Someone like Harley Race who was considered washed up half way through the decade has several opponents where he had at minimum borderline great matches and he's not a guy who we have anything near a complete composite of. Backlund who is still a divisive worker to say the least has matches that could safely be called great against a pretty broad variety of workers. Et., et., et.

Funk v. Lawler from the 80's is tough, though I would lean Lawler. He's got more volume which strikes me as a reasonable tie breaker. On the other hand Funk has more variety. Fuck I'm not sure.

Funk v. Martel is hilarious and one of my favorite matches of all time

Maybe I'll watch it and review for the purposes of this thread.

Emilo Charles Jr. is a tremendous worker based on the limited sampling I've seen. I'd actually put him in the upper tier of Luchadores I'm familiar with along with Dandy, Santo, Casas, Panther, Satanico, La Fiera and possibly Chicana.

El Dandy is another lucha worker who with the footage seems like he would be a lock for the upper tier and even without consistent footage his peak stuff is so good it would feel wrong for me to bump him down a perspective list. I wouldn't go to bat for him at this point, but La Fiera has been excellent in every match I've seen him in from the 80's.

Tito has some fine matches in the AWA, but the footage is limited. His shining moment there is the Strike Force v. High Flyers tag that is really a great match and you could argue Tito was the best guy in it. He also has a really good match with Billy Robinson, though only about half of it is shown. Tito's strength is his stuff with Valentine and Savage, combined with his consistency.

I used to think Bock was overrated too. Watching the AWA footage it's clear that isn't true. I think he gets stereotyped as a guy who sits in holds and doesn't do much, which may be true in isolated cases, but is total bullshit as a rule. He had his go to spots like everyone else from the period, but he seemed to adapt more to his opponent/match than Flair and I'm someone who really likes Flair. People are going to be blown away by the Bock v. Wahoo match when the AWA Set hits. It's literally one of the best singles matches from anywhere on Earth in the 80's. Bock was also an extremely underrated tag team worker. It would be very hard for me to see him lower than top ten U.S. from the 80's. Even missing the last two years of the decade I would consider him a VERY strong top five contender in fact. As for Flair in 89, I loved him that year and still do. But you could construct an argument that he wasn't even the best wrestler in the World THAT YEAR.

I am really high on Fujinami and Lawler for that decade. Also the Satanico footage I've seen from the 80's is really great. One wishes we had more Sangre Chicana though I'm not sure he would be a number one contender.

I'll come back to the meat of your post later, but Martel/Bock matches really aren't comparable to Flair/Steamboat in my view. Not even close really. And I do like that series (Hennig v. Bock I could be convinced on). I love Martel v. Rheingans and think it is a pretty god damned great match. Could maybe be convinced that is Martel's big "HOLY FUCK!" type of performance match.

Rey is clearly another candidate from 96-05. I could easily construct an argument for him above Eddy and Benoit in fact.

He's got a case, better than some might suspect on the surface, but I don't think he's a top ten lock. Martel is a guy who's stock has gone up A LOT with me through watching AJPW, AWA and Portland. I imagine the Montreal sitting in my DVD player right now will continue this trend. But the Montreal and AJPW aren't germane to the discussion. His Portland run is really great when you consider his age and I think you could make a case for him as Buddy Rose's best in ring opponent. Not saying that's set in stone, but it's certainly arguable and at minimum he would be on a VERY short list in that discussion. Still, AWA is where he lives and dies as a candidate. There is plenty of really good Martel in the AWA. He's got virtually no duds. He was often paired off against guys that people were not buying as challengers as champ (Zhukov and Garvin most notably) and always got the most out of those matches. The best Bock matches are really awesome. I thought Tito was the star of Strike Force in the AWA and the WWF but Martel was a good compliment if nothing else. What Martel does lack is a clear cut "holy shit that was awesome!" type of match, where he is the clear star. Here is what I wrote comping Hennig to Martel in the "Who Was Better?" thread this Summer Rick Martel or Curt Hennig? This is a pretty easy comp to make because here you have guys that worked in a lot of the same places and in similar roles. Anyway looking at this across the board: Portland Martel and Hennig both worked there and were both great there very early in their careers. Martel's matches against Buddy may have been better than Hennig's matches with Buddy, but Hennig's non-Buddy matches may have been better. One thing I do think is that at this point Martel was better working long, and Hennig was better as a sprint worker. That would change some over time, though I don't think Martel ever got really good at working shorter, tight matches the way Hennig could. I would probably call this a "tie." AWA This is tough because it depends on what you want to include. I think there is no question that Martel was better as the companies anchor, but that had a lot to do with the decline of the AWA and the position the company was in by the time Hennig got the belt. If you include Martel's international defenses I think his case gets stronger, but without those I would go with Hennig for sure, and even with them.... Martel had great matches with Jimmy Garvin, Brad Rheingans, Bock, Jumbo, Race (actually this was after he lost the title from memory), Choshu and Flair during his reign and it is hard to argue against them. Having said that Hennig's babyface work before he won the title was really great. He was excellent in tags, had far better offense back then (though Martel's was better), worked FAR stiffer than Martel, and was a considerably better bumper. Everyone knows about the great Bockwinkel series (and those matches hold up VERY well in my view), but he also had a pair of excellent matches with Hansen prior to winning the belt in 86 and after the heel turn had a run of defenses (and after he lost the belt matches) with guys like Greg Gagne, Wahoo, Lawler, and DJ Peterson that I would have absolutely no problem calling great. To be fair to Martel his run was shorter than Curt's but I still think Curt showed himself to be far more versatile here than Martel did. Pretty close, but I would rate Curt over Martel. Just a lot more you can point to to be honest. WWF Totally disagree with Jerome here that the best thing that happened to Hennig was Mr. Perfect. From a business/making money standpoint sure. From a worker standpoint it killed him dead and was so obviously the deathblow to him as a great in ring talent that it's actually a point I think is not even debatable if you have seen the footage I have. Will and I have talked about this at length and he theorizes that Hennig was just made to be a babyface. It's hard to argue against that since Hennig is an unbelievably great babyface in both the AWA and Portland. The only problem with that theory is that his initial heel turn in the AWA was brilliant as well and his work MAY have even IMPROVED during that period. Also the Mr. Perfect character was definitely a lot of fun. The problem is that in the ring the Perfect character was totally lowest common denominator wrestling, all about bumps and one or two offense moves. The Bret matches are good but overrated. I like the Garvin match for what it is but it's not something that even borders on being very good, let alone great. He was fun in the tag with Poffo v. Hogan and Warrior from SNME. I liked at least one of his matches v. Tito and the Doink match from Raw in 93 (which honestly comes across as a Doink carry job in hindsight). Other than that I can't think of a thing he did that stands out. His offense was garbage, he seemed to revert back to being FAR better in short matches though even then he was a shell of his former self, he just didn't seem to give too shits about anything other than taking huge bumps. I don't blame him really, but when I think of guys the WWF killed Hennig is at the top of the list. He wasn't awful there, but he was really middling given his talent and that is bad enough. Martel is tough to peg. He was never used in an ideal situation, but when he was given chances I thought he looked better than Hennig. Strike Force was a good team - in some ways better than any other team in the WWF at the time - but they don't really have a lot of matches you can point to as worth going out of your way to see. "The Model" gimmick was silly but worked in the context of the WWF at the time and honestly the Jake feud was more memorable and interesting to me than anything the Mr. Perfect character did. His matches with Hall and Savage were good showings and honestly I like his draw v. Bret better than Hennig's draw v. Bret and think Martel was a lot better in the match than Hennig was in his. It seems strange to say, but I actually would rate Martel's WWF work over Hennig's. Post-Prime Hennig had some pretty shitty post-prime stuff in WCW, but at least partially redeemed himself with the West Texas Rednecks where I would call him "pretty good" though certainly not great. His Hogan match from the XWF and late WWF return were probably better than they should have been but not memorable in any way. Martel only has a few months of post-prime work that you can really point and it has been heavily mythologized. I didn't find that there was anything approaching "great" in his brief WCW run, but what there was was a guy who could obviously still go and almost certainly would have hit "great" if he hadn't gotten hurt. He was the best guy in every match he had and the Booker T stuff is at the very least worth watching. It's really tough to say, but overall I think I would go with Hennig by the slimmest of margins for two reasons: 1. Hennig was a better heel than Martel by a fairly wide margin and they were no worse than equals as babyfaces. 2. Hennig's ability to work big epic matches eventually equaled Martel's, whereas I don't think Martel ever got as good at working balls to the wall sprints. Having said that I have not seen much of Martel's Montreal run and if that turns out to be as good as the rest of his stuff I could see flip flopping on this pretty easily. That's Martel v. Hennig - a guy who is another arguable top ten guy. Now look at the list I posted originally: Ric Flair Jerry Lawler Bill Dundee Buddy Rose Ricky Steamboat Nick Bockwinkel Curt Hennig Rick Martel Sgt. Slaughter Barry Windham Tully Blanchard Bob Backlund Randy Savage Terry Funk Ricky Morton Bobby Eaton Harley Race Dick Murdoch Arn Anderson Greg Valentine Tito Santana Tommy Rogers Dutch Mantell Ted Dibiase The six guys in bold are the guys where I think it would be near unanimous opinion that they are better than Martel. The five guys in italics are guys who I would have an extremely difficult time putting below Martel on top of those bolded six. I can't see him in my top ten because of that and looking at the list there are other comparisons that are tough for him. For example I'm not buying peak Martel as better than peak Dibiase on the surface. I didn't italic him but as noted above I'd have him below Hennig. Tito may be a tough comp for him as well. There are others. Not saying Martel is bad and I put him on the list for a reason but he's not a "lock" level top ten guy even if you see him as a probable top ten guy.

I'm about 90% sure it's Jarrett. The pieces fit him better than anyone else

Sorry but "aside from the Owen and Kid [and Backlund] matches" is a comical way to look at 94 for Bret. I mean "aside from the Steamboat and Funk matches" what does 89 Ric Flair have? No Bret' 94 isn't quite at that level but it's comparable from the perspective that the Owen matches are considered iconic Classics and secondary feud is based around psychotic, "old man" wrestler, thinking he is owed the title and going on a psychotic rampage. The better question is "did Michaels do anything in 94 that matches an all time classic rivalry plus well regarded hate filled feud with hot angle [plus widely loved vet v. upstart "classic"]." I like 90's Michaels fine but you'd really have to stretch his resume to absurd lengths to see something out of his 94 that matches up with that.

People can say MindGames wasn't gimmicky but I thought it was deliberately tailored to be just that given the setting. It's a great match but when I think about it I think about five things: Shawn freaking out at a blown spot. Foley's hangman spot/with the mandible claw. The table bump. The chair assisted superkick. The dogshit finish. Scorpio wrestled in ECW where a very large portion of matches included crowd brawling, table spots, chair spots, et. I can pull a lot more from some of his matches - even ones that have more prop use - than I can from Mind Games. That may be because those matches are fresher in my mind...in part. But at least some of it is the fact that MindGames was a gimmicky match.

That's the apex that I was referring to, but it's an apex that few can touch. You could easily make a case that the MSG Boot Camp match and Final Conflict are the two best gimmick matches in U.S. wrestling history, and the two best matches in general from the promotions they occurred in. I'd rate the Paterson and Backlund matches on the next level down. I like them a lot but they aren't on THAT level. I'd also rate them below the Starrcage Main Event (teaming with Blackwell v. Adnan/Superstar/Tonga), the AWA handheld v. Hansen, and his match as Super Destroyer 2 v. Greg Gagne.

In hindsight, I regretted not putting Michaels as the WOTY for 1996 in favor of Scorpio. It really was his year. I loathe 21st century Michaels but that doesn't change the fact that I thought he was a pretty excellent worker pre-injury. If/when I do a top 10 list for the 90's, Michaels is a serious contender for my top 5. Scorpio is hardly a bad pick for 96 and can easily go match for match with Shawn from that year. He also has fewer disappointments (as in "none" off the top of my head) The question is how many people have watched Scorp's best stuff?

I agree with Paul that the Ladder Matches hold up and I have no problem with someone rating Shawn on top for the decade but I think it is curious that if you look at Shawn's absolute best matches they are all heavily gimmicked to the gills, with one notable exception that comes to mind: Ladder matches v. Razor Good Friends Better Enemies HITC MindGames MindGames technically didn't have a "gimmick" but there is no disputing it was a "gimmick match" in the sense most would identify the term. The one "exception" to this rule would be Jarrett v. Michaels. I have no problem calling that a great match, but I think it is CLEAR the match was worked TN style, in front of a Nashville crowd, with a Jarrett. No way in hell I'm saying Shawn doesn't deserve any of the credit, or even a lot of the credit, but it's the one time I can really remember Shawn working a match like that, so I think Jarrett deserves a lot more credit for it than he has often been given. I don't think it is unfair to say those are the "consensus" best Shawn matches of the 90's. I'm not a huge fan of HITC, but I am a really big fan of all of the other matches myself. Still it is glaring to me that Shawn has exactly ONE great match from his peak decade that I would call gimmick free. Perhaps he deserves credit for being master of the gimmick match. Hell I've made that point in the past myself. But it would be nice if there were more Shawn matches that were great that were absent a gimmick.

Ventura/Adonis were actually a GOOD team. How much of that was due to Jesse? Not much. But he added bits and pieces here and there and was a heat magnet which certainly helped the team. He could be useful in the same way in six-mans. It's possible that Ventura was worse than Graham, but I'd rather watch the average Ventura/Adonis match than any Graham match.

The strength of Slaughter is that his best stuff is HOLY SHIT great and holds up better than some of the better stuff from the more "obvious" names.

I don't know about that. Billy Graham was pretty fucking awful in the ring, among the worst I've ever seen. Big Daddy is widely regarded as one of the two or three worst wrestlers of all time. Notwithstanding the views of some on this board, Old Andre is not someone who evokes many fond memories. Maurice Tillet was a freak show. Primo Carnera was Primo Carnera. That's five off the top of my head. I'm sure we could come up with others easily. I agree with your general point, but there have been some sorry sacks of shit in the ring who drew

DK's best stuff in the States was in Portland working with and opposite Buddy. Really it's the only DK stuff I think holds up all match at all. Rose is an interesting candidate. I still think a case could made that he was the best wrestler on Earth in the cumulative period from 77-84. In 85 he really didn't do shit and there are holes at the end of the decade but man alive was he good in the first half of the 80's. I'd rate 80, 82 and 83 as off the charts years, with 81 being a bit down due to competition but still a very strong year that was on the level of anything anyone else in the States (or anywhere really) was doing at that time. 84 we don't have a complete picture going from memory but what is there is really good. I think his AWA run in 86 through the first month or two of 87 is insanely underrated as I don't see any real decline as a worker at all at that point, he's just used in a slightly different fashion (tag worker) and is just as effective. 88 and 89 he was morbidly obese, but still a shockingly good bumper capable of having fun matches. Number one feels like a stretch even for me, but top five does not even if I'm unsure whether or not I would have him there myself.

Shawn is a love him or hate him type guy this decade. Arguably even more so than Angle. I think he had some good performances this decade, lots of stuff I don't care about and some outright dog shit including some matches that people really, really love. I can't see him making my U.S. top fifty for the decade. Some people would probably have him number one.

I agree that there is a logic hole to a degree, but it is worth recalling that the storyline reason for Trips ascension was because of how out of control things had gotten under Vince. He was installed to clean up Vince's mess. In kayfabe World it is clear the mess has gotten worse and deeper since Vince left. So it stands to reason that the guy installed to solve problems, making things worse, would be called to the carpet. Or something