Dylan Waco

THE COLLEGE GAME IS ONLY FORTY MINUTES

I see what you are saying I'm just not sure it's unique to modern WWE.

I haven't watched Crockett tv in ages but I recall a lot of squash matches for a long time. I think 92 WCW would be a pretty good candidate offhand.

Maybe I don't understand your criticism. Is your criticism that guys use the same offensive moves in similar order? Because that has been going on for the entire duration of wrestling history and honestly I don't see modern WWE being any better or worse in that regard than any other promotion. Look at the matches I listed. Stylistically and structurally it is hard to say "those are very similar matches." Take two others. Compare David Hart Smith v. William Regal to John Cena v. Dolph Ziggler. Pretty sure they happened within in a week of each other. I don't see a lot of similarities to those matches other than the fact that they both feature carbon based life forms, slathered in baby oil, grappling in shorts. Having said this I DO believe there is a WWE main event style and I have criticized it before despite the fact that I think on average it leads to quality matches more often than not.

I agree with that in theory but then the questions becomes what do you do with guys like Rey who have consistent runs of quality that might not meet the peak of certain other all timers but last far longer? I think that is peak v. longevity really becomes a debate.

I understand what you are saying MJH as we have been down this road before. I will just repeat my standard position which is a. formula isn't bad and b. the notion that modern WWE is super cookie cutter and formulaic is drastically at odds with the facts. There simply is no way that a promotion that puts on matches as diverse as Rey/Punk, McIntyre/Hardy, Masters/Chavo, Lawler/Miz, Ziggler/Bryan, Goldust/Regal, et. deserves the "processed, packaged, plopped in your lap" label that certain people like to try and put on it.

The peak v. longevity argument has been going on for fifteen years and I still don't know for sure where I stand on it. I can say that Fujinami would likely make my top fifteen if I were throwing together a list today. Maybe higher. Also worth noting that Fujinami v. Nishimura from in 06 is one of my favorite Puro matches of the last ten years even if it wasn't neccesarily one of the best.

About 00's wrestling, after watching the Texas Set (which I damn sure enjoyed) and the New Japan Set I am probably higher on the current product than ever before. I loved both sets but when I saw some of the matches that made those sets it really gave me an appreciation for what we have today. That sounds like an attack on the quality of those sets but it's not. The vast, vast majority of the matches that made the sets were good, with some absolutely blowaway great matches in there. Having said that there are plenty of modern WWE matches that would have done very well on my ballot. If I were to make a top ten Rey Jr. list from the last decade and stack it next to my TX top ten I'm almost positive the Rey matches would be stronger or at worst of comparable quality. Offhand I can think of four Chris Masters matches from last year that would have made the upper half of my Texas Ballot AT WORST and this is a guy that almost never makes the companies B Show. For shits in giggles my younger brother went through a WWE match list for each show from 09 the other day. He came up with 366 televised matches that he could remember being good. Going over the notes he sent me I found it extremely hard to dispute any of those matches and in fact probably would have included several more. 2010 would not have as high a number I would guess because of the absence of ECW, but I don't think it's out of the question that you could come up with another 250 quality matches that made tv last year. I don't think it's a stretch to say there have probably been between 1,000 and 1500 quality matches on WWE tv since the turn of the decade. I realize that Japan is a lot worse than it was and I'm not a guy who knows nearly enough about Lucha to make a claim one way or the other, but being the WOTD (other than Danielson is there even a serious contender?) in an era where there are more good tv matches week in and out than there has been in god knows how long (maybe ever?) is not something I feel can be dismissed casually. The Rey/Eddie comp is really tough and I think you could make the case that peak Eddie was better but I think every year that goes by the notion that Eddie is the better GOAT candidate has to take a bit of a hit. Not because Eddie ages poorly, but because Rey keeps on trucking.

I agree with Ditch that having quality tv matches in the 98-99 era isn't really a big horn to blow as far as GOAT but I do think Rey has two things going for him that very few others have. 1. He had two very different eras that various people will identify as his peak. The 95-97 era where he was obviously a flashier worker doing things that virtually no one else on Earth was doing and I think generally becoming the favorite "flyer" of damn near everyone at the time. And then his current WWE run where his matches are much more so about traditional babyface work (I can already here the HE TOLD STORIES IN 96 TOO! crowd chiming in and we can have that debate again if we want but does anyone really doubt that his matches are more about selling, structure, et now than they were when he was working Psicosis?). I think he has a very sound claim for having been the best wrestler of the 00's as well which is a feather in his cap. 2. There is a very large composite of his career available going back at least as far as 93 to the present and with the exception of Russo WCW when literally NO ONE was any good (at least no one on the A shows) there has never been a point where Rey wasn't good and more often than not he was great. You could easily make the case Mysterio was the best worker in the promotion he was in more often than not over the course of the last fifteen years (not sure I would argue this, but the point is the argument could be made) - and these are feds that have included guys like Finlay, Regal, Benoit, Eddy, Danielson and others with big time reps. Anyhow the point is we have a HUGE portion of his career on tape, with virtually everything of note over the last sixteen years or so being documented and no matter the opponent or setting Rey always seems to look awesome accepting the aforementioned Russo period. With guys like Flair even most Flair marks will admit that he had dropped off dramatically by 95 at THE LATEST and his famed stuff in the 70's is mostly stuff of lore. Harley is another case like that though even more extreme. The same could be said of Terry Funk too. Lucha footage has always been thinner so far as I can tell. The Japanese guys and girls have tons of footage but aside from Tenryu, Liger, Kawada and maybe Misawa do any of them have runs of comparable length/quality to what Rey has? I do think longevity can be overrated in these sorts of discussions as peak performance is always what impresses most, but longevity + access to large amount of footage + peak/high quality performances throughout the vast majority of the career = possible GOAT....maybe?

Steering off topic for a moment, what do you all think of Rey as GOAT candidate? I suspect I know what Jerome thinks though I welcome his comments one way or the other. I ask because when this conversation came up with my little brothers the other night they mentioned his name and I found it incredibly difficult to trivialize it, dispute it or dismiss it away. I guess you could argue that he was never an effective heel but then I have always thought Rey was one of those guys who was such a great, transcendent babyface that the notion of him being heel was utterly absurd. I would not rate him quite at the level of the very best guys, but I don't think he is far off and if I was someone of my brothers' generation I could see how he might be "their Flair" from the perspective of having a very consistent almost 20 year run of high quality matches, with a workable formula that almost any scrub can be effectively plugged into. Someone mentioned Fujinami being on my original list and maybe he shouldn't be on it. I don't consider him the GOAT, but I don't think he is a ludicrous candidate. Granted I have not seen much of his 90's work in years, but on the NJPW 80's set he was really incredible in multiple settings to the point where he shot up my personal list. Perhaps I'm overrating him based on that.

Kobayashi and Hase were both much better juniors than Takada. Koshinaka wasn't but he wasn't any good at all at that point. I did like Takada and Kosh a lot better in tags from that period fwiw.

There were people who touted Takada as top five for sure and plenty of people who considered him a "best ever" contender.

I really wish I could remember what thread it was over at the DVDVR where tomk talked about the new online wrestling fan v. the old online wrestling fan because I feel like that might be pertinent to this discussion.

To John's post two things: First thing is that I absolutely have seen people pimp Destroyer as the best ever so I don't think this is the case of projection. There was a period of time where tOA guys were pretty influential on the web and I think your points about Destroyer being a great, somewhat forgotten worker, led people to proclaim him the best ever after watching the matches themselves. Not saying you were one of those people - just acknowledging the fact that they existed. On Backlund I get your point to an extent and I personally don't see him as a guy that you or anyone is really touting as the best of all time. Having said that I have to ask - if the point of the Backlund stuff was just to point out that he was a good, solid worker why bother writing and talking so much about it over the years? I don't say this to accuse you of duplicity either as I don't doubt that was your intent. I'm just curious as to why it became a project of sorts for you.

Enjoy the responses so far. This is kind of what I expected to see as I figured some people would say that I was conflating greatest with GOAT, figured others would say a few of the names have changed but the amount of serious candidates are about the same and pretty much knew OJ would say that no one thinks about wrestling this way anymore

Speaking for myself of course but I think Fujinami destroys Takada. Takada would not even make a top hundred for me at this point. Really disappointing on the NJPW 80's sets and the UWFI stuff does not hold up nearly as well to me as the other "shootstyle" feds.

I was thinking about this over the last couple of days, but when I started posting about wrestling on the net over fifteen years ago the range of acceptable "best ever" candidates was really small. It expanded a bit over the years but by and large there was a very small number of candidates that wouldn't be met with accusations of insanity/trolling. I would say about ten years ago the serious candidates would have been: Kawada, Misawa, Jumbo, Flair, Destroyer (I believe the Beyer pimping) and maybe Liger. There were a few guys touting people like Funk, Takada, various Joshi figures (most notably Jaguar, Aja or Hokuto), Dynamite and Harley but they were more isolated and in many quarters were viewed as contrarian picks. Lucha was almost never discussed, shootstyle was off the radar, NJPW heavies largely ignored and a non-NWA champ GOAT claim from the States would have been dismissed out of hand (yes I realize Terry is not pimped for his title run but I'm on a role here). Fast forward ten years and the explosion of available footage and access to it and it seems like there are a mammoth number of available GOAT contenders. I am a Lucha novice but I have seen claims for: El Dandy El Hijo Del Santo Negro Casas Satanico Blue Panther is another name that I know is highly regarded though I get the feeling GOAT would be considered excessive. Still those are guys with followings that weren't even in the discussion before. From the U.S. you've got: Terry Funk Ric Flair Eddy Guerrero Stan Hansen (though I guess you could argue that a lot of his claim rests on stuff from Japan) Jerry Lawler The Destroyer (see Hansen) You still see an occasional Harley fan out there though he's not as touted as before. Bockwinkel has fans. Benoit was a guy with supporters before the murders. A couple of days ago my brother mentioned Rey and I found it impossible to argue against. I get the feeling if you were in the right place Michaels, Austin and Bret would all have many advocates as well. Even someone like Bill Dundee does not seem like a totally off the reservation pick to me. The point is there are more obvious candidates then before and several others that I think would be in the discussion. Japan probably has seen the biggest shake up as people pay less attention to Juniors and no attention to Joshi. This has led to a situation where no one is touting Joshi gals anymore but I think if anything the over all field has expanded dramatically. Japan: Tenryu Kawada Misawa Kobashi Jumbo Fujiwara Fujinami Hashimoto Liger I am tempted to include Volk Han, Tamura and even someone like Ishikawa as he is someone that has a vocal following online though I don't know that anyone would tout any of these guys as GOAT. Anyway I was curious to see if the general view is that I am crazy and we have just seen a sea change in who is pimped so heavily or if we are actually seeing a broadening landscape leading to a more inclusive and (perhaps) thoughtful appraisal of who the best ever was. Also would love to hear if anyone thinks any of these names are stretches, if anyone else could be included, et. For example are their any Europeans worth considering? Did I name all the relevant Luchadores? et, et, et

Ihope this set has room for at least a few Ron Wright promos

Rumor I heard from a friend of a friend is that Highspots got a percentage of merch sales from the Fayetteville taping. I really doubt that is true but the info comes from a source that I wouldn't typically accuse of making things up.

Related sidenote - I love how the homophobic stuff like this is always accompanied by requests/demands from the person who issues the slurs for some sort of sexual act to be performed upon them. I.E. boo to The Rock because he's gay, hey Rock suck my penis...

That's not true. When Scott Steiner referred to Samoa Joe as a fat half breed the promos were widely praised. Wrestling is innately anti-pc. There are things about that fact that I like, things about that fact that I hate, and things that I am indifferent too. I'd like to think that I'm not homophobic but I had no real problem with the promo largely because I am so used to homophobia, ethnic stereotyping, horrible portrayals of women, et in pro wrestling that it has to be something unusually offensive for me to cringe. I do wish that "u r gay!" wasn't the first response of virtually every top edgy WWE babyface in recent years (see DX and Cena) but at this point it is basically an assumed part of the product and I don't believe for a second that a program built on ritualistic violence is a good place to deal with the "anti-bullying" stuff in the first place.

We never agree on anything, but I said the same thing to someone not an hour ago

My dream would be that Miz wins with a flash pin and post-match Rock comes into the ring to bury the hatchet with Cena and gets destroyed by him as the show goes off the air. Zero chance of that happening but that is definitely the scenario that I would enjoy the most.

This is common among internet fans and I blame the Attitude Era. It has gotten to the point where many people feel cheated if their isn't a surprise but then will turn around and complain if the surprise is something they don't like. (not accusing Vic of this fwiw)

I agree with this. Goldust could have been a fun challenger and a program with Michaels would have been good, but I think the gimmick was too over the top to carry the company. I agree that he was NEVER going to be the face of the company but that is entirely different than asking whether or not he could have become a legit champion. Why would you have Goldust winning the belt? What would it accomplish? And why wouldn't you choose one of the other options available at that time? I didn't say I would have him win the belt. The issue to me - more so than the actual question of whether or not he could have been champ - is whether or not he was booked in such a way to maximize his talents and the character itself. I probably would never have given him the belt, but then I probably would never have given Shawn the belt either or a lot of other guys for that matter.