Dylan Waco

As someone who used to hate on Backlund pretty hardcore, I must admit that my opinion has changed of him over the last couple of the years. In part this is because of watching his best stuff for the WWE poll at SC, and even though I still disagree with you on the specifics of certain matches, it's hard to deny that Bob was a strong ring worker. Having said that I've never really been able to nail down your position on Bob as a worker as it relates to other great in ring talents from his era. For whatever reason you've been evasive about this when I've asked before. I'm not really interested in where you would rate him next to someone like Flair who I know you are tired of discussing. I'm much more interested in whether or not you think Bob is a serious contender for best U.S. wrestler of the 80's, if you've ever seen a bad Bob performance, how you think he stacks up next to some of his better opponents (see Slaughter or Buddy Rose), et. Just wanted to get your overall thoughts on him, especially now that you've gone through so many of his matches over on tOA in the hundred nights of WWF thread.

I had it three all time for the WWE in the SC poll and in hindsight I kind of wish I had it at one. The match is actually even better if you watch the entire storyline and angle leading up to it, with the three minute concussion angle disguised at a match at SS and the awesome Street Fight on Raw. The fact that Hardy went over in such a decisive fashion by stopping Edge from escaping, kicking out of Edge's finisher, getting revenge on Lita and winning clean with the Super-Legdrop is pretty amazing considering it's the WWE. I've been pimping this pretty hard for a year now and up until this week most people roll their eyes when I tell them how high I rate it. Glad to see I'm not crazy. Also, while I have never had Liger at my number one, he's a guy who is a "safe" all time top five guy for me. The guy is a master at conveying emotion and body language despite working in a full bodysuit and mask which is telling in and of itself. Supposedly the DVDVR guys are really high on his pre-Liger work, and as I recall from the matches I've seen him have from that period (quite a few due to some previous bulk purchases and a nice Owen in Japan comp) when more people see that stuff I think the consensus on him is going to solidify.

The pop for UT's demolition of the Stooges is still one of my favorite extracurricular spots in wrestling history.

I'm not a Cryme Tyme fan at all, but when I saw them work a house show here two weeks back, they had the second best match of the night, on a card that included Regal v. Finlay and Ricky Steamboat working underneath.

Did the crowd come off as dead live as it did on tv?

Gives a "crisis in confidence" speech wear he attacks the company for it's dependence on foreign talent and bad writing. Next week McMahon opens up Raw and says a malaise has fallen over the show and they need to shake things up. Announces Adamle as guest host.

Loss have you watched Kanemoto v. El Samarai from BOSJ 97 recently? I remember thinking it was wildly overrated at the time,but I watched it a couple of weeks back and thought it was a very good match.

My favorite guy that really looks like he had no business in the ring was pasty Bob Cook.

I like this an awful lot, but I'm not sure it's Luger's best singles match. Besides the Flair matches there is also the Pillman match from HH 89 that is awfully good. I also maybe the only person who likes Hayes v. Luger nearly as much as this match with Steamer.

Really enjoying reading your thoughts in this thread Loss, even if I find myself disagreeing with you way more than I would have thought. I like this match a lot as a legit out of control brawl, even with the problems you point to. On the other hand I think you and I are a dying breed on Flair v. Steamboat from SS 94. I've always liked it and never understood what the argument against it is.

Funny because I've watched a lot of wrestling these last two weeks and Orndorff has come up more than once as a guy who seems really great, even though you can't point to a particular reason why. I really think he just carries himself around in the ring the way a "great" is supposed to and it shines through. I've seen some very fun early MACW tags with him and I really like his matches with Hogan, but like you I'd struggle to find anything great.

I'm one of those people who hates that Ladder Match and thinks it is a terrible bout. Having said that even I thought Jericho really busted his ass in that match and his performance really impressed me as he was essentially wrestling against a dangerously out of control and clueless performer in a setting that isn't exactly the sort of place you want to showcase carelessness in. So yeah Jericho's performance in that match was very good. Michaels performance in that match is among the worst I've ever seen from an allegedly great wrestler in a big match.

Probably Batista, but I suspect that Kane's absence was a wellness suspension for reasons that aren't entirely restricted to his tv disappearance.

Jericho is easily the best all around performer in the WWE right now and I'd only put Rey and Christian ahead of him in the ring (and really that's debatable). To me this is the best in ring year he's ever had. Very high end matches with CM Punk, the whole Rey series, the exchanges with Steamboat, the really great match v. Cena on his "last night on Raw." He's yet to have a real stinker this year and just seems to be clicking on all cylinders. He also has the most amusing taunts in wrestling. Really the idea that Jericho's in ring peak was in WCW is pretty comical. I agree that he was an excellent mid-card act and probably should have been elevated. But he was sloppy throughout and there are precisely two Jericho matches from that run that stand out: a great little Nitro match v. Mike Enos which is really on offensive explosion from Enos and the super underrated match v. Eddie at Fall Brawl 97. Everything else runs together and more often than not it feels like Jericho is a big man trapped in a little mans body that can't connect on the spots and work at the pace of the other guys running circles around him. I always loved him in 02-03. Thought he was the only good thing about Raw for big chunks of this period (well him and Goldust). I'd be lying if I said I remembered many of the matches Loss points to but I don't doubt them being good.

Matt Hardy's childish blogging was actually a brilliant long term career move for him though.

Hogan was good more often than not. Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt that Hogan was a by the numbers worker at times and that Hogan wasn't the strongest of house show performers. But year-by-year Hogan tends to have a lot of good stuff and it's not just against high end opponents, on the biggest shows. I'm not calling him a great worker by any means, and there are a large number of people I would rate ahead of him, but he's hardly the bum that many smart fans made him out to be for years.

Hogan was good more often than not. Hogan as mediocre worker is the real myth.

Probably the best wrestler in the world for the decade of the 90's. An offhand reference to him in the PWI almanac, coupled with Williams pimpage of him in the Torch turned me into a massive AJPW fan. One of two guys in history that can lay a reasonable claim to having been a part of the best singles and tag match in history. Having said that, I don't find this to be terribly shocking. Misawa wrestled the same sort of hard hitting style that Eddie, Benoit, Pillman and Hash worked. Arguably even more so. He has been in noticeably bad shape the last few years and didn't look well in the Jan. Dome match that has been positively reviewed by many modern Puro fans. Carrying the weight of company with no logical successor on his back had to have been a massive stress to him as well. Of course all of that is speculation and this may have just been a pure freak accident, but the death of Misawa ought to be a lesson about the consequences of working such an unforgiving style.

Austin is one of the most liberal cities in the country.

Really? I mean I guess there are more black wrestlers than black jockeys but I woulds be surprised if someone could prove that wrestling was as integrated as horse racing. Integrated probably isn't the best word. Multicultural?

I kinda doubt it. The match was noticeably quick and featured Orton doing even more of the work than you would expect in a match like this. Finish was very much out of the blue as well.

Wrestling is a heavily integrated and heavily un-PC work environment. It's very rare in that respect. I suspect that most of the guys are reflections of that culture, which is to say that they aren't really aren't neat fits for any sort of politics. No doubt that most of the business is probably Republican, but it's not principled conservative or even slavishly right wing from what I can tell. There do appear to be a fair number of libertarians in the business as well (Kane, Val Venis)

It's impossible to know for sure, and I see Loss point, but I think IF he had been active he would have ended up with the belt by 03 at the latest. I don't think he ever would have gotten a major run mind you, but I just supect it would have happened eventually.

Grew up on wrestling. First major memories are wrestling related. My two best friend growing up were fans. One got me into all the shows in town for free for years because his dad worked the gate. He quit giving a shit when he was 13 or so, though he still likes Cena, Michaels and Flair and will watch it when he's over here (he regards Jushin Liger as the best wrestler ever which I think is funny since he never saw a lick of Liger's overseas work). My other best friend started watching when he was young, but got super into it in 94 when I introduced him to Vader/WCWSN. From BATB 94 until Jan 01 we watched and recorded every single ppv at his house, took summer trips to follow around ECW, subscribed to all of the major newsletters (including the Lariat.....). I moved out of his house in Jan of 01 and into a gigantic party house, with no cable but lots of booze and acid. Being the only straight edge kid in the punk house, I spent a lot of my time breaking up fights, encouraging criminal behavior from a distance and laughing my ass off. I missed most of that years wrestling related insanity and my buddy called me the night of the last Nitro to tell me what was going on. That was the last time he ever watched a wrestling show until two years ago when I got him to watch the Rise and Fall of ECW dvd with me. Now one of the my closest friends and colleagues is a huge wrestling fan who regularly advertises it in his articles and commentaries. I watch all the ppvs with him and a group of mutual friends at the local sports bar, though he doesn't really give a shit about digging up obscure shit and I think he thinks I'm nuts for being so into wrestling from other countries (keep in mind this is a guy who's work office is filled with wrestling photos and autographs). Two of my three little brothers are huge fans and I talk to them about the shows once a week. I"ve sent some tapes there way over the years and one of them contributed to the Best WWE matches ever poll at SC. My youngest brother is staying with me this summer and we plan on watching a shitload of my old, unlabeled tapes. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to get some of it online as a lot of it is semi-rare or stuff I've never really seen online (Mid-Atlantic raw footage, all of Shawn Michaels TWA, tons and tons of SMW, lots of World Class tv, et.). My uncle has promoted benefit shows in TN and GA. Oddly he's nowhere near the fan me or my brothers are, but he's an old school fan. So yeah wrestling is pretty important to me because it's tied in to a lot of my relationships and a lot of my day to day dealings. People have paid me to write about it, I've been watching it my whole life, a lot of my friends/family are into it, et.

I would be surprised if any were. How many did I watch or re-watch? I promised myself that I would re-watch/watch at least 35 of the heavily pimped matches on the board. I made it to 50 and tapped out at that point. Ended up being everything from 2003 through early 2008 that made the Top 100, and most that made the Top 101-200. There were a few like a Benoit vs Kane TV match that I saw at the time it aired, didn't have any memory of it doing a thing for me, and passed on it to spend my time watching something else more pimped. How much did I seriously consider? After watching/re-watching them, none. I don't think that should be terribly surprising. Back in 2000-2004 when posting regularly about the WWE and it's TV and PPV's, I wasn't as big of a fan of Benoit and Eddy's work in the WWE as most everyone else. I was off Angle's bandwagon pretty early. I never was as high on Brock as most. What I think of Shawn is pretty well known (it's not like many of his matches in the 80s or 90s made my list - just one that I can recall). I never cared much for Trip. I was more tolerant of Cena's work early on than most. I've never been a big Regal or Finlay mark. Edge always struck me as "solid" rather than "great". I'm trying to remember anything I said positive about Rey's work in the WWE. 2000-2004 was well before my jag on watching 80s WWF in response to the DVDVR poll. Didn't start the WWF 80s thread until the end of 2006, which is also when Will's Backlund set came out. My lack of sporting a woody over "Modern WWF" predates looking at the 80s, especially looking deeper into the 80s than the DVDVR list - didn't start writing about that stuff until 2008, probably 1-2 months before Ray asked me to jump into the SC Poll. But what the heck, fans of the WWF/WWE shouldn't dispare. My favorite promotion is All Japan. The work in the promotion started wearing with me in 1997 and by 1998 it was painful. I haven't thought as highly about much of anything from All Japan or NOAH since then that other pimp to the moon. I think the match I've had the most fun with since then was Kobashi vs Suzuki and that was largely for Suzuki goofing on NOAH-style spots. So if 2003-2009 WWE doesn't float my boat, consider than none of the Kobashi-Misawa, Kobashi-Akiyama and Misawa-Akiyama matches after 1/97 are things that would make my "Top 50 All Japan + NOAH" list. I suspect WWE in the 00's would do better on my list than AJPW+NOAH in the 00s would. John I don't doubt any of this. My point wasn't "John compared 00's to 80's and thought 00's sucked." My point was "John and I have different taste as evidenced by the fact that he clearly doesn't like much WWE from this decade,whereas I like a lot of it."