Childs

Where are you seeing youth vs. experience? Hash started in 1984, Hase in 1986. They were very much of the same generation. And who was the outsider?

I'd love to see where both would be if they didn't stray from their "reasons for notoriety." I.e. if Tyson hadn't become such a train wreck with the rape, the arrest and some of the batshit stuff he's done and said since, and being someone that TV show and movie producers would bring in as a cameo or whatnot (BTW, Mel Gibson was dropped from Hangover II because of his antisemitic and off the rails drunken tirades rubbed the actors the wrong way, which is fair, but they'd rather do scenes with a CONVICTED RAPIST?) Train wreck was part of the deal with Tyson from early on. The Robin Givens interview came when he was still clearly the No. 1 boxing star in the world. There was never a version of him that wasn't headed down that path. I was thinking last night about whether Tyson is clearly bigger than Hogan. He probably is, because he was such a huge figure both for straight sports fans and in tabloid culture. Particularly surreal is his third act as a beloved old crazy, touring the country with a one-man show. That I did not see coming, though perhaps I should've, because Mike was always super-engaging in doses.

But Hogan really wasn't small potatoes, Loss. My mom and dad knew who he was. Everyone at school knew who he was. And that continued for several generations. I mean, when they play Voodoo Chile at Camden Yards as the walk-in for one of the Orioles' relievers, someone in the press box invariably strums an air guitar and makes a Hollywood Hogan joke. I'm not saying people regard him as anything more than a cartoon sprung to life. But he's extremely well-known.

The classic Observer that went online this week is the original HOF issue, which gives an interesting glimpse of Dave's thinking on all the members of the first class.

But isn't the current product less necessarily important to us as hardcore fans that it ever has been? We're able to dive into footage from all sorts of past eras and experience them on week-to-week levels of detail. I could probably be an engaged wrestling fan for the rest of my life without ever watching WWE in real time. So a lot of the time, I don't give a fuck if WWE is good or not. Of course I think it'd be better if the dominant promotion in the world was great. I got excited about Summerslam, just like everybody else. But in reality, I often read these sorts of threads and shrug, because I know I'll be fine either way.

Yeah, people are conflating the question of biggest mainstream star with the question of biggest wrestling star. Rock is certainly a bigger star to the average person than Bruno Sammartino or Steve Austin. But I don't think he's been as important to the WWE/WWF's business as those guys were. To be fair, his role in the last three Wrestlemanias gives him a better argument. Hogan still resides on another planet from all those guys.

I haven't watched nearly as much lucha as OJ, so I'm less qualified to talk about title match standards. That said, Satanico and Cochisse obeyed the spirit of the form by depicting their rivalry as one of wrestling one-upsmanship rather than blood hatred. They worked with ferocity and incorporated little gestures of disdain, but the match was ultimately about which guy could outwrestle the other, not which guy could leave the other lying bloody at ringside. I love that they created such an intense vibe without going full MS1-Sangre Chicana. That takes an incredible degree of skill, and it's why this is one of the best title matches I've seen.

I love where he describes Harley Race as a "local wrestler."

What about Taker vs. Bret?

Where would you put him all-time among WWF/WWE stars? Behind Hogan, Bruno, Austin, Cena, Rock? Would he go above Backlund? HHH? Macho? Not making an argument so much as I'm curious what people will say.

Why must we treat this as a binary issue? It's what they do well plus what they actually produce with it. Very few people here have advocated rating workers solely by counting great matches. I know you know that, having participated in a number of these methodology conversations.

Matt, have you watched the Satanico-Cochisse match yet? To me, that's about the perfect title match.

I'm with some others here in that I'm currently more excited to watch Martel (and probably Santana) than Steamer. But Steamboat's best matches were so damn good, and he was incredibly consistent in that last WCW run. Honestly, I don't see much of an argument for Santana over him. Martel, you could probably at least convince me that he did more things well than Steamboat.

Not enough people have seen their stuff. Maybe that will change with the interest in UK workers as WON Hall of Fame candidates and with the eventual release of the DVDVR Euro set. Ohtani's Jacket has done excellent work laying the foundation for discussion. I definitely see guys like Steve Grey and Jim Breaks as candidates for the upper reaches of GOAT lists.

Not just you. Barr was a very involved ref, but his tone was all over the fucking place.

This was it for their singles matches, and it is a treat, even though both were past their primes.

Well I did give the 5/9/80 Hansen match an A, which is a pretty high rating from me. I was also the high vote on the 12/06/79 Backlund match on the recent Titans show -- and by some margin. But in both cases, it felt like I liked these matches despite Inoki. I'm just wondering if there are matches where the match is good primarily because of Inoki rather than his opponent. Well, you didn't ask: Was Inoki a great wrestler who carried lots of guys to classics? The answer to that would be no. But he was a game participant in a lot of really good matches. Thus, I and a lot of others seem to be saying that "hate" is too strong a reaction to his body of work. I just think that if you disliked him strongly in the Hansen matches and the Backlund match, you're unlikely to find religion on Inoki.

I hated watching every Inoki match that made tape from the '80s, because he mailed in way too many performances. But I like his best stuff too much to say I hate him. Not sure why John felt the Brisco match was just there; I thought it featured lots of hardfought matwork with effective build to the highspots. And Inoki worked hard in it. I think Loss is a fan of that match as well. I also liked the Robinson match, and as Dylan mentioned, I've generally not hated the '70s Inoki I've seen. That was his athletic prime. I genuinely loved that 2/6/86 match against Fujiwara in which Inoki was the lesser guy but held his own. Others have mentioned his willingness to let Vader slaughter him when he was past 50. I feel weird defending Inoki, because I've probably suffered through as much of his worst shit as anyone. But there you have it. JVK, I feel like you're generally not a fan of older-school matwork, so I'm not sure you're ever going to like some of Inoki's better stuff from the '70s. You've already expressed your aversion to the Hansen series, and I thought he was pretty good in those matches. So the gulf might simply be too wide.

I wax and wane on guys as well, and I agree that it's arbitrary. But there are wrestlers who consistently excite me. Matches too. When I see Hashimoto get that look of ferocious determination and start throwing kicks and overhand chops, I always get fired up with him. When I watch Andre and Hansen going at it like rampaging dinosaurs, I always think "Awesome!" Then there are guys I respect but don't react to as strongly. I'm thinking of Negro Casas, Steamboat, Bret Hart, a lot of Terry Funk. With Lawler, his babyface performances in big matches hit me in the gut where I'm more clinically amused by his hide-the-chain heeling. I don't see any profound underlying reason for this. It's the same with songs, movies, whatever. I hear "Ticket to Ride," I get tingles. I hear "Yesterday," I think it's an incredibly tight piece of craft but that's it. I watch "Dazed and Confused," I'm awash in emotions about youth. I watch "Vertigo," I just think it's nifty work. I don't feel the need to examine that alchemy past a certain point. I love talking about how things are crafted, but there's a point where if two works are both great and I react to one more powerfully, it just is.

I understand, believe me. If you really want to go deep on individual years, I'd recommend New Japan '83-'84, '86-'89 and All Japan '89-'93. Though with '80s New Japan, the DVDVR set really does do a lot of the work for you. All Japan was pretty staggering in its week to week quality, especially from '91 to '93. Very few weekly shows without at least one excellent match during those years.

But again, between the 80s sets, the yearbooks and Ditch's download sites, you can piece together a pretty good approximation. Unless you want to watch all the TV from a promotion, that's about as deep as you're going to need or want to go.

I feel like I must be the overall closest to the pin champion for the 80s sets.

But that's primarily because WWF was an international company. Bret might have headlined more big shows, depending on how you define that. But it would be hard to argue that he had the same impact in his own country that Choshu did in Japan in the '80s. He was obviously an important figure in setting up the late '90s wrestling boom, but for a variety of reasons, some not his fault, he never became the guy who made promotions rise and fall.

I think we just forgot about it in making the line-up for the show.

I agree OJ and I think I made that point on the podcast. My problems with Joshi have nothing to do with a lack of athleticism. If anything, the high-end matches sometimes fetishize athleticism to a damaging point. As for the lucha, I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff that we didn't see. As you said, the yearbooks are surveys by nature. But I'm comfortable saying the best stuff from '91 didn't reach the ridiculous heights of the best stuff from '90.