JerryvonKramer

One thing I like about these women's matches is that if I ever get bored I can just look at their asses. Decent match imo

So let me get this right: HHH isn't going to defend the title at all before Mania?

I am tickled that a man responsible for booking so many shitty wrestling matches and cards should now have an award for excellence named after him.

Memphis 4.13 Koko Ware vs. Tommy Rogers (10/24/83) Someone said recently that Koko Ware was brutal when he worked squash matches recently. Well Jesus Christ, he's only some straight up All Japan shit in this match because he throws brainbusters, neck breakers, butterfly suplexes, backdrop suplexes and various other high end throws for fun here. I mean, like, full on OTT Steiner-style suplex machine. I don't know how good this match is really, but the spectacle of Koko just annihilating Rogers will all the huge bombs he can throw is amazingly good fun. If you haven't seen this one, and if you grew up watching the Birdman job on WWF TV every week, I'd recommend giving this one a quick watch just for the mind-fuck of seeing him work as Yoshiaki Yatsu here. ***1/2 Memphis 4.14 Bill Dundee vs. Tommy Rogers (11/7/83) Rogers has always been a fave of mine, as has Dundee so looking forward to this one. Like Dory vs. Lawler, this is another awesome match that seemed to get totally shafted in the final voting for this set. Both matches, in my book, should have been pushing for top 20, at least based on first four discs. This is a tremendously stiff, all-action, violent match between two great workers. Dundee's punches are something else aren't they. Hot match. **** Memphis 4.15 Dutch Mantel, Koko Ware, Bobby Eaton & Jaguar vs. The Grapplers & Bruise Brothers (12/10/83) The promo before the match here gives you a good idea of why Johnny Sorrow loves the gurning goon Porkchop Cash. Jaguar appears to be a Tiger Mask knock off. Koko is under a mask and called "Stagger Lee", even their secret identities were knock off, ha ha. There's some dissension in the ranks of the first family here and Jimmy Hart does some fire fighting. The seeds for the Surivor Series were sown right here. This was actually a really good match, a lot of action. Porkchop Cash stood out with some over the top bumping and fun heel work from the apron. The Grapplers can both throw a suplex or two, Koko was an effective FIP. And I have to give it to Ken Wayne, he captured Tiger Mask's botching superbly ... It's in the same "fun" range as a lot of these Memphis matches have been. ***1/2

Just to say that everyone who hasn't should watch Koko vs. Tommy Rogers from 10/24/83 to see one of the most mind-boggling performances I think I've ever seen. Mainly just because Koko runs through every single bomb he knows. It's 1983 in Memphis and he works it like it could be 1995 in AJPW. Review of that match coming soon, but holy shit, LOL. --- Just on Koko more generally, he is good in Memphis, especially tagging with Eaton, but there is not enough there for a GWE case I don't think.

Memphis 4.7 Fabulous Ones vs. Moondogs (6/13/83) Not really a match since the bout is thrown out after about two minutes, but this is a batshit insane brawl, just mayhem and carnage. I could do without the whistle blowing though from Jimmy Hart, it's super annoying. This is just mental. Memphis 4.8 Rock N Roll Express & Bobby Eaton vs. The Moondogs & Jimmy Hart (7/25/83) Retroactively quite weird to see Eaton tag with the Rock n Rolls here. This was effectively worked double heat with Morton then Eaton as FIPs. Not a lot to write home about, some nice bumps by the faces, but the beatdown on Eaton post-match is fun. ** Memphis 4.9 Bill Dundee vs. Assassin #1 (9/25/83) So Dundee is back after two months? He didn't leave town for long. The Assassin looks huge here, but of course this is Memphis so it's not the real Assassin, Jody Hamilton but instead Dusty Rip Off Merchant, Dirty Rhodes. This is a pretty fun match with Dundee nailing Assassin with a chain several times and then Assassin going all out for revenge for the rest of the match. And I thought he looked pretty good on top, pretty agile for a big man, etc. Poor finish wherein the other Assassin comes in and just attacks Bill for the DQ loss. Good fun. Post-match Lawler saves Dundee from a beatdown. **1/2 Memphis 4.10 Jerry Lawler & Austin Idol vs. Jesse Ventura & Stan Hansen (9/25/83) What a weird team here! Hansen and Ventura?! I didn't even know Jesse worked in Memphis. This goes as you'd imagine to begin with: Hansen kicks the crap out of Lawler. Ventura, of course, works a bear hug on Idol, but it doesn't go on too long. Then this just degenerates into a post-match brawl. Uber fun to see all these guys in the same match, but it's not exactly helping anyone's GWE case. ** Memphis 4.11 Austin Idol vs. Stan Hansen (Texas Bullrope Match) (10/3/83) It's a damn shame that it was Ventura who got the run with Lawler and Idol who got Hansen. This kinda reminded me of the Lex Luger match from Starrcade 90. Which is to say that Hansen had his formulas just like anyone else. And just like that match this is okay without being blow away. ***1/2 Memphis 4.12 Austin Idol vs. Stan Hansen (Bunkhouse Match) (10/10/83) Ref Paul Morton is bald and I thought it was Joe Higuchi at first and wondered if he'd come all the way from Japan just to ref this match. It thought this was very disappointing, the match is thrown out too early and never really gets going and while we do get the fun of seeing Hansen lariat Eddie Marlin, it's not really much of a match. Feels a bit of a cop out. Hansen is suspended which is just as well because an All Japan tour was about to start. I see these Austin Idol matches as a slight knock on Hansen only insomuch as I think Flair or Funk could have gotten better matches out of the same opponent. This seemed like a pretty lazy Hansen-by-numbers feud for me and of the runs outside of Japan people point to -- Puerto Rico, WWF, WCW, and this -- by far the weakest run for me. **

Anything specific I should look at? I also want to ask: are you grading him on a curve? As in, relative to the other workers around him? Because, from what you say, it does sound like that. Specifically these phrases: "as good as it gets ... From the modern era" and "rare instance of a contemporary worker". I'm just trying to understand if you are judging him purely against the standards of his own time or against all workers ever. I ask this partly because I think someone -- maybe it was elliott? -- might have tried to argue that it was pretty common for guys in the 80s to be able to work a lot of different roles or with any sort of opponent and so we should give them exponentially less credit for it. And obviously, I care about that because those guys make up a good chunk of my list. Like to my way of thinking the 80s were just better than now for wrestling so it makes sense you'd have a greater number of great workers active then.

Brock?

I disagree with this one and even gave him 0 for intangibles.

Which old timers are getting voted for with only a dozen matches on tape?

Memphis 4.5 Fabulous Ones vs. Bobby Eaton & Duke Myers (Hair vs. Titles) (5/16/83) Very fun to see a pre-Midnights Eaton and Cornette against a pre-Midnights Lane. Myers bleeds a lot here and they pack a lot of action into ten minutes. These Fabs tags are all really solid. I wonder if the strictures of the formula limit how good they can be,, maybe I'd want maybe five or six minutes longer to push the rating up and get more nuanced stories going on in the matches, but I'd still recommend every single one of these tags. ***3/4 Memphis 4.6 Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) (6/6/83) A lot of the work on this Memphis footage so far has been solid without being spectacular, and what I've been missing is that stone cold classic that would threaten my top 100 matches list. This match has a big reputation and so I was hoping this would be it. I watched the match four times. Dundee's punches are exceptional in this match and his offense carries a lot of the action. He has a great sense of intensity and urgency. In fact, I thought Dundee's performance overall is fantastic in this one. Lawler does his thing too and his selling of the punches is excellent; the juice job on his eye is nasty too. I've been trying to put my finger on what is missing for me, which is why I watched it four times. This might sound strange to some, but I think it feels a bit short. I don't know if it's because it is clipped or because Russell is a bit off with his timings (he calls 20 mins, and I make it more like 16 or 17), or if it's because the finish comes a little abruptly, but it lacked a sense of epicness to me. But then I think of Dibiase vs. Duggan or Magnum vs. Tully, which are both shorter, but those both have a much stronger sense of pay off as well as straight up blood and guts violence. So yeah, I guess I want it either to be more blood and guts or more epic. This is in the Chi-Town Rumble sort of time range and it it's not on that sort of level for me. Even though what they do is excellent. I also would have liked to have seen a little more long-term selling from both guys. Dundee hurts his leg, but then seems to forget about that when he's going for those for awesome chop blocks during the finish. I also wonder why the eye injury didn't play into the story of the match more. If you break the match down it feels like about four disconnected segments or mini-stories, which are all pretty great in their own right, but I think there's some slight disjointedness when you put them all together. Those four mini-stories: 1. Bulldogs and the counter to the bulldog 2. Action outside with tremendous Dundee punches 3. Lawler on top 4. The finish with Dundee going for the chop blocks and Lawler hitting the piledriver. It's not even that the transitions between these four sequences are bad, they aren't, it's just that they don't really add up to a big story within the terms of the match itself. I feel like in all the big classic matches I'd put in my top 100, from NWA, All Japan, etc., there are lots of things that are set up early in the match that are paid off later, but this doesn't really have that cohesion I'd want from a classic. So ... It's not the five-star or even the 4.75 match I'm looking for from Lawler, but it's still probably the best match I've seen out of Memphis so far ****1/2

I loathed that one match of Roberts vs Fuchi from All Japan so much (ranked 150 for the set) that I've held it against him ever since. Maybe he'll seem better in a British setting. I plan on doing a WoS marathon before deadline, just enough so that I can give ratings to a lot of those guys. I will have to look for out for Roberts.

I agree that I'd very much prefer it if funkdoc would make greater use of his neglected shift key.

Dylan, you are not voting for several really notable guys, including Ted Dibiase. What do you think Cesaro has over those guys? Just one of those things I wonder about. Virtually nothing this guy has done has stood out to me in cards I've watched over the past couple of years (which is only big PPVs), apart from the fact that he seems quite strong. Is he someone I should spend any time actually considering?

I have to reset my iPad, so posting any unposted reviews I have buried in notepad. The Destroyer vs. Giant Baba (3/5/69) No play by play for these longer matches, just going to watch and take in and then provide analysis. Destroyer, for those not familiar, wears a white mask with quite an open mouth area through which you can see the gap in his teeth. This gives him kind of a Jim Breaks vibe and like Breaks he's very vocal and an obvious heel. Baba is Baba who never seems to age or change or anything. Looks exactly the same as any other time you've seen him. Inoki looking like a Japanese Elvis is in Baba's corner; Destroyer has an assortment of cowboys, one I think is Cowboy Bob Ellis, in his. Another one really looks like Bill Watts. First off, The Destroyer is obviously legit awesome. He's a consummate heel constantly jawing, stooging, cheating, doing nasty shit and so on. He does the phantom object stuff as well as anyone I've ever seen. This whole match is worked super snug, and it has very nasty hand and finger work, especially in the early portion. Destroyer biting on the fingers while choking Baba out is a superb bit of ... Double cheating! Baba actually catches colour here, which I haven't seen him do a lot from a headbutt with a loaded mask. The matwork is top notch here. I was expecting this to be dry as fuck,Mubi it wasn't at all and the hour flew by. Destroyer is just a supremely engaging worker and the early comparison I made to Jim Breaks is one that holds: just one of those incredibly natural talents. This is has a reputation of being the premier match worked in this style and I can't really disagree. My only qualm is that the finish was straight dogshit. Destroyer goes in the the figure four he's been trying to hook for the entire match, gets it, Baba submits and that makes it 1-1, then Inoki comes in, the American cronies come in, the ref ends up getting punched and DQs Destroyer. Baba gets the big trophy and ceremony but surely he can't be happy with that victory and it kinda makes him look like a bitch chump winning on a technicality. Not a fan of that booking and it does enough to bring this one down from the highest rating. Still, this is is a must watch match. ****3/4 The Destroyer vs. Antonio Inoki (5/19/71) As ever with Inoki, it depends which Inoki turns up, but I want to see what he could do with Rikidozan's other protégé. I really didn't get a lot out of this to be honest. Destroyer did some neat stuff here and there, but mostly this bored me to tears just like every other Inoki match I've ever seen. How did the guy become such a superstar when he was soooo boring? Literally just sits in holds and does nothing to keep them interesting. ***

Not that I've done any sort of sustained rewatch of Jericho, but OJ's assessment strikes me as being overly harsh. Without really thinking about it, I'd see Jericho as being comparable to several other workers I rate highly, Hase most obviously, but also Ted DiBiase, which coming from me is huge praise. Why is it such a stretch to call Jericho a great worker? Seems to me that he can do a lot of things very well. Bump, sell, good array of offense, great charisma, work any number of different styles, can work basically any opponent. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me. What qualities do you look for in a great worker OJ aside from matwork ability? Just seems weird to me that you'd be this critical of a talented worker like Jericho while also telling us that Tibor Szakacs is god's gift to wrestling. It's just not clear to me what is driving those two assessments. Do you look at Jericho and punish him for not being able to do the pretzel stuff that Szakacs can? Or is it simply the case that you value WOS style workers but don't value a US-style worker like Jericho?

8 vs. 6 isn't exactly "well ahead". And also bear in mind that a 6 is "all-time great" for intangibles.

But Elliot, that's not your only criteria right? Or to put it in abother way, are you voting on more stuff than just my A column?

http://placetobenation.com/pwo-ptbn-roundtable-wwe-coms-top-50-babyfaces-in-wrestling-history/ Parv (Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling) welcomes Will (Dangerous Alliance, Reaction shows), Pete (This Week in Wrestling, Titans of Wrestling), Timothy (Lucha Undead, This Week in Wrestling), and Kris Zellner (Between the Sheets, Exile on Bad Street) for this special roundtable to discuss WWE.com's Top 50 Babyfaces in Wrestling History. 50. Diamond Dallas Page 49. Rocky Johnson 48. Bob Armstrong 47. Trish Stratus 46. Danny Hodge 45. Tommy Dreamer 44. Pedro Morales 43. Kofi Kingston 42. Ivan Putski 41. Tommy Rich 40. Lex Luger 39. Wahoo McDaniel 38. Eddie Guerrero 37. Antonino Rocco 36. Mr. Wrestling II 35. Jerry Lawler 34. Tito Santana 33. Verne Gagne 32. Rob Van Dam 31. Chief Jay Strongbow 30. Jack Brisco 29. Hacksaw Jim Duggan 28. Bob Backlund 27. Mil Mascaras 26. The Road Warriors 25. Bobo Brazil 24. Shawn Michaels 23. The Crusher and The Bruiser 22. Jimmy Snuka 21. Goldberg 20. Mankind 19. Macho Man Randy Savage 18. Magnum TA 17. Ultimate Warrior 16. Jeff Hardy 15. Andre the Giant 14. The Rock 'N' Roll Express 13. The Junkyard Dog 12. Undertaker 11. The Von Erichs 10. Rey Mysterio 9. Ricky Steamboat 8. The Rock 7. Dusty Rhodes 6. Bret Hart 5. Sting 4. John Cena 3. Stone Cold Steve Austin 2. Hulk Hogan 1. Bruno Sammartino

The way I'd rather put it Dylan is to flip the terms of it, so rather penalising Morton for the things he doesn't do, instead recognising the fact that a guy like Terry Funk being able to excel in SO MANY different roles is something that is really amazing that should be proportionally rewarded. So let's say Morton is the 10/10 FIP, that's great, but Terry Funk is a 9/10 FIP. He also happens to be an all-time great heel. He also happens to be a former NWA champ who travelled the world and was over everywhere he went. He also happens to be a phenomenal worker of gimmick matches. He could also work hour-long technical broadways etc. etc. In recognising that, I guess you de facto recognise that lots of other people can't say that they did all those things. And the ones who can -- Flair, Bock, Eddie, etc. -- are really pretty special. I guess I am saying that being a 9/10 at all of those things is better than being a 10/10 in one of them.

Jimmy, it's just a question of degrees. I can only speak to my own way of doing things, but Steamboat loses a grand total of 1 point (out of a possible 60) for never having worked heel. It means very little in the overall scheme of things. But lets say he never worked tags, never worked gimmick matches, never left Mid-Atlantic and spent his entire career working technical 20-minute TV draws, then it's going to start stacking. This won't happen in Steamboat's case, or even in Morton's, because hey, they were great workers, and had range within what they could do. I mean Morton did work heel, proved he could work singles, and so on. He had limited offense but can only lose 3 points total (of a possible 60) for that. Let's face it, the sorts of workers who were SO limited that they could only do one or two things -- let's say JYD -- probably aren't making the list anyway. But I think Charles might be talking about the small margins at the top. And there, yes, maybe the 1 point Steamboat loses for not working heel does end up hurting him vs. say Nick Bockwinkel, the career heel, who did show he could work face. It's one thing Bock can say that Steamer can't. Now, I see your point, that you could flip it: "this is something Steamer can say that Bock can't". Sure, but I'm not doing Greatest Babyface Ever, I'm doing Greatest WRESTLER ever, and I want my GWE to be able to do both, so I see the fact Steamer can say that actually as a slight negative in this instance. I hope that makes sense.

I'll just say on this that my view is that people tend to over-reward the guy who is exceptional at the one thing and under-reward the generalist. Not deliberately or even consciously, I just think it is a quirk of human thinking and how exceptionalism tends to work. "This guy is the best at this one thing" sticks in the head more than "this guy is very good at these ten different things, even though he isn't the best at any of them". I do think Morton should get his due for being the best FIP and for defining the role, but I also think he should be penalised for all the things he can't do. I suspect Eaton will finish above Morton for me, simply because his all-around game is stronger. He has better offense, he can work in a greater variety of different roles etc. All other things being equal, Eaton has the edge. To me, you can't be the GWE unless you are pretty great at all aspects of being a wrestler, which is why it counts for roughly one sixth of what I'm looking for. And looking down the sample in the spreadsheet, the guys who are the best all-rounders are Funk (top for that), then Flair, Bockwinkel, and Eddie.

One thing I'm still really torn on for Hogan is whether he should be getting points in the L [Longevity of Peak] rating. Nominally that rating is " the period of time that worker was roughly a top 30 worker in the world". And if I was to give Hogan points, it would be something like 81-91 = 10 years = 6. He's currently getting 0 from me there. But here's what I can't square, and where the "Being Hulk Hogan" thing comes into play. Can anyone say with a straight face that Hogan WASN'T a top 30 worker in the world during that time frame? He was the biggest star by a mile. He had big memorable matches. Huge moments we all still remember. It kind of feels wrong to give him 0. What do people think?

I will say too that the A [Ability to work different roles] rating is purposefully designed to punish guys who were limited or specialist in what they could do, because I specifically think the GWE should be able to "do it all". And currently, this is where Funk and Flair and pulling ahead of the Japanese contenders. Don't forget that BIGLAV is custom-made to reward the things I look for specifically in the top GWE guy. Ricky Morton won't do well in the A rating, and I do believe that it is a knock on him that he could only really do one thing.

He gets a +1 for being ace / champ. BUT ALSO Arguably gets all the benefits that go along with that, namely: opportunities to have great matches (see Great Matches: 10), and opportunities to have memorable matches against a variety of different opponents (see Variety: 10). You will notice that almost every WWF champ gets a boost to their variety rating simply because they got those chances. With Bob Backlund, it's basically his entire case. So Misawa does get recognition for the career he had. Brian Pillman does not get the +1 for being champ / ace, AND he never had those same opportunities. So I don't think things are stacked against Misawa here. Pillman can claw 1 point back through +1 over in multiple markets (Stampede, WCW, ECW, WWF). He's not getting a +1 just for WCW, but for the fact he was over in four distinct promotions. He also gets a +1 for ability to work heel, which is something else he has over Misawa. And another +1 for ability to work gimmick matches, which is seemingly something every American worker has over every Japanese worker.