JerryvonKramer

I am interested: I will very likely have Arn a good bit above Tully on my list. Will you?

Tully is an interesting one to leave out. Makes me wonder what you found disappointing about his match with Steamboat, the tag with Arn vs. Luger / Windham, etc. etc. I've never really seen anyone be down on those matches.

Simply put, Ted just had a way better career than Hennig. 1. He had two legendary feuds in Georgia, one with the Freebirds, one with Mr. R (Brad Armstrong under a hood). The matches would be in the "memorable" category and the angle where he takes multiple piledrivers from Gordy is in the "all-time" category in term's of Ted's performance during the whole deal. 2. Before the Duggan deal, he had a legendary feud with JYD in Mid-South. The matches DiBiase had with JYD are textbook on working around the limitations of a very limited worker. 3. He had several high-profile runs in All Japan as Stan Hansen's partner and was part of over a dozen VERY solid matches in that setting. And by "very solid" I mean in the ***1/2-**** range. 4. There is the angle with Flair (another all-time great selling job by Ted) and the subsquent feud with Murdoch. 5. There is the Million Dollar Man character itself, which, again to put it bluntly, was just much more important than the Mr. Perfect character in terms of establishing new guys and putting over talent. 6. As per 5. there is the stuff with Dustin Rhodes which helped get him over as an up and comer. 7. As per 5 and 6, there is the feud with Virgil, which established him as one of the hottest babyfaces of 1991. 8. The Money Inc. team has some very underrated stuff, especially with the Steiner Brothers in 1993. And this is without really getting into the hard numbers of *total no of good-great matches in Mid-South vs. total no of good-great matches in AWA* The whole thing just adds up to a much better career than Hennig's inside the ring and out of it. You can't expect DiBiase to have a ****+ match with fucking Virgil or Dusty Rhodes, but look at his role in those matches and feuds and see how effective he was in getting over his opponents. Who did Mr. Perfect put over really? Who did he make? Bret? Maybe, but Bret would have been a star no matter what. DiBiase made a lot of stars during his career in MSW and WWF. This is why the BIGLAV rating has SIX categories and not only one or two. I take the whole career and what was achieved in that career (in terms of in-ring performances) into perspective. In the Ted vs. Curt case, it translates into Ted having better "intangibles", greater longevity, a wider variety of opponents, and the ability to fulfill a wider spectrum of roles and get over in more markets with different audiences. This is also why Ted is a smidge higher than Windham in my ratings because, again, I just think Ted had a better career than Windham. It's also why I think the idea of people rating Rick Rude over Ted is basically absurd because Ted's career demolishes Rude's except for his phenomenal 1992. However, I no longer care AT ALL what other people think (and frankly cannot WAIT for this whole thing to be over), and you, of course, are free to make up your own mind about these things, and about what is and is not important to you when judging GWE. For me, the career matters. Arn Anderson had a longer and better career than Tully Blanchard, which is why Arn will rank above Tully on my list. Tully had more great matches and was arguably a more complete wrestler, but those aren't the only metrics.

Incidentally this is why I see ZERO Flair in him

^ Jimmy, that's the Tulsa match

Polite request to end music discussion at this point. Jimmy, Ted-Magnum should be online soon.

Funny enough it was watching those matches that inspired me to bump this thread.

I had considered Donovan also. But I'm such a Dylan mark that I don't consider Ochs or Donavan even to be on the same planet. Hence Stones, CCR etc.

Memphis 4.1 Dutch Mantell, Steve O & The Fabulous Ones vs. Adrian Street, Jesse Barr & The Sheepherders (Stipulations Match) (3/28/83) Was very hard to get into this with the fuzziness of the footage and general chaos. Seemed like a mess to me. Loathe to give it a rating, but I've watched it three times now trying to get into this disc and that is more than enough. * Cornette's hysterical "there's got to be a loophole!" freak out after the match, however, is pretty incredible. Memphis 4.2 Bill Dundee vs. Terry Taylor (4/4/83) Didn't think much of this and one of the more disappointing Dundee performances I can remember seeing. Only goes ten minutes and has a poor finish. Still amazes me how Flair got that match out of Taylor. **1/2 Memphis 4.3 Fabulous Ones vs. The Moondogs (4/4/83) One thing that has come out of this Memphis footage is that their tag matches were incredibly strong and benefitted greatly from sticking so closely to the Southern formula. I've suffered a lot of Moondogs matches for Titans and this was more enjoyable than any of them. Obviously this is after Spot has replaced King, but I don't think it's a personnel thing, but a formula thing. The formula works. ***1/2 Memphis 4.4 Fabulous Ones vs. The Moondogs (Stretcher Match) (5/2/83) A smidge better than last match because the Fabs got more time on offense and we got blood. These two teams had good chemistry. ***3/4

Ha ha ha Mellancamp is so harsh as a comparison! At least give him someone like, I dunno, CCR or Allman Brothers Band seem fairer to me. In such a comparison, Terry Funk would be the Rolling Stones. That reminds me, let me see about getting the Magnum matches online.

Will anyone rank him? He's in an awful lot of good matches across both his big tag runs.

He is an assassin who is cerebral. I do recall him going after body parts / injuries and that being played up by JR.

Incidentally, this one strikes me as pertinent to recent discussions: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/critics-76.php

I've liked plenty of Lucha matches too. I'm still a Lucha philistine. Christague is a lot better on other stuff. I've got his big reference book somewhere. I have a lot of books like that on music and film. Over the years, I've found Christague is generally unhelpful. His longer essays are good.

It's interesting cos I've never seen an iota of Flair in HHH's performance.

Perhaps, but the point is there's virtually nothing casual about the dismissal. I mean we even broke down Azteca vs Dandy minute by minute so I could explain everything that I don't like about the match. Hardly casual.

It is precisely because I am self-aware that I will not be ranking any lucha or shoot guys. I am to them what our friend Christague is to rap, a philistine who will never get it no matter how many albums he listens to. So, yes, self-awareness.

As an aside, I really have no time for Christgau. Why? This was his review of Liquid Swords Liquid Swords [Geffen, 1995] gangsta as mystery, religious and literary ("Shadowboxin'," "Killah Hills 10304") ** Great insight Rob. As I said, I will provide lists of Ted's high-end matches in due time. I really need to see 85-7 stuff again because I watched it in a blur last time, and my tastes have changed a bit.

Metal and hip-hop weren't created in a vacuum either, what's your point? Every new style comes from something. "Nothing comes of nothing", as someone once wrote. You are talking as if being a niche is a bad thing. It isn't. It's a descriptive and generic label. It's not a mark of how popular or unpopular something is. I don't care for shootstyle which is why my list will not be representing it. Ditto lucha. I will leave them for the enthusiasts. I was mainly objecting to Phil's characterisation of the local pizza place as a mischaracterisation. I just don't think it is an accurate analogy.

It should be self-evident. NWA, with all its consistuent members, including AJ and NJ (and WWF) represents the mainstream of wrestling history since Sam Muchnick and friends got together in the 1950s. ECW, shoot-style, garbage matches, high-flying, etc. etc. represent niches, essentially departures from that. Lucha is its own thing that doesn't plug in neatly to this narrative and the relationship is much closer to something like the relationship between jazz -- something with its own history and traditions -- and rock n roll. I don't think any of this is remotely controversial.

Can you please leave me alone. Ted didn't work shootstyle, so this is basically irrelevent. If you want to talk about contributing, I felt we were starting to really do that with Ted vs. Barry discussion. As an aside, you're wrong. Hip-hop records sell in the millions, and Jay-Z is a household name. It doesn't change the fact that hip-hop, within the purview of popular music since the 1950s, is a niche.

Within the purview of pro wrestling, whichever way you cut it, whichever way you want to slice it, it is a niche. Jumbo and AJ style are both strongly influenced by US work and US workers. Jumbo was a Funks trainee. They had NWA matches. They were plugged into the mainstream of what wrestling was. However, I would honestly much prefer Barry / Ted talk to continue. If you want to talk about how you think Shootstyle "isn't a niche", please make a new thread for it and do it there where I can ignore it.

I would also hate this exchange with Phil to detract from Windham / DiBiase comparisons and would love to hear move people weigh in on that.

I think I also reject the terms of the slightly snooty analogy. It's less insisting that Mario's down the street has the best pizza in the world, and much more in line with sticking to the idea that the greatest bands are The Bealtes, Led Zeppelin and the Stones as opposed to some post-rock indie metal band no one has ever heard of. In this analogy, fans of certain niches -- let us say shootstyle -- are much more akin to the fans who swear that, I dunno, Yes's Close to the Edge and Can's Ege Bamyasi are the best albums of 1972 as opposed to Ziggy Stardust or Exile of Main Street which are "overrated". I say, after considering both, nah, prog sucks, it's still Ziggy, then Exile. Or maybe there's someone who says it's Miles Davis's On the Corner. And I say, after struggling for a month to get into discordant trumpets and whatnot, nah, fuck that jazz sucks too. It's still Ziggy. Much closer to what it is, I think. Call that myopic, but I don't think it's fair to say that the sampling range is narrow. Ziggy is a no-brainer, it doesn't stop being one just because jazz or prog exist.

I dunno, I haven't really seen that been brought against anyone else in this whole thing over the past two years. Haven't really thought about it to be honest. Probably timely cos I'm about to watch a whole bunch of Onita.