JerryvonKramer

I was talking about one of the ones I sat through from ... I think 1980.

I had this anime tape called RG Veda before. Anime had a little spell of being big in the mid-late 90s. Goth kids were into it. Sailor Moon was a thing. I had the Street Fighter anime series on tape too. Can't believe this thread has become this. Need to review some matches soon I think.

I will get to these I promise.

We aren't so old on this site. Most of us are in our early 30s right? The grand old men are Johnny, Pete, Good Ol' Will ... I assume Phil is older? (jdw of course)

?? ??

Now, now it's all subjective don't forget.

Yeah that really annoys me too.

Him mattering is a part of the ridiculous DVDVR/PWO bubble. Move on fellas. I think he's basically just shorthand for the sorts of reviews you'd read in the late 90s / early 00s. The experience of many people first coming online and reading about wrestling was the same. Whether it was Keith in particular or any of the other ones is immaterial. They were all of that particular mindset, the influence of which -- if you venture a tiny bit outside of the "ridiculous bubble" you refer to -- is still in evidence everywhere. Meltzer influenced them, they influenced lots of random people who found them when they first came online. jdw might come in and say "oh well, back in the 90s", but jdw isn't 99% of people. People who actually received the newsletters by post account for a fraction of the people who got online during the Monday Night Wars to read Keith Scott's rants or The Rick or CRZ or any of those dudes. Let's not try to write them out of history. Most "normal" fans didn't even know what the Observer was when they first got online.

That's pretty cool, I'll add a review in that thread I referenced later. Awesome.

I don't know if this frowned upon, or not, but I'm also factoring in his stuff with Stevens. Typically we go on footage we've seen not just on rep. As far as I know, there isn't any Patterson / Stevens stuff on tape so vast majority of people never saw them. The hype around Ray Stevens has been of interest to me because it's not really in evidence from what we see of him later in his career. I started reviewing what we have of his team with Bock from AWA here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/30606-ray-stevens-nick-bockwinkel/

It is circular, but does that mean it's wrong?

I continue to be interested by this because I do think it is held against him. Why aren't we seeing Earthquake in top 10 lists? "Because he didn't have great matches". Okay, well why didn't he have great matches? You see the point? It is held against him. He was limited. And correspondingly there's a limit to how good his matches could have been. Let's up the stakes and make the case more extreme. I can think of a MORE limited guy who had a much better match than any Tenta match I've ever seen: I put Bill Watts and JYD vs. Midnight Express in my top 100 matches. That was a match all about smart booking, working smart, maximising strengths, telling a great story, etc. etc. It wouldn't have been possible without a superworker like Bobby Eaton to execute it. Bobby Eaton will be in my top 100, JYD won't. JYD played his part in that match perfectly. But I do hold it against him that he was limited.

Yeah, I was just wondering how much you'd seen. I love his 1979 WWF run and stuff with Slaughter, but there isn't much footage available sadly from before that -- a bit of silent stuff from early 70s San Francisco. I want to rank him as highly as possible, but lack of footage limits him for me.

The purpose of the thread was to understand what is meant by the term "anti-workrate". Maybe I have drilled down enough to get that point. And if no one is arguing with that, it's a misleading phrase that we could probably do without.

I had the exact same thing with all those guys. I think I saw about four Hase matches (this is years before GWE project was started) and thought "this guy just has it, he was born to be a pro wrestler", then as I've been rewatching stuff for GWE he's been more or less outstanding in everything I've seen him in. I may have watched far less of him before this project, but he was already a lock even based on that. I guess sometimes there really just is that intangible sort of it factor that some people get seeing certain workers. As you say, you "just know". Right. Casas is another one who had that instant impact factor too. Just knew. Immediately accessible greatness. But not every case is like that. For example, a guy who didn't have that for me is someone like Hash. I've seen him here and there and nothing stood out to me in particular. Yet enough people speak highly of him that I'd want to explore him more. It took me a quite a lot of matches to understand the appeal of John Cena and he'll probably make my top 100 now.

Fascinates me that you'd put Patterson so high. Any reasons?

This lacked a clear thesis in my view. And I didn't really buy its conclusion that his brief and anecdotal exploration of a few different people's take on what workrate means that "there is no definition of workrate". There is a definition of workrate. It is Meltzer's one. The other people are stretching the word to mean something else. All I really got from that article was that Phil Schneider and his friends understand psychology. That's all any of it boils down to. Do you understand psychology? None of this gets away from the fact that the sorts of people who will be right at up at the top end of most people's top 100s, Misawa, Kawada, Flair, Casas, pick whoever you want, are all guys who had high workrate AS WELL as other elements of pyschology and storytelling you might look for. Stan Hansen worked hard too. It's interesting that Earthquake has become the poster boy. Don't get me wrong, I like Tenta well enough. He was good at what he did. His matches with Hogan are underrated. Hell, Hogan himself is underrated. Scott Keith routinely gave matches involving Tenta DUD when they were probably deserved *** He underrated a lot of people. His view of what made matches good was too narrow. But I am saying that it is too narrow in the other direction to dismiss the concept of workrate entirely. Working smart can get you so far. Working hard can get you so far. I have yet to see a match you could realistically give ***** to that didn't have an element of both. Edit: and Tenta still caps out as "perfectly acceptable", which is what I said in the first place.

You probably won't find a bigger Brisco fan than me on here and Steamer had the better arm drag.

Distinct lack of Ted DiBiase.

Also, I should mention that I'm broadly with those people like Loss who have said that it's not an all or nothing proposition. I think the situation is this: - Meltzer and the early internet fandom privileged workrate at the expense of everything else. - Fans now, the ones we see on this site, demand good storytelling AS WELL AS workrate. The contention here is with the "as well as". I'm saying that just because workrate has been overrated as a metric in the past, doesn't mean that we no longer look for it. Most of us do. Most people will rate Vader over Earthquake. It's because he worked harder and had better matches. Most people will rate Ricky Steamboat over Don Muraco. It's because he worked harder and had better matches. I realise I'm a guy who doesn't watch a lot of go go Indys shit and that many people might be coming at this from the other end of the spectrum, seeing a lot of workrate and little psychology. But I do watch a lot of Vince Sr era WWF where we get the opposite extreme end of the spectrum and I'm trying to remind people what a lack of workrate actually looks like. Bottom line: most people care about it.

Don't want to harp on this, but if you watch Brisco vs. Dory from Florida '72 (for example), you'll see that those two work a lot of big bombs over the course of an hour. Yes, there are holds, counters and so on, but even when in a hold, someone like Jack Brisco is so animated that he's working very hard. But there's also a lot of motion and bumps. Dory wasn't the biggest bumper, but he did a lot of rope running spots and suplex variations. And keeps things moving. Later in his career, he slowed down a bit, but that's the "boring Dory" that everyone hates. ------- The reason I'm resisting the anti-workrate thesis is because I'm not sure that it holds for most fans. A lot of people hate watching Don Muraco matches from the mid-80s. Why? Because he was lazy as fuck and just sat in front face locks. His matches were boring. They are boring because they lack workrate.

For me he is a guy who shouldn't be anywhere near the list. Not only mechanically awful, but also bad at mostly all aspects of the performance but also at key times in his career was over as a baby face when booked as a heel and does nothing to cut off those pops. Yet failed to draw when pushed in babyface positions. Also egregiously unprofessional in the sense that he just didn't do his job. I don't see any case at all, that's the truth.

Not sure that he's nominated, just looked for him.

Verne, Dory, Colon and Iron Sheik all had good workrate.

Sid is an awful worker and I'd be shocked if he makes anyone's top 100