JerryvonKramer

Who are the really top guys who don't work hard? Who'd be like the top 10 anti-workrate crew? I'm just curious. I've seen a lot of Lawler matches and he bumps his ass off.

Read the post I was replying to.

Vader and Blackwell were both working harder than Tenta. I don't understand why there would be any debate about that or why Vader and Tenta would be bracketed together in that way. Tenta didn't bump around, Vader and Blackwell did. They had a higher workrate. Are these definitions really so unknown to us?

Generally I'd need more than 10 matches, but with certain excpetional cases, such as Breaks or Hase I just "know". Jack Brisco was a bit like that too.

I'm leaving this convo now before my eyes roll so much that they actually end up falling out of my head.

No. Pretty much every lucha guy I've ever seen does a floaty arm drag. Don't nail it deep, crisp and awesome like Steamer does.

Who has a better arm drag than him?

Final Conflict 2/15/87 Maple Leaf Wrestlemania III 3/8/86 Boston Holy Trinity Clash 17 Superbrawl III Beach Blash 92 Steamboat had a cap? Apart from Flair what other US workers from that time frame have 10 matches of that quality to their name? Legimately at least 7 all-time performances there, and 3 others that arguably are too. Also: * 16 Elbow drops * The best arm drag anyone has ever seen * Some of the hardest chops a man can throw Although his key asset was selling, it's not fair to say that Steamer's offense was never better than "good".

Right now only really comfortable giving ratings for Casas and Cota. I will not being giving El Dandy ratings, so he won't rank.

Kelly and Parv sit through another Cap Centre card. Tune in to find out what Tony Garea's so angry about? And ALL HAIL Mr. Fuji and his new suit!

What are the tools to be a ring general, though? What are we using to determine and assign that status onto a worker? Do we use testimonies from other workers? Chris Jericho called Triple H a ring general once. Is it solid matches with mediocre talent? What do we have to measure that ring general's influence vs. an inconsistent talent having one of their better matches? Triple H was a ring general, just not a very good one. He was still entrusted with that role. The tools of a good ring general will almost certainly include the ability to bump and sell and make others look good. Earthquake couldn't go in there and pinball for an opponent, he didn't have the tools to do that. Triple H theoretically did have those tools, but didn't always put them to the best effect. You can have ring generals at different levels of ability. I mean Johnny Rodz was a ring general too -- what Austin would call a "carpenter".

It's basically someone who can go in there with any opponent and get the best out of them. They control the tempo, the crowd and timing. They call the spots. Etc. It's Ric Flair. It's DiBiase in Mid-South. It's Lawler in Memphis. It's Tully. It's Arn. It's Bock. It's Kawada. It's Terry Funk. All those guys were ring generals. Earthquake wasn't. He might have known how to get himself over and maximise his assets in a match, but that doesn't in itself make him a ring general. He didn't have the tools to be one.

I also wanted to comment on this: We live in a society in which words and phrases have accepted meanings, repeated through usage. I didn't make up the phrase "ring general". It comes from wrestlers' own lingo. If you told Bill Watts that Earthquake was a ring general, he'd laugh in your face. Steve Austin would too and probably tell you that you don't understand what one is. I am not intending to be snarky or insulting when I say that, just that it is the truth. The terms we have aren't just made up, they have an accepted meaning. I'm using the one that has been used for decades. You are using one you've made up. So really I don't see why I can't "throw it around".

The reason I mentioned the capping out at ***1/2 for Quake was because, in practice, that's about the best match of his I've seen.

Matt, nothing to do with questioning of motivations and everything to do with the fact that this way of looking at things -- whether you like it or not -- is a marked departure from the received wisdom. The very phrase "anti-workrate" has an older concept built into it. "Anti-" anything in critical terms tends to come after (and against) an older school. As this approach clearly does. I am not saying you are aiming to be shocking or arguing in bad faith or any of those things. But you also can't pretend that you are writing and watching in a vacuum. Wrestling criticism is at least twenty years old and everyone here is aware of and grew up reading that form of criticism. And it's only really now that more interesting ways of looking at things are being established.

I guess to put it in another way, "knowing what to do with your tools" is of value, but I'm not convinced it can overturn or outweigh the value of being either: 1. A super worker or 2. A master ring general And when people turn in their GWE lists, I still expect to see them pretty much dominanted by guys who fall into one of those two broad descriptions.

Right, but just because Earthquake has been underappreciated by others, Scott Keith, for example, does that mean we go to the extent of saying he's better than a guy who was technically an excellent wrestler? How far do you go with it? "For his size" is an interesting qualifier. Does that lower the bar he's judged against? Is it also being suggested that Malenko -- he's a random example, could be anyone who is more "technical" -- is somehow less smart as a worker? That he didn't know what to do? That he had poor psychology? I just wonder if the will to revise and overturn leads to a situation where it's possible to get a bit carried away. The tools of Earthquake cap out at about ***1/2, if you look at the tools of Ricky Steamboat, there is no cap. I'm just not sure if I can buy into this anti-workrate idea fully, and I am also not sold that this is how most people even in this community view wrestling and judge workers.

Hmmm, I'd be interested to know if you'd still be saying this after watching lots and lots of late 70s and early 80s WWF. Out of shape guys in their 50s lumbering around, mostly to gigantic pops. They were lazy as hell, limited to the point where if you do get anything beyond a punch or a kick, you are lucky to get a body slam let alone a suplex. They barely bump. But on the basis that they played their roles and got the reactions required of them, they were "working smart", right? How "anti-workrate" are you really?

Loss, you have to see it as a snapshot as opposed to something definitive. Also, because I'd love to know what that list would look like so much, I'd happily record you and just sit there saying "well Charles, what's your number 89 then and why do you have it there?"

We had "Great Match Theory" and "self-conscious epic". The word of the month on PWO recently seems to be this. What is it? I ask partly because I don't think Matt D and my boy Kelly have the same thing in mind. I think Matt D means that he favours psychology and logic and looks for coherence in the performance rather than mechanics, athletic ability, moves, etc. Part of this is the "use of tools" in particular contexts. I think Kelly means that he has turned from being a fan who cares about things like match quality and instead these days cares more about the emotion of it all, a hot crowd, the charm of a given setting, and all the "nonsense" of pro wrestling. I could also have this wrong, so I want to check. As for myself, I maintain that "revisionism can go too far" -- by which I mean that the sorts of things traditionally valued by so-called smart fans -- such as the ability to bump and sell, execute offense crisply, or work as a great ring general (etc. etc.) -- shouldn't now be undervalued because we also value other aspects of the performance. I'd still take it as a given that Dean Malenko (random example) is a much better wrestler than Chief Jay Strongbow, even if Strongbow was 100s of times more over than Dean ever was. I'd also probably say that Malenko was better than someone like Earthquake, just because Earthquake was so much more limited in what he could do. And so I don't really know if I am "anti-workrate". Are you?

Looks like it won't have made tape sadly.

I'll say this: his WWF run in 1982 blew my mind on Titans. He looked absolutely incredible from what we saw.

Are you sure on this one? Graham has this: WWF @ Fresno, CA - Convention Center - January 26, 1993 Owen Hart & Koko B. Ware defeated WWF Tag Team Champions Ted Dibiase & IRS via disqualification at 5:53 after the champions kept double-teaming Owen and then kept pulling him up off the canvas after several 2-counts when they could have won the fall; after the bout, WWF World Champion Bret Hart made the save for his brother; during the bout, Koko was helped backstage by two referees after he injured his leg

When I had my own little freak out a few months back, the thing that brought me back of realising that it really doesn't matter what other people are doing and how they are going about their lists. It was something random that did it, I think a guy who somehow found his way on Dave Musgrave's Top 50 list on a Wrestling Culture from years ago. It might have been Adrian Adonis. Each person's list will be far far more interesting than the final results -- which I can already tell you will be much, much more US-centric than most people will expect, mainly because that stuff is common to everyone while everything else is niche. For every one guy who is into NJPW juniors, there's three who don't give a shit about it, that's just the reality. So basically I wouldn't worry about it. The results will not be in any single way meaningful. Each person's own list will be. The process has been. The reviews are. But the final results? It'll just be a mish-mash. And most people privately already know this. So bottomline: you should put in a list.

Several actually, Hogan, Piper, Steamboat, JYD, Hillbilly Jim, Cpl. Kirchner, Outback Jack, Bigelow, Strike Force, Young Stallions, Sam Houston, and Rockin Robin were all 1987-era faces who had theme music. Now go through all the heels who had themes, and all those who didn't. I suspect my general point will be borne out.