JerryvonKramer

Are you going to keep doing PWSS in the new year Steven?

Both Chad and I have jobs that are prone to having very busy periods. I've also had a lot of other stuff on, which accounts for lack of Titans too (there were two times we were set to record when I had to bounce on the day). And I think obviously Chad becoming a dad has had a real impact on our schedule this year on top of all that. I have some free time coming up so hopefully we will get some more out soon. The regular schedule is something I know I can't keep up with so it's why I've never promised it. I do hope 2016 will have some more frequency for my regular shows though. I've written two books this year. I don't plan on writing any next year.

A much more likely fate for Roku is that it will get bought up by one of these big companies and incorporated into their offering. That is always what happens in the tech / media space. I know that Sky's NowTV box is essentially a tweaked Roku. I would bet money that Roku does not exist as an independent company in 10 years time.

Would be grateful if someone could provide a list of Casas's "Greatest Hits" for me to check out over the coming weeks. Many thanks.

I'm going to watch these ones soon. WOOOOOO last day of teaching today!!! I can watch wrestling again and I'm going to be hitting it HARD over Xmas. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi (1/17/00) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Vader (2/17/00) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (3/31/00) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Masa Fuchi (7/1/00) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Genichiro Tenryu (10/28/00) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Keiji Mutoh (2/24/02) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Keiji Mutoh (7/13/03) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Shinjiro Ohtani (9/6/03) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Genichiro Tenryu (1/18/04) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Shinya Hashimoto (2/22/04) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Cactus Jack (Hustle 5/8/04) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (NOAH 7/18/05) Toshiaki Kawada vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (NJ 8/5/05) Toshiaki Kawada vs. D-Lo Brown (7/30/06) Toshiaki Kawada vs. TAJIRI (3/28/07)

Dory has a real case for being best worker in the world for 1975, so there's that.

Lol, I can only imagine. I will say, though, I've always appreciated the creativity and wit of football chants.

Sorry Kelly, tonight is all about Star Wars for me. But I will watch this when I get a chance.

Every time I see this come up I think it's Shigeru Miyamoto, aka the creator of Mario and Zelda from Nintendo.

Perhaps the beauty of this project is in seeing what different people value. Think we can leave it there for now.

Was Jumbo being carried? It's one thing to say the opponent was leading the match, it's another to suggest he was being carried. What are you saying with this? Is it that because he was the junior guy in those matches they doen't "count" in some way? Or that I can't really start him in 1973 with the Longevity rating? My criteria for that, as I've told you, is "Top 30 in the world", if you can demonstrate for every year 73, 74, 75, 76, etc. 30 guys who have better matches in the same sort of volume on the available footage we have from that era, I'd consider shortening it. I don't think there are 30 guys though who were having better matches than that in the period. At least not from the 70s stuff I've watched, which is quite a lot. I am not really sure about this "portioning credit" business. I recall a very lengthy response from jdw once when I suggested Rick Rude was carrying Ultimate Warrior. He pointed out blow-by-blow why it was a "nonsense" to suggest Rude was carrying that match. And I got the impression that most people were on his side in that one. Jumbo Tsuruta was not the Ultimate Warrior, he was an Olympic-level amatuer wrestler who Dory Funk Jr described as the fastest learner he'd ever trained and who Giant Baba hand-picked from all of the available young boys to be "his man". By which I mean -- steady-on a bit with this idea that he was being led by the nose. Ric Flair called all the matches with Steamboat, was Steamer being carried?

Right, I'm not claiming any greater validity with this, it's just how I'm working things out personally. And I devised it because I thought I was making calls that felt arbitrary and I didn't like that feeling.

I was in touch with Backlundfan some time last year, I can reach out to him if need be. I'm curious to see the match too, although I could already describe it to you without knowing anything about it (Backlund kicks Blackwell's ass who bumps huge for him before getting in some token offense )

Mil actually had good matches in the 70s with a few other people that I've seen, including Harley and the Funks (79 one). And given experience levels, you'd expect Mil to be the one calling the match. But, y'know, I've been in debates before on this site where my attempts to demonstrate that Ted DiBiase was a "better worker" than Big Bossman, even in his WWF days, on the basis that he was a ring general and leading matches tended to be sidelined in favour of "who has the better matches?". And it seemed to me then that most people did not seem to particularly care for "who was leading the match" as a metric or something to take into consideration. Why is this important now but wasn't when we were doing Ted vs. Bossman, a couple of years back?

As a follow up, the question "what did this guy do in each of these matches?" is -- like the distinction between different styles of workers -- a level of nuance that I'm not getting into with my metrics. And, yes, this does give Robert Gibson an outside bet of making 90-100 sort of range. I understand this is a limitation, but it's also something I can't realistically assess across 100 guys, the scope is too huge and I have just over 4 months. I want to ensure everyone on my list is subjected to the same level of scrutiny. I can't really do that if I'm asking "what did he do in each of these matches?", it's a level of detail that doesn't scale easily for 100. At least not for me, it might be for you. The "Base skills" thing is getting towards that, and as you can see for me Jumbo is a 10 in that from where I'm sitting [basic (offense, selling, psychology) 3/3 3/3 3/3 (+1 for hitting ever move like a finisher) = 10]. You could argue well he wasn't a 10 at all stages of his career, only from 85-92. And again, that's a level of nuance my thing can't deal with. Rating stuff is complicated and those sorts of critical questions demonstrate why. But I'm making a top 100 wrestler list, not writing a book on aesthetics.

What this seems to be driving towards OJ, is that you seem to be lower on 70s Jumbo than either myself or jdw, which is fine. I think the 75 Funks tag is a masterpiece. Different strokes. All claims made by anyone is subject to "based on what I've seen", which goes without saying. But "generally loathing" the idea of someone saying anything without really being in a position to comment on X (e.g. 70s Fujinami) seems weird from the guy who ignored 60s rock in favour of obscure jazz albums and who was then ready to declare those jazz albums as his top 10 of all time, or whatever. In an ideal world we would all have seen absolutely everything. We haven't seen absolutely everything. From what I understand, Fujinami has great performances in 79 but they are scarcer before that time. I am still working through 80s Fujinami and cannot yet provide metrics for him. In any case, I do not think there is anything remotely controversial about claiming Jumbo was "one of the best workers in the world" during the 70s. Top 10 might be a stretch, but top 30 -- which if you recall is my nominal criteria -- is pretty easy to demonstrate.

^ jdw, on the "stale" point, I largely agree, but would you also agree that he slowed down some in the early 80s? When he transitioned more into the Ace role, I think he became a bit more stoical and some might say "stodgy" in his working style. If you look at him in 1980 when he was allied with Terry Funk (who was at the peak of his stardom), he's still that spunky, firey young babyface. Fast-forward to those matches with Race you reference, and he seems to have less of the spunk about him, but hasn't yet got the aura of being "the man" that would define his late 80s, or indeed his much loved "grumpiness". I mean I dislike Phil Schneider's "Terry Taylor" comparison, but you could call 81-4 his "Terry Taylor" years. He's transitioning out of one role into another, and hasn't quite "found himself" in the new role. It's "a knock", but he's still having great matches through that period (i.e. better than any Terry Taylor would ever have) so to an extent I'm like "well who cares". tl;dr version: * "Baby Jumbo" (73-5) * Young, spunky, firey Jumbo (76-80) * The "Terry Taylor years" (81-4) * "The Man" (85-89) * Grumpy Jumbo (90-92) You'll get some bleeding between these, but roughly speaking I think that's a fair summation.

Yeah, I see what you're getting at. I guess this is a level of nuance that I'm kinda gliding over with my variety metric. I just need *any 20* different guys and am not looking at how similar or different any of them are. That said, I think a lot of people would disagree with the glib idea that Dory and Terry are "similar" workers even if they did have the same last name. Although I do think, if you look past character work, that their basic movesets are essentially the same, which has always been Terry's point about why the brother vs. brother match was disappointing. But I do get the idea, you want to look across that list of opponents and see a veritable rogue's gallery. Fat guys, thin guys, big guys, small guys, brawlers, technical workers, etc. etc. It's just a level of nuance my metric can't get to. You have convinced me, however, that Kimura should be included and I'm happy because it gives Jumbo a perfect 10 in that category, which I would have said before trying to list it out.

I dunno that I would use the word "unrealistic" since doing stuff like that is kind of the whole point of this site and GWE project. How many Dory Jr matches have you watched to re-evaluate people calling him boring and awful? That someone would subject themselves to that strikes me as way more unrealistic (not to mention masochistic ) than deep diving on late era Kawada. I mean for godsake, this site has a 2 page long Trish Stratus work analysis thread. A fair amount of 00s Kawada is online. I may look into it once I get some computer issues resolved. Unless John wants to order me a Kawada set for Christmas I'm intrigued by the idea that someone would rank Misawa, Kobashi and Taue above Kawada based on post prime work because it would indicate to me (someone who loves Kawada) that he was really bad post 2003 (when I stopped following modern puro) while Misawa/Kobashi/Taue must have been really fucking great considering that's the time period that makes the other 3 "easily surpass" Kawada. I haven't watched a ton of post 2003 4 Corners stuff but I've seen enough that I'm skeptical. Yeah, I get what you are saying, but with Dory there was, in some sense, "a need" -- a guy with an old-time rep of being all-time great whose rep through revisionist eyes had fallen to "boring old fuck who is not even being considered" -- whereas for a guy like Kawada who is largely going to be in over 80% of people's top 20s (probably top 10s) anyway, it is literally going to be deciding if he's going to rank #5 or #6. And when some of us have watched less than 10 Negro Casas or Buddy Rose matches total, it's a question of priorities. All of that said, I'd LOVE to see someone tackle that late Kawada stuff in detail and point the rest of us to the cherries. When I said "unrealisitic", I was think more of the types of guys who have done that sort of work to date, and I have a rough idea of the sorts of stuff they will be watching in the next four months. But if there's someone reading this who'd take it on, absolutely do it!

I would not ignore those things for Gibson. My way of ranking stuff is pretty transparent. Gibson will score in the great matches column and in the variety stakes, where he's going to suffer badly is in the other four categoires where I legit can't see him getting more than 3 or 4 in any of them, and possibly will get 0s for at least two of them. But I don't ignore the fact that Gibson was a part of a lot of great matches and it is to his credit. Well, I disagree, obviously. To me that series of matches contains several near-masterpieces. If you want my reasoning and long form reviews, they are almost all in my Dory thread: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/27872-learning-to-love-dory/ It would be fair to say that I am higher than the average on Funks tags. For me, Funks are GOAT tag team, and I absolutely love many of their matches. This is where some (or a lots of) "subjectivity" creeps in. But that's the nature of rating things. In my view, those matches are ****+ affairs, and feeature great work, top notch psychology and basically encapsulate the AJ tag style. I think the period 73-79 is better than the 80-85 pre-Choshu period of AJ in general. Taue is going to rank for me big time. He will score massive in great matches category and if I had to guess will finish in the top 20 of my list. I did start reviewing Low Ki matches here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/29461-low-ki/ I gave up after really hating a match of his vs. Eddie from 2001, because I didn't think he was going to make my list. But go figure, I'm higher on 70s AJ than I am on 00s indy scene. No big secret. It's a good question. I've not scene all of the WoS guys in any sustained sort of way. Breaks, Brisco, Dory, Robinson, Terry, Baba are all above Jumbo for 70s, possibly also Johnny Saint who is awesome vs. Breaks. Jumbo vs. Race would be something I'd have to think about. I think it would be close. Based on footage available, I'd have Jumbo over Bock for 70s. I'd (controversially) have Jumbo above Destroyer, because I am not the biggest fan of the 60s mat-based style. I do like Destroyer, but have found some of his stuff a bit boring too. "But Parv you love Dory!", yeah, but Dory does butterfly suplexes, piledrivers, and fucks guys up with European uppercuts -- that is, it's a bit of a myth that he just lays there in a headlock. That said, I have given at least two Destroyer matches five stars. Beyond that it's about footage and gaps. Buddy Rose has been on my "to do" list forever. McManus is someone I'm prone to love, but have only seen a handful of matches.

I appreciate what it "looks like" but I do think in this case appearances can be deceptive. People see numbers and "math" and assume that something terrible must be going on. But really this is not so far away from the star ratings people habitually throw out. Or from the process of ranking which people have done in every DVDR project. This is just a tiny bit more granular. For me, personally, it has made things super clear in terms both of what I'm looking for and how strong certain guys are in certain things. But I also get that a lot of people will take one look at it and have the knee jerk reaction of hating it. That's fine. I would say too that if people have particular hang ups with using numericals, you could ask the same six questions of any candidate and without affixing any ratings. This guy did it here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31119-trish-stratus/?p=5715738 And used like that it is a bit more like Gordy list.

I once bought every single SNME on VHS from a guy on ebay, along with every single "Best of WWF" volume. Legit like 50 casette tapes in two big sacks. I got an angry call from my dad who was like "what the flying fuck are these massive packages?" I watched them all in one summer. Glory days.

Re: Inoki, I really have a problem with him. I am lower on his matches with Dory, Brisco, Baba, Destroyer, etc. than a lot of people. I think he is the ultimate boring fuck. I hate the Backlund matches. And yet he probably has more than 10 matches I've given ****+ to and when all is said and done, when I put him through the metrics, will likely make the list. I appreciate that putting a guy I completely loathe on my list seems counter-intutive but that's how I'm doing my list. Inoki will score high in the intangibles, he'll be high on the variety, he'll do well for great matches compared to lots of people. Could easily finish above 80. Probably my least fave guy ever though.

For a guy who had no standout performances, he had an awful lot of good matches to his name in that period. It's all I'm saying. You can say he was hand-fed, you can say he was put in a spot to succeed. My point is only that, well, it was him and none of these other guys. And the matches are good and he's in all of them.

That's what I'm watching to find out. It should jump off the screen if that's the case. When I watch his 70s work, I keep thinking about him in regard to Tatsumi Fujinami and Jaguar Yokota who also made their starts in the 70s, or even a comparison with Misawa & Co. in the early 90s. I can't shake the fact that he's still an up and comer. The question I would put to you is this: were the others having ****+ matches against world-class opponents as up and comers? Does Fujinami have a match from the 70s you'd put against Jumbo vs. Terry Funk or Jumbo vs. Billy Robinson or any of the Jumbo-Baba vs. Funks tags or Jumbo vs. Brisco? Does Misawa as Tiger Mask II have anything you'd put against that stuff?