JerryvonKramer

On the flip side, I'm someone who completely doesn't let the murders affect the way I assess him, and he really hasn't impressed me in the several matches I've watched of his. But caveats are: * I never worshipped Benoit in the first place and always thought he lacked something * I am generally down on late 90s / early 00s stuff insomuch as I've been lower on other stuff from around that time relative to other people * Most of the material has been from WWF run, especially Smackdown Six era

One things I've never got is why they didn't run dates more logically. If you look at results both Crockett and WWF were zigzagging all over the country. Why not just run one area one month and then another area the next month? You don't need to run in Florida every night, why not just hit it every third month? Likewise with every region. Surely you have more chance of bigger houses if you run less frequently too. -------- On another note: Why did promotions have to physically run in every market when they had national TV? I think of the 92 Wembley show. Vince wasn't running in the uk every night, and there was no loop there, and sure he must have had tremendous local promotion for that show. But a lot of that house was drawn from a TV audience who'd never been to a WWF show before. Why couldn't JCP do similar things in outside markets? Let's say the TV is being shown in LA, do they need to go and physically try to run a show in LA? I don't get that. Why not film in Greensboro where the crowds are molten hot, and show the people of LA that until there's palpable demand there for a show and then run there? Vince was able to get over in a lot of places through local marketing and promotion, I'm sure, but the TV and mainstream exposure must have helped a lot. I guess my thought is that they might have leveraged TBS an awful lot more than they did. If you read old Meltzers Crockett and WCW viewing figures were never awful. Yet the live gates were almost always below WWF live gates. It's a point I've made before (even allowing for the lower population base than the northeast).

Turns out ol Art Jimmerson wasn't that much of an idiot after all: http://www.mmamania.com/2013/11/16/5109964/ufc-1-story-art-jimmerson-lone-boxing-glove-mma

You'd think with Dusty on the roster, JCP would have no problem drawing in Florida. But then I wonder how much Florida was already burned out on Dusty ...

Gracie is arrogant as fuck. Heel!

Final: Gracie vs Savate Guy Gerard. Gracie gets Gerard grounded and he taps in less than a minute. Oh well. This was a bit like watching an old episode of Superstars, all squashes.

Big hype for old man Gracie now with the entire Gracie clan behind him. This gives some credibility to PeteF3's claim just now that this whole thing is just one big pimping showcase for the Gracies. Can you say a bit more about this Pete?

Semi final 1 Savate guy vs. Jobber kickboxer. Savate guy wins by stomping the shit out of jobber. Post-match jobber cuts a nice guy promo. Match went about 30 seconds. Semi final 2 Shamrock vs. Gracie Poor booking on the brackets here, this wouldn't happen in pro wrestling. Announcers are hyping this as the big match. Oh a lot of struggle here. Kicks to the kidneys by Gracie. Shamrock taps soon enough as Gracie chokes him out. Well that was over quickly.

Ken Shamrock vs. Patrick Smith Smith has a record of 250-0!!!! He's a kickboxing dude. Shamrock gets him grounded immediately. Leglock by him. Shades of Dory Jr. Ha ha. Oh he's going for the ankle lock. And Smith taps out. There goes 250 and 0 for Smith. These fights are extremely short. Ooooooh, we get some post-match and Smith is pissed!

Gracie vs. the Boxer He literally comes to the ring wearing boxing gloves. Actually just one on his left hand. This has disaster written all over it for him. Great thin tash on the boxer. Gracie is wearing judo gear. Gracie gets him grounded, he must regret wearing that glove. And he taps out. Why on earth did he wear that glove? What an idiot!

The world kickboxing champion looks like a jobber, but he's just brutally beat the crap out of the black Kenpo guy. Some of the blows to the back of his head were sick. Fun so far.

Good start, a fat sumo just got kicked in the face by a karate dude. Needs to work on his promo skills though. Don't get why the bout ended.

I'm about to watch UFC 1. I get one free night in a week and I'm watching fucking UFC instead of wrestling. But I'm genuinely curious about the style vs. Style bouts.

Bret screwed Bret.

Does this mean that "it has been proven" that BJJ is better than Kung fu?

jdw, in the scenario that they don't buy out Watts, do you see any possibility of a DiBiase JCP run? And would it have helped their fortunes at all?

^ Brain, I think Flair would include Florida but not Texas or Watts country. I think he mentions a particular river down there they should have stayed east of.

From my understanding it was Crockett inflating the paychecks, not Vince. Vince brought in guaranteed downsides and bigger pay to counter Crockett. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think Flair's idea is that by running those old loops instead of expanding, they'd have run just as many dates, made just as much money, and cut down severely on costs. And the big argument for being perceived as national as opposed to small-time is ... TBS. They had the TV slot to appear bigger than they were. They could have expanded in perception without actually running extra towns, just increase popularity through the TV. HOWEVER ... - Does Crockett still get bought by Turner if they hadn't have gone national / bought out Watts? - And if not, can Crockett compete with Vince in paying the guys? - Does Flair himself jump in 1988 if Turner buyout doesn't happen?

I understand the rationale of Flair's argument on this. Jim Cornette has made a similar argument in the past. Let's say they just stuck to the old JCP route, didn't relocate an office to Dallas. Ran the loop across what was essentially the old Mid-Atlantic and Georgia territories, plus Florida (I assume Flair would be okay with running old Eddie Graham towns), you then have what is effectively a super territory with a loyal crowd base to draw from again and again. I see the logic. The problem is, and the big question is ... if they'd have done that, would people watching the WWF product on TV have stayed loyal to NWA or would they perceive it as "small time" because they were only running in the south east? I think the idea from the promoters to "go national" was to mitigate against the charge of being parochial or small time. If they'd have stuck to the loop Flair proposed, would he have been perceived as "the world champ" or "the champion of the area between Greensboro, Atlanta and the pan-handle"?

Is it true that things have become less homogenous style wise? I spent a good chunk of time reading around and the narrative I got was: 1. UFC was set up originally to determine the greatest material arts style. 2. Royce Gracie was almost unbeatable because he would apply a choke on the ground for which none of the other styles had an answer. 3. Therefore, the only other style to be competitive was wrestlers like Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock who could deal with a ground game. 4. That meant all the other serious UFC fighters learned BJJ and the kung fu guys and others stopped entering cos they'd lose. 5. For a while everything stayed like that. 6. But then people learned how to strike again, and how to throw. And things became more diverse. 7. However, it never really became style vs. style again because everyone does a bit of everything, but you can specialise in one of three "bases": striking, throwing, and ground game. Is that more or less it?

Or Wrestlemania 7.

Wow, I believe this is the first time Sasha / Bayley has pulled ahead.

Very often in the All Japan tags,the role of ace is pretty clearly defined. I'd be interested to see if you'd draw the same criticisms against Misawa in the 90s and Giant Baba in the 70s. How many of the 70s Jumbo tags have you seen vs. The Funks? Does he work the same way there as the junior partner? My list didn't include the two Billy Robinson matches (which I have at *****), do you think the things he does in those matches are of no consequence? I'm interested to know if this is something you think is true of him for the whole of his career or just for late 80s / early 90s. For your question: Stan Lane - he has a chance of making my list, he was part of at least two legit great tag-teams in the Fabulous Ones and the Midnight Express. I have less interest in the Heavenly Bodies and doubt I will get to SMW stuff before the deadline, but could be persuaded to look for the sake of fleshing out the Lane case. On the whole, I think Lane gets a bit of an unfair rap. I feel like people pull him down to build Dennis Condrey up. I also think he's in there with one of the most naturally gifted workers of all time in Eaton, so the perception of being the second best guy in the team hurts him as well. But I think I'm higher on Lane than a lot of posters here. Robert Gibson - virtually no chance. To me he's a jobber who got lucky and not much more. I have argued with no small amount of heat against my buddy Johnny and others about that in the past. I think Gibson was a nothing who was 90%+ carried by Morton. I probably got way more heat for dissing Gibson than you will get for your criticisms of Jumbo.

I was recently on a show where I made a case for Jumbo as 1, he also finished as consensus #1 in the 2006 Smarkschoice poll. A huge part of the case I made for him was his resume of great matches. Which remain the ones I listed here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28578-jumbo-tsuruta/?p=5665915 How many of those are not "great matches" to you? I think I made the statement on that show that Jumbo must have great psychology because he has that huge list of great matches. How would you respond to a claim like that? Is there some hint of a suggestion that he's like a kind of ultimate Ultimate Warrior? I could point to specific things, the double teaming with Fuchi during the 4/20/91 six man springs to mind off-hand. Or his trope of smashing a guy off the apron in tags, almost incidentally, as a "fuck you I'm the boss" statement. But I guess I'd want you to address the macro picture before the micro picture. In other words, supposing all of these things you are saying about Jumbo are true, doesn't the big list of great matches and the monster run of facing great workers from 72 to 92 do anything to off-set the criticisms? Isn't that a plus in his favour over a guy like Pillman who had a much shorter run and for whatever reason did not get the breaks? Like when I think about my list, a lot of people know I'm not huge on Backlund and he does lots of things that annoy me. But when I sit back, his six year run as champ in WWF produced a lot of good to very good matches against a wide variety of different guys. So I have to give the guy his due despite my personal misgivings. How do you deal with that sort of thing?