JerryvonKramer

Attempting any form of headbutt, turnbuckle head slamming spot or similar on a black man / Samoan / Islander of any description would also be up there.

A really standard one, especially in 80s WWF, is Irish whipping the opponent into the ropes and then putting your head down for a backdrop which almost always resulted in the babyface getting back on top and Gorilla Monsoon busting out the line "that was a cardinal mistake for a pro". One of the most basic WWF transition spots.

With some of the much older newsletters, which Kelly, Dylan and I used for that one Titans Xtra show (Old Curiosity Shop), there is a lot of kayfabe stuff, but no real behind the scenes stuff. The best one is by the guy who died young. I forget the name.

Right, that's what I was saying: a huge amount of changes on the 91 card.

Can't find it, but look at this match up.

Yeah, that's right. 91 series is the one with the most last minute changes to the card, I think. I made a thread about it once. Let's see if I can dig that up.

I would also put Team Flair promo from Survivor Series 1991, Flair and DiBiase both on one team was cool then and it is cool now. One of the oddest ones I can remember as a kid is from that same show: the one where it is Road Warriors and Bossman vs. IRS and Natural Disasters. Bossman is eliminated early, then Typhoon is eliminated after being accidentally hit with the briefcase and Earthquake bails leaving IRS 2 vs 1 against both Hawk and Animal. What is really surprising is that IRS lasts a whole FIVE minutes against the Legion of Doom in a handicap match, which I thought was really mental as a kid and still find it kinda surprising now. Weird booking all around for that match.

I don't think anyone has suggested that even for a moment.

The match with Heenan stepping in for Tully.

Seems like it is fair game for Lawler advocates to be militant in their views. "Completely"? I mentioned the Mantell and Bam Bam matches because they finished top 10. 1. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) (6/6/83) [EWY-6] - 7216 points. 2. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) (12/30/85) [EYETIGER-10] - 7114 points. 3. Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (No DQ) (3/23/81) [bADNEWS-9] - 6926 points. 4. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (Barbed Wire Match) (3/29/82) [bLUESKIES-8] - 6867 points. 5. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (No DQ) (3/22/82) [bLUESKIES-6] - 6724 points. 6. Jerry Lawler vs. Austin Idol (Hair vs. Hair, Steel Cage Match) (4/27/87) [MEMPTENN-4] - 6683 points. 7. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) (7/14/86) [EYETIGER-13] - 6506 points. 8. Koko Ware vs. Ric Flair (11/18/85) [EYETIGER-9] - 6401 points. 9. Jerry Lawler vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (Texas Death) (9/7/86) [MEMPTENN-1] - 6017 points. 10. Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage (Loser Leaves Town) (6/3/85) [WARMACH-14] - 5961 points. Unless of course voters were overrating these matches as they were with other ones ... My point is that I'm not sure those matches vs. Funk and Mantell would really threaten Flair's top 20. Are they the equivalent of Flair's matches with Garvin, Windham, Luger, etc? I don't see the Lawler list as truly being equal to the sorts of lists Flair, All Japan crew and others can put up. Like that Funk No DQ match is very good, it ranked #3 there, but I had that at ****1/2 (as an example, though it did make my all time Top 100 in the high 90s*) -- I had Mantell 3/29/82 at ****1/2, and had Mantell No DQ 3/22/82 much lower -- was *** only (see reviews here) -- whereas the Flair matches I'm talking about are all ****3/4+. It might come down to the fact that you and Phil and others DO think Lawler vs. Funk is ****3/4+, or that you do think the matches with Mantell break the ****1/2 barrier. Or that you don't have Flair's greatest hits at ****3/4+. And if you do / don't, that's fine, we are rating those matches differently. We're back to the nature of subjectivity and there's no way around that. In my view, based on the stuff I've seen so far and what is touted as high-end, I don't think Lawler is putting up a list of matches as great as other candidates in the 1-5 conversation (Flair, Jumbo, Misawa, Kawada, Hansen, etc.) if people are pointing to the Mantell and Funk ones as absolute top end. If you do think Mantell matches are in ****3/4+ range, I'd love to read reviews laying out why. I will be watching and reviewing matches vs. Dundee, Savage, Bundy, Idol, Rich etc. in the coming months as I work through rest of 80s Memphis. I will give honest opinion as always. I think the nature of this particular disagreement boils down to exactly where we are rating the matches. Hope this is clear. It's like I've got a Bob Dylan and I'm saying "Freewheelin, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks -- all five star: GOAT. And you come back at me with someone else (I'm purposefully not giving an example) and I'm saying "well I don't know if this back catalogue holds up, this isn't five star, that isn't five star, I don't know if he can hold up to Dylan, the albums don't seem to be on that sort of level". * EDIT: If interested, I had Lawler vs. Funk at #96 on that list. I dug the hell out of Lawler vs. Dory too, which I have slightly higher at #92 (still ****1/2 for me though), and looking at DVDR rankings would have been the high vote on it.

That one finishing at 21 is a bit weird. I just had a look and I had it at 79, ***1/2 Seems like with DVDR voting, that there are more guys who vote than who post a lot. Internet is meant to have a 1:10 rule. For every one person who posts / contributes, there are about 10 "lurkers". Seems in the case of DVDR, the lurkers were high on Flair vs. Bock / Taylor. I had a talk with Will about some stuff earlier and he mentioned that a lot of stuff is ironed out in voting. Even if there are outliers, the average pushes consensus picks to top. As in, let's say Matt D hated Rockers vs. Rose and Somers, cage. It still had a high finish. I'm kind of interested in the idea of Flair being some sort of pattern anomaly. Then again, my memory of mid-south set watchers is that some people were high on Terry Taylor at that time. I was hating him, and people kept telling me "keep watching". Could partly account for top 30 finishes on those ones.

I'm actually interested by this point Kris. Are you saying that most voters are just biased towards ranking Flair high on these sets? To me, DVDR rankings do mean something because it's saying "of these guys who have all watched at least 150 matches from this promotion [which requires a certain amount of interest, knowledge and commitment], they thought it was this good". It carries weight with me. Do you think it shouldn't?

I'm wondering if you can talk about why you needed to see Kawada's and other GOATC matches against scrubs to see how they did against guys who weren't great but "...Lawler was working lesser guys. To me that just doesn't matter Flair's top 20 > Lawler's for most people. That's what I care about." Well, because I do want to see range. Not just great matches against the same group of elite workers. I think this is entirely consistent. The point I was making is that Flair vs. Garvin and vs. Windham are matches in the region of ****3/4 whereas the Lawler ones vs. Mantell and Bigelow (for example) aren't in that sort of ball park. It's not just range, it's range at that top ****3/4+ level. And then a whole boatload of ****1/2 under that. It boils down to "how great" are those matches. It seems that's the point that isn't clear. Is Lawler vs. Mantell *really* the equivalent of Flair vs. Garvin? I'm saying that "even taking into account the manifold complexities of subjective value judgements ..." Flair's Top 20 is better than Lawler's. And that matters. It's more than 20 matches, and if a guy HAD 20 Great matches to his name -- by which I mean ****1/2+ range, then he is bound to also have great performances, etc. etc. too. It's not my only criteria, but it is very important in the 1-5 range of candidate. At some point you have to say "where are your goods? Put them on the table?" Great performances, charisma, amazing basics etc. can get guys so far. It will get guys like Arn Anderson and William Regal very far. But those guys aren't in 1-5 conversation precisely because they don't have that list of 20 GREAT matches. Great meaning "some of the greatest matches ever". It's why the top 10 candidates are who they are, and I'm not really sure how you could dispute that. NB. Specifically defending positions I outlined on these shows in these posts.

I know you didn't get chance to talk Daddy with Dave & Bryan, but please Matt, can you emphasise the below point I posted a few weeks ago to Dave, as he still doesn't get the differences between US & UK culture. If you look up any music tour from the 60s/70s/early80s of the biggest bands in the world, you see them selling out huge stadiums/arenas in the US, then when they get back over to the UK it's the same small theaters and halls that the wrestling was using. Just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_at_the_Races_Tour#Tour_dates . The Beatles were no more of a draw in Britain than Big Daddy, if you're looking at pure numbers. Which is obviously silly but gets the point across that there's more to the cultural impact of something than just attendance numbers. This is a fantastic post. Never thought about it that way before. It's true though. Manchester Trade Hall, Hammersmith Odean, Royal Albert Hall ... none of them huge venues. Hadn't occured to me before that the idea of the stadium rock tour didn't migrate to the UK until significantly after the Beatles's Shea Stadium concert in 1965. And even in the 70s and 80s a lot of acts played smaller and more historic venues here rather than stadiums, even on tours where they were playing massive stadiums everywhere else. So like in 1983 when Bowie played MSG, Philly Spectrum, 80,000+ crowd in New Zealand, etc. etc., he still did the 2,100 crowd in the Hammersmith in London. Or when McCartney and Wings did their world tour in 75-6, they played MSG, Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, etc. in US leg but UK was all the classic old-school venues: Bristol Hippodrome, Liverpool Empire Theatre, Manchester Tradehall, Hammersmith Odeon. Kind of strange, cos in 1983 Bowie could have probably sold out Wembley twice over and same with Wings in 75.

The main issue I had with Will on part 5 is that he was talking as if Lawler's matches with Bigelow, Mantell, etc. etc. were the equivalent of Flair vs. Garvin or Flair vs. Windham or whatever. For him they might be, but judging by the fact that Flair vs. Koko Ware, a match that wasn't in Pete's Top 20 Flair matches, finished 8th on Memphis DVDR project ranking, I'm not sure if consensus would hold that those Lawler "range" matches WERE the equivalent of Flair's. A match that isn't in Flair's top 20 for the decade, finished 8th in Lawler's backyard. I did not put this to Will directly, but I was hinting at it. And he had a built-in defense, which is that Flair was working cream of the crop (for the record, he said Koko was a "great worker" in Memphis, so I guess he's cream too), whereas Lawler was working lesser guys. To me that just doesn't matter, Flair's top 20 > Lawler's for most people. That's what I care about. It's because Flair was the NWA champ whereas Lawler was the champ of a territory that was never that well respected and so couldn't attract the top top workers. For Will he puts more stock into getting more out of less. For me it's like being the best player in a struggling mid-table football team, that's Lawler. Flair is more like the best player on the best football team setting all the goal-scoring records. For me that makes Flair a definitive Goat whereas Lawler is more like a relative Goat. I don't like relative, I like definitive. To me Will's argument was saying "well, if you change the goalposts and make all sorts of excuses and qualifications, then Lawler is best". I was saying "if you just take things straight-up, doesn't matter about circumstances, Flair is best, he doesn't need excuses, he has the goods". Something like this. I don't think either of us are likely to be much swayed from our positions at this point.

The real guy who got screwed in 97 was Luger anyway. He was so over. He got five days with the title. They might have transitioned to something mega over. Imagine Luger vs. Crow Sting. Imagine Luger defending against NWO members for a few months. I really think that was another time they dropped the ball with Luger. So often in his career.

My impression of that deal in 97 is that ... Well let's just say it doesn't take much for Hogan to get cold feet about doing a job. The story Eric told is the story that Hulk told himself. His own BS justification to himself. This is human nature to a degree, but one senses that Hulk probably does that more than anyone. It's on Bischoff not Hogan though. Just as 88 is on JCP and not Flair. You mostly have to assume workers will be self-centred. We know in a similar situation in 1997, Vince literally walked to ringside to ensure the belt ended up where he wanted it to. Even if Vince was "wrong", he still wasn't letting a worker dictate where his belt was.

Fan wise, it is hard to want to change the 89 we got with Flair vs Steamer and Flair vs Funk. Plus, of course, Luger's career best year as US Champ. But business-wise, I don't think Flair should have been a heel in 89. Fans wanted to cheer him, and they did. I think fantasy running the first thing I do is ... Don't hire George Scott. I don't know after that. Ban bonnie from ringside. Let the girls scream for Ricky. Don't have him bringing his kid out. And ... How about running Flair vs. Steamboat face vs. face?

I think functionally you are right, but technically there may have been a vote. I dunno. Either way, they dropped the ball in 1988. They also didn't seem to get that territory days were over so NWA champ formula needed to be changed. You can't do Dusty finishes, and never put the babyface over if the champ isn't leaving town. Luger was screwed as much by the failure to change that mentality. It is noticeable though that Luger is the one guy Flair never seemed to put over. But y'know he put over so many people that I don't know if not doing a job is something you can hold against the guy. By which I mean, if they really really wanted to put the belt on Luger, he could have been talked into it. I seem to remember reading also that Flair as champ was part of the turner deal though, which is one reason why the belt didn't get switched. They wanted Flair as top star. I would have put Luger over at gab 88 and have him drop it back by Starrcade, then play 89 out as it was. Nice five month reign for Luger in 88.

I think with Sting it's that he was super over with live crowds. Especially in 88 when he was breaking out. They saw potential in that, whereas Lex never generated that sort of electricity. For whatever reason though Sting never translated into box office. And, at least in my view, was never able to capitalise on the sorts of chances he was given, except in 92. I think during 89, 90 and 91 before the injury, he actively struggles to live up to the spot he's in. Luger, on the other hand, from what I've seen and read, translated into box office more. I also think, at least listening to Flair's podcast, that we might have overestimated the degree to which the boys didn't like him. It sounds like they were friendly at least and had banter. 1988 I'm not sure why they didn't put the belt on him. 1991 Flair was insecure and playing hard ball, and being more selfish. You can't really blame him there, he was going to New York. 88 I think they probably thought he was too green to take the big one. And remember NWA was still technically running then. I don't know if WCW can just put the belt on who they want, Kris or someone might be able to confirm. I still think technically there was a vote.

You mean Summerslam 93. Thing is though, Lex kinda got screwed in 88 (not winning title) and 91 (not beating Flair, turning as he did so) and 94/5 as well (Million Dollar shitcanned midcard crap) and possibly also during Monday Night Wars at least once -- as in he was hot after beating Hogan but only got belt for a day. For Luger it's like any time he gets hot, something happens to fuck him over. Even in 89, he was red hot as heel US champ and then he had to turn again. Then just as he got hot as a face, he turned again. Whereas with Sting it's like any time he gets hot, he's given the ball and proves he can't run with it. Insomuch as 90 and 92 tanked at box office. He wasn't really given the ball in 97.

Last last thing, just to answer Kris and I think Steven who mentioned that earlier. I do think this is a really important thing that probably needs to be addressed. Will and I talked about this on a pod recently too. I haven't written off any style and won't write off any stlye. I will watch Lucha, and have basically forced myself to watch the stuff I have already ... purely because it is rated. Just like I don't really like Jazz, but when I was involved with an album project years ago (not a million miles away from this one), I forced myself to listen to all of its most highly rated albums. I did it year-by-year from the mid-50s really all the way through. And when the forum I did that work on was lost, a small piece of me died. But when I finally compiled my album list, when all was said and done there were only 2 jazz albums on it (Jimmy Smith's Back and the Chicken Shack, and Weather Report's Heavy Weather, fact fans). I went through all the stuff and still just didn't get Miles Davies or John Coltrane. There was a strong bias in my list against jazz, and people criticised me for it -- but they couldn't say I wrote it off or didn't make an attempt not to be ignorant about it (I still feel like I am btw). There was also a bias towards 60s/70s rock and singer/songwriters. In fact, there were huge blow ups over exactly these sorts of issues back then, with people asking me why I was so insistent that Bob Dylan deserved more attention than whatever indie band they were into at the time (Animal Collective anyone?) and why I thought it was so self-evident that the argument didn't need to be made. That time, I did stay the course, because I'd just invested so much in trying to leave "no stone unturned", to the best of my abilities, that I had to. And I came across lots and lots of albums I wouldn't have listened to otherwise. The arguments we had over that were so much more ... abrasive, foul-mouthed, dramatic, insane ... than the ones we have here. Even this "drama" really is nothing compared to that. But the point is that -- yes, sure, personal taste is a big huge part, and you cannot take that out, but it's a conclusion arrived at after ... really trying very hard to see the greatness in whatever it is. To come back to wrestling, I will not write off El Dandy lightly. I have not been into him much, but I am not prepared to let that go just yet. I will come back to Lucha and try to like it. I will give Shoot Style another go. I will keep trying with Lawler until I can at least get to the point where I "get" why someone might love him, even if I still don't. I won't be making that effort for Ron Bass. Because no one is really saying Ron Bass was one of the Greatest of All Time. This should be pretty logical. And don't actually think that someone like Kris and I are too far apart on that. When all is said and done, let's say I come to recognise that Lawler was really very good at what he did, but that I still don't really love him. He might still rank and even top half or top 20, or whatever. To me that is something "beyond favourites", beyond just personal taste. Like, for example, I think I ended up ranking Velvet Underground & Nico in my top 20, even if I probably don't pull that record out too often to actually want to listen it. I recognise its greatness, even if I don't LOVE it. It's a set of conclusions arrived at after homework. There is a certain degree of thoroughness involved. Where you draw that line is something to consider. It's why I always understood Loss's position because in an ideal world, I'd want exactly the same thing. I do think what he wants is ultimately impossible. I draw the limits smaller. I have altered them to try to make them more realistic. At times I can't go album by album but have to take just the greatest album. Like at times I've had to beeline to greatest hits with certain wrestlers. Not ideal, I'd want more, time is a factor. What led to this whole thing, was that it seemed to me that the snap decision between "Ted or Rude" wasn't really being arrived at after a process like this. I mean, some people were making the decision based on it, but others were making it on factors that seemed to me to be more arbitary "who would I rather watch right now?" (for instance). That question "who would I rather watch right now?" seems to be the question that Matt D and others who envision the project as a litmus test for current hotness are trying to answer. To me that has nothing to do with Greatest Wrestler Ever. "Okay, but Parv, you can still vote, etc." Sure, but to me -- for right or for wrong -- it really matters what everyone else thinks they are trying to do here. Like, there is no reason at all for me to spent time, energy, and effort arguing with a guy who is just going to turn around and say "yeah, but see, I'm just bored of this guy, and I'm into this guy right now". Like, alright, but we're doing different projects. And the way this thread has gone, it seems like more people want to do that project than the one I've described above. It's not me being childish, or taking my toys home, or anything like that, it's me saying "okay, if that's the project, it's not the one I've been doing, I'm not interested in that project much and therefore I'm out". I hope that makes sense. Top 100 Greatest to me means Greatest. It doesn't mean Top 100 Current Consensus Hotness or Top 100 Guys I Happen to Love.

If it boils down strictly to personal taste, then what is the distinction between 'favourite' and 'greatest'? Is your final 100 simply a list of your 100 favourite guys, or is it something more than that. That is a question for voters to answer. I did not say that personal taste is not a factor at all, of course it is, but is that all it is? Again, a question for voters to answer. On this small point, I believe S&S asks for only a top 10, not a top 100, so it is a small sample size from each critic or director. And with a top 10 and top 10 only, there is more of a chance to "make a statement" with your list. I'd be interested to see if any voter has ever gone on record to say that Citizen Kane or Vertigo wouldn't make their top 1000s. Not impossible, of course. I'm going to reply to this with a question, or rather two of them: if you and 9 other hardcores from here sat down in a room for 2 hours to hash out a criteria, how much disagreement do you think there would be when you started getting down to brass tacks? A serious question. Which criteria that I've gone on record as being important, specifically, is contentious? For me, it's not about canon. It really isn't. Like I honestly don't care if it ends up where Ted doesn't rank and Flair comes 10th. It really doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is how those decisions are reached. And the extent to which decisions are made "willy nilly". It seems to me from various people in this thread that to an extent people want a more litmus-test "what do you love right now" sort of thing, which is cool, but of less interest to me for reasons I've articulated. I've nothing to add to anything I've said already. These are all now all issues for GWE voters to grapple over, if they care seriously about them, they can hash them out and it might be fun to read. I must exercise no small amount of self-control now to refrain from posting any more about it. Feel I've said my piece and more than once. I'm going to watch and review some Memphis circa 1982-3.

My word Parv! Really?! Greatness comes down to more than personal taste. Which is a position at the heart of this conflict.