JerryvonKramer

This interests me because I think Misawa embodies the ace role more than anyone else, but it is a different sort of ace than what you see out of post-Dory Funk Jr. NWA touring champions. I would also note that your second paragraph here tracks very closely to how I feel about Jumbo. Interesting. Note, I don't really feel that way about Misawa, but I can see why some people might feel distance or coldness towards him. Jumbo, I think, has three distinct phases of his career: in the 1970s he was spunkier and more explosive, in the early-mid 80s, he was more stoical and also seemed to slow down and work longer mat-based matches; then from about 1986 on, we get the evolution of grumpy Jumbo who has a real "what? you? fuck no! do you know who I am?!" vibe about him. 80-85 is a transitional period where he was becoming true Ace. Didn't feel like "THE MAN" really until 85 at the earliest, even if functionally he was earlier than that. And I'm lower on 80-85 Jumbo than I am 73-79 Jumbo or him from 85 to 93.

Steven and I forgot to mention, and I've just realised, that this and ep #10 marked the one-year anniverary of AJ Excite Series. Christ, time flies doesn't it. AJ Excite Series, of course, has an end date: March 2016.

Ratings:

http://placetobenation.com/all-japan-excite-series-11/ Parv and Steven are on a roll and review four more matches, including one very special one. Get excited. 06/09/95 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue 07/24/95 - Kenta Kobashi vs Akira Taue 07/24/95 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada 10/15/95 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue

I don't really mean career in that sense, that is in terms of drawing or being a big star. Not sure why you asked the question really, seems pretty obvious to me.

George Scott was a big finish guy.

One for the Google Wrestling Podcast, Matt.

Could certainly do one, but would probably go 1 hour rather than 5 parts. Not sure who'd want to sit in on that one with me though. Race will be in my 40-60 range probably.

Does the dynamic change a bit later on? Remember I'm up to 1995 only. Hard not to watch his 95 output without thinking of him as a total dick heel (in my view). Total opportunist, sneaky, sly, cheap, plays dirty (within bounds of AJ) while Kobashi and Misawa play "fair".

I guess my response is that "extenuating circumstances" are there, but I can't change them. I can't change what happened. Flair was the NWA champ, Ted DiBiase wasn't. Maybe Ted could have been champ in 82 or 85. Could, shoulda, doesn't matter. He had the career he had and worked under the circumstances he did. Every worker is the same. It might just be that pound for pound Barry Windham was the best and most naturally gifted worker ever to set foot in the ring. He had Barry Windham's career. We can't rate on potential. We have to rate based on what happened. The base value of a guy like Windham (or Ted, or any number of other guys) will get them so far and so high in rankings. But at some point, the career they had comes into play. I mean Bob Backlund would not be making many ballots if Vince Sr didn't have a crazy plan to make that goofy shit champ for 6 years, but some of us will definitely have him on our lists -- I will. He was put in a position that many other more talented and better workers were not, and he has the matches to show for it. Not "fair", but then what can you do. What happened is what happened, just like what we have on tape is what we have on tape. The other stuff does not factor into the rating for me. Some guys got there by nepotism, some guys got there by politics and scheming, some guys were lucky, some guys were profoundly unlucky, some guys took drugs. None of it matters when answering the question. Although I guess we have got to the heart of a distinction between: 1. Who is the best worker? and 2. Who had the best career? They aren't the same. For GOAT I'm looking for a combination of those two things. If I was rating purely based on who I think the most talented worker was, the list would look really different. And when I've tried to devise methods of looking just at workers divorced from their actual matches and careers it gained ... precisely zero traction. So I should be preaching to the converted on this.

It's interesting OJ, because I typically think of Kawada as a heel.

Is this your round-about way of saying that you don't think Flair was a smart worker / lacked psychology etc.? If so cool, you know where to find my counters Should point out also that I don't think Flair even came top in Smarkschoice in 2006, he came 8th. A reminder: 1. Jumbo Tsuruta – 4,594 points - 48 votes – 14 #1 votes - 35 top 5 votes - 40 top 10 votes - VHB This Is Workrate, Smoove Luv B, gordi, Mike Oles, ElPatoume, Ditch, Wolverine, Goodhelmet, wagnerpanther, Owen, Real Man’s man, Theseus, throughsilver, Famous Mortimer # 1 2. Toshiaki Kawada – 4,477 points - 48 votes – 7 #1 votes - 27 top 5 votes -36 top 10 votes - VHB Bozzaholic, Dangerous Dan, roro ur boat, JHM (Rob's mentor), Rainmaker, Monday Night Jericho, Ray #1 3. Chris Benoit – 4,442 points - 49 votes - 13 top 5 votes - 30 top 10 votes - VHB Andrew D Lacelle, Wild Pegasus #2 4. Jushin Thunder Liger – 4,388 points - 48 votes – 2 #1 votes - 15 top 5 votes - 34 top 10 votes - VHB Dan T, AoA #1 5. Kenta Kobashi – 4,311 points - 47 votes – 1 #1 vote - 15 top 5 votes - 40 top 10 votes - VHB greenman #1 6. Eddie Guerrero – 4,255 points - 49 votes – 3 #1 votes – 8 top 5 votes - 21 top 10 votes - VHB Stunning Grover, Eivion Thanotos, WOODOO #1 7. Mitsuharu Misawa – 4,190 points - 47 votes – 12 top 5 votes - 28 top 10 votes - VHB Floyd, gordi, throughsilver #2 8. Ric Flair – 4,141 points – 48 votes – 8 #1 votes – 13 top 5 votes – 23 top 10 votes - VHB Floyd, Shozo the strong, anarchistxx, Rocket Moose, Dylan Waco, Big Rob, Shoe, Loss #1 9. Bret Hart – 3,707 points - 46 votes – 3 #1 votes – 9 top 5 votes – 13 top 10 votes - VHB Andrew D Lacelle, Slick Rick, Insane Clown #1 10. Stan Hansen – 3,669 points - 45 votes – 2 top 5 votes – 10 top 10 votes - VHB Andrew D Lacelle #3 11. Terry Funk – 3,573 points - 43 votes – 8 top 5 votes - 15 top 10 votes - VHB Rocket Moose, Dylan Waco, Big Rob #2 12. Harley Race – 3,501 points - 42 votes – 1 #1 vote - 8 top 5 votes - 15 top 10 votes - VHB Rob Naylor #1 13. Ricky Steamboat – 3,301 points - 45 votes – 1 top 5 vote - 4 top 10 votes - VHB Big Rob #3 14. Dynamite Kid – 3,250 points - 45 votes – 2 #1 votes – 2 top 5 votes - 8 top 10 votes - VHB Wild Pegasus, Warriorfan #1 15. Akira Hokuto – 3,244 points - 36 votes – 1 #1 vote - 11 top 5 votes - 21 top 10 votes - VHB Mr Dragon #1 Matt's point speaks a lot more to Dynamite Kid's final ranking than Flair's.

I recognise the trend you're talking about Matt, but surely you've read and heard enough of my reviews to know that you can't exactly pull an "us vs. them" card on me when it comes to any of that.

My sense with Misawa right now is that more than any other candidate, he is the Great Match Theory flag-bearer. There's something a bit icy and inaccessible about him -- he doesn't have the crowd-pleasing largesse or massive over-the-topness of Kobashi, he doesn't have the heelish dick fallback character stuff of Kawada. This makes him a bit "harder" to relate to, to feel close to, to understand, etc. As a result of that quality vs. the metric ton of great matches, I wonder if Misawa might suffer a bit in people's final votes, falling to 6-10 range simply be virtue of the fact that he feels more remote than the others. I'm not saying that will happen, I'm just recognising the possibiltiy that it might.

I'm not too keen on your interesting use of "us" and "we" in this post Matt. Especially because you strike me as one of the more singular and unusual voices on the site.

I can speak to this directly. Let's start with Jumbo, a guy who didn't travel that widely, taking in both singles and tags, and see ... Dory Funk Jr, Jack Brisco, Terry Funk, Harley Race, Ric Flair, Billy Robinson, Rusher Kimura, Animal Hamaguchi, Kerry Von Erich, Stan Hansen*, Ted Dibiase, Dick Slater, Nick Bockwinkel, Rick Martel, Riki Choshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Toshiaki Kawada, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi. That's 20 different guys he had 4+ star affairs with in singles or tags. Not even starting to scrape around or dig deep. That's top end, we could also then go into the merely "very solid ***1/2 - ***3/4" category and we get Doug Furnas, Dan Kroffat, Ricky Fuyuki, The Road Warriors, Bruiser Brody, Mil Mascaras, Manuel Soto, Gypsy Joe, Kevin Sullivan, Tommy Rich, Bob Roop, Bob Backlund, Horst Hoffman, Dos Caras, Pat O'Connor, Ken Mantell, Dick Murdoch, Fritz Von Erich, Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, Curt Hennig ... how deep do you want to go. He has the goods, he has more goods. Could do same with Flair. I don't see how you see this expectation of a GOAT candidate as "limiting". It's saying "wow, that's a GOAT career, this guy had it, this other guy over here, he didn't". * See 10/21/86

Should have mentioned that the Jim Breaks special is probably the most painful looking move in all of wrestling.

I saw the claim made that some people think it is Kawada. Arn Anderson might be a de facto go to choice and before thinking about things, I thought it might be also. But it has just occurred to me that it might just be ... Jumbo Tsuruta. He had four legit great tag teams who ALL had matches in the ****3/4+ range. Jumbo and Baba - some real classics in the 70s, especially vs. Funks. Jumbo and Tenryu - some real classics vs. Choshu and co. Jumbo and Yatsu - really great team in 88-9. Jumbo and Taue - awesome swan song and the six mans with Fuchi also all-time best level matches for their type. Could even argue that the Jumbo and Fuchi combo might stretch it to a fifth great team, but I don't know how regularly they tagged. But the point is that if you count it all up, I think Jumbo had more great tag matches than any other wrestler. He wins on Great Match Theory here. But I'm really interested in where this might go and what sorts of argument people will put forward.

Dylan you raise some good points, and Elliott articulated a similar objection also in a PM exchange we had. I do get the idea of judging people on what they were and did not for what they weren't or didn't do. I think that is valid. Where I disagree is in the idea that my premium placed on a wide variety of great matches with a wide variety different opponents is misplaced or is in some way unfair to the All Japan crew. For me the GOAT wrestler has to have had that. Seems to me AJ crew very probably had the best matches of all time with each other, that makes those the greatest matches of all time. I mean shit, I had 34 matches from AJ in my top 100, and many of those were Misawa and co. It doesn't make him or any one of them the GOAT in my estimation, because they didn't do it with a wide enough range of people. They may have had the best feud with the best work of all time, but I don't know if any of them had the best career of all time. There is a difference. It's a hard set criteria for me, which is why Jumbo - a guy who legit faced off and did excellently vs. Five different NWA champions, held the AWA title and got over in three different decades against wildly different types of opponents is a legit challenger to Flair for #1. Misawa can't be and won't be. I am fine with people disagreeing with my criteria. But for me, I can't call someone the greatest without that quality and without a career like that. It's not "fair" in the sense that both Flair's and Jumbo's careers are remarkable and unrepeatable, once in a generation type guys, but what can you do -- GOATs gonna GOAT. Will puts a premium on getting more out of less. Chad puts a premium on great matches. Some others might put a premium on other things. Dylan puts a premium on working different styles in different settings in different roles. It's easy to see why they are advocates for Lawler, Misawa and Funk respectively. I am looking for someone who ticks all those boxes and did it for a sustained period against many different people -- all round great in almost every category. And for me, the only guys who tick every box are Flair and Jumbo. You don't need to relativise their cases. You don't need to make qualifiers for what you do and don't value. They excel in almost every measurable area. They can hang multiple hats on multiple things. Their cases are wide and not narrow like some other cases, a who's who of everyone who was anyone in pro wrestling, and great matches and great fueds every step of the way. Flair was the man in the US, Jumbo was the man in Japan. That's why those. There could be literally 100 Misawa vs. Kawada ***** classics and it can't change that fact for me. Is it their fault Baba was isolationist during that period? No. But it does mean that their cases are narrower and less multifaceted than Flair's and Jumbo's. De facto disqualifies them from the running for #1 spot, by my criteria. I don't expect you to agree Dylan, especially not on Jumbo, but at least I hope you can see where I'm coming from with the criteria.

One thing about his broomstick formula: he worked it better than Race. The average Flair title defense is better than the average Race title defense. And I can say this after a survey of both. I am higher on Race than some here, I think aspects of his work are overplayed in criticisms. But Flair was clearly better at working NWA title matches.

I'd have to disagree with "scarcely more involved than heel / face". We did a very long review of the match before and there are layers in Clash 6 you aren't crediting there. I also have to dispute the idea that laying out matches ahead of time is a "more evolved" process than calling it in the ring. Any one who has either match less than ***** is not really having the debate on the even keel I'd want. Anyway, people are discussing kawada in more depth and with greater levels of scrutiny which is all I wanted. Nice to see some passion on display.

I still value all of those things.

70s Flair is more brawl-y from what I've seen. More towards Wahoo. Early 80s he mixes in more throws and technical aspects.

I don't accept that notion either elliott, but I do think Wade is great.

I love Wade Garrett.