JerryvonKramer

Lock top 10. The stuff I've seen tagging with Dory in the 70s in All Japan is out-of-this-world good and you can see the real making of a star there. The stuff in Memphis with Lawler is legendary. The matches with Stan Hansen in All Japan are among the best brawls I've ever seen. He did some good stuff with Hogan in 85. He worked an all-time great feud with Flair in 89. Tremendous heel or babyface. Unique charisma. Actually more multifaceted than he's given credit for because like Flair he can switch personas from madman to coward or any one of several other modes. Few do symapthetic bloodied babyface better. I am very excited to see him in Puerto Rico -- and will probably be unable to resist peaking when I'm watching more of the Dory stuff. I need to see more of him as NWA champ. To be honest, I don't care much about his ECW career. I will watch it unfurl as part of the 90s Yearbook watching which I intend to power through before the end of this project. But to me, it's in the same bucket as post-96 Flair. Whatever is good is a nice bonus, whatever is bad is "oh well, he was well past his prime anyway". Funk does not have a shot of finishing about Flair for me for two reasons. 1. Because I think he has an unfair advantage over him: he worked short stints, whereas Flair was a mainstay for 10+ years. It's easier to come in and make an impact (when you are a guy like Funk) than it is to maintain a level of performance over a long period. Funk is an impact player, Flair is the franchise. And 2. He doesn't have the number of great matches Flair does in such density, especially during the 80s.

You can't prove it but it will add a layer to the argumentation. I think you can easily make an argument that Ted was a better worker than Tenryu. He was smoother. His execution was better. As a heel his charisma is more "obvious" (at least to Western eyes). He had better hair. And -- a la Matt D -- you can make that sort of thing, rather than "great matches" your main criteria, fine. But if you are considering actual "great matches", Tenryu has too many to his name to ignore, and has the advantage over Ted of having more on tape and working for a longer period at a high level. Now you could shift to trying to argue that the Tenryu matches vs. Jumbo or vs. Choshu/ Yatsu aren't that great or that lots of incidental Ted matches like those vs. Virgil or Dusty or whomever are actually "great". And, fine, it's technically possible to do that. But I feel it's quite a pedantic point to make. In the case of the Ted vs. Tenryu argument, the guy on the Ted side would really have his work cut out for him if he was going to do that. My point was that there is a difference between "favourite" and "greatest". To me, nothing shuts down debate more than the idea that people are just going to go with their favourites and "oh well, who cares, it's all subjective at the end of the day isn't it, so there's no point in arguing yada yada".

Sheik and Abby were masters at generating heat from the tools at their disposal and as such are two of the better heels I've ever seen. So if Dump is anything like as smart as either of them, she has a shot at making my top 100.

Tito has a shot at my top 100 for sure. For me the real question will be how he measures up against the other 80s blow job babyfaces. Not just the obvious comparison points of Martel and Steamboat either ... Tommy Rogers, either of the Rockers, Jay Youngblood, Tommy Rich, Jim Brunzell ... That's ultimately how I'm going to get the measure of Sananta. He's got Tom Zenk beat for sure.

I will probably represent Andre in my top 100. Special sort of worker, who was able to maintain a certain aura right up till his death. I think other workers in his size range (think of El Gigante) have shown that working as a giant isn't just about being big. Andre was the master at it. I'd actually like to see Matt breaking down some of those Collosal Connection performances he's so high on. The standard wisdom is that Andre was "better than you'd expect" when young but then old and broken down past 86. Depending on how convincing the arguments about him "working smart" are, Andre could go as high as the late 60s for me.

Andre should probably be nominated.

A good Matt D style project would be to watch all his matches tagging with Andre, where he was basically working 2 vs 1 handicap matches, and see how well he carried his end and how smartly he worked. I find it surprising people have focused on Islanders and Meng. For me, "peak" Haku is his singles run in between those two periods.

Have you seen the late 70s Abby and Sheik vs. Funks matches, Charles? Those performances by The Sheik in particular really turned me around on him. More when his nominee thread goes up. There are several young Sheik matches in that Chicago footage, and more buried in episodes of Big Time Wrestling that I might be motivated to seek out after Race / Dory projects.

Now I think about it more, I do see the merit in having rank outsiders like Jacques Rougeau. It can help put other people in perspective too. I also don't think Jacques is necessarily bad, as I've said above. In fact, were I to go on listing beyond my 100, he'd probably finish above Duggan.

What I'm saying is that there's no point re-evaluating footage or discussing nominees and whatnot if it's just people voting on their favourites. We could do that now. The whole idea of a process to me suggests some level of rigour and some level of people thinking about more than just who they like. I agree that some arguments aren't going to persuade people. The main arguments, however, should be aimed at persuading people to check out footage for themselves to make a call.

Does he really have a realistic shot at getting even within 50 places of most people's 100? Top 200 even? I'll give him this, he was on occasion a wonderful dick heel and the Fabulous Rogeaus are a very underrated act in general. I think it might be fair to say that Ray tends to get a lot of that "underrated" credit, but Jacques was the heat magnet. I haven't seen his work prior to WWF either, and it could well add to his stock. His late run with The Quebecers helped keep the tag division sort of together at a time when it was going to shit. He was effective at what he did. He got good heat. He was a decent worker. Not really Top 100 calibre in my book, or even close, but in general I'm not down on him.

Right that's it. Irwin R. Shyster Dory Funk Jr Tommy Rogers Bob Orton Jr Ernie Ladd (80s project threads), Titans of Wrestling The Original Sheik (see Dory thread) Abdullah the Butcher (as above) Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner Bobby Heenan Dennis Condrey

Grimmas's Canadian bias is out of control. Who nominated The Mountie, for god's sake? I'll be surprised if he makes a single person's top 100.

I read an Observer from 1989 a while back that argued that Dusty Rhodes looked like Dump Matsumoto "only without the wrestling talent". Man, Dave really had it in for Dusty back then.

I recall Arn selling his ass off for Renegade and stooging like mad for him. It's more "career low" in a "I can't believe they asked him to do that" sort of way. Same with the awful "main event" of GAB 91 (vs. Rick Steiner). Arn is Mr. Consistency. He'll always give you 7/10 or 8/10, but he'll seldom give you 10/10. By the same token, he'll seldom give you 5/10 either. I can't really think of an outright bad Arn performance and I've seen a lot of his matches. I wasn't a fan of his match with Regal when I saw it years ago, but am reserving judgement till I hit again it with Chad.

His series with DiBiase isn't given enough due. Also has a case of being WWF MVP every single year from 1986 to at least 1991, if not 1992.

Are we going to nominate anyone who ever had a half decent match? Duggan made those DiBiase matches great don't hate him. Hey, I'm not hating on him but where does this end? Let's nominate Paul Roma and Hercules while we're at it. I'm still waiting to pull the trigger on my nominations.

Alright then, just make it a free for all, and have everyone choose their favourites providing no arguments or reasons. What terrific fun that will be.

Let me repeat this line again. Just in case you missed it the first time around.

To me the difference is clear and obvious. Ted DiBiase is my favourite wrestler. He's not my favourite because I think he's the best, I just so happen to really like him. Same with Arn Anderson and quite a few others. Who do I prefer, Ted DiBiase or Tenryu? Ted, every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Who is the better wrestler? Well, "objectively speaking", Tenryu's body of work supersedes Ted's and then some. I'd have a very hard time justifying to myself or anyone else that I or they should be ranking Ted above Tenryu. I don't even *like* Tenryu before about 1988, but even by that time he was part of some of the best matches I've ever seen. So I have to give him his due. Do you understand the distinction? I don't think the words "subjective" and "objective" are very helpful here. I think it's more a case of "can you back the argument up?" What are the REASONS? What is the case? I think that without that demand, the project loses value and meaning. We could all give our top 100 *favourite* wrestlers right now.

Are we going to nominate anyone who ever had a half decent match?

I don't think this would have been considered racist in that time frame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro Of course, drawing attention to his race probably isn't necessary, but it seems churlish to me to use this as a knock on Davis.

Yes, but patchiness during which he had the matches with Savage and Flair that will form the bedrock of his case for a lot of people.

To me he seemed to be over in those matches vs. Sheik (awesome) and Snuka (terrible).

I said what I think about this here. Also, if a Bret vs. Flair version of this is made, I'm leaving the project.