JerryvonKramer

I don't have any data to back it up, but as a nine/ten year old in the boom years every single person I knew watched WWF, and even your parents would know characters like The Rock and Steve Austin. It was crazy popular around that time. It depends where you were -- in your life I guess. I was 17/ 18 in 2000 and while I was watching again, it was hardly big for most people. Raw was shown on Friday nights. I'd either go over my friend's to watch it before going out, or stay in and watch it with my brother ... probably before going out. MOST people just went out on a Friday night. I recall if ever I'd bring up wrestling with someone around that time it would quickly beeline into "ha ha remember Dino Bravo?" sort of territory. Could just be my year in my town -- others who were my age at that time may tell you different -- but my memory of it is that most people didn't care and still thought of wrestling in that childhood nostalgia sort of way. What I'd be interested in is if that was paralleled in 1991-3. That's when I was 10 and it seemed like every single person watched WWF. Were 18-year olds watching then? My guess is probably not. My guess is that if you'd asked an 18 year old in 1992 about wrestling chances are he'd bring up World of Sport. Likely most of them didn't care and just wanted to get smashed and fuck and do all the other things 18-year olds do. Maybe Lister or someone else who is a bit older can testify?

Think Steamboat is suffering with some people because he was the guy with the pre-existing big rep. Let's pretend Martel's top stuff was the known quantity and Steamboat's best stuff had been seen in the context of something like the AWA set. In those circumstances, I can't help but believe that this would be a landslide.

He-Man, Transformers and TMNT (HERO Turtles here), definitely, plus Thundercats and Ghostbusters. All at different times. I don't recall GI Joe being a big thing, but MASK was relatively at one point. Don't want this to get too off-topic, but a few years ago I did some essays on some of these shows. Looks like the site has changed, gone really slow, and the pics have gone but still ... Thundercats Critical Retrospective, Thundercats Season Two (Part 2), TMNT, The Real Ghostbusters, MASK. There were other fads: the football sticker albums, Top Trumps, "Pogs", Tamagotchi, "Tazos", I remember a spell where loads of people were into Anime stuff. I do wonder if the UK market was particularly fad-based at this time, or whether everywhere is prone to fads in the same way. I recall my idea that JYD was essentially a fad in New Orleans being shot down by some, accepted by others ...

http://www.wrestletapes.net/bestofrickysteamboat.html Disc 2 – Mid-Atlantic, AJPW Ricky Steamboat vs. Greg Valentine (1980) Ricky Steamboat vs. Greg Valentine (1980) Hard to imagine that these matches aren't good Ricky Steamboat vs. Big John Studd (1980) Ricky Steamboat vs. Ken Patera (1980) Ricky Steamboat vs. The Iron Sheik (1980) Anyone seen these? Potential to be great. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Jimmy Snuka & Ray Stevens (06/29/80) Ricky Steamboat vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (12/1/80) Ricky Steamboat & Dick Slater vs. Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta (12/5/80) Disc 3 – Mid-Atlantic, AJPW Ricky Steamboat vs. The Sheik (12/9/80) A particular favourite of mine. Ricky Steamboat vs. Jimmy Snuka (6/3/81) Ricky Steamboat vs. Jimmy Snuka (6/10/81) Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair (6/4/82) Seen this talked about on occasion Ricky Steamboat & Atsushi Onita vs. Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell (6/8/82) Ricky Steamboat vs. Joe LeDuc (1982) Ricky Steamboat vs. Bad Leroy Brown (1982) Disc 4 – Mid-Atlantic, AJPW Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen. (11/26/82) Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Dory & Terry Funk. (12/2/82) Could be good. Ricky Steamboat vs. Harley Race. (12/7/82) Ditto Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Sgt. Slaughter & Don Kernodle. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Sgt. Slaughter & Don Kernodle. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Sgt. Slaughter & Don Kernodle. The Road to Greensboro contract signing. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. Sgt. Slaughter & Don Kernodle in a “Steel Cage Match.” (The Final Conflict, 3/12/83) Disc 5 – Mid-Atlantic, AJPW Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. The Brisco Brothers. (1983) Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. The Brisco Brothers. (1983) Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood, The Brisco Brothers confrontation. (1983) Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. The Brisco Brothers. (8/83) Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood training video. Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood vs. The Brisco Brothers. (Starrcade 11/24/83) Ricky Steamboat “retires.” (1/84) Ricky Steamboat vs. Genichiro Tenryu. (2/23/84) Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair. (The Night of the Champions, 5/29/84) Another touted match. Ricky Steamboat vs. Dick Slater. (6/84) This also looks good. I don't mind watching these soon. I'd love to see the Sleeze breakdown on them though.

I think you're selling Steamboat a little short here Martin, primarily because you're overlooking his early 90s WCW run, which you don't mention. He had some good tag matches in that run, some good moments on the mic, another handful of great matches to add to his CV. All-in-all, I went with Steamboat with Martel a close second. I still need to revisit Tito in more detail, but honestly don't see him going higher than either guy. My feeling with Martel on the AWA set is that he was a great worker, tremendous fire, great at selling, exciting babyface BUT ... always seems to stop short of delivering that knockout 5-star classic you're looking for. Plenty of very good matches in the B+ / A- range, but nothing going over the top. Steamboat simply has a bigger collection of knock-out classics. And that's without digging deeper. Have we gone back to watch the '78 Flair matches? The '82 stuff? James hopefully will bring some of this Mid-Atlantic stuff to light at some point, but I get the sense that there is a deeper pool of quality Steamboat that is still relatively under-the-radar. That said, I've still not seen the touted Martel Portland stuff -- and Martel was meant to be better in 1980 than he was in 1985. So in terms of footage I've not seen, it could go either way. All that said, instinctually -- and feel free to disagree -- but at the very top end, I think Steamboat has another gear to go to that Martel doesn't and that's why I've given him my vote. EDIT: coming out of the post and going back to board, I noticed the "Babyface of the 80s" subtitle. In which case, it's only really the touted stuff from 80-84 missing. If it's ONLY 1980s, I'm tempted to want to switch to Martel. It's close but I'll stick with Steamer. His match with Luger in 89 is not talked about enough. He has a good match with Tully for the TV title.

Excellent call

He certainly had a parallel drop off in the quality of his work ....

Thinking back now, it's pretty amazing how big it was over here and how quickly the popularity dropped (from memory it had plummeted by the start of 1993). I don't know what led to the drop, but I would guess that over-saturation may have been another factor. My first live event was a UK Rampage show in Birmingham in 1991, then I attended the European Rampage tour, the European Rampage Again tour and finally Summerslam (at which point I was 14) and all these events were well spread apart. There was another tour over here almost straight after Summerslam and me and my group of friends decided not to go purely because of how close it was after Summerslam and we just couldn't afford it. I'm guessing that we weren't the only ones who felt like this, and what at once was considered a treat or a pretty special night to see the WWF live, wasn't what it once was a year and a bit earlier. The magazine situation over here also changed rapidly. In the town where I lived in mid-92 you could get the WWF Magazine, the WCW Magazine, all the Apter mags (PWI, Sports Review Wrestling, Inside Wrestling, The Wrestler), Superstars of Wrestling (predecessor to Powerslam) and a bunch of others like Wrestling's Main Event, New Wave Wrestling and Wrestling Eye. Fast forward to the start of 1993 and you were just left with the WWF Magazine, PWI and a UK produced effort called Wrestling Big Shots (which I liked purely for the ridiculously detailed results section). Even Superstars of Wrestling had disappeared off the radar and didn't show up again until the Powerslam relaunch in August 1994. It's still buried in that GOAT thread, but if you look at the data I pulled out on this, there's no discernable drop in attendence in 93, even as late as August where Hogan vs. Yoko is still selling out arenas. Like everyone else, anecdotally, I had the decline pegged before that -- it's almost like wrestling became deeply uncool overnight -- but the numbers haven't dropped off yet. Thinking about it, the summer holidays of 1993 would be where the big shift happened in the playground. Going back to school in September 93, it was yesterday's news. I recall Wrestlemania 9 being talked about quite a lot by the other kids. I'm also not sure I'd peg Gladiators as being the thing that killed WWF. That's not how I remember it and it didn't seem like an either / or choice. Gladiators was big for a bit too though. Mods - this might be an opportune moment to move all that stuff into this thread.

I absolutely love the fact that SD Jones comes above so many bigger stars. also, Denucci at 89!! There's a distinct lack of Bruno on this list Mookie, where does he rank? Seems odd to think that Kelly's boys (Denucci, Scicluna, Estrada, Rodz) all had more TV time than him. The other person who stands out is Davey Boy. More screentime than Hogan? It's his late 90s run alone doing that, which speaks a lot to Chad's point.

That's more reasoned out that you'd expect. From more recent viewing, I think DiBiase threw very good punches. Punching was kind of ingrained into his black glove gimmick. On a good day, I even wonder if they were better than Terry Funk's. He seems to have learned his punching style from him. On another note: who threw the meanest european uppercut? Dory? Regal? Rotunda?

genuine lol at this. And another one here.

HOLY SHIT

My immediate thought is that it would have done Big Show's career wonders.

My rhyme's so chilled you can call my style "ghostly" So now I'll break it down on Pro Wrestling Mostly: I love the board like Mario loves Yoshi, I love the board like Loss loves Joshi. Whether it's Jack and Jerry, Or Dory and Terry, Or David and Kerry, Or Dean and Perry, We want those southern-style tags; Sort of shit you read about in the Apter mags. Did you see that suplex? Did you see that botch? Do we have any footage of Karl Gotch? El-P's still at it, yo, fucking it up a notch. "Listen up, I do contend That Bill Watts talked up the megatrend" Did you ever see Hero in Super Friends? Did you read the Rose note Matt D penned? Did you see OJ's stuff on King Ben? Ain't it sweet to see Dylan's love for Ken? Did you ever count how many discs Will sends? Do you ever worry that you're off the deep end?

Cawthorn's book looks great, may have to get it.

Well I did give the 5/9/80 Hansen match an A, which is a pretty high rating from me. I was also the high vote on the 12/06/79 Backlund match on the recent Titans show -- and by some margin. But in both cases, it felt like I liked these matches despite Inoki. I'm just wondering if there are matches where the match is good primarily because of Inoki rather than his opponent.

Here in the UK we have two very big chinned men. One is Bruce Forsyth. He's been on TV for something like 50 years. I think I mentioned to you once that he's in the film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. He also had a go at breaking America at one point and during that run had a guest spot on The Muppets Show. Another very big chinned man is the former football manager and pundit Jimmy Hill. But I think Inoki has them both beat. Look at it!! My god. You could put a banana next to his face and there'd probably still be chin left over. I have to respect that.

Inoki seems like he has friends in some high places because this poll keeps resetting! 6 votes cast and it's back to 0. It went back to 0 after 3 votes too. I mean "as a worker" obviously rather than as a man, or a booker. His chin is something else too.

Seldom has a worker inspired such visceral hatred in me as Antonio Inoki. I mean how boring was this fuck? Honestly, I'd take Dory Jr over him at this stage. As I've said, he feels like a guy who was perfectly content to just sit on the mat and run out the time if you let him. Seems like every bit of selling, every high spot, bit of excitement, or basically anything that isn't laying on the mat has to be dragged from him by his opponent. I've got this impression seeing him vs. both Hansen and Backlund now. But mostly he's been rubbish. Now, I haven't seen more than 20 Inoki matches in my life total, but how on earth was Inoki such a legend being as sickeningly dull as he was? Any thoughts welcome on Inoki. What are some examples of Inoki being "on", rather than his opponent basically forcing him to have a good, watchable match?

Rather controversially, I'm going to say Bob Backlund in his original run. We all know Backlund had the abiltiy to talk and he was great in that heel run as Mr. Backlund. Unfortunately, from watching from January to December 79 now, he shows very little charisma in his promos as a babyface. A part of this is the status quo of the time: babyfaces tended to be soft-spoken and stoical, a la comatose Chief Jay Strongbow. A lot of babyfaces cut those bland promos then: see also DiBiase, Steamboat, and even Flair as a babyface. It was the default mode. But the period also saw the likes of Dusty. Bruno was a pretty decent promo. Looks like Pat Patterson as a babyface is set to cut great promos. My main problem is that Backlund's character as a promo doesn't match his fired-up character in the ring. If only he could have injected more energy and determination into what he was saying. Taking everything into account, I think Backlund is one of the people where the perception of him has hurt how people think of him in general more than almost anyone else. I don't know that he was a blow-away great worker, but if he'd have been a better promo, I wonder if he'd be more fondly remembered as an "all-time great"?

This is also true. I'm a little conflicted on this. I agree absolutely that it matters who wins in something like Tenryu vs. Jumbo. I think possibly MASSIVE wins and losses in big feuds matter, but those matches account for less than 2% of all the matches you'll likely see, period. I even think within big feuds sometimes it doesn't matter either. Without looking it up, I honestly couldn't tell you who won Tenryu/ Jumbo vs. Yatsu / Choshu '86. I can't remember, and I'm not sure how important it was to my enjoyment of it despite being one of the best matches I've ever seen. I might say something like: "most of the time it doesn't matter, but in the 2% of times that it does, it's really important". Something like that.

Is this because over the last 10 years or so we have been taught to think wins and loses don't matter? No, but it may be because over the past 10 years or so I almost exclusively watch old wrestling and don't care about the current product at all. For me "emotional connection" is more about just giving a shit about what's happening. Being invested in the characters. Getting involved in the story of the match. Feeling a tinge of excitement at the high spots, which these days might be writing "holy shit that was awesome" in my notes. Wrestling makes me laugh a lot. A LOT. I love its absurd little self-contained universe. And that's why I love posting here because guys like Loss just get it. Wrestling has only made me cry twice: once with Flair's fairytale win over Vader at Starrcade 93, and once when Macho Man died.

The disconnect for me here is the winning and losing aspect. I probably don't care who loses or wins.

http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrest...-december-1979/ Parv, James, Kelly, Pete and Johnny Sorrow finish up WWF in 1979. On the docket tonight: 12-01 ALBANO MAKES DEAL WITH WIZARD FOR PAT PATTERSON CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING 12-01 TONY ATLAS vs JOSE ESTRADA CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING 12-06 BOB BACKLUND vs ANTONIO INOKI WWF TITLE JAPAN 12-08 KEN PATERA vs JOHNNY RIVERA ALL STAR WRESTLING 12-08 PATTERSON/SAMOANS vs ZBYSZKO/DENUCCI/PUTSKI CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING 12-17 HULK HOGAN vs TED DIBIASE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 12-79 BOB BACKLUND, LOU ALBANO/BOBBY DUNCUM PROMOS WWF TV 12-17 BOB BACKLUND vs BOBBY DUNCUM WWF TITLE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 12-17 HARLEY RACE vs DUSTY RHODES NWA TITLE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 12-31 ANDRE THE GIANT, LOU ALBANO PROMOS WWF TV Some highlights include: - The mailbag returns, possibly for the last time - Bios for Tony Atlas (Johnny), Antonio Inoki, Ken Patera (both Kelly), and Harley Race (Parv) - Does the piledriver hurt the top of your head or just the neck? - End of year awards for 1979 - Plus Al Pacino, how many members of the Village People were gay?, cheap generic colas, Sylvester the Cat, and loads more fun and nonsense The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, you’ll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.