JerryvonKramer

I am not sure that anyone is actually disagreeing here, even though it seems like it. Consider these two statements from myself and Loss: I don't know if we're all that far apart in what we're ultimately saying, but it seems like we're getting there in a different way. Enjoying reading people's responses to these questions.

The guy who is almost always brought up as being the hardest son of a bitch in the world is Haku. Every shoot pretty much someone mentions it.

Having seen some Bruno promos now, Bruno surely counts for this. He was a very good, charismatic promo. Also, Hayes and Cornette are both awesome. I look forward to 're-discovering' Doc Hendrix.

I think I can make the second point more succinctly: you shouldn't knock WWF for not being NWA. And vice versa. That's not to say some things aren't true (NWA had better matches, NWA were terrible at pay offs, WWF were good at postcard moments, etc.), but to say that when you go to WWF or go to NWA, you might as well go for the things they do well. You're not going to get the Flair 5-star match in WWF so don't moan when you don't find it, but you might get Rick Martel spraying arrogance or a knock-out great segment on Piper's Pit. They did different things well. I think the tendency in wrestling fandom has always been for guys to back a horse. "All Japan is best". "NWA is great, WWF sucks", etc.

Some of this stuff is quite hard to put into words. I think what you're talking about here is valid. Your tastes as a 20-something or 30-something are not going to be the same as the 8-year old. We gain new appreciations and see new things, etc. I'm talking about something a little more deep-rooted. Brainfollower hit on it when he talked about finishes. He was "hard-wired" as a fan to expect the babyface to go over. For me, as a heel fan, JCP was liberating because it was like this fantasy world where the faces always got screwed over. As a kid I used to get so excited when managers interfered or when there were heel run ins, I'd pop for that stuff. So when I was first discovering the early Starrcades and other JCP stuff tape collecting in the early 2000s, it was just amazing that a promotion could be run on such different lines. But no matter how much other stuff I watch, I still to this day expect the babyface to come out on top in the end. There are other expectations that are really hard to shake. Another example, we're all trained, to an extent, for "finishers". WWF was big on finishers. Finishers became a de facto norm in the 1990s. When you watch matches from the 70s, it can be jarring -- at least at first -- when a match is finishing with a simple elbow drop. Again, no matter how much 70s stuff I watch, the expectation for a definitive "finish" with a finisher is there. This is the sort of thing I'm getting at, not so much still loving poor Boris and poor Nikolai. I guess I'm making a second point too. Like I said this is hard to articulate for some reason ... The second point is that I don't count the fact I love NWA so much against the WWF stuff I grew up with. And I still think that stuff is defensible on its own terms. My view these days is much more along the lines of different types of wrestling as being different types of cuisines judged by the standards of that cuisine. i.e. You don't knock French cooking for its lack of noodles. It's a difficult view for me because "relativism" / "pluralism" of this sort goes against my nature. And I also don't know how far you take it. Do you judge WCW 2000 only against WCW 2000? I dunno.

Might have to listen to this through a second time as I was distracted by something first time round. How about Jacques and Raymond for an underrated team? Or 2Cold Scorpio and Bagwell?

See, I know this is not a popular view, but to me that match is Sting, Clash 1

Great show. Love this series so far. 1. Awesome awesome Savage promo. 2. Who was the voice over in the bit talking about Goldust? Was it Todd Pettingall? The phasing was very Mooney-esque but I know it's too late for him. Didn't sound like Todd. 3. Goldust = Oscar = mind blown.

On the latest Wresting with the Past show (IC title edition), Loss talked about two different "certifiable" carry jobs: the first was Rude vs. Warrior; the second was Bret vs. Bulldog. I agree with him that both of those are carry jobs. There are other matches that over the years have been talked up as carry jobs that I'd dispute: Flair vs. Luger springs to mind. I don't believe Luger was "carried" in those matches. Maybe, the GAB 88 match, maybe. But not the others. So in this thread we can do two things: 1. What are some "certifiable" carry jobs? 2. What are some matches that have been hyped as carry jobs but in actuality weren't?

I don't know if this warrants a new thread and it's only sort of related to the topic of this one, and I am not sure entirely how to put it into words but ... Can you ever truly shed your wrestling origins? For example, one of the sort of "knocks" that often gets flung my way on this board is that I tend to filter everything through the prism of the late 80s / early 90s WWF product. I'm pretty sure some people here might even think of me as some sort of die-hard apologist for that era. True, it's usually from people who don't listen to the two podcasts I put out (one on NWA, one on an earlier period of WWF), but still -- the perception is there that "this guy sees things from this perspective ... and therefore [insert conclusion here]". Leaving aside the issue of whether this is or is not true of me (not a very interesting topic), I want to scrutinise that train of thought a little bit. There are people here who I've come to know who definitely have "soft spots" which usually happens to be the promotion in which they had an emotional investment as a mark kid. For Will it's mid-80s NWA and maybe Watts. For Johnny Sorrow it's early-mid-80s WWF. For khawk and Smack2k it's probably AWA. For other dudes here it'll be the early 90s, for others still it's the attitude era. So ... I guess there are two questions here: 1. Accepting the idea that people have this sort of "soft spot", to what extent does it actually form your view of what wrestling should be like? I mean, you've got to get your benchmarks and expectations from somewhere right? 2. Can you ever really turn your back on the thing that brought you to the dance? ---------------- I'll have a bash at answering these questions myself: 1. The view I've developed myself over the past couple of years is that to a certain extent, you have to be a kind of relativist watching wrestling from different promotions. By that I mean, when watching AWA, you have to judge it by AWA standards, NWA by NWA standards, Lucha by Lucha standards and so on. That's not to suggest that one "standard" is above or better than the other, just that there's no point in trying to evaluate the thing outside of its own context. I was talking to Chad and Brad about this recently when they did their debate about ratings. For me, each set of ratings is contingent within the promotion itself. So like, an AWA **** match is "4 stars within an AWA context". But that's worth the same as 4 stars from any other company, if that makes any sense. So what I've tried to do when watching footage from different places is establish NEW benchmarks and expectations per territory. A lot of the time then, I'm mainly looking to judge matches against other matches from within the same sort of timeframe and within that promotion. So if I'm watching a match from 1979 WWF, I only really want to consider other matches from around then. I'm not going to start trying to compare Patterson vs. Backlund to Jumbo vs. Tenryu 89. I don't really see the point in it. So for myself, even though my "soft spot" will always be 88-92 WWF, my benchmarks in terms of evaluating matches are almost never coming from there. In fact, my benchmarks switch according to what I'm watching. I'm interested in this because I wonder if Loss, for example, with his "yearbook-style" watching switches up his criteria relative to context in this way or whether he has more "absolute" benchmarks. 2. I honestly don't think you can. Or at least, personally, I won't turn my back on the shit that first got me into wrestling. It goes back to the first post I made in this thread over 2 years ago: I don't like smarkiness, or the point of view that sees "work" as being the only game in town. A lot of the time, that means I'm going to be batting for Vince's goofy crap: I dunno fucking Dino Bravo doing bench presses, or Jesse Ventura shitting on Uncle Elmer's wedding. I'll defend it time and again, and argue that such "crap" was instrumental in making fans of millions of people. This was a bit of an incoherent ramble, but keen to get anyone else's take on any of this stuff.

Separate numbering for the two different arguments. A kid of 3 years old could see that. Kind of bears out my point doesn't it that you're so focused on "winning", that your eye is so on "the prize" -- whatever the hell that might be -- that you get this tunnel vision which leads you to make these really petty non-points. Also, I was saying that the action figures drove the gate, not that toy sales were an indication of success. The fact your mind only went that way suggests that you're not really engaging with anything being said, but just trying to score points, as per usual. I'll tell you: I don't care how many people respect your opinion or how many people think mine is a total joke. Couldn't give less of a shit. The shift in the way wrestling looked and was presented in the 1980s is so patently, transparently and completely obvious that it really shouldn't have to be discussed any more than having it pointed out. It's like trying to argue that Elvis didn't change music. The fact you refuse to acknowledge it should be staggering, if it wasn't you. Pointing back to the 1920s or Gorgeous George changes nothing. Your complete inability to distinguish precedent from innovation is laughable in its sheer block-headedness. By the same logic Shakespeare didn't innovate in drama either. But it's just testament to the sort of person you are: one not really worth bothering with. Somewhere in the Bible it says "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another". Not so with you. You serve only to blunt and mangle, and drain the life out of everything you touch. You've taken plenty of potshots at my intelligence and knowledge and so on, plenty of them. I won't take them from someone with a mind as mundane as yours. I can always gain knowledge, you can never stop being you.

Yeah, I'm a bit confused by that. Austin had a decent singles run in which he was touted as a future big star "wrestler of the 90s", and made US champ. Decent feud with Steamboat until injury cut it short. The big crime is Bischoff cutting his balls off and jobbing him out to Duggan at Fall Brawl 1994, which has basically nothing to do with the Blondes splitting up. Just a bit of a headscratcher for me.

I've read before that Dusty wanted Austin to be US champ. Is there any reason why history shits on the idea of their split? I thought Pillman got injured anyway and Austin joined the Dustin vs. Studd Stable feud.

Because there is a risk of you know who returning to this thread, I have to write this out in logical form to mitigate against any prospect of having my words twisted or misrepresented. With such characters around, this is unfortunately a necessary measure. Argument against "he was just lucky" Premise 1: Advantages alone do not diminish the achievements of successful people, because they need to be realised Premise 2: Advantages by themselves mean nothing until they are realised; and there is nothing inevitable in their realisation. Conclusion 1: Therefore, you measure success not by the advantages, but by what a person does to press and realise those advantages Premise 3: The advantage of being located in New York alone does not diminish the achivements of Vince, because he needed to realise those advantages Premise 4: Being in New York alone meant nothing until Vince used it as a competitive advantage; and there is nothing inevitable about the fact that he used it to such advantage -- and even if there was, there is nothing inevitable about the success that followed that Conclusion 2: Therefore, we measure the success of Vince not by the advantages he enjoyed from being located in New York, but by what he did to leverage that into the success he enjoyed. ----------------- Addendum: There's nothing inevitable about any of the creative moves I've outlined in this thread. Nothing inevitable about Wrestlemania as a concept. About so many of the things Vince did. Try imagining the company being run by Vince Sr into the 1990s and tell me what happens.

Just because there is luck and contingency, it does not mean that Vince was only lucky or that his success was only contingent. For every success story there has ever been you can point to a luck factor and a set of variables that needed to be in place. Think of how lucky Eric Bischoff was. He could sign any wrestler in the world. He eventually had every single marquee star under contract. The company that owned WCW owned the TV station. And he still fucked it all up. It doesn't change anything that Vince could only have done the what he did because he was in New York: you play the hand you're dealt and make the best of it. Remember the first part of Karl Marx's maxim: There's nothing inevitable about the success that Vince had. Imagine if Vince Sr hadn't have died and stayed on through the 1980s and 1990s somehow. What happens then? The circumstances are simply that: a set of circumstances. Vince is the differentiator.

Glad you went with Ivan in the end too.

Andy Kaufman is probably my wrestling hero. Genius.

As far as I know Dusty himself was still the booker in late 1993. The big change in WCW in 1993 was Eric Bischoff taking over as Executive VP from Bill Watts. So I can only assume they are talking about Uncle Eric. They split up too early for it to be Flair.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ptbn-wr...d715657490?mt=2 This is the iTunes link.

Housekeeping Lucha d1 A* MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana (9/23/83) A Atlantis y El Hijo del Santo vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Lobo Rubio (11/25/83) B Satoru Sayama y Gran Hamada vs. Perro Aguayo y Baby Face (4/13/80) B- Espectro Jr., Satanico y MS-1 vs. Mocho Cota, Sangre Chicana y La Fiera (9/30/83) Centurion Negro vs. Gran Hamada (2/14/82) El Canek vs. Don Corleone (2/14/82) C+ Kevin von Erich, Mascara Ano 2000 y Halcon Ortiz v. Coloso Colosetti, Pirata Morgan y Herodes (9/23/83) Tatsumi Fujinami vs. El Canek (6/12/83) C Sangre Chicana vs. Ringo Mendoza (10/28/83) D+ Andre the Giant & Cien Caras vs. Alfonso Dantes, Herodes y Sangre Chicana (1981)

Lucha 1.8 Espectro Jr., Satanico y MS-1 vs. Mocho Cota, Sangre Chicana y La Fiera (9/30/83) Anyone ever play Final Fight? This is like all of the goons from that come to life and fighting each other. No real clue what's going on in the first five minues here but it's fun as hell. Newly bald MS-1 does a good King of the Mountain thing early on. Christ! That mask is scary! Espectro Jr could give the kids nightmares. MS-1 and Espectro are like Team Evil here. Cool. They are doing a real number on Mocho Coto. Pretty soon he's busted open. And now we get a comeback. Chaos here again, stuff happening all over the place. The faces start triple teaming Satanico now. Then Espectro's in trouble. Hard to know where to look with this much stuff going on. There's a big kick to the balls. I don't know what's going on. Arghhh too much chaos. Cota rips off Espectro's mask and his hair! I honestly couldn't tell you what is happening. So the faces have won? B- Wild, but also alienating in that I have no fucking clue what I just saw. Bit too random for my tastes. If someone asked me "what was the story of that match". My answer could only be "well a bunch of shit happened". I'm not sold on the idea that that's a great thing. If this exact match happened in a US ring, I'd say exactly the same thing. I can imagine there'll be people who'll really love this, but I'm not one of them. Lucha 1.9 Sangre Chicana vs. Ringo Mendoza (10/28/83) Ringo Mendoza looks like a real thug. Much more technical style of match now from Chicana. After some early mat stuff there's a nice neckbreaker. A little later there's one that sort of misses. I've never seen someone "miss" a neckbreaker before. Still Mendoza is clearly targetting Chicana's neck here. Very "scientific" stuff this. Chicana targets the upper back and shoulder area with his holds. Mendoza is trying to bend and twist Chicana's neck. That's the story of this match pretty much from start to finish -- as stories go it's a very mildly diverting one, but little more than that. If you're going to work 3 falls, my preference is to make each fall standout in some way. Here all three were worked in the same pace and gear. No real transitions to speak of. And I like transitions. Will be lower-middle. C Lucha 1.10 Atlantis y El Hijo del Santo vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Lobo Rubio (11/25/83) More great 80s-looking punkish thugs here. Rubio wouldn't look out of place graffiting the subway in the background of Turtles. Cool headscissors sequence to start. A lot of trips and flips and things between Gurrera and Atlantis that I won't pretend I understand. This is all very fluid. Constant motion. The armdrags are unusual. They seem "airy" in someway, not seen those before. Faces seem to be just too good for the heels here. Santo seems to hit what I can only call a reverse armdrag. Not sure I understand the physics, but I've never seen one before. The move actually defies science. El Punko Rubio has a go now and we get more floaty armdrags. Both Atlantis and Santo look really good in this match. I don't mind this variety of super-duper smooth fluid matwork, it's all rather artful. Heels have had nothing in this match so far. They can't get anything going at all. Santo seems to glide rather than jump. A very graceful worker. Heels finally get a bit off offense going and work over Atlantis. I feel Fureza allowed him to tag out far too easily though. Cut the ring off, basic strategy. Rubio starts working over Santo now. He's the power man in this match. Nastily throws Santo to the floor over the top rope. Sick sick bump!!! Shit! The heels have been properly vicious in this segment. Santo vs. Rubio now and Santo hits a nice kneelift and as Rubio charges him just trips his leg. Awesome. Have loved Santo in this match. Cool backbreaker on Fureza by Atlantis now. Rubio breaks it up. Some real highflying stuff from Santo and Atlantis now in a sequence which is a little too choregraphed for my tastes. It's enough for a countout win though. Spectacular finish. Dug the hell out of this. Strong finish to the disc. A

Housekeeping: New Japan d1 rankings: ****3/4 Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (5/9/80) ****1/2 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Chavo Guerrero (5/9/80) **** Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Steve Keirn (2/3 Falls) (2/1/80) ***3/4 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dynamite Kid (2/5/80) ***1/2 Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (9/11/80) *** Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Londos (9/19/80) Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Rocco (9/11/80) Gran Hamada vs. Babyface (4/3/80) **1/2 Tatsumi Fujinami & Kantaro Hoshino vs. Dynamite Kid & Steve Keirn (1/18/80) Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (4/3/80) ** Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (2/8/80) Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura (9/25/80)

New Japan 1.9 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Rocco (9/11/80) I've decided to give Cowboy Wally another chance after taking a break with the last 4 matches, and he's pulling a 70s Vince here and flying solo. Good, the other guy was the one making all the douche-y comments last time. He's doing much more play-by-play now. He's actually not bad at all. More 70s Vince Cowboy Wally please. I must say this has been quite dull so far. Fujinami is still bringing the ground game and Rocco tries to answer in kind. This sort of matwork leaves me cold. Now who is Tony Rocco? He's a guy who sounds like he should be familiar but I can't say I've ever come across him till now. This is very dry stuff here. Pretty much an anti-JvK match this. Things pick up a bit and it goes outside. Rocco picks Fujinami up and rams him into the post. Suplex by Rocco. Thank god, some action. Bodyslam. TOP ROPE BY ROCCO. Misses the splash and now Fujinami rams him into the mat. Flair flip by Rocco. Fujinami rams his head into the post behind the turnbuckle. Rocco hits a missile dropkick from the top. Butterfly suplex! Catapult by Rocco. Fujinami goes flying. Misses a crossbody. Slam by Fujinami. He goes to the top and misses a knee. Surfboarrrddddd? Yes? Yes? YES! Fujinami then wins out of nowhere with a flash pin. The old soccer cliche is that "this is a game of two halves", that platitude has never been truer than of this match. The first half was interminably dull. Hated every second of it. The second half was aweomse, except for the finish. On balance ... *** Fujinami already emerging as a great worker on this set. Can seemingly work any type of opponent with ease. New Japan 1.10 Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (9/11/80) Back in 2009 podland, Cowboy Wally is taking calls now, and a chap calls in to ask what the Japanese drink at these shows. "Ginger beer?" Ha ha, not a bad way to introduce himself. Inoki does a very strange-looking armhold thing at the start. Hansen does his usual stiff offense to retaliate. Inoki works the left arm again, and gets an arm lock on. Suplex by Hansen. Stamps on Inoki's head. Hansen is literally FORCING Inoki to sell his shit here. You couldn't not sell those stomps. Hansen keeps things moving here. Thought this was a lesser version of the previous match. ***1/2 New Japan 1.11 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Tony Londos (9/19/80) Another balding junior here, this look was all the rage in 1980. Londos works at a much higher pace than Rocco from the bell. Fujinami busts out some chops and a dropkick. Fujinami is working much more agressively here than in some previous matches. Much faster and stiffer than he was vs. Chavo or Rocco. Another flash pin. This was decent for a short match. *** Fujinami can work scientifically, as a highflyer, he can brawl, he can work in bombfests. I think in just a few short matches, he's shown all of that, which is pretty remarkable. Surely a contender for best worker anywhere in the world for 1980. New Japan 1.12 Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura (9/25/80) Kimura wants to see his barber here because his hair is absolutely awful, by 1980 standards or by any standards. Awful hair. One cool thing about New Japan is how so many people wear the "pure" black tights. Ok, shall I talk about wrestling rather than just the hair or clothes? If I must. So this is the first time we've seen Fujinami against someone who, for all intents and purposes is much like him. I mean in terms of look and style: this guy -- unlike Keirn, Kid, Chavo, Rocco or London -- is Japanese, about the same size and weight, and his preference is for a ground-based technical offensive game. Unfortunately for me, this means a lot of listless and not-particularly-interesting matwork. There are sparks of frustration which are quite compelling, but then they go back to the matwork. Hopefully, this is just the calm before the storm. There's a hell of a lot of struggle and tension developing here. Kimura keeps losing his temper and trying to slap Fujinami, and Fujinami is a bit of a cocky little shit, but he wants to keep outwrestling him. More mat stuff now as Fujinami ties Kimura up like a pretzel. I want the match to transition to the next gear now. It keeps threatening to and then not. Quite the tease of a match so far. Headscissors by Kimura now. Fujinami looks like he's going to do the hand-stand escape. Finally is able to bridge out. I'm not a fan of this "fancy dan" shit. Just slap the guy in the face and break. Criss-cross now and dropkicks and somersaults being missed left and right. Snapmare by Kimura into a chinlock. Headlock now. Come on now, take it to the next gear!!! PLEASE. Botched corkscrew by Kimura. Light looking arm-lock by him now. Fujinami could easily get out of this. European uppercut by Kimura. Shoulder barge by Fujinami. Running European uppercut by Fujinami -- that was like a Street Fighter move! OUCH!!!!! Christ, that was a brutal looking piledriver by Kimura. I'm surprised Fujinami isn't paralysed. Could have broke his neck. Things go outside and Kimura has colour. Fujinami dives through the ropes. Suplex in. Kimura goes up to the top but Fujinami dropkicks him up there. Bell goes and I'm not sure why. I thought Kimura was actively bad in this match. Matwork was rubbish. A lot of botches. Not good. **