JerryvonKramer

Loss and Pete have made all the arguments I would have made. Just want to elaborate on this point a bit more: The extent to which Flair sells is also dictated as much by context as it is by the opponent. For example, he gives Luger a lot more time on offense (and gets much less in himself) at Bash 88 than at Starrcade 88. There's a good reason for that: Flair had been ducking Luger for weeks before the Bash match and Luger was full of fire ready to beat him up (it's basically Hogan vs. Bock). That match had a bullshit finish designed to send people home with the idea that Luger had the beating of Flair who had weaseled out on a technicality. If I was to point to one match that has "Flair as HTM" it's that one. But by Starrcade, in storyline, Flair had had months to prep -- and was now being positioned as greatest champ ever™. He was able to take out Luger's leg during the match, which gave him the win. That match was designed to leave you thinking Flair is the GOAT champ and that Luger is not going to get another title shot for a long time. Sure, Luger gets a lot of time on top in both matches, but in the second match there's no sense in which you come away from the match not thinking Flair is the better wrestler.

I do think the extent to which Flair was a bitch champ / "Honkytonk Man" style champ in the mid-late 80s is overstated.

I think it's a real curiosity piece. I recall Kevin Sullivan's extremely creepy post-match antics being the most memorable part of it. There are a few really good things about it. There's a very slight tease for the Ron Garvin heel turn. The match builds reasonably well. I do recall us having some problems with it though: Hawk making the save for Precious when it should have been Jimmy Garvin. Some real awkward moments when two guys reach the bottom cage and just stand there. Overall, I think it's a match everyone needs to see once just to say they've seen it.

One thing that has interested me about all the Hansen I've seen so far is that he's one guy who mixes up match structure more than most. Many times he'll accelerate the start of a match so we get no shine sequence at all. Other times he can work a slower mat-based match. Sometimes he can work dominant, other times -- including against guys like Baba -- he can work from underneath and sell his ass off. Going through All Japan, the one thing that set him apart consistently though was match structure. His matches do not play out the same way as 90% of other matches, there's a genuine unpredictability there. I've been a bit out of it wrestling-wise for the past couple of weeks as real-life has thrown some things in my way but I'm looking forward to seeing his PR stuff and AWA stuff.

No comment from me.

I could buy this sort of argument if you were talking about something like video games. Someone who grew up in the 8-bit or 16-bit era is going to think Mario 3 and Mario World are great games, someone who is a bit younger might have fonder memories of Mario 64, someone younger again who grew up in the era when FPS games dominated might be more like "platformers suck". That's a case where it can be hard to go back and appreciate things before your time. You get genuine generational splits there. Try telling an 18-year old that some 48kb ZX Spectrum game is one of the best of all time and he'll laugh in your face and think you are insane. I don't believe wrestling is a case like this. Wrestling doesn't change so drastically from era to era that old matches so much are harder to get into. And I especially don't think this is something you can level at PWO posters. Not when you've got guys living in Texas spending their time watching Jim Breaks matches from the mid-70s. Even if what you are saying might generally be the case outside of this forum, it's really unfair to level that charge at people who post here.

My feeling is that he'd beat Flair on most sites because Bret, among mainstream fans, gets a similar sort of megaboost that Shawn gets. His associations with Austin and HBK, his long-term IRL rivalry with Vince, and being an internet darling circa 2000 have all helped maintain a mystique and an over-inflated sense of his importance. For 1,000s of fans Crockett or the NWA might as well have not existed. They simply don't care about Flair outside of the year or so he was in WWF in 91-3 and his 00s run. Part of my vitriol in this whole thread has been that I don't even think Bret belongs in the conversation with Flair. If wrestling was a real sport, no one would be putting Bret in that conversation. But all of the above artificially puts him in such a conversation. That's it really. I don't dispute that Bret had many great matches or even that he was one of the greatest WWF workers of his era, I just don't think he belongs in a GOAT discussion with Flair or any of the other people actually in that GOAT discussion.

Butch - the localised commentary for those shows was pretty funny though. Think it was Scott Hudson and Larry Z. I love it when guys are doing commentary for things completely off the radar. It's like those random Monsoon C-shows in the mid-90s or Mooney and Hayes on the Colesium Home Videos. I am also sceptical that Mania 3 showed on Channel 4.

Do bookies actually take odds though?

I can't remember where it was Butch, but I did explain this somewhere. Might have been in a PM. Not sure if I mentioned the conference though

I have yet to find an even semi-intelligent football message board. They tend to be horrible. I mainly read The Guardian football coverage, who have some good commenters, and http://www.zonalmarking.net/ Players who spend their whole career at one club are very rare these days and a special breed. You can probably name them on two hands from recent history: John Terry, Ryan Giggs, Carles Puyol, Stephen Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Iker Casillas, Paul Scholes, Francesco Totti, Gary Neville, and the legendary Paolo Maldini. If you went and read the Wiki articles for those 10 players, you'd be getting a decent taster of European football history from about 1988 on. One-club men of this sort are exceptionally rare though at the top flight, and the norm would be for a player to ply his trade for several clubs during his career. The trajectory for an average player would be breaking into the first team around the age of 20-22, they hit their peak around 26-30. 33 is "aging". Most players would retire between 35-7, some even at 34. Some players keep going till they're 39-40 (see Giggs, Maldini) but these are, again, exceptions to the rule. Goalkeepers are a different case and peak later in their early 30s. And it is common for them to play on until they are 39-40 (see USA's own Brad Friedel). With club ownership: it depends on the club. The majority are owned as private companies and can be bought and sold to the highest bidder -- there are some rules around who can own a football club though. Some clubs are publicly traded and have shareholders. They work much like any other stock company with a Chairman and a Board of Directors and public meetings with all the shareholders. Finally, some special clubs are 100% "owned by the people". Barcelona are one such club. Bayern Munich are another -- in fact, it's more common in Germany than in other countries. These clubs are special cases but as such have tons of money because they are fundamentally locked into the local sports setup at every level. I think Ajax in Holland may run along these lines too. Most clubs though have private owners, even the biggest ones. AC Milan, for example, are owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The story of the Glazers buying Man Utd is complex because they were publicly traded for a while. I still don't really understand it but the Glazers were somehow able to leverage Man Utd's own credit to raise the funds for the bulk of the purchase. It's something I can't get my head around because of how bat-shit insane it is. Essentially, they came in and immediately saddled the club with a £700 million debt! Finally, as regards Football Manager, it is the deepest, most complex management sim ever made and has been known to cause divorces. I have had every edition since 1996 and have spent a ridiculous amount of time playing it. It's not a game, it's a way of life. I think it has got to the stage now where it's so in-depth and so hardcore that someone like you who is new to football in general might feel totally at sea. Right ... we better stop talking about "soccer" before Goodhelmet Will bans me for life.

I honestly don't know, but I think part of it is hubris along the lines of "I made money with the Boston Red Sox, so I MUST be able to make money with Liverpool FC". They won't make any money with it. Players are on multi-year contracts, from anywhere between £20k to £250k A WEEK. If a club wants a player who is under contract, they have to pay a transfer fee. Your average EPL striker might fetch something like £10 million, but players have gone for £50million and over. Real Madrid bought Christiano Ronaldo from Man U for £81.7 million. That's the current record, but transfers over £20 million are common place now. If a player runs down their contract they can actually move to another club for free (look up "Bosman ruling"). Essentially this is to stop clubs holding players against their own will. The money involved in football transfers and in player wages has been "crazy money" since the early 90s. You can probably pinpoint it to when AC Milan bought Gianluigi Lentini for £13million in 1992. It wasn't long after that that Newcastle United bought Alan Shearer from Blackburn for £15million, then they just kept getting bigger and bigger. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_football_transfer_record Bear in mind that those are only the records. There'll have been tons of £20+ and £30+ million signings not mentioned there. Off the top of my head, Chelsea bought Fernando Torres for £50million, Shevchenko for £30million. I think Man City spent £30million on Robinho. Man U spent £30million on Veron back in like 2001, then £30m on Rio Ferdinand the season after that.

So the rest of the money is just pure profit right? I think that's one of the things that American owners don't get when they come over here and buy clubs. The Glazers at Man Utd, or John W. Henry at Liverpool. A football club is not a profit making enterprise. It's just a massive money sink, a blackhole almost. There are EPL players on £200,000 a week. At the bigger clubs even the squad players will be on £50k a week minimum. If an owner comes in and spends £100 million on players in transfer fees, and then something like £2.5 million A WEEK in player wages, he has to realise that probably he'll need to spend another £70 million the year after that and the same again the year after that if he wants the team to keep competing. And he'll never see any real return on his investment. And, if he does something the fans don't like, they'll boo him too. There are loads of foreign investors who have found this out the hard way. The only people who can make it work is people with money to burn to use the club as their personal toybox (e.g. Abramovich at Chelsea). Therefore, very few EPL teams actually turn a profit. The thing is though, that the Aston Villas, Fulhams and Evertons of this world are all in the boat only at a lower level. If one of them gets an outstanding player, they'll be snapped up by one of the bigger teams. But virtually all of them have big debts. I might be wrong, but I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet that every single NFL franchise turns a profit. Is that the case?

Can't do tonight but should have mentioned to you Will that I am not teaching again till 22nd April ("Easter Break") and I've already done all my marking, so between now and then I have pretty great availability. I also seem to have become completely nocturnal. Would be cool to make one last appearance on this. Would like to catch-up a bit more though before doing so.

I used to watch Prisoner! It was on the same night as WCW. This would explain the random leaps in timeline though. They paid for one bunch of tapes, then got another lot from months later. I've said it before but going from Dangerous Alliance to Flair for the Gold in a couple of weeks was a bit jarring. Are you in Wales, Butch? I was watching on HTV and the scheduling jumped all over the place. 2am one week, 4am the next week, randomly not on the next, 1am after that. It was pretty obvious no one really gave a shit what they were showing in those time slots.

Thanks for that tomk and he's absolutely right. The equivalent of the NFL would be a European Super League featuring 20 teams, I could name them now (ok then! these 18 teams, plus Chelsea and FC Porto). The thing is though that there'd be all sorts of outcry about the formation of such a league. For example, Man City are not one of the 20 teams I've named, yet they are the current Premier League champions, they've been bought by a billionaire, Sheik Mansoor, so they look set to be major players of the next decade. If you made that league right now, there'd be an argument for including them over Liverpool, who are historically one of the most successful teams in Europe (currently in a slump). This is why it'll never happen. The system with The Champions League works quite well because while it's mostly the same elite teams year on year, upstarts like Man City can break into it and take another team's spot in any given season. The thing I wonder about though is that in football, the big clubs just keep getting bigger and richer. Does that happen in NFL or is the growth of each franchise somehow capped?

Holy shit, that's just absolutely surreal. I love the way it's presented as just "wrestling" regardless of the promotion. I'm guessing at some stage TBS must have bought that ITV slot. I don't want to derail this thread too much with this random talk of British TV schedules. Do you remember when they started showing Heat on Channel 4 though? Think Channel 4 even showed a couple of PPVs free-to-air.

When was that and what did they show? I remember WCW on ITV but thought WWF had only ever aired on Sky.

What terrestrial channel was WWF ever on? This is total news to me.

Whoa, not only did SD Jones get a win, he beat Mr. Fuji!

Not sure I'd go as far as saying it's a classic, but it tells a very compelling story. Garvin kicks Flair's ass for 15 minutes, then blows his knee out and does one of the most effective selling jobs on it I've ever seen. Flair switches into psycho mode and goes after the leg like an assassin. We're doing a best of 80s awards show in a few weeks, that's one "sleeper" pick I can see me putting quite high, as in top 20, the other one being the Gilbert/Simmons vs. Fantastics tag. Both of those are in the ****1/4 range for me. I think Chad like that Garvin match too though.

My only point that I haven't mentioned before in the past 18 pages is that the pimped Bret matches are always the same matches. Flair has got tons of ****+ matches that aren't uber-canonical. AND he's got his uber-canonical stuff. I just don't think Bret has that sort of depth beyond his very best worst. If Andrews or anyone else can point me to a big list of great Bret matches that aren't the same old ones then sure I'll concede that it is worth even having a conversation about this.

Have to disagree with Will about Garvin. I've just written this over on DVDR: "From what I've seen in Crockett, Garvin was good around 86-87, espcially in that cage match vs. Flair. Actively bad by 89-90." At least on the supercards, Garvin was solid as a face whether on his own or teaming with Ronnie Garvin. And, so far, hasn't been as good teaming with Hayes. Is it possibly that Garvin was someone who was able to bring his A-game to PPV events and Clashes but dogged it in nothing TV matches?

We also talked about blood on the recent Halloween Havoc 89 show after TBS banned it. Was interesting to hear two people from different sides of that argument. I think in general I am pro blood, but anti-biting cuts.