JerryvonKramer

I'm having a hard time ranking the WWF teams. Did The Hart Foundation ever have a match better than Bulldogs vs. The Dream Team on SNME? I think I'd probably put the Summerslam match with Arn and Tully a shade behind that.

Crockett Cup 88 I keep on getting confused about the awesome match against Arn and Tully from Clash 1 but Luger's partner is Windham there. Keep getting it mixed up.

Welcome to the forum buddy.

Marginal NWA teams: The Minnesota Wrecking Crew (Arn and Ole) - Arn was actually quite green when he was in team (not that you'd know it) and Ole was more of an asskicker than a technician, but they worked a classic style and have some great matches (e.g. vs. Rock 'n' Roll Express, Starrcade 86). If you want to look at total package, I think Ole was one of the all-time great talkers who brought a genuine sense of legitimacy to things, Arn was Arn. Chavo and Hector Gurrrero - from what I've seen these are are really hit and miss. Could be great in one match and nothing in the next. I get the impression Chavo was a much bigger star than Hector, but could be wrong on that. I don't know if they ever had a sustained great run in one promotion. Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle - the Final Conflict was a great match and I watched quite a bit of the build ("The Road to Greensboro", most of it on youtube now) for that show too. Unfortunately, for the majority of that, we typically get Kernolde tagging with Private Nelson (aka Boris Zhukov), but any time it is Slaughter / Kernodle vs. Steamboat / Youngblood the match is pretty good and there's quite a cool match vs. Nelson and Mike Rotunda where they kick the shit out of Nelson. Could be a dark horse pick to include. The Russians (Ivan and Nikita Koloff) - this is going to sound stupid, but Ivan was the Ricky Morton of this team and he'd bump his ass off every single match in extended heel-in-peril segments which had the effect of putting Nikita over huge as a monster heel. I think these are one of the more unappreciated teams of the era, they had a nice longish run with the world tag titles. If they were a WWF team absolutely more people would talk about them, and I don't know that they are *obviously* worse than the big WWF teams. I'd pick them over Demolition!

Are these in order Brain? Do you have any reasoning behind why you've ranked them this way? I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my list. I think Arn and Tully are a LOCK for number 1, with probably the Midnight Express in as #2. But beyond that it starts getting more difficult. Obviously the Rock 'n' Roll Express have lots of great matches and Morton is brilliant, but when I look at a card and see a Rock 'n' Rolls match on it, I'm not as excited to see it as I am if it's Arn / Tully or the Midnights. And I probably *am* excited to see it if there's a Fantastics match on there. So I'm torn on who is getting #3. There's also one team I've got a feeling I'm going to like a lot from the AWA stuff: Doug Summers and Buddy Rose. They sound really good from what I've heard. And my list at this stage would be on the priviso I've not seen them at all. After #4 it starts getting even more difficult. There are more marginal cases from the NWA and all the WWF big guns. Need to deliberate a bit more.

Dylan / Dave - one of the consequences of this new sub forum has been that I've gone back to listen to some of your older episodes again. I like the ones where you just pick a topic and shoot the shit for 2 hours -- short-lived tag-teams, Black wrestlers, those sorts of episodes. Not that I don't like the interviews and special interest stuff, but it would be great to have more of the shoot-the-shit style ones too. I was wondering if you take requests? There are some things I'd love to hear you discuss.

Should be mentioned too that the angle where Morton got his nose broken by the Horsemen WAS quite a big deal for Crockett and it did put Morton over pretty big, so he was arguably "super over" in that time. Loss is absolutely right also that the NWA used to main event shows with tag matches quite a lot, not Hogan and Savage vs. Andre and DiBiase type matches, but matches featuring the Midnights, Rock n Rollers, Arn and Tully, the Road Warriors or even The Russians. I think the tag division was a bigger deal in Crockett than it was in WWF. If you had to pin point biggest drawing acts for the promotion in any given year, for WWF after Hogan you are typically looking at singles guys either in the main event picture or in the IC division. THEN at the tag teams. In Crockett, the US title is almost on par with the World title at times, there's a much bigger sense of the US title guy being someone who is going to go on to face Flair at some point. The tag titles were a massive deal and you get matches like The Midnights vs. Flair and Windham which put over the idea that the best tag team COULD beat the best two singles stars. Now imagine The Hart Foundation or Arn and Tully taking on Hogan and Warrior. In WWF, the IC title didn't have that feel. The IC division had IC guys in it, typically smaller more technical guys: Bret and Perfect felt self-contained on that level in 90-91. The tag division was also a self-contained entity and was typically your number 4 or even number 5 feud in the promotion*. There was also much less cross pollination, which is why it feels so extraordinary for certain unlikely combinations to square off in the Royal Rumble. Partly this is to do with roster size (WWF maintained a roster of 60+ guys, Crockett more like 30), partly it is to do with booking philosophy. And Matt D - no trap, buddy. Whichever measuring stick you want to you, rank the teams. That's all. * To verify this. Pick a year (90) and typically there's your main event feud (#1 Hogan / Warrior), an upper-mid card feud given a lot of air time, sometimes there are two of these (#2 Jake / DiBiase, #3 Dusty / Savage), the IC title feud (null and void because Warrior was IC champ, we'll say one of the other feuds replaces that) and THEN your tag feud (#4 Demolition / Colossal Connection). Go down any WWF card from that time frame and you can pick those feuds out. The situation with NWA/ WCW was not the same.

Thought they had their main run 89-90, but turns out they debuted July 90, so not valid for this thread. I am interested to see if anyone will rank "outside bet" teams like The Russians who had a really good run if you think about it. This is one of those instances where WWE dominance comes to the fore on the wide-world internet, as a cursory google search reveals 100s of lists topped by Demolition with one or two NWA teams thrown in to make it look like they know what they are talking about. No offense to anyone affiliated with it, but this is probably my least favourite site on the internet and its terrible for shit like that.

We got into this recently talking about The Fantastics. Chad said he'd rank them probably over all of the WWF teams of the era, with the possible exception of The Rockers. Let's say youwere going to make a list of the Top 10 Tag Teams of the 1980s, how would you rank it? Can go 20 if you want, but 10 seems manageable. Here is a list of teams to consider (categories are just as they came to mind, not instructive or exclusive): NWA/ Territories The Midnight Express (Condrey and Eaton) The Midnight Express (Eaton and Lane) The Original Midnight Express (Condrey and Randy Rose) The Fabulous Freebirds (Hayes and Roberts) The Fabulous Freebirds (Hayes and Gordy) The Fabulous Freebirds (Gordy and Roberts) The Fabulous Freebirds (Hayes and Jimmy Garvin) The Rock 'n' Roll Express The Fantastics The Minnesota Wrecking Crew (Arn and Ole) The Brainbusters (Arn and Tully) The Sheepherders The Road Warriors Chavo and Hector Gurrrero The Garvins (Ron and Jimmy) Doom (Ron Simmons and Butch Reed) The Steiner Brothers The Super Destroyers (aka Scott and Bill Irwin) Chris Adams and Gino Hernandez Tommy Rich and Eddie Gilbert ("Fargo's Fabulous Ones") The Fabulous Ones (Stan Lane and Steve Keirn) Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood Wahoo McDaniel and Mark Youngblood- Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle The Russians (Ivan and Nikita Koloff) Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude The Varsity Club (Rotunda and Williams) The Blade Runners (Sting and Warrior) Sting and Lex Luger Kevin and Kerry von Erich The Zambuie Express (two big fat black dudes) Ted DiBiase and Dr Death Steve Williams Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee Ray Stevens and Greg Valentine America's Team (Dusty Rhodes and Magnum TA) The Super Powers (Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff) WWF Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis The Briscos The Funks The Hart Foundation The Rockers The Orient Express (Sato and Tanaka) The British Bulldogs The Islanders The Fabulous Rogeous Brothers The Killer Bees The Powers of Pain Demolition Strike Force (Tito and Martel) Rick Martel and Tony Garea The Dream Team (Beefcake and Valentine) The Collosal Connection (Haku and Andre) Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff The US Express (Rotunda and Windham) The Mega Powers (Hogan and Savage) The Twin Towers (Bossman and Akeem) Power & Glory (Herc and Roma) AWA The High Flyers (Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell) The East-West Connection (Adrian Adonis and Jesse Ventura) The Sheiks (Patera and Blackwell) Buddy Rose and Doug Summers The Destruction Crew (aka The Beverley Brothers) The Pretty Young Things (Koko Ware and Norvell Austin) That's a lot to chew on. I will have a think. I am genuinely interested to see how guys rank this. ONLY 80s runs should be considered. No point trrying to include, for example, Gene and Ole because they had a few matches in the early 80s or Patterson and Stevens because they had a few matchs in 1980. Likewise, stuff from the 90s including The Rockers vs. The Orient Express shouldn't be considered. 1980-1989 on US soil only. Obviously it would be great if reasoning could be provided. The best case scenario would be a team-by-team analysis but we all have jobs to do and lives to lead.

This is one of the reasons I maintain he was at his best as IRS because something of the real Mike Rotunda came through in his performance -- the guy clocking in for work. I buy him much more as an anal taxman than as a college jock. I said it before, I don't believe Rotunda would have been a popular kid on the college football team, he would have sat quietly in the corner. IRS had that exact vibe. His career highlight might be these skits: On the subject of him being boring, has anyone sat through the shoot interview he did? I have. He's a guy with no great passion for the business and he was very dry and boring throughout that interview. The major takeway is that he's quite close to Barry Windham (his brother-in-law).

Well shit, so it was. Sorry Studd's stable had so many interchangable parts that had matches with Dustin that it's easy to get confused.

I just want to state, once again, for the record, that I HATE that Bunkhouse Buck - Dustin match on the back of the lorry. I remember Schnieder put it on one of his comps and I PMed him specifically to ask him what the fuck he was doing. As for Sid, I think he was pretty good in the Hogan feud in 92. Best thing about him though is the music from the old WWF Steel Cage challenge NES game: YEAH!

My immediate thought is that The Funks would have influenced how a lot of guys took bumps as well. I think there's a line of guys including Dick Murdoch, Ted DiBiase, Arn Anderson, and Dick Slater who whether directly or indirectly all took a lot from the way both Dory and Terry would take certain bumps. I don't know if you'd call any of those guys' bumping styles "pinball". The other factor I wonder about in terms of influence is Harley Race, who was more or less a bumping machine. I see he had some time in Amarillo early in his career, but was trained by the Zybyskos. Can you clarify exactly who qualifies as "pinballs"? Curt Hennig's bumping style is quite unique in that I've never seen a another guy bounce back 20 feet from a basic turnbuckle spot.

In order to make comments more manageable, we've decided to run with a longer format so we'll no longer be splitting shows into two halves. This means shows might run long (this one is over 2 hours), if anyone would prefer the old two-part format for longer shows, let me know. Where the Big Boys Play #32 - Clash of the Champions 5 Chad and Parv review Clash of the Champions 5: St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In this show, among other things: Dusty out - George Scott in, ranking JJ Dillon among the great managers, the psychology of the Steamboat vs. Flair feud: do you relate to Steamboat or do you want to be like Flair?, The BLACKMAILER! Worst gimmick ever?, ranking The Fantastics among all the 80s US tag teams (are they better than every single WWF team?), sports and the question of class, Chad aka AC Slater talks about some of his amateur wrestling experiences in high school, the Lyle Alzado update and a big roundup on listener comments. 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.

Hey, Will, knock yourself out.

Pretty sure the team with Murdoch was known as "The Hardliners" or "The Two Dicks".

He does it in the Wrestlefest match against Savage for sure. A lot of the Savage matches have the finish cut short by bullshit as OJ was saying. Since Dailymotion and Youtube are so hard to navigate these days, I can't for the life of me find the Hogan match from that VHS. I've found one from 87 where Ted steals a Countout win against Hulk and another one from 88, but neither of them are the one I have in mind. It would help if cocks didn't upload their video game versions of wrestlers in matches. I will have to consult my Colesium video guide when I get home later to check the date.

I said recently that I think Mike Rotunda's peak is the IRS character. Not only did he do his best promos at this time (awful one-liners aside), but also his work in the ring -- in my view -- benefitted from the WWF style. I've seen quite a bit of Varisty Club era Rotunda recently from 87 and 88 and he sucks. Why? Because his matwork is so bloody boring and he doesn't nothing to make it more interesting. He's happy to sit in a chinlock or an armbar for 6 minutes at a time. In the WWF, he just wasn't allowed to do that because of the booking style, so we get a different way of working from him. Yes, he'll still do an abdominal stretch or a chinlock, but he's only allowed to sit in it for 2 or 3 minutes maximum. By 95/6 and his second WCW run as Michael Wallstreet, he's past it. Would people agree with this assessment or not?

Could there be a "lists and rankings" sub-forum? I wanted to make a Top 20 Mic workers thread, for example, but somehow felt inhibited. But it would also be a good place for people's Top 50 matches or worker lists and so on. Also, I recall a poll from a year or two or so in which some people said they like having those sorts of convos and some don't. It's something I don't think the main folder would miss too much.

I do feel a bit guilty about not replying to Dylan here. That's the debate equivalent of a duck and weave, but he's asking me to justify why DiBiase is better than The Nasty Boys. This is arguably the only wrestling board on the internet that would require someone to make that argument, it's hard work.

Here's a link to the Information thread I suggested: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?showtopic=18101 "Beginner's Guides" could be a thing, but I'm not sure we have enough of them to justify a whole sub-forum. I would still like to see an all-round resource thread pinned to the top of the main folder. We all draw on a lot of other sites for info like solie.org, historyofwwe.com and so on. It would be very cool to have links all that info in one place. Hall of Fame discussion could be a good one. I think there's a world of difference, for example, between the current DiBiase or Bret / Flair stuff and what Dylan was doing with Patera or Rose before.

Is that the cage match where the idiot fan jump onto the cage? I think the final blow off to the feud (not including Summerslam 88) with a proper finish comes on July 31st on the Wrestlefet 88 show from Milwaukee. I believe we see both a Million Dollar Dream AND a clean pin in that match. To avoid being tiresome, when I come to watch some Ted, I will watch a different set of matches: Ted DiBiase v. Lanny Poffo (challenge 9/13/87 ) Ted DiBiase v. The Junkyard Dog (WWF TV 9/18/87 ) Ted DiBiase v. Ivan Putski (msg 11/24/87 ) This is very early MDM, with the green suit and the very blonde hair. I want to look at how Ted worked on the receiving end of a monster push against a range of opponents. Ted DiBiase v. Don Muraco (SNME 4/30/88 ) Ted DiBiase v. Jim Brunzell (some time in 88) Ted DiBiase v. Koko Ware (Primetime 12-4-88) Will watch these to assess his offense against "lesser" opponents. Ted DiBiase v. Blue Blazer (SNME - 3/11/89) Remember it being good. A look at him right at the start of a new phase of his career as an upper midcarder rather than a main eventer. Ted DiBiase v. Bret Hart (WWF TV 4/89) The much-talked about Odessa match. Ted DiBiase v. Dustin Rhodes (10 minute challenge match. WWF TV 11/5/90) Because I've gone on about it. Ted DiBiase vs. Texas Tornado (1/18/91) Never seen it, would have to be a carry job to be any good. Can compare directly with what Hennig did against the same opponent. Ted Dibiase vs. Pat Armstrong (WWF TV 4/1/91) Ted at the start of a re-push of sorts with Sherri as his new manager. Ted Dibiase vs. Greg Valentine (Primetime 12/9/91) TOTAL curiosity. WTF! Ted DiBiase v. Kerry Von Erich (WWF/ SWS show at the Tokyo Dome - 12/12/91) Comparison with first Kerry match. Money Inc v. Koko B. Ware & Owen Hart (Primetime 7/20/92) See how he works with Koko and Owen compared to 88-89 matches. Money Inc. v. Hacksaw Jim Duggan & Sgt. Slaughter (some time in 92) Would be interested to see this if I can find it. Slaughter was still ok, Ted and Duggan faced each other many times. Money Inc v. The Beverly Brothers (RAW 4/19/93) Interest's sake. My focus will be on Ted's offense, which has dictated some of my choices here. We all know he can bump and sell.

Here's a Superstars match from April 1988 against a jobber: He uses the Dream there. Vince and Jesse keep calling him a "master technician". When he does the hold, Vince said "what is that?! ... I believe he said he was going to show us something new, that's the Million Dollar Dream!" I'd be surprised if that isn't the debut of it.

Yeah, the Odessa match is the Bret match I'd go to first. Again going on memory, I think he does the dream in that Hogan match from the Hulk VHS. I remember that match having a reasonably long control segment from Ted culminating in the dream. The Wrestlemania 9 match has a similar control segment, again ending in the dream on Hogan. I was surprised by the description of the Hogan match above, because in both those matches Hogan sold for Ted (didn't give him anything at Summerslam 88 though). Good job on this though OJ, I will get on this soon myself. My wife has a few days off work and we've just started watching Dexter so wrestling has had to take a backseat for a while. I will also make an effort to dig up and watch different matches. Chad - I think I agree with you about the general point that his offense isn't all that focused. BUT if you look at his signature spots -- the suplex (or belly-to-back suplex), the piledriver. the back breaker, the scoop power slam -- they all hit the back and upper neck area as a setup to the Million Dollar Dream. Don't think I've EVER seen Ted work a bodypart in the WWF, but his moveset is nonetheless focused and consistent in a macro or 'big picture' sort of way.