JerryvonKramer

Three points here: 1. Criticism 101 says that you should have a consistent theoretical / aesthetic framework when judging like for like items. Unless you're Aristotle it's difficult to come up with that from scratch unless A. you're reacting against an existing framework or B. you start with something you really like and work backwards from your conclusions to try to figure out how you got there. I do both of these things, I don't pretend to have a fully formed framework, justing working it out as I go along. I'd be suspicious of someone who was 100% sure that they've got eveything worked out. 2. I was a massive mark for IRS as a kid too, I had a big brief case and even got myself a pair of clear lens glasses at one stage. And Rotunda is one of the people I've been consistently most down on. DiBiase in WWF has become something of a hobby-horse of mine because I think he's sold short here. Certain people here are doing a very good job of testing that hypothesis and I'm trying to let it run its course. I spend the vast majority of my wrestling time watching and talking about stuff I DIDN'T see as a kid. 3. If I don't always follow my arguments through, it's because I am open to be persuaded otherwise. For example, I went long and hard at the Sting for HoF argument but the opposite side persuaded me that they were ultimately right and his case is weak. Arguments aren't a win or loss thing for me, if the opposition is right and persuade me to see that I'm wrong, I'm happy to concede. (SIDE POINT:With this recent debate, Loss made a very good post and persuaded me that he was broadly correct in it with some lingering reversations. That reservation, incidentally, is that the wrestling and non-wrestling aspects of what a given wrestler does are dialectical and that the binary thinking that easily separates them is missing something fundamental about wrestling. I also suspect that, as *I think* OJ said, most people don't do that to the extent they profess. My feeling is that people don't want to have or think about that conversation, so I'm not pushing it.)

That really is a surprise. Also shows that my memory has become defective, part of the experience of getting into your 30s I guess. I distinctly recall him doing at least a suplex and a piledriver against Hogan. Is this the match from the Hulk's Greatest Matches (or Hulkamania) VHS?

My impression is that the 88 Horsemen were COOL heels. In the same way the Dangerous Alliance and the NWO were cool heels. And holding all the belts at once is a very cool looking visual, I always thought The Radicalz and even Evolution looked really kick ass too. But on this show we were really talking about the beef between Ole and Vince, the tightness between the Mulligans and the McMahons and the way that the WWE has consistently played up the Windham version of the Horsemen over the Ole version, including the HoF deal. Is that not revisionism?

Kinda surprised to see offense being the thing letting Ted down in these matches. Is he doing his signature high spots? The suplex, the piledriver, the fist drop, the powerslam? Are these things 1. Missing from these control segments? And 2. "not interesting"? 95% of WWF matches from this era go shine - control / heat - comeback - finish so the getting his ass kicked to start (presumably followed by a bail) is expected in the first 4-5 minutes. But it sounds like his control segments are cut short in these matches.

They certainly don't feel as kickass as the original group when watching these shows. I'd probably take Ole's mic work and Tully solo over the virtues of the latter group. The 88 version is also curiously short-lived to be the greatest version.

It had been YEARS since I watched that, but in the context of watching dozens of Coliseum tapes hosted by Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes, it stood out as being good. Then again, the competition was stuff like Jim Neidhart vs. The Warlord. You're watching it back to back with matches from All Japan and WCW.

I'd include for the sake of completeness: The JYD match from 87 - curiosity's sake, and this is his first big match I think The Shawn Michaels match - just because it is one of his more pimped efforts that often gets ****+, though I'm aware of HBK-inflation. The Warrior match - from Tokyo, because it's an example of Ted the broomstick worker, in front of a Japanese crowd. The Dustin Rhodes match - because I don't recall a singles match with Dusty, and Dustin is quite green here and they go 10 minutes on TV The Owen Hart (Blue Blazer) match - this is from 89 and an example of Ted as a top heel being very generous to a lower card face while still looking like a top heel Also: He had a feud with Texas Tornado when he screwed him out of the IC belt (Perfect won it), I've never seen it, but pretty sure there's a match with Kerry in 91. As part of the Virgil feud, Ted was also feuding with Roddy Piper, and again, there's a match or even two from 91 that I've never seen. He had a semi-feud with Tito Santana just before the Money Inc. team formed. They had a whole bunch of house shows late 91 and early 92 (Repo Man was involved too). I seem to recall one of the Colesium tapes had a match with Tito, either a Supertape or something like Invasion 92 or whatever. *possibly* this is the one with Sherri cam. The Hogan match from the old Hulkamania VHS I remember being really very good. Hulk always sold for DiBiase. There's also a 15-minute draw with Steamboat on handheld from one of the King of the Rings. I may well join you in this, as well as doing all the Savage matches jdw mentioned.

Part of the problem with this jdw, is that I am going on footage I watched on the Macho Madness VHS tape almost a decade ago, but I REALLY liked that MSG match and the Wrestlefest one when I watched it then (and the SNME IIRC). BUT that was in the context of spending almost a year trying to find a UK PAL version of that tape. I forked something like £20 for it in the end, of all the tapes I bought back then, that was the hardest one to track down and I'm fairly sure I ended up getting a copied version of the US SCART tape. So those matches had a certain mystique for me, added to the fact Ted was my favourite guy. But I remember really, REALLY enjoying them. I have never seen the matches that aren't on that tape except for Mania. And don't tend to watch matches on VHS anymore, so haven't seen the ones that are in some time. My feeling is that Savage and DiBiase had TERRIFIC chemistry, as good as Savage's chemistry with either Flair or Steamboat. They aren't ***** because there are a lot of bullshit finishes and Virgil getting involved and all the usual WWF stuff, but they are solid **** matches in my book. It's peak Savage vs. peak or near peak DiBiase, I don't know why anyone would expect less. I am up for the challenge of going through all of those matches now in 2013 if that footage exists online easily. Does it? Hell, I'll do a blow-by-blow account if need be, just for interest's sake. My hypothesis is that Ted is being sold short, but the proof will be in the pudding.

Loss, bit work intensive but I wonder if you could move this thread and all other single wrestler threads to that sub-forum to give it a kick start. Good idea mind.

Really good post this. Since the 88 NWA stuff is still very fresh with me, I'd like to know how you think that Luger match compares with the Starrcade one. I said it back there (or in another thread, this place has been hot of late), but to me Flair works those two matches slightly differently. In one he's just plain beat and screws Luger out of the win, in the other he outwrestles him or out thinks him because he HAD TO (lose the belt on a DQ stip). Would like to know what conclusions you draw.

I'm not trying to make excuses for DiBiase, I was just saying he does have a handful of ***+ matches, with some pushing **** if you look. I haven't taken an EXTENSIVE look at his TV matches though, I haven't seen all the DiBiase in WWF that there is. Mostly all of the matches I cited are found on PPV, SNME or Coliseum Home Video which I watched right though going on 7-8 years ago. I might need to re-evaluate some of those matches too. It's been a long time since I watched the Jake match, for example. Ted himself always says it's one of his career matches, he even said once I think that it was his best match. So that might be better than I remember it being. (Also stuff like the Owen Hart match from 89, the SNME Savage match from before Mania -- a lot of this stuff I have on VHS, it's just sitting in my parents attic, also have an early best of MDM comp on laser disc somewhere, 5 discs, probably lost). But this is why I don't like "great matches" as the only barometer of someone's work. Take Piper, for example, sure there are more "great matches" you can immediately point to from him in WWF than from Ted. But match in - match out, who is working more smoothly? Who is executing better? Who is bumping better? Who is making their opponent look better? Ultimate Warrior probably has more "great matches" in WWF than Ted too. Does that mean we think Warrior's in-ring work was better than Ted's? It's a nonsense barometer. As late as 89 Meltzer is still going on about DiBiase as a top 2 or 3 US worker, how many ****+ ratings did he give him in 88? One or two maybe. It's not just about the classic matches or as you say "out put", it's about the little things too. These aren't all "excuses", they are fundamental questions about how we judge workers and specific runs. Yes, the WWF run was mainly about character and gimmick and angles, yes, he didn't have any truly amazing matches there, but that does not mean we can write him off as a worker or suddenly say that Roddy Piper or Ultimate Warrior were better workers than him. Great work does not always equal great matches. Can you point to any matches where DiBiase is actively bad? Where he's lazy? Where he botches? Where he misses his cues? Where he doesn't execute well? Where he doesn't get all the basics and fundamentals of wrestling spot on? In a way I wish this conversation was not about DiBiase but someone else, because it looks like I'm sticking up for my childhood favourite, I'm not. I'd make a similar argument for someone else working in that timeframe in that company whose main job was to get over a gimmick. Parallels might be made to Rick Martel, but again I'm a long way from re-evaluating or exhaustively surveying all the Martel in WWF that there is. WWF had a habit of treating guys like DiBiase and Martel as "good hands". So what we get is them being good hands. I'm not sure the same applies to Piper or Warrior.

Chad - from what I've read it's a combination of JJ Dillon suddenly leaving as Loss says, and Matsuda was tight with someone in the office or even on the roster (I want to say it was Eddie Gilbert, but can't be sure), so they brought him in. Even so, Meltzer makes it clear that once Steamboat is back to full ring fitness he'll be, and I quote, "pushing Flair, Windham and DiBiase as the best worker in the country" (WON, Jan 30th 89, p. 2). Meltzer definitely KNEW a Steamboat move was on the cards in November 88 and you're right it wasn't this big surprise (don't think I said that on the podcast either), but the evidence suggests he didn't know about the timing or specifics of the move until the January 16th edition. If I recall correctly, there's also a question mark over Steamboat's possible schedule which was one thing that potentially scuppered his move -- he'd left WWF because he didn't want to work all the dates, even after he's joined NWA, Meltzer is unsure if he's going to work a full schedule. This view I can accept and think it is broadly correct. But I also think that a certain generation of "smark" fans got a whole bunch of received wisdom on Luger from shoot interviews and Scott Keith reviews and all the rest of it, as well as continually being buried on the WWE outputs like the 27/4 roundtable. Luger's the one guy it was ok for bury for years. "Revisionism" might not be the correct phrase, but being positive about Luger is sailing against a received view of him that became dominant. Absolutely the board has a group of people with wildly divergent views, but I think almost all of its members are united by this refusal to accept received opinion -- for example, about a guy like Luger, or for example, about the idea of Shawn Michaels as a GOAT contender. This puts PWO in a 1% sort of category. Sure, there are all sorts of different views here, but in the overall scheme of things taking every single wrestling board and wrestling fan out there, all of the guys you name have a lot more in common than any one of them and any one average wrestling fan "out there". That's not to say any of us will ever agree on everything (or indeed anything ), but I do think that's the reality of it. My general point is: we shouldn't be surprised if we still hear people who are way down on Luger or even way down on the AWA -- that's not even necessarily to say that such views aren't possible on PWO, just that they'd be coming from a different place.

Another three-star I'll throw out is the 10-minute match with Dustin Rhodes. The tag from Rumble with Dusty and him is pushing 3-star too. I think you've got to understand how WWF utilized Ted though, it wasn't to have great matches, it was to go out there with guys like Virgil or Hercules or Warrior and drag decent matches out of them. DiBiase wasn't Flair, but he was good enough to get a guy like Virgil over strong.

Savage cage match, I'd push for the Wrestlefest match too. Steiners cage match The Bret and Michaels matches.

He knows in the Jan 16th edition that he will be headlining the Chicago show. Go and have a look. The other factor here is George Scott, he's brought in as booker and Meltzer knows he made money with Flair and Steamboat back in the 70s and immediately thinks that he'll try to do that again.

RE: Scott's opinions on Luger (and on AWA in part 1 of the Starrcade shows), he doesn't post on this forum and is not here to defend himself (but Justin is here and is free to jump in). I'll say that to an extent he's an un-reconstructed old-time fan from Connecticut so, again to an extent, you have to expect him to have some of the views he does. The positive view of Luger is in some respects a revisionist one, and PWO is a revisionist board. That general point of view is put over on the show every week by Chad and to some extent me (my views are far too eccentric and idiosyncratic to be representative of anyone else, but in the overall scheme of things, I'm closer to the PWO view than the wide-world of the internet). We've generally had guests on who represent a different viewpoints, because that makes for a more interesting review. I don't agree with much of what Scott said, but he did make an interesting point: that Luger was still quite immature in 1988, and now he's said it I can see it. That said, I do think Luger is one of the most misunderstood and unfairly ragged on wrestlers in the industry. He comes across very well in his shoots, and I don't believe a lot of the stories I hear about him. He just wasn't one of the boys.

Loss, I'll quote you the relevant bit of the January 2nd WON that suggests Dave had no clue if or when Steamboat was going to sign: It's difficult to believe that he would have written that if he knew Steamer was signing in a few days. In the next edition (Jan 16th), he knows about Steamboat and that he's going to headline Chi-Town Rumble.

Meltzer didn't know about Steamboat 100 percent till the January 16th 1989 edition of WON. The very next one after he reviews Starrcade. If Steamer is mentioned before that it's in the form of a rumour only. He didn't know for sure until the 16th. That's why he doesn't mention him in the incomings he talking about in the January 2nd 89 edition and why his predictions in the edition for the coming year are so dire, he doesn't mention Steamboart once there. Loss, go back and read those issues you may be confused. I do a pretty thorough job of going through them before each show.

You wouldn't give those matches ***?

But there is: 6/25/88 Ted DiBiase vs. Randy Savage (MSG - steel cage) 7/31/88 Ted DiBiase vs. Randy Savage (Wrestlefest) 11/24/88 Hulk Hogan/Randy Savage/Hillbilly Jim/Koko B. Ware/Hercules vs. Haku/Ted DiBiase/Akeem/Red Rooster/Big Bossman (Survivor Series) 3/8/89 Ted DiBiase vs. Bret Hart 4/24/90 Ted DiBiase vs. Shawn Michaels 11/22/90 Ted DiBiase/Undertaker/Greg Valentine/Honky Tonk Man vs. Dusty Rhodes/Koko B. Ware/Bret Hart/Jim Neidhart (Survivor Series) 11/23/90 Ultimate Warrior vs. Ted DiBiase 4/15/91 Bret Hart vs. Ted DiBiase 8/22/93 Money Inc. vs. The Steiner Brothers (cage match, Summerslam Spectacular) These are just from the top of my head, and some of them are pushing **** or even more. I could probably point to more if given time. The idea that Ted doesn't have a string of THREE star matches in WWF is simply not true.

Guys, fantastic job on this, JJ Dillon is such a nice and humble guy, and so informative and interesting. Loved the stuff he mentions from the 50s, 60s and 70s. The Wajima story was genuinely surprising. Dillon is someone who really went everywhere and worked with everyone wasn't he, and yet somehow he didn't burn any bridges. This is probably the best interview I've listened to in the past 3-4 years. The Dusty stuff was very touching. Pumped for part 2.

Can we do a top 10 or even top 20 promo-men thread? Don't think Michaels would be in my top 50. Ole Anderson would be top 10.

I didn't think this was very clever. Also, mock while you will, but I did actually do a course in "Material methodologies" when I was at Oxford that looked into the impact of typography, font, paper stock and the binding process on the meaning of a given text. True story. Not a field I took any great interest in, but it does exist. There is quite a lot being done at the moment on how reading a physical book, for example, differs from reading an electronic book. If you're really interested tomk and you weren't being facetious in this thread, a good starting place might be here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transferred-Illusi...s/dp/0754670163 Also I think the idea that mic work is analogous in any way to a book cover is idiotic and since you took the trouble to make this ill-thought out lampoon, I have no problem saying that.

SLL - my main argument was that you can't write off that part of Ted's career because it doesn't have any ***** matches in it. I see greatness in 3 big feuds that he had during that time (twin ref angle with Hogan, Jake feud, Virgil feud) and in the famous vignettes where he's kicking people out of swimming pools and making kids cry by kicking basket balls away, and none of those things produced a great match (I really like the Savage matches but seem to be alone in that). They don't add much to our assessment of Ted the worker, but I'd expect those things to come into play when assessing Ted the heel or Ted's career vs. any other guys career. If you suddenly say none of that stuff matters and that you'd rather watch Citizen Kane, then that's a whole chunk of what he did during his time in the WWF gone from your picture of his career. I respect the idea that in-ring work is important (and the MOST important thing), but I can't understand the view that simply dismisses the non-wresting elements out of hand in that manner. ---- There is a separate argument, one I think Matt D points to a lot, that says that great matches are not the only yardstick that you have to look at what guys do in matches. I'm towards that way of thinking too. It's probably a topic for a different thread, but again I still maintain that a guy could spend his entire career never having had a stellar ***** match but still be really good, excellent even. I think Ted in the WWF is really good, even if he never had a match better than **** in 6 years. Arn Anderson is like that in a lot of his singles matches -- it might not be an all-time classic match but Arn himself is always really good.

Where the Big Boys Play #31 – Starrcade 88: Part 2 Chad, Parv, Scott and Justin wrap up their review of Starrcade 88. In this episode: thoughts on Bam Bam Bigelow’s career, why did Crockett wait so long before giving the Road Warriors the belts?, another assessment of Paul Ellering, who would Jim Ross rather sleep with Lex Luger or Steve Williams?, as Justin has to step out Scott, Chad and Parv take an in-depth look at Flair vs. Luger, NWA booking philosophy vs. WWF booking philosophy, Meltzer ratings and end of show awards.