JerryvonKramer

I didn't say Vince wasn't the number 1 commentator, I asked why he kept Gorilla in the spot he was in, Do you think there weren't 101 guys who wanted that spot in the hottest promotion in wrestling? Gorilla was most often used on B shows and pre-taped / studio-based stuff right? Prime-time was Gorillla's show, Superstars was Vince's show. I don't see how your point changes anything. If he sucked, why did Vince keep him on the air?

That seems a counter intuitive argument. If it's true that Gorilla did that then: 1. Why did McMahon keep him on air and on his most important PPV show of the year? 2. Why don't you hear your DiBiases and Races and so on bitching and moaning about him? Seems to me the same people who rag on him are your same assholes who rag on everyone. Also: It's far FAR too reductive to say that because he criticised little things he only ever got himself over. People here have praised Jim Ross for being like a legit sports announcer. Well in real sports, aren't they critical of stuff? Don't they pick up on mistakes and whatnot? Your standard Gorillia-isms: "He didn't hook the leg" (after heel puts head down for backbody drop) "that was a cardinal mistake for a pro" and so on, are designed to get the illusion of this being a legit sports contest over. I don't think that him saying those things EVER BURIED ANYONE. I don't care if I'm the only guy on this board who'll stand up for Gorilla, the idea he only got himself over or that he was only good as a foil for Heenan and nothing else are absolute nonsense. Gorilla's influence spread so far that Tony Schiavone was still using his phrases years after he'd died over in another promotion. How can anyone say he didn't do an effective job of getting the talent over? I don't get this at all. I'm not buying this "full circle" argument either because there are PLENTY of guys from that time who I'd be happy to tell you were totally shit. But Gorilla isn't one of them.

The "circle of life" stuff is interesting. The stuff about Gorilla is deeply, deeply flawed. Why? Because WWF's guys from the 80s boom period were some of the most over guys in history -- so the empiricial evidence is against the idea he buried everyone and is against whichever old wrestlers have bitched and moaned about him.

I should make it clear that Ross's football stuff doesn't annoy me, it just makes me laugh with how far he takes it. Like I said, there are two different ideologies: one is not necessarily better than the other, they are just different. I like Jim Ross, he was great at what he did, I even don't mind him in the Attitude era. The point I was trying to make was that Jesse worked NWA-style (to an extent) in 1992 and was pretty good at it, at least a B+ (to use the TEW-style ratings). I think at WWF-style Jesse was probably an A*, Ross at NWA-style taking it all into consideration I think was an A rising to A* on a good day, at WWF-style in 93 he was a C+, by the late 90s more like a B+ So if you take Ross's career let's say 85-92 he's a A-A*, 93-5 a C+, 96-2002ish a B+ and around a B after that. No one is arguing with Ross in the Hall of Fame. If you take Jesse's career he's an A* 85-90, a B+ in 92 and I'd argue at least an A from 93-4 with Tony. If you accept those ratings -- the question becomes to what extent is Ross there for his time on Raw? And if his work wasn't ever more than a B+ on Raw then does the argument become "well he was synonymous with Raw". If THAT is the case, then I'd argue that Jesse was as synonymous with SNME and Superstars as JR was with Raw. And is work was of a higher quality on average. Ross worked for longer., but was less consistently great Breaking down Ross's case isn't necessary to make a case for Ventura, but doing so puts it into context for what we're looking at exactly. I'm going to move on to Okerlund later.

Yes, but can a billionaire like Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour waltz into the NFL take over one of the clubs and buy all the best players? It's not a free market economy is it.

So many awesome posts lost forever!

I did try to watch American Football once and it confused the fuck out of me. Incidentally, some of my old school friends have turned their back on "soccer" and have converted to watching NFL. They are disillusioned with football's elitism and stupid wages so talk up the slightly more commie American Football way of doing things. They still watch football, but they get more excited by American Football. One of my mates even takes the day off work for the Super Bowl. Crazy.

That's not been the Fuchi I've seen on the 80s set. Which matches of his would you point to?

Does the baseball broadcaster sound like he gets off on Winfield being a super athlete though? Does he make it sound like he's got a secret closet full of Winfield posters? Ross at times bordered on being a creepy stalker-type fan of Pillman, Luger and Simmons.

I might be alone in this, but I always found JR's college stuff had a vaguely homo-erotic bent. With certain guys -- Pillman, Luger and Ron Simmons all spring to mind -- he sounded like he was actually aroused by their sporting achievements. He could talk for 5 minutes straight on Luger's time in Pennsylvania State, Miami and his time with the Packers. I wouldn't be surprised if when Ross used to make love to his wife, he'd imagine he was actually doing it to Luger. Reeling off the key stats of his pro-football career as he was climaxing.

Fairly sure they showed Prime Time here too.

It's more more Fuchi in those specific matches, Fuchi the boring mat-wrestler.

From watching the All Japan set Masa Fuchi. Don't get the love for that guy at all. Ditto Joe Malenko. Ditto Pete Roberts or indeed ANY boring mat-based wrestler. It's a style I just don't understand at all. Crowds are always dead for it. It looks fake. It's often not logical. My bottom 3 matches on the set are Roberts vs. Fuchi, Joe Malenko vs. Dean Malenko and Joe Malenko vs. Fuchi.

Jesse was synonymous with a major boom period for the WWF not only nationally but internationally as Jerry and Jerome and I can attest to. It's stupid to compare him with what Russell did regionally. Russell would have flopped in the WWF just like he didn't pan out in WCW. The same thing happened to Ross the first time he was in the WWF and Solie when he worked for the NWA yet no-one holds these fish out of water periods against them. Besides, they were all frontmen and the straight guy. It makes more sense to compare those guys with Monsoon. People are massively underrating how difficult it is to be a good commentator. There simply haven't been that many in the history of professional wrestling. There's also a bit of favouritism going on. Jimmy Hart sucked after leaving Memphis yet people are trying to find extra reasons for him to go in like music production. When you think of the 80's boom period when does Jesse enter your head? First? Second? Third? Fourth? I actually agree with you guys a great deal on his quality as a color guy, but he would be well down the list of guys I think of when I think of that era. Not even sure he would enter my top ten. That may be just me personally. But there is no way in hell a guy that far down the list enters into the "synonymous category." Conversely when I think of Memphis wrestling I think of Lance Russell pretty much immediately. When I think of early era WCW I grew up on I think of Ross. I just don't see how Ventura fits into that discussion. I'm not even sure what the Jimmy Hart remark is other than really shitty trolling veiled in making a point. Hart's music production was pretty clearly at least as influential as Jesse wearing boas or saying quirky things from the booth. You don't need that to make a case for Hart though. You just need Memphis, where as I noted he drew more money than Ventura ever did in his life. I don't think "80s boom period" is the right question. If you say "80s boom period" you naturally are going to default to Hogan and maybe the image of Hogan and Andre. Hell, maybe Mr. T comes in there. Maybe the image of Flair and the Horsemen comes in there. etc. But if you ask the question "think of Saturday Night's Main Event" - then Jesse is one of the first 2-3 people I'd think of. I'd think of him standing next to Vince in a ridiculous outfit ready to kick things off. He was the co-presenter of the show. The difference between an announcer and most workers is that they are on the air about 90% of the time. An announcer can be synonymous with a show in a way workers seldom can. Jesse might not be snyonymous with "the 80s boom period" but he IS synonymous with SNME and to a lesser extent Superstars and the first Wrestlemanias. What I'm hearing from Loss is basically a subscription to a different wrestling philosophy and ideology -- the idea of wrestling as a legit sport -- which Ross and Solie majored in. There's nothing wrong with that philosophy, hell I LOVE the WCW presentation under Watts in 92, but it's not the only one. WWF certainly has always had a different one. And Jesse played his role to perfection in getting over CHARACTERS and ANGLES. When Ventura went to WCW in 1992 he worked with Ross for a year. When he first arrived, Jesse was still working WWF style, Ross was still basically working in his Mid-South/ UWF style. I typed out what Jesse had to say about Ross in 93/4 yesterday. I'm not saying I agree with him, but if you go back to the early 92 shows you can see a clash of ideologies between Jesse and Ross. What's INTERESTING about it is that -- despite being on the big money, given a big star's welcome and billing, etc. -- it's Jesse who bends to Ross's stlye not vice versa. Clearly after the first month or so, Jesse decided that Ross wasn't going to play ball with him, so from about March onwards he just does a solid job of analysing what's going on. He plays down his schtick, he stops trying to getting any sort of rise out of Ross, he even humours him by talking about people's college backgrounds and so on with him. Go back and listen -- some of you must have recent experience of that pairing from the 92 yearbook. Jesse in 92 is VERY well behaved. He talks about wrestling, name checks Edouard Carpentier and Lou Thesz, shows off his knowledge of wrestling moves. He conformed to Ross's NWA-style play-by-play -- even though, as we now know, he privately thought that Ross sucked. I think this strengthens his case further. When he was working with someone who didn't suit his own style, he was good enough as an analyst and intelligent enough as a person to make it work. I'm not saying Ventura and Ross weren't an awkward pairing at times, because they were, but they were awkward whenever Ross had to react to something Jesse said not the other way around. Ross in 92, "peak Ross" as some of you call him, was good at what he did, but he was brittle and inflexible. At that point he could only do the one style and didn't know how to react to a big WWF guy like Jesse -- he'd have to learn this under Vince, which he did. Then in 93, Tony Schiavone must have been like a god-send for Ventura because he now had someone he could play off. Schiavone was also brittle and awkward to begin with, and he was NEVER 100% comfortable playing McMahon to Ventura, but somehow that worked and played into one of the most interesting on-screen partnerships in WCW history. I think the fact that Ventura could work with Ross and then Schiavone back-to-back and make them both work -- one in NWA-style, one in WWF-style -- is testament to his incredible strengths as a colour man. I take the point that his run was relatively short -- 7 years in WWF, 2 and a half years in WCW -- but he was absolutely top notch for the entirety of that run. Which other commentators were excellent for their entire runs? I can't think of anyone who didn't have dips. Jesse's "dip" is probably 92, and he was pretty fucking solid in 92, if that year is the worst of his career as a colour man, then you've got to start thinking that he had an amazing career as one.

While I agree that the majority probably haven't seen it, it's got a rep and mystique and is constantly pimped as being the GOAT on WWE tv and elsewhere. A lot of people haven't seen The Godfather or Kane either but they'll be aware of them talked about as GOAT films. I'd imagine your average fan will at least be vaguely aware of the holy trilogy, less so of Misawa vs. Kawada, or indeed any match from Japan.

I think you can safely argue that outside of Hogan, Vince, maybe Patterson and without a doubt the production crew, everyone was along for the ride. I think lots of other people played key early roles, because they were running split crews. Albano, Piper, Snuka, Slaughter, Andre, Shiek, etc. There were several Madison Square Garden shows that drew very well without Hogan in the mid 1980s, headlined by those guys instead. The problem with Jesse is that it's hard to quantify how important he truly was to the product. It's not like Vince didn't have good chemistry with other broadcast partners after Jesse left. He was an enjoyable part of the package, but then so was Jerry "The King" Lawler's pervy comedy routine during the Attitude Era to most viewers and I don't think anyone would advocate him going into a Hall Of Fame just for that. I don't think you can make a case for Ventura that is quantifiable. The only argument you can make is the one that says he's the GOAT colour man and is important to wrestling and WWF history because of that. That's the only criterion by which he gets in. And his case lives or dies by it. A little difficult because obviously that's a value statement, but that's the best and almost only case imo. Incidentally, that why out of the 5, I started with Ventura because it's the most straight forward case. The others require a bit more explaination / argument.

I've used varations of these about 3-4 times in my Too Short comments watching the All Japan set. My feeling is that criticism in general is rather good at seperating stuff into about 4 categories The cream Very good "somewhere in between" Shit Most critical systems can do that. Most critical consensuses can get you there. Most individuals can do that with ease. What they are less apt at doing is distinguishing between two creams or two shits. What's better Citizen Kane or the largley forgotten 1968-film Candy? Obviously Kane. What's better Citizen Kane or The Godfather Part 2? Well how do you even begin to answer that? I veer between thinking you can work out a definitive system and thinking that it's a fool's game and that the best you can do is come up with lists of cream of equal greatness that do different things. I lean towards the latter increasingly these days. I also think that among fans IN GENERAL that Steamboat - Flair is automatic default GOAT pick. There are layers of fandom.

This struck me as apposite to the current discussion: "To me Ross sucks. I find his announcing abrasive. It's irritating, it's not from the heart. He thinks he's Keith Jackson or something you know? Also, he's so much of an ego, he's out for himself not for the programme. When I first came to WCW, I would feed him so well and he would ignore me. He was so bad. I'll tell you how bad it was: Lex Luger called my manager and asked him if we were broadcasting from the same booth. Because Jesse feeds him and Ross doesn't react -- he did that on purpose because he wanted to be the number 1 honcho, rather than working for co-ordination in the show. That's why I respect McMahon. McMahon is more powerful than any announcer in this business, but McMahon would allow me to berate him ... he just knew that the SHOW was the ultimate result not Vince's ego."

Interestingly, he points to a direct correlation between his departure from the WWF and declining buyrates. And points to the fact that Hogan is still there whereas he has gone. He also argues that he and Vince were the best broadcast team of all time, and neither of them have been as good since. He also absolutely buries JR and essentially calls him shit and accuses Meltzer of sucking up to him because he feeds him results. This is the Jesse shoot I thought we'd never hear. There's a funny dynamic where he knows these guys are taping him but plays along anyway.

This is interesting if you can hear through the crowd. Jesse has attacked Meltzer quite a lot so far. "He's raping you as well as the business" ouch

The way I'd look at it though, some people just put on their seatbelts and sat quietly in the back on the ride, whereas others did cool shit to pimp that ride out. Ventura did the equivalent of putting little touches on the ride, like a gold fin thing on the back to make it look more aerodynamic and like all flame patterns on the front. Sure, that ride would have still be dope without those little touches, but he made the dope ride doper.

I didn't point to the Erik Watts bit as an example of him being good in the booth, I put it forward as one example of when he tried to bury someone. The only one I've come across. It's not even funny because of Ventura, it's funny because of Tony's pathetic attempt at a save "is it woo, not boo". We may have a different interpreation of what we think wrestling is about though, because one thing I think Vince changed was the idea that everything was a hard sell / shill. I think by the time we get to SNME there's a "soft sell" or kind of hook. You can see this much more readily in the Prime Time roundtables or the silly skits with Jimmy Hart and JYD having a water slide race. "Entertainment" need not be a slippery slope, but a more general hook to keep audiences coming back. And whichever way you look at it, that model beat the old territorial hard shill model. Moments that are "just there to entertain" are in fact there to keep you hooked and coming back for more. The reason the Russo era was bad was NOT because it sought to entertain for entertainment's sake but because it tried to manufacture entertainment artificially and WRITE characters rather than let them develop organically. And even then the chief successes of that era -- Rock, Austin, Foley -- weren't WRITTEN but came from an organic place. The slippery slope is thinking you can create a character like a Ventura, or a Rock, or a Flair, Austin, Hogan etc., from the head of a writer. You can't. That's why so much "sports entertainment" has sucked since Russo, not because it's tried to be entertaining.

Point taken, but I'd suggest that Ventura only did this in matches that were of no importance and the Watts example is the ONLY example I can think of of him outright burying a guy. Besides, are you seriously suggesting Hayes was a better colour man than Ventura? I think this taking wrestling hipsterdom a step too far. I don't think it's a fair criticism of Ventura IN GENERAL that he got his own humour over at the expense of the talent. I think those are exceptions to the general rule, which over hours and hours of footage surely you can forgive. RE Rude: Ventura likes all the heels, but he had a particular thing for Rude, possibly because he saw him as having a similar gimmick to himself and being his spiritual protege. Ergo, Ventura being involved with the posedown vs. Warrior and the arm wrestling tourney in WCW. I don't agree with this. Their job is to make entertaining TV AS WELL as get talent over. I'd take Vince circa 1986 over Solie any day of the week. And I don't care which wrestling gods I offend by saying that.

Jesse Ventura I'm going to take each guy at a time, starting with Ventura. First of all, I'm going to make one thing clear: my argument for Ventura's candidacy is 100% based on his work as a colour commentator. His in-ring careeer is little but a footnote to that, his Hollywood career, his Governorship of Minnesota, and his subsequent work as a chat show host etc. aren't part of the picture at all. In one line the argument is this: Jesse Ventura was the greatest colour commentator ever to step into the booth and therefore he should be in the WON Hall of Fame. That's it. Your view on this will depend therefore on: 1. The extent to which you agree with that statement 2. The extent to which you think the role of colour commentator is important to wrestling and, although not logically following on from that statement, this is still important to my case ... 3. The extent to which you think the WWF as presented on tv in the 1980s is important in wrestling history in general There are a few nuances to the argument I'd make: - Jesse wasn't only a great heel a la Heenan, he was also a great ANALYST of the action -- he worked on the level of a pro sports commentator. This is easiest to see in 1992 in WCW when he's working with Jim Ross under Watts. Ross in 92 was not interested in playing up the heel / face dynamic, he was at that point obsessed with guys' college backgrounds and football careers, etc. Ventura plugged straight in there and did a very efficient job of pulling apart the action on a technical level. This aspect of Ventura's performance is underrated and seldom talked about. It's this aspect of his performance that carries him through the PPVs with Gorilla too. - He formed not one but TWO legit awesome partnerships in his career -- both of them with onscreen morons / OTT pro-face marks. First with Vince McMahon on SNME and Superstars. Second, with Tony Schiavone in WCW in 1993 -- which was just so much fun it's unreal. His chemistry with Vince was off the charts. People talk about Monsoon and Heenan as being the all-time greatest partnership, I think it was Vince and Jesse. Think about the roles they played in some of the biggest angles ever and even in some of the less important ones. Yes, I'm thinking of Uncle Elmer's wedding. Jesse not only made that watchable, he made it COMPELLING. Which brings me to ... - The importance of SNME to the WWF boom. My feeling is that without this show, you don't get 93,000 at Wrestlemania 3, you don't get that massive casual fanbase to draw from for the next decade ... - Jesse was ABSOLUTELY INTEGRAL to the presentation of both SNME and Superstars in this period. It's very difficult to say what the effect would have been were he not on the show, but 1) it wouldn't have been as good and 2) neither the heels nor the faces wouldn't have got over to the same extent that they did. It's difficult to put some sort of figure on it. Let's say it was 5%. That's not only 5% the shows overall, but also 5% to the careers of all of the major and even not so major guys then. In a few exceptional cases -- Savage in 86, Rude, Duggan -- you can probably double that figure. WWF around this timeframe was magical, but let's face it, it wasn't magical because of anything happening in the ring, it was magical because of the PRESENTATION and Jesse was the cherry on the cake. Sure, it would have still be great without it, but he helped make it next level. For my money, it's the best wrestling has EVER been presented, although I admit that's contentious. - Intelligence. Jesse was easily the cleverest guy around and that's something you can't script, he just had natural intelligence and that sparkled in an environment in which you're basically surrounded by idiots. It's one of the reasons that he's consistently entertaining no matter what the show and who the partner. - Wrestlemania and the other big PPVs. It's easy now to take the first 6 Wrestlemanias for granted, but had any of them failed the landscape of wrestling would have been immeasurably different now. Jesse was on all of them and again he at least has to take some of the credit for how it got over with the mainstream, casual audience. What's next? Sean Mooney? Danny Davis? Earl and Dave Hebner? Mr. Fuji? I think broadcast teams and the general PRESENTATION elements of what made the boom era great are often overlooked by your typical smart fan. But there's a reason I'm pimping Ventura and not Mooney or Hayes or any other second-string guy. Suffice it to say, I think Jesse Ventura is more important to wrestling history than at least 60% of the wrestlers named in this thread so far. Sorry, but this just isn't true. It isn't. Everyone here has watched hours of WWF and WCW footage from the era in which he was active and it's not true. He ALWAYS got the action over. Always. Even in 93 and 94, when Tony would start shilling for the main event on the 2nd match of the card, Ventura stayed focused on the action. He always got people over. Yes, he got himself over too, but that's because he had natural charisma and intelligence. I associate Ventura with RICK RUDE in the same way I associate Ross with Austin. Both in WWF and WCW, Ventura had a permanent hard on for Rude. Incidentally, the ONLY time I heard Ventura bury anyone was when fans were booing Erik Watts on one of the PPV shows in 92. It was during Superbrawl III actually and in my little review, I even took a transcript: Very funny. Part of me wonders if Jesse is beloved because he was somehow smarkier in his comments. Or maybe he was just anti-Hogan at a time where it seemed like no one else in the rest of the country was anti-Hogan except for Dave and his ilk. As if he was their mouthpiece on some level. Maybe that's reaching too far. I think he's entertaining, but part of why I like him is because, as a kid, I always felt "hey, Jesse has a point!" which has nothing to do with him being effective, just with me being contrary. Jesse was never smarky, he was always 100% kayfabe, but within that there was always a grain of truth to what he said and he DID have a point. That is what set Ventura apart from the cartoon heeling of Heenan. He'd call out Hogan for being a total dick when he was being a dick. He'd call out hypocrisies. And when Vince or Gorilla pointed out the heel cheating or whatnot, rather than covering or pretending he didn't see it like Heenan, he'd acknowledge it. He'd also sometimes give praise to faces. He did a fantastic job of giving the illusion of journalistic integrity while still blatantly cheering for heels. Far more effective than Heenan ever was AT THAT if you ask me. I don't understand jdw and others knocking him. Just seems like anti-WWF sentiment or smarky contrarianism to me. Ventura legit rules and deserves to be in the HoF. This last point is plain not true. His WCW run is as good as anything he did in WWF and much, much better than Heenan's. Piper doesn't compare with Ventura as a colour man. I found him annoying. Like many great talkers, he was a much better promo than he was an analyst. Piper's colour stuff in 1990 is very annoying to my mind. I don't think it is fair to say that Jesse was just along for the ride. Would you admit that SNME would have been far less entertaining if it was someone else standing there with Vince? What if Bruno had stuck around? Or Billy Graham? Have you seen how much those shows suck because of their shitty commentary? WWF was a promotion where commentary and presentation MATTERED MORE than the wrestling. That wasn't the case in most of the territories or in Crockett, but it was in New York. I'd argue it was at least 70% presentation to 30% wrestling. And Jesse was a significant part of that presentation. Fact is, he was a unique figure in wrestling -- you couldn't manufacture his brand of intelligence and charisma. You couldn't write his lines. You couldn't replace him. He, like Heenan and a handful of others from this generation, was a "true one off". I don't see any reason for him not to go in the HoF.