JerryvonKramer

Who's that Mid South ref that Will always rips on? Jerry something. Also, Randy "don't call me Pee Wee" Anderson also had a signature dive into the 3 count. Anderson was one of the more athletic refs. I'd probably take him over Nick Patrick.

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Wouldn't your criteria make Tommy Young pretty much the worst ref ever? I don't think I've ever seen a match with Young involved where I haven't noticed him. He's really loud and vocal. He's got that crazy dive over the lateral press into the three count he does. He's a ref who will kick someone's hand off the ropes. He takes the bumps like you said. Could you seriously argue that Young wasn't noticeable? Same goes for Joe Higuchi.

Over on the DVDR 80s project Too Short match reviews, I've seen guys let a bad performance from the ref adversely affect their rating of the match. I think Goodhelmet is pretty big on this. So ... What are you looking for from a ref? What are some examples of the best and worst refs? Who is your favourite ref?

Wile E. was the real draw of that show.

Wile E. was the draw in that feud without doubt.

Daffy = Randy Savage

- Arn's promo in the NY cap is AMAZING. He's improved even in the course of this set in the space of a few months.

- Without doubt, Ole is a great talker - What's that PWI show with Apter and Solie? - Can't believe the GAB '85 matches are clipped. Ring invasion! - Why was Tommy Young always such a physical ref? - OMG! Was not at all expecting the Dusty win there at GAB '85. Celebrated as being a massive deal too. "Baby Doll belongs to Dusty for 30 days" -- really sinister. - Wow, Jim Crockett himself!!!! Never seen him before. He hardly has the charisma of Vinnie Mac does he. - Magnum TA really enunciates every little word, his mouth looks quite unusual during his promos. - The gender politics of this Baby Doll angle are insane, why is Magnum TA always the one to enforce it? He's all over it, seems to love the fact she's now "owned" by Dusty. Ha ha. She looks hard as nails though. - I think Tully is the babyface in this angle. - Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, escape by horse. "Baby Doll! I'm gonna tan your hide!" lol

I reckon 99% of crowds around the world turn on roadrunner and cheer Wile E. I think Roadrunner is everyone's least favourite babyface and Wile E. everyone's favourite heel. Foghorn Leghorn was the world's first tweener.

^ His matches vs. Sam Houston on Will's awesome 4 Horsemen set that I've seen so far follow that story pretty well.

On a side note: jdw, you count Basement Tapes for 75? You know they were recorded between Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding right? I tend to think of it in there chronologically. I was thinking of 1989 - "holy trinity" of Flair/ Steamboat matches = holy trinity of Bob albums (BABH, H61, BoB)

I have some experience of this from the Top 50 Games podcast I did a while back. The sample size there was 37, and I recall having very similar arguments about Baldur's Gate 2 with someone who predicted that some people would vote tactically, etc. Regardless of that, and regardless of the fact that its positioning became a talking point AS people were submitting their Top 20 lists, Baldur's Gate 2 still topped the list. Althoguh the gap between that and number 2 wasn't that big. I'd say that you'd need a sample size of at least 25 for this to work. Any less, and you're right it becomes too volatile. But once you get to the 25+ mark, more idiosycratic picks fall off and the stuff everyone likes rises to the top. From the methodology we used (every person submits a top 20 list, each person's picks are then weighted a #1 pick getting 100 points, a #2 pick 50 points and a #20 pick something like 20 points), over 300 games were actually voted for, of which obviously only 50 made the list. This is what I'm saying would happen here -- assuming there are more than 25 voters -- there'd be a huge number of wrestlers picked for every person's top 20, lots and lots of guys would only get 1 vote. Flair would be picking up points from almost everyone, as Baldur's Gate 2 and a few other elite titles did (e.g. Deus EX). You may be right though, how many people post here and would take part? If it's less than 25 then it wouldn't be worth doing because, as you say, each person then has more influence and something like an anti-Flair campaign could skew the voting.

That is ASSUMING, Mad Dog, that another candidate will emerge in his stead. I think people will be split and his gross total would still be above anyone else's.

Expand it to top 10 then to allow for quirkiness, pet picks, willful obscurantism and so on. I still think he'd be the worker who had the most repeat votes.

Thing is, if it was weighted, Flair would almost certainly be in 90%+ of voters top fives. Who else would pick up so many top 5 votes? He could probably come out as #1 even if no one actually picks him as their GOAT. Incidentally, since this has been mooted, I'd tip it as being a near certainty to happen now. I think Flair would walk it because the vote would be split for all the other major candidates. As much as the Lawlers and Funks have their backers, are they unanimous top 5 picks now? For EVERYONE? I reckon you'd get people who lean towards 90s All Japan, people who lean towards the Eddies and Benoits, people who lean towards overlooked candidates, etc. Flair would be a common denominator in almost all of those people's lists. Incidentally, without even doing such a poll, this is why he's GOAT. Even if he has "lost stock", he'd be on everyone's list. Who else would be on everyone's list for certain?

Have any of the DiBiase vs. Tito Santana matches ever turned up? This isn't "recommend matches you haven't seen but think might be good"... Yeah I know that, but thought it might be pertinent given that to my way of thinking it's a "dream match". Doesn't seem all that spectacular though. Thanks for the link jdw.

I'm 100% with Loss. I can't say anymore because I'll likely get angry and be accused of flaming. It seems batshit insane to me for anyone to suggest Benoit's or Eddie's careers are even comparable to Flair's, let alone better. El-P -- How many times have we argued this? Anything good after 1993 for Flair is BONUS and he still has a hell of a lot of good (considering all round performance, micwork, angles, feuds etc.) in the last 18 years of his career. BUT ... I've said it before: it's like Bob Dylan. He could have died in 1967 and he'd already have enough material for a legit GOAT case. If he'd done nothing else after 1976, he'd already be a nail on GOAT candidate. Everything after that is BONUS. The fact he's got amazing albums after then, just adds to the case. The fact he has some shitty ones does nothing AT ALL to diminish the case. And so it with Flair. Let's call his year with WWF in 91-3 his Blood on the Tracks and Desire. He's already a nail on GOAT candidate for the rest of time. I'm going to stop now, I feel too strongly about this topic to remain controlled.

Good job again chaps. However, I couldn't BELIEVE you spent about 15 minutes taking about short-lived tagteams from WCW from 91-3 and somehow STILL didn't mention "The Masters of the Powerbomb".

- I just marked out when Nikita nailed David Crockett. Fair play to Dave, he really gave it to Ivan and really stood up for Flair. A little strange this angle where he's Flair's babyface in the middle of the Magnum feud. - I'm gaining more and more respect for Dusty with every interview. He's getting over with me as a babyface, and I'm a 29 year old guy from the UK who has never liked Dusty Rhodes, god knows what the core audience must have been feeling. Terrific performer. - Ole talking about Flair growing up on commentary, the foreshadowing is terrific, even if it wasn't planned. And now the triple team, awesome. - Tully's love for Baby Doll comes through strongly every time he talks about here. That's a great sell job. - Flair just gave a promo in which he started out heel (vs. Magnum TA) and ended up face (Nikita), what's interesting there is that by saying "I am America, I represent free enterprise" and getting fans to cheer that, he exposes the hypocrisy of fans booing him for exactly the same qualities against other Americans. - Has there ever been a lower lower midcarder than Pistol Pez Whatley? Rocky King is pretty ripped for an 80s jobber.

- I absolutely love that WTBS studio. How big was the crowd in there? 200 people max? - Dick Slater - pretty good promo, never expected him to be a decent talker, can't say the same for Budd Sawyer ha ha - I like how Flair, Tully and the Wrecking Crew are starting to comment on each other now. I also like this angle that is brewing with JJ Dillon and Buddy Landel. - Flair is unreal on the mic. Just when you think you've heard it all, he comes out with lines out of nowhere. "The girls knock on his door, but nobody came ... if you get my meaning". He's a cheeky one! lol - Was the Mid-Atlantic show a B-show by this stage? And who is this "Johnny" with Bob Caudle? - Dusty's "I'll be the judge, the jury and the hangman" promo on Tully is absolutely amazing.

Dylan, I think the difference between Flair's laundery list and almost everyone else's ... well actually I think there are two main differences: 1. Flair's laundery list is creme de la creme -- it's a Who's Who of wrestling, top tier guys, wrestling royalty, everyone from guys like Windham and DiBiase tipped for greatness from the start to guys like Jumbo and Sting who were picked to be company aces to the great champions of the past (Race, Bockwinkel, Funk) to "greatest worker of the era" type guys (Steamboat, Morton, Tenryu) to "broomsticks" (Luger) and self-promoting fat men (Dusty) to guys far below his level (Ron Garvin). That's not only everyone who is anyone it's also EVERY TYPE of worker as well. Sure, all the laundry lists you put up there are impressive in their own way, but Flair's laundry list is the laundry list of ALL laundry lists. 2. Which brings me to point 2, which is that he had great matches and feuds from the start of the decade, to the middle of the decade to the end of the decade against guys from different eras working different styles. Incidentally, my GOAT argument for Flair pretty much also rests on this. He's the ONLY guy in history to have matches with the Funks, Race, and all of the greats from that 70s generation through the 80s to many significant workers of the 90s and 00s (Hogan, Shawn, Bret, Austin, The Rock, Benoit, Jericho, etc. etc. etc.) In fact find someone who is ANYone from 1975-2008 who hasn't locked up at some stage with Flair. That's pretty much a once in a millennium sort of career. No one else has Flair's career and we'll never see it's like again. Ever. You can rest the case on his American Majors career alone, but the fact he has the great matches in Japan, and in most of the main US territories makes him not only a nail on for 80s worldwide worker but also for GOAT. I know you put a really strong case for Funk on the podcast Dylan and I think he is right up there, no doubt, but with Flair it's just the sheer volume, the sheer numbers, the sheer breadth, scope and variety. It's insane. Funk has a hell of a laundry list too and it stretches further back than Flair's and he has the ECW stuff that Flair doesn't have. But I don't think that can compensate for the above. Way I look at it is that you could probably take Funk out of wrestling history and while there'd be a pile of great stuff we wouldn't have, each of the promotions for whom he worked would probably easily be able to retcon it. Because he never hung around for long. Try to take Flair out of wrestling history? To make a really really strange analogy, if wrestling history was a house of cards -- Funk would be one of the ones on the side or maybe even right at the top. You could probably pick it off without the whole thing crashing down. Flair is like the cards right on the bottom row - take one of those out and the whole thing crashes down. I wrote more than I meant to then -- it's easy to get burned out on Flair, it's easy to criticise him, but even more so it's easy to take him for granted. I accept the GOAT debate is not as cut and dried as that, but if he's not number 1, he's number 2 at the very least. For 80s though, I think everyone else is battling for number 2 spot. And in fact I think number 2 spot is a much more interesting debate.

Can you outline how Flair's philosophy differs from Tito's? Just really interested.

Earthquake and Dino Bravo would be an excellent pick for 1990.

I was originally planning a series of these threads, but thought instead I'd do an all-in-one type deal here given the recent explosion of "Best Worker" threads for fear of burn out and overkill. I'm picking out only the 10 most prestigious titles historically here: NWA World Champion (take WCW champ after 1991) WWF World Champion Intercontinential Champion US Champion NWA/ WCW World Tag Champs WWF World Tag Champs NWA/ WCW World TV Champion AJPW Triple Crown (take NWA International title before 1989) IWGP Heavyweight Championship AWA World Title I don't think the answers to most of these are entirely clear cut. For the purposes of this thread, after the brand split nonsense take Big Gold as continuing the NWA / WCW lineage. I'd be surprised if there are any real contenders from that time frame though. I'm going to start by picking out just two here: US champ: I think there are some very strong contenders here. Rude's reign in 92 stands out as does Austin's run with it. But I think the man who gave this title most credibility in his runs with it and made it seem like a big deal is actually Lex Luger. He's my pick for best ever US champ. IC champ: again a good number of options, Honky Tonk Man, Greg Valentine, Randy Savage, Tito Santana, Shawn Michaels, Bret .... the list goes on and on. But the guy who epitomised for me what the IC title was all about was Mr. Perfect. I know that run is not popular here, but for me Mr. Perfect was everything that the IC champion should be -- athletic, technical, smaller than the heavyweight champ but not lightweight. I always liked Benoit or Jericho with it for the same reason.