JerryvonKramer

Harley Race, Dusty Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat, Lex Luger, Sting, Jumbo, Kerry von Erich, Barry Windham, Ted DiBiase, Ricky Morton, Terry Funk, Tenryu, Terry Taylor ... what do all these men have in common? They each had great matches with Ric Flair in the 80s. "But it was always the same match!" "No it wasn't, be quiet"

Whichever way you look at it, whichever way you argue it, whoever you pimp, whatever you say ... the answer is Flair.

Dylan - fantastic analysis there. Will say more in a bit. Mad Dog - What about Piper?

Yeah the idea is that you can use who you want.

- wow, Ole's a pretty good promo, never had him down as a great talker but he has some great lines and a menacingly subdued tone. - Has there ever been a cooler move than the slingshot suplex? - Starting to think of Baby Doll as a GREAT valet. Also lol at Dusty: "And I don't care if every woman's organization in the coutnry writes to me" ha ha.

- Flair's disrespect of Sam Houston is tremendous. Could the guys actually hear the commentators in the ring? - Nice butterfly suplex from Flair! - Loving this nasty, arrogant dick Flair abusing Sam Houston. - That "Tully Blanchard Number 1" mark and his friend are probably my favourite wrestling fans ever -- although the grumpy old man and old woman front row centre from Mid-South are close.

Yikes. Mil had really good matches with Jumbo and The Destroyer. There also was praise for all four of his matches that made the DVDVR 80s AJPW set from a pretty wide variety of the people who dropped comments in the threads. John I wasn't one of them, I pretty much despise Mil's matches on the set and hate Mil.

I heard Ventura saying before that he'd aim to get to ten minutes into the match without having even having locked up. He was a pure "working the crowd" type guy, and unashamedly so.

I think the case for Rick Martel being in the top ten is pretty strong. Are there ten better workers than him who had better a better 80s?

- Seems so odd to think of Arn as a "youngster" because he looked at least 35 even in 1985. - Bob Roop clearly has 70s hair. - lol at some dude in the crowd yelling "Buddy Landell!" at Flair - "You see yours is silver, mine is gold, weighs about 10lbs and represents 80 years of the greatest athletes in this sport" WOOOOO

Oh right! That must be one of those cultural zeitgeist things - like "wassup!!!" or whatever. Does anyone still say "perfet ten"?

I think a "who was worse in the ring: Billy Graham or Jesse Ventura?" debate would be quite hotly contested.

This is, sort of, a fantasy booking thread, but not really ... At Starrcade '90, WCW held the Pat O'Connor Memorial International Cup Tag Team Tournament featuring two representatives from the eight main wrestling nations: USA Canada Mexico United Kingdom Japan New Zealand Russia South Africa I thought it would be fun to ask the question: let's say it is December 1990 and you have no restrictions on who you can book to represent each country, who would you go for? You can also play around with the date if you want, or do an "all time" one. For the purposes of this: 1. We can assume that all wrestlers who were "Russian" are in fact Russian (e.g. Nikita Kolof can count as being Russian) 2. Because South Africa is kind of a random one, you can sub that out for another nation - Australia, Argentina, Germany, whatever - take your pick. Hoping this should be fun.

I'm going to make a statement: The Rock is a candidate based on his micwork alone. i.e. "It doesn't matter" (ha ha get it) if he had zero good matches, the level of his performance on the stick puts him in contention. How many times have we heard old guys say that you don't work the crowds into the stadiums, but talk them there? I think promos have been severely undersold in this thread. Once you take "worker" to mean more than just the matches, then Bret is no longer your automatic number 1 pick. You have to look at Austin. And others. If matches are the only criteria, then it's obviously Bret across the decade.

-Don Kernodle looks decent. This match vs. Tully has been pretty good.

Decided to take a break from 80s All Japan and to burn into some of this. Will provide some real-time thoughts here: - Shit Manny Ferndandez's forehead is a wreck! - Manny Ferdandez looks pretty good actually, love his matwork and "karate" - There's no way in hell Baby Doll is a size 10, she looks more like a 14 minimum. She's got bigger shoulders than Tully. Wiki says she was 190lbs, that's about 20lbs more than me! - Thunderbolt Patterson is legit awful of the mic. Terrible! He looks pretty awful taking those shots from Arn too. Love this little angle of Ole taking a fancy to Arn and ditching Patterson who he claims that he's been carrying. I laughed when Ole claimed that he was lazy and lying on his belly just as he was making a comeback. - Loving how they aren't the Horsemen yet and how the set weaves between Flair, Tully and Arn. This is top top work Will. - Difficult not to love David Crockett, such a ridiculous figure. - Face roster for the NWA is noticably thin, as Flair is listing them he doesn't have many names to play with beyond Dusty, Magnum TA and Manny Ferndandez. After them it's Terry Taylor and then down to Sam Housten! He ends up namechecking Harley Race and the Von Erichs. - Sam Housten looks about 12 years old. I've just read that he went on to marry none other than the Baby Doll!! She'd eat him alive!

I know that it could be a completely valid thing. People's opinions change and wrestling is a subjective art form. I could absolutely see myself liking a Paul Roma and Arn vs Bunkhouse buck and Dick Slater match more than Arn vs Flair on PPV(I really like Arn's transition after the Flair Flip, though it's a bit lessened since he does it on TV shortly thereafter, but I agree that the match isn't nearly as good as it should have been). My favorite WCW match of 93 is a Blonds vs Scorpio+Bagwell match from Worldwide, and I feel pretty confident about that. And some of my favorite WCW 95 stuff is WCW Prime tags with the Armstrongs or Lightning Express and Bunk/Slater. And that's not me trying to be obscure or indy or bucking trends. It's because there are elements in those matches I like more. It's only a problem if you try to come up with some reason to make it a problem. There are no objective best matches. There's no dogma here. There's a big note on this very site about why we all like wrestling and what we like about it. I think that we're as self-aware as anyone, and think as metatextually as anyone about this stuff. I don't think there's any big "danger" here at all. I don't necessarily think it IS a problem, until you reach the stage where you are rating the Bunkhouse Buck Worldwide match from 93 above Steamboat/ Flair '89, Steamboat/ Savage WM3, etc. I know that certain uber-pimped matches lose stock -- Dynamite Kid vs. Tiger Mask comes to mind -- but I think it is possible to reach a stage where things start becoming absurd. When someone genuinely thinks Skinner was a better worker than Ted DiBiase (or whatever). I'm not have a go at anyone or anything in particular, I don't think anyone is obscure for the sake of it, I just think it is possible to lose perspective. i.e. pimping the unheralded and tearing down the pimped, a form of overcompensation I guess. All that said, I'll accept that Flair vs. Arn isn't the best example to illustrate the above.

I still think there's a danger of becoming too esoteric sometimes to the extent where matches are judged in a vacuum and context is ignored. e.g. Arn vs. Flair from Fall Brawl '95 becomes a terrible match that you don't "ever want to see again", but suddenly Paul Roma and Arn vs. Bunkhouse Buck and Dick Slater from a random Worldwide in 1993 becomes a forgotten classic. I totally made up that second match, but you get the picture. It's almost like when you get one of those extreme hardcore Bob Dylan fans who'll no sell the original version of "Like a Rolling Stone" because they have a bootleg of some performance he did in Ohio on 25th March, 1978. Do you know what I mean?

I think the build was probably better than the match itself which it why it was pimped for a while. I'm a sucker for angles to be honest. That's why I rate Vader-Flair highly, not because of the match, but because of the stuff around it. Up until the swerve, I think the Arn/ Flair feud is one of the most interesting of all time.

If people are considering Steamboat, should we also be considering Rude? Did anyone have a better year than Rude in 92? And Ontani - I ordered the 92 and 93 sets today. I already predicted that people would piss on Flair vs. Arn from Fall Brawl but for a long time when the subject of Arn's career best singles match came up that match was never far away. That said, Meltzer never rated it highly.

He wasn't pinned, but he submitted to Luger three times in '97. 1. Three hour Nitro toward the end of June in a non title single match 2. Bash at the Beach '97 in a tag match. I wanna say Hogan and Rodman vs. Lex and Giant, but I don't remember Luger's partner for sure. 3. Nitro in August of '97 - Luger won the WCW Title. I was assuming he'd done quite afew jobs as Hollywood Hogan since he played such a cowardly Memphis-style heel. But jobs as the red and yellow were few and far between. Someone mentioned he was pinned by Flair shortly a week or two before the Arn match??? Anyone got any further detail on that?

I'm wondering now if that's the first time Hogan had been pinned since his match with Yokozuna at KotR 93. I reckon it was the 4th time he'd been pinned in the 90s: 1. Vs. Warrior (WM6) [clean] 2. Vs. Undertaker (Survivor Series '91) [after a tombstone on a chair] 3. Vs. Yokozuna (KoTR '93) [after a fireball from a dodgy camera man] 4. Vs. Arn (Nitro, Feb '96) [after being hit with a shoe] Were there any other times he was pinned during those 6 years?

I've always wondered what the story about that was. Hogan literally never jobbed, never. Especially during this WCW run. It's so random.

Oh my god!

Just finished listening to show 3. Two things: 1. Did Gary Michael Cappetta ever have a podcast? One of you mentioned it in passing. 2. Anyone got any pics of the La Momia Kurt is talking about? In fact, a post with photos or links to clips for each of these guys would be fantastic.