JerryvonKramer

All of the people mentioned are black apart from Mariah Carey. No way is she black.

Main event Upper midcarder Midcarder Lower midcarder JTTS Jobber with offense Jobber Anything missing there? I think in the old WWF "tag team" would be a different push, and two levels of them: In-the-title-picture team Midcard team with no chance of winning titles (e.g. Bushwackers, Rhythmn and Blues, The Orient Express, The Beverley Brothers)

Are we saying that there is a role BETWEEN being a JTTS and a pure jobber? SD Jones territory?

1993 for sure. The NWA title run.

At least it's over in 90s minutes. All I'm saying.

I probably need greater exposure to Lane to make a fair assessment, but I've very much enjoyed Dennis Condrey's work on the Mid-South set. While Bobby Eaton is obviously the workhorse of the team, Condrey I'd argue has greater charisma and his dick heel moves are among the best I've seen for a heel team.

Would people say that the Condrey/ Eaton MX are better than the Lane version then?

When was Wrestling II in WWF?

He did do a lot of running up and down that flank in that game though. You can't really compare Maldini with Cafu. Maldini was a defender first and foremost. Trademark Maldini was him running back and executing a perfectly time sliding tackle on the opposing right-winger. I'll always remember the game he came up against Andrei Kanchelskis at Euro '96. It was epic. Cafu was essentially a winger who played nominally at right-back, your archetypical Brazilian "wing-back". And, yes, a freak of nature. I think MOST people would take Maldini over Cafu any day of the week though. Doesn't offer you as much going forward, but he was arguably the best fullback who ever played.

Excellent post and thread idea. I think it has to go: 1. Arn 2. Morton 3. Eaton Anyone disagree with that? As for others to mention: From what I've seen so far on the All Japan set, I'd like to mention Jumbo here. Has there ever been a better fired-up face getting the hot tag? He's been the standout worker in almost every tag match he's been involved in so far (finished disc 3). Haku / Meng - Often overlooked, he was good in several different teams playing different styles and different roles. In the Islanders, with immobile late 1989/90 Andre, and with the Barbarian in WCW. Three completely different teams and he was good in all of them. Sting - I think Sting was a great face tag-team wrestler. Whether with Warrior, Luger or RANDOM partner, he was always good. Could be the face-in-peril or the hot tag, and great in either role. And what JvK post would be complete without a mention of Ted DiBiase? I'll mention him. I think Money Inc. is underrated. He made a good partner for (ever so slightly less) immobile 1988 Andre. He made a good partner for Stan Hansen in Japan and Steve Williams in Mid-South. Don't really like bland face Ted much, but he was a decent tag-team wrestler whenever he had to work a tag match. EDIT: Someone should mention Dennis Condrey too.

Henry is a great example yeah. I think the lesson to draw from both Giggs and Maldini is that they both adapted their game. Maldini moved inside to become a (classy) centre-back and Giggs went from being a flying winger to an incredible playmaker who can come from deep, wide or in the centre. In some ways, Giggs in the past 2 years has been a better -- or at least a more intelligent -- player than he was in, say, 1993. When Maldini played leftback late on though, he could still but in the miles. Watch the first half of the 2005 Champions League final against Liverpool when he actually scored. He was up and down that game. I don't think he could have done that 2 years later at 38 though.

You're right, Rude is awesome at selling the atomic drop. I tell you who else was: Honky Tonk Man.

Yeah. It really does. Thanks for clearing this up. Was always one of those moves I could never understand how it was meant to hurt because, especially in the WWF, the knee was never even close to even looking like it connected.

So is the knee meant to connect or not?

Dylan, I thought was a good post. Obviously, you know I'm a guy who essentially acts like wrestling finished in 2003/4, so I kinda come from things out of sync with whatever is going on now. I brought this up because both in the PG-13 thread and in the recent abortion of a thread I made (Money Inc. vs. Beer Money Inc.), various people, including off the top of my head people who rate DiBiase like goodhelmet, said that Money Inc were of no interest to them at all and they couldn't care less if they saw another match of theirs BECAUSE both guys were past their prime. Like I said, I see no real difference between Ted then and Ted in '88, or even Ted in '85. But clearly there was something behind the comment, and clearly something Will and others are looking for there that I am not seeing. Not just with the DiBiase example, with anyone really. What's the difference between Backlund in '83 and Backlund in '94? I'm not talking about example where a guy is CLEARLY semi-retired or old. Bockwinkel vs. Dory Funk Jr. at Slamboree '93 for example, where you've got two guys in the 50s. I'm talking about around the 38-45 mark.

Quick question: where is the atomic drop meant to impact? I mean is the small of the back/ ass meant to connect with the knee or not? Something I've never been sure of.

Well like I said in football -- and I'm sure in pretty much any "real" sport -- there are things that show a guys age. Even in snooker (US folks know snooker right? bit like pool only harder and bigger), there comes a point where hand-eye coordination is not what it was. In wrestling, there are few signs that I can see beyond the way a guy LOOKS. I mean eventually they'll not be able to take bumps like they once could, but more often than not that's because of a specific injury. Hell I mean, Ricky Steamboat at Wrestlemania 25 looked crisp and pretty darn good at the age of 56. On the Mid-South set, at the age of 45, Bill Watts can just about manage a few punches.

But was there anything actually in the ring that he did differently? I should have said "prime" not "peak". Can you change the thread title to "prime" please Loss? I think it's a slightly different thing. Peak = high point of career, prime = athletic peak / ability to go in the ring.

In football ("soccer"), you can usually tell when a player is getting on a bit because he loses a yard of pace and takes fewer risks. If he's a defender he'll rely on his positional play more. And in the worst case scenarios, for example this happened with Gary Neville last season, they get cruelly exposed when they can't keep up anymore. Footballers become generally less mobile after they are 30. You get the odd one or two like Ryan Giggs or Paolo Maldini who are still good in their late 30s, but this is rare. Recently, a few people have mentioned that Money Inc. were two guys past their prime. Mike Rotunda was 35 in 1993, DiBiase was 39. This thread is not about them, but they are my two case examples. Because here's the thing: I can't really tell the difference between either of those two in 1993 compared with them 5 years earlier. I mean Rotunda in 88 seems exactly the same to me in 93, even more so with DiBiase - him in 88 and him in 93 are pretty much identical to my layman eyes. Both of them looked and worked exactly the same. Or am I wrong? In football ("soccer"), 5 years is a very long time. 5 years ago Andrei Schevchenko was one of the best strikers in Europe, now you'd have to double check who he's playing for, or if he's even still playing at all. This is because he he 29/30 and suddenly just wasn't the same player anymore. But in wrestling, I don't see the same steep drop off when guys reach the other side of 30. I'm watching the All Japan set and by the criteria laid out in the Money inc. example, Terry Funk and Harley Race were past their prime in 1982. I don't think I can tell that by watching them work. For me, Ric Flair didn't start showing signs of his age until he was 46 in 1995! And that is more because his body had started to LOOK old than anything he actually did in the ring. So what are the tell-tale signs? What sort of things do people who are "past their prime" do to cut corners? These things are not obvious to me.

I can't really justify this thread. I posted it as a piece of mild frippery. It was much more whimsical than anything else. I'm sometimes a whimsical and playful sort of poster. By the way, I am not at all involved in the discussion or thread on the other board at all. It just came up on a google search. I have no agenda at all.

Just thought it might be an interesting critical exercise. Not least because it is not clear to me which way people will call it. And they have similar names, which makes the thread very very slightly more justifiable than something completely random like "The Godwins vs. Dino Bravo and Earthquake". I mean it is still completely random, but at least the fact that the two teams have similar names gives the appearance of it being a more substantial question. Have I sold it to you?

I decided to do a random google search on this earlier and this thread came up from Wrestlezone: http://forums.wrestlezone.com/showthread.php?t=70524 It's fairly clear to me reading that, that probably not one of those posters genuinely watched WWF in the early 90s. It's clear that they are mainly fronting it out. The general consensus there is that DiBiase is obviously the best worker out of the four, but Rotunda probably the worst "although underrated". A lot of weight seems to be given to Money Inc's three tag title wins and WHO they won them against: Legion of Doom, Natural Disasters and the Steiners. Now both you and I know that 1) they have got this information from looking it up on Wikipedia and 2) two of those title wins came at house shows of which, I'm fairly sure, no footage exists. Point is, none of the people in this thread are in any sort of position to vote because it's clear that they only really know the work of Beer Money Inc. and are voting for Money Inc. based soley on their reputation, or their apparent reputation from reading their Wiki page. I would like you to have a bash at doing this properly. Which is the better team and why?

I was the one who asked this question in Comments that don't warrant, and I asked it because my cycle is to watch about 15 minutes of TNA every 4 or 5 months. Done that since it has been aired here in the UK and I can honestly say that each and every minute was painful for me, as a wrestling fan, to sit through. It's like ritual torture. I don't even know the storylines, but it's all so horribly inept that I can tell that a) they don't make sense and B ) no one gives a shit. Also, there's just way way way too much back office stuff on camera. I was wondering though, what was that promotion with Jumpin Jeff Farmer in it? Those are the worst promos I've ever seen, laugh out loud funny bad. If that was national, it must run TNA close.

I think ultimately TNA will just be a footnote in his career. TNA is destined merely to be a footnote in the careers of any established star in their roster. Sting is a major deal to TNA history, but TNA is just a footnote in Sting's. Ditto Foley, Hogan, Flair etc. Question: is TNA the worst wrestling promotion ever to be televised internationally?

Scroll back about 15 pages and you'll find yourself and various others shouting at me for criticising their offence, before going on about how great their offence was. Also, anyone fancy explaining this whole "heel-in-peril" thing. Has someone written an essay on it to which they could link me? Why is it such a terrible thing? etc.