JerryvonKramer

Ok, let me try to have this out properly. There's something about the matches/ albums analogy that doesn't quite work for me. And that's because I am not convinced that wrestling and music can be compared in this way. Let's break this down a little bit: wrestling is a very strange thing. I mean it's the illusion of a real sports contest between people with larger-than-life personalities who, as part of their performance, do things to make the crowd love or hate them and say things to make their opponent want to beat them. That bit I've put in italics there, in my view, is not detachable. It's a fundamental part of what wrestling is. The other aspects of what musicians do - album cover art, image and so on, are not fundamental. You could take Ziggy Stardust without the front cover and without any knowledge of Bowie and it's still a great album. The music is the thing, everything else is an attachment. In wrestling, you can't do that. For me, Savage vs. Steamboat without the storyline -- without the context of Savage having attacked him with the bell, etc., without the knowledge that Savage is a borderline psychopath who'd probably kill a man who looked at his wife the wrong way and Steamboat is a nice, down-to-earth clean-living family man -- is meaningless. What's the essence of wrestling? Is it the 15 near falls in Savage/Steamboat '87 or is it seeing that WITHIN the context of the above? In other words, I'm saying that when you say "the name on the marquee" is wrestling, the word "wrestling" once deconstructed MEANS the heel/face dynamic, the characterization, the storylines and angles, and so on and then and only then the match. Bizarrely, the French philosopher Roland Barthes is pretty good on this. I'd recommend all wrestling fans to pick up Mythologies and read how he structurally picks apart what's going on in a wrestling match he went to in 60s France. Let's get back down to Earth: for me the ESSENCE of wrestling is not the ***** workrate classic, it's the crowd going absolutely bananas when Virgil beat The Million Dollar Man at Summerslam '91. Or when some dork in the crowd was so incensed by The Million Dollar Man that he actually tried to jump on the cage and punch him. This is why I'm still ranking Watts/Stagger Lee vs. The Midnights very high on the Watts set. There's nothing but punches in that match, two of the workers involved are basically immobile, but the crowd is just absolutely nuts. The post-match shenanigans with Cornette in the diaper are as much "wrestling" to me as the match itself. For me, once you start taking that stuff out. Once you abstract it to who did the least botches and who's had the most 45-minute chain-wrestling epics, then you lose something of what wrestling is all about. I think you lose the very thing that got us all into it in the first place. You kind of take the joy out of it. Ergo, if the "essence" of wrestling is not the matches but something else, then - back to the title of the thread - to what extent do you need great matches to be considered an all-time great? Let me ask you something: If you had a choice between Benoit in his prime and Bobby Heenan for your promotion, and you could only have one, who would you take? I'd probably take one Bobby Heenan for ten Chris Benoits. I'd take a lot of guys over Benoit: Piper, Jake Roberts, DiBiase, Rude, Hennig, could probably list about 20 more. Hell I'd take Shane McMahon over Benoit. I'm being serious. But then you have the GOAT discussion and Benoit, by virtue of his matches, is going to rank up there somewhere - and some of the others, by virtue of having fewer great matches, don't even rank. To me, that's a problem with the criteria and something of an absurdity. PS. I know 2 Cold Scorpio has more good matches than that one, I was just being facetious.

On Volkoff - although the WWF wasn't playing ball at the time, didn't the wrestlers still mostly work non-exclusive pay-per-appearance deals? When did Vince start locking down his workers on written contracts? When was Andre's last non-WWF appearance? Did Snuka work for anyone else during his WWF stint? Just wondering really. The answer may lie therein, but maybe not. On Pettingill - it looks like his contract expired and they decided not to renew it. Mooney also seemed to be on a long-term sort of deal before him and in that instance, his contract expired and he decided he didn't want to renew it. I'd assume that Rob Bartlett, Charlie Minh were on try out deals whereas there was an actual job in the company attached to "the Mooney/ Pettingill/ Cole" role. Like the difference between a permanent position and temporary role. If you look, there was probably a similar "permenant post" there for Lord Alfred. When he retired in 1995, clearly the replacement was Michael Hayes (as "Dok Hendrix"). This is just a guess, but it seems like when Hayes moved to creative, that job was then taken by Jonathan Coachman. Seem to me there were a set number of "permanent positions" on the WWF broadcast team: On air President / commissioner (Jack Tunney >> Gorilla Monsoon >> Sgt. Slaughter) Lead play-by-play (Gorilla Monsoon >> [Vince >>] Jim Ross*) Lead Colour (Jesse Ventura* >> Bobby Heenan >> Jerry Lawler) Lead interviewer / host (Gene Okerlund >> Joe Fowler (?) >> Kevin Kelly? [role phased out ??]) B-show play-by-play (Vince McMahon* >> Tony Schiavone** >> Vince McMahon >> Gorilla Monsoon) B-show colour (Bobby Heenan >> Roddy Piper >> Randy Savage >> Jim Cornette ??) 'The Mooney role' [2nd interviewer, Home video host, 'news updates', C-show play-by-play (Craig DeGeorge >> Sean Mooney >> Todd Pettingill >> Michael Cole) C-show colour / heel interviewer / home video co-host: Lord Alred Hayes >> Michael Hayes >> The Coach * This is slightly complicated by the fact that on programming, the commentary teams were usually paired: McMahon / Ventura and Monsoon / Heenan. The former on Superstars and SNME and the latter on Prime Time. However, on PPVs it was almost always Monsoon and Ventura, that's why they are "lead". Also, seems like for whatever reason around late 1993 Vince lost faith in Jim Ross, and reinstated himself as lead play-by-play for PPVs and Raw. Again, not sure why this is, but it is worth noting. ** I've always been slightly puzzled by why Vince signed Schiavone. Is there a reason why he did Summerslam 89 and Royal Rumble 90? Was he planning to phase onsoon out then? Because Vince also does a lot of the PPV play-by-play himself in this era. Was Gorilla ill in 1990? Never really worked that out.

MJH - you are touching on the point which led to me creating the thread in the first place there. Everything DiBiase did was really smooth and natural. From the way he did a suplex to little things to how he'd take a basic punch to the stomach or how he'd roll out of the ring. If someone was going to write a wrestling "text book" with demonstrations of exactly how to do certain moves, Ted could easily feature quite a lot in that book. Move for move, in terms of execution alone, he's probably better than, for example, Jerry Lawler. But he doesn't have the same amount of great matches that Lawler had. My question is: since when did "the match" become the dominant unit of analysis? DiBiase is only one example. There are quite a few others. I suppose what I'm saying is, he'd make a pretty good top trump card if you going to break down all the parts of the performance and give a rating out of 10 or 20. If someone rates highly in every category, but for whatever reason, doesn't have a large portfolio of great matches to his name, why should he be taken out of the running? We talked about Arn before. If DiBiase had been in NWA/WCW from 87-93 instead of WWF, do you think he would have had more or fewer great matches than Arn did in that period? You've surely got to assess what a guy has to work with. Seems to me that a system that privileges matches above other criteria is going to be skewed in certain ways and produce results heavily inclined towards certain promotions at certain times and against others - namely, the WWF in the mid-late 80s. This is why I've been arguing for a more holistic system. I'm not saying Ted would rank any higher with people there, but at least he'd have a fairer crack of the whip. I sometimes get the impression that if we had it out and went for a big Top 100 vote that you'd see someone like 2 Cold Scorpio rank about the DiBiases, Hennigs and the Rudes just because he had a good match with Benoit once. There's something that doesn't sit right with me about the assessment criteria.

If he went for 1992 wouldn't he also get the Jesse Ventura arm wrestling tournament? Kip Frey era WCW is awesome, as is early Watts. First 6 months of 1992 - in my opinion - is the peak period for WCW as a company. Think Watts comes in around June, I think. Beach Blast was his first PPV, Wrestlewar Frey's last Frey's 6-month run in WCW has got to rank as one of the best of all-time. Wonder how come noone else ever approached him. Things don't start going bad until Halloween Havoc.

Two things John: 1. I love how you claim not to care about wrestling and then make posts like that 2. You neglected to mention what you make of Dory yourself.

For what it's worth, I think IRS is underrated in general. I thought it was an inspired piece of casting to put Rotunda in that gimmick. Rotunda has a slightly nerdy/ whiny/ tiresome quality to his voice so he was just perfect. Look at this, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcsNwwK9vfg His promos coming down to the ring were good, especially at a time when every other guy on the roster had theme music. IRS never had theme music. And in the ring, while he possibly wasn't like a taxman the whole time, the shirt and tie and use of the briefcase were enough to keep us minded of his character. I thought he was worth at least an IC title run in 1994/5. I really believe he made that character work. I also think that Money Inc. are one of the coolest ever looking heel teams: Schyster always looked like such a creep. He was obviously DiBiase's corrupt stooge and that dynamic worked very well. I think they are one of the more interestingly packaged tag teams of the era. Ignore me though, because if it isn't obvious already, I'm basically still a mark.

So you're saying the fact Dory had zero chairsma has affected his reputation as a technical wrestler? How does Jack Brisco rank as a mat worker? Just interested to see how far stock has fallen in that 60s/70s generation of mat technicians. And I wonder if it's partly down to this again. I think the 70s guys are hurt by the perception that they were slow and bland.

Is this view reflected by everyone? If so, what was his reputation based on? Being NWA champ for 4 years? Why does Dory suck but, for example, Backlund or Bockwinkel not?

Where does someone like Dory Funk Jr. rank?

Dooly, have you seen his stuff with Bret Hart (April 27, 1991 or the little mini-match from Survivor Series '90) or even the one with Shawn Michaels (April 24, 1990)? Or the Money Inc cage match vs. The Steiners? Or the performance in the Royal Rumble 1990? I still feel you guys are selling DiBiase short. Hell, I'm with Meltzer! Ha ha.

I know I owe a couple of people proper replies here ... and I hate to go back to this, but I just watched the 3 DiBiase vs. Magnum TA matches from the Mid-South set and how can anyone say that Ted didn't have great matches?

Anyone know why Sean Mooney was released in 1993? I HATED Todd Pettingill. Hated him. At least Mooney had kitsch appeal. I always thought Mooney wouldn't have been out of place in the 1966 Batman. Something so awesomely cheesy/ corny about him.

This is just a fantastic thread. My only question/ thought is this: Was there a moment the WWF/E decided to adopt a policy of meaningless Orwellian Newspeak or was it ALWAYS there only back then the likes of Gorilla and Jesse Ventura or Heenan wouldn't abide by the corporate policy? Why do I ask this? Sean Mooney that's why. Mooney never once referred to a "wrestler", he's always always ALWAYS say "superstar". He had a lot of little quirks. Loved to say "the squared circle". Loved calling the Undertaker "the Phenom" and many many more examples, too numerous to list. I'm wondering, did Mooney have poetic license on these, or was he just such a good corporate employee that he'd stick to the letter to whatever was sent by Head Office? Nothing Mooney ever said is something a normal human being would say. That's one of the reasons I LOVE him, he's like living embodiment of what a man produced entirely by the WWF in the late 80s/ early 90s would be. See Mooney - and Pettingill after him - they were the prototype Michael Cole. So I wonder if this approach was ALWAYS there, but massively mitigated by the personalities of Monsoon, Ventura and Heenan?

Bloody hell, Ted Arcidi was HUGGGGEEEE

Very good shout! Also, The Yeti, of course.

Did anyone aside from Hercules use the bearhug as a finisher after 1980?

I've finally got my World War 3 '95 thing up and my website has moved to a new URL: http://parviniworld.com/WorldWarIII95.html

Thinking of the last time the actual blue was used now, aside from the black Austin / McMahon one. I'm pretty sure Money Inc. vs. The Steiners from 1993 was blue cage. Yes, take a look: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2suio_th...ney-inc-c_sport Real slept on match that. Rude vs. Piper was also blue cage. And Rude vs. Warrior where his tights come down. They used that blue cage quite a lot come to think of it. I'm wondering if that Steiners / Money Inc match was the last? No, hang on, Bret vs. Owen at Summerslam 1994, pretty sure that was blue cage. Any more after that?

What I'd never seen before last week is the bigger cage, blue-steel WWF style only black on the Mid-South set, but much much bigger than the ring in terms of circumference - could bump to the floor- but also really quite short. This is the cage from Wrestling II/ Mangum TA vs. Niedhart/ Reed.

Another completely random one: I watched the Watts/Stagger Lee vs. Midnights from the Midsouth set the other night and left my thoughts on DVDR. Now, Watts works like he's about 55 going on 60 in that match. I assumed he was pretty old. Looked him up on Wiki today just to check - by my calculations he was 44/45 when that match took place in 1984. WTF?! Why was he so old and out of shape? Was he injured? What happened to him? Undertaker is older than that NOW. Flair at 45 was awesome. What gives?

True actually. That does contradict everything I've been saying. Can't it just be called "Total Package GOAT"? Would be interesting to see if Lex Luger ranked at all. Ha ha.

Isn't it more judging a guy on the "non-wrestling" part of the performance: The promo skills General acting ability Overness of the persona Entertainment value etc. I think you can reasonably objectively say that, say, Jim Cornette was a better promo than John Nord.

Most professional atheletes are done by the time they are 35 - apart from the odd super-human like Paolo Maldini who can play on till they are 40. It's only in wrestling where it's the norm to go on into the 40s and even 50s. Wiki says Edge is 37 though.

Ah I missed that, twas in the "dark years" where I'd pretty much switched off WWF circa 94/5. I didn't even know the other Quebecer had a singles career. Who's the newer pirate?