JerryvonKramer

Herein lies the issue. There's some crap and then there's the amount of crap he's had.

What did they say? "We're marks"? Sorry, just think he's easily the worst guy in the top 150. HHH is there too I guess.

Happy to be a minority voice with you here. You're not really a minority voice if he makes less than half of the ballots. I don't know too many people who had him in thier lists. I know of a couple. An interesting comparison would be Undertaker vs. Inoki. A shitload of matches.... a shitload of main event protection.... a handful of classics and a ton of crap. Could have fooled me after the amount of crap I got for pointing out the mountains of absolute shit he's produced since 1991. I think Taker making the list is a shame, and I think his case is poor if you seriously factor in consistency. Thinking about it, I don't really know why I was getting shit from the brothers Hales about it, the only thing consistent about him is that he consistently produced garbage. And, unlike Inoki, he had no real mat skills either. I didn't have many feelings about Taker before GWE, now I think I literally hate the idea of him being touted as a great worker. Think it's a joke.

Happy to be a minority voice with you here.

Lesbian line was LOL, Pete.

Was this meant to be a kayfabed list?

Mugging for the camera

If Vince McMahon was booking PWO, jdw and El-P would be coming back and squashing Jimmy Redman and that promising second-generation star Exposer.

One of the things that makes Batman so great for me (or did), is how each of his major villains is in some way a mirror of Batman / Bruce Wayne, pushing at some aspect of his personality. Joker is the chaos to his order Ra's Al-Ghul is the mirror to the millionaire ideologist, and his equal in terms of wits and resources The Penguin is the aspirational socialite flipside of Bruce Wayne, and a reminder that privilege is built on exploitation Two-Face is his old friend, and mirrors Bruce's own split personality Scarecrow plays on fear just like Batman plays on fear And so we can go down the line. They are kind of perfect foes for Batman that highlight some particular aspect of his persona. I think you can do that also with Garvin, Luger, Steamboat, Sting, Dusty, Harley, Funk, etc. What makes Garvin special is because, in a way that seems really different from Steamboat, he seems to be his equal and match. Bob Backlund vs. Greg Valentine also has this quality as a feud. The idea that the two guys are just matched -- height, weight, skills, experience, etc. It's pretty cool and not that many feuds have it.

I will point out that he was the only guy I had to fiat past BIGLAV (into Mil Mascaras's slot), which suggests that I think Garvin's case for the top 100 is actually quite weak. He was the one guy I was willing to negate the system for, which probably also says something.

Sabu innovated the self-conscious botch.

I just don't think Lawler's punches are a single spot. I think they are many different spots. The way he feeds a babyface comeback as a heel is not the same spot as when he makes a comeback as a babyface. When he's doing a Tazmanian Devil style flurry against Bock, it isn't the same as the straight right jab he might do in the body of a match. He has an arsenal of different punches, not just one punch which is the same and used in different contexts. Misawa's elbows are mostly always the same, but they are utilised to different ends and traverse different registers.

What is that even supposed to mean ? Read it again and in time I'm sure you'll figure it out.

One thing I've learned about this project is that minority views massively over-index.

Well there it is. I'm done talking Flair at this point. For now and ever.

Well, any stab at in-depth analysis of Flair matches, or talking about his psychology or whatever -- which me, and Chad, and Charles, and many others have done for hours and hours -- is routinely just dismissed as over-reaching by detractors. And then they blithely go on trotting out the same tired criticisms and treat any spot he does as a mindless cheap pop. You understand why we get frustrated? As for this thread, I don't think Lawler's punch is really in the conversation in terms of wringing multiple different things from the same spot. Misawa's elbow seems to be the closest I can think of in terms of traversing different registers. But intelligent conversation seems beyond us in these heady GWE days, so let's forget it.

I'll maintain that the studio bout, the cage match from 86, and the blow-off at Starrcade are a trilogy of extremely strong matches. I do not want to dissuade you from the conclusions you've drawn or El-P's from his view. I just hope that they are both minority views.

The question was how multi-faceted and deeply layered a single spot was. I don't really see that being discussed or engaged with in any meaningful way.

The re-appraisal of those matches, which undoubtedly Chad and I have been a part of, was to rescue them from the criticisms of the booking that Scott Keith and others had leant on for years. The whole point was that we were looking at the matches, not at the booking or the feud or anything else. It was battling a line that said something like "Ron Garvin, worst world champ ever, therefore he sucks, therefore these matches suck". I think the two things we pushed hardest on WTBBP over the past four years were changing a mindset that went from penalising booking and backstage stuff to just straight-up analysing matches. The two biggest beneficiaries of this "revisionist" mindset were Lex Luger and Ron Garvin. Others who have been around came to the same conclusions independently, some of them some time ago. But to say that the Flair vs. Garvin stuff is now "overrated" as a result of that process is pushing it.

What exactly was the point of this thread GOTNW? I'm really disappointed with the level of discussion here.

I'm glad I took the time to write up the nuances of the different varieties of Flair chop ...

I really hope that El-P and OJ are firmly minority voices when it comes to the Flair vs. Garvin main matches. That's all.

Never again

The Garvin vs Flair stuff is overrated now?

The Shea stadium match is really good. YOU ARE WEIRD, JERRY I took a trip back to Titans #16 to see what we said. "I didn't get the psychology [of Hogan bearhugging Andre], in the first match and I don't get it here either. You're not going to beat Andre with a bear hug" - Pete "I was really disappointed by this match ... I think they have a good brawl in them, if only Hansen was there they could have tore up the stadium" - Pete "Of course, if this match had happened in New Japan, Hogan would be doing hurricanranas" - me "It's disappointing because these guys have good chemistry, and Andre is a great worker, and we've that seen Hogan can get carried by the likes of Bob Backlund. ... I think Andre could have carried his end of a brawl, but it's not what we got" - Pete *huge digression talking about two guys in the crowd, and the use of the term "Shakespeare" for Baron Scicluna / Jerry Lawler foreign object play.* "Scicluna, Scicluna, wherefore art thou Sciculuna?" - Johnny "I think these matches have been fucking awful" - me "The finish gets called back to in 1988 at the Main Even: continuity!" - Kelly "There's an even bigger call back during Wrestlemania 3 ... When Hogan slammed Andre. Because he does slam him. 'Andre the Giant: never slammed!' He was slammed by Hogan! In this match!" - me "I said that in my review were you not listening?" - Pete "I think my continuity point was the more important moment" - Kelly "I've been disappointed by Andre too ... I think Pete was right, they should have worked this as a brawl and they just stood around in holds. Really boring holds." - me "It's because the selling point was 'look at how big these fuckers are ... come see the Giant men'. Really as unexciting as it is, that's what it was about.'" - Johnny "I think Hogan needed to bump around a bit more. I think Andre can phone in matches and just not care. And, well, here he was phoning it in." - me "He cared enough to gig himself at the end." - Johnny "That's true" - me "And they are trying to build it up as two giants, so maybe Hogan can't really go bumping for Andre." - Pete "Yeah, I do actually question the wisdom of putting Hogan in this match with Andre as well. They always do that in wrestling: let's put the one man in the world taller than Hogan in the ring with him!" - me "Like when WCW grabbed Mike Awesome and the first program they put him in is with Kevin Nash." - Johnny "They always do it. Like I've been seeing in WCW in 91, Sid comes back from injury and who do they put him with? El Gigante! Fucking hell, the one guy in the company don't put Sid with, for numerous reasons, is El Giante!" - me ----- I'll stop there. Typical train wreck review from Titans there, but you get the gist.