JerryvonKramer

Forgot to mention but I did watch and review the entire When World's Collide card: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31793-jvk-reviews-pimped-matches-from-late-90s-10s/page-9&do=findComment&comment=5716740

Thanks El-P, this is similar to what I probably think about this too. It comes down to a question of authenticity to me.

Dylan wrote a thing about Kenta Kobashi and Shawn Michaels. He said that one reason I was rejecting the comparison was because it might force me to self-reflect a little too much. I think at the heart of that comment was a critque of 90s AJPW from Dylan that says something like "it's not all that different from self-conscious 00s WWE and indie stuff that YOU Parv criticise and rail on!" I could be reading it wrong, but I think that's what he was getting at. I am musing on this, but I thought it might be an interesting thing to ponder: what in your view are the differences between the huge matches between Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi and so on, and the 00s wank-a-thons that I hate so much? A few considerations: 1. Are there differences between the 00s WWE main event epic style and the 00s indy Daniel Bryan style. If so, what are they? 2. What are the differences between 90s AJPW and those two styles? 3. Why DON'T criticisms that can be drawn against 00s WWE main event style also apply to 90s AJPW or 00s Indy style? Hopefully some interesting stuff will come of this. As for me, currently, I don't know the answers. And I'm thinking about the questions.

Seeing Rogers and Condrey both fall has made me slightly uneasy about how this is going to go. It could be that 1. guys short-changed those two because they were seen as tag workers. Or, my fear: 2. We are going to see a lot of 80s territory guys fall in the next 100 and mainstream attitude era and 00s guys are going to dominate the back half of the actual top 100. I really really hope it was 1.

Not in my eyes I wasn't, but my eyes are still my eyes. The system was there to ensure that guys like HBK and Rey and so on weren't just dismissed entirely because of my own negative hang ups "over-indexing". I still gave them lower ratings in categories where fans of theirs would have given bigger numbers. Especially in the G rating, which is where I can register the fact that I think HBK vs. Taker is a bloated wank-off self-conscious epic and Rey vs. Eddie is a **1/2 match.

I understand your sadness but you've been around long enough to know you should always be saving rare stuff off youtube. I've also been around long enough to have lost a 3TB HDD which was almost full of wrestling ...

That's one of the little things I love about BIGLAV, people look at numbers and assume I'm making it a maths problem. But if you drill into it, you'll see my personal takes all over it. Especially the massive low-balling of HBK and Rey.

It took until last night to get to the end of the Charles-Childs epic, and what is joyful is that I now have two more eps of this to listen to, yay!

For what it's worth, I agree with some of this. I think the issue for a lot of us is that he's just nowhere near the worker that the legend would have us believe, and unlike Stevens, the footage is there. He has a sick knee drop though. And is in at least four or five ****+ matches in AJPW.

Which ones are they?

I feel I watched more Stevens than a lot of people and yeah there's nothing there and it was a good couple of discs worth of stuff. Bock carried that team. I'd give anything to see the Patterson team though, anything.

Oh FFS, my fifth soldier was Dennis Condrey.

Dunno, looks like a Bret fan to me.

This was a last minute production call, and I still can't figure out if it is for the best cos the other planned theme tune was also pretty cool. Anyway, I reached the very end, finally, and I guess there was only one real surprise for me and that was the fact that one guy didn't make either of your top tens. I also think that in terms of the very top of the list, just based on all the shows so far, there feel like 6-7 guys who coalesce around the top 6-7 spots whatever the order. And they are not necessarily the 6-7 guys who have had the most press.

I'm picturing Scott Hall, Scott Steiner and HHH all gathered in some early 00s nightmare scene laughing and laughing and laughing.

Alright, I need to see this: I mean ... what is that?

Doing tag and singles at same time is biggest regret from this project. Yeah it really was a mistake looking back.

Our friend in Japan You were the man You can't understand The pain I feel Like a spinning toehold Like an Indian deathlock You know like when Dory falls back on it I'm fucking gutted.

Dustin Rhodes. Better than Stan Lane and Steve Keirn? Yeah, I really do think so. Stan Lane was part of 2 legit great teams, and he was good in both of them, but I think Rogers has better performances in a greater number of really high-end matches. And, just in terms of "input" as Grimmas likes to say, he's just a better wrestler than Lane. Kerin, for me, I don't really see as a pure tag worker. I associate him with Florida, with being a guy like Dick Slater who was seen as being legit and who had those amatuer credentials etc. I realise a lot of people think of him later on in Memphis, as part of the Fabs, but I think there's more to Keirn's career than that. With him, like a lot of those late 70s / early 80s guys it's a footage deal. We do have more Florida than people might think, and Keirn is in a lot of it, but I haven't really come across super-highend matches from him, so I'm not seeing the output really. Although arguably Keirn was a better worker, just in terms of his skills, than either Rogers or Lane. So yeah, I would put Rogers over both.

Anyone ever play that PC Game Cannon Fodder? I used to. Losing guys feels a bit like losing guys in that.

Ah fuck, my fourth soldier, Rogers was my #93. I don't know why but I see it as a personal shortcoming every time one of my guys drops. Tommy Rogers was, in my view, the 4th best pure tag worker in US history behind Arn, Eaton and Morton.

On another note, has it ever been explained why they picked Chono to be one of the musketeers? I guess he does have a handful of great matches (Hase? Rude? couple of others), but did he ever really look like a great worker?

Things I'm wondering about guys on my list now and who I expect to fall before we get to the actual top #100: - How high can Scotty Steiner possibly go? - Maybe I'm not the only one who still rates Dynamite Kid - Who are those other closet Sting voters! - Where are we gonna see Hogan and Dusty, and could they finish top 100? - Can the perennially underrated Hase make it to the 100? - There's also the question of ... Isn't it exciting eh.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential. What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I?

OJ, I think I'm finally going to sit down with that Johnny Powers match from 12/10/73 later. I've read a couple of pretty interesting reviews of it putting it over pretty strongly. It seems like in the NJ lore, Powers is one of the big scalps in Inoki's rogue's gallery. I seem to recall reading somewhere that when they made their championship belt, Inoki had to go through all his old foes and they invited Powers back for it. I'd love to know any more info about that deal. Also, looking for a rogue's gallery for Inoki, I came across this internet page that can only be from the 90s: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~YF7M-ON/erival.html