JerryvonKramer

I do see that too, we are missing a lot of the 1970s footage -- just a smattering really and he doesn't crop up in Japan. There is a 1977 WWF run. To me he's kind of a bit like a Rick Rude candidate with 1980 as his 1992 -- only his 1980 is a smidge below Rude's 92 (outside of Backlund, the Pat Patterson feud is pretty darn good too: Grand Wizard, what a double-crossing so and so!) -- but then his AWA stuff is mostly better than anything Rude has outside of 92, so there they are similar types of candidates to me. But I can see anyone justifying leaving either guy off.

He could have been a #1 guy but he's a top #20 sorta guy instead. It definitely has made a difference. He might have had more #1 votes because of it. Some people see that inability to work as ace or champ as something important. I think most of the Backlund votes would be Keirn's instead. Look at where Terry Taylor ranked. He's not hurt by it, he's helped by it. He massively over-indexes because of working in one of the most visible promotions and being put over as their best guy for so long. The inputs stay the same, but the output matters more to a GWE case. This is plainer than any other case with Barry Windham. He could have been #1, he had all the skills to be #1, he didn't have the career that means he could be a viable #1 guy. It's as simple as that. I am harping on it because "input" seems to me to be a convenient way of looking past the careers that guys actually had. Why isn't Barry Windham your #1? I've said before, that our lists are really pretty similar. My list is also similar to Childs's list and also to Pete's sans a couple of Lucha and shoot-style guys. And in all those cases -- as well as Chad's and Loss's lists -- I've had people on my list in the EXACT same position as any of you guys did. We are arguing about a philosophy more than anything else. Well, that, and why Bret Hart isn't really a top 10 guy.

I'll just mention that Patera's early 80s WWF run is about as good as any heel who passed through and took on Backlund. The Texas Death match is a contender for best MSG match of all time. He's one of the better IC champions of all-time also. His AWA run as part of the Heenan family and tagging with The Sheiks adds to his case too. And he's at least good to very good when he crops up in the other territories before the jail-time, especially Mid-Atlantic. Not a AMAZING worker, but really a very good one for a good 7-8 year time span stretching across the late 70s and early 80s.

How many times have I used the phrase "well it was him, it wasn't someone else". That applies to anyone. The What If stuff means nothing to GWE. What If is Barry Windham NWA Champ 1987. What if is Kawada 6-year triple crown reign. What if is Steven Keirn WWF champion. What if is Curt "Red Rooster" Hennig. There's literally zero point in it.

I enjoyed Danish Dynamite's post. I think is almost unquestionably true. I don't see what's wrong with folks acknowledging how much the environment and presentation may play into their rankings. Booking is a factor in opportunity and presentation that impacts the material we all had to work with. Bret Hart Top 10 All Time is still lunacy in my eyes, but it would make all the sense in the world and be completely unobjectionable by tipping the hat to what's driving it. I'd also co-sign both of those posts.

Patera was my third soldier to fall. I'm a little surprised he finished below some of the other guys I have on my list.

In deep into part 3 now and am still waiting for any discernible evidence that these two are running on fumes. I'm not sure how you did it, I'm usually spent at the three hour mark, can probably stretch to four, but I did not detect any obvious drop in energy or seriousness into the eighth straight hour!

I don't think anyone has had that position in quite some time, there was a real drive to encourage voting across all the shows -- we pushed it reasonably hard on the first one, WTBBP, which was about a month before deadline -- and on here, and on Twitter, and the pay off was 152 voters. I think I recall saying specifically something along the lines of: "it doesn't matter what you've seen or haven't seen, everyone has blind spots, if you care about wrestling just get a ballot in"

You can't mean me? Yeah, didn't you have him like #23 or something?

It should be. See what we were talking about above Dylan. You are actually agreeing with me there. I am against the celebration of mediocrity in a GWE list. Jimmy's specific idea here is about the the alleged great performance in the bog-standard **1/2 house show match. I guess I'd probably say if the performance was that good the match would have been better.

Sid vs. El Giante at Superbrawl I.

Well to an extent they kind of were, and when it comes to workers people really care about -- Ted or Bret say -- it's brought up as a knock on their GWE cases that they were having **1/2 house show matches as opposed to better ones.

I have to go to bed now, but I do have a good reason for believing that. It's because I believe GWE is not about championing mediocrity but about celebrating actual *greatness*. To me the bog-standard WWF house show match is ... just bog-standard. It's mediocre. It's work-a-day. A competent worker like Eadie is gonna be fine in a match like that, but it's not his finest hour, or his worst hour, but just a match he had once. This is where I really draw that distinction. I don't want the GWE list to be a celebration of stuff that is just bog-standard in wrestling.

Well it's more about the context. That's a random Demolition vs. Twin Towers house show match. Not a great match, not a terrible match. Just a match. Probably around the ** or **1/2 mark, absolutely standard for a house show match in WWF at that time. I don't think it does anything for or against Eadie's case. It happened, but I don't really think anyone would ever point to it. It's just kind of there. Matt D might get a lot of mileage out of breaking down that match and that will be interesting to read. And it will deepen our appreciation. I don't see it at all being relevent to GWE. I think this is one of the areas where Dylan and I (maybe, possibly) are most at odds. Maybe not, I'm not sure. To me, Flair vs. Steamboat is a pretty big feather in both guy's cap and is the centrepiece of any GWE case you'd build for either guy. Demolition vs. Bigboss Man and Akeem means virtually nothing to the Eadie GWE case.

This has happened to the extent that guys like Ron Garvin, Greg Valentine, and others, who are routinely shit on by internet fans 10 years ago and even now, will probably (hopefully) rank. This comes from watching footage beyond just WWF PPVs and also from looking for different things. Psychology and storytelling as opposed to it being (solely) action and motion / workrate being one of the key ways people think differently. I don't think we'll ever get to the point where people will rank soley based on 6-minute midcard TV matches or whatever. You can think about Arn or Regal but those guys had lots and lots of opportunies to have good matches. They both held the TV title, for example. Arn was in the friggin Four Horsemen in semi-mains and mains for god knows how long, he was hardly a lower card act. @Jimmy Masked Superstar / Eadie was actually in that bubble group with Iron Sheik, Rock, Undertaker and Adrian Street. They were all on 28 points in the 101-105 range. But Masked Superstar had main-event runs and had quite a lot of opportunities to have good matches. His case isn't bad. He's probably not going to be getting in based on some Prime-time match with Akeem though. I still think it HAS to be more than that. What I get out of the work as an individual is my own critical appreciation. The GWE is about more than that. Something beyond what I, personally, get out of it.

My definition of greatness is, I would argue, pretty robust. Six different categories that take in all sorts of aspects of a worker's career. To me, the definition of greatness that comes from that, is not *narrow* but pretty wide-ranging. I will try to put my last post as a pictorial representation. "Deeper appreciation of wrestling in context" GWE "Deeper appreciation of wrestling in context" GWE To me this distinction between the general joy of gaining a deeper understanding of wrestling and assessing who the 100 greatest of all time might be is quite important. One is critical appreciation, the other is ranking against a set of criteria.

I guess my ulimate point with this is that the stuff you can point to for a guy like Strongbow is *good* for a deeper appreciation of wrestling. It's actually some interesting stuff to think about. And despite my hatred for the man, I have developed a fascination and grudging admiration for some of those long-time mid-card (W)WWF acts. But -- I contend -- none of that stuff matters much to a GWE case. *Good* for apprecating wrestling. *Bad* for making GWE cases. That's more or less my position. Do you disagree?

It's interesting you used the word "effective", because he was much more effective than many other guys in front of that crowd. One of my absolute favourites Yatsu wrestled in front of that crowd and you could hear crickets for him. No one gave a shit. Strongbow brought them alive. And he was able to do it for over a decade long past his prime. I put him forward not as an outlier -- but absolutely as an example of someone fantastic "in context" and who generally always did the right thing in his matches for the situation. Most of the time his job was *not* to have good matches. He could have them on occassion (vs. Valentine, vs. Fuji / Saito), but most of the time he was there to pop the crowd a bit in the middle of long and dreary cards.

But he did exactly the right things at exactly the right times for the context. He really did. He's the most efficient wrestler I've ever seen. So what gives? I really haven't watched much Strongbow at all. Hit me with some recs that are on youtube. I'll point you again to the 1973 match at MSG vs. Fuji. It's on youtube. What positive inputs does Jay bring? Mainly psychology, timing and crowd control. He is better at those three things than most of the current WWE roster.

But he did exactly the right things at exactly the right times for the context. He really did. He's the most efficient wrestler I've ever seen. So what gives? I really haven't watched much Strongbow at all. Hit me with some recs that are on youtube. I'll point you again to the 1973 match at MSG vs. Fuji. It's on youtube.

I guess it depends how high. I had Scott a wee bit higher, but in some ways I do think Rick was the more solid wrestler. I buy Rick on the mat more, for example. Scott also was injured *a lot*.

But he did exactly the right things at exactly the right times for the context. He really did. He's the most efficient wrestler I've ever seen. So what gives?

I'm getting increasingly concerned at the lack of Scott Steiner's appearance. Rick was the first guy I lost. Does this mean that there are *several* people out there who have voted Scott way higher based on the Big Poppa Pump years? Surely not!

I guess my struggle time and time again with this is the very idea of Chief Jay Strongbow and why more people don't champion him. I'd be much more receptive to it if people could find a way to square "context" with also thinking he sucks. The arguments I made for him and Putski were not just facetious piss-takes of "The Matt D view", they put forward arguments that Johnny and others have tried to articulate before about the importance of time and place, and doing the right thing for the context. I realise this is on the extreme end of things, but one way to test ideas is to push at the limits.

I've thought of an analogy. Picture a giant mountain, like Everest or something, and a normal needle that you'd mend a pair of socks. The criticism to me seems like trying to use a needle to poke at the side of a mountain. Putting the needle before the mountain -- when it comes to assessing a GWE case -- seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.