WingedEagle

I'm essentially completely on board with #2 as its basically my approach as well. If someone wants to point to some interviews or records where Flair says that Terry Taylor actually laid out their series of matches and carried him the whole way then I'll rethink who's responsible for those occasions, but otherwise its a huge feather in Flair's cap. One of the most interesting parts of this project has been seeing certain folks flesh out why they appreciate a given wrestler for reasons other than being a part of great matches. Can't say they've influenced what I think of a given wrestler or match, but they've certainly given me some different things to think about when watching, even if at the end of the day I liked and appreciate the same things I did at the beginning of the day. #3 I struggle with a bit. A rabid, hot crowd will always make me rate something higher than if that crowd weren't there. But why? Watched a Horsemen 6-man against Magnum, Billy Jack Haynes & Sam Houston yesterday that was just terrific. Billy Jack got to look like a superpower freak press slamming everyone, while we got a nice, long run of Magnum as face in peril with the Horsemen using every heel trick in the book to great success. Yet most of the way the crowd reaction was really just polite, at best, until the close. Don't quite know what their problem was -- morning taping after a long bender the night before? Fight in the crowd? Point is this match was terrific even if the crowd didn't care. Opinions are like assholes, and on this occasion the crowd at this taping had the wrong one. But I still wish I could pinpoint when & why a crowd's reaction does or doesn't matter to me beyond simply saying they got it right or wrong.

I also wouldn't discount the fiery, comeback babyface aspect of his character. Would flip that switch on a regular basis and it could be counted on to succeed all the time, especially with blood.

What about an over-reliance on it?

Curious if perhaps we're not exactly overrating these flaws but rather discussing them too much? Yesterday I watched Will Ospreay vs. Marty Scurll from last weekend's RPW show. Talking about it with a friend afterwards and right after saying it was amazing, the next things I brought up were (1) the general lack of selling throughout the match as they'd routinely move from spot to spot, (2) the limb work that really went nowhere yet was a part of the finish, and (3) how if they were to just slow it down and put a bit more emphasis on selling so as to tell more of a story it could've been a real classic. After all of that I still thought Ospreay/Scurll was a ****1/2, amazing match. It just so happens that its "flaws" were some things I generally look for in a match and part of many of my favorite matches. Which makes their absence here standout and perhaps receive undue attention when thinking about or discussing the match. But the fact remains the spots were so incredible, were woven into the match so seamlessly and at such a pace with such smooth execution that they had me slapping the couch and enthralled the entire time. Its sometimes certainly easier to get caught up in what doesn't work when those are front-page talking points and may distort the fact that they may have had zero impact on the match whatsoever.

For never-happening-in-this-lifetime-or-the-next- fantasy booking, that was spectacular fun.

I should explain that the reason I won't do this is because I hate fair-weather-ism. I need a more thorough-going look at WoS to get a measure of if he's really the only guy to come from there. When we did the album thing a few years back, I was against guys voting on the couple of rap records they liked when they were little more than day-trippers, tourists. Hadn't done their rap homework. What can I say, I have a puritanical streak. I can't vote in an area where I feel I haven't done my homework. I won't vote Hase unless I watch a good chunk of Hash, Liger, Muta, and other 90s NJ types as well. Just what I'm like. Naturally, people can do what they like with their lists, but that's my own thing. My opinion on Lucha really does mean jack shit, so an endorsement for Casas or Cota from me means absolutely nothing. Genuinely how I see it. I'd rather not give a meaningless endorsement. That's one way of looking at it, but I'd simply see it as you found Casas / Cota impressive enough to rank without speaking at all to your thoughts of lucha elsewhere.

Its really true. If you cut the classics and just kept the squashes it'd still be a hell of a set.

An interesting question to ask would be: How many different guys had their best match with Flair? How many different guys had their best match with Fujinami? How many with Jumbo? And so on down the line. I think that's a metric that might help Lawler, but the quality bar on both those matches and those opponents probably lower. How many people wrestled as many different opponents as Flair did in big (could have good matches like title match) settings. Absolutely no one, so of course no one did it better than Flair. Nobody even had the chance (taped at least). With that logic you can also say Flair is being discounted for not working low on the card, in big tags, in brawls. All they asked him to do was main event in world title matches around the country. Which is why others did those other things "better" than Flair.

Picking up with the Best of the Horsemen during the blizzard this afternoon, and its amazing how great the squashes here are. Every one of them has something fun to offer. Andersons destroying some poor bastard's arm, Flair shaking hands with Rocky King after disposing of him, etc. Just phenomenal.

+1 for the Moondogs. Super, quick, violent squashes. Great call there.

YES! Exactly this. Who else could ever pull 3 (in my eyes) classics out of Terry Taylor? Still scratching my head how you found each of their 3 matches so different, quality-wise, but the point about Flair remains. The mileage they get out of that headlock in the third is just incredible. Still coming down from it, rare that I see a Flair classic I've not seen before. Last time I felt like this was seeing the 92 Tenryu match. I don't know why the other two didn't hit the spot like that one. But I do agree that I find it difficult to imagine Jumbo, Fujinami, Hansen, Lawler or even Bock pulling a match that good out of Taylor. I think Terry Funk probably could. You won't want to do it now, but I'd say its worth rewatching the first 2 with fresh eyes when you have the opportunity. The first is still my favorite, very possibly due to the fact that I didn't expect anything approaching that level going into it, but just didn't find the others to be very far behind.

YES! Exactly this. Who else could ever pull 3 (in my eyes) classics out of Terry Taylor? Still scratching my head how you found each of their 3 matches so different, quality-wise, but the point about Flair remains. The mileage they get out of that headlock in the third is just incredible.

I understand the arguments for Fujinami and Jumbo, and interestingly find Jumbo with higher highs and much lower lows. But at the end of the day there isn't enough of a body of work to trump Flair's output across the globe and territories. Hell, he's responsible for one of Jumbo's best matches of the 80s and MOTD contenders with folks who wouldn't otherwise rate near the top of anyone's list. Just too much to overcome.

And working the arm! Second this vote. Just killers.

Don't know where Brie's passions lie as we haven't spoken about it, but pretty sure WWE employment won't be a problem for Mrs. Cena as long as that's who she is.

No disagreement there. Expectations matter tremendously and I generally think people significantly underrate them. Last night I watched the Danielson/Aries 80 minute 2/3 falls match from 2004. Had been putting it off for weeks because it was eighty freaking minutes. Sure enough, I was blown away and thought the match flew by. Just loved it, which I didn't think would be remotely possible. Had Danielson not suffered an apparent concussion midway through the sky was the limit.

Fair enough. Perhaps I was doing backflips over it because I hadn't watched much Flair in a while, but I thought the world these, to the point that the first felt like a potential top 20 match for Flair. Curious if I love it as much the next time I check it out, but have to imagine the series will rise & fall together for me.

Parv, very clear here why you didn't like this match. Very interested why it came up so short with their first encounter as I didn't find it a huge departure from that one. I was absolutely blown by the Taylor series (and am no fan of Taylor's), to the point that if someone pointed to these 3 matches as their case for Flair as GOAT, while not necessarily agreeing, I couldn't exactly say they were out of their minds. The first match had better character work with Flair playing the sportsman before snapping, and then working lots of great little things as the pissed off heel world champion. We also had Flair selling the leg there in a nice contrast, and a better conclusion. That said, thought this match was also a vintage "little things" outing from the champ, jawing with the ref, making sure that every hammerlock and headlock was not a wasted resthold but rather an opportunity to put over the challenger and sell the effects of such holds. Then you had Flair work the arm only for Taylor to pay it back down the stretch. I found those matches a series of brilliant performances by Flair to carry a perfectly average opponent to compelling, MOTYC quality title bouts with enough variation from match to match that if they were presented on TV week to week it'd have been considered a tour de force. Well that's quite a long-winded way to inquire about the comparison, isn't it?

The added hour of Raw also makes a huge difference when creative is lacking. Much tougher to sit through.

Not sure who was into it. Most people I know aren't wrestling fans to begin with, let alone watching weekly TV, but this is the first praise I've seen for it.

I was in college in STL until May '03. No UPN affiliate there. Returned to NY for grad school and watched Smackdown sporadically at that point depending on classes / woman as this was pre-dvr.

Democracy!

I'm not remotely interested in whether a match is called on the fly or laid out in advance. Can make for some interesting stories after the fact but it won't have any bearing on what I thought of the match or the participants.

Three months out from the show Shinsuke Nakamura is not WWE character ready to have a major match at Wrestlemania unless they went balls out on advertising it as an "interpromotional" match with a NJPW star who then became a WWE act regularly afterwards but even then I don't know what kind of hook that has with casual fans who don't follow puro or care about it. Bray Wyatt on the other hand is an established WWE act who the fans know and can buy in a match with Brock. I am not even arguing that Nakamura couldn't be a big deal at some point for the WWE (although to be honest I have serious doubts about that due to how WWE has gone about things and as Goodhelmet pointed out earlier in here or other thread, this is Vince's show, I can't trust that being endorsed by Triple H overrides years of Vince mentality), but it's not happening in three months. AJ Styles has a better chance for immediate success because he's been a major name on the US indies and for the #2 and #3 US promotions in recent past and even him I don't believe will have the kind of impact that warrants a Brock Wrestlemania match in three months. For the masses, that may very well be correct. I'd be into a Nak match tomorrow. On the other hand, after the last 2+ years I don't think 3 months is nearly enough time to turn Bray into someone who'd make a credible and interesting opponent for Brock. In fact he may have a lot more to overcome than Nakamura or any other fresh face.