FedEx227

Are you referring to this?

It's hard to recognize it as a joke when the person saying it is a know-it-all blowhard who talks down to other people to make himself feel superior.

Seems like a solid attitude to have about the subject/discussion.

I'm a huge sports fan and a big reason I got into professional wrestling was that blend of over the top characters and physical activity. To me, it was sports on steroids (sometimes literally and figuratively) and had all the elements of a sport but ALSO with promos, great characters, etc. Very quickly I was attracted to guys who I considered to be great athletes, guys who jumped high, worked fast, looked good and made me think I was watching high-level sport. So allow me to tackle your questions a bit: How do you define workrate? Workrate to me has always been the action going on in the right. As others have said, I always felt "restholds" or any transitional-type maneuvers weren't exactly workrate. It's very hard to give a clear definition here but I guess a high-level athletic display, action-based wrestling that makes sense in the context of the larger match and the story being told. Is workrate important to you? It's everything to me. As I said in the opening paragraph, I got into wrestling because I was a sports fan and I wanted something similar to sport with the volume turned WAY up. Workrate to me, IS THAT. I define it the same way I'd define a good game of basketball. There's a blend between the Denver Nuggets of the 1980s/Phoenix Suns of the 2000s and the NBA's Eastern Conference in the early 2000s (very slow, deliberate, methodical, etc.) Those are perfect analogies for wrestling and my favorite lies somewhere in between. Sometimes the go-go-go can make your head spin and more often than not those teams don't succeed in the long run. The teams in the middle, the ones that know when to play fast and when to slow it down are usually more successful and provide a more entertaining brand of basketball. I don't see wrestling being any different. Give me match that's paced somewhere in the middle and I'm a-okay. What elements make up a quality match for you, and how much of that is workrate? As I said, I prefer über-athleticism over working methodically, that's just me, it'll always be the style I prefer and it's the style I was attracted to the moment I started watching wrestling. The first time I saw Rey Mysterio on WCW TV (I'm 27, start watching for real in about 95/96) I was blown away, absolutely floored by what this guy could do. He immediately made the last two hours on Nitro look like a complete bore. Why do I want to watch Hogan doing a headlock if this guy is making me go "WOW!" all the time. Sure, there's more to it and as I've gotten older I've appreciated the nuance of wrestling more and more but to me, I'm always looking for the "WOW" I'm looking for the athletic displays. Do we need to move away from workrate as a metric in evaluating matches? Perhaps, but but I won't. It's still the upmost importance for me and why I watch wrestling. I think a great match can cover a shit story but a shit story rarely if ever destroys what I consider a great match. Pair the two together and of course you have legendary stuff but I'll always think a great workrate match (how I defined it), is key. I do think there needs to be other ways to evaluate matches and I think a lot of the guys at this site HAVE done a good job of that but it'll always be my evaluation standard. How did the online communities view of workrate influence you earlier in your wrestling fandom? Very little. As I said, even before I was on the internet I was blown away by what I considered the high workrate guys. As I got on the internet and got exposed to a lot more stuff, it certainly helped me discover new guys but I was already there. Seeing Ring of Honor for the first time didn't sway me to start liking workrate, being a fan of high workrate and seeing ROH made me a huge fan from the get-go.

In case you guys are interested (i haven't been posting these individually) but we have a ton of WON Hall of Fame content but at VoicesofWrestling.com Discussion of Europe candidates with John Lister: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2014/09/19/european-candidates-john-lister/ Mexico candidates with Matt Farmer: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2014/09/22/mexico-candidates-matt-farmer/ Random columns, guest posts, etc: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/category/2014-wrestling-observer-hall-of-fame/

Given that Shane McMahon was routinely booked to be better than everyday in-ring workers in a number of his matches, I'll assume that wasn't all on Angle.

I have no memory of them either. As a note, I absolutely hated Edge in that era so I probably didn't like them at all.

He's going to be a polarizing guy in this because like Bill and W2B, I'm a huge fan as his pace doesn't bother me much. I haven't been in love with much of his TNA work but I thought he had some great matches in WWE against a variety of different opponents. The biggest disappointment is him not being able to have a longer run in WWECW as I think character and in-ring wise he was really starting to hit his true peak. He's going to be high on my list.

Has his absolute stand-out moments and is one of the best working big men of all time (IMO) but it's hard to make a body of work argument with him. He had some REALLY special matches along the way but I don't think he had enough of them.

Yes, W2B is Joe from VOW. I'll guess you'll be joining us on this crusade Shining Wiz. Welcome to the team!

It definitely was shittier in those eras. It's nowhere near it's worse point whatsoever. The problem is, a bad show now comes with another full hour of commitment. My biggest point is it's not that it's so bad you can't stand watching it, it's just boring and meaningless. Nothing matters, a beatdown this week leads to nothing next week, matches don't mean anything, you don't get title switches or really anything tangible that would make you want to watch the show on a weekly basis. I could live with this IF they were instead shuttling important things onto the Network (let's say Main Event is where the important matches were so if you want to see them buy the network!) but that's not happening either.

The "flip" culture was the big deal at the time, anyone who watched it live knows you wore out your PREVIOUS/FLASHBACK button and made huge decisions switching. They did a little bit of the split screen showing what was happening on both shows at the same time but this was only used as a bit piece when I really think you can make a WHOLE episode out of it. You were going to break to combat the other guys, you were booking matches in certain places because of what was going on in the other show. This is a huge aspect of the War and it's completely and utterly ignored in episode 2 in lieu of us discussing Montreal again. I'm done with the series.

The format for this series is so miserable and wastes a potential game-changing piece of original Network content. As you said, the war is essentially over by episode 2 when WWE takes the lead back so now we're going to cover each guy that helped WWE win. This becomes nothing more than slightly altered single wrestler documentaries. Why are we not getting week-by-week breakdowns, discussions of booking decisions or shit, ANY discussion of WCW's dominance for a year and a half? We shoud've known how this was going to be, silly us for having faith that WWE could give some credit to the competition (THAT THEY OWN)

The 3-hour Raws have also made it easy to break the habit. I've probably watched at least a few minutes of every Raw since 1997 because, well, it's Monday and why not? These 3-hour chores have made it just that, a chore. Now instead of, hey, why not it's Monday, it's ugh...it's Monday. That's not good. People can give an hour or two hours to something they may not love but still want to try. Three hours is an awful lot to ask.

I'll definitely give you that, he's been a consistent hand for years and years with very little truly "bad" stuff. I haven't been a huge fan of his work both character or in-ring but he didn't make me run to the bathroom/concession stand. I just don't think he's good enough for a Top 100 like this. Then again, Moondog Spot is considered a strong canddiate while KENTA is immediately dismissed so what the fuck do I know?

The more I watch the gif and her crazy overreaction, I'm guessing it's intentional to make her look like an idiot but the announcers (SHOCKINGLY!) didn't bring that up.

He's pretty solid at both. I've seen matches where it was nothing but garbage wrestling from him then other times, even with the same opponent he's more in the brawler role.

100 was definitely an exaggeration but I'd put at the very least 20-30 guys in ROH above Jacobs during that period. Everything you're mentioning here is right, but it's nothing more than him being a good hand in a number of promotions and somewhat standing out by doing a different style than what was most popular. That doesn't make him inherently great, good or a top 100 wrestler on any list. He also spent a good majority of his early ROH run getting "X-Pac heat" while people laughed and made fun of his awful characters (Jimmy loves Lacey!). The Age of the Fall storyline was a colossal failure afters months of build and even now as a veteran of the company, he's not seen as an ROH legend by ROH, their fans or anyone who regularly follows the product.

Jarrett would be a hard case for my top 100 or really anyone's. He never seemed to excel at any point during his career and while you got reliably good out of Jarrett, you rarely if EVER got "great" or anything. As W2B mentioned, he stands out in Attitude Era PPVs but that's not something I would exactly consider as a feather in the cap.

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Bryan Danielson from Unscripted III Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black vs. Jay & Mark Briscoe Final Battle 2007 Jimmy Jacobs & Tyler Black vs. MCMG Tag Wars 2008 are three that immediately come to mind for me, I liked his late 2007-early 2008 run but that's about it.

I sat front row at nearly every Chicago ROH show from 07-11 and I wouldn't put Jacobs in my top 100 of ROH guys I saw during that period. He had a few matches that I'd consider good but he was totally overshadowed on each and every show I went to and he's done nothing in recent years to help this either. I'd be STUNNED if he made this list.

I think you may be right about the NAO or to an extent DX was probably right up there. Are we looking for a way to discredit guys that were big merch sellers? If so, why? Why can't it be a feather in someone's cap that they sold a ton of shirts? I think its profound aspect of "drawing" in this modern era, especially in WWE where the brand's reputation is so powerful (which makes buys, attendance tough to measure on an individual level)

I saw it more as a tool to build Rusev for a future Cena match (perhaps soon depending on how NoC goes down).

It's definitely tough, all we know is at some point in 2011 he beat Cena in total merch sales. We have concrete numbers on his DVD which show he was one of the highest selling DVD comps ever which is definitely a feather in the cap but yeah, without knowing the other figures exactly. On the other hand, anecdotes have certainly been used to accentuate someone's HOF resume before.

Basically. I concluded as a PPV draw he was above average but not significant.