funkdoc

i would gladly take that bet in any of the classic SF2 series, 3rd strike, or SF4. probably alpha 2 & 3, even, and i don't care about alpha. heck, if you like the EX series, i've put a lot of work into 1 & 3. with GGPO we could even play online in theory, though you would need a suitable controller for your computer. but that netcode absolutely DESTROYS modern fighters' i also remembered you saying you're a fan of board games...if you like power grid we could also do an online challenge in that somehow. that's like top 5 game of any kind for me and i've been grinding the hell out of it this year

i really dig this place, and i'm someone who basically quit internet forums altogether a couple years ago only big issue i have is that will can be really dismissive of legitimate requests (see the "bitch" discussion in the harley race thread). i expect that from various posters, but a mod/admin should be above that sort of thing in my view. this place is remarkable compared to the rest of the pro wrestling internet in handling this stuff, but we can always do better!

i'd say they have a far weaker case for top 25 than hogan or dusty does for the singles top 100. just too much of a tendency to eat their opponents alive when uncalled for

yea, that seems to fit with an outback jack interview where he said khan was the laziest guy he worked with. granted, this was at the tail end of his career when he was just chasing that hogan money...

it's times like these when i wish we had an outlet to talk about things besides wrestling, nice bunch here =)

Been on Shoryuken for years. Was a competitive Mortal Kombat II player back in my arcade rat days and transitioned over to some Street Fighter games when I was younger. oh sweet, that's 6 then! i was a MK kid all the way in the 90s, but got into the tournament scene with guilty gear. funny that i fucking hate like 99% of anime, and yet my #1 all-time game and my possible #1 fighting game are both anime as heck

yea basically i was going for what russellmania said WCW actually did this really well with the US title, when flair lost the world title and immediately challenged for it. his promos really put over how the US title was the fastest track to another world title shot, which is the kind of thing i'd like to see again. re: the mid-90s champs, i don't think jarrett was in the same ballpark as ahmed or mero. ahmed was clearly being groomed for the main event before the injuries & sloppiness caught up - he had a goldberg-style aura about him and was hugely over even though you couldn't understand a word he was saying. mero didn't have that same vibe but stood out to the average fan far more than jarrett did, what with sable and the shooting star press and all.

i will say this much: i could easily see thatcher & his ilk coming off as the wrestling equivalent of fedoras & steampunk. nerds getting nostalgic for an era they never experienced at all, kinda like what MJH touched on. i foresee him being one of the most divisive guys here, possibly...

this one is interesting because it depends on what you consider a "downfall" the IC title was originally held by legit main-eventers, even if they were past their prime a la pedro. then it moved on to guys who could work main events that drew good houses, but weren't the top guys...think valentine & tito. it became something of a star-making belt after that with savage/warrior/bret, and steamboat & perfect were no lower on the totem pole than tito/valentine during their reigns. and even though honky tonk man was far from a top guy, he was one of their stronger draws when he held the title. i guess shawn fits into that "star-making" timeline as well. jarrett really does stick out like a sore thumb compared to all of the prior champs, but i would listen to arguments that the IC title was never really the same after they stopped giving it to established main-eventers.

to be fair, people like bryan & punk aren't really seen as "indie" guys anymore since they made it on the biggest stage i think joe & rovert are referring more to post-"peak ROH" indies, and would agree that this is a major blind spot for this site. i do see a tendency on here to assume that indie wrestling jumped the shark after punk & bryan left, with comments like "indie wrestling is so mid-2000s". there are people like bill & dylan who keep up with today's stuff, but they don't post a whole lot about it here (i know dylan does elsewhere at least) and i would really like to see them do so. not sure how feasible that is with the top 100 project though...

i've always viewed the burning hammer as wrestling's version of the classic Forbidden Technique trope in martial arts movies

what is workrate davey don't hurt me don't hurt me no more

i think flair being picked apart to this degree was inevitable for a couple reasons one, it's kinda necessary for any #1 or even top 10 candidate. i mean, the misawa thread has had some discussion on the style he spawned, with people possibly not voting for him at all because of that. the bockwinkel thread mentioned how boring he could be in AJPW sometimes. the nitpicking is out there for other top candidates, just not with this many posts, and i expect it to pick up at least somewhat while flair discussion tails off. two, let's face it: flair is the closest "smart fan" equivalent to HHH in how much he's been shoved down people's throats by those with influence. it's similar to how much national sports coverage focuses on the east coast and LA - there's a natural resentment toward those areas from the rest of the country, and you shouldn't expect much different with someone pushed as hard as flair has been.

i think the tuesday in texas match was easily better than the mania one, unless i'm getting them mixed up. neither was bad at all though! davey & warlord just had unusual chemistry. a funny side effect of this is that warlord had more good matches than kerry von erich that year...

fun fact for any fighting game fans (parv for sure, matt d & fxnj maybe???): this forum now has 5 people with accounts on shoryuken.com there's nintendologic, myself, pol, broccoman, & mvc2 sentinel. wonder if any other comparably niche forum is that strongly represented on here...

re: the discussing on emotion, i honestly think there is something to the idea of some public displays of anger being less socially acceptable these days the monica seles stabbing was a watershed case in some ways, yes, but i think general drunken behavior at sporting events is more relevant to this discussion. pro sports used to be *much* more lenient toward drinking, up until the 90s probably. bill james had a fascinating aside in the new historical baseball abstract on how bad things were even in the 80s (e.g. a fan falling to his death in the royals' ballpark, possibly from being pushed off), and how MLB had done a genuinely good job cracking down on this stuff in the following decade without anyone noticing at all. for a football example, i'm a browns fan (lawler tie-in!!!). when the new browns came in as an expansion team in 1999, my father would complain about how they wouldn't let you cut loose in the dawg pound anymore like they did in the old stadium. that was only a difference of a few years there (the original browns left cleveland after the 1995 season), suggesting that it may have taken football until the late 90s to catch up with baseball in this area if that example was typical. i honestly think that a lot of those hallowed "displays of emotion" in pro wrestling may have just been fans getting hammered and doing stupid shit. and since wrestling is always behind the times, i bet they were still getting away with it during the attitude era. vince's transition toward "entertainment" likely forced them to become more like real sports here, and that will have a tangible effect on the average crowd heat. regardless, i'm definitely not buying the "death of kayfabe" argument as an explanation for this. the same complaints re: lack of emotion are standard in real sports nowadays as well, so does that mean sports are less exciting than they used to be? i think it comes more from higher ticket prices (the main scapegoat in the media) and the aforementioned attitude shift on drinking at sporting events (which gets very little media discussion). pro wrestling probably isn't much different.

i feel like goodhelmet is seriously going for some strategic voting with all his memphis & lucha guys

with bill on this one whenever i hear people use "bitch" like that i just think of john romero and laugh. it's something i associate with people who never grew up past their teen jock or metalhead phase

he had the superworker rep and a nice run on top with savage that looks better now than it did at the time, plus one of the most memorable gimmicks i think this also speaks to parv's discussion on "ring generals", as that seems like exactly the sort of thing wrestlers value more than we do. dibiase definitely benefited from that!

he's definitely not talking about you. you just value totally different things from a lot of folks around here, and bigelow being high up there makes a lot of sense for you. no shame in that, and i do think ditch worded his post badly in missing that. MOST people who talk up bigelow as an all-time great do fit that bill in my experience, though. i think the LT match singlehandedly made his rep with a lot of people

ah, thanks! yeah, i was completely unaware of this community back then haha, just knew the conventional "smart fan" wisdom

scorpio, tajiri, mikey whipwreck if anyone nominated him...

you really need to see the dan spivey match, perfect counterpoint to that whole argument. luger vs. ron simmons from halloween havoc 91 is also good, if you can stomach JR getting way too excited because HOSSES

i've figured baba would be one of the main beneficiaries from all the new footage we have compared to the last time this was done. will be interesting to see how right i turn out to be! i guess him having such a bad rep beforehand makes it harder for him to gain from that, compared to a billy robinson or verne gagne or someone...

yea, i'm more with ditch on this one. super porky absolutely smokes bigelow too imo, and i doubt i would have him in a top 100 if i did this