Goodear

Just for giggles, what is his first name because all I'm finding is Death Match clips including syringes getting jammed into guys' cheeks.

By the same token, we then don't use promos as a reason to knock them either. Whereas Kobashi (just to use the same person as an example) may be the worst promo ever discussing how he just wants to be friends with Taue, we wouldn't generally have any idea. I just have to agree that promos should be seen as less important than being engaging in ring with physical charisma which would transcend any language barrier.

I think Luger could be more inconsistent than Hunter and had more down periods but had higher highs with his run in the late eighties and early nineties being particularly good. He certainly had some bad habits like shouting with every blow, but I think his good points outweigh his negatives. I really think he could have carried the NWA/WCW ball at some point if he wasn't always holding down the fort for Sting to come in with a bigger story line victory.

Not that anyone cares since this thread seems long dead but I always felt Bret was better in terms of getting to the final destination of his match ups from a structure standpoint while Flair was phenomenal at filling minutes, I never got the sense that there was a good final plan. Even though both guys could rely on pinning combination finishes, I always found Bret's use more organic, more focused and simply more memorable. I can easily call to mind 7 pay-per-view finishes from Bret's that ended on a combination and all of them were different. Flair's tended to come more out of nowhere and while I can remember that a finish of his was a small package, I can't pull out the particulars like I can with Bret. Now, this might be simply a case of Bret's peak corresponding with my formative years as a fan, but I'm willing to make the point regardless.

I've heard the planning the match argument before from fans as well as professionals and it tends to ring hollow with me. So Savage and Steamboat put together a match that stole the show at the biggest event in wrestling history and I'm supposed to be upset that it wasn't called on the fly? Considering the stage which was beyond huge and the constraints that they must have been under, it makes sense for that amount of planning to go into the performance. I'm sure they worked variations of that match around the horn, cutting and adding stuff wherever needed. And in the end, it worked didn't it? They still had to go out and do it didn't they? If it was so easy to just put matches together like Savage and Steamboat and make classics, people would be doing it. Other than that, I think wrestlers care primarily about their opponents taking care of them in the ring. With the grind and schedule of WWE guys, I'm sure this is doubly important but even Ricky Morton wants to be able to work the next weekend. I think this was the main bone of contention when Lance Storm took issue with the DVDVR 500 back in the day especially when it was loving up on Kawada.

WWE era ECW with Christian, Zack Ryder, Regal's army, the Hurricane-Burchill feud was way underrated. It really went to show how by pairing down the people available and the time you had to fill a week, that a show could really come together in a focused way. Honestly, it served as a proto-NXT more than anything else and laid the blueprint down for what we get now out of those sets of initials. But I'm guessing the question posed has a whole lot more to do when it was a separate entity from WWE. While I think imitators took a lot of ECW did and boiled it down to flabby guys in T-shirts hitting each other with stuff, that there was more there than all the negatives being discussed. This is not to say that those negatives aren't a reality and the idea of turning the crowd into an active character in a show is one of the most damaging things to hit the scene ever. But what ECW really did well was delve into the current culture and counter culture in ways larger organizations have never been able to do. Raven and New Jack especially managed to tie things going on in the music scene into wrestling while WCW had a guy disco dancing (and WWE currently has one doing ballroom).

Regarding the four managers of note at the time: Fuji was the sadist who would always pressed his charges to deliver punishment as we've already discussed. Heenan had two main types of guys. Mindless thugs like Barbarian or Haku who would be blockers for his main charges and his main guys who were a form of wish fulfillment for the Brain. Bobby would want to be like (for example) sexy like Rick Rude and would be a key instigator in the prematch kissing ceremony. You get the sense that Bobby would be like these members of the Family if he had the body to match his brains. Hart tended towards oddballs like The Honky Tonk Man or The Mountie. Guys who would never really be accepted by the mainstream as anything other than deviants despite their success or how much they wished for accolades. Slick was an expression of black power as he reigned over a biker "turned African" and a prison guard/cop. Subverting cultural norms and putting the majority of the audience on edge.

Bunkhouse Buck went from someone I openly despised back when he was actually performing in WCW to a guy I now search out on occasion just to see if there is anything new available to find. The anti-moveset equation, Buck worked the untrained brawler gimmick exceptionally well with kicks, gouges and punches being his only form of offense. He also used a very awkward bumping style that in retrospect, worked with what he was trying to portray. Great facials and physical presence also and who didn't love how he would always shove down a camera man as part of his entrance?

How much of the 'devious' stuff was holdover from his wrestling career? I'm just wondering if it was a case of him just keeping a nickname from back in the day. Granted they weren't still calling Blassie a vampire back then so I may be entirely off base.

Think of it this way, if he called football games, Monsoon would say that giuys threw bad interceptions or that a coach called a poor fourth down play but he wouldn't call them bad players or coaches.

I think the over-the-top rule made a lot more sense when the floor was bare concrete which I'm sure was a lot more common in the NWA when the rule was at its height. It would also make Battle Royals seem a lot more unique and dangerous if you really think about it. It definitely was a throw back rule though and should have been phased out as the business evolved. The Bill Watts WCW era was really good for odd rule changes especially the no coming off the top rope rule which I'm sure was great for the 4 or five guys with top rope finishes like Ricky Streamboat, Brian Pillman and Bobby Eaton. I sort of liked the evolution of the rule when it became 'no knee to the throat' as it was supposed to turn the move into a Memphis Piledriver but it simply never came across as dangerous despite the protection. Someone needed to do a stretcher job or cough up blood after taking it or something and that never happened. In regards to chokes, it sort of bothered me as MMA stuff moved into wrestling that stuff like rear naked chokes were legal when 'choke' was right there in the name. Finally, my biggest pet peeve is when a heel distracts the referee so he doesn't see the faces tag. Not seeing the tag, the referee forces the hot face out of the ring. Meanwhile behind his back the heels switch off (bonus points for clapping) and he allows that exchange. It doesn't make sense. I've been happy to see referees lately then make the heels make a legal tag instead. Lucha libre referees are a whole nother box of rocks.

I'm just not sure why you would be convinced that Fuji was even "bad" at what he was supposed to be doing. Maybe his promos weren't great shakes or anything but I never remember thinking they were bad either. His sadist character which always demanded more punishment led to a built in narrative reason why his charges would lose in the end as they would push their luck rather than just get wins. I thought he had pretty good chemistry with Demolition, The Orient Express and The Berzerker and I never felt like he overshadowed anyone like say Heenan would for his lesser charges like Haku, Hercules or The Barbarian. I never got the impression that Fuji was the one feuding with guys with the possible exception of Demolition after the turn and that made sense considering where the feud ended up at Wresstlemania whatever it was.

Group A: Demolition Smash - I will probably be the odd person out here as Demolition opinions seem to be mixed. However, I feel as though Darsow has a bit more range than the other two as his ability to take on other characters was much more pronounced. I feel as though the transformation from Krusher to Smash to Repoman to Blacktop Bully was more striking than the slower changes Rick made throughout the years. Smash was clearly the highlight of his career and I would put Ax over anyone else from any of the three teams presented in a heartbeat but I take Smash in this. Rick Steiner - The most explosive of the three and really fun in tag team squashes but time has taken the rose off the Steiner Brothers as not being able to get over narratives other than being bad asses that suplex anything that moves. I'm less familiar with his Varsity Club stuff and the fall out there but there was a time where Rick Road Warrior Animal - Probably underrated in the grand scheme of things but I would still take the other two on the list over him. A lot of his strikes were very loose in my estimation (especially his elbow to the top of the head) and his bumping was pretty wooden. I don't think he ever evolved himself in any way which is understandable when you are so groundbreaking but still it will hurt him here. Group B: I'm going to not rank Gordy since I've seen way less of him than the other two and while his reputation would indicate that he would probably top the other two, I don't feel comfortable ranking him based off 10-15 matches as opposed to the probably hundred for the other two. Bam Bam Bigelow I would take over Tenta by a small amount. I appreciate he has a bit more athleticism than Tenta although I question his use of those athletic talents in terms of going to high impact flying stuff without a proper amount of set up. That being said, I think Bigelow has a better match-by-match output with more opponents. John Tenta One of the best elbow drops this side of Greg Valentine, I think from a long view he does better than from a great match standpoint. But I'm not sure you can argue that he didn't do what he did with pretty good execution. Group C: Yoshihiro Tajiri I think of Tajiri as an all time great wrestler with great character and overall work. While the other two have their strong points, I think Tajiri rolls over both pretty easily. 2 Cold Scorpio Scorpio could be a bit of a stall machine between spots in ECW. Obviously a very innovative guy in terms of air born offense, I don't think he has the promo work to match Tajiri which sounds insane and all but what are you going to do? Sabu In terms of structure, I can't stand Sabu as he uses three punches to set up big huge complicated spots. He doesn't chain stuff well together. Group D: Eddie Guerrero Another high level worker who could do everything I ask out guys. Chris Benoit Not the character Eddie was with a more high impact offense. Shawn Michaels - I'm totally not a Shawn guy. Lots of athletic stuff and bumping but his offense was typically far weaker than I look for in a main event guy.

Realistically, a TNA card with anyone WWE fans would care about would just be Kurt Angle bringing in a bunch of old WWE guys like MVP, Bully Ray and The Hardyz. One would have to question if you were WWE and going to bother, why you would bring them in as TNA guys when they were brought to national exposure as WWE properties. Now, if you want to have those guys come in for a One Night Only sort of deal, I think you could get some nice throw back pops in short segments but there is no reason to blow out your own guys to do it. As far as 'TNA Original Talent' I think some of them could get really over in a WWE context but might be better off with a trip to NXT rather than going right into a main card so they can come up individually once they have the style down or there is room for them.

Windham is one of my favorites based on a lot of different things. I think his best attribute was his fluidity which you can see in his lariat and superplex. Austin on one of his podcasts mentioned you could see how athletic the guy was just by how he could get in the ring in one big stride. In a lot of ways he was in the middle ground between a guy like Ric Flair who could main event around the country and a guy like Arn who was an all time great lead in act. He would have excelled in the US title area a lot more if Luger didn't have such a stranglehold on the strap and if the belt was on a face more often. You could easily picture Barry as the US Champion like Luger who would get frequent shots at Steamboat or Sting but never quite get the job done. Barry was also an underrated tag guy who gelled very well in short runs with Arn, Pillman and Hennig but never was in a team long enough for it to reach big time status like we saw with Arn and Tully or Pillman and Austin. It was a shame how much the knee injuries took out of him as he never looked worse than the title shot against Flair as Col. Parker's mystery man. The guy just looked Chris Hero levels of out of shape and was just poured into his tights in a very unflattering way.