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The Russian Daydream

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  1. The Russian Daydream
    I think this has been a really fascinating part of the list because there are two types of nominees mixed in here. There are the wrestlers who most of us wouldn't consider but a few people with different views really like, so they get a few votes. There are also the ones who lots of people appreciate and may have placed in their 100-150/200 region but only managed to scrape onto a few top 100s. At this stage it's hard to differentiate the two, though I suspect we are coming towards the end of that section of the list now with most who appear now having been on a fair number of ballots.
  2. The Russian Daydream
    How about the Scaffold match with Steve Austin and Terry Taylor vs Bobby Eaton & PN News from Great American Bash 1991? Scaffold matches tend to be tedious with only a few exceptions but this one didn't even have the payoff of someone taking the big bump at the end. The finish is absolutely awful, where Eaton captures the flag from the heel teams end but neither the fans nor the commentators realised the match had ended. The guys just pretty much stopped fighting and climbed down.
  3. The Russian Daydream
    This is quite interesting because they obviously approached the finish to their matches differently. Kobashi tended to build his matches to a huge crescendo, finishing with a big offensive move or blow. The majority of Hart's finishes, however, whether winning or losing, were defensive. Sudden roll-ups or cradles, like the PPV matches with Davey Boy, WM10 with Owen, the Piper match, the Austin Survivor Series match and so on. I'm not sure which is better but they are definitely different philosophies.
  4. The Russian Daydream
    I had Rick Steiner on my list too, and I thought he deserved to be there. I agree in late 90s WCW he was pretty poor, but in his peak, from about 87 through to 95ish, he was a great character and a very exciting and innovative wrestler.
  5. The Russian Daydream
    I can identify with this. I'm relatively new to PWO and was a little anxious that my list might be the "wrong answer" as far as the community goes. Aside from some fairly gentle ribbing though, the eccentricities that have appeared so far have been largely celebrated for their diversity of opinion. I've also been encouraged to see only two of my picks (The Original Sheik and Dave Taylor) have come up so far. Obviously my idea of what makes for great wrestling is relatively in line with the majority here and makes me very pleased to have finally discovered this corner of the internet.
  6. The Russian Daydream
    Regarding Jimmy Garvin, he wasn't on my list and was never that close, but I do think he might be greater than some of us realise. When I first saw WCW on TV in Britain in 1989, my dad would sometimes watch along with me. He is by no means a wrestling fan but always liked the gobby heels, like the Freebirds, Jim Cornette and Larry Zbyszko. To this day he fondly remembers Garvin's "Yeah, yeah, yeah" routine. So, while he's maybe not that highly regarded by many of us today, he did a very good job of entertaining some people back then, which, at the end of the day is what wrestling is about. On a different note, I wasn't at all prepared for that picture of Robert Fuller first thing on a Sunday morning.
  7. The Russian Daydream
    Well, I was the high vote on the Sheik at 75. I used an amended BIGLAV approach to rank my set and, while Sheik didn't score highly for great matches (although he got some credit for his AJPW stuff which I like), he got very high ratings for the length of his career, his intangibles and for his general influence on the business and other wrestlers. Looking at it now, I think 75 might have been a bit high, but I think he deserved a spot on my list and can live with a Sheik avatar for a bit.
  8. The Russian Daydream
    ??? Who? Jim Neidhart surely. Part of me wanted Sandman to do better. He's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I know I should be critical of him but I do find his matches tremendous fun. He was utterly unconventional but he genuinely was great at wrestling as a crazy drunk man would. I couldn't quite bring myself to vote for him though.
  9. The Russian Daydream
    The diversity of opinion in this process is what I'm really enjoying. Only one of my votes have come up so far (Dave Taylor) but I can see how someone who values different things about wrestling would vote for most of those who have come up. For the life of me though, I cannot see what someone would be looking for in a wrestler that would make Honky Tonk Man the 49th best wrestler they have ever seen. I do want to say that I love that Tommy Dreamer picture.
  10. The Russian Daydream
    I have a degree in physics, yet an online form is beyond me. You have my permission to de-anonymise me, if that is possible.
  11. The Russian Daydream
    I presume I'm also an 'anonymous' too, although I'm certain I named myself on the ballot. Weird.
  12. The Russian Daydream
    I have just submitted a singles ballot. I'm quite happy with the top half of the list, but not so much about the second half. I did a modified version of Parv's BIGLAV ranking scheme because I like numbers and couldn't even begin to rank without some form of numerical criteria. I filled in a spreadsheet with all the nominated wrestlers and then ordered them on score. It was really surprised to find I valued some wrestlers much more than I thought and some who I thought were awesome didn't rate as highly when I assigned criteria to it. Looking forward to the final results now.
  13. The Russian Daydream
    I really liked this. I've been so pleasantly surprised how good Shane Douglas is in this run. He really did seem to have a ton of potential at this point in his career before injuries, egos and politics but his bakes on. He showed a lot of emotion standing on the apron, cheering steamboat on, tons of fire in his hot tag and sold brilliantly. The finish was really well done too.
  14. The Russian Daydream
    I'm putting off listening to this until I've completed my list. I wasn't going to do one but after reading Parv's BIGLAV thread I decided to give it a go. I really like the concept as a science guy it makes things far more quantifiable, so I'm working with an amended BIIGLAVS scheme, where the second 'I' is 'influence on the business and other wrestlers' and the 'S' is 'sustained consistency'. I also made each sub-category within 'ability to work different styles / roles' worth three marks. This gives a total out of 100 for each wrestler which should mean less tie on identical scores. I've not finished scoring my list yet though so I'll just see how it goes.
  15. The Russian Daydream
    This was another fun effort from these two although not as well worked as their match the previous week. I really liked Stramboat losing his temper and slapping Rhodes, mainly because it was so unexpected from Mr Clean Steamboat. As Loss said, it does feel like they were building to a third match but I don't recall that one ever happened, which is odd. Perhaps a casualty of Watts's firing which must have happened shortly after this?
  16. The Russian Daydream
    The crowd really hurt this match. Steamboat's kick out from Rhodes' bulldog should have gotten a pop but it felt like nobody was actually watching. The work was pretty good though and steamboat sold that DDT at the end so well.
  17. The Russian Daydream
    Absolutely. I was at the show in Aberdeen Scotland on the 14th and was really excited to hear of Sting's big win a few days before. It was awesome to see Sting's successful defence live too. I went back to school the next day and told my friends about it and was very gutted weeks later when I found out Sting hadn't held it beyond the end of the week!
  18. The Russian Daydream
    I actually quite enjoyed Sid's promos. They were often quite confused, but that along with his half whispering, half shouting delivery worked well with his deranged character.
  19. The Russian Daydream
    I enjoyed watching this a lot. As has been mentioned, Kawada adapted and worked Albright's style really well, while still remaining true to his regular work. His selling of Albright's holds in particular was tremendous. The crowd heat, along with the commentator going mental whenever they teased a suplex or submission really only drew me in further. As much fun as I had watching the match though, I'm still undecided on he 'good' it actually was. My biggest negative is that neither man really sells the limb a hold had been applied to or a blow targeted at for more than a few seconds. With all the kicks Kawada directed at Albright's leg, surely he should have been limping. Both guys managed to apply some really convincing submissions, which were sold as agony, but then neither obviously favoured the injured arm or leg beyond the initial sell of the hold. This is perhaps a factor of the blurring of the shoot-pro wrestling line, where, for me, long term selling throughout a match is something I look for in a great pro wrestling match. On the other hand, in a real fight, guys try to no-sell as much as possible to avoid showing vulnerability. I guess because this match is a bit of both, I'm not sure how to look at it. All in all, this was such a fun match to watch, which is all that really matters to me at the end of the day.
  20. The Russian Daydream
    I enjoyed this one a fair bit. Yes Dragon slipped a couple of times, and the diving headbutt one was particularly bad, but i don't think it detracted too much, just added a sense of realism. The only botch that really took me out of it a bit was where something went wrong on the tombstone reversal. Liger, particularly has always been very good at holding things together when someone slips up so it was ok. Maybe it doesn't hold up well in comparison to the junior heavyweight matches which came later, but looking at in the context of he time and place it happened, it was absolutely state off the art. The flying body press over the railing was an absolutely amazing spot too. That's one I'll remember. Incidentally, regarding the slips, I'm sure I remember someone saying in an interview that the ropes New Japan used were particularly prone to picking up condensation in the bigger arenas making them slippery.
  21. The Russian Daydream
    Disjointed is defiantly the word I'd use although I thought it was better than **1/2. I'd say it was good but not very good. It was a whole lot better than the Starrcade match from a week or so earlier though. I think really it's down to a combination of Muta's way of working (as Muta) during this period and Chono still adapting to wrestling post neck injury.
  22. The Russian Daydream
    Personally I prefer the Bash match, but only by a slim margin. I especially like the finish of this match as the cross-body reversed into the poweslam by Vader was blamed for Sting's injured ribs back at the very beginning of the feud. Seeing Sting beat Vader with the same move gives a good feeling of revenge. Poor Sting took a lot of punishment in this one. The spot where he missed the Stinger Splash into the railing looked brutal. With Vader's strikes on top of that he's bound to have felt pretty sore the morning after.
  23. The Russian Daydream
    This is a very good tag match with really good performances from all involved, particularly Douglas as mentioned above, where he sold well and had good fire. I also enjoyed the Windham and Pillman team dynamic. They played it as Pillman as the young hot-headed guy with Windham as the calming influence, which we saw a few times here as well as earlier in the Lethsl Lottery match where they were on opposite sides. I thought it worked well and could have been fun over the longer term if they hadn't gone with The Hollywood Blondes instead. This period with Steamboat was the high point of Douglas' career. Working as the younger guy in a babyface tag team was obviously his forte.
  24. The Russian Daydream
    Everything I'd say about this has been said above. It is a really excellent 45 minute draw. The trouble is, it lasts an hour.
  25. The Russian Daydream
    I'm about half way through this but wanted to comment to say it's nice to hear some credit being given to Nikita Kolloff. I would never place him as a greatest ever sort of guy, but I do think he had his moments in the ring and had a tremendous look (save for the crew-cut days in 1988 when Parv is right - he sucked). It always annoys me that Meltzer in particular would never seem to have much good to say about him. Actually, I think Dave Meltzer has a habit of letting his preconceptions impact on his match ratings a lot, like around this time, any Misawa match would start at 4* and he'd adjust from there, whereas he'd go into watching a Kolloff match, thinking 'It's Nikita so that's a star-and-half at best". Incidentally I'd just been watching some Nikita when I first signed up here. I thought he was cool and my wife would definitely attest that I am on of the worlds great day dreamers, hence the name. I'm not some creepy, weird Nikita Kolloff super-fan or something, just to make that clear. I'm looking forward to hearing what you said about Sting vs Vader. It's one of my favourite rivalries ever and personally, I think the Bash match is the best of the 92-93 trilogy.
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