joeg

Wow, how are half the indies in the country not advertising their weekend shows during TNA?

I know that Meltzer claims that Funk said that but does anybody have any proof? Meltzer seems to pull stuff out of his ass on occasion just to stir the pot. Anyways I do believe Tanaka has a lot more personality than Misawa.

JvK-- I would argue that Austin's peak was longer than that. I would argue that he was money from day 1. His Chris Adams feud was incredible, that was like in what 87? I'd put Austin at 15 to 20 very good matches and 3 to 5 great matches, two of which I'd say may be all time greats. I also defend Luger with he might be the biggest victim ever of shitty booking.

I think live viewing impacted my ranking of the more recent guys.

Why do all of Meltzer's articles read like my drunk texts?

I think Brody gets a bad rap. I can say with a straight face his match vs Flair in St Louis is probably my favorite Flair formula type matches. I can also say I pretty much loved everything involving the Funks vs Brody and Hansen in AJPW. I know many people find it over rated, I love that stuff. And to say Brody doesn't sell isn't true. To me he's like Inoki and Mascaras, where if he respected a guy or thought he could make money with a guy he would sell for him. If not he would go out of his way to look invincible at their expense.

Confession to make. I have Brody, CM Punk and Okada as my vanity picks at 98, 99, and 100. Don't ask me to justify any of them with anything other than "well I like that guy"

Just stuff on tape... There is a tag in 77 or 78 with Patterson against Strongbow and Robinson I want to say. Best Strongbow match I ever remember seeing. I don't really keep track of matches that I watch the way some people do. So stuff on tape from AWA and snippets of his stuff on tape from other places in the 70s. There two other guys I have on my list based on so few matches- Buddy Rogers at 22 and Wahoo at 36. I've defended my placement of guys like that where there is very limited footage by quoting Jerry West. The first time he saw Kobe work out 15 minutes into the workout he stopped the workout and said "I've seen enough" and walked out of the gym. I mean how many Flair or Funk or Hansen or Misawa matches would you need to see to decide they are a top 10 guy? 1? 2? 3? So it didn't take me many matches to come to the conclusion that Stevens was a top 50 guy.

Rush vs Caristico Mask vs Hair BJW is building Daichi Hashimoto up nicely. There should be some interesting matches with him in a year or so. In NJPW- anything that establishes Kamaitachi as a star, which hopefully I get in the Super J Cup this Summer. In WWE Cesaro vs Lesnar AJ vs Lesnar AJ vs Reigns Joe vs Lesnar Joe vs Reigns In LuchaUnderground Pentagon Jr vs Matanza Pentagon Jr vs Mil Meurtes

I'd love to see you write up some of those ten matches in the Microscope. I'd be really curious to see you pinpoint those elements. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I'd just like to understand. Stevens is a hell of a myth and I'd like to be able to believe some of it. 39 might be a little high considering the people I have him in front of. The thing that stood out the most was how much heat he drew. And I'm a fan of heels who draw insane amounts of heat (I also had Art Barr very high). For example, the "twin magic" spot of the Bellas, he and Patterson would do it because they looked so much alike. It drew that white heat. That some fan is going to jump into the ring and stab a motherfucker heat. And he drew heat with how he worked, not his talking. I'm talking Freebird heat. I also loved how he bumped. He's pinballing around in an era when top guys would work a hold for an extended period of time. His gaga is awesome too, like Micheal Hayes, Jake Roberts awesome.

I had Stevens at #39. I've seen less than 10 of his matches but in those few matches you can tell he's special.

How much footage does WWE have in their climate controlled vault that has yet to be released? I've heard one estimate at over 100,000 hours worth of TV dating back to the 30s...

I always liked his work. He could cut a promo, he had a lot of personality, he bumped well for a guy that was a 300 pounder, and he was surprisingly agile for a 300 pounder. I always thought he could have been a bigger deal than he was.

With all the stuff coming out on NWA classics and the Texas set, etc I sort of expected Gino Hernandez to do better...

Taue is awesome. He isn't the most athletic dude in the world. Actually he always reminded me of Foley in that he had a horrible look and no athleticism, but at least he was tall. I can't think of how somebody could say Taue was a bad wrestler. A bad athlete? Absolutely. But not a bad wrestler. I would imagine that he would do very well on some metric such as the BIGLAV. I would imagine that his BIGLAV score would be in the high 30s to low 40s. Anyways I have him placed in my top 20, right below Hashimoto but above Akiyama who is a far superior athlete.

5 down- Barr (58), Kroffat (76), Sheik (91), Mascaras (92), Yamamoto (94). I think I can come up with a good argument for 4 out of the 5 being in the top 100. For Mil Mascaras my only defense would be "I dunno, I liked his watching him during the best of the 70s project a few years back"

I don't really care what metric you judge. Kobashi drew more money than Hart. Kobashi's best matches were better than Hart's best matches. Kobashi's average weekly TV match was better than Hart's average weekly TV match. So please explain how Hart was better than Kobashi? '

The arguement that Hart is in anyway better than Kobashi astounds me. The idea that he wasn't a smart worker is rediculous. Kobashi may have the best baby face fire up outside of Hogan and Steamboat, which is why I think he worked better gainjins than other Japanese workers. Also aside from maybe Misawa, I can't think of anybody that sells limb work better than Kobashi. I don't mean having a part worked on and selling it for one match or even having a part worked on in the beginning of a tour and selling it for the whole tour (which is something that you will see a lot in New Japan). No I mean Kobashi would land akwardly and spend the next 4 months selling his knee. He would come back from shoulder or elbow surgery and spend the next year selling the arm every time he chopped a guy, he would comeback from a knee surgery and spend the next year walking around with a limp that would get worse after he did the moonsault. He did shit like this better than anybody outside of Misawa. Oh yeah and he was 6'4" built like a brick shithouse and had the most graceful moonsault ever. He did cool moves but wasn't overly movezy. He worked snug but he wasn't reckless with his opponents (with himself, yes). Oh and have you ever seen somebody who was one of the best Ricky Mortons ever when he was the weak link on a tag team and at the same time a better Robert Gibson than Robert Gibson when he was was in the big brother role? And there was a 3 to 4 year stretch where he was probably the biggest fucking draw in the fucking WORLD despite having his biggest run at a time when business was down in Japan thanks to the MMA boom. Bret Hart was never even the biggest in the US let alone the world. There is no single metric by which one could say Hart was better. Perhaps he was a better heel only because Kobashi never had a heel run.

I think Goldberg is a better wrestler than Sydal. You're wrong but you are entitled to your wrong opinion. They are both borderline unwatchable. Goldberg had 1 good match against DDP, I can't think of a good Sydal match. Goldberg squashes could be fun. I wouldn't expect either guy to do well on the BIGLAV. Sydal was never a top guy and Goldberg wasn't much of a draw when he was on top...

And the goal isn't to put on a great match. I think that is the biggest misnomer. The goal is to make money. Putting on a great match is small part of this, but Timothy Thatcher is putting on amazing matches in front of 50 people every weekend so there is more to it than that. Being able to talk the people into the building and get them to come back again is way more important than a great match.

Oh and Kobashi was excellent at selling. the selling of his knee in the spring of 95 is one of the greatest things I have ever seen in all of wrestling. For those 2 monthes you believed his may have legit been hurt in that 6 man in March. Each month the limp got worse. Then, after 3 months of selling a bad knee, it culminates in the most dramatic tag match I have ever seen. All due to his selling of the knee. So I don't buy he wasn't good at selling for a second....

My problem with great match theory is potential that somebody who never drew a dime could be labeled a great wrestler over somebody who spent a career on top wherever they went. Secondly, somebody asked for a list of guys with great matches who aren't considered great wrestlers- Johnny Ace, Yoshinari Ogawa, HHH, Undertaker, Dynamite Kid, Gary Albright, Mil Mascaras, Inoki, Killer Khan, Doug Furnas, David Von Erich, Takada, etc... There are a lot of guys where credit for their in ring sucess is given to other factors.

David Von Erich had a lot of great matches but people around these parts aren't exactly a fan. Whoever he was in the ring with usually gets the credit for those matches. Yoshinari Ogawa was involved in a bunch of good matches, same thing. Takada was in a bunch of good matches, but usually gets regarded as over rated. Gary Albright, Killer Khan, Dynamite Kid, Mil Mascaras, Inoki, Baba, Kurt Angle, Undertaker, Doug Furnas, Brody, Shawn Micheals, HHH, etc. The list goes on and on of guys who were in multiple great matches but the convential wisdom among "smart fans" is that their opponents, or the angle or booking was great as opposed to the wrestler or the match itself.

I really like Angle. But here's my thing with him. Back in like 99-2001, remember the hype that he was to be the next Flair, the next great heel? He was being hyped by the dirt sheets as having the potential to be the greatest heel of all time. For a guy who was over 6 ft, was an Olympic gold medalist, and could cut a good promo, the career he had is incredibly disappointing. I think that is where the backlash comes from. Its that he never really got better after his first year or two, if anything he got worse. There seems with most great workers to be a peak in ring psychology when they've been working for 10 years or more. Angle just never seems to have had that peak. If anything, 10-15 years in, he regressed from his first two years in.

The brawl with Hansen in 1990.