brockobama

Erling Haaland is incredible, wish he played anywhere other than City. Oh wait Dynamite's on?

It always comes back to the Reds smdh. Hope that Wrestling Heritage site has a full breakdown of football affiliation among the wrestlers, need to know who my fellow hopeless Spurs fans were.

Have a few questions as I slowly inch my way through this footage: -How many of these international characters are just Brits with gimmicks? If it's only a handful it feels like Joint Promotions would've had more foreign talent than any one contemporary American territory would've had at a given time. Was there a concerted effort to put on a more colorful, worldly product? -When did ITV's standalone wrestling program air after WOS was canceled, was it the traditional Saturday afternoon spot or a different time of day? -What's with Big Daddy using "We Shall Not Be Moved"? Very strange seeing this large red-faced Englishman kissing babies and hugging grannies to this anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.

Maybe he just switched allegiance to uhhhh [frantic Googling] Long Island University

Hate to break it to you pal but three of the people you listed are very much not British

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I will concede that he had nicer hair too

Hear, hear

Were they drawing different crowds to television tapings versus untelevised shows then? Hard to tell, from the ITV match listings, how many of these events were our equivalent of touring house shows or if it was virtually all taped and there's just little surviving footage. Fascinating to hear about guys garnering a reputation as "too hot for TV", that's classic wrestling.

Rock did the same thing in the Fast and Furious series right? Man's a born wrestler Was this always the case? Like much of this WOS footage comes from later airings on some "men and movies" block that clearly caters to a very different audience. Surely cultural perspectives of British wrestling shifted around over time the same as with American wrestling. At some point I'm just gonna have to read that John Lister book.

In every mockup I've done so far Necro's wound up in my top 20 or just outside of it. Doubt that's gonna change. There's no way that a guy who's had a handful of matches I'd seriously consider for the greatest match ever could wind up anywhere else, let alone miss my list. Great punches, great bumps, great selling, great personality, all that's missing is more longevity--and I'd argue that his longevity rivals all but the best Japanese deathmatch workers and blows almost all the other Americans out of the water. The style naturally results in a shorter shelf life than basically any other kind of wrestler and I think the guy going as long as he has (including on the other end of a cancer diagnosis) should count for something. But his greatest strength is the intangible aura. Dylan said it best, his work achieves a transcendence few others can equal. The best Necro Butcher matches feel like a life or death experience, whether for being literally dangerous or for being so wholly absorbing. Would also suggest that his scuzzy appearance is his charm. In an indie scene chock full of superior athletes and polished professionals, Necro is the everyman brawler just fighting to survive. As with a guy like Mick Foley, it's this mortal fallibility that helps to heighten his superhuman struggles and prevent them from wading into self-conscious Shawn Michaels territory. Maybe his work doesn't hit you in that way but discounting the guy for his flabby frame (or even his "bad" move execution) should get you laughed out of the room. I'll recommend some more matches that haven't been mentioned yet. His PWG title four-way with Chris Hero, Low Ki, and Eddie Kingston from August '08 is maybe my favorite match in that promotion's history, even over Necro/SD. Another great example of what he can do in a non-deathmatch environment and how his rugged naturalism disrupts the wider US indie style, even among fellow heavy hitters. It's also just fun as fuck. Would also recommend his British Rounds match with Hero on IWA Mid-South's January '06 show, a great bit of bullshit with this country bumpkin getting the best of the cocky, world-traveled technician. As far as hardcore stuff goes, Necro/Hero/SD vs Joe/Whitmer/Pearce from ROH's 100th Show in April of that same year isn't nearly so good as the Cage of Death a few months later but is a terribly enjoyable match more in the mode of a classic crowd brawl. On the same day as the famous Samoa Joe match Necro has a tag with Toby Klein against the H8 Club that is incredibly impressive if nothing else, illustrating how the guy can carry a lesser team through a fun falls count anywhere affair a few hours after a legendarily grueling match. (The tag title switch the following month isn't of the same quality but shows how great Necro is in a feel-good win.) Finally I'd point to his first round meeting with Matt Tremont in Tournament of Death X as a prime example of Necro elevating a promising youngster that would basically go on to supplant his role as the hometown hero of the American deathmatch proletariat.

The jokey, lighthearted nature of the matches and the crowd has made this a bit of slog so far, yeah. I love some comedic wrestling but there's been so much of it, really feels like the """serious""" wrestling is a relative rarity.

Been inching my way through WOS lately. Funny how there's not this widespread orientalist view of the "respectful" British audience, who so far through this footage have been just as quiet as any Japanese crowd I've ever seen. Maybe Chris Jericho needs to write another book about other countries he bombed in.

So really, how much pre-fed footage do we have? Is it just scattered matches I'd find searching YouTube? Because honestly Yoko's painfully short peak in WWF might be the only thing separating him from the bottom few spots of my list.

Reviewed a bunch of his matches a few years ago and came away thinking that he was awesome but was going to miss my list, largely due to some significant down periods in a lengthy career. That complaint still stands but everything I've done since then makes the idea of him not making my top 100 sillier and sillier. Has the scientifically proven best match of the 2010s and every time I've seen him pop up when I've been working on someone else's case I've thought "goddamn is Regal great". This BCC run ten years after his retirement just further emphasizes how much of a presence he has in whatever he's involved in. Lock for the massive, amorphous middle of my list.

Just doing my job, ma'am.

Duggan has been the big revelation for me so far in this process. Happened upon his SNME match with Rick Rude last year when I was working on the Rude case and was amazed by how much I was enjoying this Cro-Magnon American Monarchist bellowing with board in hand. Had seen some of the DiBiase Mid-South stuff when I was a kid just getting into wrestling and wasn't impressed by it so I thought I had this dopey old legend figured out, a big guy with a big character but short on skills. After the Rude match I vowed to do a deeper dive. Watched 60 matches or so over the last few weeks, nothing exhaustive, but it's enough to get Duggan on my list. Before anything else I'll mention that his mechanics are rock solid. He never strays too far from straightforward brawling but within that style he hits all the right notes, with great punches and pinpoint timing. His bumps are in the floaty Buddy Rose mold but I think he brings much more weight to them, resulting in a more natural feel that doesn't feel out of place in a Mid-South bloodbath. Moreover Duggan's deceptively lithe. He spins and twirls well for a guy his size, being more flexible in the middle and lighter on his feet than you'd expect. You watch his stuff with fellow dancer Buzz Sawyer and it's halfway to ballet. (Ballet is an apt comparison because Duggan has a certain girlish playfulness to him, as with the way he swings his hips to set up the three point stance or how he grabs his hair up in a ponytail. He comes across as a big, burly man who's not afraid to play teatime with a young niece and that's very endearing.) He's not often in the position to sell from underneath for an extended period of time but because of this lithesome quality he's always good at it, going weak at the knees after some shot to the head and doing some great "swinging blind" selling second only to Funk. I also love his glassy-eyed expressions when he's down and out, something you see a lot more in his post-WWF career. This gracefulness contrasts with Duggan's overall appearance and that's another thing I really love about the guy. One of the first thoughts I had, watching his early Watts stuff, was "goddamn I've never noticed how heavy his footfalls are" and it really emphasized how much he does in every match to appeal to the crowd. Whether it's in caveman stomping around the ring or little glances (and sneers as a heel) or barking at them directly or "should I do it?" questioning or the ubiquitous thumbs up and HOOOOOOOO, Duggan is constantly doing something to get the audience to engage with this ludicrous, larger than life character. He has an expert understanding of when to prod the people (and why) and when to return to the ass-kicking. I can't say I ever saw a Duggan match with a dead crowd; even with the motley crew of late 90s WCW being the most indifferent towards him, he was able to work his way into nostalgia pops and good-hearted chuckles in those C-show matches. He was always fairly cartoonish in Mid-South but really reaches another level in WWF, electrifying fans in an undeniably fun way. One of the things that impressed me most in this project was something I saw repeatedly in the Savage feud, where Duggan would jerk his head around to look at the crowd after avoiding a pin, showing that he's still alive, and the place would EXPLODE. Man knew how to connect with people. Duggan's commitment to being a cartoon wrestler is perhaps his greatest strength. Both in the broader Captain Caveman shtick and the more explicitly patriotic stuff, as well as in specific gimmicks such as the football pads match with Dr. Death or the oft-maligned martial arts match with Meng, the dude is giving himself wholly to the inherent absurdity of pro wrestling in a way that is very charming. Everybody talks about how his WWF run is so much worse than his stuff in Mid-South but I think his performances are much stronger and it results in matches that last with me longer. In WWF Duggan becomes somebody who can out-hulk up the Hulkster, bringing a more overwhelming energy to that comeback than Hogan ever did. In WWF Duggan can play up to Andre's level, being the rare sort of wrestler whose outlandish personality isn't outshone by a literal giant and instead makes them both feel bigger. In WWF Duggan unlocks his ridiculous comic timing, as with the aforementioned Rude and Savage matches. Arguably it all culminates with the Yokozuna feud. The knockdown challenge angle in '93 is an incredible bit of bullshit and the peak of WWF's 90s warbaiting, being fun (and dare I say stirring) in a way I never felt with Hogan's and Luger's patriotic victories. The man certainly has his downsides. I was always frustrated with how light Duggan's offense was, delivering kicks and stomps and kneedrops that pale in comparison to his punches, with his droopy clothesline being the worst perpetrator of all. It never feels like he uses his size to his advantage; I wouldn't say he's working small necessarily but that he rarely comes across as being as big as he clearly is. In spite of his popularity he can also get lost in a star-studded tag, not just playing second fiddle to the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Butch Reed and Bill Watts and the RNRs but feeling like he's not contributing anything to the match. The one where he's tagging with Jake the Snake against Andre and Rude is maybe the first time I saw him not get shown up in a tag and even then he's firmly behind Roberts in the crowd's eyes. Even more than his in-ring style, Duggan seems like a limited worker in terms of the sorts of matches he can get over in. While I'm no expert on the era, I find issue with the comment about how bad Duggan was for younger opponents in WCW. The initial angle with Stunning Steve is pretty infamous but I think it's perfectly in line with Austin's other feuds at the time, this young loudmouth heel pinballing around for an energetic babyface. Duggan certainly doesn't no-sell against him (or against Vader in his next feud, nor with regular opponent Steve Regal) and if he does so later on it's in his role as a past-his-prime, over-the-top character wrestler popping the crowd. Hard to judge him for not being more giving in three minute Worldwide matches contractually obligated to contain 90 seconds or more of HOOOOOOOOOO. He also spends way more time wrestling the likes of Mike Rotunda, Bobby Eaton, Curt Hennig, Bubba Rogers, The Barbarian, and Barry Darsow than anyone else, so I find the assertion that he was dragging down a multitude of youngsters pretty silly. On the contrary, I think his WCW run added a lot to his case. Early on he looks more energetic and spry there than he had in the last few years of WWF, going back to the Savage feud at least. He's clearly feeling the effects of time, being both skinnier and slower, but he makes meaningful adjustments to account for that; he's a lot choosier with his bumping and gives way more wobbly-legged, wide-eyed old man selling performances than ever before, best exemplified with his taped fist match against Big Bubba and the tag against Flair and Arn. I'm not quite as high on his Vader matches as others seem to be but I really like his stuff with Austin and Regal, two feuds full of crowd-pleasers. Beyond that he becomes a great C-show babyface, a guy divorced from anything too serious but who remains a fun presence centering meaningless matches around a little bit of selling and a lot of shtick. You laugh and don't think too hard about it when he says something like "Saturday Night belongs to me!" because ultimately it doesn't matter. It's the perfect role for Duggan, a guy who was rarely ever a title contender despite his popularity over the years, getting to fool around and be charismatic doing nothing of consequence. Then that's all flipped around with that Goldberg match in 2000, an exceptional bit of wrestling TV. Duggan delivers the most moving promos of his life before and after a cancer scare, building up to a bewilderingly great showdown with monster heel Goldberg who works over the man's missing kidney while Duggan throws the heaviest punches of his career and sells his ass off. I watched that early Friday morning and I'm still buzzing about it days later. Twenty years into his career, half a decade past his last meaningful push, the dude still takes my breath away in a three minute squash match. Don't know where Duggan's gonna end up on my list but there's no way he doesn't make my top 100. He's wacky and weird in all the ways I want out of wrestling.

I've actually got a big list of what I've labeled "ongoing cases", numbering about 30 in all. About half of those are people who would have a good chance at making my list if we voted now but could either shoot up the thing or fall off entirely depending on how the next few years go. As for the folks who will make or break their case in the coming years, Barbaro Cavernario, Roman Reigns, Trevor Lee, Sasha Banks, La Sombra, Bayley, Yuji Okabayashi, and Shayna Baszler seem the most likely picks.

Steve Austin, Bryan Danielson, Aja Kong, Shinya Hashimoto, Negro Casas, and John Cena are the only ones who feel like strong contenders at the moment. The back half of the top ten is a real fluid thing for me. Mick Foley and Antonio Inoki are probably the most likely picks after that. The more I watch Andre the higher I want to put him, which seems sort of wild.

Right now I'm in the weeding out portion of making my list. I started out with about 70 or 80 wrestlers who A. have a good shot of making my final list and B. I know well enough that I'd feel comfortable voting for them if we turned ballots in today. Along with that I put together another group of about 300ish wrestlers who fall somewhere in the spectrum of "I'm fairly familiar with this wrestler and know how I feel about their career" and so far I've been whittling that list down to a more reasonable number. Generally what that means is watching a few dozen of their most famous, well-regarded matches or at least matches from their most notable runs and giving a simple pass or fail grade based on whether they have any real chance at making the top 100 if I do a deeper dive on them later in this process. What I find myself looking for most often are moments of transcendence, which isn't just exciting performances in big matches. It can be how someone carries themselves in a post-match angle or how they interact with the crowd on a smaller show or what they do when a match goes south. What I want is an indication that somebody is more than just a person who learned how to do a scoop slam that didn't kill anybody and was charming enough to appeal to children, something that indicates an exceptional quality of some kind. A lot of times that can simply mean taking me by surprise, subverting a preconceived notion I had about them going into a match. I was watching some Rick Rude stuff recently for this project and found myself sort of wowed by how fun and engaging Hacksaw Jim Duggan was in this random SNME match, in spite of never having any sort of love for the guy in the decade plus that I've been watching wrestling. So all of a sudden he's going on the list of people I want to dive deeper into. In that vein I'm also keeping in mind that I'm going to keep running into these wrestlers I'm deleting from the big list as I do deeper dives into the ones that remain. I think it's useful to stay open to the idea that someone could creep back into consideration later on in this process and not get hung up on the fact that I went "hmmm, naw" back in 2021.

That's the number that gets bandied around for regular arena seating plus the floor, though their site is saying 55,000. I'm sure you're right in that it used to be higher but I wouldn't know when exactly those changes took place and/or were enforced.

My understanding is that it's a combination of a much larger stage, possible legal restrictions that have changed over the years, and the fact that they absolutely did draw more back when the company was hotter. With a capacity of 57,000, supposedly, and the ability to cram people in like they can't today, I don't see 60k being far-fetched, especially for the UWFi feud or the Choshu and Inoki retirements.

Even more so than the bad acting that seems to hamper all of them to some degree or another, my biggest complaint about these 'cinematic' or 'special presentation' pandemic matches is their length. Between the comedy of the final few minutes and the Hager/Page bar room brawl there's plenty of good stuff here but it feels like such a small percentage of what is otherwise an aimless 35 minute crowd brawl with no crowd. Save for that bar room stuff--which itself is walking a fine line between being exciting and blatantly choreographed--the action is never impactful or emphatic, even when these guys are leaping off the stands and crashing through tables. The way this whole thing was presented didn't help, with the production emphasizing just how much empty space and dead air there is in an arena without any fans, something the rest of the PPV had actually done a good job of hiding. I liked many of the goofs here and thought Ortiz in particular shined in this setting but taken as a whole this was no better than any of the hammy, unengaging shit WWE's been doing of late. You could lop twenty minutes off this thing and lose nothing of value.

Do we have any empirical evidence that he is any more of a draw than she is

Adore this match. Simple, emphatic, believable drama and action. It's almost certainly my 2012 MOTY and one of the top matches of the decade. I reviewed this on my blog last year as part of a quick Regal retrospective and I thought that it was the sort of thing his entire career had been building toward.