Frankensteiner

I know this has its fans but I did not like this at all. Smothers looking for fan approval in between every one of his moves killed it for me.

I want to say that happened the following year. I think it was on the 2/3/97 Raw from the Skydome.

The pro-shot version is clipped, but the gaps can be filled with handheld copy. I need to rewatch this but I found it pretty boring and pedestrian. There didn't seem to be much effort.

For WAR, are you guys including the 1/5/94 tag with Tenryu and Muto? I watched it a couple of months back and forget who the other two guys were on their respective sides (I think Kitahara and someone else). I think it's awesome and like it better than some of the other famous Tenryu vs NJ tags. Muto is an awesome prick in this.

Couple of more lucha recs.: Atlantis/Lizmark/Rayo de Jalisco Jr. vs Los Dinamitas (Cien Caras/Mascara Ano 2000/Universo 2000) - 7/21/91 Pretty great little brawl at Arena Coliseo. They started hotter than they finished but this is still well worth it. Dandy/Black Magic/Dantes vs. Pierroth/Javier Cruz/Blue Panther - 8/18/91 This wasn't as good as the previous match but still pretty good. I would include it for the great showdown between Dandy and Panther. This was the week after Panther's title match with Atlantis.

If you look at the Toronto matches, Steamboat/Savage is a poor man’s version of Tito/Savage. I just think Tito was better at working feuds than WWF Steamboat. Santana didn’t have the opportunity to work a WM-type match with Savage, but those tag matches over the summer of ‘86 are pretty great. Santana had a good match with Roberts in Houston. It was a one off, but it’s better in relation to the Steamboat/Roberts feud than Steamboat’s match with Valentine in relation to the Tito/Valentine feud (if that makes sense). If you go year by year, Steamboat is ahead of Tito in ’89 and possibly ’83 (but really on the strength of one match). Every other year Tito wins, imo. If I were ranking them for the 80s it would go Tito -> Martel -> Steamboat, but everyone would be very close. If it were career v career it’s Steamboat in a walk ahead of the other two. I am not trying to denigrate Steamer, he is one of my top 3 favorite wrestlers.

When your job is to pretend you're Bruce Lee, yeah I think so.

Martel/Bockwinkel matches are comparable to Flair/Steamboat, and Martel/Rheingans is blowaway great. I would not put Flair ahead of Martel since he's far too hit or miss (probably in the minority on that). Steamboat would also not be ahead of Martel. His mid-80s WWF run is disappointing. I don't know if it was the gimmick, the style, or something else... but it didn't click. I would say he still had a good run, but the difference between his WWF and WCW work is like night and day. When you stack them up, I can't see an argument for not putting Tito ahead of Steamboat in the 80s either. Steamer had the Flair matches (and in the end had a better career) but when they were in the same setting, against the same opponents (Valentine, Savage, Orton, Roberts, Orndorff, Reed, Muraco, HTM, etc) I think Tito looked better.

I mentioned him page one. There's the concession stand brawl with the Moondogs. You can find that on YouTube. I am aware of the Moondogs feud although a lot of that seems clipped. I was hoping there's more arena footage.

Going from memory I think Regal's best year was 94 though I could be mixing and matching stuff. I know that was the year of the Larry matches and I liked those a lot. Regal's 93 and 94 are better than his 96, but relative to the rest of the field I don't think those years warrant a mention. I do think the Finlay feud was Regal's high point in WCW even if the rest of the year is a little lacking.

In hindsight, I regretted not putting Michaels as the WOTY for 1996 in favor of Scorpio. It really was his year. I loathe 21st century Michaels but that doesn't change the fact that I thought he was a pretty excellent worker pre-injury. If/when I do a top 10 list for the 90's, Michaels is a serious contender for my top 5.

Another name that I don't think has been mentioned is Jeff Jarrett. He was active the entire decade. His case probably hinges on his USWA footage, of which I've seen very little. Is there enough there to make a judgment?

For 1996, what did Regal do after the Sting feud? I thought about putting him on the list somewhere as a HMbut 1996 is probably the only year he would make it.

Since I’m at work I thought about breaking this down by year just to see how it would shake out. What I found is ’92-’94 are absolutely loaded, ’95-’97 is a step down but still very strong, and ’90-’91 & ’98-’99 are sort of the weakest (or at least the hardest for me to rank). I tried to limit the Honorable Mentions to no more than 3 but felt some years deserved more. 1990 – Ric Flair (HM: Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton) 1991 – Brian Pillman (HM: Eaton, Barry Windham) 1992 – Ricky Steamboat (HM: Bret Hart, Sting, Vader, Windham) 1993 – Vader (HM: Hart, Marty Jannetty, Tracy Smothers, Windham) 1994 – Bret Hart (HM: Dustin Rhodes, Steamboat, Vader) 1995 – Bret Hart (HM: Shawn Michaels, Smothers) 1996 – Too Cold Scorpio (HM: Steve Austin, Michaels, Sabu) 1997 – Bret Hart (HM: Austin, Eddie Guerrero, Sabu) 1998 – ? 1999 – Tajiri (?) I’m sure I’m missing/wrong on some of this. I wanted to get Douglas on the list somewhere but was having a hard time thinking of his peak year.

I agree with pretty much all of this, right down to not giving a shit if I ever see another Bret match or not. I was bored at work today and sketched out a list to see if I could get to a hundred names that I think were safely "good" for both the 90's and the 80's in the U.S. I hit the numbers, but the big difference is that with 80's names there were a lot more guys who immediately jumped off the page to me as "top tier" type of guys. With the 90's it gets real thin, real quick. I don't believe this means 90's wrestling was "bad," but it is sort of odd that there are so few definitive U.S. workers from the period. Well, there's way more 80s promotions/footage than 90s promotions/footage. Hence, more guys with better resumes. If you weren't having matches in JCP or WWF, you can go to any number of other places to put on your 15-25 min performance. But if you compare 90s WWF to 80s WWF and ramp era WCW 90-94 to JCP TBS era 85-89, I would take the 90s easily.

I’ve been watching a lot of Nitros from 1998/1999 lately and Bret’s heel shtick was gold. From the promos to the matches, he was consistently the most entertaining part of WCW (which I guess you can also take as a criticism of how awful WCW was at the time). The buildup to the Sting match was great even though the match itself wasn’t. He did have plenty of good WCW matches though with Savage, Benoit, Flair, DDP, Luger, Booker T, Sting, and even Piper. I think his WCW run is disappointing relative to what it should have been. But it’s still pretty good for what it was.

I'm not here to romanticize Arn's 1992, but it's kind of silly to refute one person's opinion with another person's opinion. Plenty of stuff in that 1992 list that I think is underrated and overrated.

In terms of Bret's Coliseum matches, I think the good (v. Shawn, v Flair, v Kamala, v Bigelow, v Luger, v Yokozuna, v Owen) outweighs the bad. When you couple those Coliseum matches with his handhelds (v Flair, Luger, Backlund, Yoko, Lawler, Savage, Bigelow, Owen, a couple of MSG tags), I think the idea that Bret only brought it on the big shows is kind of a myth. Yes, when he was in with Kwang or Adam Bomb he tended to mail it in, but that's more the exception. As far as short matches go, outside of Hakushi on Raw, there's probably nothing that I would consider great. But I did enjoy his matches with Shango, Virgil, and Kamala right after he won the WWF title for the first time. There's also a couple of matches against Henry Godwinn in 95 that are pretty decent with as much as you can expect from Henry Godwinn matches in 95. Also remember liking his IC matches against Hercules and Berzerker from 91. Also a decent match against Blake Beverly from 93 Superstars that was under 5 min.

Atlantis/Dandy/Fiera vs. Emilio Charles Jr/Herodes/Vampiro - 3/17/91 I just watche this. It's not a MOTYC for Lucha or anything but if you are to include the Atlantis/Emilio title match from 3/24, this would be a good setup match to show. Those two guys take center stage and do some cool brawling throughout.

Wait, what? Who's not in it for the paycheck?

Personally I'm only interested in the last two. Don't want to read anything on people like Matt Hardy or Melina or Linda, or beating the dead horse that is Ric Flair's personal life, or the "oh my god I can't believe Dave Meltzer said this in his podcast last night"-type stuff.

I would also like to put in a vote for Tito Santana as best babyface. He's got the perfect balance of sympathetic selling and ass-kicking offense.

Rick Martel vs. Jimmy Garvin, Las Vegas, 1/17/85 I’ve sort of been putting off watching this feud because I wanted to collect the matches in some semblance of order and because I’m not very high on Garvin in general. This took place on Pro Wrestling USA TV and was a good, short heatup match for their feud. Martel got the crowd fired up early working Garvin over and Garvin was pretty good bumping around him. It’s kind of jarring watching Garvin in the context of these AWA matches as he’s so much more theatrical than any of Martel’s other challengers. It seemed there was a jump cut to Martel attempting to escape a Garvin chinlock, which after watching the next match, I wasn’t really disappointed in missing. Garvin got the pin by hitting Martel with the knux but the decision was quickly reversed. Why did they run this finish on their TV after doing it around the arenas the previous month? Rick Martel vs. Jimmy Garvin, Winnipeg, 2/7/85 Looking over clawmaster’s list, I don’t think he listed results for this match. It took place in Winnipeg but it’s not the 12/84 match because that ended on the reverse decision, and it’s not the 3/7/85 match which had Von Rashke in drag in Martel’s corner. So I’m assuming that 2/7/85 has to be the date since this was a bridge in the feud. This was an OK match but I wouldn’t consider it one of Martel’s best from this time period. Because they worked it for the arena the pace was slower than for the prior TV match. On that note, they also worked what seemed like a 6 minute chinlock spot for Garvin’s control segment. They did try to work some escape attempts but it felt like they were basically wasting time and it wasn’t very interesting. Garvin didn’t really bring much here to make me change my opinion of him as a worker. Martel was DQed for throwing Garvin over the top rope after Garvin had done the same to Martel earlier in the match. This didn’t add much to their series.

No, Lawler did the "hulk up" comeback. I don't see how that can even be a debate.

I've heard tell of him having a match against World Champion Randy Savage in Los Angeles that was dubbed a classic "work smarter, not harder" match. Does anyone have a date and can they vouch for this? I'd like to give it a look, it sounds interesting. 8/13/88, and yes, it's good.