strobogo

I love Bret, love his mind and approach, love his technique. It sucks that because of how WWE operated, he really only had a handful of big matches with other stars on TV or PPV for his prime, but almost all are excellent and varied. Pretty much everyone has their best matches with Bret. The two classics with Owen in completely different styles, Two classics with Bulldog in completely different styles Two classics with Austin in completely different styles (Personally I prefer the Survivor Series match) I would suggest the best matches in Razor's run only the WM X ladder match being even in the discussion Two of the best three matches of Kevin Nash's career (and they also continued to have great chemistry even in WCW, even at Nash's laziest and Bret in jorts with scrambled egg brains) The best 123 Kid match The best match of the Steiners' WWF run The best match of Bam Bam's WWF run(s) Two classics with Mr. Perfect in pretty different styles Probably the best match of Flair's first WWF run The best match of Piper's career, certainly his WWF run at the very least A lot of really good matches with HBK, weirdly most before either were truly established as top guys. His WCW run was what it was, but there still were some good highlights like Bret vs Flair, Bret vs Hennig, Bret vs Savage, Bret/Hogan vs Savage/Piper which was way better than it had any right to be especially as it involved 1998 Hogan, Piper, Macho with one leg, and unmotivated and also likely injured WCW Bret, of course the Benoit match but there were also a couple of TV matches with Benoit before the Owen tribute that were also good TV matches, a good TV match with Dean, a good Nitro match with Booker, and the aforementioned 2000 Nitro match with Nash which is easily the best thing Nash had been involved with probably since 1997 and Bret's brains were completely fucked. There's a lot of 80s stuff I never really got to dig into because cutting through Prime Time and the Old School shows was just too much for me, but I do remember a really strong MSG or Philly match with The Barbarian, and another with Taker in 1991 that was actually my favorite of all the Bret/Taker matches because I think their 1996-1997 matches suck. I'm going to dig through that top 100 matches and find some new Bret stuff to watch for sure. Bret had such a way of just feeling realer than everyone. It's a weird thing but what has always stuck out to me was the way his legs would lay after a bump. I can't explain it, but others probably understand what I'm talking about and it probably sticks out to them, too. At this point I almost forget about the Hart Foundation as a tag, and now that I'm remembering some of those matches, man what a great.

laughs in gedo

I definitely do not think it is reasonable to hold NJ tags against anyone, and in fact I'd say anyone who actually watches all the Road To shows is a masochist in the same way anyone who watches Raw and SD every week is.

I have a singles match with Baba on the rec list but can't remember anything about it. There were a lot of Baba/Jumbo vs Oki/Duk tags and the two from 1976 were the only ones that stood out at all, but they were awesome. Otherwise I have this: 7/6/79 Giant Baba-Rocky Hata vs. Kintaro Oki-Moose Morowski Recommended and that seems really hard to believe to my eyes now. I must have been in a good mood that day or something.

There's an excellent Baba/Jumbo vs Oki/Kim Duk from 10/28/76 that is just a super hateful tag you'd much more associate with the Choshu or Jumbo vs Misawa eras that is definitely a must see. They have a rematch on 12/9/76 that is around the same level.

Low Ki's "I'll expose my immune system and build an immunity" is less annoying and stupid than "Veganism will protect me", I guess.

It was pretty neat seeing JWA stuff where Baba was just like...a normal wrestler who happened to be giant. And he could really go in his younger days. I'd say he starts to truly start slowing down in 1975-1977 but still is capable of great stuff even in a singles role and then spends damn near 20 years as a more mobile late stage Andre in terms of doing what he does well and not trying things he can't do anymore, but it all makes sense and there are still times even all the way up to the first AJ dome show where he can still be pretty enjoyable.

Of all the listed above, Val Venis at least seems to have the excuse of CTE. Joey Ryan is the most clear wtf are you doing bro of them all. From going dark to returning as a good Christian boy, to then attacking all of his accusers, to talking about all of his co-workers' girlfriends he had affairs with while he's trying to get back into the good graces of the industry, to trying to secretly run a women's benefit show, to then just clipping his Youtube page to be Joey Ryan BOOBPLEXES X with all the thumbnails being him grabbing breasts. I absolutely believe he ends up back in sleazy Japanese indies running a a comedy gimmick as a sexual assaulter that everyone is afraid of.

I love Macho so much I can completely ignore the horrific 1999 run, which is about as bad of a run as any star has ever had. From Memphis to WWF to SWS to WCW, dude was just the most watchable guy in every situation (except 1999) and really the embodiment of pro wrestling in my mind even today. He's maybe the definitive "jack of all trades, master of none" type in American wrestling. You can put him in any situation and he excelled. You want insane Hogan/Warrior style coked up nonsense promos? Check. You need super intense, nasty heel promos? Check. You need serious and somber promos? Check. You need corny babyface stuff? Check. You need cool heel stuff? Check. You need a wild, bloody brawl? Check. You need a high speed spotfest? Check. You need pinballing for a super face? Check. You need sympathetic babyface fighting from underneath? Check. You need hateful bloodfeud? Check. You need melodramatic SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT excellence? Check. You need wrasslin? Check. You can even plug this guy into a hard hitting puro setting and he'd produce good stuff. He's certainly not the perfect wrestler mechanically. He had some weird quirks and his squash match was often literally just a body slam and the elbow which is lol. One of the most underrated aspects to Macho is I can think of few top guys who would let guys hit him with anything. He had Norton looking like an absolute monster in one of the early Nitros, and I can't recall Norton even getting a chance to work any of the other top guys unless it was Goldberg/Giant squashing him. Meanwhile, Macho is out there taking ultra stiff powerbombs and rope hanging DDT/brainbusters for this dude basically completely unknown in the US. I recognize there are people better than Randy Savage, but there are fewer people in the history of pro wrestling I enjoy more than Randy Savage and could easily put him at 1.

It does not appear that's in the AJ Archive so I don't think so. Yes, it's on the rec list

It's been a real loltna engagement considering AEW won't mention anything going on on Impact, haven't even promoted the Kenny vs Swann title vs title match, and the first 3 months had Tony Khan and Tony Schiavone outright burying TNA on TNA's own TV show every week. TNA looks as second rate as ever, AEW looks bad making their new partner look bad, and the only talent AEW is getting out of the exchange is fucking Festus and Karl Anderson shitting up the joint as usual.

All I've seen of Horst was a handful of AJ matches in 1975-1977 and it's now been a few years since I've seen that early into the Archive, but I was extremely impressed by him and now I see he had an AWA run including matches with Bock. Seemed like a guy Inoki would have tried hard to poach and then get his ass thoroughly manhandled like he did against Roland Bock.

I gotta point out that I have Choshu/Bock on the rec list, and at this stage I fucking hate Choshu in anything that goes beyond 10 minutes, so that was a real holy shit Bock is untouchable moment.

Anyway just in All Japan Bock has classic after classic 12/5/78 Terry Funk-Dory Funk Jr. vs. Nick Bockwinkel-Blackjack Lanza Real World Tag League Highly Recommended 12/13/78 Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Nick Bockwinkel Highly Recommended 2/10/79 Nick Bockwinkel (c.) vs. Verne Gagne AWA Heavyweight Chicago AWA event Highly Recommended 2/14/79 Nick Bockwinkel (c.) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta AWA Heavyweight Bloody, Big Time Wrestling Hawaii event Highly Recommended 12/5/80 Billy Robinson-Les Thornton vs. Nick Bockwinkel-Jim Brunzell Real Wold Tag League Highly Recommended 12/9/80 Terry Funk-Dory Funk Jr. vs. Nick Bockwinkel-Jim Brunzell Real World Tag League Highly Recommended 12/11/80 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Billy Robinson Highly Recommended 2/4/82 Nick Bockwinkel (c.) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta AWA World Heavyweight Highly Recommended 2/23/84 Nick Bockwinkel (c.) vs. Jumbo Tsuruta AWA World Heavyweight Clipped, Special Guest Referee: Terry Funk Highly Recommended 3/24/84 Jumbo Tsuruta (c.) vs. Nick Bockwinkel AWA World Heavyweight Highly Recommended I'm up to mid 1986 in the AJPW Archive. I have 29 matches with Bock. 10 are highly recommended. 12 are recommended. The remaining 7 that I have as skippable are all clipped or joined in progress to various degrees. His hit to miss ratio is probably as high as anyone, probably higher than Jumbo/Terry due to there being a lot more and so there are a lot more misses by default. This isn't even his home promotion and the earliest match, he's already in his mid 40s.

Least accessible in the sense that it was much, much, much easier to get all versions of JCP TV and big shows, basically all WWWF-WWF TV and big shows, all of World Class, the glut of All Japan and New Japan TV, whole years of Stampede TV even before WWE Network came around. And even then, their AWA output was very sparring and basically down to a handful of ESPN shows and a handful of major events from the 80s. Also always seemed like there was much less interest in the AWA than other major territories online. It's always seemed to me that AWA footage is stuff you'd have to actively dig around for more than other stuff and what you'd find was mostly from the dying period anyway. I'm 100% positive I've seen more AWA Championship matches in All Japan rings than AWA rings.

It's amazing to me how incredible I think Bock is and I'm realizing I have seen almost nothing of his work before he was in his 40s. Despite in the Flair thread saying my opinion of Flair has definitely risen in the past couple of years, and having seen a fraction of Bock footage compared to Flair, and none of that in his actual prime, I still think Bock did everything Flair did better besides maybe coked up promos. I just need more footage of him. Young Bock vs Thesz or Buddy Rogers (who I also have seen very, very little footage of but to my surprise dude was actually awesome and doing brutal piledrivers in the 50s while Lou was doing brutal powerbombs in the 50s) sounds like an absolute blast. Bock suffers from being around about 10 years too early and staying in the AWA, which has the least accessible footage and worst reputation as just boring old white guy territory. I imagine a world where he moved to Crockett in the early 80s and the first Starrcade was Flair vs Bock instead of Harley. Bock was still putting out excellent work deep into the 80s into his 50s. It's like...imagine if all the Flair footage people most people had seen was starting at his first WWF run. I am always up for watching more Bockwinkel footage, be it against Verne, a Hennig, a Hogan, a Jumbo, a Baba, a Martel, a Lawler, a Thesz, a Rogers. I need it all, brother.

Fenix gets a lot of Rey comparisons and I fully understand that, but he reminds me more of Blitzkrieg where he's purely about doing some crazy shit and showing off his physical abilities and everything else is secondary if it exists in a match at all. Rey even in his physical prime where he could do anything he wanted was much better about weaving in his spots and and selling, where as Fenix is just WANNA SEE SOME AWESOME SHIT HERE I GO no matter what is going on in a match prior or after. Which definitely has its place and there isn't a guy currently in wrestling that makes me hit the Titus.gif in real life pretty much every time I see him, and that's pretty rad. However, I haven't really seen him do much more than that, and I don't feel like AEW or at least his position in AEW really is going to require that of him anytime soon.

Well now I'm going to have to change it because fuck Jim Cornette

His terrible HBK histrionics that he clearly thinks is great acting should disqualify him from anything tbh

This is really something. I agree with all the above comments about it being weird, being too long, it's messy, there's not much "psychology" in the defined story or strategy. All four guys are gassed as hell (Vader especially, but consider that Arn/Flair/young Austin are also gassed and Vader has 100+ pounds on all of them). Around the 12-15 minute mark, Flair goes on a huge string of extremely fired up babyface offense and it seems like it's heading to the finish, but then it goes on another 15 minutes. Somehow they never lose the audience despite plenty of miscommunications, sloppiness, and general aimlessness. In some ways this reminds me of a hateful puro tag match from the 80s, but the second half also has Arn/Flair working as the RNR Express. I don't give star or number rankings to matches I keep track of, I instead use this scale: Skippable (nothing of note or value) Skippable but interesting (little of note or value but maybe an interesting spot or pairing or some other historical oddity) Recommended (Unequivocally good and worthy of your time) Highly Recommended (Absolutely should watch) I would give this a Highly Recommended rating if I was keeping track of it like I was going through the AJPW Archive. It's messy, long, full of flubs or at least weird miscommunications (Flair particularly has multiple times where he doesn't seem to have a good way out of a spot so he literally just falls down, not even the Flair Flop way, he'll clothesline Austin in the corner and then just fall over lmao), it doesn't really have a story in it beyond each side being "fuck you" from start to finish, a lack of a finish. But boy is it engaging and entertaining even in the down spots. I'm trying to imagine anything like this on WWE TV in 1993 or years in either direction.

Gonna be extra lol when Kenny wins both the TNA and Impact titles and is on Dynamite with TNA's head guy and it isn't mentioned.

I actually don't like watching Darby because I always feel like I'm going to see a broken bone on live TV. My first impression of him seeing him in EVOLVE was man this kid is dumb and then I saw him on TNT doing the same shit and now Sting is his dad and I guess that's pretty cool.

WWF jobbers in the Raw era sucked outside of Chris Hammerick doing his bump once in a while and a couple of cool names like LA Gore. Otherwise it's just a bunch of shitty ECW guys and like....Thrasher. The squashes themselves also weren't fun unless it was the Steiners or Yoko killing dudes. Unlike WCW where those jobbers got WORK.

Destroyer stuff into the 80s will not cool you off on him, but probably won't raise him much in your estimation, either. He's pretty much doing all of his classic stuff but there are no stakes to anything so it's skippable fluff altogether. He's just as talented and capable deep into the 80s as he was in the 50s/60s/70s, though. Probably into the 90s if I had to guess.

It doesn't really feel like AJPW has too many belts in the 80s because most of the time they're all held by Jumbo/Baba/Tenryu, usually overlapping singles and tags, so it's not like you'll get UN, PWF, NWA International, PWF Tag, All Asia Tag, NWA International Tag on the same card because they're all held by 3 people.