goodhelmet

OK, that is going to play an important factor with guys like Flair, Steamboat, Rick Rude, or even Dustin. I am glad you said that because I was about to break out the M-Pro from '96 and argue TAKA's worth.

Oh you didn't know? Your ass better call... Oh fuck, I am posting wrestling catchphrases. OOOHHH. What about Road Dogg... for the other thread? Nah, just fucking around.

I don' t necessarily mind if these guys are in or out. I just want to make sure all names are considered before we jump in and forget someone that has to be there... like the Red Rooster or Koko B. Ware

Damn you, Loss... I have a write-up of this match and it is a different take than yours in where I view it. I know I am taking alot of rainchecks tonight but I want to have plenty of time to elaborate on this, WCW, the Flair-Funk match, etc.

Fuck, Some Guy opened it up... IN: Adrian Adonis OUT:Bad News brown Bad News was a badass that did jackshit in the WWF. Um.. Battle Royale of Mania 4? Kicked Vince's ass? Adonis on the other hand was a fine worker in his day, was part one of the greatest anges that I think paid off in the ring. Granted, most of his pimped matches happened before 1985 but it is fucking Adrian Adonis!!! IN: Don Muraco OUT: Greg valentine This was hard for me to do but in 1985, and even early 1986, Muraco was the workhorse. His most famous matches occurred before 1985 but he was still integral to the product during the rise of rock n' wrestling. Valentine, on the other hand, was not doing the best matches of his career at this time either. The Bulldogs match from WM2 was probably the best match I saw him in from this time period. Fuck, another one to consider... IN: Honkytonk Man OUT: Jerry Lawler HAHAHA! Fucking kicking cousins. anyway, I would think Honkytonk was more important in the ring than Lawler ever was in the WWF. Lawler was a WWF announcer, not a wrestler. All of his best moments happened in Memphis long before he became King of Puppies.

With my purchase of the Observer, I was able to choose 2 free issues. One was last year's Wrestlemania issue that had a couple of lists and poll results (I'll post thse in a separate post). It also had a great write-up on the Monday Night Wars DVD. The other free issue I chose was the 2001 issue that chronicled the life and death of WCW. If I get some spare time this weekend, I'll type up some key points in the article I think are worth sharing.

Mike Rotunda, Barry Windham and Dan Spivey were also pretty fromidable in the early goings of rock n' wrestling. Also, if you were to include Sgt. Slaughter, would you include Junkyard Dog as well... even though his best matches and angles were with Watts? Damn, also remembering the Killer Bees.

1-2-3 Kid/X-Pac Andre the Giant Arn Anderson Bad News Brown Bam Bam Bigelow Big Show Bret Hart Bob Backlund Booker T Brock Lesnar Brutus Beefcake Chavo Guerrero Jr Chris Benoit Chris Jericho Christian Davey Boy Smith Diesel Dynamite Kid Eddy Guerrero Edge Goldust Greg Valentine HHH Hulk Hogan Jacques Rougeau Jake Roberts Jeff Hardy Jeff Jarrett Jerry Lawler John Bradshaw Layfield Kane Kurt Angle Marty Jannetty Matt Hardy Mick Foley Mr. Perfect Owen Hart Paul Orndorff Randy Orton Randy Savage Razor Ramon Rey Misterio Ric Flair Rick Martel Rick Rude Rikishi Ricky Steamboat Rob Van Dam The Rock Roddy Piper Savio Vega Sgt Slaughter Shawn Michaels Steve Austin Taka Michinoku Ted DiBiase Tito Santana Tully Blanchard Ultimate Warrior Undertaker Vader Val Venis Yokozuna Yoshihiro Taijiri Jimmy Snuka would be a good addition. Also, from looking at the list, Brian Pillman is missing. So is Marc Mero. I only mention him because I wouldn't have Savio Vega in there. Another consideration would be Al Snow.

I'm going to put them in alphabetical order by first name to make it a little more organized.

I think Matt will be recieved much like Jamie Knoble has been. If he has his working boots on and can work a little snug, he should have no problem making the transition. As for his shoot interview, I don't knownhow interesting it will be since he has already made most of the details public and I feel like most of it would be old news. If he goes in-depth about the day-to-day happenings at OMEGA, I would be interested but not if it's a two hour recap of the Lita break-up. As for Joe, I had heard this reported awhile back. I am more saddened that Joe isn't getting NJ dates than I am he isn't working with WWE. At least in Japan, he could still maintain most of his edge while I have absolutely zero faith in the WWE machine to make him look the least bit credible.

I was reading this topic earlier and was having a hard time coming to grips with the question because of the subject material. To me, WCW is a hard topic to discuss because of my history with the company. I stopped watching wrestling around 1989-1990 when McMahon's cartoon circus was in full-effect and NWA had killed my interest with the Dusty booking and lack of payoffs (shortly before 1989 is when I stopped watching NWA). In late 1996, I was working at a nightclub as a bartender and a couple of my barbacks were wrestling fans. Turns out, a few doormen were also fans. I had worked there for two years and had no clue. Wrestling was in my past. Well, one night I go over to my sister's house (probably Dec. 1996) and my nephew is watching WCW. I hadn;t watched wrestling in years. The last program I can remember seeing before this was the RAW where 123 Kid upset Razor Ramon. I also vaguely remember Evad Sullivan being picked on while flipping through the channels. The NWO v. WCW storyline intrigued the hell out of me. Fans throwing trash at the ring. The Outsiders questioning the very company they worked for... or against. The constant questions of who would turn from each side. I was hooked back on wrestling. Pretty soon, the guys from work would meet every Monday night and watch Nitro and Raw. Even though the awesome Hart Foundation story was unfolding, we were dedicated to Nitro and the nWo. This was long before I became smart to the biz or was on the internet... a good two 1/2 years before I had known there was this wrestling subculture that existed. Having said that, it wasn't long before the nWo story became stale (although I watched every PPV from nWo Souled 97 until Satrrcade 98) and we needed new reasons to watch wrestling. I remember those days and remember what it was like to be a wrestling fan and actually wearing an nWo shirt and not being scoffed at in public. By early 1998, I found myself watching wrestling with fewer and fewer people but a change had occurred before this. I wasn't watching to see Nash and the Giant. I was watching to see my new favorite guys on the roster... Benoit and Malenko. I was watching Rey Mysterio Jr. matches since I had never seen lucha before and thought the guy was different than anything I had seen before. I saw the transformation of Jericho from smiling babyface to the top interview... a guy who's segments I loved watching. When I went to my first Nitro in '97, I was cheering Sting in the rafters. In '98, I was loving every minute of the Jericho-Malenko match where I first saw Malenko do the top-rope DDT. By the time of Starrcade '98, I had sworn off WCW for good and focused on WWF. It was easy to do because there was never any resolution to the angles and stories in WCW. The show no longer had the edge. I kept wondering why they didn't push Konnan and Scott Hall (the two most charismatic, or at least over guys) oblivious to the fact that these guys were locker room cancers. IN WWF, I found people still watching the product who I was able to talk wrestling with. I didn't just resent WCW, I despised it because I had invested time and money into the product and it never paid off... ever. The whole point is that I could have been labeled as your typical nWo mark in its heyday but it wasn't the nWo that always held my interest. I would look forward to a Benoit match just as much as I would an Outsiders match. I would scream up and down that Benoit and Malenko should form a team and become tag champs, completely unaware that they had teamed in ECW (which I didn't see until it came on TNN) and had travelled together. This was happening while my friends would point out the painfully obvious position of the marks... they were too small. If the nWo was the selling point, it was the undercard that maintained its fanbase. By the time Jericho had arrived in the WWF, I hadn't watched WCW in months. When Benoit and company jumped, I had already been on the internet and knew the stories behind the scenes. I was happy that they jumped. Fuck WCW and the shitty product. Kudos to my two new favorite wrestlers for going to New York. They had magic in Atlanta for a short while and they pissed it away, alienating its fanbase (i.e. ME!) in the meantime. Like Cooke, I miss the WCW but I miss them from 96-97, not for the actual wrestling product, but for the feeling I felt when I rediscovered wrestling. Now, I am bitter and jaded but not without hope. I am constantly rediscovering matches and promotions that I missed out on and the past has become my future for wrestling.

Are the Robinson-Inoki matches feautured on the New Japan classics? I am really digging the Robinson-Jumbo matches and I am not sure how much of that is the greatness of Jumbo or the talent of Robinson combined with the greatness of Jumbo.

Tim this is the process I use... First off, I have an 80g hard drive, so I have plenty of space to mess around with. -I use a program called DVDshrink. After opening the disc, I am able to extract from point A to point B on any part of the disc. So, for example, I can take Destoyer vs. Mil Mascaras from All Japan Classics, put it on the hard drive. Then, I can take Joe vs. Punk III and put that on the hard drive. Then, I can take Eddy-JBL and put that on the hard drive. Look at the comps in Some Guy's "I Just Copped' post to get an idea. Depending on the source, you may want to compress the VQ from 100% to be able to fit more wrestling on one disc. If you have a disc that has footage taped from TV, I don't recommend compressing it. For ROH and WWF, if you compress lower than 80%, you can tell as the VQ noticably declines. For movies, I have compressed as low as 68% with no noticable effects. After you put the matches on the hard drive, I use Nero to compile my compilation. I upload the matches on to Nero. You can trim parts off (which there would be no need to if you had the right points at start and end in DVDshrink). You can add transitional effects, create menus and your own chapters. Then you burn. A bit of warning. The process can be tedious. In DVD shrink, each match you scan will take anywhere from 2-8 minutes depending on the size of the file. Then, on Nero, it takes another 3-10 minutes to upload it. After compiling the disc, it has to compile the new stream. After this happens, the burning starts which varies depending on the speed of your burner.

OK, Loss, I think you need to elaborate on the difference between working ability and wrestling ability. We've explored the differences ate other boards but some of the guys who don't venture out much might be puzzled if you called Hogan a great worker.

HTQ, you have to elaborate, man. What surprises you?

Damn, that was a quick reply

Wrestling ability is a definite must but I would also consider match quality. That is how the real debate can get started. Some of the better workers have not had the best WWF matches (Owen Hart). On the flipside, you have guys like Bulldog, who were never considered great, but have had really great matches by virtue of who they were in the ring with... or the stars were just aligned right.

I have no idea. I was waiting for the obituary. To be honest, I think he is probably getting it down in print so when Robinson does die, he'll have his entry ready for Tributes Whatever, This is one of the few stories that raised my eyebrow. I had no idea Robinson had that kind of reputation.

This past week's Observer had a bio on Billy Robinson. Well, contained inside is a story where Billy was ribbing Peter Maivia and Rock's Granddaddy didn't like it too much. Here is a word-for-word account of the story in the Observer...

I totally agree that SK is not worth talking about.. except when he opens up his mouth. While people say no one listens to him anyway, you hear alot of people echo his sentiments, sometimes word for word, when discussing matches. I know it has been my goal (and for Loss and Cooke and others) to shift those paradigms.

It's simple. There were many people who dismissed it because they accepted his point of view. In the future, you would hope that people who watched that match, and agreed with us (me, Loss, Tim cooke, Some Guy etc.) would see that the guy is full of shit and not discard a possible good match because of something SK said.

WTF? I won't be smiling.