S.L.L.

If you were aware you were doing it, you probably would've stopped a long time ago. Like I said,I don't think it's something you do deliberately. I'm sure you're intentions are good. Honestly, these are all things I thought would go away on their own, like the whole "80's/early 90's WWF is the only wrestling that ever mattered" attitude you copped when you first showed up here (yes, I know that's a gross oversimplification, but just go with me here). I thought you'd shed some other traits that rubbed me the wrong way just like you did with that once you got accustomed to the climate of the board. But you still have a tendency to post in this overbearing, patronizing tone, and I'm getting really sick of it. So en lieu of waiting any longer for you to figure it out on your own, I'm just gonna say it to your face and hope you finally get the message. I'm sorry it came to this, but you needed to hear it from someone. Might as well be me. Oh, now don't do that. Subjectivity is the beginning of the discussion, not the end. Wrestling is no less subjective than music. Are you going to walk away from the board entirely just because something about defending Dylan makes you uncomfortable? The last time I saw a guy this shook up over defending a point of view was WildPegasus in the Ayn Rand thread at DVDVR. This is not a road you want to go down. You can't let your aesthetic attachments become so overwhelming that they eat at you like this. You say defending Dylan is bad for you. I say being in a state where defending Dylan is bad for you is bad for you. You are not your taste in music. You are bigger than that. Be bigger than that, damn it! This is two separate issues, isn't it? Agreed that albums shouldn't be the only metric, but acts like The Zombies being penalized for not getting the same opportunities as more successful bands...isn't that the same argument we had when talking about Sting as a potential HOFer? I thought we were all more or less in agreement: just because you didn't get the opportunities others did doesn't mean you should be rewarded for what you might have done if things had gone differently. We can only judge performers for what they actually did, regardless of the circumstances effecting them. I think The Zombies were awesome, but I can't pretend they stayed together after Odyssey & Oracle, nor can I pretend they had a boatload of great singles pre-Odyssey & Oracle. Odyssey & Oracle plus "She's Not There", "Tell Her No", and "Whenever You're Ready", plus some other good but lesser singles is a nice little legacy, but the fact that they were probably capable of more doesn't actually put them on the level of guys who actually did more.

I don't want to pick on Jerry. He seems like a nice enough guy, and he's capable of contributing positively to the board. Also - and I shouldn't speak for others - I don't think anyone takes issue to him having obvious answers. I added the Stones, Zep, and Neil Young to the discussion. Those guys aren't really any less obvious than the Beatles or Dylan. A lot of times, answers are obvious because they're right. I think the problem is this: No argument? None at all? That sounds awfully definitive for something that doesn't even begin to look like an open and shut case. It's "GOAT music". Jazz is a different ballpark than music? You can't compare music to music? Albums? Those guys all came to the fore before LPs were the dominant medium in music. Does "listening to all their albums" mean you listened to all their compilations, including the redundant ones? Or does it mean you never listened to Louie's Hot Fives/Hot Sevens? And either way, why would you subject yourself to that much Louie in the first place when.... ....not to mention.... Louis Armstrong wasn't a jazz musician? So other hip-hop fans can't make arguments? Your hip-hop fandom is so far above and beyond that of anyone else on the board that none should even dare discuss the matter without fear of being struck down by your untouchable understanding of the genre? Also, I think he may have broken WildPegasus' record for the most times someone has "left the thread" without actually leaving the thread: Then why did you ever post in the first place? That's a new trick from him. The rest...not so much, and it's showing up in his posts all too often. I disagree with what Jerry has to say often, but I don't object to him having a different opinion than my own. No, it's the tone. Jerry said he's not a preacher, but he sure comes off as one in thread after thread. So often, he comes into a thread trying to position himself as smarter than the room, talking down to us like he's trying to enlighten the unwashed masses, and backing it with an intellectual authority he doesn't actually have ("absurdism" and "Dadaism" do not just mean "weird for the sake of weird", Jerry). The fact that he's still pushing the whole "C'mon, guys! We really have to judge wrestlers' promos and angles equally to their matches!" thing on us after all these years when most would just accept that we have differing views and move on is something I can't see as anything other than preachy, not to mention a little desperate and pathetic. Again, I don't want to find Jerry so frustrating. He's not WildPegasus. He's not anarchistxx. He's not Rob Bihari. And when he says he's not a preacher, I'm sure he doesn't want to be one. But I emphasize the word "want". I'm sure none of the things I find grating about him are intentional, and if nothing else, that's probably more than can be said about the things people find grating about me. But when people complain about me being a smug douchebag, I can't really argue it's without cause, or that I don't deserve it, or that people are being too hard on me. It seems like Jerry is bringing it on himself.

The Beatles were together for less than a decade. It was a hell of a less than a decade. It was still less than a decade. I have no problem accepting The Beatles as GOAT types, because I do believe they were just that good, but.... ...if you're treating longevity as an issue, surely the fact The Beatles really only had a six-year run as a GOAT-level band must open up room for longer-running acts with strong outputs to at least contend. In fact, that's exactly what Dylan did. Dylan never had a concentrated run as strong as The Beatles' '64-'69. He reached those peaks at times, but outside of the one-two-three punch of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, no Beatles-level runs for him. I guess you could give him a '63-'69 peak, a '74-'76 comeback peak, and a few late-career albums like Love and Theft and Modern Times that hold up to some of his better (though not his best) works. Are those unmatchable in music history? Hell, forget comparing them to acts from other eras and genres. Are those unmatchable even just within the realm of 60's pop and rock? The Rolling Stones had a '64-'72 Dylan-level run that hit Beatles-level peaks in '68-'72. Outside of Some Girls, they never did anything after that on that level, but I don't think their record looks out of place next to Beatles/Dylan. Led Zeppelin had a Beatles-level peak from '69-'75. It's tempered by the fact that they released nothing in '72 or '74, but even excising those years, it's a run that doesn't look out of place next to Beatles/Dylan. Neil Young had a '69-'75 Dylan-level run, hitting short Beatles-level peaks on the front and back end of that, and had some really strong post-peak stuff like Rust Never Sleeps/Live Rust and Ragged Glory. Not out of place with Beatles/Dylan. That's three more acts on that level, and I didn't even look outside of pop/rockers who hit their stride in the 60's. They're not even controversial picks. I really wanted to make a case for The Kinks. I think they peaked really high, but it was too short, and their pre- and post-peak stuff was too scattershot for me to do it. But the Stones, Zep, and Young all feel like pretty safe GOAT-level picks that most wouldn't really argue. And yeah, you could argue that the Beatles and Dylan are still better. That's fair. I'd certainly agree the Beatles are the cream of that crop. Dylan I'm less sure about. I'd probably have him below the Stones but above Zep and Neil. I could see the argument for him as #2 on the depth chart, though. Point is, even if you have Beatles/Dylan ahead of Stones/Zep/Young, I don't buy that they're so far ahead that Stones/Zep/Young shouldn't even be considered GOATCs. And again, that's just pop and rock acts of the 60's. Imagine what we find if we actually open our minds a little and start looking at different genres and eras.

Except "X is untenable" isn't an opinion and cannot possibly be stated as such. An argument is either tenable or not. Your opinion has about as much weight on the issue as it does on whether or not the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. Unless, of course, you're a truth relativist, in which case your opinion matters a great deal on those things. But that's an extreme position, and there's no evidence that Matt D holds it. You can't just assume that everyone who disagrees with you does so because of obscure and bizarre schools of philosophy. Sometimes, people who agree with you that objective reality exists will still disagree with what 80's tag teams were good. That's your opinion. And yet you claim to hold no truck with relativism? I expected better from you, Jerry. I expected you to take a firm stance on relativism's merits and the truck-holding thereof. Now I see you could not hold a truck regardless of what school of philosophy was in the driver's seat. You will live to regret this, Jerry. Someday, relativism will get out of it's truck, and do you know what it will do? It will push you off of the roof of Cobo Hall, that's what! And when that happens, don't say I didn't warn you! (Paid for by the Society For a Truth Relativism-Free America) Which it is, but for reasons completely unrelated to Matt D liking Demolition. What I'm driving at - through an admittedly unusual route - is that I don't like it when people feel the need to treat dissenting opinions as suspicious and motivated by something other than just a different point of view. We can argue the merits of those points of views (and should, because it's usually a lot of fun), but to not only outright dismiss it as wrong, but to do so by applying sinister motivations to it that aren't really there seems borderline insane.

Except "X is untenable" isn't an opinion and cannot possibly be stated as such. An argument is either tenable or not. Your opinion has about as much weight on the issue as it does on whether or not the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. Unless, of course, you're a truth relativist, in which case your opinion matters a great deal on those things. But that's an extreme position, and there's no evidence that Matt D holds it. You can't just assume that everyone who disagrees with you does so because of obscure and bizarre schools of philosophy. Sometimes, people who agree with you that objective reality exists will still disagree with what 80's tag teams were good.

That's literally the exact opposite of how relativism works. Relativism holds that are no absolute truths. "X is untenable" is an absolute truth, and has no place in relativism.

You know, I've said a few times now that most of the problems Jerry faces in his arguments are semantic ones, and really, this is the case here yet again. But it is different in one respect, in that Jerry's previous semantic misunderstandings made him seem like a guy who just plain didn't understand the terminology he was using (his claim that "psychology" meant "psyching out your opponent", for example...I'm reminded of an old Daily Show sketch where Steve Carrell thought "keeping hydrated" meant "inhaling hydrogen"). But here, it's purely a matter of the context of how those terms are used. "Good/great/best wrestler" as Jerry defines it is not defined incorrectly at all. The problem is that he's wandered onto a board that - not unlike many internet wrestling message boards - frequently uses the term "good/great/best wrestler" interchangeably with "good/great/best worker", and that alternate definition is used so often that everyone here understands and accepts it, even though they know it's not the only definition, even though they don't dispute the value of the other definition, and even though they use that alternate definition themselves in things like HOF discussions and whatnot. I think if Jerry could learn to distinguish between "good/great/best wrestler (all things considered)" and "good/great/best wrestler (in-ring)", a lot of his problems with this issue would go away.

This. EDIT: And that's not me tapping out, it's me saying I've seen enough wrestling to know what Loss is saying is 100% true and very well thought out. I'll also mention that I love Bobby Eaton and think he was a great worker for all the reasons you mention; my point was that Corny helped to get him over and put him in a position where he would not be wasted. I don't believe that he would have had the success he did without a great manager like that -- as jdw says they were a great unit. But this is swings and roundabouts, I think we're on the same page. EDIT 2: I did also want to say that I know it can appear sometimes that I'm arguing that non-wrestling aspects are the draw too. I don't believe that. The in-ring element is the ONLY indispensable part. Promos aren't the be all and end all, for all the reasons you mention. Also, I have a tendency to overlook or temporarily forget some of the clusterfuck shit the WWF/E pulled after the Attitude Era. That "forced" quality is one of the reasons I stopped watching -- that, and the 15-minute HHH promos that go nowhere. By the time he's made his entrance, spat water everywhere, and then made material that would have been okay for a 1-minute insert promo last for an entire segment, I've had enough. I am absolutely with you that wrestling and the wrestlers are the draw, not the shit. My point was only ever that "the shit" can help and shouldn't be overlooked, that it's part of a bigger picture and we should look at that bigger picture if at all possible. My mindset as a fan is stuck in the 80s and pre-attitude era 90s. That's all I've watched for a long time now. "The shit" can also be a hindrance if the bookers get the wrong-headed idea that that is solely what people are tuning in for. This post saved me from having to write a very long and angry screed about how you still don't get the point behind my objection to your argument after all this time. Apparently, you get it just fine. Understand, my objection has never been that the non-wrestling parts of wrestling are unimportant or not interesting to me. I'd never say that. It's simply not true. What I object to is that you try to build up the importance of interviews/angles/etc. by tearing down the importance of matches. As you say, the match is the only indispensable part of wrestling. I'm sure you can understand why a lot of us prize some indispensable over something dispensable, even if we like the dispensable thing, too. At it's most basic level, it provides wrestling - as a medium of entertainment - with it's identity, and all the other cool stuff that gets piled on top of it really only works because it's backed by wrestling matches. So when you start saying things like "you can judge WWF DiBiase without looking at his matches at all," it's just not gonna stand up to scrutiny. But I think that, at it's heart, your opinion is a viable one, even if I don't subscribe to it. And if you will respect my opinion, I will be more than happy to respect yours.

Were weight divisions ever needed in the first place? It's just another tool to be used well or used poorly or not used at all as promoters see fit. The concept itself is completely value neutral as far as I'm concerned.

Jerry, you completely ignore that the entire business model of wrestling in the 80s was to get people to the house shows. The skits, characters, bad acting, lame storylines... all there, even in Vinnie Mac Land, to get people to watch the house shows. If the wrestling part was so unimportant to Vince, he wouldn't have guys working 300+ days a year, many times without months off (if you believe the wrestlers). Wrestling matches were very much a part of his product and the whole purpose of all of the fluff was to get people to go watch the MATCHES at the house shows. If the skits and interviews and vignettes were the most important part of Vince's world, they would have had skit heavy and promo heavy house shows. They didn't. The TV existed as one long infomercial for the house shows. Don't forget PPVs. Last I checked, Mania III was headlined by the Hogan/Andre match, not the Hogan/Andre contract signing. Vince cared so much about the angle and so little about the match that he gave the former away for free on TV and made you pay for the latter.......what? So...you agree with me? Because that's basically what I was trying to argue - that wrestling is it's own thing not comparable to Citizen Kane or Dallas because ultimately, they get in the ring. If them getting in the ring is unimportant, it's just another TV show. DiBiase is not Orson Welles. He's not Larry Hagman. He's not even Paul Ruebens. His schtick is not enough to warrant my interest unless it's backed by fistdrops and powerslams. It's like he's wrestling gold, and you're Richard Nixon trying to change the standard.

I know I made that post less than 24 hours ago, but I'm a little sad nobody made a joke about people on this board overrating Kane. Anyway.... I'm afraid it's already veered into absurdity if you're seriously going to argue that kook and kitsch are qualities wholly unique to pro wrestling. Pee-Wee's Playhouse ran from 1986 to 1991, pretty much spanning DiBiase's entire run as a singles star in the WWF. If I'm in it for kook and kitsch and not something else, what does Ted - or really any wrestler - have to offer that Pee-Wee can't match or beat? He's a better actor, he's funnier, he's more creative, his show is more visually dynamic....the only advantages Ted has are what he does in the ring. So if I'm not supposed to judge him based on what he does in the ring, there's really not much reason to invest in Ted unless I really need my kitsch to have an evil rich guy...in which case I will watch Dallas, thank you very much. No, a mental position is saying that any successful wrestling pro wrestling promotion ever took the focus so far away from the ring that one could - nevermind should - judge a wrestler's worth without taking their ringwork into consideration at all. That is a huge misreading of what was going on in the Rock 'N' Wrestling era. The fact that the WWF in that period didn't run very smark-friendly shows in no way means that the matches weren't critical. But even if I accept that idea, the fact remains that the defining feature of wrestling as a genre is wrestling. If you dismiss the wrestling from wrestling, you're left with just another TV show. There's nothing shielding it from comparisons to every other form of entertainment, because it's not doing anything different from them. It's just doing what they do, only worse. If I'm not supposed to judge Million Dollar Man-era Ted based on what he does in the ring, then I have to judge him as an actor. And as an actor, he's no Orson Welles. That...is not apparent from your writing at all, but OK.

He must have forgotten to call the fans idiots.

They're both fruit. I don't expect the exact same things from a comedy film as I do a drama, but I do expect both of them to be good. If the expectation I'm supposed to have of a genre is that it's going to suck...then the genre sucks. And yeah, I know, we're supposed to watch it for the "entertainment"...you know what I think is really, really entertaining? Good wrestling matches. And that's not to say there aren't a lot of other things in wrestling that entertain me, but I can get those things from every other form of entertainment in existence, and almost all of them do those things better. I mean, if all I wanted was to watch a rich asshole talk about how great he was and treat everyone around him like shit in an entertaining matter, why would I waste my time with this guy.... ....when I could be watching this guy.... Ted DiBiase is simply not as compelling of an actor as Orson Welles, so if I'm gonna give a shit about him, he has to provide me with something Welles doesn't. And as it happens, I've never seen Welles break out a fistdrop as pretty as DiBiase's, nor a powerslam as slick as DiBiase's. Ted DiBiase fills a hole in my entertainment world that Citizen Kane cannot. But he didn't do it through technical wrestling, and more to the point, even we accepted your premise that Hogan-era WWF should be judged primarily on non-match elements, I'm not sure how that proves anything about DiBiase being a technician. What, because being a technician was part of his character? OK, I guess, but that tells us less than nothing about what Ted's actual value as a wrestler was and why. Understand that when Will says Ted was a brawler and not a technician, he is looking to make a slightly more insightful comment than "Stan Hansen is a cowboy and not a mummy".

One thing I should say for Brody - particularly in regards to how his death effected public perception of him - is that that last year or so run in World Class is by far his best run of his career in-ring in my opinion, because he seemed a lot less focused on just getting himself over and was more willing to be a team player. The main example I always point to was a great match against Buzz Sawyer. He wasn't afraid to lay around in holds for a while at certain points, but his offense looked good and, more significantly, he gave Sawyer way more than you would ever expect him to. And that's the case for a lot of what he did there at the time. Nothing that screams "GREATEST BRAWLER EVER!", but he came off as a good hand, which is more than I can say for him anywhere else in his career. I bring this up, because the natural inclination is to look at Brody's overhyped career and assume that, had he not been murdered, his bad attitude, shitty work, and advancing age would've sunk his career in the post-territorial era. But for all of Brody's faults, he doesn't strike me as having been a stupid man. Honestly, part of me wonders if, had he lived, Brody would've seen the writing on the wall and dialed back his shenanigans accordingly, if only to keep himself employable, in which case, even without his post-mortem mytholgization, he probably still gets legend status from Meltzer and the like. I think that status only really falls if he lives AND fails to maintain a viable career into the 90's, in which case he becomes forgotten/only remembered for a lousy late career by a lot of fans, and doesn't have guys like us who go back and watch old stuff to save him, because his old stuff sucked, too.

Also also, since when does being good at one thing preclude you from being good at another thing? No one's saying DiBiase wasn't a great technician because he was a great brawler instead, they're saying he wasn't a great technician and he was a great brawler instead. If he was a great technician, he'd be acknowledged as being that and a great brawler, because he'd have proven himself to be great at both. He didn't, so he doesn't. This doesn't really seem all that complicated to me.

I thought the really telling thing with them was watching how the Commonwealth angle in Southwest played out. There was a short run in there where Luke was on his own, and he's actual a really exciting, violent brawler. And then Butch shows up...and he's not. At all. And they start teaming, and Luke starts working down to Butch's level. Really weird thing to find out about two guys I used to not be able to tell apart at all. As to the topic at hand..."really dislike" is probably too strong a term, but I was always very "meh" towards Bull Nakano. I honestly can't put my finger on why that is, but her work leaves me cold in ways that, say, Aja Kong's doesn't.

His finisher is "whatever he does after the 619 this week", so it's ultimately besides the point. I don't know if you are criticizing the multiple finishers or praising it but that is one of the things I love about WWE Rey. It wasn't a value judgement, just a statement of fact. Though, if I were to make a value judgement, I'd say I like it, too. It's just kind of an unusual way to go about things. Off the top of my head, I don't know if it's an approach ever done before Rey, or after, for that matter. But it is what it is, and it works or me.

His finisher is "whatever he does after the 619 this week", so it's ultimately besides the point.

F4Wonline.com: But, of course, he's best known to me for this.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFJDLb9c7kE Rest in peace.

The problem with this line of thinking is that adults tend to be more stable in their viewing and purchasing habits. Children, on the other hand, are more likely to follow the latest fad. In fact, that's largely what has happened. I'm even less sympathetic to this point. TV Tropes' entry "What Do You Mean It's For Kids?" is really about two different concepts, but the one I'm pointing to here is this: Frustratingly for me, just about every example they actually cite is for the other definition (kid's shows with questionable content...admittedly something wrestling would also fit even at it's most kid-friendly), but if you're capable of objective thought, you're probably capable of seeing how wrestling fits the first definition. I've seen more than a few revisionist historians try to convince me that the thing that was obviously marketed as working class family entertainment for decades was actually super-serious adults-only fare. Sorry, but I can't really take you seriously when you say that it's a bad business move to aim at a younger audience in a medium whose all-time biggest star is this guy: No...no....just...just no. And as far as adults being more stable in their purchasing habits and kids being more fad-driven, well, I can't really dispute that, can I can also point out than Hogan had a pretty long run as a big money draw for someone who was aimed at kids probably moreso than any other wrestler in history. I can point out that there have been no shortage of successful and enduring works aimed at families and children. I could point out that WWE's "stable" adult audience actually abandoned them quicker when the Attitude "fad" died out than the kids did when the longer-lived Rock 'N' Wrestling "fad" died out. I don't think you're interested in hearing that, though. What was it that I said a few posts earlier? You know everything I've just told you. You ignored it because there's no way to address the woes of WWE meaningfully without running risks that would likely destabilize the audience - specifically, you - to some degree or another. Forget Cena for a second. That was an idea I had in 2007, and I long ago accepted that they were never going to go anywhere with it. Last year, I think they had a window of opportunity with Punk. I'm not sure it's entirely closed yet. They also may be opening one now with Ryback. Now, if I'm running WWE, I'd probably try to set up some kind of Three Musketeers deal with the two of them and Cena, but you could just pick one or two of them and give them a real Hogan/Austin-type push to make WWE their "show". But ANY of those moves would jeopardize the bland but stable environment they've cultivated for the last few years. So what I ask you is this: 1. Are there any circumstances under which it would be advisable for WWE to make a large enough change that it would risk current audience stability, and if so, what are they? 2. Is a bland but stable WWE really preferable to one that runs a risk in an attempt to better itself? 3. Is the long-term success of WWE dependent on maintaining an adult male fanbase? 4. Is this really about what's best for WWE business, or is this about you?

I once saw John Ratzenberger give a great interview where he lamented the decline of "tinkerers" (as he so eloquently put it), and attributed it in large part to how "people in my profession have done a great job of making them look like jokes". The perception amongst the people who write RAW is that, say, a plumber, is clearly and undeniably lower on the totem pole than, say, a doctor. This is in spite of the fact that many plumbers make the kind of money that my doctor father could only dream of. But the perception does exist at large that any job based around manual labor is inherently a demeaning, low-paying affair for people who don't have "real" skills, and while that is obviously bullshit, wrestling is more about "realism" than reality, and the perception of the way things are is really more important than the way things actually are. On the other hand, wrestling is working class entertainment, and seems like a bad idea to try and bullshit the working class about what it's like to be a part of the working class (insert joke about the Republican party here). On the other other hand, WWE doesn't want to be working class entertainment, and often tries to pretend it isn't, so I understand why this was written for an audience of failed sitcom writers instead of the audience that actually exists. On the OTHER other other hand...that's fucking stupid.

He is from South America...in a manner of speaking.

Jerry, you're a well-educated man. Surely, you've taken a history course at some point in your life. You know better than this. There are plenty of ways to learn about and understand the past if you care to look for them. "Ever" means "ever" in the WON HOF, which is the subject of this thread. "Ever" not meaning "ever" would actually be a major shift in tone after we just got done talking about Hans Schmidt and Gus Sonnenberg.

Really? We get upset about Kurt Angle and Ultimo getting in and "we aren't sure" about Super Dragon.....? If one wants to point to indy runs as being clear positives and even "the bulk" of a candidacy of a guy who will be pushed on pure work like Danielson I don't think it's out there. I agree that the indy boom was impressive, but it's not something I can see being argued as the primary support for an HoF candidacy. I shouldn't put words in Loss' mouth, but I don't think he was arguing all those guys might have a case as much as he was arguing that creating the situation where what they did was possible - which Low Ki was probably the main guy responsible for - might make you a case. I don't want to spend a lot of time arguing it, because I don't feel strongly about it, and no matter how I slice it, I can't see Ki as someone who should or will get into the HOF. But if Punk goes in, and Danielson goes in, and hypothetically a number of other indy guys manage to climb up the ranks and go in...I think the guy who kicked things off for them probably deserves as much consideration for the Hall as Sabu. Which is to say, a little. Not much, certainly not enough to merit induction, but I think it would be reasonable to mention him if - if - the indy boom proves to have wider reaching consequences than it currently does.

Did Meltzer say he was actually going to include him on the ballot or are you just guessing? A couple weeks ago he said on one of the radio shows that he was considering adding AJ Styles but that when he asked around, no one with a ballot said they'd actually vote for him so Meltzer figured why bother. I can't see the same not being true for Low Ki. Not really sure what the debate even would be for him. He's a great wrestler but not so great he could get in on work alone and that's all he really has going for him. He might do okay with reporters I suppose but I can't see historians or former wrestlers giving him much thought and for as talented as he is, he also has a rep of being really difficult to work with, an ego maniac, an asshole and a bit of a nut job among a lot of his peers. I'd think the argument for Ki would be work and influence. Ki and Danielson were the point men in kicking off the early-2000's indy explosion, and of the two, Ki really played the bigger role in initiating it, though Danielson clearly did more to sustain it. Granted, I would not ever consider that HOF-worthy influence, and I wouldn't vote for him in a million years if I had a ballot. But if you want to make an argument for him, that's probably the one.