ohtani's jacket

I figured it may be a turnoff for some voters the way lucha can be. You're probably right about it being the reason people vote for him, but it will take more than their votes to get him into the hall I suspect.

I'd be generally happy if the discussion of Flair was dropped the way this thread is going.

Again pointless... Actors don't star in movies with the same frequency that wrestlers work matches, and besides Brando's acting career also encompasses his stage work. Flair produced his work w/ some direction from the booker or road agent. Brando did not produce his material.

These acting comparisons are pointless unless you can point to bad movies that Brando and De Niro wrote, produced, directed and starred in. Otherwise the closest analogy would be periods where Flair was booked poorly.

The only good Parka one is the first one. The other two have terrible booking. All of the Satanico matches are disappointing. You want them to be Flair/Steamboat, but they're not. I'm sure they must have hit one out of the park at some stage but not on tape.

You shouldn't be afraid to do things like this. It's better that someone makes their case for Michaels rather than comments like he wouldn't be in my top 500. You will probably get some support as there are bound to be other Shawn Michaels fans around here. Shawn Michaels as #1 is an interesting viewpoint and challenges the current take on him, and I love people challenging that sort of thing. The poll is a good opportunity to reassess whether we've gone overboard on certain wrestlers in the past ten years, and you may swing some people back in favour of putting him on their ballot. I want to hear the argument.

The entire Los Intocables run, especially the matches against the Brazos and Infernales, through to his mask match with El Supremo. I will comb through my blog archive to get specific dates.

Great worker who even managed to overcome the trappings of AAA and have some brilliant matches while he was there, which not too many others can say. Was good for an awfully long time. Along with Solar and Atlantis, one of the great masked technicos of the modern era.

Another case of wishing we had more footage, but from the UWA and AAA we have he looks on par with the best wrestlers in the business. The best wrestler in Mexico in 1992 was Casas, but there's a chance Espanto was in the top 5.

I like Pierroth a lot from '90 to '92. After that he's spotty, but that 1992 run was one of the most outstanding things in early 90s lucha.

I enjoyed his match against Flair more than I ever have before, though it was still a bit of a chore. The Ricky Martel love continues!

I dunno. I just wanted to know what Savage did that was good. I don't care about any of that other stuff.

What did he do that was that great from '93 to the time he retired? The Flair and DDP feuds?

I was introduced to the term from the old RSPW FAQ. I think that definition is good enough, though I would probably substitute restholds for down time. To me, workrate refers to the amount of action in a match. It's closely related to pace as workers with high workrate tend to up the tempo and maintain a steady tempo, but can also refer to intensity. It's important. I have low tolerance for wrestling I find boring. I get restless and start wanting to do other things. But it's a bit like Goldilocks and her porridge -- not too hot, not too cold, just right. I don't like matches that are too dense and have too many moves. I don't like matches which are unnecessarily long or too short. I don't like it in older matches when they stop working the mat to end a fall, and I don't like it when you have two falls of brawling in an apuesta match and a third caida of back and forth junior style action. In general, I like the action to escalate so that by the end of the match you have a sense of how far they've come from the first lock-up, but on the other hand I don't want it telegraphed. Like Goldilocks, I'm difficult to please. Matwork, selling, a basic structure, rhythm, timing, maybe a bit of acting and some basic narrative. All of these things are "working," therefore workrate is important. Workrate was a more important metric when it was used to champion midcard workers. I don't think it's as relevant as it used to be. I don't think it's important what metric you use so long as you can explain what you like. Too many people hang their hat on some kind of psychology/character/story metric and rubbish workrate matches, but that's an easy target. If you can't criticse the stuff you like then it's no better than being a huge workrate fan. It had a huge influence. It was my first introduction to work and workers. Without it I doubt I would have continued to be a fan. I may not be enamored with the same workers I was in the late 90s, but it provided the basic foundation for how I watched and view wrestling and ultimately how I judged it. There's a downside to that though. Before I experienced that influence, I was into practically everything that was presented in wrestling. Now I find it hard to enjoy a lot of stuff because I'm always critiquing it. But I was very much influenced by what I first read on the internet, yes.

I wasn't really referring to his character but his work. I don't think he's anywhere near as assured in the ring in the Mid-Atlantic footage as he would become later even when the shtick is the same. He wrestles like a United States champion as opposed to a Wotld champion. That was the impression I got.

Isn't the generation who thought those things dead?

I don't think that's true at all. In fact, I think if people are looking for any interesting take on Flair then tracking his development over the late 70s to early 80s would be an interesting route to go.

Man, there was a lot of stuff on this I didn't agree with. The Missioneros are the best workers on the ballot? Navarro and Texano were like Flair and Tully? I don't know how we can draw that conclusion from the minuscule amount of Missioneros footage on tape and the fact that what we do have isn't that good, and Signo is arguably the best of the three. Their influence on trios matches gets blown out of proportion as well. There were many famous trios before the Missioneros, and while trios matches may not have been the predominant form of match they weren't suddenly born with the Missioneros. The discussion also ignored how short their run was, the troubles replicating it, their less successful Japan stints, the fact that only Texano could get proper work after it was over. The Brazos were draws. Arguably bigger draws overall than the Missioneros as Jose pointed out the other day. They also weren't created because of the Missioneros. They formed around the same time in the late 70s. Villano III has a laundry list of great matches? Is that a laundry list that's been through a cycle and torn up a bit? Not on tape he doesn't.

They still kept her pretty strong from '97-99 since was one of the few who didn't leave in the exodus. She put Ito over in the '97 Grand Prix then won it herself in both '98 and '99. During '97-98, she probably had as many recommended matches as Aja. Chigusa then tapped into something good with Aja in GAEA. AJW could have put the belt back on Toyota in '97, and maybe should have, but were trying something new.

Do you mean after Toyota dropped the belt in 2002 or '96? The degree of difficulty in Toyota continuing to have good matches isn't the same as with Aja, so it wouldn't factor into my consideration of the two, but there's no argument that since the bottom fell out of Joshi that Aja has had the better in ring career. I'm not sure whether you'd call it great. If not for Satomura, I doubt too many people would be paying attention.

The only advantage Grey would have is that he was a better worker, but then probably only you and I and a few other people in our circle believe that. The rest of people out in voter land no doubt believe Saint to be synonymous with the British style. The only other slight advantage Grey might have is that he didn't jump to All-Star so he was on TV consistently throughout the 80s whereas Saint disappears from TV after '82 and his only matches available after that are Screen Sport, German handhelds and All-Star's brief run at sharing the time slot. Aside from that, Grey was always positioned as second to Saint. He was the British Lightweight Champion to Saint's World Lightweight Champion, not as big a star as Saint in the mid-to-late 70s (Saint's heyday), and I'm not sure if he ever traveled abroad (perhaps to places like Pakistan or South Africa.) It was harder for lightweights to travel than the bigger guys. He did get more exposure than Saint in the very late 70s with his lengthy feud with Breaks. They were a heavily promoted part of the undercard for the first Wembley Arena show. But I don't think that improves Grey's overall standing vs Saint.

Otto Wanz Pro: * Successful amateur boxing background * Long wrestling career from the late 60s to 90s * Huge name in his home country * Became promoter of the CWA in the late 80s * Former AWA World Heavyweight Champion * Four time CWA World Heavyweight Champion * Defended the CWA title 32 times for 29 wins and 3 losses * Won the IBV German Championship tournament three times ('78, '81 and '85) and the European Championship twice ('77 and '78) * Won the Hanover tournament in '85 and again from '87-89 * Won Bremen multiple times from 1972 to 1978 as well as Dortmund from '72 to '90 * Multiple time winner in Munich, Graz and Linz * Legitimate strongman supposedly with Guinness record for destroying phone books * Wrestled all over the world. Bigger headliner than anyone else in the category Cons: * Not a good reputation as a worker * Stigma of having "bought" the AWA title * Unfairly (?) stigmatised for booking himself on top * Question of whether drawing data is available for voters * Promotion ultimately failed, or rather stopped promoting wrestling

Sting had more than a couple of good Regal matches. Every time they locked up it was cool. Sting would bust out all these holds you never thought he could do. Not a guy I'd vote for, but there's no way I'd call him a bad worker.

Orndorff was a good worker. Not good enough to get on a list like this, but in both WWF and WCW viewing I've found him to be consistently good.

There's a lot of workers who people continue to like when they grow older and give a free pass to on things like execution and speed. I do this all the time with Charlie Lucero, for example. I'm kind of skeptical about how much these guys adapt. Unless they transform themselves into a completely different worker like Navarro did, I'd argue that most guys are doing what they've always done only at half speed and that people dig it because it's old school. A lot of the problem with Flair is that he looks worse than Keith Richards, which ruins the entire gimmick. Other workers can get old and out of shape and be praised for being a curmudgeon, but Flair was like an aging Sinatra. How could he have adapted and made it work? That's a more interesting question for mine. I mean Bock kept in tremendous physical shape and was still a great looking guy into his 50s. How could Flair have kept up keeping in mind he had been over exposed?