ohtani's jacket

There is no universally agreed-upon set of criteria, so subjectivity is inevitable. Which is like I'd like to move away from speculation about people's motivations. Are people going to favor criteria that cast their favorites in the best possible light? Probably. But it's not really relevant whether you first decide what's important and then see who best fits the bill or work your way backwards to stack the deck in favor of the guys you like. As long as you're open about the standards you use and apply them consistently, I don't see the problem. I think if you sat down and worked out some guidelines then you could agree to a set of criteria. This is sort of what happened in the podcast where there were areas that all three were examined in. So long as the criteria suits all of them then I don't see what the issue is.

Sorry, I didn't answer this before. I would have no hesistation rating the wrestler with the greatest peak as the greatest of all-time. How long that peak would have to continue for I'm not sure. At one point I considered Akira Hokuto the greatest worker I had seen and that was from a three year peak.

Understood, I was just saying that taking his longevity into account gets him into people's top ten, maybe even their top five, but not much further than that. Post-prime effectiveness may factor into some sports arguments, but in the main sports arguments always return to peak performance. To me, the post-prime argument in this thread is like suggesting that because Bob McAdoo won a couple of rings after his peak was over he must be a better HOF candidate than players who didn't win a ring as vets.

There was an idea floated around here the other day that his peak was in '85. I just think the ten year period works well for comparing these three guys as workers .

We're talking about a ten year period or more, so you don't really need to undercut the argument to the best year, month, week or day.

Seriously ? I mean, maybe it is because here in France the auteur theory pretty much still is the predominant cinema critic ideology, but to me it's pretty much always what happens when discussing the merits of directors. (this is a footnote in the discussion though, as I pretty much agree with a lot of what you're saying here. I've watched most of the famous Lawler matches in the WWE the last few years, and thought it was "fun for a 60 year old guy", but to hear about Lawler being a great wrestler in 2011/12 is just insane to me. I have seen some indy stuff he did from earlier in the decade too, mostly against Funk, and again it was "fun for what it was". Then again, I don't think Jerry Lawler is a GOAT worker either) I don't think people are concerned with discussing Donovan's Reef or Cheyenne Autumn or Young Cassidy or Seven Women when discussing John Ford. A film critic or fan could watch those final four pictures of his and find things about them that are great or things that only John Ford could do, but using those films to strength Ford's case as the GOAT? I'm not buying it. People don't expect directors to make great films forever and I don't think they should expect wrestlers to work great matches forever. If you have a favourite TV show and it peters out towards the end of its run are you going to consider it as worse than TV show you didn't like quite as much that never petered out? Childs brought up the example of Kareem, but if Kareem's longevity were so impressive he'd be considered automatically, hands down the greatest player of all-time. Only he isn't, because some people consider Jordan or Chamberlain to be better at their peaks.

Sure, you like it. You might even be a bit overexcited about it considering you think Terry Funk is possibly top 20 in the world for 1994, but what's the point? A Flair fan might think Flair's '94 was really good too. Unless we all sit down and agree that Funk in '94 was something that Flair was not and that this difference is important in determining whether one guy is better than the other it's just an additional talking point. Funk had better matches than Flair in 1994, that's all. You need to produce a more convincing argument of why it matters that Funk had better matches than Flair in 1994 instead of just throwing it out there as though we should all nod in agreement that this is one thing more that Funk has over Flair. You turned "Funk the roamer" into a positive, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but someone could easily turn around and say that Funk not having an extended run in the big leagues is a blot on his candidacy and that Flair maintaining his spot all the way through to '94 is far more impressive than Funk working indie dates. There's all sorts of ways you can twist this. If you want my honest opinion, I think you're overcompensating for the fact that there just isn't as much good Terry Funk from the period in question as there is Lawler and Flair. I think you want to extend it out to '97 because he helps fill out Funk's resume. The downside of Funk not staying in one place for long is that he doesn't have the string of matches that Lawler or Flair had so you have to argue that Funk's best matches are as good as Lawler or Flair's, or concentrate on performance or micro details or post-prime work in order to boost his case. I've heard you mention this American Onita thing before, but I don't understand what it means. Did you expect him to work deathmatches or ECW style brawls like Funk? Hogan had been the biggest babyface in wrestling for 12 years. Flair flip flopped between heel and face so much times there was no way he could reinvent himself a turn. Besides, it's not like Flair didn't work his age into his schtick. Oldest ride in the park, longest line, all that shit. There is a crazy old man period for Ric. Man, this is from the John D. Williams school of if "it happened once in living memory your argument is null and void." I already mentioned that there may have been a select group of AWA fans who thought Bock was great in his 50s. But the average internet fan wouldn't have bought it, just like they wouldn't have bought that the AWA in the 80s was good. So, let me get this straight, in 1998 Hogan, Flair and Piper were considered better workers than Austin, Rock and Foley? Tenryu was considered better than Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Hashimoto, Liger, etc? Chigusa was better than Toyota, Kansai, Kong, Ozaki, et. al? The best luchadores in the world were the workers from the generation before Santo, Casas, etc., who were no spring chickens themselves? There hasn't been any shift whatsoever? But you don't see a lot of awards going to old workers in the past do you? It doesn't matter whether it's the WON or the old rspw awards do you? You're not going to read a tremendous amount of praise for veterans from a guy like Mike Lorefice are you? In fact, most of the time you'll read him bitching about older workers and guys who stayed on for too long the same way a Bihari does. Ten or more years ago that was the prevailing sentiment. A GOAT argument isn't about who you think is better. It's about determining who the greatest of all time is by using a set of objective criteria. Sure there is, if you lay down the same guidelines for everyone. I already said that I was just guessing at the years. I chose '76 for Funk because of the Jumbo match and '77 for Lawler because of the Race match. I don't know if that's the earliest complete or useful footage. There's not enough 70s footage for it to be an advantage for one guy over the other, anyway. I'd just take as much peak Dandy as there is available and compare it with peak Flair. Seems simple to me. I'm not sure that Dandy would come out on top, either. Now you're getting childish. Flair and Funk's careers and primes overlapped enough for there to be a direct comparison. We're not trying to compare different eras here. Or we could just spit the dummy. Well, that's that then. I don't agree when you throw out hyperbole about stuff and then get uber defensive when people question it. Surely, it's not that frustrating to you that some people think there should be a cut-off point where comparing workers with one another. Nobody's pretending that it doesn't exist. I don't think it's worth including in the debate, you think it helps Funk's case (whether you admit it or not), I think you haven't really evaluated the post-prime period with anything other than a eye to making Funk seem a stronger case than he really is. All three guys worked through the 80s. Whoever was the best in the 80s is likely the greatest of all-time, since it apparently boils down to those three. And since none of them were GOAT level after the end of the 80s, you might as well concentrate on the period where they were, y'know, the GOAT. The GOAT doesn't mean who had the longest or the best career or who could adapt or change or stay relevant. It means which guy was the greatest there's ever been at professional wrestling. First you talk it up, now you talk it down. Either you think Funk was top 20 on earth in 1994 and Lawler was top 10 on earth in 2011 and it's this big earth shattering thing or you don't. Nobody's the GOAT for their entire career not even if the GOAT, whoever that is. The problem we're having here, to put it crudely, is that if someone's made up their mind that Flair is the best of the three they're not going to care that he got bad and they're not going to give a shit if Funk was marginally better at some point in the 90s or beyond. You're not doing a good enough job convincing Flair fans that any of the post-prime stuff you're arguing about matters. If Funk is so good in the 90s then maybe his peak didn't really end in '89. Maybe that's the way you should lay it out. It probably can't be bridged, but that's the fun of messageboard posting. I like all three guys, but not as much as Satanico, Fujiwara, Breaks or McManus, so I'll step out here.

This is how I feel about the praise for Jerry Lawler. It's like the music forum I'm on, where most people's end of year lists have a blend of new guys and old guys, of electronic, hip hop, jazz, soul, hyped records, indie rock, RnB, ambient, metal etc. Jessie Ware, VFTL, Actress, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Beach House, OF, Allo Darlin, Andy Stott, whatever has clicked. And then you'll have a few of the older guys who will all have Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bill Fay, Van Halen as their top five, and inist the old guys are still putting out music better than anyone else. They are the Jerry Lawler's and Black Terry's and Terry Funk's. The same guys never list the latest Beach Boys or Paul McCartney though - they are Ric Flair and Hogan, good in their time but well past it now. -- I don't really want to get into this argument, as I've only seen a handful of the matches over the past few years, so I'll bow out before my argument gets destroyed and abused. Just wanted to agree with the analogy. I think there's some truth to this, but I will say that guys like Dylan or Phil watch just about everything.

Yeah, what was up with that? I always forget about that because my abiding memory of Wrestlemania IX is Bret getting royally screwed at the end, but it was almost like they were trying to recreate the Mega Powers vs. the Mega Bucks angle. Anyway, it was 1994-95 WCW level crap. You'd be better off writing it out of history.

That Observer list is so fantastically authentic as a time capsule of 1989 Dave. I love it. Where's all that 1989 Negro Casas and how we get it for the lucha set?

That's some hefty Dibiase love right there. On the other hand, given that he and Savage probably were the two best workers in the company in '88 I guess it's not unwarranted. The comment in parentheses is hard to justify, but given how Dave felt about Backlund, I think you can see from his perspective how he might have thought Dibiase was better than a Tito or a Valentine or even a Slaughter, technically anyway.

I remember a lot of sentimentality surrounding Flair due to the way Bischoff had treated him and his return to Nitro. One group of fans seemed to want him to reunite the Horsemen with Arn and Benoit and Malenko and have one last glory run and another group of fans wanted him to jump to the WWF and be Vince's corporate champion and have one last glory run against Austin. As I recall, there were a lot of guys at the time who claimed to be reared on Crockett who hated Vince and the WWF and death rode him during the difficult points in '97 (finances, Pillman's death, Montreal) and were gleeful during WCW's big business run. On the other hand, you had WWF fans who thought every Tuesday when the WWF won the ratings was like their team winning the Super Bowl and that if anybody jumped from WCW to WWF it was one more nail in Turner's coffin, but I don't remember Flair being an internet darling work-wise. People fantasy booked him, but Benoit and Foley were the internet darlings. I agree that Flair boosters would have pointed to his longevity back then, but bear in mind that circa '98 he was only four years past arguably the last good year of his career. They hadn't seen the second WWF run yet. He hadn't quite soiled his legacy as he may have today. If you have good matches past your prime then a lot of wrestling fans will say "thanks, I'll take that," but I don't care about Flair's good matches post 1990/91, so why should I care about Lawler and Funk's good matches? Are they really that good that I'm going to change my mind about them? I like Funk's run in WCW in '94 a great deal, but it doesn't make me think anymore of Funk and I wouldn't have thought any less of him if it didn't happen. It's not as though it's some kind of eye opener about how good Terry Funk was and how we just never knew. And what was Flair supposed to? Traverse the indies? Work shows in one territory for two decades? Funk and Lawler were at a certain level in wrestling where they were respected names without being the biggest names in the business and could adapt and thrive on smaller stages. Flair is one of the bigger names in the history of the sport and demanded a larger spotlight. It's difficult to imagine Flair following a similar trajectory as Funk and I don't see where there was anywhere for him to fit in like Lawler. I mean, on some level wasn't Lawler a commentator and part time wrestler and wasn't Funk working the indies? Was that really for Flair? What was he supposed to do exactly? Firstly, I want to know if you think that 80s Bockwinkel is one of the best workers of the decade, because if you don't then what I'm about to say is redundant, but do you really think that up until the release of the 80s AWA set that people would have contemplated Nick Bockwinkel, in his 50s, as one of the best workers of the 80s? I'm talking about the concept not whether Bockwinkel was watched 15 years ago. I know that Bockwinkel wasn't watched 15 years ago. The concept of Bockwinkel being great in the 80s and great in his 50s could not existed without the present mindset. That's my argument. I don't think anyone considered Funk the GOAT back then. I know that you always mentioned him as a guy you considered a GOAT contender and that you've always been consistent with that, but if there were were people sreaming "look at how good this ECW stuff is, Funk must be the GOAT" I wasn't paying attention. Who was seen in favour? Was Baba seen in favour? Was Choshu seen in favour? Didn't that Williams guy try to get people to see those two differently? Was Perro seen in favour? Caras? Mascara Ano 2000? Universo 2000? How about Hogan and Piper? Sure there were Funks and Hamadas and guys I may have forgotten, but wasn't Atlantis vs. Villano quite an exception when it won MOTY in 2000? If you're comparing the three then how can it be a positive for two and not a negative for the other? That doesn't seem like an even playing field. It seems to me that Loss is trying to find output from a comparative period. If Funk, Lawler and Flair were all in their primes during roughly the same time then you ought to be able to compare their output from their best years. Hence, there's no need to bring post-prime work into the equation because you're essentially comparing when they went head-to-head. They all have footage missing from the 80s, they're all iconic 80s workers with strong runs, honestly who cares which of them was better in 2011? It might as well be a footnote when it comes to comparing them as workers. You'd exclude it from the discussion because it's not important. If you take a film director, you look at the films he made during his artistic and commercial prime first. You don't look at the films he made when he couldn't get funding or he was no longer given A-list projects. If he had a swang song, great, but if he didn't (and most don't), you throw it out. I have never seen an argument about film where a director's oeuvre was considered in its entirety. The early films where they're still finding their feet are chucked out, and the latter films where they're washed up are chucked out and what you're left with is the best that they were capable of. Some critics and fans may find the early pictures interesting as well as the latter day efforts, but I think it's only natural to look for the best in everything. Beside, I don't think it's necessarily convenient to chuck out Flair's post-prime. I find myself agreeing with Loss on a lot of this. Flair has a lot of stuff that holds up against Funk's stuff and Lawler's stuff post 1990. As far as I can tell, the sum total of Lawler's good WWF output is five or six matches. The Kiss My Foot stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see, the Jake Roberts stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see. Loss has mentioned some of the things he's found annoying about Lawler on the 1990 yearbook. Flair's been examined and re-examined for years now. Turn the microscope on Lawler and it might not be so pretty. It is way too easy to say that because Lawler had the odd good match here and there from Memphis that showed up on tape that he's been good for centuries. And the mindset is totally different. People want to find good Lawler matches. They go trawling for good Lawler matches. I respect that. That's the best possible use of the internet in terms of wrestling fandom. But do you honestly think that people go looking for great past his prime Flair matches? I don't think people watch a random WCW television match from '97 and say "wow, Flair was still good here." It's always a bit disappointing because people have an image of prime Flair that they don't have of Terry Funk or Jerry Lawler. I think it's much, much easier to say that a '97 Lawler match is a bigger positive than a '97 Flair match without going into details. You're probably right, but I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why it matters. I understand that you think it strengthens Funk and Lawler's case, but to me, take Stan Hansen for example. If Hansen had never had the 1993 that he had, I don't think it would make an iota of difference how I would appraise him as an 80s worker against Funk, Flair and Lawler and as an all-time worker on the basis of that. And his '93 was better than anything Funk, Flair or Lawler did from the 90s onwards, arguably. It's a feather in the cap not a dagger. I've read a lot of your stuff. I know you have no problem with people disagreeing and that you're always up for a debate. Like I said, I'm dealing with hypotheticals here. You're laying out your opinion on Lawler in the past few years like it's an accepted fact, in a GOAT argument. As far as I'm aware, not too many people argue with that opinion. Maybe some guys here, on Wrestling KO, deathvalleydriver, I don't know. I haven't seen the matches and I don't know whether I'd agree, but that's not important for the sake of my argument. I just don't see how you can drop that in a GOAT argument. It's so fringe and carries so much weight if it were verified that it's just a throwaway comment in my eyes. I mean, if you're going to say that Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2010 or 2011, twenty years after the hypothetical cut-off point that has been suggested, that's a huge statement. You don't get too many people in entertainment fields who show up twenty years later and are the very best at what they do. That makes Lawler really special. Is he deserving of being singled out like that? I'll assume you think he is. It depends on the nature of the post-prime work. From what I have seen, Black Terry and Navarro are better now than they were in their primes and I would include both of them as all-time great luchadores. Casas has managed to stay relevant by working well with younger talent and is arguably the ultimate adapter. Panther I would kind of call bullshit on the past few years adding to his status as an all-time great because I think he's clearly physically past his prime and I don't like his present style anywhere near as much as the work from his prime. I think it works on a case by case basis, but for the sake of GOAT arguments you've got to apply it evenly to everyone and I just don't see it as useful. Of course it adds to your understanding of a particular wrestler, but it adds to your understanding of their career not whether they're the greatest of all-time. Theoretically, the GOAT doesn't need to have a great post-prime. Theoretically, the greatest of all-time could have been cut down in his or her prime. It is in no way, shape or form a necessity to have been good post-prime. If you're going to be a stickler about it, you might as well say that a good wrestler has to have a good post-prime and make a rule of it. Because everybody gets a peak no matter how good they may be. Post-peak nothing is guaranteed. The idea that there are these smart wrestlers who truly get it and are great into their 50s, to me, overlooks the fact that it's a crapshot whether you'll even get to your 50s as a worker. Not many do, whether they're good, bad or indifferent. If you're going to have a GOAT argument then you need to find the fairest way to do it and when you have guys whose careers overlap each other's as easily as Flair, Funk and Lawler's do then it's really easy to compare peak with peak. If it were a dead heat then maybe you could bring the extraneous stuff in, but where would be the fun in that? Best guy from the 80s sets is the most fun argument from my point of view. 1990s, there are better workers to argue about.

Wrestlemania V had 14 matches, which is way too many but they seemed to shove everyone on the card. The match lengths are ridiculous and the lay out of the card was kind of weird. It was basically a three match card, but Ted got a better shake on the undercard than most. He had the spot with Trump and a longer match than the other fixtures. I also liked the houseshow matches from that feud, so I don't think it's that much of a come down. But I'm not really sure that you can really use PPV as a measure of position during this era. With SummerSlam he went on second to last on a shorter card, but I don't think that means much. Didn't he cut a promo on Roberts before that match against Snuka? I guess he was kind of in a holding pattern before Jake got back, but really his only opportunity was a feud with Warrior which was the spot they gave Rude. He was a midcarder after '88, but everytbody was a midcarder bar Hogan. If the top heel is whoever's feuding with Hogan then you had Savage, Zeus, Earthquake then Slaughter, right? There was also Undertaker sandwiched in there. I might go Rude, Dibiase and Perfect after that, in that order. I think the Batman analogy kind of works, but after Survivor Series '89 he's not really on Hogan's radar anymore. He probably needed one more run against Hogan to be his R'as Al-Ghul.

Harley Race vs. Giant Baba, AJPW 11/7/79 This was more of the same from Baba and Race. I suppose if you're a stickler for detail you could notice some differences but I was more caught up in his wife and son at ringside which led me to research how many times he'd been married, how many children he'd had and other points of distraction. Baba did do a type of Lou Thez press thing that I don't remember him doing in the first match, but I don't know what I'd give him points for it. I don't get why Race bladed in each of these matches. I guess he thought it was dramatic, but he doesn't come across as much of a storyteller to me. I think I'd take the Inoki/Hansen series over Baba/Race.

The uploader said it was from Sun City, but it could be from Durban. They ran shows in both places. I think we can give Phil a pass on not knowing the ethnic make-up of South Africa.

No. Just no. There are a lot of reasons for it, a bunch, and we've talked about it more and more, but there's been a trend of appreciating working smart over working hard over the last five years. That's not just dissatisfaction and it's not just "a type of veteran appreciation." It's part of why people liked Mark Henry or Chris Masters as well. It's not just old people. It's part of a completely different trend than you're talking about. And that trend has its pros and cons and its causes and reasons, but I really, truly don't think it's what you're saying. People consistently pull out specific examples. They pull out specific matches. They break things down. They back up what they say. It's not just some whimsy. It's not just some whim. People support their arguments. They make arguments in the first place. People are backing up what they're saying all over the place, both in dismantling some things and building up others. You can't dismiss it like that because it fits into some nice little box and thus is easy to ignore. What you're saying about working smart over working hard may be true, but consider this: When Yokota, Chigusa and Asuka retired and came back in the mid-90s, people didn't all of a sudden appreciate them because they worked smarter than the girls who worked harder (Hokuto, Toyota, Kyoko et al.) And it's not like smart work wasn't appreciated back then. You didn't see much praise for Perro Aguayo or Caras and his brothers when Santo and Panther and Casas were having great matches and especially not during the boom in AAA popularity with the likes of Mysterio Jr., Psicosis and Juventud regardless of how smart Perro and Los Hermanos Dimanita worked. People didn't feel the need to go back and revisit Jumbo or Hansen or Choshu or Fujinami in great detail when Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Hashimoto, Liger and others were in their primes. If there had been a bunch of rookies who had debut in the 90s and gone on to do great things in the 2000s and so on, I suspect there wouldn't be quite as much appreciation for older guys as there is today. It's not only about working smart, but also stylistic. Modern wrestling is worked a certain way the world over. Old guys tend to work the way they've always known. Some of them like Casas adapt, guys like Finlay and Navarro have arguably gotten better, but a lot of times you'll hear a review that says "this was like an old-school XYZ match," i.e the old way was the right way, the better way, the smart way to work. Even the newer guys who get pimped tend to remind people of the older guys. I don't think anyone on this board is the type of fan who thinks NJPW's Dome Show was the greatest thing because they're caught up in the now. To gleefully use a BOB DYLAN example, we're like some old guy who thinks the latest Dylan album is better than any of today's new music. That may not be totally fair, but if I said I don't gravitate towards Black Terry and Navarro and Virus because I haven't liked a newly pushed luchador since Angel Azteca I would be lying. And if I said I would have loved Black Terry and Navarro ten years ago, I'd be lying. And why are you always making out like it's whims? I thought Loss articulated quite well the changes in people's attitudes. Even when we're dealing with older footage, people get fed up with the same old, same old. I love the changing landscape of wrestling opinion, I'm just trying to articulate it for what it is or at least how I've viewed it.

I don't think it's bullshit. When I first came online, people generally thought that old guys sucked. Nobody wanted to see old guys on top, nobody wanted to see them wrestle and nobody appreciated what they were able to do despite their advancing age. You didn't see a lot of praise for older workers. You wouldn't have seen people praise Bockwinkel as someone who was great into his 50s unless you were talking about a very small section of older fans. Funk and Tenryu may have been popular, but they were hardly being pimped as the GOAT and people didn't consider them better than the current workers at the time. Guys in their 50s as best in the world didn't become a talking point until people starting thinking the guys in their 50s were better than the guys in their 20s and 30s, which started happening about five or six years ago, possibly even earlier than that. I want to say it's a trend that began with Liger and Kikuchi in NOAH, Tenryu and Navarro and Terry and Solar and has worked its way back through older footage retroactively. Initially, it reflected disatisfaction with the current state of wrestling and now it's a type of veteran appreciation. But you are holding it against Flair when you say he doesn't have the longevity of a Funk or a Lawler. As soon as you say it's important then it becomes detrimental to Flair's case. I can't be bothered going back through this thread and making sure that I've got everyone's position correct, so bear with me, but if Loss is saying that Flair vs. Funk vs. Lawler should be compared stretch runs at their peak then I completely agree with him. I would put Flair's 82-89 against Funk's 76-89 and Lawler's 77-89 (don't know if I got those years right, they're off the top of my head.) I don't think that anything Funk or Lawler did after 1990 or so is good enough that it makes a difference to the argument unless the argument is purely longevity. For every good bit of Lawler and Funk post-90, there's something Flair did post-90, but it's all post-prime and not very important. Also, and I don't know if anybody brought this up, but Flair's was the toughest act to change. Funk had already changed his act well before he got into his 50s. Lawler never really even had to change his. How does Flair change from being the Nature Boy to something else? Is it possible? Should he have changed his gimmick to the settled down Nature Boy? Perhaps he could have laid it all on the table as the bankrupt, co-dependent Nature Boy? Like Hogan it was always going to be the same schtick getting worse and worse. Would you listen to a super Rotundo fan or take it with a grain of salt? If you make a statement like Jerry Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2011 or Terry Funk was really great in ECW, and I'm being hypothetical here, do you not expect people outside of your circle to check whether your hypothesis gels? We're not talking gospel here. Jerry Lawler as one of the best in the world is a contentious statement. It may be true, but there are going to be people who disagree. Plenty of people. Terry Funk as top 20 in 1994 is another contentious statement. I've got nothing against contentious statements, most of us make contentious statements and a lot of us argue things strongly, all I'm saying is that if I'm unsold on Lawler then to me "Lawler's still really good even now" is a lot more palpable than "Jerry Lawler was minimum top five in the world last year. Minimum." That's one thing, but then if you use it in an argument against Flair as GOAT my natural reaction *might be* "oh, bollocks, I don't give a fuck about Jerry Lawler in 2011 and Funk's garbage wrestling period was annoying." And I'd have the same reaction if someone overpimped Flair's '91-93 WWF run or his late 90s WCW work. It would be one thing to point to 1998 Flair performances that are good, but another entirely to start ranking Flair as top 20 for the year.

The Dibiase/Savage Wrestlefest match is pointless after watching the cage match blowoffs.

Sun City doesn't, though.

Rotundo is the most boring wrestler I've ever seen. No one I'd rather watch less. Bring on Mike George and Mike Rapada. Anyone but him Rotundo was boring, I'll give you that, but he was boring on a bleh guys who can supposedly work level. I wouldn't exactly call him offensive. John Naylor, Mal Sanders and Danny Collins piss me off, but they're not Big Daddy bad. I actually think Barry Windham is overrated in the same way that Owen Hart is overrated or Dustin Rhodes, guys I really like, but late 80s WWF Dibiase being better than late 80s Barry Windham holds no truck with me. No truck.

Then a hell of a lot of workers didn't really get it, including Bret Hart. I think "my criteria" is pertinent in this case. Satanico is one of the greatest workers I have ever laid eyes on. He turned 50 in 1999, but the last match of his that I'd call great was against Pirata Morgan in 1993 when he was 44 or so. Satanico wasn't a bad worker in his mid-late 40s, he just lacked something from his earlier work and there were much better workers in Mexico at the time which made Satanico second tier. But stick mid-40s Satanico in CMLL today and he'd be one of the best in the world, as the saying goes. Some fans, and I'm one of them, can't relate to the Sombras and the Volodars and what have you. Some do and don't like maestro workers, at least not quite as much as some of us do. Fredo or Bihari or Cubsfan are unlikely to have the same top 10 as me and they're probably objectively right considering the way the business works. I love 70s World of Sport. It's easy to consider it prime stuff because of the limited footage. But you'd be surprised by how many of the best workers were in their 40s and 50s and how much of it was past their prime stuff. Can't be so sure about their work without that prime because what seems great in the 70s made seem worse if that prime was available. I also hate most of the young boys, so it's blinkered. I think it's important to consider any biases we might have before saying it's because a few lucky guys get it.

Surely, there were twenty workers better than Terry Funk in 1994. Best in the world is such an exaggerated talking point. And just because some workers are great into their 50s (which, honestly, is a talking point that only started five or six years ago and previously would have been a joke), you can't hold it against guys who weren't. It's not normal for a guy to be great into his 50s. You're talking about special cases. Does anybody judge El Dandy or Emilio Charles, Jr. on how broken down they became? No, they just say "fuck this, I'm going to watch some prime El Dandy and Emilio Charles, Jr." Maybe it's a plus in Tenryu's case, but on the flipside it took him a long time to get good. Casas, Panther, Navarro, Black Terry and Solar are all great workers in their 50s, but we're missing their primes, so how do you judge their careers? Lawler in his 60s is judged one of the best of the world by super Lawler fans and Funk being great in the 90s is a really favourable take as well. I think the age thing should be factored into the conversation more carefully is all.

Man, that is harsh on Rotundo. When Windham left and Spivey came in, Rotundo carried that team, which is a heck of a lot more challenging than being saddled with Rotundo.

Harley Race vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, AJPW 6/11/77 I guess it's been more than a decade since I last saw this, which is kind of scary. Watching it at the time, it was kind of this big eye opener to 70s wrestling and Jumbo Tsuruta. It was never going to be as special this time, but I still liked it a lot. I was surprised by how much of the match Race gave to Jumbo. It seemed like Jumbo had a ton of offence and I was impressed by how varied it was. With the focus on Jumbo's youth and athleticism, it felt like a different kind of Race match than I'm used to and I thought at times that it seemed a step down from an NWA heavyweight title match in terms of intensity. It kind of felt like more of a UN Championship level match, but that may have been the impression that Jumbo's youth gave me. The shortish lengths to the falls also added to that impression. The difference in intensity wasn't bad, however. I liked the pace of the action here and I thought they did a good job with the narrative structure over three falls. It was pretty much a well booked, well worked match in general. Jumbo came out of the match looking strong and Race showed his chops as champ. I don't know if it's Race's best match from the 70s, but it's the leading contender at present. Loved that Indian Deathlock once he got it on.

I don't know that I agree with this. After SummerSlam '88, Dibiase was given new impetus with the creation of the Million Dollar Belt, a much stronger push than most Hogan opponents got once their program with over. When Jake was out with his back surgery, they used Dibiase in the Hogan mix for Survivor Series while Savage was feuding with Duggan and he went on to have a strong 1990. He was pushed in the Rumble, they kept the Roberts program running through to Wrestlemania, then he had the big summer thru winter program with Dusty and was the sole survivor of his Survivor Series match and top heel in the finale match. And all that was before the Sherri run. Savage had a similar level of protection, but I think as Loss alluded to it had a great deal to do with both men's talent as well that they could make the main event to midcard to main event transitions work and that they felt like they belonged anywhere on the card because of how well they played their characters.