ohtani's jacket

Boss Man vs. Rick Martel, MSG 2/23/92 and Hershey, PA 9/1/92 These weren't very good. Both guys were capable of better, but Martel was coasting on schtick at this point. Schtick that was some of the weakest in the company. His selling was generally good, in fact I thought he made Boss Man's punches look better than anybody has so far, but he had nothing on offence. A couple of decent flurries from Boss Man and some reasonably inventive finishes as far as night stick vs. the atomizer goes, but pretty blah otherwise.

Gotta echo the love for Regal/Taylor. Some of Taylor's stuff was awkward but that was almost like watching a WCW version of a World of Sport match.

Went back and listened to part 2 after watching Flair/Race and pretty much agreed with everything you guys said. I don't think Harley was quite as bad as was made out in terms of emotion and his robe is cool.

Boss Man vs. Akeem, Saturday Night's Main Event 4/23/90 This was better than their Wrestlemania match, but instead of getting a cool "WWF is where the big boys play" bout there's a Dibiase and Virgil run-in in short order. This was more of a Boss Man/Dibiase feud than having anything to do with Slick and Akeem so we don't get the Twin Towers blood feud. For as good as WWF was at turning people, they didn't handle the tag team break-ups with the same aplomb.

Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, Starrcade '83 11/24/83 Watched the press conference before this where they announced that Jim Crockett promotions had won the bid to hold the return title match between Ric Flair and Harley Race. Shabby, shabby producton values, especially when they pretend they're crossing live for satellite reactions from Ric Flair and Harley Race. Harley Race is supposed to be in Kansas but is actually in Fort Worth, Texas. He gives a typically grim promo about Crockett shelling out more money then anyone in the history of professional wrestling to ensure that Flair gets a match in his own backyard and says he's just paid for the end of Ric Flair's wrestling career. Harley being Harley he stumbles over his words a bit. His promos always had a clear message but his delivery wasn't the greatest. Flair's babyface promo is lame and Flair going this match "A Flair for the Gold" made me cringe the same way I gringe when a character in a movie says the title of the film. Anyway, on to the match.... It's not a match I've ever paid any attention to as it doesn't have the greatest rep. This was the first time for me to really sit down and watch it. I thought it was a decent Race/Flair match, but even without the ref bullshit it would've fallen flat. Something about it isn't special enough for the setting or the build. If it were just a regular houseshow match that we have on tape I'd probably be a lot more positive about it, but to me even the post-match celebration lacked something. Only the intros were exciting, I thought. I really love Race's robe from this era. Match is a bit too divided between wrestling and brawling as well, but a lot of that was Kiniski's fault as he kept cutting off the brawling spots in the first half of the match. I assume that was planned. I don't remember the inside info on this. Not a bad match, but not the match of the century it was hyped as and not a home run as far as promoting a supershow is concerned.

Harley Race vs. Kevin Von Erich, WCCW 6/17/83 Another excellent match. I thought the structure of Harley bumping and selling for the challenger worked well here and that the armwork was a strong reprisal. I'm not sure he did enough to warrant the retaliation he received from David Von Erich, since he pretty much had his brother beat cleanly, but I guess this was the Von Erich's territory and there was a family hatred for Race so they could do as they pleased. The booking philosophy of having the World's Heavyweight champion beaten to a pulp and laid out won't sit well with people who buy into the whole Japanese "strongest fighter" video-game style ace mentality, but I can live with endings like these if they tack on a decent post-match and that's what we got here. Harley Race vs. Abdullah the Butcher, AJPW 5/13/76 Not much of a match, but something of a spectacle I guess. Harley banging his own head into a steel chair with a crazed look in his eye was something I hadn't seen before.

Boss Man turns face, 1/2/90 Fun segment. Boss Man's motivation for turning face was questionable but it was fun seeing Slick and Dibiase ham it up. Boss Man did a great job of getting across his anger. I loved how he kept spitting in Dibiase's face while serving out his righteous indignation. I also chuckled when he called him "fat face," an insult which is patently true. The shot of the heels & Brother Love crying "nooo!" when Boss Man returned to the ring was a classic and Jake was AWESOME at conveying his distrust in the Boss Man. And I loved the bump Slick took on Boss Man's way back. That was such a nice touch, as Boss Man shoving Slick to the deck severed their relationship completely. Great stuff. Boss Man vs. Bobby Heenan, 11/20/90 and ball & chain match 1/8/91 Bobby was gold here, pleading for the match to be called off in both cases. The funniest parts where when Mike McGuirk announced his weight and he ripped the mic off her and when he said he'd sent the Boss Man's mother a Hulk Hogan wrestling buddy. Amusing angle considering Boss Man drove Big Show's daddy down the highway at high speeeed. He did seem to brutalise Heenan a bit too much for my liking but I guess his face character kind of walked the line. Grabbing Hebner by the scruff of the neck after chasing off the Heenan family then letting him go when Hebner gestured he only wanted to raise Boss Man's arm was a nice touch. I don't know how over Boss Man was at the time as these clips always sound like there's been crowd noise added, but this was a memorable run.

If you were thinking mainly of Race doesn't that mean it was Race that sucked at the touring champ style?

Totally agree. The people's elbow from a spine buster was a weird finish and Punk looked stupid lying there with his eyes shut.

Great top five. One of my favourite Dandy performances from that year is the 5/90 tag tournament where he's partnered with Angel Azteca. The job he does bumping for Super Muneco is proof that he was God that year. I also loved the Fujiwara/Nakano match which I don't think made the set. Takada had some really bad stuff that didn't make the set, but I'm guessing you like Takada.

S'alright. The up and comers were Suzuki and Funaki. Suzuki had made his debut in '88 and Funaki had debut in '85 at the age of 15. Nakano was in his mid-20s and had been wrestling for about six years in 1990 and never made it past the lower card. It helps to see what Funaki did to Yamazaki, Fujiwara and Takada before this match to realise how epic a showdown it was. This was the Misawa/Jumbo of shoot style.

Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, 3/8/84 I guess this was more of an angle than a match, but it was great stuff. I almost didn't watch it because I thought "oh, this is the one with Missing Link," but after watching Harley take all those headbutts and how well he sold the beating I was pretty hooked. The match itself turns into a war and we get a good look at the headbutt as weapon. Finally, I felt like I was watching the real Harley Race. To me he looks like an ex-navy guy who should be reliving bar fights he had in Saigon or the Philippines every time he steps in the ring. Flair was great in this too and it feels like he might be Race's best match-up. The finish sees Missing Link interfere again, but as an angle it made sense for him to screw Race so I was okay with it. I liked how they had the credits foll over Race kicking ass and Flair doing an awesome turnbuckle flip with the crimson mask. Harley Race vs. Ric Flair, 8/31/83 Great TV title match. Again I was struck by the awesomeness of the headbutt. The cut-off spot that Harley does in this match with his headbutt is phenomenal. Another thing that impressed me was Flair's vertical suplex. Jerry mentioned recently that Flair had some of the best execution ever and I was a bit skeptical because Flair's not a guy I think of when I think great execution, but the vertical suplex he does on Race in this match is amazing for the length he holds him up there. It's a bout with lots of little touches like that. The ending was kind of a predictabe way to end something like this that they were throwing out on TV, but Harley laughing and twisting his moustache like a silent film villain while Flair was laid out was a satisfying way to end the show and this really made me want to watch the Starrcade match. Harley Race vs. King Kong Bundy, WCCW 8/15/82 I've never really watched any of Bundy's matches before. Was he always this good pre-WWF? Because he seemed pretty damn good to me. This was another great match from post-70s Race, which made me wonder whether this is the period of Harley's I like most. This wasn't quite as much of a brawl as the Flair matches, but compelling nonetheless. The Bundy control segments where a lot better to me than Baba's control segments and Race sold and paced the match well. The only trouble was the ending. They worked this so well that a title switch felt like a real possibility -- it wasn't because it had been pre-announced that one of the Von Erichs was getting the next title shot -- but it seemed like the title switch was on, so they had to end it with a screwy finish. Screwy finishes worked in the first two matches I watched but this one was a bit of a disappointment. Still, a cool run of Harley matches.

Boss Man vs. Earthquake, Toronto 9/16/90, Survivor Series Showdown 10/29/90, Royal Albert Hall 10/3/91 and Survivor Series Showdown 11/11/91 These two worked well together. I think if you're a fan of structure in your wrestling you'll probably appreciate the match layouts here. You probably don't need to watch all four because they repeat a lot of the same spots, but the '91 matches are different enough that it might be a good idea to watch one from each year. My favourite was the Survivor Series Showdown match from '90, which I thought was a great TV match up until the bullshit finish which was the same finish as the Main Event Hennig/Boss Man match. The Royal Albert Hall match is interesting from the point of view that they go long (around 15 minutes) and manage to do a decent job filling that time in, and the '91 Survivor Series Showndown match has some cool armwork from Earthquake, though it gets blown off in the melee that always finishes these Survivor Series previews. One of the first gimmicks I started following in wrestling was Boss Man handcuffing jobbers to the ropes and beating them with the nightstick. I remember it pretty vividly along with Roberts putting Damien on people, Brutus giving jobbers a haircut and Dibiase shoving a hundred dollar bill down their throat. The fact that they could turn Boss Man and make him into such a solid babyface is a testament to how good they used to be at turning people. Bobby is also awesome through all this and it's a great look at Tenta too, who I think we'll all agree was a good worker. In fact, aside from the annoying finishes, a lot of this was the kind of stuff the WWF did really well in these years. I don't know if Loss will agree, but I've always thought their booking was quite good in '91/92.

Boss Man vs. Mr. Perfect, The Main Event IV 11/23/90 and Wrestlemania VII, 3/24/91 The Main Event match was building into something good when it was ruined by the Heenan angle. Perfect's timing seemed a bit off at the start w/ the spot where Boss Man chased him around the ring and the sliding crotch spot into the turnbuckle, but once he was on top I thought he delivered a far better beating than Dibiase usually did. Boss man's selling was really good during that control period as well. The Wrestlemania match had some big time bumps from Hennig as well as Boss Man's bump into the steel steps and that was about it.

Boss Man vs. The Barbarian, Royal Rumble 1/18/91 and Hamilton, Ontario 1/25/91 I don't like the way Boss Man sells as a babyface. I understand he's trying to get the crowd behind him by acting all fired up, but the shuffling of the feet, the spinning off the ropes and all the shaking he does seeps into his moves like those exaggerated body shots he gave Dibiase. I also don't find his selling very compelling when he's putting over the rib injury in these matches. It's not really his fault as he's clearly trying, but both these matches felt like I was watching a guy who knew what he was doing but couldn't execute it in an exciting way. I was impressed that they went so long in the Rumble match, but there was a ton of downtime and the basic structure of Boss Man starting out like a house on fire, getting caught out, injurying himself, fighting through the pain and making the big push for the win was so standard that I can only imagine it being praised because it's not expected from a Boss Man/Barbarian match and not because it was well done. Some of the offence was cool. I liked the spot where Boss Man catches the Barbarian's big boot. With both these guys, I'd rather see offensive matches than any kind of effort at storytelling. I liked how Barbarian got his boy Haku to help beat up Boss Man the Ontario match. Don't see how these were better than Dibiase's best matches against Savage and Roberts.

Nakano wasn't an up and comer.

No, I much prefer watching the Boston/Philly/New York footage from that era.

I'm pretty sure I watched all those Savage matches and the Hogan match. I wanted to avoid Saturday Night's Main Event so I didn't watch the Blazer match.

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.