ohtani's jacket

Did Memphis fans ever get sick of Lawler? Did Japanese crowds tire of Funk? For guys who have reneged on their retirements, Funk is far less annoying than Flair.

Why buy a book that reads like a series of message board posts and bad news site reviews?

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/have-no-truck-with.html I can't wait to use this today. "I hold no truck with you sir."

Bock is creating excitement because he's new, just like the other 70s guys did when the All Japan Classics footage first began circulating. There was a time when people were excited to see Harley title matches from the 70s. After a while, people began picking holes in them as they do with most pimped workers. I'm not sure if there will be a backlash against Bock, perhaps there's not enough people re-evaluating him for it to matter, but any time a worker is pimped there's always people who will resist. Workers get pimped as the best ever, the excitement and interest in them reaches a peak then dies off as people move onto other things. I'm not trying to make Harley out as some kind of major deal because I don't think he was a big discovery, but I do think Harley is waiting to rebound. He'll be back.

If he was one of the best during his era then he's at least a contender for the GOAT, which is more meaningful in my eyes than finding a winner. In fact, I'm more interested in whether a guy like Race was the GOAT up until that point rather than "all-time." And you can talk anybody up or down in terms of all-time calibre. I could talk Jumbo down as a talker or list 25 workers that were better. We could all start praising the fuck out of Harley today and tomorrow he'd be an instant candidate. A year ago nobody was talking about Bock like they are now, so I find that a bit arbitrary. Anyway, I should probably start a Harley thread instead of derailing Dylan's project.

I would say that first of all you'd have to work out whether he was one of the very best from his era, because I think a lot of the GOAT arguments ignore more than they consider. Don't even get me started on best in the world claims. If someone watched all of the available footage from everywhere in the 70s (and this should be possible in the future when the 70s yearbooks are released) and then came away with the conclusion that Harley wasn't top tier I could understand that, but if they think he wasn't one of the best simply because somebody had a better match with Baba or Jumbo I think that's a bit weak. I don't think he was that bad on the mic during his run as champ and he sure drew in New Zealand. Maybe I'm getting a bit defensive because the last Harley I watched was the Hogan feud which is excellent.

Were you as high on The Destroyer as the rest of us when his Classics stuff started circulating? What about Harley? On the podcast you mentioned Mysterio Jr. How far off the top tier is he?

Very true. I actually thought about starting a thread for the time frame in question where I would try and formulate a top twenty-five but I got lazy. Breaks of course is someone who would do very well for me during that period. I'd like to see that top 25. There probably isn't enough footage from the era for anyone to compete with the status that Funk, Flair and Lawler have, but there were at least 50 good-to-great workers in Europe at the time which adds depth to the argument.

I think the big issue is the clipping. If New Japan classics had covered the Liger, Samurai & Co. vs. Kanemoto, Ohtani & Co. era in full I think it would have been re-evaluated by now. I think a lot of the repeat match-ups aren't as good as the peak year for juniors ('96), but the division appeared to be strong through to the end of '98. Wagner's run is really underrated, IMO. Arguably, the best a luchador has adapted to Japan. In fact, he looked like he belonged in Japan more than he did in Mexico.

I guess you can't be. I just thought it was weird because it wasn't as though he hit Virgil off the apron or did the spot where the face bangs Dibiase and Virgil's heads together. And it wasn't after the bell either. Bossman pulled him into the ring and did this extended mini-sequence with him during the stretch run. It was a drop in the bucket really.

Ted Dibiase vs. The Big Bossman, MSG 4/30/90 This was a decent enough match. It was a rare match in Dibiase's ouevre in that it saw him going after an injured body part (in this case the ribs.) The payoff to Dibiase working the ribs was that Bossman ended up beating the shit out of Virgil (more than I can ever remember someone beating up a manager without being DQ'ed), making it to the ropes before submitting to the Million Dollar Dream and surprising Dibiase with a small package. Not a bad TV match. That pretty much marks the end of my Dibiase viewing. Some general thoughts on WWF Ted: I think WWF Ted was a good worker without ever really being a great one. He was extremely dependable and I can't imagine Vince ever envisioning firing him while he could still work. His promo work was great and he played the Million Dollar Man character better than just about any wrestler played their role during the same time frame. That character work didn't always come across in his matches because of the abbreviated heel control segments that we've mentioned many times and that was the biggest surprise for me because I remember Dibiase as being a guy who had cool offence. In reality, he was more of a Flair guy who had his spots he loved to run like sliding backwards on his ass begging off and missing his top rope move and getting a shot to the guts. I hated the Virgil apron spot that was the finish to so many of his matches and his headlock was one of the worst mid-match restholds I've seen from this era of the WWF. But he was reliable. He didn't have a tremendous amount of good matches but he didn't have as many turgid matches as I originally claimed, at least not from this limited sampling. I vehemently disagree with Loss that every match can be good and I think he was handicapped a lot by match length and the finishes to his matches, but he was a solid performer despite all that. I would have liked to have seen him get a proper 25 minute match against Savage or work in a little more workrate friendly environment, but at the same time he seemed like a bumping and selling kind of a guy and I'm not sure he would have benefitted so much from a longer match if he wouldn't have been able to make his offence both focused and interesting. The Bossman match I just watched showed he could do it, but who knows. On a final note, if you fancy watching some WWF Ted Dibiase try the Savage matches and the first Jake match. That should scratch your itch.

I've only listened to the first half so far, but what I've heard has been truly outstanding. One thing I want to chime in on is Dylan's best in the world from the late 70s to the early 80s talking point. He mentioned the lack of lucha footage, but I think the European workers and even Joshi girls get overlooked in that time frame.

I'm pretty sure Hudson and Larry Z was for the international version of Worldwide and not just the UK because we got it in New Zealand too.

Ricky Steamboat vs. Ted Dibiase, King of the Ring 09/07/91 Lousy match. I'm really starting to hate Dibiase's headlocks. They're about as exciting as a Rick Rude chinlock. Ted Dibiase vs. Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, Boston 9/12/87 and Philadelphia 2/11/89 These actually weren't that bad. I especially liked the Boston match. Ted got such awesome heat when he first debut as the Million Dollar Man character. Again, the Boston fans were throwing garbage into the ring and again they got some of Ted's money from the face, which is one way to get folks into your match. Beefcake flapped about like a fish out of water when he sold, but at least it made Dibiase's headlocks seem more interesting. Ted seemed fresher in the beginning of his run, but I guess that was because he was still fleshing things out. The '89 match ends with the Virgil apron spot, which I didn't need to see again.

I was including us in the 95%

I'm sorry but changing the order of your spots in a squash match is not some kind of evidence of a genius at work. I have a hard time believing he put that much thought into a tag match against Well Dunn. In fact, it looked like they barely put any effort into the structure at all. House on fire hot tag after a couple of minutes is weak sauce. I'm sure Bret mixed things up more than he's given credit for, but I don't think the things you mentioned would be noticeable to 95% of the people watching and certainly not adapted for the sake of Well Dunn.

Ted Dibiase vs. Kerry Von Erich, London 4/24/91 The Dibiase/Von Erich matches weren't very good as you can probably imagine from Kerry's general state at the time, but this one at least got a decent amount of time. Piper annoyed the fuck out of me on commentary here putting over his beef with Dibiase every five seconds. I realise Von Erich didn't mean shit in the grand scheme of things at this point, but call the guy's match ffs. The finish sucked too. It looked like it was heading for a double countout, but Sherri scratched Von Erich's back allowing Ted to slide back in. The timing seemed off and the camera man had a bad angle. Ted seemed to call it, Sherri was late for the spot and Von Erich looked pretty stupid falling for the whole thing. Ted Dibiase vs. Dusty Rhodes, Boston 6/3/89 I think this was Dusty's television debut on his return to the WWF. The first thing he does is slip on the ropes trying to do a Rock-like pose on the turnbuckle. Nice one. Man, was he trying hard to get over with the crowd. This was goofy but kind of fun. Dusty gave a bunch of Ted's money away to kids at ringside and there were these feral Boston kids screaming into the camera and pointing at the cash. Suddenly, I realised what it must have been like for the Lakers to visit Boston Garden at the time. The finish here was amusing. Dusty won with a roll-up after Dibiase collided with Virgil on the ring apron and Lord Alfred Hayes tried to put over how clever Dusty was. It's too bad I've been watching so much Dibiase over the past few days because Ted fell victim to that same collision on a number of occasions. You'd think him and Virgil would've sorted it out. Ted Dibiase vs. Tito Santana, San Francisco 11/15/88 I think I watched this for the Tito Santana vs. the World thread. It hasn't gotten any better. It's not a bad match, but the wasted potential of a Ted/Santana match just so you can run some Hercules interference is really annoying, and I was surprised to see so many of the same sequences from the UK Dibiase/Von Erich match. I mean whole stretches. To give an example, Ted had this whole lock-up routine he used to do that wound up with him getting beaten up on the outside and slither back into the ring crawling on his backside. He really is quite Flair-ish in a way, I think.

Ted Dibiase vs. The Red Rooster, San Francisco 3/7/90 This was a nice competitive squash and the type of Dibiase performance I was searching for when I started this thread. Call me crazy but I actually think Taylor was kind of decent as The Red Rooster. I also got to hear Jesse here and he cracked me up straight away. He was talking about how the Rooster must feel at home at the Cow Palace when the director cut to a slightly large woman in the crowd and suddenly you hear Jesse say: "there's a cow right there." Then later on, when Virgil had stuffed the money down the Rooster's throat he goes on about how the Rooster can afford to buy his weight in chicken feed. I think I prefer Jesse to Bobby, to be honest. Ted Dibiase vs. Greg Valentine, New Haven 11/11/91 This was all right, but they were hardly given any time at all. Which is a bummer because I love me some Hammer. Ted Dibiase vs. Demolition Smash, Wichita 11/1/89 For a throwaway match on a pre-Survivor Series show I thought these guys put a lot of effort into a 10 minute bout. Of course just when it was getting good Zeus came to ringside to remind us of how awesome the wrestling at Survivor Series was going to be and Axe eventually made the save, but I guess you've got to expect those sort of pre-PPV goings ons. I wouldn't say this eas exactly Flair vs. Road Warrior Hawk, but I think it showed that there was at least some relation between tag workers and singles stars in the WWF at the time.

Ted Dibiase vs. Roddy Piper, 4/16/91 and 4/22/91 These were fun bouts while they lasted. I wish they'd had a program in the late 80s with a three match swing ala the Savage and Roberts feuds. These matchws were really just a tie-in to the Dibiase/Virgil feud with a bit of Piper/Sherri schtick and Dibiase going after Roddy's injured knee. The crowds were pretty dead at this point. Awful finish for the MSG match as the bell suddenly rings causing Piper, Dibiase and Sherri to stop and gawk at the time keeper. Finkel announces that Danny Davis has called the match off to prevent Piper's knee from being further damaged, Piper tears Sherri's dress off and that's the payoff basically: Sherri's ass. Never before seen.

The Bulldogs were way more exciting than the Hart Foundation. The Killer Bees were fucking awful.

I'm going to finish this off looking at Ted vs. random opponents starting with One Man Gang. Ted Dibiase vs. One Man Gang, Houston 6/7/87 Technical Ted Dibiase was a face here, working the hammerlock against big One Man Gang. Never really got out of first gear, but it wasn't the sort of match you expect to get out of first. OMG was about as inspired as Big Daddy. I'm sure he would've shown more life if he'd been working Hogan on this card. Strange to imagine what Ted's WWF career would've been like if he'd remained a face. I can't picture it.

Morton was very over. Check out the crowd reaction to some of those early angles. Flair also drew 15,000 when Road Warrior Hawk challenged him on the Great American Bash tour in Philly. Vince didn't need to run Hogan/Michaels. Both were babyfaces. Bret vs Savage is really the closest a tag team wrestler got to interacting with the top singles stars in the era, and that only happened one time. The point was that the NWA treated their tag teams as stars on the same level as their singles performers, where in the WWF, they were an isolated division. I'm not saying it's not without its own set of flaws, but I am saying that the NWA would have suffered more from the loss of the Road Warriors or Rock & Roll Express than the WWF would have from the loss of the Hart Foundation or British Bulldogs. I agree that the NWA would have suffered more from the loss of their mainstay tag acts, but I think that had a lot to do with the size of the roster and the pull that New York had in terms of luring guys away. The WWF didn't have quite the same mainstay acts as the Midnight Express or Rock 'n' Roll Express as teams were either coming in and out, breaking up and dissolving or having guys receive a singles push, and in the latter case I think the WWF was much more successful at turning tag performers into singles stars. In the long run, working a program with Flair did very little for Ricky Morton in terms of singles success and nothing for Road Warrior Hawk. In terms of working programs with the top guys, I agree that the tag teams were kept in isolation for the most part (they there were clear affiliations, heel stables, etc.), but the WWF had a much wider net they could cast over their midcard and with big guys they could bring in to to feud with Hogan. I'd also argue that Flair/Morton was a bit more credible than Hogan/Morton equivalent. I tend to think of the WWF tag division being well booked and meaningful up until the end of the steriod era. I think the WWF tag teams were handicapped in many ways, and I don't think many of us like the style, but there was a distinct effort to manage the division and it was treated as important. And hey, the top NWA tag teams had matching outfits too.

The WWF tag teams were over as performers. Just about every person on the roster was over as a performer. The old adage that "everybody is somebody's favourite" has never been truer than when it comes to WWF tag teams. I don't know if there was a great WWF tag match during the 80s or not. I've heard good things about the Briscos/Murdoch & Adonis handheld and I quite like the match where The Dream Team win the titles from The US Express. I also don't know that it's fair to say that because Ricky Morton wrestled Flair for the title that the WWF tag teams weren't important. Did Morton wrestle Flair out of necessity (challengers) or because he was super over? Why would Vince have run Hogan/Michaels? The roster would have had to have been a lot smaller for that match-up to headline anything.

The 9/24/88 Philly cage match isn't essential viewing for the Savage/Dibiase feud -- it doesn't add anything to the feud and is basically the MSG cage match reworked -- but it has great heat and is a strong finish to their houseshow run. The 7/31/88 WrestleFest match from Milwaukee is just the second Boston match with a clean pin rather than Virgil interfering. Nothing special. I would recommend people watch either the MSG leg or the Philly leg of this feud and skip the rest.

The 12/14/89 Ontario Jake vs. Dibiase match is more of the same, but it has a cool promo beforehand where Jake says the Million Dollar Belt is in Damien's bag, only if Virgil sticks his hand in there it may not be Damien he finds but one of Jake's more dangerous snakes. A series of clips follows with Jake holding one nasty looking snake after another and being totally and utterly Jake. I also saw a Boston match of theirs from the year before (1/9/88), which was better than Jake's return matches in '89 but nothing special. As Jake would say, I've seen all of this feud I need to see my man.