ohtani's jacket

El Dandy was the best worker in Mexico in 1990, but Satanico is the greatest luchador of all-time (at least on tape and in my opinion.) I don't think there was ever a point where I thought Atlantis or Azteca were better. However, the demands of being a technico are different from a rudo and the latter two really stand out as excellent technicos. Great rudos on the other hand are far more common. I also think watching CMLL TV week to week is better than watching a yearbook, but that's true of every promotion I imagine and not the fault of the yearbook.

I also think you have to take match structures into account. Dibiase worked in an era where nine times out of ten a match would start as a straight contest and would disintegrate into a brawl, and I think most of the time the matches were defined by that pattern as opposed to brawler vs. technical wrestler.

Isn't Jerry from a lit background? If wrestling was taken seriously academically then of course you would break it down layer upon a layer upon a layer.

Steve Veidor is a guy who really grew on me too. Angel Azteca really should have been the Lizmark/Solar/Atlantis of his generation, but sadly after 1990 he's never the same again. He has some decent stuff in AAA, but he should have been a major player throughout the decade. That Blackwell/Mulligan match is pretty cool. Shame about the video difficulty at the end, though.

I think there is some merit in your definitions, but at the same time you're presuming that Dibiase could've worked the mat in the WWF if he'd wanted to but chose not to. I don't think anyone really worked the mat seriously in the WWF from 1988 to 1991 or however long it was that Ted's push as a singles worker lasted. The guy who worked the mat most was probably Bret Hart and he was hardly a fantastic mat worker. In the eyes of the fans he was, but not by my metric. Granted, there isn't much evidence that Dibiase was a great mat worker in other territories outside of the WWF, but I would throw matwork out when it comes to the WWF. I believe there definition of technical wrestler was based on execution. Rude and Orndorff are difficult cases, though. Orndorff I almost want to call an all-rounder in cricketing terms, only I'm not sure he had the all-round skills of say a Barry Windham. He was a body type first and foremost, but his in ring ability defied his body type. Rude to me was a bump and stooge guy since his offence sucked. Again, it's hard to define as he was maybe even a brawler with crappy technical skills.

Dibiase worked as a technical wrestler in the WWF. They were forever putting over his execution on the commentary (textbook suplex, vertical suplex and a beauty, Jess, and so on and so forth.) He was supposed to be a guy who had the skill and wrestling acumen to back up all of his cash and bravado. The definition of a technical wrestler was pretty clear at the time. It was supposed to be a guy who was a strategist and who knew his way around the ring. Someone who would work to a plan and was ring savvy. I don't think it was strictly defined as someone who could work holds as post-Backlund you didn't get a lot of that in the WWF. It was sold as someone who in a kayfabe sense could "work" (i.e. wrestle) even if that simply meant executing moves well.

I ended up randomly watching a Bockwinkel/Brody match which wasn't particularly good, but Brody sold for a long stretch of the match so perhaps the Brody criticisms need to be refined.

1. Tibor Szakacs -- when I think of WoS guys I wish there was more footage of, Adrian Street, Alan Sarjeant, Abe Ginsberg, Peter Szacaks, Billy Robinson and Jackie Pallo all come to mind. But if I was only allowed to choose one guy it wouldn't be a McManus or a Masambula, it would be Tibor Szakacs. To me he's almost like a WoS Volk Han in the sense that even though Hungary isn't that far removed from England there's something really foreign about his grappling style and the way he throws strikes that makes him seem exotic to the audience. I don't know if he was the best mat wrestler in the history of British wrestling but he was surely one of the toughest. 2. Carl Greco -- I'm of the firm belief that shoot style should look like a shoot. I tend to hate anything that looks too juniorish or too much like pro-wrestling (within reason.) I'm not a huge fan of the hybrid BattlArts style but I like the main core of workers and I like it when they wrestle Carl Greco. I don't know much about his background and I've never been interested in finding out really. All I know is that this American guy who featured on and off again on BattlArts cards over the years is probably (no shit) one of the five best American mat workers of all time. I would even go so far to say that he's probably the best American mat worker of the past 20 odd years. I love his short matches with the likes of Ikeda and Ishikawa more than any celebrated BattlArts match ever with the possible exception of the '98 and '99 Ikeda/Ishikawa matches. 3. Rocky Moran -- I'm on a bit of a non-watching cycle lately though the upswing in discussion the past few days has got me all itchy. Moran was my most recent WoS discovery. The Belfast Brawler no one's ever heard of. There aren't too many of the other Irish lads who get too much play outside of Finlay, but Moran could go. He's not blow away great like some of the 70s workers, but when the All Star split occurs and the 80s down period begins he's consistently one of the best performing talents on TV. His title match with Cullen is a certified classic by WoS standards and he's a guy who is now squarely on my radar. 4. Billy Robinson & Nick Bockwinkel -- cheating, I know, but like I said above I'm on a bit of a non-watching cycle and I had a bit of a kick start by searching for these guys on youtube. I've always liked both guys without being obssessive compulsive about it, and I'm slowly starting to chip away at their matches on youtube. 5. Sangre Chicana -- I was going to choose Hogan for the last spot since before I stopped watching wrestling and got caught up in my other hobbies the most fun I was having was watching Hogan's brawling sprints against the likes of Orndorff and Race, but then I realised that it was actually Hogan's opponents I liked since so many of Hogan's other 80s matches suck ass. So I'm going with Chicana since that was the last lucha I watched. To me the quintessential wrestler is one of the great actors and performers like Satanico or Fujiwara, but there's another argument that the quintessential wrestler is a brawler and in that respect to me Chicana is completely unique. There are brawlers like Murdoch and Hansen and Aguayo who brawl. That's what they do. Then there's Chicana, who looks like he goes from town to town, getting drunk, sleeping in the street, getting into some sort of dispute with a local and winds up being one of the great gunslingers of all time instead of just a wino. I mean, on some level we're supposed to suspend our disbelief that these guys get paid to wrestle and that they do it for a living. Chicana doesn't look like he does it for a living. He looks like he wound up in the ring because he fucked the wrong person's daughter and there's a posse waiting for him if he makes it out alive. One of the most sympathetic babyfaces ever and one of the most despicable heels and probably the sleaziest worker I can think of.

The directors voted Tokyo Story number one this year and 2001 joint second. The directors' top 10 films all finished in the critics' top 50 with The Bicycle Thief/Bicycle Thieves finishing the lowest at 33. That's not too bad considering 358 directors vote and 846 critics with very few of the same films appearing on ballots.

It happened after the invasion of Kuwait right before Operation Desert Storm.

Inoki "converted" to Islam in 1990. The batshit part was that instead of calling himself Ali he took the Hussein part from Saddam Hussein. I think this is news again because he's revisited Pakistan.

Flair stopped being Flair when he cut his hair. Or perhaps before that when he started wearing it in a ponytail. I liked his 1990 stuff and don't think it was too much of a step down from 1989.

I don't think you have to be Japanese to understand it. The strong, silent type is an archetype in Western culture too. Think Cary Cooper.

Thought of some more who've annoyed me over time... Johnny Saint, Mark Rocco, Aja Kong, Lioness Asuka, Jim Cornette, Rick Rude, Jushin Liger, Vader and Owen Hart. Did 180s on the Midnight Express, Rock 'n' Roll Express, Misawa and Choshu in recent years.

If Misawa had a run as best in the world it was in 1994 and 1995.

Because in Japan he's being a legit badass. Whether it's a sumo wrestler stepping up to the dohyo, a judoka or Bunta Sugawara in a yakuza film, a poker face is a legit sign of toughness in Japan. Jumbo used to make facials like Arnold Schwarznegger pulling that thing out of his nose in Total Recall, but I think he was just trying to ape the Americans he'd worked with.

I don't dislike Jumbo as such. I just dislike when people run around saying "Ooh, Jumbo's the best," which is a kneejerk reaction since I probably went through a stage where I also thought Jumbo was the best. I do think his early 80s period is boring as shit. I didn't get the All Japan set, but I watched that Kerry Von Erich match and was bored shitless. With Tenryu, I always get psyched up to watch one of his matches and wind up disappointed. I can't get into his WAR stuff at all. It all seems like cookie cutter Riki Choshu style stuff to me and Tenryu is so clumsy. I could never forgive out why people turn a blind eye to him blowing stuff.

You by far have higher standards for match quality than anyone else I can think of. I don't even point that out as a bad thing. I just think you can be pretty critical. So it doesn't surprise me that a list of wrestlers you don't really care to ever watch again is a long one. It may be because I'm critical, but between every album I've yet to hear and every movie I need to see there isn't much time for anything other than new wrestling. I tend to go through phases in what I watch and I'm currently on a non-watching cycle to boot, but for a lot of workers I can't imagine seeing a match of theirs that adds anything to what I know about them. There were people who I was an uber fan of like Bret Hart of Akira Hokuto who I couldn't watch another match of without turning it off. It's like a closed chapter. I admire the way you power through those yearbooks. One guy who I've heard people say they enjoy lately is Otto Wanz. Man, that guy is torture for me. In fact, German wrestling by sheer reason of the way it's usually handhelds and dark and confusing often gives me a viewing headache.

Casas is a tricky one. We'll never know how good he was in the 80s because UWA didn't have TV and no new handhelds have emerged to date. The UWA TV that does exist from the early 90s is a different style from CMLL. The guys you expect to be good look good, but the matches are consistently fun as opposed to spectacular, and the Santo/Casas match that exists from '92 is clipped to shit. He shows up in 1992 CMLL and is an absolute genius, which I think it's safe to assume didn't happen over night, but we'll never really know how good Casas was compared to his peers during his UWA days. Remember, there were a lot of good workers in Mexico during that timeframe. From what I've seen, most of Casas' contemporaries in the '89-92 period peaked during that TV boom. Of the top workers from that era, only Satanico really looks like a fantastic worker in the early 80s. So, it's hard to gauge. Also, Casas hasn't ever been put under the microscope like Ric Flair because not enough people have seen him work. At his best I think Casas is an absolute genius, but I have a lot of issues with his work. I think his offense is often weak and his matwork can be poor. There are matches where that isn't the case, but the more offense heavy CMLL became the less I liked his work. There's a decade or more from '98-10 or thereabouts where I wouldn't bother watching his matches. It's probably a stylistic thing more than anything else and apathy towards the direction CMLL took, but I still don't like that era of Casas. In fact, the Casas/Santo shit was so dragged out and took so long to resolve itself and then led to crappy tag matches that were several notches down from the great '97 run that burnout would have been a very real possibility had I been watching the stuff in real time. Lately, he's had the Panther feud which I don't love as much as everyone else but is still worth watching and a couple of strong matches against younger guys, but unless there's a Casas set released that proves me wrong I would agree with Loss' point that it's very difficult to argue that Casas was the best in the world for multiple years in a row. Whether that means he's not a candidate for GOAT, I'm not sure. First I think you'd have to start off arguing whether he's the best luchador of all time, which I think is highly debatable. As for Breaks, I think there's a bit more available that you haven't seen yet, though it may not be in full. Breaks is super fresh, which Flair obviously isn't. I remember Ditch saying that if you've seen one Breaks match you've seen them all, which is a fair comment if you don't love his schtick wholeheartedly. That Young David match is immense, though. Actually, both the Young David matches are really good. I think people may be surprised by how fun young Davey Boy Smith was when the Europe set is finally released.

Great thread for the day after the end of the world. I fucking hate Nobuhiko Takada, Jerry Estrada and John Naylor. Shiro Koshinaka I'm willing to give a break because I really like the Satanico match. The list of guys I don't hate but never want to watch another match from would be pretty long.

I think from the documentary makers point of view that would have confused the narrative.

A big Hansen fan would probably find him more varied than someone who's only watched his best known stuff. Personally, I think his matches, though they were almost universally brawls, were varied enough that he doesn't really seem like a one trick pony to me. Again, going back to the Brit doco, McManus was portrayed as the greatest heel of all-time and he wrestled pretty much the same match in all of the footage we have. Now to be fair, the footage is from the latter part of McManus' career, but the Pallo/McManus footage wasn't remarkably different from what we know of Mick. Arguably more intense, but nothing earth shattering. But McManus was such a great performer (and I really, really rate McManus) that I could watch his schtick all day long. Regal didn't sound like much of a fun when the topic of Catweazle and McManus was brought up, so others may disagree, but I think McManus is an example of masterful schtick. Breaks would be another, although Jimmy had more match types than Mick.

I think reinvention is more along the lines of the transformation from Kid Tarzan Jonathan to Exotic Adrian Street and is more apparent in gimmick changes, unmaskings and character turns. In the case of Jumbo, if you were to chart his career as young challenger --> All Japan ace --> grumpy vet, I'd argue that has more to do with aging. No doubt Jumbo adapted to each stage of his career, but I don't think he necessarily reinvented himself. In Funk's case, I don't think the Funk we saw in 1989 was markedly different from the Funk that fought Lawler in the early 80s and I think many of the traits on show were evident in his Japan babyface work, but I'd agree with Dylan's argument that Funk was versatile enough to play a different role in every territory he entered. That's a plus for Funk and one of his strengths. It may be the reason that some people hold him in higher regard than Flair, however I would argue that Funk was in a different position from Flair and that while we may have seen different shades of Flair in each territory there was basically a necessity for him to play Flair just about everywhere he went. But yes, ultimately they both represent the opposite of Duggan. I don't believe that you can discount a wrestler with Duggan like schtick from the GOAT arguments, however. I just got done watching the British doco where they praise career spanning schtick so perhaps that's influencing me. I don't reallly see how the 90s All Japan guys are exempt from criticism either. If you're talking about versatility then surely they failed to change in the same vain as North American examples.

Ok, I take your point about personal tastes. I don't really see how Funk or Jumbo reinvented themselves. The changes in their personas were a natural progression over time. They evolved as they grew older. This may be a positive for them, but does that mean that the absence of reinvention is a negative for others? Why can't it be a plus for some wrestlers and a non-factor for others? Perhaps Flair had a persona that was so over there wasn't any scope to reinvent it. Perhaps what he really needed was better stories, better angles and better feuds. There aren't too many main event attractions who change their style once they're established. Perhaps Flair perfected his act so well that people still wanted to see it long after many of us were sick of it. If you think about it, it's difficult to imagine Flair doing anything different. That may be the trappings of being Ric Flair, but it's hard for me to see it as a negative that he never mixed up his act. In the case of someone like Negro Navarro I would say his transformation was a total success, but I would also temper that by saying the little footage we have of him as a younger worker is not quite as compelling as the worker he evolved into. I don't see how versatility is as important as being really, really good at what you do. Your act is everything in pro-wrestling and since the overwhelming majority of workers never change if you're going to have arguments about who was the best I think it ought to boil down to who was the absolute best at what they did not whether they versatile. If you think that being versatile is part of being the absolute best then fair enough, but like I said I don't think it's imperative that a wrestler changes.

All Japan is the greatet style ever created and you can't say the same about touring NWA champ style? I thought Williams told me people like you don't exist. How many singers, actors, directors, writers or artists in general are eclectic? Not very many. Creative people generally draw from the same well every time. I really don't understand your versatility argument when you have such conservative views on wrestling. You seem to be misinterpreting what jdw and I have said. I never said that 90s All Japan is flawless or the only style worth watching. But yes, I do think it's the best. Anyway, the fact that versatility is so rare is precisely what makes it so extraordinary when someone demonstrates it. When guys are relatively equal in other respects, it's something that should be taken into account. What happens if someone thinks the touring NWA champ style is the greatest style ever created? Who says Flair or anyone else for that matter have to reinvent themselves? And how exactly did Funk or Jumbo do it? They got older.