ohtani's jacket

Did The Honky Tonk Man actually say that?

Uh, Steamboat was constantly one of the top workers in WCW.

August IWRG Avisman vs. Trauma II, IWRG Intercontinental Lightweight Championship, 8/16/09 This was OK. They put each other in interesting holds, and the selling was good, particularly from Avisman, who reminds me of this angry little kid I went to school with. The problem with these guys is that every time they work the mat, they put each other in submission holds. When they can't get a submission, they release the hold without being told to break. It doesn't make sense to give up position in a wrestling match. They'd be better off countering their way out of a hold, or better yet, countering the hold before it can be hooked into a submission. The annoying thing about all the resets is that you know that every single time they return to the neutral position that they're going to swap positions on the mat. So what you get is a bunch of highspots on the mat and some weak transitions. You almost get the feeling that these guys want to be maestros before their time. The difference between these younger guys and Terry and Navarro is that Terry and Navarro are looking to hurt each other. When Terry or Navarro release a hold, their selling tells the story. They're bastards, who've mastered the art of hurting each other. The second fall was better in this respect, as Avisman went after Trauma's injured shoulder, but the other thing I couldn't understand about this match is why Avisman went over. Trauma had a kayfabe reason for losing the belt, but he'd only just won it. IWRG booking just doesn't make sense. The finish was awful as they threw in a couple of unnecessary topes and Avisman wrenched the arm about twenty times before Trauma would submit. Was that supposed to make Trauma look tough? That was ridiculous. IWRG - Festival de Máscaras - 8/20/09 Cerebro Negro Dr. Cerebro Vs Orito El Panterita This was a tidy match, but I was expecting at least one spectacular sequence. Freelance was strangely subdued. Los Misioneros de la Muerte El Signo Negro Navarro Vs Los Temerarios Black Terry Shu el Guerrero This won't be to everyone's tastes, but I was really enjoying it until IWRG decided they'd had enough and blinded me with white light. The Terry vs. Navarro feud has morphed into Bill Dundee vs. Jerry Lawler. Both guys have developed amazing punches, adding another dimension to the best feud in wrestling. It's a shame that lucha doesn't do loser leaves town matches, as that would be the match of the decade. Terry lost his hair to Chico Che on the 16th, so now he truly looks as craggy and windswept as the great Western films and the directors who made them. He had a cut above his eye, which Signo did an expert job of reopening. Signo can't move like he used to, but he's still pretty useful with his mitts. The match itself was bare and minimalistic, just the way it ought to be. The match wasn't about matwork as much as it was about hurting people. Signo had his old mask on, where the mouthpiece makes it look like he's grinning the whole time. Shu worked an arm injury, so naturally Terry tried evening the score, but he had a tough time dealing with Signo's wrist strength. With some of the reverse holds they did, it looked like Signo was laughing at him. Navarro, as usual, was on another level. The finish was bullshit, like it usually is in Terry/Navarro matches, but Navarro is untouchable. I've seen some unbeatable workers in my time, guys who only ever lose because it's a work, but Navarro is on a whole nutha level. Now that he can throw rights and lefts equally well, he's just untouchable. Be warned: this was a slow match. There was a time when Signo and Shu el Guerrero would've torn it up in their opening mat exchange, but not anymore. Still, if you like selling and killer holds, here's this week's recommendation. Homenaje al Matemático This was a trophy presentation to honour Matemático's 40th year in wrestling. Very cool. You're better off watching this than the main event.

Are you sure it's not clipped?

Here's a question -- has there ever been a better Japanese pro-wrestler than Fujiwara? El Hijo del Santo or Negro Casas? Barry Windham or Arn Anderson? Marty Jones or Dynamite Kid?

Steamboat was pretty good at getting fired up. His WCW run from '91 to '94 is full of asskicking performances. The most cringeworthy thing I can remember Rey doing was that promo they made him do after Hogan turned heel.

Sorry, didn't read your post properly. I'm not sure that the Greatest Wrestlers Ever poll was all that impartial, but certainly "characterisation" can be used as a means of judging workers. I'd still argue, however, that you need to find some common ground. If you simply prefer Tito's work or Bret's characterisation, that's fine from your own point-of-view, but it's not really enough if you want to make a case for Tito & Bret > Rey. To be honest, I'm not really sure who I think is the better babyface out of those three, but if I were to think about it, first I'd have to wipe out all of my biases. Then I'd try to ignore the booking and the different positions those workers were in, and try to find something they all in common.

If only Ray could cap screen shots. Such a nice touch.

If Rey's lowered himself in WWF, what was that crap he was doing running around without a mask in WCW? Or that crap he did in Mexico before he signed with the WWE?

I'm not sure if I understand your point. Comparing guys working in different environements is what people do all the time. If you voted in the SC Greatest Wrestler poll, which I believe you did, you had to engage in ranking different wrestlers working different styles and working different promotions. So if you indeed sent in a ballot, you're contradicting yourself here. I didn't vote based on who the better babyface was, I simply voted for what I thought the best matches were. That was a matches poll, not a workers poll. If someone says Rey Mysterio Jr. is the greatest WWE babyface worker ever and another guy reckons it's Tito Santana, that would actually make for a pretty cool argument, but I don't think it's as simple as listing matches.

Well, stunningrover, I told you an Eddie Guerrero fan might disagree. I've seen most of the Guerreros stuff in Mexico and Chavo Sr. was clearly the best of the Guerreros. Eddie was never really a "lucha style worker." He always looked like a US pro-wrestler to me. I don't think the Gringos stuff holds up compared to other heel trios, and I don't see how working lucha brawls was a problem when so many other great 90s feuds had awesome brawling trios matches. I also think that working NJPW moves in AAA matches is a strike against Eddie, at least from my perspective. It's understandable if people like Rey and Eddie's early work, but there seems to be an inbuilt prejudice that they can't have done their best work in the WWE, because it's the WWE and the WWE has always been a shitty promotion work-wise. I wouldn't felt that way too had I not watched a ton of lucha lately and been involved in the WWF and WCW projects at smarkschoice. As for judging one babyface against another, Tito was a Ricky Steamboat type face, Bret was a wannabe Gretsky who thought he was a role model and Rey Mysterio has been an underdog. How do you compare the three? There's not a lot of common ground there.

Every great worker is overrated to one extent or another. Take Eddie for example. He had two really good periods, WCW in 1997 and WWE 2004-05. The rest you could nitpick. If you ask me he wasn't particularly good in Mexico, his early US babyface work was weak, his Japanese work was a mixed bag and he struggled when he first joined WWE. Eddie Guerrero fans won't see it that way, but the point is that you can critique anything. Rey's WWE work, of which I've seen the stuff recommended to me, is better than his AAA, ECW, WAR and WCW stuff. Wrestling fans always want to compare workers against each other when often there's no connection. I don't really know how you judge a Tito Santana performance from 1984 or 1985 with a Rey Mysterio performance from twenty years later. Tito was in an awesome feud with Greg Valentine. A wrestling feud. The type of feud that forms the foundation of most people's fandom. Rey is feuding over shit that wouldn't make it past the writer's table on a network drama. Hell, it's such crap that the writer's would be too embarrassed to bring it up. So, I think the only way to judge Mysterio is whether he's better now than he was in '96 and '97. Athletically, many people would say no. Match wise, I'd say yes.

I'm not a big fan of Mysterio Jr., but the other day I watched him have an excellent match with Finlay from 2006. It was a storyline match much like Rey's feud with Eddie Guerrero in 2005. I couldn't give a shit about Rey's problems with Vicki Guerrero, and I didn't need Cole reminding us that every...single...second...of...the...match was about Rey's problems with Vicki Guerrero, but it was an excellent match by any standards. All of the Vicki Guerrero crap was annoying in the same manner that all of the emotion of that Unforgiven cage match that Dylan loves is annoying because the commentators never stop ramming it down your throat, but it's not the workers fault that the commentators can't or won't shut up. But more to the point, there is nothing good about Marufuji.

How can you say Rey's WWE stuff is overrated and have anything good to say about Marufuji?

That's because all Vader matches are the same.

I don't know the answer to this question. I'd have to watch it again. I do know that I like the Midnight Express more than I ever did before after doing this project, and in particular I like Bobby Eaton more than I ever did before, so I might be going on an outdated memory. I never cared much for Smothers or Armstrong as workers and hated the Southern Boys gimmick, but I watched one of their TV matches before the end of the balloting and really enjoyed it, so maybe the GAB match is OK. From memory, it wasn't laid out as well as Midnights vs. Rock "n" Roll Express or some of the other tags they had that year.

Heel champions were only ever transitional champs back then and Vince was looking for a babyface draw. I think it was a little murkier than babyface champs for three years. Either Bret or Diesel could've turned heading into SS '95, but they both ended up as tweeners. Sid was a tweener as well. He was a heel who started getting babyface pops because Michael's face run didn't have any pre-Attitude era edge to it. UT may have been a face, but his gimmick was that he was otherwordly. Aside from the failed Diesel push, where they really put him up against some ridiculous opponents, there was one clear cut babyface run in that period (Michaels) and it sucked.

OK, I'll give you a reprieve

There's a story going around in English rugby right now about a physio slipping a player a blood capsule so he could head to the blood bin and be replaced by a goal kicker. Should've bladed.

I stopped watching WWE before the Invasion angle, but surely it was bound to fall on its ass. An invasion angle can only really work if a group of workers jump from one promotion to another or appear to have jumped even if their company went out of business (like the original UWF.) How can you have an "invasion" when Vince is shooting about owning the wrestlers' contracts and everyone thinks WCW was a shitty promotion in its last few years? How many of those WCW guys were actually hot, like Choshu, Maeda or Hall and Nash? It kinda reminds me of that crappy UWF-i feud with New Japan, though I guess not everyone in Japan realised that the UWF-i was losing money. And at least in that scenario, you had the idea that Takada would take on the world to see who the best worker in Japan was.

The thing about Rey and Psicosis is that it's easier for a rudo to look better because a rudo does more work than a technico. Psicosis was a sloppy worker and somewhat poor offensively, but he had great schtick and took incredible bumps. Rey in AAA was pretty much an early version of WCW Rey -- he aborbed as much punishment as he could take before rattling off a comeback. That's okay in a trios match or 2/3 falls, but in WCW it took him a while to adjust to one fall singles matches. His weakness in AAA was that he couldn't brawl and his matwork was weak. Psicosis wasn't a hell of a lot better, but could cover up for it with the madcap stuff he did. In WCW, I thought he looked strong in his first couple of matches, but they jobbed him out in his first month. Ideally, he should've been brought into the company as a "Mysterio hunter" or something like that, and they could've ran a Sano/Liger type feud, but WCW didn't give much thought to it and had Malenko as Rey's main opponent in his first six months. So, yes, Psicosis was more entertaining than Rey in AAA, but he hung out with great rudos from UWA and CMLL. Mysterio, more often than not, worked alongside crappy AAA luchadores. His best period was probably when they put him together with Santo and Octagon and they formed a kind of third rate Space Cadets. Octagon was such a big star at that time that I guess Rey worked more like Octagon than someone classy like Solar or Lizmark. Angel Azteca was the closest thing to a Solar or Lizmark, but for whatever reason wasn't pushed. I don't think there's much comparison between WWE Rey and any of his earlier work. He's a much better worker now than he's ever been before, which is strange and unusual, but a credit to him.

Sacrilege! What's the highest ranked tag on your list?

I always assumed the Superbrawl tag was highly regarded. It was actually my #3 match, I think. The Starrcade 92 tag and the 5/22 6-man were #4 and #5 and I don't think there's three better tags in WCW history than that trio. Superbrawl is the best of the lot because it's Austin and Larry as a team, which shouldn't have worked but was awesome. You only have to compare it to the awful Steiners vs. Arn/Eaton match from the same show to see how it stands out from the pack.

I'm not criticising the list, I just think it's strange. Our thinking was pretty similar on 1930s cinema, but miles apart on WCW. Your #52 was my #2.