blueminister

I tend to think people perceive Brody was a great wrestler because 1) unlike many main-eventers of his era he was a natural performer who effortlessly projected "wild man" and contributed to a riot-like atmosphere so well people just assume the rest of the presentation and 2) they're Meltzer zombies with a generalized lack of refinement/they're just less uptight about constitutes "great brawling" (depending on your point of view.) I don't think anyone thinks he was a great brawler because he was stabbed to death in the shower by his booker. I need to read the Matysik bio, but other than the controversy over his prowres acumen and friends testifying that he was actually a kind and intelligent man in private life I don't see much variation in the opinion that he was often an unprofessional dickhead to work with. The Luger cage match tape isn't exactly a secret.

uh

I don't hate Duggan or anything but hahahahaha. I know you loaded your post with disclaimers but unless Brody went around stabbing people in showers this is a pretty bizarre statement -- the idea that being a difficult performer has any degree of traction in the wrestler mindset for justifying a shanking murder just reminds me how strange, depressing and anti-social wrestling is. He stiffed him! He went off-script! There have been performers in other fields way more difficult than Brody and I can't say that, say, music is any poorer because Neil Young or Axl Rose didn't have to worry about being garroted by David Geffen. I'm not trying to morally grandstand you because you seem to have a pretty good handle on the real-world morality of the situation, I'm just not really sure what the point of the post is if not a sort of twilight zone rationalization. It seems enough to talk about him supposedly not being as good at his job as claimed and say mean things about his wrestling matches without even getting into that stuff.

I was a film studies major (lol) and I want to kick your writing in the teeth.

I don't know/care about the methodology of the S&S poll but I think the idea that, say, The Searchers is a critical cause celebre that isn't a definitive GOAT among film directors would be news to actual film directors. You're kind of using the fact that critics place slightly greater weight on historical importance to overstate the variance of opinion in the film community. Wrestling insiders' logic in making value judgments is more insular because, unlike film, they're a deliberately insular community that internalizes the value judgments of the "other side" more into their thought process, even when they're defying it. Wrestling thought operates under a self-reflexive "workers/consumers" division that hasn't existed in film since the American New Wave.

I don't see OJ's distinction between "reinventing themselves" and "evolution." Both terms seem to represent the opposite of, say, Hacksaw Duggan finding a schtick and riding it thirty years into the sunset.

Was Dean Ambrose the guy Mick Foley didn't want to work with, and if so -- has it been established what exactly the deal with that was?

Well I don't think anyone ever accused Blueblood Hunter of being a great character. (I'm a fan of the gimmick myself in an "unrealized potential" way.)

Wrestling isn't a sport, so it's actually completely different. There were no pennants or World Series for Sting to win, and the championships he did win were all props. Packing houses is not the fake wrestling equivalent of winning titles unless you're a promoter. Glad I could help.

The Intern and The Dungeon Master

Brother Love owns, no diss to Paul Bearer but it would have been really cool if he kept managing the Undertaker and became the most hated guy in wrestling.

I would assume Steve Austin would have been great at his job as a fake wrestler even if certain opportunities hadn't have come about or happened differently, that he would have continued to make the most of opportunities given, that you could watch footage of him being great at being a wrestler, and acknowledge whether or not his merits as a wrestler warrant him being honored alongside other wrestlers. I don't see where "what-if" scenarios and alternative universes come into it.

Man, I should have replied late last night, but on the other hand I'm not sure having Dylan reject Jake Roberts, Naoya Ogawa and Brian Pillman for reasoning I already reject would have been at all productive. My post wasn't even intended as a shot at anyone, as I appreciate the efforts of Dylan to look up attendance figures when making the case for late-territory wrestlers like Patera and Blackwell, just an acknowledgement that I think having stats be any sort of "final word" in measuring an individual's worth like in sports isn't universally instructive as we're dealing with performers pretending to be athletes and essentially rating the efforts of same backstage powers the further we get into the televised era. I think the idea that Sting didn't "meet his potential" is wrong. We're enthusiasts, we have youtubes and bootleg discs of good-to-great matches and engaging and energetic promos from Sting and other performers that give lie to the notion that their efforts weren't sufficient to engage their audience. I find it weird that WCW failing to draw crowds or pop buyrates is effectively blamed on Sting shitting the bed as a performer when it's clear the company was fucked on several levels that had nothing to do with Sting not being great enough at his job. It seems founded on a "great performances can overcome bad booking and promotion" assumption that seems to have no basis in the history of pro wrestling and actively ignores the last twenty-five years of mass-marketed wrestling centralized under a handful of bookers whose efforts have hindered the abilities of their performers to promote themselves more often than not. Even if you disagree with me on the idea of Sting's merits, the idea that his merits are some sort of unknowable quantity because he worked for the wrong companies is nuts. I'm not totally discounting the idea that figures could have a place in the modern context, but in this case that still brings us back the claim that Sting finally being booked well as the face in one of the hugest angles of all time somehow not being sufficient instead of proving his case. It's a conclusion built from the assumption that he was merely good-to-middling performer to begin with who lucked into working with heel Hogan instead of a guy who was able to parlay his years as the mast of a sinking ship into being one of the most popular faces of America in the sort of long game you don't see much of in wrestling.

It's probably very telling of the McMahon mentality that this at least two documentary DVDs that devoted time to attempting to redeem Show/Bossman. Show pretending that it helped him deal with his father's death is right up there with Batista saying he was WWE 4 Lyfe in the WWE DVD nuclear bullshit category.

I think Sting is one of like a hundred deserving dudes sunk pro by applying sabremetrics w/ columns of buyrates and attendence figures to a hillbilly performance art and essentially making recognition of any individual over-reliant on the wherewithal of their promoters but I accept that my beef is really more with the institution of the HOF than any particular dude who engages in that sort of thing.

Most Skilled at Imaginary Aspect of Fake Sport

Even given WWE being really spiteful and dumb about protecting their own contractors I can't believe they were stupid enough to have Punk work hurt against Ryback in physical RAW angles and a TLC match when you take into account his angle and dearth of over people on the roster.

Actually I think Ric Flair is just sort of white trash irl with all sorts of retrograde views.

Any job where you're working with human waste on a daily basis is not ideal to the vast majority of people, hope this helps.

Hahahaha bring Buddy Landell in as nWo Flair.

I agree on "Nash undersold for nWo success" point for the same reasons I find myself stanning for Sting -- there were no interchangeable parts in that angle and Nash was one of the few wrestlers frankly intelligent enough to understand the importance of what was going down, how to handle himself in the WCW booking environment, and how to present himself for maximum effect. As a performer Nash is a personal favorite of mine, but if we're counting someone's failures against them -- as we're apparently doing with Bischoff -- even as the fourth of fifth guy on the "who killed WCW" list I don't see how he makes it.

No, because Nash was the author of the majority of his failures, those failures were ultimately disastrous to the industry, and there's little room to dispute that. I think hypothetically that Nash would have been worth considering if he only had the WWF champ run and 1996-98 to his name though. Sting is demonstrably a better candidate because he never had a decisive role in wrecking a company that had every reason to succeed.

He wasn't carrying the promotion by himself, it is not even necessary to my argument that he carried the promotion by himself.

You're ignoring that wrestling's a cooperative performance art and not a sport, so the fact that Sting didn't single-handedly become a national phenomenon in a bad promotion is not necessarily a damning measure of his worth as a performer. To use counter-examples from other performance arts: despite being given starring vehicles funded by major Hollywood studios, Brad Pitt didn't become a megastar until 1994. This sort of Gordy Lister logic would suggest that Brad Pitt was not good at his job until 1994, when in fact we should be considering that Sting is a guy that spent the majority of his career starring in the wrestling version of Cool World but when tested with non-destructive angles passed with flying colors. There's no reason to treat his ability as a performer or draw as merely theoretical when he was a critical part of one of wrestling's hugest and best-drawing angles. Orson Welles could be dismissed as a guy with a "single good year" for Touch of Evil who invariably failed during the multiple times he was pushed on top. This is, of course, nonsense indicative of an overly-exclusive and arbitrary approach to quantifying worth that pretends it's anything but. Goldberg found wrestling's version of overnight success in an already molten hot promotional environment -- created with the help of, uh, Sting -- a luxury a handful of wrestlers have had and certainly one Sting didn't have in the late 80s and early 90s. Sting was tasked with lifting dead weight, Goldberg was carried on shoulders. No one find success in a vacuum, and the idea that building a monster aura was a trick that Goldberg had to perform all by himself not once but twice is laughable.

It isn't a specific reference to anything in your post, just a chuckle at the idea that Sting-nWo 1997 was essentially transitive because lots of wrestlers have great runs now and then. Yeah, it usually helps when wrestlers aren't actively sabotaged by bad angles, ineffective promotion, and creative inconsistency. So, wait -- are you giving Sting credit for 1997? Or are you suggesting that he was ultimately interchangeable? Because I was told that this was a bit that no one in this thread was engaging in. I don't see how you took my statement that he had worked hard to gradually cultivate a loyal but modest fanbase in spite of a promotion that inadvertently worked against him and replied to it as if I had stated affirmatively that he drew money and initially attracted a mass following, but, uh... Seriously? The unofficial main event of countless Nitros and PPVs was Sting Will Fly Down And Do Something Important. Everyone in 1997 understood this, I don't see why enthusiasts are acting as if it wasn't the case so as if to say "whoops, I guess nothing can be proven." Unlike, say, pretending Sting-nWo was just another hot run with ultimately no greater significance to the big picture than any other well-drawing feud.