El-P

Raymond sure is one guy who got out of wrestling and lives a nice life afterward. Piloting his own plane... I don't know excatly why he retired so young (he was barely 40 I believe), but I think it has something to do with the Dynamite Kid debacle. Anyway, the Rougeaus are quite the opposite of the Von Erichs.

Hoga never did anything that was as great as the production on"Toxic". Of course it's not Spears' doing. I guess Pat Patterson never produced something as good for Hogan. But yeah, these days whatever is "effective" or "playing is role well" is overpimped. I've seen shitload of effective movies that I would hardly call *good*. *Good for what it is* rather.

It's rare enough, but I agree with this word for word. Taking in account some void in what I've seen, here's a list that I can live with at the time : 1 - Bret Hart Case had been talked about to death now. 2 - 2 Cold Scorpio See above. I hesitated between him and Eddie for the second spot, but Scorp has more big matches than Eddie, whose work in ECW against Dean I'm not huge fan of. 3 - Eddie Guerrero Can't go to far without mentionning Eddie. Peaked in 97 and 98 in an amazing way. 4 - Mick Foley Yep. The more I think of him, the more it seems I can't put him much lower. Was around all the time, in different promotions, delivered everywhere, has the great matches. Not a big fan of masturbatory Foley like the Vader SNME or RR 99, but otherwise, Foley was that good to me. 5 - Vader Best monster of the decade. It's just a shame he was never let lose in WWF, but he still found way to deliver. 6 - Rey Mysterio Jr. Best babyface of the decade this side of Bret. Sometimes I'm midly annoyed by him, but I can't deny he greatness of his work in WCW despite some time out with injuries. Half a decade at his level justput him over there. 7 - Shane Douglas Yep. Has been underrated a lot over the years, because he was an ECW guy and the "injured champ who never defended his belt in 98". But man, his work from 94 to 96/97 is just awesome. Not in a spectacular way, this guy was alreay looking like a throwback, but he had some of the best matches of the decade, and could work with anybody at that time. His WCW work as a Dude showed some potential, and when he came back in 92 he was really good already. He has the great matches, which he why he's above... 8 - Chris Benoit I got a bit tired of Benoit by 2002. Still some fanstastic work in WCW, but he was dragged down by the style to me (watching him work DDP was kinda painfull) and he just doesn't have those great matches under his belt. Benoit is a New Japan guy to me. 9 - Sabu Fuck yeah. I even thought about putting him above Benoit, since at that time I can be happy with never seeing another Benoit match again (and not just because of the obvious reason), but I never got tired of Sabu during my ECW watch. Much better than I ever gave him credit for, was innovative, evolved with time, has the matches. Sure, he also has his share of trainwrecks, but Sabu was fascinating to watch during his prime. 10 - Ricky Steamboat Not even years to grant him a higher slot, but he was so good durin the time he was still active it would be ridiculous to scratch him from the top 10. His few years stackup very well against Shawn's whole decade for instance, Steamboat being a much better worker, had about as much great matches, and was a lot more consistent too. Really, if not for the injury and knowing what we know after watching his short comeback a few years ago, Steamboat could have been in the top 5 easily.

Well, that one is rather infamous, but it's 89.

If you're looking only at great matches, yes, I agree it's a completely distorted view. But when there's no great matches at all, I just won't buy the case of a "great worker". Even in the shittiest place workwise like 80's WWF, great workers were able to deliver, maybe not often, but they eventually did. If I don't see any great matches it's either : _the guy really never was given any occasion to have one of them, EVER. _the guy just isn't *great*. He can be solid as hell, but he just doesn't have that little thing that would make him great. As of now, the answer to me is always case N°2. I don't believe in the "great worker without great match" argument.

Hum... I understand, but it's strictly a geographical issue then, AAA being a pure mexican lucha libre promotion. I don't think I would take in account Rey or Eddie's work in AAA to judge them as "US worker". By US I think it's clearly "working in a US based promotion". Well, if we're going by nationality and not place of work, then some gaijins would have some thing to say, most notably Steve Williams, but I don't think that's where we were going initially.

As long as it's actual new footage, I'm perfectly fine with it. But at some point, revisiting WWF TV from the 90's and get excited about a few El Matador (to bounce back of what Dan said for instance) good matches on Superstars just doesn't cut it as far as re-drawing the map of the workers of the 90's. There's also the temptation to overpimp any "new good stuff", simply because it's fresh. And to trash what has been established for years as great, because we're tired of it at his point. I think there should be a balance somewhere. Yes, I agree. I like the notion that there are a number of classics that constitute a corpus of reference. Call me "dated" on that one.

Both of these guys worked in the US before 1995. John I had my doubt about those two. Where did they show up before 95 ? I don't think it was in ECW.

Yep, that's why I put Regal with Arn earlier on. The great matches just aren't there. Super solid week to week, but nothing that make you think "that's great" either. See also Finlay, Fit (well, at least in the US in the 90's and 00's, no idea about his european work). Again, I like those guy a lot. DiBiase falls into the same category to me.

I’ve been watching a lot of Nitros from 1998/1999 lately and Bret’s heel shtick was gold. From the promos to the matches, he was consistently the most entertaining part of WCW (which I guess you can also take as a criticism of how awful WCW was at the time). The buildup to the Sting match was great even though the match itself wasn’t. He did have plenty of good WCW matches though with Savage, Benoit, Flair, DDP, Luger, Booker T, Sting, and even Piper. I think his WCW run is disappointing relative to what it should have been. But it’s still pretty good for what it was. Agree. When I went through WCW 1998 last year, the biggest and nicest surprise was to see how Bret as a manipulative hypocritical sack of shit was the best part of the show. Before the heel turn Bret was a non factor, although the Flair match is better than it has been given credit for. But as soon as he turned, as nonsensical as it may have been, Bret the character was fun as hell. And he did work really good matches. The "Bret in WCW sucked" is a myth to me at this point. The matches and promos are there, at least during his initial heel turn, Bret was still excellent.

Well, if that's the case, then I don't have any interet in it. As much as diving into stuff that hasn't been wachted or talked about much like SMW or 90's Memphis is very interesting, trying to seek out whatever *pretty good* stuff and declare that all of a sudden it's *great* just makes everything irrelevant. There's also the point when it has to be accepted that there isnt any new *great* stuff to watch in one given era or territory. Which brings me to this, there's one territory that looks to me as the black hole of US wrestling, and that's Puerto Rico. Going through the yearbook threads, it's obvious PR isn't represented. I guess the lack of footage and bad TV format is the reason, but it seems like it's the last unique area that really hasn't been talked about, in pretty much any era. Not that I think there are a lot of legit great stuff coming from there, but considering the randomness of the guys who worked there, it's probably fascinating to see what comes from this old-school territory. I picture it as an old fashioned, outdated version of Memphis mixed with tons of bloody stuff. I'm pretty sure guys like Miguel Perez Jr. would be "discovered" if we had the right footage available. Anyway, SMW, USWA and WWC are pretty much the only largely unpimped material of the 90's at this point, and I wonder what could come of it. Sorry for the ranting.

I'm surprised Rude hasn't been brought up more actually since people talk about peak a lot. I probably wouldn't pick him, but he's a better candidate than Malenko. As far as Arn vs Flair goes, it was a failure to me. Just another Flair match, and by 1995 it's nothing great anymore. Blame Flair, blame lack of blood, but it was just there. No hatred, no intensity. Arn had a miraculous match with Luger later in the year that was much more impressive.

Yeah, that seems like a perfectly valid criticisim. I don't think it's necessary, but the fact is Bret had great matches all decade long and was consistent all decade long, which put him in a favourite position to me. The only guy whose peak would be enough to dethrone him would be Eddie I guess.

Even without having seen much of his SMW work, Candido is a very viable candidate to me on the strenghts of his WWF and ECW run.

Just to put things in perspective : Arn : 1990-1996 Steamboat : 1990-1994 Benoit : 1993 / 1995-1999 Eddie : 1995-1999 Rey : 1995-1999 Scorp : 1993 - 1999 Vader : 1992 - 1998 Pillman 1990 - 1997 Shawn : 1990 - 1998 Then you got guys like Flair, Bret, Douglas, Dustin, Smothers who were pretty much always there through the whole decade. Is that about right ?

To me Bret has both the great matches and the consistency, with a TV format that didn't allow him to be entertaining on a wek to week basis. Bret was solid as hell during the whole decade and had the great matches scattered from 1990 to 1999. He's a no-brainer N°1.

Agreed. Athough the yearbooks give such a wide spectrum that one could think about a GW of the 90's discussion/poll when it's all done. From there you can get the top 10 for each style : US, Lucha, Puro, Joshi... Anyway, great thread.

I don't like Lance very much, but I'd have a hard time finding anything remotely good about Kane. A pretty bad wrestler if you ask me. And the worst flying clothesline ever. Lance was a great athlete, but a passable wrestler. It struck me when I realized that pretty much everyone in ECW had their most disapointing matches with Lance. Only Candido could make him look really good. Justin Credible was carrying their team like it's not funny. Maybe Lance was a bit better in WCW, but I won't put myself through this era ever again. Saturn ? The Eliminators were a joke of a team, and his WCW run was nice because he worked with guys who knew how to work. Raven made him look like a star. I like Saturn, but he's not even close to guys I wouldn't consider top 10 material. Jericho may have learned WWF psychology with Pat, but that doesn't mean he wasn't any good before. Before his heel turn he was a spotfest artist, but a good one at that. After the heel turn he delivered quite a bit, and even made me care about Malenko. Douglas I made my case before, he's in my top 10.

So, since he was brought up, where does Savage ranks ? I really would not have thought about him at all, but now that I think of it, maybe he's not a worse candidate than Flair. Not to say I would include either in the top 10, but Savage did have some great matches early in the decade and a few excellent ones late in the decade against DDP. Between the two, he sometimes showed up, and also mailed in quite a bit. How does Savage compare to Flair in the 90's ? To me he compares quite well. Flair didn't had anything as good as he Savage vs DDP since 1992 probably, and that was against Savage. Then Flair had a few good stuff in 1996 too, once again working Savage. Savage has the two Warrior matches under his belt, while Flair as Lex, who was much better than Warrior, but the Sting match is very disapointing. In terms of big matches, I think it's pretty equal (don't give me Flair vs Vader as a great Flair match).

I don't think if was as great as those guys, but yeah, injury-free face Pillman would have put him in the top ten at the end of the decade for sure. I really think the Loose Cannon gimmick didn't age well at all, as it never really resulted in anything in the ring in any way shape or form. It was a gimmick for anecdotes : Heenan saying fuck on TV, the bookerman promo which was stupid and the reason why Russo loves shoot angles (I remember reading a column in the Raw magazine back in the days about it), a bunch of demented promos in ECW which led nowhere, a bunch of demented promos in WWF which led nowhere...

Agreed. It was so refreshing to watch him work like the old Steve Austin in 2001 after the mediocrity he fell into in the very late 90's.

Sabu always made the big spots matter. There was a progression in the high spots, so when he finally hit the big one it mattered and got a huge reaction. I'm curious where this bad brawling supposedly was. Sabu was one of the few guys who did crowd brawling correctly. More often than not it seemed like a fight. Rather than dragging a guy by his hair across the arena. Totaly agree. On Sabu's punches : they were awesome. Used it like Stan Hansen would use little kicks, to make transitions between more important moves too. I would put Sabu along with Bobby Eaton as far as punching goes. On "blowing spots" on purpose, it's no bullshit. I watched about 95% of Sabu's ECW available match (that is I may have missed a few that were on RF video, still not much I think), and the way he evolved through the times and changed his highspots is very interesting. And at some point, you can see him deliberatly stumble onto the top rope and fall back in the ring, which make him loose time, so that the guy on the table is able to get away when Sabu tries the move again. Or fall onto the top rope. I you watch him closely, you see he's totally choosing to do it. Because those dangerous spots aren't supposed to be hit perfectly everytime, if that's was the case, where's the danger ? Sabu was way smarter that he was ever give credit for. Crazy, but he knew how to convey it the best way possible. There's someting to say about Sabu's selling too, which is fascinating : you never exactly know if the guy sells or if he's really hurt, and since most of the time it was both, it made for a unique kind of selling hich was indeed "realistic". On Sabu/RVD vs Busa/Shinzaki, like FLIK said, this match fell apart and was indeed one of the worst the four of them was involved in.

Well, during my ECW watch, I was baffled by how much the "Sabu blows spots and is sloppy" thing has been totally overblown. The truth is, Sabu didn't blew much spots at all. He did "blew" spots on purpose at times too, which was obious if you watch him a lot, to get over the dangerosity of his style, and it actually made sense in the context of the matches and the character. I don't see any bad brawling either, Sabu portrayed brawling pretty well. Sabu didn't go overboard with the tables if you pay attention, and he milked it or hit it often at the right time. Really, he's a guy that really went up dramatically in my book. Bad brawling, nonsensical garbage spots left and right and sloppiness is all about RVD, not Sabu. I can see why some people would find Dustin Rhodes bland because as far as character goes, "The Natural" Dustin Rhodes was bland as hell. I mean, Dustin was a tall pale redneck. That and being Dusty Jr. hurt the perception of him being a really good worker.

Well, Waltman best worker in the WWF in 99, I have no issue with that for sure. But the ECW crew were just tearing it up at the same time, despite poor booking and annoying TV format (ECW on TNN was so much worse than Hadcore TV).

Sting always worked hard. He may not of worked smart, but the effort was/is never in question. Crow Sting would also dog in matches in a big way. The Hogan return match in 1998 is a perfect exemple of Sting not putting any effort at all, while Hogan brought a lot more to the table. As the year went on, he worked harder on occasion. As far as Waltman best US worker in 1999, I don't see the case at all. 99 was a rotten year in US, especially in WWF. What did Waltman do to warrant such a ranking that year ? In ECW you had Tajiri, Little Guido, Super Crazy, Jerry Lynn putting on excellent matches on weekly basis. Benoit in WCW was still quite the man in the ring. Waltman carrying Shane-O and Kane to watchable match sure deserves some credit, but I don'tsee him as being the best in the US at that time. Had he worked in ECW or WCW, it migt have been a different story, but WWF was a shithole in 1999.