Matt D

From a GWE "input" perspective, I did think the Gonzalez singles highlighted Dandy's selling very well in a scenario where he didn't really have a lot to work with.

Remember, Ricky ended up as 15 on the overall list last time. 15. That's super high. I am more or less a proponent of the idea that we shouldn't penalize someone for something that they didn't do, as in, I don't hold the fact that we don't have footage of Steamboat as a heel against him (except for maybe if we're talking top 5 candidate), but if we do have him in a specific role and it didn't go well, that's another story.

I am quite high on the Stevens/Snuka vs Steamboat/Youngblood glimpses we get from 80. It's the only time I've ever seen anything at all special in Stevens and Snuka is really impressive. As for my point above, it's three matches where he had a chance to wrestle as a traveling NWA champ in Japan, which is a metric we can compare him with other people on, and it was a pretty big failure. I think versatility is important to a lot of people, especially as we enter a top tier, and this is a real chance for him to show it off and he floundered. It's the sort of thing which could impact him a few spots on my list. Nothing monumental, but if he had succeeded, it could have helped him in the same way.

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2019/04/new-footage-friday-fuchi-liger-bock.html Yes, and I'm sure SOMEONE captured it and it'll show back up sometime in the next five years, right?

As part of going through all of AJPW in 89, I watched his run there as NWA champ. My casual write-ups: 3/3/89 NWA WORLD CHAMPION Ricky Steamboat vs Takano: Yeah, this was problematic. Steamboat in Japan can be a little underwhelming, but this was all over the place. Yes, it's very cool on paper to see traveling champ Steamboat, but he didn't know what he was supposed to be here. He worked technical. He let himself get outworked on the mat, but he didn't clown or stooge. He got clotheslined over the top right after skinning the cat but he wasn't really heeling enough to make that seem like stooging. He hit the arm drags instead. He heeled in the corner with the chops and let Takano bully him. Then he hit the huge superplex off the top (which dropped Takano on his head because it's not something Steamboat should be doing against a guy that big) and got the oohs for the Flying Body Press. Despite Takano's size, Steamboat gave him way too much, as much as he should have given Tenryu or Jumbo. So lots of little things that were neat but it absolutely didn't come together. I'd call this one a real strike against Ricky, honestly. 3/4/89: Ricky Steamboat vs Shinichi Nakano: This was terrible. Maybe the worst Steamboat match I've ever seen? He gave Nakano something like 95% of the match, which is made all the more terrible because it was ten minutes tops. I'm sure he was trying to be gracious and put him over but Nakano didn't look better for it. Steamboat and the NWA World Heavyweight Championship both looked like jokes. He had some cheapshots and really lame hairpulling to try to escape a hold, but his heart wasn't into it. It was completely unbelievable. I don't know if he was trying to mimic Flair but if so, he only dipped his toes in the water the tiniest bit. No stooging, no engaging with the crowd, no emotion in anything he did, no stakes, no fire, no pride, no grandeur. This was basically a jobber match where Nakano slipped on a banana peel and the jobber somehow won. 3/8/89: Ricky Steamboat vs Tiger Mask: I feel for Ricky here, I really do, because it's obvious what he was trying to do, but it doesn't work if you don't commit fully. You can't stooge for your opponent early and let him take most of the NWA title headlock exchange, and then stooge for him in the middle of the match and let him dropkick you out of the ring after you skin the cat, and then stooge for him at the end and let him piledrive you on the floor but be completely unable to piledrive him and have it work. Flair stooging throughout the match worked because when he was on offense he was dangerous and effective and in control. You never, ever get the sense Steamboat is in control. His offense consists of one inverted atomic drop cutoff and then a bunch of chops (standing and diving). He has a cool entrance into the ring from the apron by standing on the ropes and jumping in, but never, never, never is there any sense that Tiger Mask is in trouble. He's always one irish whip reversal of getting back in control. If Steamboat wasn't going to outright cheat, what he had to do was focus on the double chicken wing and work a body part to set it up. That would have at least focused his offense and give some form to all of this. As it was, he comes off like a loser, again, and makes the title look meaningless. This had a bit more atmosphere than the other matches but it was another terrible match. Poor Ricky. I came in having no idea what to expect and came out severely disappointed.

I've been watching all AJPW 89 and I'd say that Tenta "gets it" by that year, though he didn't nearly so much in 88. I think it's actually a missed opportunity that they didn't heat up the Baba vs Abby match by doing an Abby vs Tenta match as a set up. There is a tag and the interaction between the two is good. He was pretty underutilized that year from what they could have done.

Vaguely important to note we're getting new mid-90s lucha every week or so right now thanks to Roy Lucier posting stuff. We had a set up for the Satanico vs Garza hair match which got points for both guys last week. The footage keeps coming.

Piper will be helped by some more distance from the very end of his career and some new or more easily available footage. Off the top of my head, we have the new Valentine match, the Kuwait tag, some more easily accessible west coast footage, 77 NJPW TV matches, an 86 HH vs Savage, and the new 89 Superstars taping match vs Rude. Part of this is that he looks GREAT in all the new footage.

So I can understand that sentiment, but it's not how I see this. I'm not honoring anyone. I'm trying to find some sort of truth based on specific criteria. With certain wrestlers, I will not be able to find that truth because I'm not willing to rewatch their matches and they're thereby unable to be listed. Otherwise the truth, based on my criteria (and i admit that my criteria can be unique, but it tends to be consistent), is going to be the truth, no matter how I feel. Look, wrestling is a wretched, excess-laden business based on carny principles and manipulating people. If we're honoring anyone for anything, it's who's best at manipulating people's emotions and conning them out of their money through performances alone. It's built into the equation. It's full of hazing, bullying, misuse of power, adultery, drug use. I'm not sure you can even find 100 decent people in any culture over any era to make a list of. Molly Holly, Daniel Bryan, and Tito Santana are an awesome WAR team, but... If this is the weight you're carrying on your shoulders for the sake of this project, you're going to make yourself absolutely miserable in figuring out how to possibly exclude one wrestler for exposing himself on airplanes but keeping another one on who bullied younger wrestlers as part of the Japanese valet system (as they were bullied themselves previously) or whatever.

With Breaks, the court found him to be unfit to stand trial. It's tragic and could speak to elements of his character but I'm not sure it has a bearing on what happened in his career decades before. Do people hold what happened with Verne 40 years after he was done wrestling against him as a candidate? I do think ultimately it's going to come down to whether or not people are comfortable watching wrestlers. If you can't watch the footage, you can't rank the wrestlers.

Roger Delaporte One of the great pro wrestling villains of the 20th century. A vulnerable, cringing, and craven lead heel who often sold with close-up expressiveness as if his liver was caught in a bear trap. He was slick enough to hang in the demanding French Catch style, had an absolute mean streak when on top, and could hit as hard as anyone, using his Mr. Belvedere body type to bully and control the ring. He was able to go from sending the crowd and announcer into fits of laughter to doing tangible damage to his opponent with the snap of his finger, and was credible in his wins despite being vulnerable for a huge chunk of the match prior. We have him in all sorts of settings over 20+ matches: tags with an equal in Bollet and with minions like Guy Robin, as de facto babyface vs monsters, in long singles matches against a variety of opponents, from the mid-50s into the 70s. Delaporte/Bollet vs Hayes/Hunter 2/1/60 vs Jean Frisuk 5/3/62 vs Warnia de Zarzecki 4/9/65

Sort of a specifically weird call out here as the slight against them is that their personality issues affected their ring work/matches, which isn't the issue with Lawler, unless you want to hold some late 90s Memphis stuff with Stacy against him (and no one does). Now, if you want to look at the flip side, Brody's probably ok, but the Rockers use of roofies is probably just as disqualifying as anything Lawler's done. It's sort of a race to the bottom. That said, I do understand if someone has a hard time placing ANY candidate because they're not comfortable watching their matches for any reason. That's a slightly different issue and could potentially be a very difficult one. I think it's less so with a candidate that ranked extremely highly on someone's list like in the case of having Lawler at #4, because if you're going to rank him that high in the first place, you probably understand him well enough you don't need to revisit much.

The lackey is part of the package anyone else will have to overcome.

Definitely a way to put a guy over huge.

Yes, but in previous years, we were able to not have to watch him if we wanted to watch the Main Event of Wrestlemania? Or something.