Matt D

I don't have time to do the legwork on these three right now, but they didn't make the AWA set. Anyone have time to take a look and report back on how Slaughter looked against some game opponents? (12 mins vs Saito)

I think this is ultimately a fairly silly argument to be having in the first place, but nothing said has dissuaded me from my initial comments, with the wording and semantics exactly as they were put. I was saying a specific thing. I still think that specific thing is true. I do sort of wish that there was A> a studio audience for MASH and B> that the audience rebelled for Radar, though.

I have to see the Taka match again.

I have Arn 173 spots above HHH

What happened to Barry Windham?

I'd be really curious to see the Maverick Wild matches again. Anyone remember if they were any good?

I'm sure you could get into both, but probably not while the pressure of GWE is hanging over your head. My watching habits will be different after April.

I've got Barry just about 20 spots higher than Ted, and frankly, I think I'm going to be higher than most people on Ted. Some of that is due to exactly what Phil referenced as a slight on Parv's list and that will be an admitted slight on mine. I'll have strong lucha and relatively strong UK representation but a dearth of the Japanese and women.

I posted my comments on the Last Man Standing Jericho match yesterday or the day before. I think almost all of HHH's big matches suffer from bloat and would be better and tighter if 5-10 minutes were lopped off of them. That's one reason why the Bryan match worked out so well. Generally, I don't think his great matches are great, in part because they contain the same inherent deficiencies as his worst matches. They're all on shaky ground. Some of them just collapse under their own weight more than others. Hunter, to me, comes off as a "pretend wrestler" much more than a lot of wrestlers who get pegged as that.

It's a general HOF argument about Edge's work. That's where you see it the most.

I think it could be the most emotional segment or one of the most memorable, but it wasn't functional. It wasn't going to draw any money. I don't think it was artistically appealing. It was real. It's sort of like, if you had for the final episode of MASH, the last five minutes were all of the actors breaking character and talking about their experiences and how much this mattered as the crowd went nuts for them. It's more of an Apples and Oranges thing in my mind. I guess on some level, it makes the WWE and Wrestling look more important, but those are really vague things. Dave's never been the best at separating things, though.

This is an extremely unhelpful contribution to this discussion, and I don't really appreciate it. You've also taken us over the page, which I don't appreciate either, because my previous post is now buried. Then stop mentioning conventional wisdom as if it matters. It's your lifeline when it comes to whining about people not properly appreciating Dibiase and I don't think it matters to a single person here other than you. We watch. We judge. We rate. Is there any other wrestler in this process that anyone is using "conventional wisdom" as a defense on?

Just watched and really liked the 06/05/1982 Mulligan match. I imagine that the rematch isn't as good, but this made me actively want to seek it out. Great way to build interest for the next match. The opening four minutes were very back and forth, with Mulligan's toughness coming to play in a fairly compelling way, and the remainder of the match was very smartly centered around the question of whether or not the claw could be the weapon to take out Andre, with Andre really getting it over, both by going out of his way to counter it, breaking his bear hug to put on a top wrist lock, trying to get the glove off, working over the hand at times, Mulligan teasing it over and over again, and then, them prefacing it finally getting locked on for the finish on the outside through Mulligan opportunistically reversing Andre's corner butt smashes with it to the trap, which downed him and then made him stagger big when he finally started to fight his way back. Vince, here, did an excellent job selling the intrigue of it. If that could do this much damage to Andre, what would happen when Mulligan got it on the temples? Liked it a lot.

Everytime Parv brings up Conventional Wisdom, Maurice Tillet's ears fall off.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xczqpa_hart-foundation-vs-u-s-express_shortfilms I love the finish on that match. Nothing really to do with Rotunda, mind you, but hey, he's in the match!

Vaguely surreal.

His best stuff isn't even all that good, relatively.

Maybe when news got out that he'd be on the show, they felt like they had to control the message quickly.

It's wrestling. Every single person here will have that tinge in the back of their mind of "Is it a work?" until it happens, logic be damned. It's the best and the worst thing about wrestling.

Here's what I posted over on DVDVR this morning.

I think a slight danger for you here is taking a look at me and people. My criteria is my criteria. I don't punish Bret for that. I do punish Hansen for his AJPW tag team slights because I think they actively hurt a large number of matches (the majority of matches that we have on tape from him in his physical prime) that look great on paper for very selfish reasons. (and even then, he's in my top 25 most likely so it's all relative!). I look for very specific things and I'm not entirely sure, even if I came to agree with you that those matches were bad, and bad due to Andre's laziness, which is not a point I am yet willing to agree to, then that may not necessarily mean he should be bumped down my list, even relative to Hansen, and that could (and probably would) still be entirely consistent with everything else I've said.

I don't necessarily agree, but that's when you should pull my own words about Hansen out against me. Come on.

I quite like Jimmy Redman's post earlier. I haven't necessarily written a comprehensive post, sure, but if you go back through my posts over the years, you'll find me high on a number of his matches from a variety of places and eras. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21005-andre-the-giant/?view=findpost&p=5563589 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21078-1980s-lucha-wrestling-party-1/?view=findpost&p=5566948 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19444-kamala/?view=findpost&p=5608586 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31399-nwa-classics-247/?view=findpost&p=5683190 I'm sure I've written something on the Blackwell match, something on the Hansen match, something on the Piper/Orton/Orndorff tag, and something on Andre the Giant, Franz van Buyten & Ali Bey vs Rusher Kimura, Teranishi & Thunder Sugiyama as well. What I will say is that I suppose, at #9, I think the case for 70s Andre is fairly well discussed by others, driven home by the footage we've gotten in the last few years. The biggest hurdle for Andre is the last five years of his career when he was immobile, and doing things like picking up worst match WONs vs Warrior, and as you said, I've written quite a bit about that. So, the murky area would be 80-85 performances that you find terrible, of which I've admittedly not written much. Andre, like Bockwinkel, is a wrestler that I jump to watch any match of his that I haven't yet seen, however, so it's not like I'm blind to them. If I have time between now and the end of March, I will write up some of those matches. I think it's been made quite evident over the last couple of months that our criteria is different in certain key places, while being very consistent for both of us from wrestler to wrestler and match to match. I've written thousands of words on just what I'm looking for and how I tend to find it. I don't think anyone on PWO wants to see me go into any of that again, frankly.

Your first paragraph was the brunt of what's probably going on. The second paragraph might add some color to it. So long as you go in that way, you're fine. It's people who look to reverse the ratio who are the jackasses, not you.

This is problematic to me. I am ranking Rey highly for a similar thing on a slightly bigger stage. I imagine I will be the high vote on Christian (even if he's not in my top 30) for his role as Ace, primarily. I don't deny Dylan's point here, but I don't have Matt on my list currently.