Matt D

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.

Sorry, I meant that he should trust his Initial, well-meant instincts about the purity of other people's motives and methods as opposed to the opposing jackass view. Clarity is important in these things.

You're better off trusting your initial instincts.

I look forward to you posting that same comment for about 15 other people in my top thirty this morning. (though Blackwell isn't in my top 30. More like around #50)

Flair's currently at 8, but he's having a rough morning, so we'll have to see.

My current #9.

I might write up something like the Orton match and really highlight it for clarity's sake. Or maybe I'll try to find a fancam I haven't seen yet. We'll see.

Styles isn't making my list, but he's one of the many people who won't make it because I don't feel like I can accurately judge him. He'd be in the 70s-80s now, likely, from what I've seen, and that's not fair to him, in my mind. There's a tension point that I'm judging this on. If I feel like I'm close on someone, I'll include them. If I feel like I'm not, I won't.

General question. Has anyone gone back and looked through the Meltzer columns from The National and see if there's anything worth mining from them relative to the Observers from the time?

I wrote this up on DVDVR a couple of years ago. Reposting here with a few edits as it was for a very specific project: I think the video package before the match is really well done. I don't remember too much of this stuff, to be honest, but one of the knocks against Hunter in general is that he didn't "make" too many people, and I realize at the time the entire internet was enamored with Jericho due to his 98 WCW run, so the idea that someone had to "make" him was probably considered absurd, but that's exactly what Hunter did here. This was set up with Jericho getting one over on him three times before he fell into the numbers game and a Horseman-Style Beatdown. From the looks of it, it was really, really good pro wrestling and allowed for the escalation that made a Last Man Standing match necessary. Hunter let himself be humiliated in order to get Jericho over as a fiery worldbeater, and it worked. Jericho deserves credit for the opening stretch. He brought a real fire and all of the stuff on the outside looked good. The fans completely buy it. If I had any critiques on him they'd be that the mounted punches on the inside were pretty weak and I would have loved to see some selling of the injury after the flying back elbow off the top, especially since that came right before Hunter started on the ribs. That could have been a really great overzealous moment leading to the transition. As for Hunter here, I think he was good at fighting back just enough. I didn't like his clothesline bumps at all. They looked terrible but he more than made up for it on the bump to the outside and the super stylized bump from the shoulder thrust into the ring. , but this is a match where it really pays off to talk about the rib-work. It was set up so well in the angle leading up to the match. The transition is pretty awesome as Hunter uses his usual reversal to the back body drop but does it to the ribs instead. They tease a little hope spot of Jericho immediately fighting back, but then Hunter drops him right on the rail and then the stairs and he doesn't really look back. His kicks on the inside are vicious. His shoulder thrusts are good. The image of Hunter rolling Jericho around the ring with the tape is pretty memorable. When it comes to bodypart work it's all about keeping it interesting and believable by the person on offense and the selling by the person taking it. Hunter does a pretty good job of varying what he's doing (stomps, knee drops, kicks, knee lifts, the thrusts, the abdominal stretch w/ clubbering, etc), breaking it up a little bit with gimmicks (the tape choking, and the Stephanie slap, the suplex on the floor, grabbing the rope on the abdominal stretch, the ref pushing). I think maybe there are too many gimmicks actually. Jericho does a solid job selling the pain. He's no Ricky Morton but he has both the story to lean on and the fans behind him. He has a decent amount of hope spots that are logical (generally based off of him getting enough space due to rolling into the ring or Hunter arguing with the ref) and okay but really not milked enough to really get the fans really into them. Hunter's cut offs are good though, especially the lionsault counter. I don't think he executed the Stretch well at all but it almost didn't matter too much since it still looked painful on the midsection. It was noticeably weird however. The bodyscissors during the sleeper is extremely smart and plays into both the story of the match and the LMS gimmick (Steph doing the Daniel Bryan YES hand motions at each count is great). Then we shift into WWE storytelling mode. The key stretch is when Jericho gets up post Sleeper/Body-scissors and shows defiance leading into the super-mean Pedigree and then Jericho getting up again. There are parts of this I like: just how mean the Pedigree is, the crotch chop, Hunter hanging out on the corner arrogantly, Steph being pissed off during the post-Pedigree where she was jubilant on the post-sleeper one. Obviously the getting up from the Sleeper is a tease for the real moment, Jericho getting up from the Pedigree, but I think it might have worked better if he was in it for longer. The one major issue so far is that we haven't had enough time with Jericho in pain. Hunter's two submissions were ones that covered up his face and Jericho's body language hasn't quite been up to task. Anyway, I don't think he quite nails the "getting up at 9" moment with the right body language either. He's just sort of meandering towards the ropes as Hunter rushes out of the ring pissed off to get the chair that he kills Jericho with. We needed some blood out of Jericho's mouth or something here. Were they leading to some sort of ref strike gimmick or something? I forget. It seems weird that arguing with the ref in a NO DQ match would lead to two Jericho comebacks, including the big one; maybe if it was a special ref but whatever. Jericho's low blow is really good for what it's worth. Very glad he went with that and not just a double leg takedown or back body drop. Jericho's chairshot on Hunter is huge, right in the middle of the ring with a giant noise. It had to be big enough to completely turn the match around and I think they frame it well Jericho sells excellently on his comeback and it lets Hunter almost get back in it a few times which is really good stuff. I think Jericho's offense is okay but sort of out of touch for the point of the match they're in. This isn't the part of the match where you want to see so much light, flying stuff, if that makes sense, even if it's done onto a chair. There's a bit of meandering once Hunter takes a powder too, until we get the slightly contrived ribs (execution issue. There wasn't the sense of Hunter aiming him) into the steps spot. I like the consistency of Hunter trying to Pedigree Jericho on hard objects and this time the backdrop works and Hunter takes a big bump off the stairs. The double video monitor shot is pretty silly but it works for a double tease. I kind of like how they entered the match into an environment where the Spanish announce table was already busted. Anyway, they head back into the ring and we get the Walls and the visual tap. I feel like Jericho needed more offense in his comeback to get to this point, to be honest. He had that one stretch but other than the chairshot I wasn't super happy with it. Hunter's shouting and body language is actually extremely effective here as was the rope stuff. We get the big Steph moment to break it, another mini rib transition which sets up the missed sledge hammer spot and I don't totally love how all this is laid out but I do like the high concept at least. It goes back to the over-gimmicked nature of the earlier part of the match. I think that comes into play here too. There are almost too many "moments." It starts diluting everything. Jericho gets to get up from the Pedigree, gets the tap, gets Step, gets a sledgehammer shot in (though one that's ultimately meaningless). etc. And what was up with that kind of lame suplex finish? I think after the two attempts to hit a Pedigree on something, he should have just finished it with one on the table. Alright, I think that Hunter did a lot of good work here and Jericho mostly held his own but both guys' had flaws (micro and macro) that hurt the match. I especially liked Hunter's bodypart focus. Very strong middle section. That said, I think the match was a little too clever for its own good when it could have been tighter and more primal with only a few changes. I'd call it bloated but with a lot of strong elements that didn't fully come together. I had come in thinking I'd be bored by Hunter's offense and that wasn't the case at all, though he did make some choices I didn't totally agree with. No, if anything the problem was big picture excess. It was still a pretty interesting match.

Best use of negative space in wrestling history?

I think we'd be way higher on Dusty if we had his 70s heel work, from the tiny glimpses we do get.

dotdotkins posted this match this week. I get why it didn't make the AWA set (too JIP) but is it ever a great babyface Hennig performance.

Couple of surprisingly decent looking CMLL matches tonight on clarosports.com too. One of the better looking Friday night shows they've had, so run them split screen. It's a good night for free internet wrestling.

What's the deal with the Mexican government, Del Rio, and Zeb?

He did work ROH, at least.

He's sort of the Miz of pharmacy execs.