Matt D

Yup, it's the old cherry about the ends and the means. The "tools" are just that, tools. They're not an end unto themselves. I think there are a number of voters here and a much higher number of people not here that would, without hesitation, rank someone who had great tools/execution/timing/cardio/athleticism but no idea how to use them to work a crowd over someone who had almost no tools at all but got so much more out of them. That's an extreme obviously, and the guys in the top half of the list should have both tools and the ability to use them, though even then, exactly what "tools" are and the idea of them being used "well" are both open to opinions.

Punk got a hell of a lot out of a hell of a lot less. Owen has years where I'd argue he didn't at all make the most of his talent in ring (just because you can do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do). You can't really deny the talent gap though.

Do you see a difference in sheets-darling Owen pre-94 and more character driven Owen post-turn?

There’s the argument that Tommy Rich never fully recovered from the feud with Buzz. 2010s Brock made everyone around him consistently look worse.

They should make a t-shirt with Drew's back wounds.

She's Mighty Molly. Come on. I'm pretty sure live crowds are going to eat it up though.

That was more about me and how I consumed Breaks matches than the available footage. Also, don’t shortchange the fact that even here, you are exceptional (meant in the best way) in your knowledge.

There's a sort of Bockwinkel that you rarely see as the 80s go on. It's not at all my favorite side by any means but I do think it shows versatility and helps his case. It's how he wrestles Hogan and Gagne (and to a degree Dusty and others), bumping around like crazy for them. Super high energy stooging.

There are a lot of things going on here. Part of it is that there's an incomplete canon with lucha; part of that is due to footage, but there are other factors too. Some of it is that it's just harder to judge someone outside of singles matches, especially when you have so many other bodies in the ring and generally a singular focus to trios matches that doesn't exist in standard tag matches, for instance. Some of it is just the sheer amount of footage we have for Negro Casas spanning decades. There are holes certainly, but it's absolutely overwhelming, especially when you consider that so much of it is weekly and in front of the same crowd. I argue that people should watch everything Buddy Rose does over a span of 2-3 years in front of the same Portland crowd but while that MAY be attainable, you can't do that with Casas and since he's not the guy anchoring the territory, you probably wouldn't have to anyway. Part of it is that the trios were the week to week matches so it's hard to really make them akin to something. Part of me wants to say that it's like watching Arn or Bret due studio/prelim matches every week to build up to a PPV or house show match that we happen to have. That's kind of a tough comparison for a #1 contender relative to the footage we have for Daniel Bryan or Ric Flair or what not. Personally, I think watching Casas in a trios match is always worthwhile because he is one of the most present wrestlers we have footage of. He also almost always does something I've never seen him do before, in every match. I usually point that thing out in my reviews. It could be a reaction, something for the camera. It could be a move. It could be a spot. It could be bit of selling. It could be a taunt. It could be using the ref or one of his partners or his opponent in a unique way. But if you spend an entire match with your eye on Casas, you'll see all sorts of stuff that you're happier for having seen and yeah, at least one thing will be something you've probably never seen him do before. Where I lack and where I struggle with him, as opposed to someone like Rose or Bock (or Bret, sure) is that I don't have a great sense of his career. I can drop in and out and be entertained but I almost always lack some level of context. I have the same problem with Jim Breaks who is another guy who is always on and engaged and creatively in the moment. I think someone should get credit for playing a supporting role in a trios match, but I also argue that what Casas does that makes him special is actually more than that.

Honest question. Is there any lucha candidate you could say that about though? Could you give a comprehensive narrative of El Dandy's career and feuds in order or Satanico? Hijo Del Santo even?

I learned to love Casas watching him weekly in 2013-2015 (maybe 14-16) in random trios, albeit on the path to Rush. That’s what got him to number 2 on my list as much as his big feuds and 90s stuff, so I’m happy to go through a random few months I may not have seen comprehensively and explore if that holds up and explain it to others.

I’m willing to look at him week to week for a few months in a year he doesn’t have an apuestas match, 2005? 2008? 2011? So long as the footage is complete and readily available.

Buddy feels like the middle ground between Flair's ability to make every single moment as entertaining as possible and Bock's ability to make every single moment as purposeful as possible, while sharing the absolute and unyielding presence in the moment that both have.

If it helps, when I watch her in a couple of years, I'll be coming mostly new to her. I am not someone who's going to enjoy/forgive something because it was true to the style or the moment or the crowd or whatever though, but I'm usually consistent to a fault. I'll be coming in with as open a mind as possible and from a place of general ignorance. I will say that I enjoyed the hour long Toyota vs Inoue hour long match way more than I was expecting to (which I mean, yeah, open mind, I guess?).

I've been going back through 87 JCP TV as it's on youtube (when I write this, of course), and I needed to watch something in the background while I was doing some work and the squash match/promos/angles format of JCP studio TV works very well. It cuts out in the middle of July and while I'm sure I could keep going with it through other means, it's easier to just move on to something else. I'm going through the July Bash matches on the side but I thought I'd hit this too since I've seen most of Ronnie's year. The most interesting moment in the match to me is when Ron misses an elbow drop midway through and sells the arm big, because Flair had targeted it for his primary offensive advantage through the match so far. It's an obvious transition moment. It's also paid off much later with in that "flight" phase with Flair moving out of the way but Garvin moving with him and hitting one after the roll. Here, though, Ron obviously sells it and, I think, is expecting Flair to go back to it, but he uses the opening to go for the leg, starting the shin breakers and a figure-four. And I wonder why he did this. There are thoughts that come to mind. Familiarity: It's what Flair goes to. It what he's comfortable with. Both the man and the kayfabe wrestler. It's how he builds the back half of his matches. Arrogance: Garvin had gone for the figure four himself earlier in the match and there's a level of affrontry to that. This match also builds from the last big Flair singles cage match, in July, when he beat Jimmy Garvin after his leg gave out on a leapfrog. He wanted to beat Garvin the same way. Lack of imagination: Flair could have created a different sort of narrative and he chose not to. In the match, it worked. It worked because Garvin was set to win, I think, and because of that, he was able to survive the Figure-Four and had an amazing Hands-of-Steel counter for one shin-breaker too many, which was another turning point. You can absolutely read into this that Flair's arrogance combined with Garvin's ruggedness is his undoing, all because he didn't follow up on the arm, which is actually a feeling I don't get from a lot of other Flair matches where he shifts gears to the leg mid-match. Maybe you needed all of those earlier matches to make this match work so well, but I don't think that's entirely the case or that it excuses the other matches as much. That doesn't mean that the train of thought might not be effective, but I'd argue that because the announcers never bring it to the forefront and because I imagine the fans weren't necessarily thinking about it on that level, especially as they didn't have the luxury to rewatch matches, it's sort of a bridge too far. Within this one specific match, however, it absolutely worked. Why? Because it built so tightly off of the very similar match two months prior and here, he got his comeuppance for it.

The best part of FCW was that you could hear Dusty on commentary again.

If they want to name the current WWE era, “purgatory” is right there.

I’m two in and it’s really good. Conrad is even good and I think a lot of that is that he’s heard a lot of this in bits and pieces before so he knows what follow up questions to ask.

Probably from a May 8, 93 Superstars episode which had that trio vs Kamala and the Nasties. It was the last Nasty Boys WWF match apparently. Just the entrances below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XNj9HMLlU

Yeah, I saw the change and I’m planning on doubling back this summer.

Looking back, I had forgotten I had even wrote that write-up but I think at the time I was sad no one engaged me on it. It was probably pretty late in the process, like my Bock case but at least people find that useful now.

https://forums.prowrestlingonly.com/topic/28786-mark-henry/?page=2

Wrestlers I expect to absolutely stay in my top 10: Bockwinkel, Casas, Funk, Satanico, Rose, Lawler Wrestlers who may stay in my top 10: Flair, Andre Wrestlers who will probably not stay in my top 10: Breaks, Virus Wrestlers who could potentially end up in my top 10: Jumbo, Tenryu, Fujiwara Wrestlers who are contenders that I have new thoughts about but still don't have a great shot at my top 10: Pillars, Hansen, Bryan Wrestlers who I just don't know enough about to judge yet but that I imagine could make it: Hashimoto, Liger, Ishikawa, various joshi wrestlers

We have five years to delve into Virus' 00s, especially that 00-10 period that I think is underexamined in general. I put it through the match finder and found that there was actually a hair match he had in 07 vs Tony Rivera that made tape and it's actually online thanks to Cubs. I bet most people haven't seen it, so here it is: I hadn't seen it so I gave it a quick look. I think it bodes well for 07 Virus in general, but it also makes it an absolute shame that we don't have more meaningful singles matches from this period: This isn't the 23 minutes that the video indicates as there are a bunch of bits hyping up Del Rio included, but past the start of the segunda and tercera, you don't get the sense it was clipped too much. It's good. I think it's especially a good Virus performance. The primera goes way too quickly with an immediate missed dive by Rivera (a pretty nasty one at that, made even worse by the insult to injury of a Kemonito pratfall graphic announcing that it's the primera) overlaid upon it. They accomplish a lot in a minute or two after that, with Virus foreshadowing his facebuster with a failed attempt before hitting it a few moves later so he can lock in a submission. I liked the segunda as it felt fairly unique. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I haven't seen quite enough mid-card singles matches in 06. The idea was that Rivera would keep kicking Virus off when he tried to put on a submission (or get a roll up) and the disruption of momentum felt like hope spots in a way you rarely get in lucha. It also felt like desperation which, because they weren't exactly bringing the hate, helped create a more proper apuestas feel. Virus' punches looked really good both here and in the tercera, which is not something I usually think about with him. There was also a fairly spectacular spot where he caught Rivera when he was flying in with a lightning-fast whipping arm drag. Throughout, Rivera was definitely game but he wasn't the most graceful guy in the world, even if I thought Virus based well for him, especially on the two dives that did hit. The tercera could have gone another rotation or two (and again we might have missed a bit with the clipping) but the nearfalls were exciting. Virus had an awesome little spot where he hit an armdrag by stepping up from the floor to the apron and then lost the advantage shortly thereafter by gloating too much about it in the ring. The finish had the necessary oomph but also a crystal clear mechanical precision by Virus as he shifted one movement into the next. Overall, you'd want this to bring just a bit more hate given the stakes but it had more weight to it than a title match would have, and it's a really good look at a bridging sort of Virus where had had more athleticism than he'd bring in the 10s but still had the making of a maestro.

If you guys are engaging with me (And the page starts with others raising the question, so maybe not), let me reiterate and refocus my argument so we don't have six pages on this. I'm not talking about generalities here, but about a specific decision I made in ranking Shawn in 2016 that you can see me deliberate here and in the match discussion archive for the Taker matches and in the podcast with Stacey. In 2016, I felt like Shawn's execution in the big melodramatic matches was poor because his acting was so facile and poor. I thought that the ideas/concept/ambition was potentially very good, potentially very worthwhile, and posited that if he could "direct" wrestlers in a setting like that without his own miserable acting dragging it down, he could create something potentially very interesting. So while I docked him points for the overall matches, I didn't punish him as much as I might have otherwise because of that potential. In the meantime, we've had a chance to see just that and I stand here five years saying that I was wrong and in light of new evidence that I should have penalized Shawn more for those matches than I actually did. That's nothing to do with his overall booking/influence, just one area where I went too easy on him and now regret in the face of new evidence.