Matt D

I don't think the narrative element is there with that, though.

That's why this discussion will not get resolved. I think that statement is as baseless and incomplete as saying that wrestling is pure sport and not art. There are fortunately elements of both on display to varying degrees every time out. There is an athletic element but it's more like a narratively-driven improv dance than like Michael Jordan. Maybe I'd be more apt to liken it to folk music duets, where you need to tell a story, have the physical skills and training, and know your range while working with someone else, than anything else, and that's so far off it's not even funny. It's very much it's own animal, which is in part why we love it so much. That said, differences of opinions make the world go round, though "Baseless" might be a little harsh.

Wrestling is art, not sport. Brando is punished for his late career. Metallica is. It's not a 100% comparison but I don't think it's an entirely outlandish idea either. One aspect of being a good pro wrestler is understanding and working around your limitations, whether you are twenty or sixty. I won't penalize someone for having a less athletic match later in their career. I might penalize someone for trying to have one later in their career and failing. I think a lot of times you can use data from those matches to go back and better understand their earlier matches.

I'll take a look at what's online if I can find it.

To be fair, that's true of any standard though. There are so many differences in candidates: footage, opportunities, tag vs singles, territory that they're in, quality of opponents, tv matches vs arena matches, etc. Ultimately, the number of voters and their different backgrounds and opinions will even things out, I think. All we can try for is consistency.

What I will concede is that maybe it's ridiculous to expect that someone change up their act when it served them so well for almost 30 years in the ring, so successfully, more successfully than almost anyone ever, but he had a lot of matches in the 00s, many more than I think he expected to have. Maybe the issue wasn't a lack of understanding of wrestling and how it works, but instead a lack of perspective in the fact that he couldn't bring it to the table anymore, because he was Ric by god Flair and if anyone's delusional about himself and his capabilities, it's Slick Ric. And I'll see that in his older matches, maybe, if I can make enough of a throughline to provide me the evidence I feel I need to make that call. I'll do my homework. Right now, between what I've seen in his earlier career, what I've heard through interviews, and what I've seen in the 00s, I'm not convinced that it just wasn't a lack of understanding of certain aspects of wrestling, or at least a disagreement with what I value. But it could be that he was just a delusional old mule trapped in a lifetime of glory and not necessarily a deficient wrestler when it came to the mental game. I don't entirely know, though I have my opinions. In the end, since he's such a strong candidate for #1, I'll probably have to make an exception with him and try to decide whether or not I'd give him a pass for things I wouldn't give someone else a pass on and not just go on the matches as primary evidence. In general, I have to feel like there's strong mitigating evidence otherwise not to apply the same criteria across all wrestlers and looking at a wrestler's late career is something I think is important, because I care about situational reactions more than almost anything else. With the way I look at things, with the way any of us looking at things, the biggest danger is not trying to be as consistent as possible.

To clarify, I'm mainly looking at his 00s WWF run, when I think "older Flair." I think he was fine in the 90s, though there was a sense of diminishing returns towards the end of the decade. He could still lean on a lot of his physical gifts in the 90s. The guy aged pretty gracefully considering.

We'll revisit this later on, Charles. It all feels a bit too heated now, and I'd like to see more first, but the better you understand pro wrestling as a wrestler, the better you're able to wrestle as you get older. I fully believe that. Someone who's totally broken down like late era Andre, could still do amazing things in the ring, very much on what he DIDN'T do and when he decided to do something. Flair still tried to be Flair. Andre wasn't to do the leapfrogs he was doing earlier in his career. He understood his limitations and adapted his act accordingly. That shows a level of understanding. I'm happy penalizing someone if I don't think they have that understanding, because that's something important to me. The physical matters, sure. Execution matters. But the mental matters far more to me. The art of doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason to the right effect. That matters to me more than how pretty it looks. I'm not trying to single Flair out, but it does say something to me that the problem was Flair still trying to be Flair without the physical gifts to pull it off. It makes you wonder what was Flair without those gifts? RVD is a much worse example of the same. Flair brought (from the beginning of his career to the end) much more knowledge and understanding than RVD has, of course. How is this not consistent with everything I always say? I'm not saying that other people should feel this way too, but I absolutely do, and I levy it across the board consistently. It's something that penalizes Flair somewhat, yes, but I didn't come up with it specifically to penalize Flair. Of that, I promise you. It was a chicken/egg thing. It was something I came to decide upon by watching wrestlers over time, and then I started applying t to wrestlers as I watched them. Organic and without any sort of agenda. You know my opinions and I'm sure you know I'm eccentric enough in them that it's probably true.

Lots of guys adapt and change their act and have good matches deep into their later years. Flair didn't. Why? (Actually, that's not entirely true. He has some pretty good hardcore matches later in his career, both in ECW and the Foley match, which is almost all Foley when it comes to layout).

I think it'd be one thing if the people who said those matches don't hold up then go back and like a lot of the matches that those matches inspired. I think that's not the case. If anything it's the opposite.

I think it does absolutely, because it shows a lack of understanding about how pro wrestling works. If you are fully dependent on physical gifts and not savvy enough to change your act (like a lot of great wrestlers did as they aged to still be effective), then it means you're not as good a wrestler as other people. It means you don't have a good 360 degree understanding of pro wrestling and you just had an act that you honed that worked.

I hate his late WWF run. The guy had the worst napoleon complex I've ever seen in wrestling. So much of the "heel-in-peril" stuff from that era comes from him taking way too much of a match and just eating up his opponents to the detriment of the match. I need to see his heel stuff in Portland because that seems like a more natural fit to me.

Did we ever figure out why Sombra wasn't on the card?

Rose/Wiskowski http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15074-buddy-rose/?view=findpost&p=5565808 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15074-buddy-rose/?view=findpost&p=5564218 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15074-buddy-rose/?view=findpost&p=5543979

Brock is pretty much the last guy I want to see against Austin. They sort of cancel out each other's strengths. I'd much rather see him against Ambrose or Rollins or Heath Slater or someone.

I have no access to 2004 WONs. How did Angle getting in work with voters. I can't imagine historians went for him.

That WON that I wrote up a couple of weeks ago showed that Vince was pulling out pretty desperate tactics at the beginning of 96 though. It was surprising how desperate and paranoid that all felt.

I'll figure dates out later and will probably do a lot of editing as I go. Ric Flair vs Butch Reed (TV, Non Title, Mid South) - This had a great set up with Butch goading Flair into attacking him to set up the non-title match. Flair had hired Slater ($50K) to take Reed out and had hurt Reed's knee but that doesn't come into play here. It did in the next match. Flair's great in this, which is sub-ten minutes without a real opening stretch. He's very aggressive with his heel tactics. One thing he does better than anyone is shoot them out so He kicks out the double stomp. Reed's very good selling on the outside.quickly. The fastest draw in the west when it comes to eyepokes or the cheap knee. Flubbed backslide towards the end but it wasn't the finish so it's ok. The fans are viscerally into this. Reed wins with a shoulder block, but gets ambushed by Slater and spike pile-driven after the match. Watts wonders if Flair didn't sacrifice the fall so Slater could ambush. Very effective TV match to set up a live show. Ric Flair vs Butch Reed (WHC, Mid South, New Orleans, JIP) - What I saw was after the fact with Joel Watts and JR announcing to set up the no DQ match. I liked how Flair did the belly to back reversal out of a sleeper in the TV match and out of a headlock here. Variation like that is important to me. He brought back the knee drop instead of the double stomp too. I didn't get enough here to get a great sense of the match but it felt more like a Flair match and less like the TV one. Attacking the leg, figure four, reversal, but really the sense of Reed powering it over. Well done ref bump with Reed chasing Flair back in the ring and Flair trying to ambush him with a flying knee. Phantom backslide fall. Reed sent flair over the top and Fergie saw it. Reed suplexed Flair back in and pinned him (Second ref). Fans had the moment but then it was Dusty finished. It was okay since it set up the no DQ match the next week. Good from what i saw. Ric Flair vs Butch Reed (WHC, No DQ) - This is the last 15 mins of a supposedly hour long match. The No DQ is only evident here in over the top rope tosses and one transition crotching by Flair. It's hard to get a sense of what happened before this, which is a shame. There may be a full version out there. I have no idea. Reed's jabs are great. Flair takes over with said crotching and he's really vicious. Obvious disdain in his stomping and what not. He does some legwork and puts on the Figure Four. I'm not a big fan of Reed's struggle here, though Flair's great in it. The turn over happens sort of undramatically. Flair breaks the hold, sells huge, goes for it again, and gett rolled up. Then he stops selling. It was a little annoying since it was all to set up the spot. Reed's selling after this, but it kind of sort of looks to me like he's blown up. Flair even has to maneuver him into a spot or two towards the end. Reed takes back over with a nicely filmed post reversal on the outside. Flair takes it awesomely which is really evident the camerawork is so close. Reed doesn't show me as much as I was hoping here. There's a moment where Flair comes back in forcibly and I wish that was the off the top rope toss because that would have been fresh. It's not. That happens a minute or two later on Flair trying to do a top rope move. There's an overwrought ref bump to set up the big shoulder block off the top (a normal version pinned Flair in the non title match) which Flair kicks out of the delayed count WAY too early on. Anyway, they meander to the draw, without that really palatable moment that he MIGHT win at the last moment. He does get the press slam in at the end but times it poorly. This was disappointing to me. Ric Flair/Dick Slater vs Butch Reed/Jake Roberts (TV) - Towards the end of Flair's run in the territory. Dark Journey on the outside. Flair uses her to assist in his Figure Four, which is great since he wasn't used to working with her. Slater's really good in this, cutting off the ring during tags and distracting to allow Flair to take over. It's mostly Flair and Reed with Reed playing FIP. We miss the transition and come back from commercial with Flair on top over Reed with Dark Journey jawing at him. It's a joy to watch Roberts punching Flair, stomping around in a circle, and it's a super heated DDT tease. Flair's excellent at fighting back while getting overpowered during this Jake was great cheerleading outside of the ring due to his weird thin body shape and all but I don't get why he wasn't the FIP here. It all broke down in the end and he won it with a roll up. I liked the team of Flair and Slater. Shame we don't have more of them together.

I wanted more of a comeback out of Cometa. It's okay for him to take the segunda on a fluke, basically, but I feel like he didn't get a proper comeback since when he was able to start his offense in the tercera, they were already moving into the finishing stretch and while what he got was fairly spectacular, it didn't have a lot of emotion behind it. There wasn't much of it either. It's got to be hard to pace a match like that on a show like this though, since you can't have too many of the matches feeling the same. That's something I don't think about with lucha because I almost never watch whole shows.

To be fair, the other upside of trios is that I can see a bunch of guys at once too. I think I'm going to start making an itinerary for myself next week.

I'm planning on watching a massive amount of matches for this project. I don't necessarily want to write them all up though. I'm sure other people are in the same boat, that they might want to note a couple of sentences per match, have it somewhere easy to find, but it's not really a ton to add to a microscope or nominee note. I was wondering if people thought it made sense to use the site's underutilized Blog function for this, or should we just have people make individual threads on what they're watching? The "Ditch rewatching thread" or the "KrisZ obscure watching thread" or what not.

I'm not even sure where to start with Jumbo. I've seen what was on the AWA set and maybe a couple of matches from the 70s, but that's about it. It just seems daunting since there's a lot of him out there and a lot of really long matches too.

All I know about him is that I resent him for not selling the bodyslam to the floor in the insane Fantastics match.

I still think that it makes sense to have Ambrose pick up the winter wins like Mankind did in 98-99.

And it speaks to almost everything we know from any interaction we've ever had/read/etc. with old wrestlers? No one's saying that there aren't other factors to it, just that it's really believable that one chunk of the voting base would vote for him to make themselves feel more credible. It's an argument that comes from somewhere and isn't just raised to be pissy. As for the broader argument, I had no concern at all about the way this poll was going to shake out even before we thought about inviting other people, because there is such difference in what people think here already. Even something like "Kurt Angle sucks" is disagreed by a guy like Bill who falls in line with someone like me on a lot of other things. Honestly, if we open it up more, it all means a lot less to me. I'm not saying the people here are more "qualified" but instead that it at least means something. Even the ones who disagree with others here are part of an ongoing narrative and argument that's lasted for years. You bring in random people who have opinions on wrestling but that haven't gone through this churn and the poll is no longer defined anymore. It becomes about as credible as a CNN poll. I know the voter base here, and even the guys who I disagree with wildly like W2BTD care enough about this to put the thought in. I don't see how opening it up makes it better. Broader, maybe, but it dilutes the meaning because we suddenly no longer know or understand the voter base. The numbers don't mean as much. It becomes "here's what the 150 people at PWO and a bunch of random people on the internet think." It'd be one thing if we were drawing in people to increase our expertise, but instead, we're taking the two years to try to deepen and broaden our own expertise.