Matt D

I'm glad you liked that Can Am match. I think it's great. I'm not sure I've ever seen the Lanza tag. I need to track that down. I'm starting to see something of a pattern here, which is that you rank pretty highly Dory and Terry, as a tag, in Japan, but not everything else.

The Kennedy cage match is fucking terrible but I actually didn't mind their singles match on PPV the month before.

From what I've seen we just have bits and pieces of matches from his Mid-Atlantic run. He was in Poffo ICW right? Do we have anything meaningful from there?

Well, yeah, no one beats Fuerza in character. He could try to get the ref to call a foul after a headlock. I was just happily surprised by Psicosis and his improvement through the AAA stuff I saw since I expected him just to be Rey's patsy. I am absolutely watching this tomorrow night though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3iw9SkOrSM

I've seen very little of his early-mid 90s work but I came out of it wanting to see a ton more. I think "better character" sums it up which is why I'm drawn to him, but I haven't seen nearly enough. He seemed very versatile and to really stand out as something far more than just "The guy who took Rey's stuff." Is there Nicho stuff I should see, OJ?

Vs. Lawler his rookie year. I think he has lots of good matches though, and even more good performances. I would be very, very surprised if he made my list though.

I read that as memes not meanies. That's the world of the future.

I thought he did well as a face in Portland. Maybe Adonis' most effective partner?

Incredibly agile when he was young. Incredibly gross now that he's old.

You'd think that would be his most natural work. I think I was at that London match. Is that the one with the SSP on the arm? If so, 20 year old me went nuts for that.

I have to write some Mike Jackson reviews.

Nothing quite proves the anecdote about him telling Eddy to sell less so he could get to the next spot more than actually watching the guy wrestle. Also he doesn't actually wrestle on the mat nearly enough, ever. He wouldn't make my top 500 even if I had to list Roadblock four times to keep him out.

I wasn't going to mention that bit.

Moondog Spot is absolutely a better candidate than Jarrett or Angle who are two guys who probably wouldn't make my 300 (well Jeff might). I wouldn't say he was better than KENTA yet.

It's the WON HOF and that means something, yes, but in general for the sake of the conversation we're having, it's 2014. Get with the program. For a lot of people, workrate isn't the most important aspect of being a good wrestler anymore. Around here, the conversation has shifted to at least allow the possibility that there is as much if not more value in other aspects. You can disagree. That's fine. That's great, but you are showing an extreme lack of understanding and empathy towards the people you are conversing with.

Heenan is a guy who is immensely talented, who is a favorite, but who is someone I'm not convinced we have the variation of footage on.

Yeah, it is, but in this one specific case, I feel allowed.

I have two years to make an argument for Bock. When the time is right and I'm ready then I will. I think we have more than enough footage.

I still have a ton of Parka to see but part of me wished he ended up in 1998 WWF instead of WCW somehow. The brawls he could have had that year.

I'd probably just rather avoid Benoit except for when looking at other guys than placing him at 82 or whatever. I'll say this about a previous comment, though. Benoit's arm-work is really good in that match with RVD. It's also terribly misguided, and blatantly wrong. I don't hold this against anyone else, but I'll hold it against Benoit. RVD is my least favorite wrestler ever. If you do limbwork on him, it will take up time, but the second he goes back on offense, no matter what, it's over. Forget it. Doing limbwork on him is a black hole. Good limbwork against him is actually a negative, and frankly, Benoit should have known better. He was too caught up in what should have worked to adapt to his opponent. It's like how Malenko wasn't great at adapting to a crowd.

There are late Duggan matches I like a lot, vs Yoko in Europe in 93, the Vader match, but I don't think that's enough to overlook so much of the back end of his career. It's possible; I won't say it's not, but it's doubtful.

That's noted, and respected, but I'll be frustrated if I try to argue between something specific that one wrestler in your top tier did and something that a wrestler in the next tier did and you shut me down repeatedly by saying it doesn't matter since they're in different tiers. Just as I'm sure you'll be frustrated because to you it doesn't matter.

My big takeaways of the Burke/Bock match were 1.) It was really cool to see travelling champ Bock play de facto babyface. That was sort of a missing piece of the puzzle to me. There were a few little things, like how he was more aggressive in trying to get his hands on Burke during the King of the Mountain bit instead of just keeping him out of the ring. 2.) I think the finish was pretty smart as it made Burke look considerably good since, even though he was cheating and using nasty tactics, he still had a clear advantage and if Dr. D hadn't come out to save the day (for his own, believable reasons), you think he could have maybe won it, but at the end of the day Bock gets the win and all three guys have potential issues with each other. The local wrestlers keep their heat (maybe even gain some). Bock doesn't lose the title. There's even a pinfall. 3.) Stampede's footage issue is so frustrating.

My general feeling is that it's all going to just work out. We'll do our stuff, like we always do, and we'll end up way more educated in the end and it'll be okay.

This is from 2010, Parv, which feels like FOREVER and a day ago, so I don't want you to hold this against me too much, but it'll give you an idea. It's not how I'd write up the match now. But hey, I was still in my 20s then. The main point is that he had a certain value built up in the eyes of the fan. Wrestling is all about perception. The Cobra is a perfectly viable finishing move. Even the people's elbow, so long as it's sold as such over time. The fans believed that Andre just touching someone could cause mayhem because of how those people sold and how Andre used it. He was so limited that he made every movement he had mean something, and I think he full well knew the vocabulary he could write with given how the crowd was conditioned to feel.