Matt D

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.

Then what is there to argue about? We're trying to find which guy has 17 matches that are great and which guy has only 16? That's how you're going to decide this? Isn't it far more important what makes those matches great than how many the person has?

I love Andre in the Colossal Connection matches. That's my favorite Andre probably and it's some of the most brilliant wrestling I've ever seen when it comes to using what resources you have available when they've become, both so very, very limited, but also so incredibly special. There's very little wrestling smarter than Andre in the Colossal Connection. One of my favorite performances of all time without question is Andre and Haku vs Demolition in December at MSG.

Personally, I'm taking a pretty consistent and distinct set of criteria to a lot of wrestlers I haven't seen much of, especially ones that people will be arguing for, and then reevaluating the ones I do know well in a very strict manner. You just don't agree with my criteria. Charles very succinctly defined the difference between this and the WON HOF is that the latter is about drawing and influence and on some level work and that this project is about aesthetics. You can do a numerical tally of WHO HAD THE GREATEST NUMBER OF GREAT MATCHES ON TAPE, but that's even less interesting to me than if we just picked all our favorites now. I'd much rather take a comprehensive qualitative approach (one that's consistent over all major candidates) than a quantitative one. As long as people are open minded and consistent it'll be okay. For me, the matches and what happens within them are the primary sources that I draw my evidence from in order to generate conclusions. It means that maybe people won't have entirely shared criteria but as a community, given the knowledge and wealth of experience we bring to the table, I'm pretty confident that whatever list we come up with will be well worth the trouble of the next few years and going through this process.

Looks like it was taken down. Sorry. I'll keep an eye out though. EDIT: Or what OJ said. EDIT2: Arn is pretty much the perfect representative of the Matt D school of what makes a wrestler good, yes. BUT because of that, I'm going to put him under further scrutiny than I would otherwise. Including watching Renegade and Erik Watts matches.

I didn't necessarily see him as a heel so much as a jerk (or more necessarily a dick). But maybe that's inwardly the same thing to me? I just saw a dynamic character there, one that appealed to me way more than the other three and that I actively wanted to track down more of, while I came out of that series with the idea that watching the other three more would be something of a chore. I'm trying to think of a pop culture reference that makes sense. The big guy who takes your ball when it lands in his yard and pops it. And then laughs. Just because he can, and what are you going to do about it. Or the sort of big bully that would put his hand on Kobashi's head while the guy charged at him but couldn't reach him with his punches (he didn't do that but I would have believed it if he did). I posted my real time notes pretty thoroughly for the last bunch of those matches and you can see the exact moments I popped for over multiple matches. He reminded me a bit of laughing heel Andre or Ernie Ladd screwing around with guys. All that said, maybe? If it was just one match, I'd buy into that idea more, certainly. I watch a luchador for the first time now and sometimes I see something that I realize obviously isn't the case after I see a few matches, but i saw multiple matches here and they were pretty long matches as well (my lacking sense of time notwithstanding). I've seen another couple of Taue matches since then, though, and I don't feel any different. That said, I'll be the first guy to tell you I lack context. At the same time, I know what I like (and usually why I like it) as well as anyone. EDIT: I think the above was especially true for my first impressions, but (and hey, this shows my ignorance or something) I can't imagine watching the 06/09/95 tag match and not seeing faces and heels, between the devastation of the leg and the crazy Kobashi superman comeback and everything.

People seriously need to see the late 91 Arn vs Windham TV match. I THINK OJ likes that one too. It's probably on dailymotion as part of a WCW Pro Chicago or something but I'd have to track it down.

How the hell have I not seen that? Thanks.

Is there any footage online people could suggest?

I might rewatch that match tonight. I'm kind of curious how savvy he is in it. Granted, I penalize a guy like Shawn for being clever in the ring but using that for something other than the good of the match, so I'm tempted to if Arn did as well. It shows me a couple of things if that's the case. It's not exactly the same as some of Shawn's greatest hits mind you, but there was a ton of backstage drama about that match.