Matt D

I think he has the sort of flaws that don't necessarily matter in general, but do matter for a list like this. He's had a year full of dropping selling when it was time to go offense, for instance, and some of that was to look strong on a big stage but it was all pretty blatant. If it's the sort of stuff I'll give crap to RVD for, it's also the sort of stuff that I'd give crap to Bryan for as well. There are other matches I look at and really don't like, too. For instance, he tried to work vs Kamala, after the excellent opening stretch, as a Super Indy match, which was a blatantly terrible decision. I'm not sure if he thought the audience wouldn't accept anything else or if he just didn't have the range/savvy to make it work, but it absolutely didn't. Again, not things that normally would be held against him, but I think it keeps him well from #1.

I'll have more things to say as we go along with this, but I find Martel's heel work in WWF very frustrating. I think he was handcuffed, be it by the agents or the style or what not, and I do think a lot of his babyface work was still pretty good there. To me, the heel run is going to hurt him and I'll probably have to revisit it and see what I can find.

I guess i was going on feel there.

I'm not sure if I'll be in trouble or if Misawa might not just be #67 on my list after I watch a whole bunch of stuff that drives me more and more nuts.

NOTE: This is taken from the remedial wrestling thread at DVDVR, so some of the comments might be a little out of context or refer to the project as a whole, which watched a number of matches leading up to this match as well. I've done minimal editing. What to say about this? Alright, it was a perfectly wrestled match for the setting and the style. The narrative was excellent. The execution was brilliant. The selling was perfect and it all built into the story. Was it a little bloated? Sure, but it had to be because this match wasn't wrestled in a bubble. It followed up upon the previous matches. There's a point midway through the match that if I was watching this in a bubble, then I would have wanted them to take it home. Maybe two points. That clearly happened in the first of these tag matches. Here, though I was prepared for it and they didn't lose me like they did in previous matches. The narrative, though I don't really need to recap, was this. It was even to start, like most of these matches, with Kobashi and Misawa having a bit of an edge. Kobashi made a mistake and they worked over his damaged leg. He made the hot-ish (never hot enough) tag to Misawa. They started to damage the orbital bone and then use Misawa's body to damage Kobashi's leg to really take over. They beat on Misawa's orbital bone for a while. Kobashi finally came back and was utterly unleashed, shrugging off everything, making these crazy facial expressions, just an unstoppable dynamo. For a while they went tit for tat, with the hurt man recovering at a key moment to break things up. Misawa and Kobashi had the ultimate advantage and it all came to a head with Kawada down and Taue trapped in the corner unable to break up the pin. I guess that would be the start of the finishing sequence in a normal match. Kawada WOULD kick out and they would go around in a circle or two until they hit that moment again and this time, he didn't. In this match though, it went like this: Kawada and Taue were just too much. They weren't too much for Kobashi and Misawa in general, but given their opponents natural fighting spirit, it took too long for Misawa and Kobashi to beat them, and because of that, due to the weaknesses they had coming into this match, that meant that they ultimately could get overwhelmed. It felt like the result was inevitable before the match even began. Kobashi got nailed in the leg. Misawa got nailed in the eye again, and the momentum shifted and this time, finally, it was Misawa that lost the battle of attrition. It was compelling in leading up to a rematch on fair footing; on that level it was absolutely brilliant, but it felt cheap as a pay off to "THE BEST TAG MATCH EVER" and in that context I'm a little shaky on it. They sure protected the hell out Misawa. I'm not sure they really made Kawada and Taue look better in the process, though. The biggest real issue I had with the match was the Kobashi superman run. That's exactly what it felt right. It's funny that I've always heard that this stuff was somehow "more real." Personally, I don't mind it all that much. It felt like something out of a cartoon or comic book or sci fi, but I like those things. Actually it felt like the kid who got the Charles Atlas correspondence course and beat up the guys who kicked sand at him, or even more like it should have come after a montage with "Simply the Best" in the background. What it felt like most of all was some sort of kung fu movie (and Kung Fu Hustle came to mind) where the hero finally found his inner power and peace of mind and was able to develop super powers. It was hugely entertaining and kind of emotional, but not in the same way 99% of wrestling, even comebacks like Hogan's and Cena's are. It felt anything but real. The issue to me wasn't even that, but that it ultimately didn't really matter. Kobashi had this once in a lifetime comeback, this sort of thing that stretches credulity so far past the breaking point that his hair should have turned hot blonde and energy waves should have been coming off of him, and it was awesome, and ultimately, they still lost. It just seemed like a story element that belonged in another match, maybe? Not the one where they were finally putting Kawada/Taue over. I had thought I might talk about how the escalation here was the sort of thing that could burn out a territory and set impossible expectations. From what I understand, that eventually happened. It's a fair thing to judge a match on, I think, since they were breaking a bunch of "rules" and stretching things further than ever to accomplish what they were trying to do. It's really more than that here though: Everything had to be wrestled perfectly in this match to work. Things had to be balanced. Each move had to mean the right amount relative to the other moves in the match and the promotion in general and the fans had to buy into that. It's like exchanging currency. The edifice of the match needed every part to support it or else the entire style of wrestling would collapse, and frankly, it took both a miracle and genius performers to manage that. They did it here far, far more than they should have been able to but I almost don't think it was worth it. That's the tragedy of this match to me. They have such attention for detail, such thought in the layout, such care in their selling, such intensity and willingness to just give themselves to pro wrestling. If they worked this match in a style I actually like, it could be like nothing I'd ever seen before, because of the talent and the work put into it. Instead, we get something that is exquisitely beautiful, but that manages to succeed despite its loudness and brightness and not because of it.

This is relevant for the the 6/1/93 match (Which was the first one I saw of these guys): "The major problem is that it just went on and on and on during the finishing stretch. If the thing ended with the moonsault after the tandem DDTs or especially Kobashi's powerbomb with the flip pin, I think I ultimately would have loved the match instead of just being happily surprised with some parts of it and frustrated with other parts. It just kept going and going after that though with a sort of escalation i wasn't feeling at all, and I had actually been REALLY into it when Kawada tagged in after Misawa's flying elbow to the floor. I thought they were going to take the thing home there because it felt really right to me and they just didn't." ====== Here's everything I said about the 12/3/93 match: 12/3/93 "An really awesome 17 minute match and a very frustrating 30 minute match all in one! Seriously, this one was more egregious than the last in losing me. I really sort of loved it right until the hot tag to Misawa and Kobashi fighting back and what not. The match should have ended there, or maybe i guess gone into a second FIP or something, like in AWA matches. Instead, they just hit things in and out of giant moments and by the missed Kobashi moonsault I was done. It's really frustrating too because there are so many great little moments and really clever bits and very strong selling and facial expressions and the stuff just looks so good, but when half the match is this back and forth big bomb finishing sequence where they've given up on working any sort of tag team match after spending the first half of the match working a really great tag team match, I just get desensitized. I sort of love each guy in his role. Taue as a big man bully asshole is really great. Kawada is the surliest wrestler ever and a stubborn idiot to boot. Kobashi is a good FIP with these fiery moments of really quick offense and MIsawa is one of the best hot tags ever because his execution and the energy and emotion he's able to put behind it is just so iconic. You really get the feeling that this person is a PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER and not just someone pretending to be one. That said, everything just fizzles apart for me. My gut tells me that everything's come to a head and that they should bring the match to a conclusion and you know what? Fifteen minutes later they do." --- 3/6/94 ----- You get the idea after this. These could go into yearbook notes, but I know you were curious so I just posted a bunch. I'll go post the 6/9 one in the yearbook note. ----- Also, I do plan on seeing some of those six mans. It's a great way to see a bunch of guys at once after all.

The archives themselves are putting it up. Here's the Info: They have 208 matches in total. And the announcement.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXxP_rvXryBPpjIw7Dl9Tg/videos Was this stuff always out there? EDIT: Okay, I see that some of it was up, like the Verne vs super young Bastien match I just saw. Someone posted it 5 years ago on youtube, but the VQ on this stuff is amazing. Way better

What about the excess? One thing that impressed me very much with Misawa and co. was that many things such as strike exchanges that we take for granted now because they have been copied to the point of losing their initial meaning felt so natural and organic and important. It wasn't even about forgiving them when we hold then against modern matches. They were just completely different. The excess did not feel that way. In most of the matches I felt strongly like they should have been taking things home about 2/3rds the way through. Unlike the very visceral and meaningful strike exchanges that aspect seemed much like what many of us we criticize heavily today.

We all thought this was going to be Sabu at the time.

Hansen is a guy I need a primer for.

I find that interesting. I wonder how much it puts the onus and thus the credit on the challenger or the opponent though. What comes to mind, actually, as a contrast, is Hulk Hogan's WWF run. Did his opponents come in with any different sort of strategies even though he was a nigh-undefeatable Ace? I don't remember anyone ever trying to take out the leg to eliminate the leg drop, for instance.

And I thought it was Kensuke Sasaki that was a Road Warrior.

First, in the name of this project, I will absolutely watch anything people want me to watch, within reason, and so far, all of this is in reason. I might just not do it today or tomorrow. Second, I wonder if what Childs is mentioning here isn't sort of limited. I honestly don't know. On paper, I think it allows for less creativity in some way as a lot of what he would be forced to do would either be formulaic or reactive. Is that the case?

To clarify off of what Goodear said, it wasn't necessarily the strike exchange part of the fighting spirit that gave me trouble but the popping up to hit something before selling bit, especially after some sort of limbwork crucial to the match that was sold as if it was crucial to the match.

In the end, I think it might be something like "Does Arn do his job better than Flair does his job?" factoring in that there are both advantages and disadvantages to each job. Though it's obviously personal. So it's more like "Does Arn do his job better in my eyes than Flair does his job in my eyes?" then factoring in and weighing what I personally feel to be the advantages and disadvantages in each. I'm not convinced that it's always more difficult to wrestle a good match in a 20 minute main event than it is to wrestle one in a 10 minute tv match. It's situational. There are pros and cons.

I'm putting myself out there on this one, so be kind. I'm mainly going to comment here at all because I think it's important for me to lay this out at the beginning of the project and we can look back at this towards the end and see if I feel differently. It should be fun at least. I participated in DVDVR's little remedial wrestling project on Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada/Taue recently and despite having been watching wrestling since 1990 or so, that was the first real meaningful time I watched Misawa. So I've got five or six matches under my belt but they're some that are considered all time classics. My general impressions are thus: -Explosive Execution. Absolutely and utterly explosive. Maybe more so than any wrestler I ever saw. He seemed to have this gear that was just inhuman. In the first match I saw, when he flipped over the top and hit his dive, it was chill-inducing. It was like watching a special effect in a movie. It was the same when he hit a big move. On an execution level, he's tremendously impressive. -The Selling/Storytelling. I'm extremely impressed with the build between matches and over time, and to a lesser extent within the same match. There seems to be a throughline between many of his matches and one builds to the next and I appreciate that element of wrestling. For the most part, it's both in the intent and layout and also in the actual selling itself. On the other hand, I find a lot of the fighting spirit stuff to be frustrating. I'm not going to completely hold this against him, because it was expected in the style; it's a trapping, but I think I have to somewhat, because on the one hand, he makes such an effort to subtly sell something, to build things towards a moment, or to limit himself in one way or another, but then he gives in to the stylistic trope and just drops it all for a moment to hit his thing. I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too like this. I think that if you understand that first part, you'd see on some level why the second is problematic. There are outright resets in his matches where they drop it completely, and that bothers me way more than in lucha. Why? Because there's so much great selling and it's hindered by this, while in lucha, the selling just isn't as specific a lot of the time. If he wasn't so good at selling, it wouldn't bother me so much. I wonder if that make sense. -Excess. Most of the forty minute matches would have been better served by being twenty minutes. Most of the matches would be better served by not going back and hitting three or four of the same move. Most of the matches I saw would almost seem to reloop around in circles by the end in a very "your move, my move" sort of way, without clear and meaningful transitions. The finishing stretches were lengthy to the point of being frustrating, maybe taking up half the match in some cases and I don't think it built well from the earlier parts of the match, though it may have, instead, built on earlier matches, which is interesting but only half the battle where a slightly higher attention to detail would have served to connect everything. -Audience connection. The crowd believed in him. Completely. There's something to to that. He knew exactly what they wanted. He gave them what they wanted. They wanted the escalation. They wanted the finishing stretches. That's a pro, but I also think it's a con. It wasn't sustainable and it lead, more and more to injuries and matches where the narratives were hurt due to the need to top the last match. Sometimes, it's far more important to give the crowd what they need than what they want. What I want to see more of: -Older Misawa. I think he understood a ton about his craft. I'm curious if he was able or willing or brave enough to adapt when his body started to break down or when he was called upon for a slightly different role with different supporting player or if it was just a case of diminishing returns right up until his death. -Younger Misawa. I'm curious to see how he developed into the wrestler he ultimately became and what was there from the start and what he grew into.

Neither here nor there but looking at Boss Man's late WWF run is really interesting, because he's in positions where he has extremely short matches and every second of them matters, and there are dozens of little things he does to maximize every moment. They're not workrate-y things or spotfest-y things so they were very much overlooked at the time, but the sum of them is really impressive. Which again, isn't to say I'd vote for him, but it's interesting. I know I wrote a little about them either in his note or the Vs Dibiase one.

I'm probably not the guy to start this, but I do have some thoughts. I've actively watched quite a bit of Blue Panther over a large span of time recently. He is absolutely a guy who can get pushed to the back in trios matches, especially when he has someone like Fuerza Guerrera in front of him. That said, being placed in the role of "mat-worker in the primera caida matched up against another mat-worker" isn't a mark of shame, especially when someone can implement such effortless work, whether it be complex or just competitive. Where I've been especially impressed, however, is seeing him in different roles. He's tremendously effective when matched up with someone for a fiery/heated brawl, and almost amazingly so when he's there to do the comedy and shtick and character work, in that Fuerza role. I think he's also wrestled very well as an aged tecnico and transitioned strongly after losing the match to where he puts on strong performances with more emoting even if he's lost some of that mystique. And from what little I've seen of him in singles matches (no apuestas matches and just a few title matches), I do think I've seen evidence that he's more than able to put all of these complicated roles together into a total package. I have a lot more to see, though.

Fair enough. I mainly just like arguing with Parv. Or anyone. Probably anyone. I'm not entirely confident on talking about a lot of wrestlers right now, without spending some more time watching things. My standing line in, let's say 2010 or whenever I first started posting here regularly and stopped just lurking is that I didn't feel confident participating on the level as a lot of posters we have. I feel more so now, more refined in my views and having seen a lot more in the way of matches. I'm still not ready to weigh in on most guys yet. One think I do think I'll do is look at a lot of less seminal matches for the sake of this project and write them up, comparing and contrasting specific performances in different situations outside of GREAT MATCHES. Everyone will be looking at the great matches and it might serve the community to offer something else, especially more so than me just hammering on the point in a general sense.

I'm the first guy who is going to give an old wrestler tons of credit for learning to work around their limitations and to punish a wrestler for not being able to figure out how to do so, but again that comes to the matches that they're putting on, not their card placement. Some of the best wrestlers in the world are completely unreliable drug addicts who squander chance after chance but still continue to perform at a high level, just in a different context. That said, I guess I'm looking at this as "best wrestler of all time," because that's how I differentiate it from the WON HOF. It's a clear line to me. I appreciate that it's murkier for you, Parv. There's also a huge difference between Mike Jackson and the Barbarian (and I like the Barbarian), but that's beside the point.

Just for the sake of argument: I think it's potentially endemic of a greater issue. If this is a poll that is primarily focused on aesthetics and quality then the fact that quite often opportunity arose through anything but and may not have arose for the same non-aesthetic reasons becomes somewhat problematic. Quality rises, no matter what? Maybe, but certainly more so during different times and in different ways. A talented wrestler could probably have much better GREAT MATCHES in a meaningful position working in Memphis in 1989 or the AWA in 1986, but they could make a lot more money in New York, where they'd have far less opportunities to really show off given the depth of the roster and the very specific way the product was presented. When they did get a chance to show off, it'd often be something like Powers of Pain vs Rockers from early 90 MSG, which everyone who did the yearbook set loved, but which was hardly a "meaningful position," and even that was an exception compared to most of their matches that were taped on larger shows. Compare that to the Rose/Somers feud that the Rockers had. So because they were good enough to be in a place that gave them bigger paydays, they actually had less opportunity to show off how good they were on a "significant position" level. Some of that was very much how WWF presented tag team wrestling as opposed to AWA or JCP. Some of it was the depth of the roster when it came to things other than talent (Demolition was super over, so the Rockers couldn't be presented on top). Mainly, I'm not saying you can't judge things how you want. I'm mostly just going into more depth on why I try to discount opportunity and look at situations instead of great matches. For that, I apologize, because I think at this point, no one really wants me to go into more detail on this. ------------------------------------------------------- As someone who's 5'5", I'm not about to penalize someone for not being 6'3" and thus not having certain opportunities, for instance, or for not marrying a Gagne daughter (which isn't the sentence in this that you should be focused on, btw. Also don't focus much on the next one, please. Just consider this paragraph a fun footnote). By my criteria, it's possible for someone to put Mike Jackson over Ric Flair if they think that Mike Jackson was actually a better wrestler from watching him in a number of different situations, and we have Mike Jackson in a bunch of different situations and territories, and watching Flair in a number of situations. I'm not saying I'm going to do that, but when it comes to the things I care about, understanding the art and science of pro wrestling and executing it, I am going to say that possibility exists.

It could say that your brother owns the promotion.

Patterns over time leading to a "how well does someone understand pro wrestling and can he transfer that understanding into the ideal performance for the situation that he is in." If it means he's in a situation to have a great match, he can have a great match. If it means that he can get over in a three minute squash match, he can do that. If it means that he can put over an opponent without taking too much of the match, he can (and will) do that. It encompasses tag matches, house shows, TV tapings, dark matches, everything under the sun. You can learn almost as much from watching four or five tv squashes as you do from a 35 minute classic, and more than that, you learn different things. It's an approach that takes a lot of work, but it's a holistic one, a whole career one. It also only judges a wrestler for the matches he has and it doesn't penalize him for not being in a position to have GREAT matches. It's sort of a performance based, career-focused pound-for-pound approach.

Parv has a list of matches that show Flair's breadth and how he would change up his formula for different opponents and in different situations. Sort of an argument-killer. I've been promising for years to revisit these matches all together to see if that proved to be the case or not. If he would post it here, then I will absolutely get to it in the next two years.