Matt D

Seriously, go out into the wild for a while. Mention John Cena. Then Mention Mark Henry. See what happens.

The point is that the things you feel makes someone better are different than what I feel makes someone better. Using your criteria, I probably agree that Flair is better. But I value my criteria more than yours, understandably. In a WON HOF note we argue things like drawing a lot more. Here, the criteria is different than even that. It ultimately means that we're talking about different things, but that doesn't mean we can't express our points and have a coherent discussion. There may be elements that I find in a Bret vs Kwang CV match that I find to be more appealing and more fundamentally impressive than in a Flair vs Windham or in Flair vs Koko or whatever. The math in my head is different than the math in yours, and that's okay. I'm not saying you're wrong in how you feel. I'm just saying that to me, Bret is better. This side of wrestling is the subjective side. The Art side. There just is no objectivity here. At best, there might be consensus.

This is why Flair is better than Bret. I personally think I, in general, do an okay job escaping the Great Matches paradigm without falling into the "What If" hole. It's okay if you disagree, and sure, I admit I'm also an island unto myself with how I look at wrestling, but I like to think I back up what I say at least a lot of the time, even if it ends up in some strange backwards language.

I think if we've made any really coherent decision as a group over the last few months, it's that "What Ifs" only get us so far, and "so" is not very at all.

Presuming you were replying to me there (there was a flurry), I don't think we shouldn't look at matches. I just tend to like to pick apart matches over time instead of just looking at great matches as a whole. I think there's plenty to learn from a 4 minute superstars jobber match, a bs first house show match of a feud, and from a great 25 minute classic, and from broken down segments of all of them. All of this stuff should be factored in when comparing wrestlers.

Flair hits his shit for the sake of hitting his shit, because he feels he needs to get it in. He goes in and out of having a strategy. I think a lot of the time he lets the crowd define what he's doing instead of deciding what the crowd wants for them. And he was successful for that. it's a successful approach. Absolutely, probably even more so than Bret's. But I prefer the latter personally, on a subjective level. The question in the poll is "Who is better?" Bret is better at the things I care about, thus to me, Bret is better. I think Flair's better using a bunch of other criteria, sure, some of it more mainstream, or more recognized as important by consensus, but using the criteria I care about, Bret is better. This is the criteria that I engage you people with whenever this sort of question is asked, however, so I'm consistent, unless of course, I'm in a note talking about the WON HOF or a GOAT note or something, at which point I use the criteria I think is important for that. I took this as "who do I think is a better wrestler." and to me that usually translates to "who do I think is consciously or unconsciously showing that they know what they're doing the most in the ring." That's the most important thing to me. If you do something, it should make sense. First and foremost. If it's interesting, clever, well-executed, believable, etc, then that's what separates the people who show that are doing things for a coherent, logical reason within the context of the match. Bret's excellent at that, especially in the second two-thirds of his matches. That matters to me. That's my starting point. I think he does other things well that takes him above other wrestlers who are good in the same way. Not all, but some.

I agree with you here. I don't know that 80s WWF was an entirely different genre from Crockett but they were certainly distinguishable from one another. As a wrestling fan, I wish Ted Dibiase had a higher number of good matches, but from a WWF perspective I think it makes more sense to judge him by how well he wrestled as his character rather than whether he was technically good, though this may be truly of practically all workers and I still maintain that he was a ring technician. I watched that '89 Bret/Dibiase match and when Bret countered the rear chinlock with a top wristlock and Dibiase went for the hair, that mother knew what he was doing. The biggest thing I got coming out of the Taylor match was that Taylor's stuff was just okay but Dibiase did a great job of making it look better than okay, even if he didn't come out on top of the exchanges or do anything particularly flashy.

As everyone knows, the "great match" theory is relatively low on how I judge wrestlers (though I don't judge them on what could have been either). I think the big difference to me, so much else comparable if not equal, is this. If you look at the last 2/3rds of a Bret match and a last 2/3rds of a flair match, you can much more easily pull out why Bret is doing what he's doing than Flair. Flair does a bunch of shit just for the sake of doing it. It's not the repetition that gets me, but the fact that what he's repeating is done without rhyme or reason. With Bret, you usually get a sense of why he's choosing to do something that's a lot more logical and coherent, and that's important to me. I get that it's not important to everyone. That's fine.

I will probably go into more depth tomorrow, but for me it's a personal thing, how I feel matches are put together. It's my idea about what wrestling is and should be. I think Flair is better at doing what Flair does than Bret is at doing what Bret does, but I like what Bret does more. On the other hand, what Ric did was wildly more successful over a longer period of time. If I am saying which of the two I'd rather watch and which of the two I like more, I'd say Bret. Bret is better at doing the things I care about than Flair is.

On this board you can argue anything in the entire world so long as you back it up, but we've hit the one line Loss will not see crossed.

I thought the talking point was that Race was the Angle of his day. We need a new poll.

Switch one vote from Flair to Bret. I misclicked. Maybe it was my subconscious. For purely subjective reasons I pick Bret. Flair might be the better performer. I like Bret's ringwork more.

I like that post a lot, actually. I do think Flair didn't just do what felt right but also what he thought he was supposed to do or what he thought worked, without caring about a big picture. I'd also say that Bret was a lot more able to call an audible than that would indicate. But in general, it's not bad.

I'm sure we all have a guy who we mainly know from the Apter mags and always wondered about as a kid. For me, that's Vic Steamboat. For the two years I was really into wrestling as a kid he was always in the standings somewhere and as a big Ricky Steamboat fan I absolutely wondered.

Or the Minis version of such (says the guy who's 5'5")

I just wanted to add that I do kinda understand where you're coming from with your Bret criticisms. What you say about Bret sounds similar to how I feel about Flair. I used to be a big fan but I just can't watch him anymore. Most every Flair match is ultimately about Flair's shtick and very much Flair-centric. For the most part, Bret's matches are Bret's matches. Much like Flair, he definitely had a set way of working. I think there's enough variations in Bret's template and he switches up enough parts to the point where I don't find the formula repetitive. In fact it's impressive to me how he can work off of his formula to tell different narratives. I wouldn't mind Flair's repetitiveness so much if his matches were smarter and not as hokey. This is pretty much how I feel, though I'm not sure I'd say the last sentence quite the same.

I can watch a comedy and a drama and judge the two of them side by side. It's not that hard to do if you've seen a lot of both comedies and dramas. Yes, they're trying to accomplish different things, but you can judge how well they accomplished the things they tried to accomplish, the level of difficulty innate in what they were doing, etc, and make a decision. But then I like the Bushwhackers vs Beverly Brothers way more than most people because I think they did what they went out to do in a successful manner. It doesn't mean it'll stack up well against something with a much higher level of difficulty or complexity, all else equal, though.

Everyone I consider trustworthy or otherwise praised the show to the heavens. If anyone dislikes the show I will really have to wonder why they bother with modern Wrestling. Does this mean I'm not trustworthy? I think we can compare and contrast Dylan's initial show he watched in this note and this one and appreciate that he's definitely found other reasons to bother with modern wrestling.

I'm sure in Vince's mind the difference was that he was gambling with everything he had while Turner was just pulling from one of many giant piles.

I think I am going to attempt this. A part of me thinks the smart road to take would be to tie it in with Superstars. Yes they are different shows and different things are going on with both in terms of over all presentation. But the key is that both shows were the "wrestling" shows where the undercard talent were given time to shine against each other (and occasionally against upper card talent). Honestly, I think you could do two different comps. There's enough stuff there.

Does All American exist anywhere between 88-92 or so? I know 93 has a pretty full run but i can't even find good results for exclusive matches between 88 and 92. And just think of all the lost bobby the brain goofballery.

It's also vaguely personal with Bret and myself. And this note is as good a place as ever to put it. I'm sure I've told this story but I was lucky enough to have a friend growing up who had an uncle who worked for Titan. I don't know in what regard. I barely remember the guy but the kid was the younger sibling of a friend of my older sister and we were often on the same youth soccer team together or what not, with his dad as the coach and mine as the assistant coach. He had certain developmental issues and I like to think even as a kid I was always good to him. And again later when we he managed the baseball team in high school and i did the scorebook. But yes, his dad worked for Titan and as we were both into wrestling (he was a huge Hogan fan, I liked the Rockers and Tito). We were able to go to a few house shows comped at the old Boston Garden, and if his uncle was there, we got to go back stage. This is 91 and I'm nine or so. Well, the kid goes with me half way to the back stage area before he gets terrified of the idea of Slaughter being back there and flees back to his seat. I go on and Bret just had his match with the Barbarian so he's just out of the shower and I have sort of a Mean Joe Green moment meeting him. He was eminently kind to me, way more than he needed to be and signed a ticket stub that we found (since I hadn't brought anything to be signed or a camera or anything. It was all spur of the moment, getting to go back stage like that). I know people had bad experiences with him later on but he was really great to me when I was a lucky nine year old in 91. That said, he still had a damn great 93.

His work has aged far better than Shawn's, though.

i think you have to include 93. Like I said in the top 5 note there are a litany of really good+ matches. Flair Ironman, Bigelow in Europe. Yoko Cage (and we don't even have the best of the cage matches they had apparently). And really just the sheer accomplishment of going 30-40 with Backlund in a very good MSG match and then the next night having the Razor, Perfect, and Bam Bam matches at KOTR. 92 is interesting. Obviously there's the Davey carry job, the Piper match. Michaels at Survivor Series, but he had a ton of very solid televised Title defenses against giants in fall. Not a ton of them stand out. None of the Flair matches we have are even close to the ironman match in 93. I don't think we have a lot of the summer IC defenses vs Michaels, and none of the Mountie matches are very good from what I remember. I think 93 is a much clearer year and one that's much harder to dispute.

It always surprised me just how much handheld material seems to be available from late 85 into 86 too