Matt D

And lo, the circle continues.

I get the public perception but Bock was frigging awesome in 86-87. He has the Flair match. He has some great stuff with Larry. He has the Debeers match I love. He has the match where he is a super god face against Hansen. He has the Hennig series which are brilliant. I'm curious. What does Flair have in 86-87 that stand up to the Hennig series?

Where would you like the conversation to move? Lead the way. I just don't want it to go back to Kane. We've been there already. Maybe seven months ago. You said the same things. People contested them because you went in with SUCH extremes. You didn't give a damn. So no, I don't want to revisit that conversation. How about we regroup. Meltzer has always cared about what Wrestlers thought about their peers. I really, truly think a lot of his views developed like they did through talking to Flair in the 80s. And a lot of those viewpoints impacted the evolution of our "community's" perspective over the years, but ... Actually, alright, what about this. The sheer amount of footage out there now and the ease of accessibility is sort of like the Reformation. At one point Meltzer and a few others were reading to us in Latin since none of us knew it. Now we have the means to make decisions for ourselves and every now and again Dylan goes on the Wrestling Classics board (or even better now, the WON board) and posts up his theses.

Duly noted. Let's move on.

The AA looks like crap and always has. I don't think the execution of one signature move, especially one that's always been pretty over, is really what we're talking about here on either extreme.

His peers have an entirely different view. I think that aspect has to be acknowledged. I personally like him in once in a while small doses. As a footnote maybe? I'm not sure that's entirely useful to what we discuss around here?

Actually. WWF @ San Francisco, CA - Cow Palace - June 9, 1990 (8,400) Koko B. Ware defeated the Genius The Warlord defeated Brady Boone (sub. for the Red Rooster) Jim Brunzell defeated Al Perez Haku defeated Paul Roma The Big Bossman defeated Ted Dibiase WWF Tag Team Champions Demolition Smash & Crush (w/ Ax) defeated Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart Dusty Rhodes & Sapphire (w/ Miss Elizabeth) defeated Randy Savage & Sensational Sherri (w/ Brother Love) They actually ran it quite a bit through August. Including once on a Superstars taping dark match so it probably exists taped.

I really hate that cage match, Dylan.

The Steiner Screwdriver just showed up for the first time. Heenan: "Wow... that was.. that was like a vertical pileplex!"

Aha. I missed the classics background so I was left scratching my head. I can see Patera being "remembered" as a mid-carder.

This is obviously why Sting got betrayed so many times.

How much of the Scott promotion is out there? That's something I've always been pretty curious about

Perhaps more useful than looking at a wrestler over his career is to look at a promotion at a specific point of time and classify the wrestlers in it at that moment? I'm actually not entirely sure what Dylan thought we needed with the original post

He has THIRTY DAYS to defend the title.

I picture how I generally saw Dean Malenko when I was 18 in 1999.

Not the power I would have pegged Kris to have.

They are a level 17 technique.

The heart.

I think whether or worked or not with Sting as a heel actually has NOTHING to do with Sting at all, which is actually amazingly fitting as part of his career.

Honestly, i tend to agree. Sting being the next in line of Hogan Friends to get Jealous and Turn on Him would have been good for a Program, but not an engine to last two years. I do think there's something to Sting being the face of WCW replaced by Hogan and teaming with the guys who basically replaced Hogan in WWF but they wouldn't have ran with it as far as they needed to because of Hogan's creative control. That, to me is the most important thing of all of this. With Hogan as the heel, he had a huge interest in the NWO working. With him as a face, his interest was in building them up a little (maybe they could beat up Bockwinkel again) and then vanquishing them.

What if Sting turns instead of Hogan?

Obviously Crow Sting was more of a northern phenomenon. And good, now do Kevin Sullivan on influence, drawing in Florida, and booking.

The only thing that I think people forget is anecdotally how big Sting was as a mainstream star at that point. I knew lots of people who were into the whole black baseball bat thing in a big way. It was huge at high school. The whole baseball team was into it. Sting in 97 felt as culturally over as Austin would be in 98 or the rock a year or two later, and more so than Goldberg was. I know we can't quantify that, but it was the experience I had personally. That year it was not just socially acceptable but actually cool to like Sting.

Obviously, he wouldn't be Crow Flair, but he might have used the Horsemen as a Guerrilla Army or something to similar effect.