Serious Greatest of All Time Candidates

[Phil Schneider]

The Fujiwara wave coincided with the 80's Other Japan set which had 21 Fujiwara matches which a big group of people watched and discussed, and then the 80's NJ Set which had 30 Fujiwara matches which a big group of people watched and discussed. Add that to the Complete and Accurate list over at Segunda Caida

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2009/08/c...-of-all-of.html

 

the matches are out their, pointed to, and discussed heavily. this isn't a case of me and TomK saying something and folks parroting it, it is a case of lots of people watching lots of matches and coming to similar conclusions.

[jdw]

Lawler's ascension I think is trickier. Lawler always had his fans but Memphis was much more of a niche when I first popped up online than it is now. I remember arguing that Lawler, Dundee, Dutch, Budro, et were some of the better guys of the 80's back in 99. There were people who agreed with this, but there was no group pushing the notion that he was a top guy. When I did my own personal top 100 at a1w a decade ago I am pretty sure I had Dundee in my top forty and Lawler in my top twenty. This was the time of the Jumbo "boom" and I had him at 18 or so. A lot more attention was focused on the fact that Jumbo was "so low" rather than Lawler being that high.

Lawler Luv does go back, and I suspect some of us remember Frank and Phil having a pier-six brawl over Lawler. 95% of the MOVES~! discussion since then seems to have sprung out of that discussion/period, though I also suspect that since so few of the MOVES~! crew came along later that they don't know it.

 

That said, my read on it back then was that Lawler Luv was more along the lines of "Man... Jerry was pretty Great" than "Holy Fucking Shit!!! Jerry's Might Just Be The Best Ever!!!" That seemed to me to be a few years down the road.

 

 

My point is that I think with Lawler there were always fans of the Memphis style that regarded him as an all timer, or near that level. The difference is they weren't organized (that's a terrible word here but I can't think of a better one) and Memphis was not a high priority in that era as most everyone seemed to focus their energy on NJPW Juniors, AJPW, Joshi and the stuff coming out of the Monday Night Wars.

Wouldn't disagree with that. But there are levels of all-timers. Steamer is considered by a lot of people an all-timer, but the number of folks advocating him for #1 is... lite to say the least. It struck me that it was in those days more along the lines of getting people to see that Jerry should be up there with Steamer and DiBiase, who were pretty much taken for granted as clearly being ATG at the time.

 

 

I suspect Lawler has benefited not just by the new footage, but also by the fact that people who enjoy his work are more vocal about it now, more focused in pushing it as top stuff, and also the fact that post-Monday Night War era certain fans became encouraged to go out and seek other stuff with Vince being the only game in town.

Agree on all of that.

 

John

[jdw]

Dylan is definitely right about when Jumbo as GOAT became a big online consensus. It was basically Jumbo dies -> people start to watch whatever Jumbo they may have had laying around -> Jumbo Legend set comes out -> People go nuts over it, especially the '70s matches with Race and Rusher

I think people were watching Jumbo prior to that, including the Rusher and Race matches. I know the Race and Terry NWA Title matches were ones Frank pimped as MOTD Candidates from about as soon as they hit Lynch's list off Classics. The Terry match wasn't complete on the Legend... I wonder if the Monster 10 came out before Legend.

 

-> People go after whatever they can find on AJPW Classics tapes, plus the previous Jumbo comm. set, the Tenryu feud comp (which was missing matches), etc -> People go even more nuts over the Terry Funk, Kerry Von Erich, etc. matches along with everything else, and with the impressive body of work over such a long time, he gets pimped as GOAT.

Some, not quite. Again, I think the Jumbo general drum roll started a bit earlier. The Jumbo-Tenryu was pratically a 1997 comp, no later than 1998 with Q-Mike then trading it all over the place. Terry Nuts and Kerry Nuts were really early: I know I pimped Kerry-Jumbo and Flair-Harley as one of the best TV shows for like forever, along with Choshu-Hash, Hase & Sasaki vs Mutoh & Chono and Liger-Pegasus. And Terry-Jumbo was a drum that Frank beat over and over and over again.

 

Jumbo Love was in full force before Backlund Love, and that one goes back a long time. Pimping Jumbo Classics matches goes back before Baba-Billy... and that review of Frank's was really old.

 

 

To add to all of the other Lawler points you have to remember that even though Memphis was known for great brawls, the tape collecting veered towards the regular TV and the great angles/promos a lot of the time. Not as many people were watching the available house show footage and trying to dig up more. Jeff Lynch's US list, which had a decent amount of quality house show stuff, was barely looked at, and you had to dig all over the place for more.

This is true.

 

My question would be: was there enough stuff on Lynch's list (and other collectors at the time like Munari and Freelander) to determine that Jerry was Really Really Really Great?

 

One of the complaints about Destroyer Luv is that he got pimped off a small number of available matches. But there is the flip side of that: the small number of matches hasn't gotten in the way of people breaking down Jumbo-Baba or Jumbo-Mil and arguing that Destroyer was a high end worker for the style of the era (i.e. comp him with other workers who also have limited stuff as well, and with the overall available work from the era).

 

I don't think it got in the way of Phil having that discussion with Frank. It was over one of the classic matches, and I think he offered up other ones as well.

 

The mass let people make the "Body Of Work" argument.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

I remember UWI-i drawing shitloads of money then getting into big problems, but I don't remember the reasons why. I doubt Takada was the reason, he was a huge draw until the end of his career. He drew huge in New Japan and he drew huge to launch PRIDE, despite having been "exposed" as a pro-wrestler for years and doing really bad worked shoots camouflaged as real shoots in PRIDE.

They ran into financial problems because like most Japanese promotions they weren't very good at managing money, but they also had huge overheads in running their shows at Budokan. What really killed them off, though, was Choshu having full control over the book, destroying UWF-i's credibility while laughing all the way to the bank. Takada may have been protected in the New Japan feud, but his promotion wasn't.

 

You keep saying that believability and realism weren't an issue and that UWF-i was just another pro-wrestling company, but that's not how UWF-i was promoted. These were guys who were supposed to have legtimate catch wrestling skills even if fans were aware that the matches were worked. UWF-i put an enormous amount of energy into promoting themselves as the strongest wrestling company while deriding everyone else as fake. They even did that ridiculous publicity stunt where they borrowed ￥100 million from the bank to challenge all of the top wrestlers from other promotions and paid back the loan at the end of the day with interest.

 

I brought up this because you imply that shoot-style was something different than pro-style, sold on the basis that it looked real. So, I guess the audience was different too and was expecting "realistic stuff" out of any shoot-style promotion, right ?

That's how shoot style was marketed to them. That's why it got hot in the first place.

 

So, if that's the case, why did they made Takada the biggest shoot-style worker ever ?

It's debatable whether he was a bigger star than Maeda, but for a couple of years UWF-i was successful based on the perception that it was more legit than traditional pro-wrestling. They were not able to maintain this image because of the difficulties they had in running shows and booking opponents for Takada to face, etc.

 

I know very well that Yamazaki, Tamura, Khosaka and Han are better pure shoot-style workers than Takada, I've never had any doubt about it. But that never bothered me. Takada was more pro-style at heart, so what ?

Well, if you know that Takada isn't as good as the best shoot style workers then what's the point in having this argument in the first place? It's not as though Takada was great at pro-style either.

 

Well, it's a mistake. You can judge a movie on its own merit, but not on what you expect it to be. It makes no sense to me.

That's wonderful in theory, but it's an impossible position to hold. Whenever people watch a film, they bring their expectations with them. If they didn't then producing a film would be easy. You'd just say, "the audience expect this, this and this and then they'll be happy."

 

I don't remember how things got bad to be honest. But Takada had been a big draw for years at this point. You can't have it both way, you can't say "what the japanese audience thought has nothing to do with what wer're discussing" and at the same time point out that "they ended up bankrupt". Either it is relevant, either it's not.

I can't have it both ways? If you're going to harp on about how Takada's wrestling style didn't hurt his drawing ability then you have to acknowledge that people ended up getting fed-up with UWF-i. I've never denied that UWF-i was popular.

 

You think people really bought that ? And anyway, even though it was sold on realism, didn't Takada drew huge against pro-wrestler Vader ? Did the people really thought that was a legit fight ? That's whY i said it was a gimmick. And although I agree they strayed a little too far, if there's a guy to blame, wouldn't that be Anjoh making stupid challenges to the Gracie and getting humiliated. Wasn't Anjo a booker along with Nakano ?

Of course the fans bought it. Yeah, let's blame Anjoh and Nakano. Anybody expect the key guy.

 

I know. Tamura did the best thing for his career. He had a niche audience and he protected his style by not mixing with NJ and going to RINGS. But then we're talking about business here, and I thought that wasn't relevant ? To me the "realistic" aspect of UWF was always a gimmick like any other to make money with a niche audience. UWF-i blew it at some point, I don't remember how that happens, it's old history at this point. But really, the only guy that kept his aura was Takada. Despite working the shittiest match ever with Mutoh at the dome, he still drew huge against Hashimoto for the next Dome Show. Again, we're talking about business here. Tamura made a good business decision for himself, Takada did a good business decision for himself. The talk of the days back then was all about Takada showing up in AJ to boost attendance. Although I agree UWF-i lost their way, I'm not ready to buy it was because Nobuhiko Takada wasn't working "realistic enough".

Tamura was the best hope the company had for continuing in the future and they butchered their handling of him from the word go. Tamura's desire to work a certain way was not a gimmick or business decision. It probably wasn't the best thing for his career, either. If you watch UWF-i (which would kind of help), you'll realise that Tamura and some of the other younger guys were struggling month in, month out with how they wanted to work vs. the UWF-i style. Your whole "shoot style is a gimmick" argument is a huge misreading of the situation. You cannot put in the countless hours of training that Tamura did in legitimate fighting styles in order to make his works look good and then say it's a gimmick as though any worker can pick it up.

 

That's not even the point. The point is, Fujiwara also did lot of goofy pro-wrestling stuff, and his matwork, as great and fun as it was, wasn't "realistic".

How would you know? You haven't even bothered to watch it in umpteen years. The reason we keep going over this is because you can't reconcile the idea that Fujiwara might be better than Takada with your memories of what you watched years ago.

 

I can buy that Fujiwara was a great shoot-style worker (and I'm talking by my standart), and there's no doubt he was better on the mat than most. But it's not an issue of realism at all. That's why I say if your issue with Takada is "realism", then you should have the same issue with Fuji or Volk Han (who I adore).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by realism at this point. Fujiwara was a more realistic catch wrestler than Takada. That's pretty much indisputable.

 

Thats' where we disagree. To me I don't see how any of these matches should be judge as far as realism go. These are two wrestling match worked in the realm of one style we call "shoot-style" because it's supposed to look more "real" than other form of wrestling. One is more about technical wiz, the other is about drama and flash. That's all there is to me

Yes, one is about technical wiz and the other is about drama and flash. I'm not disputing that. However, in my opinion, one is good and the other is bad.

 

What can I say. I loved both, although my preference goes to Tamura vs Han. Maybe on rewatch I would hate Takada vs Vader. I doubt I would quite frankly. My favourite pro-wrestling match ever, the most beautiful I've seen, is the infamous Tamura vs Khosaka 30 minute draw. That's it, that's my favourite 30 minutes of men's wrestling I ever seen in my 21 years watching wrestling. Does that keep me from thinking Takada vs Vader was great ? No. Go figure.

Nobody's saying you have to prefer one over the other. I doubt there are many people who take realism into consideration when deciding which they like better, and I'm sure nobody cares about it as much as me, but watching Vader fuck around not knowing what to do and having shit feed to him by a pretty lousy shoot style worker in general is not my idea of great shoot style wrestling.

 

Blame Nakano. Blame Nakano for not pushing Yamazaki either.

I blame whoever pushed the style they worked. Hardcore fans twenty years later are not going to care about anything so long as Naoki Sano is having great matches in UWF-i like he did in PWFG, but he didn't.

 

Tamura had some great matches in UWF-i too. And it was only logical he would blossom in RINGS because he peaked there and was put in situations to have great matches with great opponents. in UWF-i, not so much. UWF-i should have pushed Tamura as the heir to Takada's throne of course. I never said UWF-i's booking was good.

So what then was good about UWF-i?

 

Oh, so Fujiwara and Volk Han were realistic but had a sense of humour. Ok.

Tamura and Kohsaka never struck me by being overty funny though.

So? Fujiwara and Volk's penchant for throwing in jokes has nothing to do with their wrestling ability.

 

Well, I guess. Doesn't mean it makes sense.

It makes perfect sense.

 

You're losing me here by bringing up WWE again. Again, makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Because you're not consistent with the way you attack certain promotions/workers and defend others. All of the arguments you've used to defend Takada and UWF-i could be applied against your own criticisms of WWE. It drew money, the audience didn't a problem with the things you're criticisng, only you have those issues, you're judging it based on your own expectations, etc.

 

Hum, Dan, I never said anything about his ability, but you seem to have this obsession with realism which makes you think everytime I say Fujiwara was not that realistic is a knock on him. Hear me out : I don't care about *realism* in pro-wrestling. And since shoot-style to me is just another form of pro-wrestling, I don't care about *realism* in shoot-style either. I'm well aware of Fujiwara's abilities.

Just because you don't care about realism in shoot style doesn't mean that it's not a valid criticism for others. It's up to you whether you choose to accept that criticism of not, but we're not getting anywhere arguing about its validity. The majority of wrestling fans don't give a shit about Takada one way or the other, but a small minority have decided that they prefer realism over whatever you call Takada's style. Just like a small minority of fans would rather watch Ishikawa, Otsuka, Ikeda, Navarro, Black Terry, etc. than the flashy workers of today. You can argue till you're blue in the face that Ishikawa and Co. aren't that realistic when it comes down to it, but realism or legitimacy in this case really means their level of actual wrestling ability. How good their stuff looks because they have actual talent and not some nonsense about whether it looks like a shoot.

 

Come on Dan... Technical ability, kicking ability of that's your stuff (Tamura wasn't a kicker, but he still ruled), matwork, smootness, creating excitement with submissions, building dramatic escapes, selling KO, selling submissions etc...

So when people argue that Takada wasn't strong at these things, why does it get your back up? You've already said that you don't think he was one of the very best shoot-style workers, so what is it that you feel is being attacked? His career?

 

The fact that MMA may be not totally legitimate is like boxing. But it's called fixing, not working, and it's cheating the audience. Not exactly the same thing unless you wnat to argue that it was exactly what pro-wrestling used to be at first.

You can call it what you want, but when Pancrase guys started using their pro-wrestling instincts to make fights longer and more exciting, and the whole notion of carrying a fight was rumoured to exist, it's a hop, skip and a jump away from its roots.

 

I guess that's why Jerry Lawler is pimped as one of the best ever.

Ok, that one was snarky.

Well, it probably doesn't apply to US wrestling as much otherwise you'd have people pimping Backlund over Lawler.

 

I didn't intend to compare Takada and Fujiwara there. My issue was with the "realism" argument. And quite frankly, I'm amused that it may be an argument to pimp Fujiwara over Takada when both as pretty unrealistic to begin with.

Hey, I'm too old for these long posts.

You're telling me. I almost died making quote tags. BTW, I watched Elephant the other day. It was an interesting film. If you have time, I hope you can give me your take on it when I get around to adding it to the what are you watching thread.

[jdw]

The Fujiwara wave coincided with the 80's Other Japan set

Other Japan was 2006. That sounds about right. Was there a Fujiwara Of The Day on the old boards, or only on the new ones.

 

I would carve the New Japan set out of it as Fujiwara Luv as that was late 2009 / early 2010, and Fujiwara Is The Best was pretty common by that point. Perhaps it helped hammer the point home for some, but it would be like the AJPW set coming up hammering home the predictable opinion on Jumbo and Tenryu: the house has been built, and all we're talking about is what color to paint it.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

Random side question for Dan: If PRIDE was pro wrestling, how would you rate Fedor, Sakuraba, et in a GOAT pro wrestler discussion?

I don't think you can make a fair comparison based on work, but I strongly believe that Sakuraba was the biggest pro-wrestling star in Japan in the 00s. Fedor I wouldn't really feel comfortable labeling with the pro-wrestling stick. At a certain point, PRIDE took on a life of its own because of the different overseas camps that became involved, and I'm not about to argue that Sakuraba and the Gracies had pro-wrestling matches and that the Gracies then became pro-wrestlers or anything extreme like that. I simply believe that PRIDE was, or began as, a pro-wrestling company that ran shoots because they saw a market for them or because shoot style was dead in the water. The fact that PRIDE started after Kingdom failed is a bit of a giveaway as far as I'm concerned.

[Ditch]

RE: UWFi's financial management: I watched James "Guido" Maritado's shoot, and from what I can tell he was paid by UWFi to train for a couple years, and he only wrestled a couple shows as a jobber for 6 months and was gone. There were probably others like that.

[jdw]

They ran into financial problems because like most Japanese promotions they weren't very good at managing money, but they also had huge overheads in running their shows at Budokan. What really killed them off, though, was Choshu having full control over the book, destroying UWF-i's credibility while laughing all the way to the bank. Takada may have been protected in the New Japan feud, but his promotion wasn't.

They were dead before that: the finances crushed them. Working with New Japan and then WAR was just a holding patern. Think Borders Books store: it's a dead company walking right now.

 

Takada wasn't exactly protected. Jobbed in his first match. Did go over in the second, was tossed a Koshinaka Bone for a UWFi show, and then put over Hash. Mutoh-Mutoh-Hash were the matches that really matters and it was L-W-L.

 

Tenyru was protected in New Japan

 

W - Kosh set up bone

W - Choshu

L - Choshu

W - Hash

W - Hash

W - Chono

W - Hase

L - Fujinami

W - Fujinami

W - Inoki

L - Hash

 

The order of the Choshu W-L made sense: Choshu making Tenryu within New Japan.

 

The order of the Fujinami W-L made sense: Fujinami at that time needed more to get two matches out of it (one in NJ and the rematch win in WAR).

 

Inoki is probably in the Top 5 of matches where I would have loved to be a fly in the wall: how the convinced Inoki to do the job.

 

Hash won on the way out after the two prior losses.

 

Probably have been other people we could find who were better protected in that role, but Tenryu vs New Japan is one of the best.

 

Takada in New Japan is really quite bad in contrast. A lot of money left on the table, but one might argue that New Japan didn't need to chase it that year.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

Regarding Jumbo, I think it's important to remember that there were a generation of wrestling fans who weren't around in '97, '98 or '99 or hadn't discovered boards where that type of conversation took place, because I also remember interest in Jumbp exploding with the Legend tapes. The spread of footage is a big determiner in these things. Jewett may have made that Jumbo/Tenryu comp in '97, but a lot of us bought it in 2001 or so. If Satanico were to get popular from the Lucha 80s set or one of the European workers, it wouldn't really mean that nobody was talking about that worker beforehand it's simply a case that the footage finally got out there.

 

I think it's difficult to make an analogy with sports because the closest you can get is a case for underrated players. It's not like there are unwatched games out there with forgotten players. Perhaps the best analogy for sport is someone who follows football, for example, and suddenly discovers there are all these great players in the Spanish or Italian leagues, etc. A little far fetched in this day and age, but perhaps true for younger fans.

[ohtani's jacket]

RE: UWFi's financial management: I watched James "Guido" Maritado's shoot, and from what I can tell he was paid by UWFi to train for a couple years, and he only wrestled a couple shows as a jobber for 6 months and was gone. There were probably others like that.

All those guys who reach shachou level in Japanese promotions (company president level) are notorious for spending more than they have. I used to know a guy who'd always tell me "let's go out with Mr. Inoki, let's go drinking with Sayama-san," but I kept turning it down on the basis of losing an entire month's salary on one boozy evening. Anyway, you know where the money is coming from when they're living the same lifestyle they had in the bubble era.

 

As far as shoot style goes, aside from them mismanaging their finances, I've always suspected that you can't really keep a promotion going with one show a month even if that show drew a sell out at Budokan. Budokan is ridiculously expensive to rent for starters, and I just don't see them bringing in enough revenue on that once-a-month basis.

[El-P]

I'll deflate the whole thing because we're both too old and quotations kill me too.

 

They ran into financial problems because like most Japanese promotions they weren't very good at managing money, but they also had huge overheads in running their shows at Budokan. What really killed them off, though, was Choshu having full control over the book, destroying UWF-i's credibility while laughing all the way to the bank. Takada may have been protected in the New Japan feud, but his promotion wasn't.

 

I agree with all of this.

 

It's debatable whether he was a bigger star than Maeda, but for a couple of years UWF-i was successful based on the perception that it was more legit than traditional pro-wrestling. They were not able to maintain this image because of the difficulties they had in running shows and booking opponents for Takada to face, etc.

We both agree that UWF-i's booking sucked.

 

Well, if you know that Takada isn't as good as the best shoot style workers then what's the point in having this argument in the first place?

I dunno. My only point was about the so-called "realism", or lack thereof, of Takada, and shoot-style as a whole.

 

It's not as though Takada was great at pro-style either.

Well, I disagree, but we'll save it for another day when I'll had rewatched old Nobuhiko.

 

That's wonderful in theory, but it's an impossible position to hold. Whenever people watch a film, they bring their expectations with them.

It's often a mistake though. More and more I try to know nothing or the bare minimum about the movie I'm going to watch anyway. Sometimes I do have high expectations if the director is someone I really like a lot, but I try to keep them vague most of the time. The less expectations I have, the most open my mind is. Now, it doesn't mean I'll enjoy the movie, but I try not to have any specific expectations about what I watch.

 

If they didn't then producing a film would be easy. You'd just say, "the audience expect this, this and this and then they'll be happy."

Well, sometime they know exactly what the audience expect, and they give it to them, and it works. And most of the time, those movies are shitty because it's all about the lowest common denominator. The widest common expectations.

 

I can't have it both ways? If you're going to harp on about how Takada's wrestling style didn't hurt his drawing ability then you have to acknowledge that people ended up getting fed-up with UWF-i. I've never denied that UWF-i was popular.

I agree UWF-i run into tons of problem, but I don't think Takada's "lack of realism" was one of them. Choshu killed them dead, but their fate had been sealed even before the NJ deal I believe, and Anjoh's goofball attitude didn't help.

 

Tamura was the best hope the company had for continuing in the future and they butchered their handling of him from the word go. Tamura's desire to work a certain way was not a gimmick or business decision. It probably wasn't the best thing for his career, either. If you watch UWF-i (which would kind of help), you'll realise that Tamura and some of the other younger guys were struggling month in, month out with how they wanted to work vs. the UWF-i style. Your whole "shoot style is a gimmick" argument is a huge misreading of the situation. You cannot put in the countless hours of training that Tamura did in legitimate fighting styles in order to make his works look good and then say it's a gimmick as though any worker can pick it up.

You misundertood what I meant by "gimmick". I repeat, I never said Fujiwara's ability or Tamura's ability was a gimmick.

 

How would you know? You haven't even bothered to watch it in umpteen years. The reason we keep going over this is because you can't reconcile the idea that Fujiwara might be better than Takada with your memories of what you watched years ago.

I never even compared the merits of each workers Dan. I only said judging Takada on whether he was "realistic" or not wasn't a valid opinion to me. I said many times that I should watch some Takada back and see how it holds up with me. I never said I haven't watched any Fujiwara in years though.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by realism at this point. Fujiwara was a more realistic catch wrestler than Takada. That's pretty much indisputable.

Well, I don't understand how he was more realistic. Tamura was more realistic. Khosaka was more realistic. But Fuji ? I don't see it. Anyway...

 

I blame whoever pushed the style they worked. Hardcore fans twenty years later are not going to care about anything so long as Naoki Sano is having great matches in UWF-i like he did in PWFG, but he didn't.

I remember an excellent match he had with Tamura. But anyway, UWF-i booking sucked, I agree with that. They were never able nor willing to push the natives beyond Takada. Yamazaki, Sano and Tamura deserved better. The style in itself, I had no problem with it.

 

So what then was good about UWF-i?

Undercard matches with Tamura, Sano, Yamazaki, Kakihara, Sakuraba, Anjoh, those gaijins whose names I forgot, Takada's epic battle on top, goofy pro-style gaijins like Tenta and Severn showing up. Lot to love in UWF-i.

 

Just because you don't care about realism in shoot style doesn't mean that it's not a valid criticism for others.

I guess, but it's a criticism I don't get.

 

It's up to you whether you choose to accept that criticism of not, but we're not getting anywhere arguing about its validity.

Indeed, and that was my whole point, so I suggest we give it a rest.

 

So when people argue that Takada wasn't strong at these things, why does it get your back up?

I said it about a thousand times, I'm not even arguing about that because I haven't watched Takada in ages. The whole thing was the "realism" point which to me sounds kinda ridiculous.

 

Well, it probably doesn't apply to US wrestling as much otherwise you'd have people pimping Backlund over Lawler.

Yep. I wonder why matwork became important. I wonder if it has anything to do with Benoit or if it's just a reaction against most of the dominant highspots late 90's styles.

 

You're telling me. I almost died making quote tags. BTW, I watched Elephant the other day. It was an interesting film. If you have time, I hope you can give me your take on it when I get around to adding it to the what are you watching thread.

I'll check it out. I love Elephant. Very important movie to me.

[Loss]

Matwork did not "become" important at any point. It's as old as wrestling itself.

[Dylan Waco]

Dan I know you have watched a shit load of Europe is there anyone from over there who you think would be pertinent to this discussion?

[Bix]

Dylan is definitely right about when Jumbo as GOAT became a big online consensus. It was basically Jumbo dies -> people start to watch whatever Jumbo they may have had laying around -> Jumbo Legend set comes out -> People go nuts over it, especially the '70s matches with Race and Rusher

I think people were watching Jumbo prior to that, including the Rusher and Race matches. I know the Race and Terry NWA Title matches were ones Frank pimped as MOTD Candidates from about as soon as they hit Lynch's list off Classics. The Terry match wasn't complete on the Legend... I wonder if the Monster 10 came out before Legend.

Monster 10 came out while Jumbo was still alive. I dunno when I started lurking at TOA but at places like DVDVR and A1, it was his death and Legend that started the GOAT pimping.

 

-> People go after whatever they can find on AJPW Classics tapes, plus the previous Jumbo comm. set, the Tenryu feud comp (which was missing matches), etc -> People go even more nuts over the Terry Funk, Kerry Von Erich, etc. matches along with everything else, and with the impressive body of work over such a long time, he gets pimped as GOAT.

Some, not quite. Again, I think the Jumbo general drum roll started a bit earlier. The Jumbo-Tenryu was pratically a 1997 comp, no later than 1998 with Q-Mike then trading it all over the place. Terry Nuts and Kerry Nuts were really early: I know I pimped Kerry-Jumbo and Flair-Harley as one of the best TV shows for like forever, along with Choshu-Hash, Hase & Sasaki vs Mutoh & Chono and Liger-Pegasus. And Terry-Jumbo was a drum that Frank beat over and over and over again.

 

Jumbo Love was in full force before Backlund Love, and that one goes back a long time. Pimping Jumbo Classics matches goes back before Baba-Billy... and that review of Frank's was really old.

They were pimped but again, not as widespread. On a bigger level, the Legend set got attention and then drew people to the Monster 10 set.

 

To add to all of the other Lawler points you have to remember that even though Memphis was known for great brawls, the tape collecting veered towards the regular TV and the great angles/promos a lot of the time. Not as many people were watching the available house show footage and trying to dig up more. Jeff Lynch's US list, which had a decent amount of quality house show stuff, was barely looked at, and you had to dig all over the place for more.

This is true.

 

My question would be: was there enough stuff on Lynch's list (and other collectors at the time like Munari and Freelander) to determine that Jerry was Really Really Really Great?

 

One of the complaints about Destroyer Luv is that he got pimped off a small number of available matches. But there is the flip side of that: the small number of matches hasn't gotten in the way of people breaking down Jumbo-Baba or Jumbo-Mil and arguing that Destroyer was a high end worker for the style of the era (i.e. comp him with other workers who also have limited stuff as well, and with the overall available work from the era).

 

I don't think it got in the way of Phil having that discussion with Frank. It was over one of the classic matches, and I think he offered up other ones as well.

 

The mass let people make the "Body Of Work" argument.

 

Off the top of my head, as far as upper level Lawler, Lynch's list has the two really great Mantell matches from '82 (Mantell's title win and the barbed wire match), the '83 Dundee LLT, the Terry Funk matches, and the Bigelow Texas Death Match (in the middle of a TV tape as opposed to an "arena" tape), as well as a decent amount of the PM Film sourced stuff, the best of which were the cage match with Savage, $1,000 per minute match with Bundy, the first tag w/ Savage vs Rude & Bundy, and one of the Bockwinkel matches, which were available in various edits on comm tapes.

 

On the other hand, the '85 Dundee LLT had been around and reviewed in the DVDVR but I didn't see it floating around until much later. The Idol cage match was around for a while, as was the AWA title win over Hennig in some circles. Other stuff like the LLT w/ Savage, the Savage/Rude/Bundy rematch, and the tags w/ Bigelow vs Idol & Rich didn't show up until more recently. The Savage LLT and tag rematch had been around, just not as easily. Other stuff has surfaced since then that was traded around back in the day but hadn't shown up in a while like the stuff with Rich on the Schneider comp, the wild tag w/ Ware vs Eaton and Sabu The Wildman. The other Hennig matches and the Memphis Kerry match weren't around AFAIK until Kurt got them from Danny Wolfe.\

[El-P]

Matwork did not "become" important at any point. It's as old as wrestling itself.

Of course. I was only replying to this :

 

And to tie this back into my original involvement in this thread -- matwork wasn't a huge deal when looking at popular 90s trends. You won't find a lot of great matwork in the more popular styles. Hell, that's probably why Takada had a rep that he could work the mat well at all. Whereas, nowdays for some hardcore fans matwork is king.

[Dylan Waco]

I actually think matwork HAS become more important to a certain segment of fans. I know I appreciate it now more than I did in the past. I can not pinpoint when or how it happened but I started to become a lot more interested in interesting grappling and matwork in the last few years than I ever had before.

[Dylan Waco]

Also on the KAFZ thing, I didn't mean to imply that the a1w folks were the primary Jumbo pimps. In fact most of the arguments there were originally centered around who was better between Misawa and Kawada. I think ultimately tOA was really the home of the Jumbo Boom, with a1w being sort of "neutral" board where the idea seemed to spread pretty quickly.

[Dylan Waco]

Not to spam my own thread but John touched on this a page back or so when he mentioned guys like Steamer or Vader who are considered all timers but not GOAT candidates. What I find interesting about that is I wouldn't think it was odd to see either of those guys in someones top ten, or maybe even in someones top five. And yet thinking of them as THE BEST ever does feel like a big stretch. Kind of an odd thing to think about and I wonder how many guys are on that "next level" down.

[KrisZ]

I've been lurking in this thread and it is a tremendous thread but a name that hasn't been mentioned at least I don't think it has been here but is a name that if you talk to guys that was around from the 50's - 70's is Ray "The Crippler" Stevens.

 

Stevens is a case where we have basically ZERO footage of him in his prime and from all the stories you hear he was just this fantastic worker who could do it all. Flair, Heenan, Bock, and lots of others have called him the greatest but us as fans of the last 30 years really have nothing but his later career to reflect on.

[ohtani's jacket]

Dan I know you have watched a shit load of Europe is there anyone from over there who you think would be pertinent to this discussion?

To be honest, I don't really think so. We're limited by how much footage there was in the ITV faults and people's private collections. I think there are a ton of great workers waiting to be discovered -- Tibor Szakacs, Peter Szacaks, Alan Sarjeant, Mike Marino and many others -- but you're looking at less than a dozen matches per guy, which just isn't enough. It really is a feast of undiscovered talent, though. I can't think of any other style where people could discover 25-30 great workers they've never heard of in one foul swoop, but to answer your question, I think people are more likely to say "this guy is like the European Johnny Valentine" or "this guy is the European Ric Flair" than argue for anybody as the GOAT. I guess you could argue that there wasn't that much more footage available of 70s Destroyer or Robinson or Race when that era was big amongst internet fans, but in that case it was comparing what came before to the 90s stuff that everyone loved. In the case of Europe, it's an idiocentric style and therefore it's going to be difficult for people to judge it alongside the existing staples of American and Japanese pro-wrestling. I suppose someone might blow-up, but people are either going to love the style or hate it and I don't think that's the type of environment that GOAT candidates are born from.

 

Probably of interest to me isn't who is the greatest of all-time overall, but who the greatest of all-time is within each given style. I think that argument would be interesting when it comes to Europe and I can also see the eventual Joshi set sparking quite a few arguments in favour of 80s workers.

[Dylan Waco]

I've been lurking in this thread and it is a tremendous thread but a name that hasn't been mentioned at least I don't think it has been here but is a name that if you talk to guys that was around from the 50's - 70's is Ray "The Crippler" Stevens.

 

Stevens is a case where we have basically ZERO footage of him in his prime and from all the stories you hear he was just this fantastic worker who could do it all. Flair, Heenan, Bock, and lots of others have called him the greatest but us as fans of the last 30 years really have nothing but his later career to reflect on.

I almost mentioned Stevens because he is catch all pick for a lot of those old timers. I know Heenan in particular always beat the drum for him. The big problem with Stevens is not just footage though - it's that of the matches that are out there we don't even really have anything that we can point to that shows flashes of his greatness. With a guy like Johnny Valentine who was widely touted in certain net circles a decade a go there wasn't much, but there was a taste for what made him so awesome in so many peoples eyes. Stevens looks *good* in some of the AWA stuff from his post-prime but there aren't really the flashes of greatness you would expect from a GOAT. Then again much of that is WAY past his physical prime.

[El-P]

Is there anyone else out there with the same rep that Stevens has, but of whom there isn't much footage either ?

[El-P]

I actually think matwork HAS become more important to a certain segment of fans. I know I appreciate it now more than I did in the past. I can not pinpoint when or how it happened but I started to become a lot more interested in interesting grappling and matwork in the last few years than I ever had before.

Not to go off in a tangeant, but did you enjoy Malenko in ECW ?

[Dylan Waco]

I was indifferent to Malenko in ECW really although I don't think he was a terribly interesting or dynamic mat worker there or in WCW for the most part.

[El-P]

I was indifferent to Malenko in ECW really although I don't think he was a terribly interesting or dynamic mat worker there or in WCW for the most part.

I agree.