To what extent does a guy need great matches to be considered an all-time great?

[JerryvonKramer]

Why can't, for example, DiBiase's "Abbey Road" be the Basket ball skit?

Because the marquee says "wrestling".

 

So back in 2003, I was actually kinda paying attention to the current music scene for the first time in my life. At that point, t.A.T.u. was getting a bunch of airplay, and their whole schoolgirl lesbian shtick was getting a big media push. At some point in the middle of all that, Bone Crusher showed up, and he had this really goofy, bombastic live presence that I don't think I can properly articulate. But I found it amusing. Thing is, while his actual vocal delivery was as charmingly silly as his stage presence, he kinda struck me as having lousy flow, and really, his whole appeal was in his gimmicky presentation. Similarly, both of the t.A.T.u. girls were awful vocalists with a dreary, unremarkable band, and their appeal lay solely with their gimmick. And this argument briefly emerged in my head over which musical act whose music I don't actually care about was more interesting to watch. I pretty easily chose Bone Crusher, since his music relied on gimmicks, but did so somewhat effectively, and also because I have the internet and, by extension, access to actual lesbian porn.

 

But it's 2011. t.A.T.u. and Bone Crusher haven't had hits since 2003, and I'm inclined to think you can tie at least some of that to them being musicians who didn't have much to offer in terms of music. And that's not to say "bad" musicians never hit it big beyond one-hit wonder status, but their actual music usually offers something that appeals to their fans, even if it doesn't always appeal to someone like me. Can DiBiase's "Abbey Road" be the basketball skit? Can t.A.T.u.'s "Abbey Road" be them making out on-stage? I like DiBiase a lot. I'd really like to think he had more to offer as a wrestler than t.A.T.u. had to offer as musicians.

 

I don't see why that has to be the analogy to music.

 

Why can't the analogy be to someone like David Bowie? Would you say that the Ziggy Stardust persona wasn't a key part of what he was doing in 1972/3?

 

Hasn't image always been a huge part of what made Bowie great? I mean as well as the music?

 

In any case, I don't think the two things are as divisible as you are making out here.

 

Wrestling matches don't exist in a vacuum, they often have a context within a storyline and the storyline WITHIN them is often driven by the clash of different personalities in the ring.

 

Tomk actually made a great post up there - Flair in the ring behaved as he did outside of it, so did Rude, so did Dusty, etc. Point is: the persona is indivisible from the working style and you can't consider the match exclusively beyond that.

 

Example:

 

Bill Watts and Stagger Lee vs. The Midnight Express w/ Jim Cornette from the Mid-South Set.

 

That is a match in which the most complex move we see is a right-handed punch. But it's an awesome match.

 

Take the characters away and it's nothing.

 

I think the view of both wrestling and music you give in this post is reductive.

 

I stand by the claim that wrestling is AS MUCH about the characters and gimmicks and personalities as it is about "wrestling".

 

The name on the marquee? Are you kidding me? "Wrestling" is not just what happens in the ring it's the whole bizarre, weird, slightly-cartoon world we've all known and loved since whenever we started watching.

 

And that goes as much for Puro as it does for American wrestling. The conventions might be different, but you still can't take the characters out of it.

[Loss]

Top 100 Wrestling Personalities of the Modern Era perhaps? Meaning 1984-present? Interesting idea if anyone else supports it.

 

Wouldn't that just be Rock followed by Hogan?

 

It's not a money drawing list. It's more of a guys pushed as stars list. I'd think even people like Gene Okerlund and Jim Ross who have been staples forever would do well. So would Goldberg, Road Warriors, Ultimate Warrior, Nikita Koloff, Roddy Piper, etc. I understand that there may not be much interest, as it would be completely subjective with no real objective criteria set except to embellish those rose-colored memories we have kind of declared have no value. But Internet wrestling culture has always been more focused on someone being right and someone being wrong than anything, so I'm not sure everyone would even understand the point.

[JerryvonKramer]

Isn't it more judging a guy on the "non-wrestling" part of the performance:

 

The promo skills

General acting ability

Overness of the persona

Entertainment value

 

etc.

 

I think you can reasonably objectively say that, say, Jim Cornette was a better promo than John Nord.

[Loss]

I honestly think categorizing like that goes against what your initial point was. I don't think you can ever completely ignore what goes on in the ring, but it would be part of the overall package instead of the entirety.

[JerryvonKramer]

True actually. That does contradict everything I've been saying.

 

Can't it just be called "Total Package GOAT"?

 

Would be interesting to see if Lex Luger ranked at all. Ha ha.

[S.L.L.]

I don't see why that has to be the analogy to music.

It doesn't have to be, it's just the one I came up with. I could've drawn the comparison to Marilyn Manson. That's not very flattering, either, but the comparison I'm forced to draw when talking about a wrestler not significant for his wrestling is a musician not significant for their music, and that's inevitably going to be an unflattering comparison.

 

Why can't the analogy be to someone like David Bowie? Would you say that the Ziggy Stardust persona wasn't a key part of what he was doing in 1972/3?

Because David Bowie wasn't just the Ziggy Stardust persona. No one is going to say that Bowie's Abbey Road is the Ziggy Stardust character. They're going to say it's the Ziggy Stardust album. Or Hunky Dory. Or Low, or Heroes, or Scary Monsters. It's going to be music. David Bowie is a musician, and when they talk about his great works, they're going to be talking about music.

 

Hasn't image always been a huge part of what made Bowie great? I mean as well as the music?

Of course, as well as the music. Just like all the shtick DiBiase did outside of the ring was a huge part of what made him great as well as the wrestling. But take away all of Bowie's great music, and we're basically talking about the Marilyn Manson of the 70's.

 

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying that I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue anymore. I mean, I thought I knew, but it's starting to get very muddled, especially right around here, so if I misinterpret something, my bad. I'm trying to do the best I can.

 

In any case, I don't think the two things are as divisible as you are making out here.

This thread is called "To what extent does a guy need great matches to be considered an all-time great?". If actual wrestling matches are not clearly divisible from everything else that wrestlers do, how were you even able to conceive of the idea for this thread, nevermind articulate the idea as cleanly as you did in the thread title?

 

Wrestling matches don't exist in a vacuum, they often have a context within a storyline and the storyline WITHIN them is often driven by the clash of different personalities in the ring.

 

Tomk actually made a great post up there - Flair in the ring behaved as he did outside of it, so did Rude, so did Dusty, etc. Point is: the persona is indivisible from the working style and you can't consider the match exclusively beyond that.

TomK did make a great post, but either he was missing your point, or you missed his.

 

I'm not sure what is meant here.

Yeah, I think he's having the same problem with the argument as I am. He was responding to this....

 

That is kind of my point. But my question would be: why is that such a bad thing?

 

Would Rick Rude be as fondly remembered if he'd just been plain old Rick Rude? When they think of Rude, do people think of things like this first, or do they think of the Iron Match match vs. Steamboat?

 

I think it's a mistake to have GOAT-type arguments and restrict the criteria to in-the-ring alone. I mean for a start, does in-the-ring take crowd heat into account? Because for crowd heat during a match Hogan and Warrior smoke Dean Malenko, as do Rude and DiBiase.

 

Why should the questions be restricted to: "did they have great matches?" and "did they draw?" For me, this is one of the classic problems with the so-called "smart" approach.

 

I honestly believe that Ric Flair wouldn't be as highly rated as he is were it not for his persona, incredible mic-work and ability to get a reaction from the crowd. If he was just plain old Richard Flare during all those great matches, surely we'd think of him much more like a Backlund or a Dory Funk Jr.

 

Who disagrees? Who agrees?

....which isn't a super-clear argument. Again, not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here, but as far as I can tell, especially when put in the larger context of the thread, you seem to be talking about the importance of gimmicks and characters independent of actual wrestling matches. TomK's response was this:

 

I'm not sure what is meant here.

The character Ric Rude portrayed in the ring was the same one he played on the mic.

Ric Flair behaved in the ring the way you would expect the Ric Flair character to act in a ring.

Dusty behaved in the ring the way you would expect the Dusty charact4er to act in the ring.

Same is kind of true of Bugsy Mcgraw, Jimmy Valiant, Mr Wrestling II, and Bob Backlund.

 

Irwin R Shyster didn't really come accross as a tax auditor in ring.

Personally, I think he's underselling IRS a little. Remember how he would knock a dude down with something and then stop to adjust his tie? That felt like something an evil wrestling tax auditor would do. I always bought into him on that level. But the point is, TomK responded to your point about (I think) the importance of gimmicks and characters independent of actual wrestling matches, by pointing out the importance of gimmicks and characters within wrestling matches.

 

Example:

 

Bill Watts and Stagger Lee vs. The Midnight Express w/ Jim Cornette from the Mid-South Set.

 

That is a match in which the most complex move we see is a right-handed punch. But it's an awesome match.

 

Take the characters away and it's nothing.

Agreed on all points. Indeed, it was an awesome match. And when people talk about late period Watts as a wrestler, I'd like to think they'd point to something like this. They can, and should, also point to him getting buried under the Soviet flag...but if you want to talk about late-period Watts the wrestler instead of just late-period Watts the on-screen authority figure, shouldn't we point to a wrestling match?

 

I think the view of both wrestling and music you give in this post is reductive.

I won't dispute this, but it hardly seems remarkable. Granted, I'm using two different meanings of the word wrestling - the actual act of having a wrestling match, and the "pro wrestling" genre of entertainment as a whole - but I think for the most part I've at least tried to clarify a further reduction, separating genre elements into "wrestling matches" and "everything else wrestlers do as part of their performances". That's about it. As reductions go, it's not a huge one. In fact, it's one most people make, including yourself, as evidenced by starting a thread entitled "To what extent does a guy need great matches to be considered an all-time great?"

 

I stand by the claim that wrestling is AS MUCH about the characters and gimmicks and personalities as it is about "wrestling".

And no one - myself included - is disputing that. What's under dispute is the question "To what extent does a guy need great matches to be considered an all-time great?" What's under dispute is "Why can't DiBiase's Abbey Road be the basketball skit?". What's under dispute is the merits of "wrestling matches" vs. "everything else wrestlers do as part of their performances" when judging the overall greatness of a wrestler. My response was that tATu and Bone Crusher were musicians who excelled in the "everything else musicians do as part of their performances" aspect of what they did, but couldn't pull their weight (admittedly hard with a guy the size of Bone Crusher) in the "making and performing music" part, and that that was a sad commentary on DiBiase if he was going to be lumped in with the likes of them. He deserves to be lumped with Bowie, a guy who actually delivered on both fronts.

 

The name on the marquee? Are you kidding me? "Wrestling" is not just what happens in the ring it's the whole bizarre, weird, slightly-cartoon world we've all known and loved since whenever we started watching.

I'm not kidding you. I don't dispute that there's more to wrestling than wrestling matches. But the marquee does, in fact, say "wrestling" (well, it often says "WWE", but they can't fool me, I know what that second "W" stands for). Wrestling matches aren't all there is to the wrestling genre, but it is very much at the center of the whole thing. That's why they call it "wrestling", because it's about wrestling. It's the critical distinguishing feature of the entire genre. It's not the only part of it, but again, who would call David Bowie a great musician if he didn't put out great music?

 

And that goes as much for Puro as it does for American wrestling. The conventions might be different, but you still can't take the characters out of it.

I wish it went for puro as much as it did for American wrestling. God, those dudes are bland as hell these days.

[JerryvonKramer]

I know I owe a couple of people proper replies here ... and I hate to go back to this, but I just watched the 3 DiBiase vs. Magnum TA matches from the Mid-South set and how can anyone say that Ted didn't have great matches?

[jdw]

I remember being bored by those three matches.

 

On the other hand, they did all finish quite well in the voting (8-18-23), so my opinion on them is an outlier.

 

John

[Loss]

I didn't care for them either. I thought the blood was gratuitous and didn't feel needed and the matches were just average. I wasn't bored by them, but I think they were overhyped.

 

My favorite DiBiase matches on the set were his matches against Terry Taylor and Brad Armstrong. Knowing what you like John, I suspect you'd like both matches quite a bit.

[Dooley]

All this talk on DiBiase makes me want to throw out my uneducated opinion. I haven't seen any of his mid-south stuff and thought he was always more gimmick than goods in the WWF. I always thought he was solid in the ring, but unspectacular. But without the Million Dollar Man persona, the fistful of cash and that wonderful evil laugh, I wouldn't have cared about him one bit. It was a real surprise to me to see Meltzer and others put the "one of the greats" label on him, because other than one really good match with Savage in '88 I can't think of any instance where I would say "check out this DiBiase match".

[JerryvonKramer]

Dooly, have you seen his stuff with Bret Hart (April 27, 1991 or the little mini-match from Survivor Series '90) or even the one with Shawn Michaels (April 24, 1990)?

 

Or the Money Inc cage match vs. The Steiners?

 

Or the performance in the Royal Rumble 1990?

 

I still feel you guys are selling DiBiase short. Hell, I'm with Meltzer! Ha ha.

[Matt D]

Irwin R Shyster didn't really come accross as a tax auditor in ring.

I feel like I want to argue this but I don't want to go out of my way to watch a lot of Rotunda right now and contort it all into this argument. I shall give you a raincheck.

[JerryvonKramer]

For what it's worth, I think IRS is underrated in general.

 

I thought it was an inspired piece of casting to put Rotunda in that gimmick. Rotunda has a slightly nerdy/ whiny/ tiresome quality to his voice so he was just perfect. Look at this, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcsNwwK9vfg

 

His promos coming down to the ring were good, especially at a time when every other guy on the roster had theme music. IRS never had theme music.

 

And in the ring, while he possibly wasn't like a taxman the whole time, the shirt and tie and use of the briefcase were enough to keep us minded of his character. I thought he was worth at least an IC title run in 1994/5.

 

I really believe he made that character work. I also think that Money Inc. are one of the coolest ever looking heel teams:

 

 

 

Schyster always looked like such a creep. He was obviously DiBiase's corrupt stooge and that dynamic worked very well. I think they are one of the more interestingly packaged tag teams of the era.

 

Ignore me though, because if it isn't obvious already, I'm basically still a mark.

[Dooley]

Dooly, have you seen his stuff with Bret Hart (April 27, 1991 or the little mini-match from Survivor Series '90) or even the one with Shawn Michaels (April 24, 1990)?

 

Or the Money Inc cage match vs. The Steiners?

 

Or the performance in the Royal Rumble 1990?

 

I still feel you guys are selling DiBiase short. Hell, I'm with Meltzer! Ha ha.

I went back and watched the Hart match and the cage match again before replying. I thought the Hart match was a fun match until the DCOR finish but didn't find it significantly better than Bret-IRS or Bret-Skinner or other comparable Bret matches from the time. The bit with Piper, Sherri and the broom was funny.

 

The cage match vs the Steiners was also fun but it's hard to single out DiBiase's performance there. If I had to pick an MVP of the match, it would be Scott Steiner.

 

I didn't go back and watch the Rumble again but I remember DiBiase having a good performance. But was it significantly better than Martel's iron man run the next year? I like battle royals but it's a hard match to determine individual worth in. I'm deliberately leaving Flair's Rumble performance out of the conversation because that's an unfair standard to compare anyone against.

 

I did have fun watching those matches though. Perhaps I will upgrade my opinion on DiBiase's WWF in-ring work from "solid, but unspectacular" to "good, but not great"

[Bob Morris]

On the Rumble match, I've always looked at it more as how good the entire Rumble match was than what a wrestler's run was all about. The 1990 Rumble is one of my favorite Rumbles because they built or set up several WM matches in it.

 

But if one talks about individual runs, the runs by Martel, Ric Flair and Bob Backlund are better than DiBiase's and that's not because of how long they lasted, but because I remember those three in more spots in which their elimination was teased than with DiBiase.

[MJH]

Flair and Michaels have done much better jobs at "carrying" Rumble matches. If you take Shawn out of the 1995 one, it's half the length of the others but would seem to drag twice as long.

 

I do, however, really like the DiBiase/Michaels match from SanAntonio. I found it about twelve years ago on a "WWF's Hottest Matches" (I think?) CHV. It's a strong house show match, but it's not the basis, by any stretch of the imagination, for any claims on DiBiase as an "all-time great" worker. No one makes the claim for Hennig anymore (if they ever, really) but his stuff with Bret, especially the KOTR match, was significantly better.

 

I mean, if someone says "Ted was great", then I'm not going to labour the point with them. He was clearly a real strong talent, and I enjoy watching him work almost every single time he's on my TV whether it's as a skit, an interview, an angle, or a match. All-Time Great? No. But he deserves a strong rep.

[JerryvonKramer]

MJH - you are touching on the point which led to me creating the thread in the first place there.

 

Everything DiBiase did was really smooth and natural. From the way he did a suplex to little things to how he'd take a basic punch to the stomach or how he'd roll out of the ring. If someone was going to write a wrestling "text book" with demonstrations of exactly how to do certain moves, Ted could easily feature quite a lot in that book.

 

Move for move, in terms of execution alone, he's probably better than, for example, Jerry Lawler. But he doesn't have the same amount of great matches that Lawler had.

 

My question is: since when did "the match" become the dominant unit of analysis?

 

DiBiase is only one example. There are quite a few others.

 

I suppose what I'm saying is, he'd make a pretty good top trump card if you going to break down all the parts of the performance and give a rating out of 10 or 20. If someone rates highly in every category, but for whatever reason, doesn't have a large portfolio of great matches to his name, why should he be taken out of the running?

 

We talked about Arn before. If DiBiase had been in NWA/WCW from 87-93 instead of WWF, do you think he would have had more or fewer great matches than Arn did in that period? You've surely got to assess what a guy has to work with.

 

Seems to me that a system that privileges matches above other criteria is going to be skewed in certain ways and produce results heavily inclined towards certain promotions at certain times and against others - namely, the WWF in the mid-late 80s. This is why I've been arguing for a more holistic system. I'm not saying Ted would rank any higher with people there, but at least he'd have a fairer crack of the whip. I sometimes get the impression that if we had it out and went for a big Top 100 vote that you'd see someone like 2 Cold Scorpio rank about the DiBiases, Hennigs and the Rudes just because he had a good match with Benoit once.

 

There's something that doesn't sit right with me about the assessment criteria.

[Dylan Waco]

Too Cold Scorpio had more than a good match with Benoit once.

[S.L.L.]

I know I owe a couple of people proper replies here ...

I don't necessarily feel I'm "owed" anything, but...

 

My question is: since when did "the match" become the dominant unit of analysis?

 

.....

 

I suppose what I'm saying is, he'd make a pretty good top trump card if you going to break down all the parts of the performance and give a rating out of 10 or 20. If someone rates highly in every category, but for whatever reason, doesn't have a large portfolio of great matches to his name, why should he be taken out of the running?

 

....

 

Seems to me that a system that privileges matches above other criteria is going to be skewed in certain ways and produce results heavily inclined towards certain promotions at certain times and against others - namely, the WWF in the mid-late 80s. This is why I've been arguing for a more holistic system. I'm not saying Ted would rank any higher with people there, but at least he'd have a fairer crack of the whip. I sometimes get the impression that if we had it out and went for a big Top 100 vote that you'd see someone like 2 Cold Scorpio rank about the DiBiases, Hennigs and the Rudes just because he had a good match with Benoit once.

 

There's something that doesn't sit right with me about the assessment criteria.

Yeah, as Dylan said, Scorpio has way more on his resume than "one good match with Benoit". Also, Rude is a guy with a pretty large portfolio of good/great matches. He definitely doesn't belong in that group. I don't think DiBiase does, either, but that's obviously a matter of some debate.

 

But anyway, if you're going to reintroduce this as the core of your argument, you need to address some things I said in my last reply:

 

I stand by the claim that wrestling is AS MUCH about the characters and gimmicks and personalities as it is about "wrestling".

And no one - myself included - is disputing that. What's under dispute is the question "To what extent does a guy need great matches to be considered an all-time great?" What's under dispute is "Why can't DiBiase's Abbey Road be the basketball skit?". What's under dispute is the merits of "wrestling matches" vs. "everything else wrestlers do as part of their performances" when judging the overall greatness of a wrestler. My response was that tATu and Bone Crusher were musicians who excelled in the "everything else musicians do as part of their performances" aspect of what they did, but couldn't pull their weight (admittedly hard with a guy the size of Bone Crusher) in the "making and performing music" part, and that that was a sad commentary on DiBiase if he was going to be lumped in with the likes of them. He deserves to be lumped with Bowie, a guy who actually delivered on both fronts.

 

The name on the marquee? Are you kidding me? "Wrestling" is not just what happens in the ring it's the whole bizarre, weird, slightly-cartoon world we've all known and loved since whenever we started watching.

I'm not kidding you. I don't dispute that there's more to wrestling than wrestling matches. But the marquee does, in fact, say "wrestling" (well, it often says "WWE", but they can't fool me, I know what that second "W" stands for). Wrestling matches aren't all there is to the wrestling genre, but it is very much at the center of the whole thing. That's why they call it "wrestling", because it's about wrestling. It's the critical distinguishing feature of the entire genre. It's not the only part of it, but again, who would call David Bowie a great musician if he didn't put out great music?

To be fair, Tatu and Bone Crusher represent extreme cases. They're more Jimmy Valiants than Curt Hennigs. Actually, Jimmy Valiant was supposedly a good brawler in his prime and had some real longevity as a name star...maybe they're more like The Boogeyman. But still, I was trying to illustrate that when you take away a performer's ability in their area of core competence - music for a musician, wrestling for a wrestler - it becomes pretty hard to call them great even if the stuff they do around that area of core competence is done well. I mean, I like the basketball skit as much as the next guy, but it's wrestling. The whole reason they did it was to make people want to see DiBiase get his ass kicked in wrestling matches, because that's what the whole genre is about. But once you get there, you're expected to actually deliver the goods, and if you don't, it hurts you a lot, probably more than most recognize. I know you're not into the contemporary stuff so much, but those who are can probably appreciate the case of Wade Barrett, a great interview and a compelling heel outside the ring, but can't translate any of that into compelling performances inside the ring, and he comes off really badly because of that.

[Johnny Sorrow]

This current resurgence of tatu in the conversations among us is really starting to worry me, man.

[MJH]

Everything DiBiase did was really smooth and natural. From the way he did a suplex to little things to how he'd take a basic punch to the stomach or how he'd roll out of the ring. If someone was going to write a wrestling "text book" with demonstrations of exactly how to do certain moves, Ted could easily feature quite a lot in that book.

 

Move for move, in terms of execution alone, he's probably better than, for example, Jerry Lawler. But he doesn't have the same amount of great matches that Lawler had.

I agree completely. You could also plug just about anyone into a match with him and it would be "good". But I suppose the point we can come back to (and God knows it's not a new one) but technique is only half of it. Heck, not even that. I mean, to go back to music, Hendrix sure as shit wasn't the best guitar player 'technically'. In fact, he was downright sloppy and unorthodox as hell. Clapton was much "cleaner", not to mention the post-EVH "shredders" who can play Flight of the Bumblebee note perfect at 250bpm [i suppose they'd be the musical Davey Richards?].

 

My question is: since when did "the match" become the dominant unit of analysis?

Because that's the product, the output, the "song", the artist's work, etc...

 

I'll agree with you to a point, though, concerning your argument about vs. Arn. 1995 Kawada is not going to be having great matches with scrubs. He'll look like the great fucking wrestler he is but the "output" won't be great. The same way the best singer of all time singing shit will still be a crap song and Dylan singing Dylan is great.

 

And I don't think the matches should be the sole, singular criteria. But, at the same time, it really isn't. No one says Kawada was great just because he had that match (be it whichever obvious choice you want).

 

I don't actually think people are disputing that DiBiase was "great" (or at least, nothing less than "very good"). But if you take the matches with Bret, with Shawn, they're nice safe matches. It's not as if they didn't have the time to have a great match. Between, I don't know, the schedule, the setting, the run-in finishes, whatever it was, they just set out to have a "nice" "good" match, did that, and were fine with it.

 

I think DiBiase's argument against the All Japan guys might actually reveal more about him. "They work harder than they have to". I mean, I know what he's saying is what ultimately happened and you reach a point where the fans are disensitised (sp?) and the majority of stuff that could be finishes aren't over at all, etc... but it's still a strange choice of words to use. I think he was just happy having as good a match as was required without really pushing himself and going all out to have a "classic". Could he? No one's going to say he wasn't a very talented worker. But the reality is we just don't know. And we can't call him an "all-time great" as a result. Which is hardly a massive critique.

[S.L.L.]

This current resurgence of tatu in the conversations among us is really starting to worry me, man.

I think I've said more about them in the last week than I did the whole time they were actually on the charts. It's....disconcerting.

[JerryvonKramer]

Ok, let me try to have this out properly.

 

I'm not kidding you. I don't dispute that there's more to wrestling than wrestling matches. But the marquee does, in fact, say "wrestling" (well, it often says "WWE", but they can't fool me, I know what that second "W" stands for). Wrestling matches aren't all there is to the wrestling genre, but it is very much at the center of the whole thing. That's why they call it "wrestling", because it's about wrestling. It's the critical distinguishing feature of the entire genre. It's not the only part of it, but again, who would call David Bowie a great musician if he didn't put out great music?

There's something about the matches/ albums analogy that doesn't quite work for me. And that's because I am not convinced that wrestling and music can be compared in this way.

 

Let's break this down a little bit: wrestling is a very strange thing. I mean it's the illusion of a real sports contest between people with larger-than-life personalities who, as part of their performance, do things to make the crowd love or hate them and say things to make their opponent want to beat them.

 

That bit I've put in italics there, in my view, is not detachable. It's a fundamental part of what wrestling is. The other aspects of what musicians do - album cover art, image and so on, are not fundamental. You could take Ziggy Stardust without the front cover and without any knowledge of Bowie and it's still a great album. The music is the thing, everything else is an attachment.

 

In wrestling, you can't do that. For me, Savage vs. Steamboat without the storyline -- without the context of Savage having attacked him with the bell, etc., without the knowledge that Savage is a borderline psychopath who'd probably kill a man who looked at his wife the wrong way and Steamboat is a nice, down-to-earth clean-living family man -- is meaningless.

 

What's the essence of wrestling? Is it the 15 near falls in Savage/Steamboat '87 or is it seeing that WITHIN the context of the above?

 

In other words, I'm saying that when you say "the name on the marquee" is wrestling, the word "wrestling" once deconstructed MEANS the heel/face dynamic, the characterization, the storylines and angles, and so on and then and only then the match. Bizarrely, the French philosopher Roland Barthes is pretty good on this. I'd recommend all wrestling fans to pick up Mythologies and read how he structurally picks apart what's going on in a wrestling match he went to in 60s France.

 

Let's get back down to Earth: for me the ESSENCE of wrestling is not the ***** workrate classic, it's the crowd going absolutely bananas when Virgil beat The Million Dollar Man at Summerslam '91. Or when some dork in the crowd was so incensed by The Million Dollar Man that he actually tried to jump on the cage and punch him.

 

This is why I'm still ranking Watts/Stagger Lee vs. The Midnights very high on the Watts set. There's nothing but punches in that match, two of the workers involved are basically immobile, but the crowd is just absolutely nuts. The post-match shenanigans with Cornette in the diaper are as much "wrestling" to me as the match itself.

 

For me, once you start taking that stuff out. Once you abstract it to who did the least botches and who's had the most 45-minute chain-wrestling epics, then you lose something of what wrestling is all about. I think you lose the very thing that got us all into it in the first place. You kind of take the joy out of it.

 

Ergo, if the "essence" of wrestling is not the matches but something else, then - back to the title of the thread - to what extent do you need great matches to be considered an all-time great?

 

Let me ask you something: If you had a choice between Benoit in his prime and Bobby Heenan for your promotion, and you could only have one, who would you take?

 

I'd probably take one Bobby Heenan for ten Chris Benoits.

 

I'd take a lot of guys over Benoit: Piper, Jake Roberts, DiBiase, Rude, Hennig, could probably list about 20 more. Hell I'd take Shane McMahon over Benoit. I'm being serious.

 

But then you have the GOAT discussion and Benoit, by virtue of his matches, is going to rank up there somewhere - and some of the others, by virtue of having fewer great matches, don't even rank. To me, that's a problem with the criteria and something of an absurdity.

 

PS. I know 2 Cold Scorpio has more good matches than that one, I was just being facetious.

[Loss]

Honky Tonk Man is an example that can be used. Knew what to do to get heat and did it very well. Had a nice little run as a draw. Didn't have that many good matches. So no one talks about him as an all-time great.

 

I think there's a place to talk about what have/could have/should have stuff, but not in the context of an all-time great discussion. Ranking the all-time greats isn't about righting wrongs. It's not about factoring in what everyone had to work with. It's about looking at what they actually did, regardless of what they had to work with.

 

I do see your point to a degree. But if you rank guys on talent instead of output, DiBiase is hardly the only guy whose status changed. Then, you can start arguing guys like Regal over Flair, which I don't think anyone would agree with.

 

You can't rate wrestlers on what they could have accomplished. You have to rate them on what they actually did accomplish. Bret, for example, will rate above DiBiase for me. Shawn too. Because instead of conforming to the style around them, they made the whole style better.

[Matt D]

Honky Tonk Man is an example that can be used. Knew what to do to get heat and did it very well. Had a nice little run as a draw. Didn't have that many good matches. So no one talks about him as an all-time great.

Honky didn't have to do more than he did to achieve the results he wanted. In fact, if he did do more he might have sabotaged some of his own efforts, or at the least, he would have had to come up with a different structure and narrative to achieve what he was trying to do. Some of this was shaped (in his own recollection) by him going up for a bump early in his career (I think a belly to back) and a guy totally killing him with his cooperation.

 

For some reason Disco Inferno comes to mind too. He's said on record that he loved watching Japanese tapes and tried to do all that stuff but he just looked awkward as hell doing it and he couldn't pull it off.

 

Both guys were very self aware of what they were doing, what others were doing, and how they might have had better rated matches, but it just didn't make sense to them for one reason or another.

 

I'm not sure what my point there was, to be honest.