Wrestler's You've Flip Flopped On

[Mad Dog]

This can go either way. This can be a guy you hated at one point and now like or a guy you loved but now dislike. It can also be for guys you liked as a mark, rebelled against when you started to become smart and then found your love of said worker again. I'll start it off.

 

The Ultimate Warrior: I bought into the meme that he had very little merit as a worker for the longest time. I laughed at all of the jokes and made a lot of them. Then I started rewatching a lot of WWF stuff from 1989 into 1991. I was a little surprised by what I saw with the Warrior. During this time period he had two pretty good matches with Rick Rude, an all time classic with Randy Savage, a pretty good match with Hogan, a surprisingly solid series of matches with the Undertaker and a match with Sgt. Slaughter that I liked a lot better when I revisited it. I also changed my mind on his promos. Sure, they're out there but they make sense. He makes his point even if it's a little weird and convoluted. I'm not saying he was good but I've seen too many good Warrior matches now to just discount him as I used to.

 

Bret Hart: I find him tedious now. He's so utterly predictable that it's almost painful to watch him at times. I think I could close my eyes and call his spots in a random match during the 90s. I also find him to be pretty boring on the mic, minus his heel 1997, and to not be terribly compelling more often than not. His matches are still pretty good, I just find myself more interested in lesser matches with more interesting wrestlers.

 

Diesel: Not really as a worker. Just his WWF Title run. I tend to feel his failure as champion had more to do with his booking and challengers than Diesel. His reign seems to work when he has good challengers and started to fizzle when he started facing random fat guy of the month.

[El-P]

The Rock : couldn't stand his in-ring work despite the great promos. I revisited him during the GWE poll, and became a fan.

 

Riki Choshu : when I got into puroresu, everything was about the AJ heavies, and how the NJ guys sucked, especially Choshu and his boring lariat/scorpion combo, no-selling the UWF-I guys and such. When I watched entire TV seasons of NJ, I became a fan very quickly of his style and the NJ heavy style as a whole. But Choshu in particular appealed to me. It was simple, basic, intense, couldn't get old.

[Ditch]

I'll second Choshu.

 

Andre the Giant is a big one thanks to seeing more footage from when he wasn't crippled by gigantism. REALLY smart, way way better as a giant than everyone who followed because he could mat wrestle. I wasn't won over by seeing him vs Strong Kobayashi in IWE, but now I know that Strong was kinda bad so it wasn't Andre's fault.

[Kostka]

I hated The Rock as a teenager too, for a lot of the same reasons the hip kidz hate Cena... then I rewatched and called myself an idiot.

 

On the flip side I used to like Angle a lot but now he's one of my least favorite guys to watch.

 

I used to think Bret Hart was the greatest of all time until about 10 years ago when I discovered the internet and started digging into the vault of wrestling history. I still like Bret, but I've cooled on him considerably just by opening my eyes to so much more wrestling.

[Coffey]

Mark Henry: Was a pretty boring hoss the majority of his career, but he has been money lately. His work still leaves a lot to be desired, but his character has been great.

 

Bret Hart: I used to think he was a great worker, and he still probably is if I go back and watch a lot of his stuff, but two things have really soured me on him: 1. His coming back recently. Especially his build-up and match with Vince McMahon. 2. It was pointed out to me that Bret never closes his mouth when he wrestles, like he's constantly gasping for air. Now I can't unsee it and it completely distracts me.

 

Rob Van Dam: When I first got into ECW, I thought RVD was the best I had ever seen. Mostly because they were beating me over the head and telling me that he was the best I had ever seen. His garbage brawls were fresh and new at the time, I had never really seen table spots before, so it was all new and cool to me. I was also a lot younger. I can't even sit through one of his matches anymore. I can watch a lot of older stuff, early Stan Hansen, or whatever. I can even watch old ECW stuff from that era, and a lot of it holds up. Like Tajiri, Super Crazy, Little Guido...but man, RVD is the drizzling shits. He can't talk, he does nothing but spots, his matches are just stalling, taunting and setting up for the next spot. Then they throw in a bunch of 2-counts (from EVERYTHING) to make the match feel "special."

 

Jim Duggan: This is a big one because for many years he was just "that retard" in WWF. Now that I've seen a lot more of his shit, the dude could go. Some of the better punches I've ever seen. His Mid-South stuff that I've seen is pretty damn good. Even some of his later WCW work wasn't bad. Namely a throwaway match with Goldberg and some Saturday Night (or maybe it was the Sunday morning) stuff. I think Duggan is really underrated now.

[Frankensteiner]

I said this in the other thread, but for me it’s Ric Flair. I don’t think I ever thought of him as the GOAT but his stock has fallen pretty hard in my eyes. He’s just really predictable and repetitive not only from match to match but also within matches. It also seems like he has to hit all of his spots regardless if it makes sense in the context of the match (like Ric going up top to get slammed with about a min. / half min. to go in a one hour draw). Finally, I don’t understand why the NWA champion would wrestle with all the stooging and comedy bumps. Wasn’t he hailed as this serious alternative to Hogan?

 

I don’t have the desire to see any more of Flair's work even if I still like some of his matches (mostly depends on his opponents).

[Matt D]

This is tricky, because at various points in my life, I've liked different things. I think we'll go with just the difference between 05 and now.

 

I've flipped flop on STYLES (and not AJ). I used to only like high action matches with a fairly fast pace and big moves. Now I care a lot more about the little things and logical storytelling.

 

I've also gone away from tracking down GREAT MATCHES to watching more things in context and appreciating great work over time even if the opportunity for "GREAT MATCHES" wasn't there due to other reasons.

 

Also, I've seen more footage. there's a lot of ignorance on my part. I've seen way more Ron Garvin or Ernie Ladd or Dutch Mantel or Rip Rogers or John Tatum or Lawler or Buddy Rose or Adrian STreet. Guys that I like a lot now but that I just hadn't seen much of before.

 

1.) Demolition. This is pretty much a gimme with me, but I thought very little of them both when I was younger and in my middle wrestling phases. Slow, plodding, few big moves, just clubbering, etc. When I did the project, I saw the sheer range of their matches and work styles, saw just how much a ring general Eadie was, etc, how they changed it up so often, and how every god damn thing they did in the ring made sense and had meaning.

 

2.) Late-Era Andre. Talk about every move having meaning. He couldn't do much, and everything he DID do took him a lot of effort so he made everything count so god damn much. Warrior/Andre SNME (the Worst match of the year according to WON) is an amazing match because there's not a bit of wasted motion out of Andre.

 

3.) Late-Era Sgt. Slaughter. I had always discounted Slaughter's 90-92 run and that's a huge mistake. He bumped bigger than any heel in the company not Hennig. His offense was nasty and different from what everyone else in the company was doing, and he was great at stooging.

 

4.) Flair. I appreciate him as much as ever, but after hearing his thoughts in shoots and what not and seeing a lot more footage. It's just not my thing. A lot of action and spots, telling little stories within a match, but not a big one. A lot of hitting things because the crowd expects it or because he's supposed to. He COULD do other things, but he didn't think he should. Flair did a lot of stuff for the sake of doing it, and it's a testament to his charisma and talent and energy and emotion that he made it so work. I see him as the big superstar band that only gets to play their big stuff in concert, but that's okay because he likes to play it.

 

5.) Hogan. Wrestling is symbolic and Hogan matches are an animal in and of themselves. They have their own narrative structure. If wrestling is tennis, Hogan matches are badminton, and it's fun to examine them against each other. A lot of the later WWF ones are really well laid out by Patterson and a lot of times they have an escalation from opponent to opponent and the last match is kept in mind. Likewise is 1991 Undertaker. Yes, he mainly choked, but there was a structure to most of his matches based around it and that was pretty neat.

 

6.) John Nord. JOHN NORD IS FRIGGING AWESOME. I had no idea. By 91-92 he had the best heel offense in the WWF, would bump big, sell big, run around the ring with a ton of energy.

[rainmakerrtv]

2.) Late-Era Andre. Talk about every move having meaning. He couldn't do much, and everything he DID do took him a lot of effort so he made everything count so god damn much. Warrior/Andre SNME (the Worst match of the year according to WON) is an amazing match because there's not a bit of wasted motion out of Andre.

I've heard tell of him having a match against World Champion Randy Savage in Los Angeles that was dubbed a classic "work smarter, not harder" match. Does anyone have a date and can they vouch for this? I'd like to give it a look, it sounds interesting.

[Ricky Jackson]

Dusty Rhodes: For years all I thought of when I heard his name was poka dots and bad commentary. Because of timing and geography, I missed his glory days completely and only knew of late-80s/90s Dusty. I think it was the Superstar Graham WWE doc that first opened my eyes to his greatness, and subsequent viewing of his WWE dvd and YouTube made me a big fan. He's one of my all time faves now.

 

On the other hand...

 

RVD: Um, yeah. Why did I love this guy again? I don't remember. Being young and a blind ECW mark certainly helped. I'm not saying I "hate" the guy, or that I don't enjoy some of his work. I just saw one of his 1996 matches with Sabu not too long ago (the one where they both do stretcher jobs) and thought it was pretty good. But for the most part I could care less if I ever see him wrestle again.

[Mad Dog]

2.) Late-Era Andre. Talk about every move having meaning. He couldn't do much, and everything he DID do took him a lot of effort so he made everything count so god damn much. Warrior/Andre SNME (the Worst match of the year according to WON) is an amazing match because there's not a bit of wasted motion out of Andre.

There's an Andre/Duggan match from 88 that was really good too. I was really surprised with the late career Andre. Sure, he has some absolutely horrible matches like the Roberts WM match but he had a lot of good matches with a variety of different workers.

[Frankensteiner]

2.) Late-Era Andre. Talk about every move having meaning. He couldn't do much, and everything he DID do took him a lot of effort so he made everything count so god damn much. Warrior/Andre SNME (the Worst match of the year according to WON) is an amazing match because there's not a bit of wasted motion out of Andre.

I've heard tell of him having a match against World Champion Randy Savage in Los Angeles that was dubbed a classic "work smarter, not harder" match. Does anyone have a date and can they vouch for this? I'd like to give it a look, it sounds interesting.

 

8/13/88, and yes, it's good.

[jdw]

Brody: enjoyed his stuff when first tape collecting in the early 90s simply because it was different from what was going on the the WWF and WCW at the time, and frankly AJPW & NJPW by that point. Then watched more... and watched him with Hansen more... and saw that Hansen was much better... and that Brody kinda was pretty goofy a lot... and kinda shitty on occassion.

 

Hogan: hated him in the 80s, and well into the 90s. On rewatch, have found more of his WWF stuff in the 80s watchable than I would have guessed.

 

Rock 'n' Roll Express: was a heel tag team fan, and still am. So I liked the MX against the R'n'R, and later Arn & Tully. The R'n'R's quality/contributions to the matches is something I didn't appreciate until later.

 

Backlund: "D'oh!" -Homer Simpson

 

Baba: Just didn't want to see him on my TV. Now enjoy more of his stuff than I ever could have imagined.

 

Flair: thought he was the greatest thing in wrestling and always was glued to the TV if there was a chance to watch him. Now... if I never see another of his matches (other than things from the 70s that bubble up), I'd be okay with that. Still think he was "great". Just tired of watching him, and he his stuff in his "prime" doesn't entertain me at all. Of course there is no way to avoid his stuff, so I'm stuck.

 

Kobashi: still love his stuff through some point in 1994, even on rewatch. In real time, started getting annoyed as fuck by him probably in 1997ish, though enjoyed poking him a bit before that. But now... I think most of his stuff from 1995 on doesn't do a ton for me unless it's the other folks in the match being compelling enough to pull me in. Don't think the stuff "sucks" or he's "terrible"... just tired of Kobashi's bullshit after some point.

 

Toyota: I'm trying to remember when I started crapping on her... was it as early as 1996? I remember one snark at the 1995 Dome show, so I may have been getting annoyed by that point. I don't think I ever got to the point of thinking that her "classic" or "great" work in her peak sucked donkey balls. Just that she stopped doing much for me, annoyed me often, and I enjoyed watching someone like Aja far more.

 

Several that I go back and forth on...

 

Choshu: Loved, hated, liked, bored, enjoyed, tired of. Go back and forth on his every few years. The positive of Choshu is that you usually can get a good solid intensity from him in a match. The negative of Choshu is... when you're not just watching Best of... you get the a lot of the same old shit from him all the time, including the intensity. That is the case for nearly *everyone*. The problem with Choshu is that the positives are the things that made/make him standout from a lot of the other more vanilla workers of his era... and when you see them time after time after time, week after week, they stop being "special" and become Choshu Shtick. I flip back and forth on him because there are times where Choshu Shtick is perfectly fine for the moment or mood I'm in or the month of viewing. There are times where "Yeah... this is where Riki gets pissed... zzz..." Less negative on him than others since there are times where he hits the spot. Plus he was in one of the most memorable matches I've ever seen live, so there's a soft spot.

 

Tenryu: Loved him when I started watching puroresu, and it was hard not to since it was the last match of the 1988 Tag League, and that was The Tenryu Show. Essentially the AJPW/Indy version of Choshu where I go back and forth on him. Plenty of years where he's bored the fuck out of me. Others where I've been in a stretch of liking him.

 

John

[Ditch]

I can see how Tenryu can elicit a "he's just doing the usual" response, but he doesn't have the 'four moves' problem of Choshu and is way better when controlling a match; as such Tenryu-by-numbers is (to me) infinitely more enjoyable and less repetitive than Choshu-by-numbers.

[jdw]

Flair has more than 4 moves/spots. After a while, you've seen the Flair Show and either you still mark out for it, or it loses the entertainment value.

 

Tenryu is similar. There are stretches where it worked for me, and stretches where:

 

"Hmm... so Tenryu is pissed off here again. Eh..."

 

It's like head dropping.

 

One Month: "Holy Shit!!!"

 

Year Later: "Eh..."

 

Before people think I'm knocking their sacred cows of Flair and Tenryu, I get that same way with Misawa. One reason I've avoided a lot of 1990-94 stuff. Good Misawa That I Like = Great~! and Hits The Spot. Other Misawa... like say the 1992 Misawa vs Jumbo that was their last singles match? The last time I watched it, what struck me was how shitty Misawa was in it. Sloppy, couldn't keep a tangent, lost at times, resets... just not good. Not shitty in "He's a bad as Sid in a shitty Sid match" sense. But bad in a "Misawa just isn't looking up to AJPW main event levels here and it's really pretty jarring to see how not-so-good he is here."

 

That was probably 5 or 6 years ago. It's possible if I watched it again, especially in the context of a lot of 1991-92 watching, I would cut it some slack. The only people over in the Yearbook thread who talked about it were Loss and Shoe, and while pretty limited in what they said, they both thought it was good. Loss did have it #78 on his list for the year, which isn't bad on one level (for a match that thought Misawa didn't look good in), but is kinda not so good on another level (Jumbo-Misawa singles of that era).

 

I'm not offering it up as an example of a match that folks should run out to disagree with me on. More as an example of:

 

I don't just bag on Tenryu and Flair for boring/disappointing the fuck out of me. Someone like Misawa, who is very clearly one of my favorites, is a guy that at times when I rewatch some of his stuff... doesn't always work well for me. At times he bores me a little with his performaces (I mentioned the 1994 singles with Jun in the 1994 Yearbook pimping), and at times his work strikes me as... not so hot. On the other hand, I pimped an early 1994 six man where, while Misawa-Kawada wasn't a dominant theme within the match, it was good when flashed and indicated that the two where good in what they flashed: it still made me lean forward when they squared off at this point in the series. Then there was the Misawa-Kawada Carny match from that year which I threw out a kind of different take for folks to think about.

 

One can still think someone is kinda/sorta/lotta Great while:

 

* being critical of them

* being bored of them

* being really fucking tired of watching them again

 

Flair, Kobashi, Tenryu, Choshu, Misawa... they fall under various of those, on occassion or always depending on the wrestler or the point of their career.

 

One can also praise an enjoy someone while:

 

* not thinking they're great

* thinking they goofy as all shit

* sorta feeling uneasy about enjoying something that you've so long hated

 

Hogan falls under one or more of those for me.

 

John

[Ditch]

I don't think a rewatch of that last Jumbo/Misawa match will change your mind on it, nor would 'context' help. If anything the 'context' is a bunch of better matches

[jdw]

Then you need to add your thoughts to the post on that match.

 

John

[Mad Dog]

Where can someone acquire the New Japan 80s TV seasons?

[jdw]

Dan G has done quite a few of NJPW from 1982 through the balance of the decade, though I don't recall if he's done all of them.

 

He did do AJPW from 1985 through 1989, and on into the mid-90s.

 

John

[Coffey]

Thinking more about this topic, I sort of wish that I was born earlier than '81. I grew up watching a lot of really amazing workers, like DiBiase, Hennig & Rude, but I was really too young to enjoy them. I was just a mark kid and wanted the good guys to win. So while we have these ridiculously good, once-in-a-lifetime workers running around, I'm just hoping for Hogan and Warrior to win, or Jake to pull out Damien. I think I even cheered for Brutus the Barber.

 

Going back and watching old stuff, I see how good people like Adrian Adonis, Butch Reed and Bad News Brown were and it just makes me sad. At least I appreciated Piper and Savage back then, I suppose. I underrated a lot of people, like Rick Martel, Tito Santana, Greg Valentine & Ricky Steamboat. The more I have learned; the more I have watched over the years, I did not realize how good I had it with those rosters growing up.

[Mad Dog]

That's a byproduct of the WWF at the time though. Guys would get a big payday to work there and then immediately start dogging it in the ring.

[NintendoLogic]

I kind of alluded to this in the other thread, but the big one for me is Chris Benoit. When I first got into serious match analysis in late 2004/early 2005, he was probably my favorite wrestler of all time. Then all the unpleasantness happened, and I shied away from his work for a while. The first time I tried to get back into his work, it still held up. But as my wrestling horizons expanded, his stuff did less and less for me. What it comes down to is that he was great at the little things but pretty weak from a big picture standpoint. Of course, there's also the fact that he made his mark in the NJ junior style and the WWE Main Event Workrate Style, both of which I've completely soured on. In fact, I'd argue that most of the stuff Kurt Angle gets bashed for can be traced back to Benoit. German overkill? Check. A supposed finisher used in every match as a nearfall spot? Check? Excessive application of submissions? Check. And on the "playing one's role effectively" front, there was the period where he was billed as the best technical wrestler in the WWF while his matches were 75% punches and chops.

[KanadianKrusty]

2.) Late-Era Andre. Talk about every move having meaning. He couldn't do much, and everything he DID do took him a lot of effort so he made everything count so god damn much. Warrior/Andre SNME (the Worst match of the year according to WON) is an amazing match because there's not a bit of wasted motion out of Andre.

There's an Andre/Duggan match from 88 that was really good too. I was really surprised with the late career Andre. Sure, he has some absolutely horrible matches like the Roberts WM match but he had a lot of good matches with a variety of different workers.

 

 

THIS. I'd have to also include his tags w/ Baba from 1990 against Demolition and Williams/Gordy. Those are fun as hell by any standard.

[Loss]

Man, I just don't get the love for old Andre at all, and I'm totally about the story of matches over the action. But wrestlers have to be able to at least execute a few basic moves to be credible (not as tough guys, but as athletes), and Andre could barely move. He wasn't fun to watch during those years at all to me. I thought it was embarrassing and he looked really frail. Not everyone needs to be incredibly athletic, but being able to execute a few wrestling moves should be a minimum requirement. Sure, the matches were psychologically sound, but they oughta be when a guy has been around that long, and the premise of wrestling is that it's an athletic contest. As strange as it is to say, Andre just didn't have any credibility with me in his later years because he didn't seem like an athlete at all.

[Victator]

I could buy Andre fucking up a large man with a single headbutt. The immobility I think helped him in some ways. As it gave the faces more of a fighting chance.

[Matt D]

It all comes down to this. Guys sold Andre's every touch as death. When he was a heel and the face was on offense, it lasted just until Andre TOUCHED them, and it was totally, utterly believable. He was a force of nature and it's because they constantly reinforced it.

 

I don't think basic execution is even necessary. It's all symbolic. It's wrestling. All that is necessary is that the guys in the ring and/or you and/or the crowd buys what happens in the match. Obviously you don't, but it seems like we do, and the crowd definitely did.