Best U.S. Worker Of The 90's?

[NintendoLogic]

Puerto Rico has its own Olympic team. It doesn't count.

[jdw]

Eddie : 1995-1999

Rey : 1995-1999

Both of these guys worked in the US before 1995.

 

John

[smkelly]

There's also the point when it has to be accepted that there isnt any new *great* stuff to watch in one given era or territory.

That is a good point. However, simply because new footage is being found and unearthed all the time, it does allow for newer things to become wide-spread and popular amongst certain groups. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that a newly found match would/could replace some of the big time US matches that have been talked about since their broadcast and/or release. Kind of like its hard for me to imagine an All Japan match being unearthed and being better than 6/3/94, 1/20/97, or the 6/9/95 and 12/6/96 tags. It is possible, but unlikely.

[Matt D]

There's also the point when it has to be accepted that there isnt any new *great* stuff to watch in one given era or territory.

That is a good point. However, simply because new footage is being found and unearthed all the time, it does allow for newer things to become wide-spread and popular amongst certain groups. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that a newly found match would/could replace some of the big time US matches that have been talked about since their broadcast and/or release. Kind of like its hard for me to imagine an All Japan match being unearthed and being better than 6/3/94, 1/20/97, or the 6/9/95 and 12/6/96 tags. It is possible, but unlikely.

 

I still say that the bigger point is that tastes change.

[smkelly]

Judging this sort of thing by the number of great matches a worker had doesn't get us anywhere.

I don't understand. We must have different definitions of 'worker', as I place the in-ring work above everything else simply because if we put acting ability/promos/angles/etc into play, Hogan would make the top ten for the US in the nineties. It would become 'best entertainer' instead of 'best worker'.

 

Look at Eddie Guerrero's 1997: great heel turn, fantastic acting, but all he has to show for it match wise is one all-time great match against Rey Mysterio, Jr. and one or two other TV matches against him. Even if you look at his US work from '94-99 it's hard to find too many truly great matches yet many people liked Eddie as a worker and would consider him for the top 10 on that basis.

I liked Eddy's matches against Malenko in ECW, and he had plenty of good/great matches in WCW beside the mask vs. title match. Thinking about it, Eddy would probably end up in my top ten after considering some of the performances he had, namely, the first and last ECW matches against Malenko, the title versus mask match, the US title match against Malenko in March '97, and probably a handful/dozen performances I am forgetting.

 

But Eddy largely falls into the WCW trap/void/wrestling purgatory, as do guys like Regal & Finlay.

[smkelly]

There's also the point when it has to be accepted that there isnt any new *great* stuff to watch in one given era or territory.

That is a good point. However, simply because new footage is being found and unearthed all the time, it does allow for newer things to become wide-spread and popular amongst certain groups. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that a newly found match would/could replace some of the big time US matches that have been talked about since their broadcast and/or release. Kind of like its hard for me to imagine an All Japan match being unearthed and being better than 6/3/94, 1/20/97, or the 6/9/95 and 12/6/96 tags. It is possible, but unlikely.

 

I still say that the bigger point is that tastes change.

 

I think this project, if it turns out to be more than just discussion, would be better off if done post-yearbook releases. But it would be something to stand on once all the yearbooks in the nineties are completed though. It'd be interesting to see how much variation in opinions occur from now to whenever all the yearbooks have been released and talked about - of which, Loss will have like 100,000 posts.

[El-P]

Eddie : 1995-1999

Rey : 1995-1999

Both of these guys worked in the US before 1995.

 

John

 

I had my doubt about those two. Where did they show up before 95 ? I don't think it was in ECW.

[El-P]

That is a good point. However, simply because new footage is being found and unearthed all the time, it does allow for newer things to become wide-spread and popular amongst certain groups. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that a newly found match would/could replace some of the big time US matches that have been talked about since their broadcast and/or release.

As long as it's actual new footage, I'm perfectly fine with it. But at some point, revisiting WWF TV from the 90's and get excited about a few El Matador (to bounce back of what Dan said for instance) good matches on Superstars just doesn't cut it as far as re-drawing the map of the workers of the 90's.

There's also the temptation to overpimp any "new good stuff", simply because it's fresh. And to trash what has been established for years as great, because we're tired of it at his point. I think there should be a balance somewhere.

 

Kind of like its hard for me to imagine an All Japan match being unearthed and being better than 6/3/94, 1/20/97, or the 6/9/95 and 12/6/96 tags. It is possible, but unlikely.

Yes, I agree. I like the notion that there are a number of classics that constitute a corpus of reference. Call me "dated" on that one.

[NintendoLogic]

I've always felt great matches is one of the worst ways to judge great workers, especially if we're talking in the US. for WWF it's a little bit easier in the 80s when you had so many taped house shows, but even then.

Wait, what? I have a hard time seeing how something other than great matches could be a better determinant of who a great worker is. If you want to argue that no one working in the US in the 90s had enough truly great matches for this to be a relevant consideration, I can see that. Otherwise, I think this is way off.

[MJH]

Eddie : 1995-1999

Rey : 1995-1999

Both of these guys worked in the US before 1995.

 

John

 

I had my doubt about those two. Where did they show up before 95 ? I don't think it was in ECW.

 

AAA worked California.

[jdw]

Rather famously.

 

John

[Victator]

I've always felt great matches is one of the worst ways to judge great workers, especially if we're talking in the US. for WWF it's a little bit easier in the 80s when you had so many taped house shows, but even then.

Wait, what? I have a hard time seeing how something other than great matches could be a better determinant of who a great worker is. If you want to argue that no one working in the US in the 90s had enough truly great matches for this to be a relevant consideration, I can see that. Otherwise, I think this is way off.

 

Great matches give a limited picture of what is going on. Looking at the dusty middle innings gives a more accurate picture of a performer.

[El-P]

AAA worked California.

Hum... I understand, but it's strictly a geographical issue then, AAA being a pure mexican lucha libre promotion. I don't think I would take in account Rey or Eddie's work in AAA to judge them as "US worker". By US I think it's clearly "working in a US based promotion".

Well, if we're going by nationality and not place of work, then some gaijins would have some thing to say, most notably Steve Williams, but I don't think that's where we were going initially.

[El-P]

Great matches give a limited picture of what is going on. Looking at the dusty middle innings gives a more accurate picture of a performer.

If you're looking only at great matches, yes, I agree it's a completely distorted view.

But when there's no great matches at all, I just won't buy the case of a "great worker". Even in the shittiest place workwise like 80's WWF, great workers were able to deliver, maybe not often, but they eventually did. If I don't see any great matches it's either :

 

_the guy really never was given any occasion to have one of them, EVER.

_the guy just isn't *great*. He can be solid as hell, but he just doesn't have that little thing that would make him great.

 

As of now, the answer to me is always case N°2. I don't believe in the "great worker without great match" argument.

[Mad Dog]

Eddie : 1995-1999

Rey : 1995-1999

Both of these guys worked in the US before 1995.

 

John

 

I had my doubt about those two. Where did they show up before 95 ? I don't think it was in ECW.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5VwGqwTlXE

[El-P]

Well, that one is rather infamous, but it's 89.

[NintendoLogic]

What El-P said. Great matches aren't necessarily the end-all be-all, but I don't know what else you'd use as a starting point.

[Coffey]

How about "Diamond" Dallas Page? Not too many "classic" matches but he did have good matches against Savage, Hart, random Johnny B. Badd and even Goldberg. Plus his stuff with Benoit, Raven and Eddie Guerrero. I think some of the Jersey Triad stuff happened in 1999 too. I remember there being some decent tag matches.

[MJH]

What El-P said. Great matches aren't necessarily the end-all be-all, but I don't know what else you'd use as a starting point.

Great performances.

 

But, yes, the general point remains the same.

[Matt D]

A lot of it is that wrestlers are trying to accomplish different things within different confines and with different purposes. JJ Dillon talks about how he had his first match in a long time after becoming a manager and he wanted to go out there an impress the boys and he worked his ass off and had what he thought was a great, exciting competitive match and got chided out over it in the back because it wasn't what he was supposed to be doing. He did it for himself not the overall show. But he was probably capable of doing EXACTLY what he was supposed to do and making it wildly effective.

 

You watch a large body of someone's work, squashes, matches all up and down the card, things that should be good on paper and things that should be less than good and you see everything the wrestler does in all sorts of situations. Not everyone gets the same opportunities, the same amount of time, the same "epic stage" and the same opponents. You look at a body of work, not for "great matches." You try to figure out if they accomplished what they were supposed to do and how difficult it was. You look at the big things that they do and the small things. You basically deconstruct their body of work.

 

Or at least I think that's as valid a way to gauge a wrestler's skill (if not more so) than limiting yourself to the great matches/performances. You're certainly welcome to disagree, but I hope you at least see where I'm coming on instead of getting exasperated by it.

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, if that's the case, then I don't have any interet in it. As much as diving into stuff that hasn't been wachted or talked about much like SMW or 90's Memphis is very interesting, trying to seek out whatever *pretty good* stuff and declare that all of a sudden it's *great* just makes everything irrelevant. There's also the point when it has to be accepted that there isnt any new *great* stuff to watch in one given era or territory.

If someone gets excited about Tito Santana's El Matador work and says it's great, it's not that difficult to conclude whether the person thinks it's truly "great" or is simply excited about what they've watched. The usage of the word is not that important compared to how compelling the person's enthusiasm is. It takes more than one person to decide that Tito Santana's El Matador work is great. If other people watch it and agree, it may or may not take on a life of its own, but it's a damn sight better than people clinging to the same 20 year old opinions.

 

Nevertheless, this is getting off topic. The great matches criteria doesn't work, hence the difficulty in putting together a top ten. If there were workers with a laundry list of great matches it wouldn't be a problem, but there aren't and so different criteria must be applied. If people think Bret is the guy, then Bret's the guy. I don't ever want to watch another Bret Hart match so long as I live, but as Dylan said everyone after Bret is where it gets interesting. The fact that a top 10 doesn't immediately spring to mind is not a very good reflection on 90s wrestling, and it's not as though we haven't revisited it either. It's funny because it seemed great at the time.

[smkelly]

I was disappointed by the Hart/Misawa match. Probably the best example of a match looking good on paper that turned out to be anything but what it should have been.

[Dylan Waco]

There is nothing wrong with looking at great matches but I don't think they are all the be all and end all. You have to look at a broader sample to get a real feel for a wrestler. Rising to the occasion matters and should get you extra points but there is something to be said for consistency.

 

I understand OJ's point about peak years but at a point you hit a wall with it. I think Tajiri in 99 was the best wrestler in the World based on his ECW work. Without putting too much thought into it I would put that single peak year very high up on a list of peak years from any wrestler working for a U.S. based promotion in the 90's. But it seems crazy to put Tajiri above someone like Mick Foley or Shawn Michaels or Terry Funk, none of whom in my view had a single year in the 90's as good as Tajiri's 99 but had a lot of good matches over the course of the decade.

 

On the esoteric v. established debate, I think far too much is put into worrying about lifting obscurity into superiority. The great matches are going to stand on their own two legs no matter what. Just because I think Vader v. Dustin from the Clash or Regal v. Larry Z from WCWSN are legitimately great matches, doesn't mean that I don't think Bret v. Owen or Shawn v. Foley are great.

 

Overall the ideal worker is someone who you want to have a combination of all of the above. Great matches. Fun/good/possibly even great "obscure" matches. Consistency. A strong peak.

 

That is what Bret is the front runner in the 90's. He is one of the few guys who has all of the above PLUS the longevity spanning the whole decade.

[Dylan Waco]

Nevertheless, this is getting off topic. The great matches criteria doesn't work, hence the difficulty in putting together a top ten. If there were workers with a laundry list of great matches it wouldn't be a problem, but there aren't and so different criteria must be applied. If people think Bret is the guy, then Bret's the guy. I don't ever want to watch another Bret Hart match so long as I live, but as Dylan said everyone after Bret is where it gets interesting. The fact that a top 10 doesn't immediately spring to mind is not a very good reflection on 90s wrestling, and it's not as though we haven't revisited it either. It's funny because it seemed great at the time.

I agree with pretty much all of this, right down to not giving a shit if I ever see another Bret match or not.

 

I was bored at work today and sketched out a list to see if I could get to a hundred names that I think were safely "good" for both the 90's and the 80's in the U.S. I hit the numbers, but the big difference is that with 80's names there were a lot more guys who immediately jumped off the page to me as "top tier" type of guys. With the 90's it gets real thin, real quick. I don't believe this means 90's wrestling was "bad," but it is sort of odd that there are so few definitive U.S. workers from the period.

[jdw]

Are we getting so granular that we're going to break down matches and determine who is a great worker based on how well they achived what they were suppose to do in the match? Because if we are, the GOAT debate starts and ends with this:

 

Hulk Hogan is the greatest wrestler of all-time because no one nailed as much of exactly what they wanted to do in a match: make people buy more tickets to see him.

 

Seriously... are we going to go down that path?

 

I'm not sure I care whether JJ Dillion thinks he didn't or did have a great match. Any of us who have ever dealt with people in the business have had people say stuff about match and show and work quality that is just gobsmacking dumb / full of shit / completely wrong. And yes: you *can* be wrong about work/match/show quality in some of the contexts that I've had it slung at me:

 

"It was a great show. We did what we wanted to, the fans are dumb and they'll come back for more."

-after watching a show where there was little heat and some fans were walking out on the main event

 

I'm paraphrasing there, but the actually quotes if I wrote them down were far worse. I know lots of us get off on all the shoot interviews and books, but in the end they're just Great Stories.

 

I don't buy JJ or any of the other guys in the business rambling about work anymore than I buy Eric or Nash waxing about the key to What Puts Asses In The Seats.

 

* * * * * * * * * * *

 

You watch a large body of someone's work, squashes, matches all up and down the card, things that should be good on paper and things that should be less than good and you see everything the wrestler does in all sorts of situations.

Here's part of the problem:

 

Lots of us saw all that shit from Arn. At the time, week after week. It's not a new discovery to us that Arn was... you know... a Good Worker. We know that shit. Live it. Paid money to see him at house shows. Etc. Liked him a lot. Still do like watching his stuff.

 

But to get someone like me who already thinks he was a Good, Solid, Enjoyable Work to buy into him being a GREAT~! Worker... it really doesn't draw me in when all one says is that:

 

"Arn is great because he was good a lot for a long time and never was sucky."

 

Well... that's not something I didn't know 25 years ago: that Arn was good. On my TV and in arenas. A lot. Most of the times I saw him.

 

Good = Good

 

When did saying something is good become and insult, and we felt the need to crank it up to 11?

 

John