Best Worker in the World in the '80's

[NintendoLogic]

I really don't get this idea that being consensus and "boring" renders an idea invalid. Knee -jerk contrarianism is just as boring, if not more so.

[jdw]

  JerryvonKramer said:

First to the point I made about "exoticism", I was actually thinking of a phenomena from being a football fan ("soccer") in the 90s. In the 1990s, and still to an extent now, if your name is something like Demetrio Albertini or Romario or anything vaguely "continental" sounding, that's a lot more exciting than being called Des Walker or Steve Bruce. And it comes with a host of unspoken assumptions not only about the player's ability but also about the player's type. You assume the "fancier" sounding continental players will be more technically skillful but perhaps less physically imposing. You assume the English players with "plain" names possess talents like "grit and determination". It's continental (or South American skill) vs. English brute force. There's was a mystique about foreign players and a mundane feeling about English players. To an extent, that has subsided today as everyone is mostly exposed to all different types of players all the time. But the old stereotypes still persist to an extent, partly of course because they are true.

Well, having been a fan of futbol in the 90s, the best players in the world were not English men. Not in any year. Or even close.

 

Granted, there were mediocre / overrated players from the Continent and South America. But there were countless English players who were getting pimped to the sky who really weren't all that.

 

Alan Shearer and Gabriel Batistuta are about a year and a half difference in age. If you polled just English on who was better, Shearer would win handily. If you polled the Continent and South America, Batistuta would win, and probably by a good margin.

 

It's one of the nice things about being a futbol fan in the US: they are all "exotics" to me, as they are all better than US football and footballers. I can be a bit more objective, love my team (Manchester United), love the English players on the team... but also love the non-English on the team, and lust after those on other teams. I love Paul Scholes... along with Eric Cantona, he'd be my favorite United player over the years. But I also tend to be objective: Xavi is the better player.

 

* * * * *

 

Flipping it back to pro wrestling. Ric Flair, Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express are the reasons I'm a pro wrestling fan. Their entertainment value on TBS in the mid-80s is what pulled me in.

 

I didn't start watching Japan because I was a WON reader or an online guy who heard others pimping it. I had a Japanese co-worker give me a tape from a local video store to watch. I liked what I saw. It wasn't "exotic". I was just "great".

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

  NintendoLogic said:

I really don't get this idea that being consensus and "boring" renders an idea invalid. Knee -jerk contrarianism is just as boring, if not more so.

lol

[El-P]

  jdw said:

along with Eric Cantona

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much".

 

Greatest Cantona promo ever.

 

(and I'm not even a football (aka soccer) fan)

[Matt D]

What I don't get with the whole argument is this.

 

No one goes "Ric Flair is overrated." and doesn't then back up what they're saying.

 

No one.

 

Because it goes against the common accepted "truth" and as such, you need to back up your opinion at that point or it's going to get discounted as whatever "anti-consensus" bs has been tossed about.

 

So people give evidence, they make points, they explain their opinion, and nine times out of ten that never gets engaged upon. It's all just buzz world bullshit in response.

[Chess Knight]

I've always wondered what it'd be like if it were the other way around. What if Jerry Lawler and Genichiro Tenryu were consensus picks Great of All Times for decades and Ric Flair and Jumbo Tsuruta were only being talked as such since 2008 (or whenever IDK)? I'm not saying or implying at all that Flair and Jumbo would be far more favourable and Lawler and Tenryu would take a back seat, but I think you can slot practicably anyone in that "Been pimped as GOATC for decades" list and they would fall in favour since due to possible over-exposure. New discoveries are exciting.

 

Part if me think some of it IS kind of over-exposure. I don't know if I would have this incredible disdain for Kurt Angle if nobody thought he was great, or a GOATC, with some saying crap like "No Angle on your list means no credibility" or "Angle by far best in ring ever" or w/e. Maybe I'm wrong. But that kind of thing can do that to me. I remember a time years ago when I guy I knew kind of wouldn't shut up about Owen Hart and Brian Pillman. I agreed at first, but his talk would eventually kind of bug me and I lost sight of how good those two actually were. I didn't really want to watch them and looked at Arn Andersons and Bobby Eatons who were newer to me.

 

OJ's saying "this guy being viewed as awesome is kind of boring" and even though I haven't read the wrestlewebs for THAT long, I see where he's coming from. If I made a greatest of all time list, the top three would probably Kawada, Flair and Misawa. It sounds boring and it probably is. But............ at the end of the day there isn't anybody I've seen yet I think is better. It probably won't stay like that forever. Lawler > Flair, Funk > Flair, Hansen > Flair, Fujiwara > Misawa, Fujiwara > Kawada don't look odd to me, I just don't agree (yet..? Maybe). I'unno.

[ButchReedMark]

  jdw said:

Alan Shearer and Gabriel Batistuta are about a year and a half difference in age. If you polled just English on who was better, Shearer would win handily.

It's not that simple over here at all. The English aren't that myopic, and there was access to Batistuta on Network TV every Sunday afternoon watched by millions.

[jdw]

The masses in England would pick Shearer. The futbol snobs in England would pick Batigol.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

That was me jdw. But the fact remained that no matter how much Football Italia I could watch on Channel 4, I still probably saw 5-6 times as much Shearer as I did Batistuta. If you asked me who was better, I'd have said Batistuta without doubt. But his greatness was still sort of shrouded in mystique and magnified by the fact that your average English football fan doesn't watch Serie A and gets their football opinions from The Sun or TalkSport. The notion that Batistuta was a god came from the fact that he seemed to be top scorer in Italy every year. And he looked amazing whenever I saw him. I didn't see him week in, week out like I saw Shearer.

 

As it happens, Shearer scored many more goals than Batistuta and was also amazing in that time frame. You could make a very convincing argument that Shearer was better than Batistuta. In fact, Shearer over the course of his career probably WAS better than Batistuta.

 

The fact that I thought it was definitely Batistuta does point towards a certain "exoticism". Would Batistuta have scored a shedload of goals in England? Probably. Would Shearer have done the same in Italy? Probably. So what's separating them then aside from the fact that one is a burly Georgie with a boring voice and the other one looks like this and has a cool name?

 

 

If we flipped it. If Batistuta looked like Shearer with Shearer's name and played in England and vice versa but their skills were identical -- i.e. only name and appearances are changed -- I am not convinced we'd have entirely the same view of it.

 

I SUSPECT, although I might be wrong, that something similar to this happens in wrestling too, only with Japanese wrestlers.

[NintendoLogic]

I thought goodhelmet told you clowns to knock it off with the soccer talk.

 

Anyway, the important thing for me isn't whether an opinion is consensus or revisionist, it's the thought behind it. I'd much rather read a well-thought-out argument for Ric Flair than someone arbitrarily deciding to go with Fujiwara or Satanico and trying to work his way backwards (not that I'm accusing anybody here of doing that).

[ohtani's jacket]

Jumbo as the greatest of all-time was a revisionist trend in the first place.

 

Ninety percent of the people pimping him as the greatest didn't even know who he was until he was dead and even then it took a few years for the memorial tapes to circulate. There weren't too many people around from when his matches originally aired in the 80s and early 90s and those who were ahead of the curve were a small minority compared to the ever expanding newer, young fans getting online and discovering foreign wrestling. I don't know what it was like in the mid-90s as when I first started using the internet I was only interested in WWF and WCW news, but if Jumbo had been pimped from the mid-90s onwards he would have been one of the first guys to be immediately pimped when people turned to "puro". AFAIC, he was some way down the list from juniors and Misawa and Kawada and garbage wrestling. Without trying to put too much of a historical bend on it, Jumbo as the greatest arguably peaked with the Smarkschoice poll after which many of the people involved slowly stopped watching wrestling and the newer fans became (inexplicably) more interested in the newer stuff.

 

But I thoroughly agree that if Lawler and Fujiwara had been consensus picks for a long time that people would look elsewhere. Who doesn't crave new footage or new workers or new footage of old workers which suddenly sheds things in a new light? Everyone went through their Misawa and Kawada phase (or whatever) like some kid discovering an old rock band and thinking he's found the greatest band of all-time, but c'mon... move on, discover new things... It doesn't matter whether Satanico or Fujiwara are better than Flair or Jumbo or anybody else... the idea that somebody has to be atop the mantle is what's really boring.

[FLIK]

  Quote

but c'mon... move on, discover new things

Heh, wish more ppl had that kind of attitude but most don't. Outside of places like this, DVDVR & a few others, when you hear most fans talk about older wrestling they're discovering or even newer things, it's usually the same old shit anyone who's been around more then a few years has heard discussed to death. Those willing to give any more then a cursory glance to the usual suspects are few & far between.

[NintendoLogic]

Was the Jumbo thing really revisionist? Plenty of folks in Japan were calling Jumbo the strongest wrestler in Japanese history at the time of his death. As Jumbo footage became more widely disseminated, Americans started catching up to what Japanese fans already knew. I tend to think of revisionism more as new interpretations of available footage.

 

Setting that aside, since you're fond of the musical analogy, it's true that some people go through a grunge phase, a punk phase, and so on. But plenty of people discover the Beatles, decide they're the greatest shit ever, and never budge from that no matter what new stuff they come across. New discoveries don't necessarily lead to revised opinions.

[Dylan Waco]

We've been over this before, but "Jumbo is the GOAT" was not even close to consensus when I first starting poking around online 17 or 18 years ago. Didn't really change until 99/00 as I recall.

[NintendoLogic]

That's what I'm saying. Jumbo footage became more widely distributed after his death, which led to a reevaluation.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't understand your point. Almost every single alleged "revision" can be tied directly to new footage/greater distribution of existing footage.

[Matt D]

I'd go so far as to say that any potential negative reevaluation of Flair was due to more footage coming out too.

[Loss]

The Flair negativity seems to have evened out. For a while, it was out of control. From what I gather, even those who no longer consider him GOAT still consider him a reasonable part of the conversation.

[Matt D]

He IS part of the conversation, so he sort of has to be. I've come to realize that he wrestles in a way that is very much not for me when it comes to the things I like and care about the most. That doesn't mean I don't think he's probably the very best at what he DOES do instead and I admit that what he does do is very, very important.

 

But when it comes to what I care most about, Flair is basically blasphemous. I feel like there's an entire school of wrestling thought that stems from Flair's feelings about wrestling and how he (brilliantly) executed those feelings. To me it's wildly short-sighted and limited, and helped to set back wrestling analysis thirty years.

[NintendoLogic]

  Dylan Waco said:

I don't understand your point. Almost every single alleged "revision" can be tied directly to new footage/greater distribution of existing footage.

As I understand it, there was always a contingent advocating for Jumbo as GOAT. As footage spread, so did that sentiment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but guys like Lawler and Fujiwara weren't really pimped on that level even by those who had seen the footage until fairly recently.

[Dylan Waco]

  NintendoLogic said:

  Dylan Waco said:

I don't understand your point. Almost every single alleged "revision" can be tied directly to new footage/greater distribution of existing footage.

As I understand it, there was always a contingent advocating for Jumbo as GOAT. As footage spread, so did that sentiment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but guys like Lawler and Fujiwara weren't really pimped on that level even by those who had seen the footage until fairly recently.

 

There may have been a contingent somewhere pimping him as GOAT, but I don't recall hearing it from anyone, anywhere until 99ish. Even then there were still more people touting guys like Dynamite, Flair, Misawa and Kawada than Jumbo.

 

On Lawler and Fujiwara you are radically overestimating the amount of footage that was available/seen by significant numbers of people. There really weren't very many people at all who had seen the footage until fairly recently. That's not surprising as there had been no major effort to collect the footage until fairly recently.

 

Fujiwara is someone who's rep has grown with a relatively small group of people directly because of the availability of footage that beforehand really wasn't seen by very many people at all. With Lawler it is a bit more nuanced as there were always Lawler fans online, including some that considered him a top ten all timer or near that level myself included. But those touting Lawler were either A. acting on fragments of what we have now as the amount of widely disseminated Memphis/90's indies has grown exponentially over the last decade or B. people like Cornette, Bowdren, et who were from the area and watched him in real time where they could appreciate his greatness week to week. So while Lawler always had his fans that saw him as a top tier guy, that number has grown and the willingness to see him as a legit GOATC has grown because far more footage is now available.

[JerryvonKramer]

  Matt D said:

He IS part of the conversation, so he sort of has to be. I've come to realize that he wrestles in a way that is very much not for me when it comes to the things I like and care about the most. That doesn't mean I don't think he's probably the very best at what he DOES do instead and I admit that what he does do is very, very important.

 

But when it comes to what I care most about, Flair is basically blasphemous. I feel like there's an entire school of wrestling thought that stems from Flair's feelings about wrestling and how he (brilliantly) executed those feelings. To me it's wildly short-sighted and limited, and helped to set back wrestling analysis thirty years.

Can you say more about this Matt?

 

If Flair has any sort of wrestling philosophy at all it's calling matches in the ring, thinking on your feet and reacting to / controlling the crowd.

 

Which is to say that going into a 45-minute match, he probably only knows a few things: 1. the opponent, 2. the finish, 3. possibly one transitional detail

 

How he gets from A to B is develops organically. A Flair match is almost entirely unplanned. Flair will dictate the match, the tempo and the transitions. This is the opposite of the "self-conscious epic" of today that El-P keeps talking about.

 

Because of this, sometimes his matches aren't coherent, but A LOT of them time they tell very compelling stories. I watched the Jimmy Garvin cage match from Great American Bash 87 recently, and that match tells a fantastic story built around a chance knee injury from Garvin. Flair spends the first half of the match getting his ass kicked, but then the second half viciously going after the injured leg like an assassin. Garvin eventually passes out in pain. Flair is the consummate dick heel throughout.

 

How did that set wrestling back 30 years?

[El-P]

  Dylan Waco said:

There may have been a contingent somewhere pimping him as GOAT, but I don't recall hearing it from anyone, anywhere until 99ish. Even then there were still more people touting guys like Dynamite, Flair, Misawa and Kawada than Jumbo.

 

When I came to the scene in early 1998, Jumbo was already talked about as a GOAT I remember.

 

  Dylan Waco said:

On Lawler and Fujiwara you are radically overestimating the amount of footage that was available/seen by significant numbers of people. There really weren't very many people at all who had seen the footage until fairly recently. That's not surprising as there had been no major effort to collect the footage until fairly recently.

On Lawler, yeah most probably, but tons of Fujiwara footage has been available for ages. Again, the UWF (1 & 2), PFWG and 80's NJ tapes from the big UWF vs NJ matches were already around 14 years ago, I remember seeing Fuji's name all over Mike Lorefice's tape list back then.

[Dylan Waco]

  El-P said:

  Dylan Waco said:

There may have been a contingent somewhere pimping him as GOAT, but I don't recall hearing it from anyone, anywhere until 99ish. Even then there were still more people touting guys like Dynamite, Flair, Misawa and Kawada than Jumbo.

 

When I came to the scene in early 1998, Jumbo was already talked about as a GOAT I remember.

  Dylan Waco said:

On Lawler and Fujiwara you are radically overestimating the amount of footage that was available/seen by significant numbers of people. There really weren't very many people at all who had seen the footage until fairly recently. That's not surprising as there had been no major effort to collect the footage until fairly recently.

On Lawler, yeah most probably, but tons of Fujiwara footage has been available for ages. Again, the UWF (1 & 2), PFWG and 80's NJ tapes from the big UWF vs NJ matches were already around 14 years ago, I remember seeing Fuji's name all over Mike Lorefice's tape list back then.

 

 

Where was this? I frequented just about every major board during that period and while it is theoretically possible there were one or two guys calling him the GOAT (as I was one of two or three guys who would put Funk in that conversation at the time) it was by no means a large group of people or block of people or a narrative that was widely held/talked about at the time.

 

On Fujiwara the matches existed in circulation to some degree, but not in controlled format that was easy to purchase and view. I don't remember any "Best of Fujiwara collections" though it's possible they existed. One of the most valuable things about the DVD comps that have exploded from 05 forward is that you can see career arcs of guys either on their own comp or through a chronological timeline in the promotion they were working in.

[JerryvonKramer]

I like the idea of El-P moving in trendier wrestling circles than Dylan circa 1998. What elite clubs did he frequent during that time-frame, I wonder?