Biggest 80s draw not called Hulk Hogan

[JerryvonKramer]

Did Ted DiBiase make that list Ricky?

 

I only ask because of the long-ish back and forth Dylan and I had over Ted vs. Patera.

[JerryvonKramer]

Excellent post btw, thanks for the info.

[Dylan Waco]

I'd be shocked if Ted wasn't on that list above Patera. He benefits from the fact that he was around during the WWF boom period/after expansion.

 

I think Kane's appearance so high on the list is telling.

[Ricky Jackson]

No Ted, no JYD, and perhaps most surprisingly, no Bill Watts, which reveals the heavy Northeast bias. The only year Ted cracked a top ten was #5 in 88. For the record, Patera hit the top ten in 77 (#5), 80 (#4), and 82 (tied for 10th). Lawler hit #3 in 74, #6 in 75, #8 in 76, and tied for #3 in 77.

[Ricky Jackson]

Looking at the various top ten lists over the years, a lot of misleading conclusions can be read from them regarding who the actual top draws were in any given year/all-time. For example, Kamala ranks #4 in 87 because of his run against a guy, Hogan, who was in the middle of an historic run as a draw. Flair ranks #2 for 95 based almost solely on all the bonus points he received for headlining against Inoki (#3 for 95) at a show that "drew" 170,000, or whatever the number was, in North Korea. Kane is ranked so high because he main evented against all-time great draws during a period (98-01) that is generally considered the hottest ever for wrestling. Was Bossman (12 pts) really as big an all time draw as Monsoon, Pat Patterson, or Mad Dog Vachon (also 12 pts), or bigger than the Fabulous Kangaroos, El Hijo del Santo (11 points) and Bearcat Wright (10 pts), let alone Ted, JYD, and Watts? One has to be careful how they interpret the data for certain wrestlers.

[FLIK]

Yeah, in wrestling there's a big diffrence between guy who's a draw & guy who can main event opposite the draw and or main event if the draw is still on the show in a high profile position.

[JerryvonKramer]

I honestly think the "truer" metric is not looking at 10,000+ gates but at the same venue in the same town with different guys on top. Obviously, during the territory era that isn't really possible if a guy was a mainstay in one area. But that mainstay vs. people who came and went would give some indicator as to how much the mainstay was a draw in and of himself and how much the opponents were drawing.

 

This sort of thing shouldn't be too hard to find.

[cm funk]

I'm looking at the top draws issue of the WON right now (8/5 2009) and Meltzer acknowledges the less than perfect nature of the 10k criteria right away:

 

I should point out that 10,000 as the arbitrary cutoff point for much of history greatly favors wrestlers who worked on top in a few selected markets, most notably the Northeast.

Highlights from the issue regarding some points already discussed in this thread:

 

He points out how prior to the 70s there were very few 10k arenas in North America or internationally. Here is what he had to say about several territories outside of the huge metro areas and the venues they ran during the 70s and into the 80s:

 

Florida

 

...the major shows were in Miami Beach and Tampa, with 5,000 seat arenas they sold out regularly, they had some of the best and most successful wrestling but nobody from that territory could make the list.

Georgia

 

...[they did not run a 10k arena] until the opening of the Omni [my note: 1973 I believe, or maybe 72], and they only ran that semi-regularly until the City Auditorium closed down, because on a weekly basis, it was more profitable to run a 5,500 seat arena.

Memphis

 

The Nick Gulas territory was hugely successful and until they went into Memphis and the Mid-South Coliseum in the early 70s, they had no 10,000 seat arena in the circuit.

Carolinas

 

The Carolinas had the Greensboro and Richmond Coliseums, but with a small population base, the idea of drawing 10,000 there, as happened at times, was far more impressive than that sized crowd in a market like San Francisco or Philadelphia.

Meltzer then goes on to state:

 

Thus, the list is generally dominated by wrestlers who worked on top in New York, Toronto and St. Louis and other areas when they got hot like Los Angeles and San Francisco at different points in time.

and

I think the safe way to view this list is not necessarily that people not on it weren't successful draws on top, but that those who made the top ten in any year concretely were having very good years...

Meltzer, based on Farmer's research, ranks the top draws of all time based on a formula that gives points based on 1) top ten per year ranking (most 10k shows headlined in a year, 10 points for number 1, 9 points for number 2, etc, with a bonus point for drawing 20k, 30k, etc., 2) ten points for having a "dominant year" (defined by someone who drew double the number of big gates than the number 2 wrestler), and 3) a five point bonus for "breaking the record for most biggest gates drawn" (typical awkward Meltzer phrasing). Based on this, here is the top ten of all time:

 

1. Jim Londos 250

2. Bruno Sammartino 196

3. Lou Thesz 172

4. Bill Longson 159

5. Hulk Hogan 154

6. Strangler Lewis 149

7. Ric Flair 126

8. Buddy Rogers 122 (back-to-back Nature Boys)

9. Joe Stecher 99

10. Dick the Bruiser 81

 

Some notes regarding the ranking of wrestlers discussed in this thread/discussed often on this board:

 

11. The Sheik 80

13. Bob Backlund 73

14. Andre the Giant 73

15. HHH 72

26. Harley Race 43

29. Antonio Inoki 42

31. Randy Savage 40

47. Shawn Michaels 30

47. Dusty Rhodes 30

53. Bret Hart 28

55. Pedro Morales 27

56. Kane 26

56. Jerry Lawler 26

67. Kurt Angle 24

72. Ivan Koloff 23

77. Sgt. Slaughter 22

78. John Cena 21 (remember this list was done in 09, so Cena would be ranked higher today)

78. Ultimate Warrior 21

92. Nick Bockwinkel 17

100. Chris Jericho 14

100. Ken Patera 14

120. Randy Orton 11

124. Lex Luger 10

 

No Sting anywhere on the list is somewhat surprising. Anyway, I've been working on this for long enough. Maybe I'll add more later. Hopefully this has been food for thought.

 

No Austin or Rock?

[Ricky Jackson]

Well, we really don't talk about them as much as we talk about other wrestlers...or maybe we do, I don't know, I tend to focus mostly on pre-Attitude Era stuff.

 

20. Rock 55

29. Austin 42

 

Because this list was done in 2009, the Rock would maybe be ranked higher today, I'm not sure.

[Dylan Waco]

I honestly think the "truer" metric is not looking at 10,000+ gates but at the same venue in the same town with different guys on top. Obviously, during the territory era that isn't really possible if a guy was a mainstay in one area. But that mainstay vs. people who came and went would give some indicator as to how much the mainstay was a draw in and of himself and how much the opponents were drawing.

 

This sort of thing shouldn't be too hard to find.

It doesn't seem like it would be hard to find or use this method but it would be.

 

Even bigger arenas like the Philly Spectrum often don't have attendance listed for card results.

 

Then you have the issue of timing - some guys take over from one hot hand and continue a streak of success. I don't hold it against them as being able to carry the ball is important. But if there is no gap between point A and point B what conclusion can you draw?

 

Then there is the issue of card support. If a venue is used to getting title shots on every card and often draws 21k, but has no title shot and/or less star power on a show and draws 19k do you hold that as a "negative" against the main event? What if a promotion is running split crews one day and does good but not great attendance in both cities? What if an undercard is terrible on one show and good on another. What if the "main event" is a title match, but the hottest, most well promoted feud coming into the show is second or even third from the top (this is not uncommon in the WWF or AWA IMO and very possibly other places as well)?

 

I'm not saying it's impossible to draw any conclusions from that sort of research but it usually will not be anything close to concrete proof unless you find a way to adjust for those other things. Yes there are guys like Londos who would CLEARLY spike cards dramatically when he came in and the gates/attendance would fire down when he was gone only to come back up for his next appearance. But the number of guys out there like that is not very large or at least I wouldn't expect it to be. My guess is that there would be a lot more "success carrying the ball" types, than "game changing" types, particularly if you are talking over the course of a full career.

 

This is why some historians have started to point to things like world title shots and being in demand all over as good metrics of drawing power. It's not "real" data, but generally speaking if a guy is in demand all over - particularly in the biggest, hottest promotions - he's probably a guy who has a reputation of being "hot" at the box office to one degree or another.

 

My view is that you need all of the above to really draw hard conclusions and different guys have different angles which you would look at and apply things.