Wrestlers you really dislike

[King Solomon]

I guess I'm in the minority here. I loved Brody in Japan and also loved his matches with Blackwell, Flair, Gordy here in the states. I didn't like his matches with Abdullah. He had a great team with Hansen and Snuka. To me Brody had the perfect blend of brawling and mat wrestling. He also had a great aura. I'd say Brody is in my top five of favorite wrestlers.

 

I think Brody is terrible, but if people like him that's fine. Having said that I am not sure what you mean by mat wrestling. I've watched a lot of Brody over the years and don't recall him being an adept mat worker by any standard.

 

 

Just watch a lot of his Japan stuuf and matches with Ric Flair in St. Louis. If you don't think he is an adept mat wrestler then I don't know what to tell you. I loved Brody in the 80's and still love him now. If you don't like Brody that's fine but to say he was terrible is a huge stretch of anyones imagination. I have saw too many good matches from him to even entertain any viewpint that he was terrible. His peers seem to hold his work in high regard. The one issue that some of his peers have with him was his atttitude at times. In a time when a lot of guys with heavily muscled bodies came on the scene, Brody was a big guy with great athleticism and had charisma that stood out unlike some of the muscle guys that came on the scene in the 80's.

 

 

As it happens I just watched the Flair/Brody matches from St. Louis within the last couple of weeks. I actually don't hate the broadway, though I don't think it's a particularly interesting match and Brody doesn't do much in the way of matwork.

 

Brody was easier to hide in tags and he was in some pretty good matches though I don't think I've ever seen a Brody match where I thought he was the best guy in the match. I'm actually a moderate on Brody relative to some on this board. I think he was terrible for any number of reasons (near refusal to bump or show any vulnerability ever, poor/inconsistent selling, horribly weak looking strikes for a guy who was supposedly a great brawler, low energy in the ring for a guy put over as a madman, et), but I'm not as down on him as goodhelmet. Possibly not as down on him as jdw either.

 

I don't know I'm pretty sure there were matches when Brody showed vulnerability. For example, matches with Greg Gagne, Jimmy Snuka, Kamala, Ted Dibiase just off the top of my head

[Jingus]

Also, this is a pet peeve of mine but I could give a shit what other wrestlers think of his work. They don't watch the TV. Maybe Jingus will be more sympathetic to this position.

I know what you mean. People working in a media industry simply have different standards than fans of that industry. I've never known a single solitary wrestler who didn't practically worship Jerry Lynn, but lots of smarks today aren't too high on him.

 

 

Or, to use a another example: check out the once-a-decade Sight & Sound top ten lists for movies. (These are the fellows who hyped Citizen Kane into being the greatest movie of all time.) They do two different polls: one with film critics, and another with veteran directors. And every time, the two lists don't match. At best, only half the lists overlap. The directors keep voting for Raging Bull, the first two Godfather movies, Bicycle Thieves, and various others which never show up on the critics' list. Meanwhile, the critics insist that 2001, Tokyo Story, The Searchers, and Battleship Potemkin are among the definitive GOATs, while the directors mostly ignore those.

 

Which list is right? Both and neither, of course. Working in a business fundamentally changes your views on that business, giving you a different point of view from the outside customer. And what the experts think is the greatest thing ever doesn't necessarily match the tastes of the consuming public.

 

Years ago I uploaded a semi shoot interview Brody did in the 80's to my youtube account and it's dwarfed anything else i've ever put up in terms of views (20 thousand+ more then my next higest rated video) and comments almost all of which tend to be positive.

I saw that interview, it was fantastic. Brody was still using kayfabe vocabulary to explain everything, but he essentially just shot straight about a ton of topics, including being a babyface in one territory but a heel in another.

 

EDIT: for what it's worth, I still like Brody about half the time. As long as he's in there with someone he's willing to sell for, it's fine. You know that you're almost never getting a clean finish unless it's "Brody squashes and pins the other guy", but fuck-finishes and no-contests were mostly the rule of the day in the places, times, and card positions he worked. And while he was no Fujiwara on the mat, when someone forced him to do matwork (like Flair, who pretty much made Brody insert himself into the Touring Flair Formula) he was at least competent at it.

[NintendoLogic]

I thoroughly despise Abdullah the Butcher. A morbidly obese man waddling around and stabbing people with cutlery is emphatically not my idea of good wrestling. I can't stand Dump Matsumoto for similar reasons.

[King Solomon]

Hey even the Bastions of serious wrestling journalism at PWI said he was a good scientific wrestler

[goodhelmet]

I would rather watch 100 Abdullah matches than 10 Brody matches. With that said, Brody discussion has been broken off into its own thread.

[WingedEagle]

As a kid from St. Louis, and also grew up in Texas. I thought Dick the Bruiser, and Brody were the toughest men on the planet. Now watching Brody he really is bad. I want to like him , but I can't. He has good matches here and there . Though the bad far outweighs the good. As far as mat work I never saw it. King Solomon your pro Brody might be the highest marks I have seen someone give Brody except Larry Matysik.

Somehow I went to college for 4 years in St. Louis and even though it was LONG after there was no such thing as Wrestling At the Chase, the only thing that ever got me to the Chase was the bar. Still incredibly disappointed and one of my big regrets from my time there.

 

In other news, Brody still sucks. I never minded his kneedrop and appreciated his willingness to bleed, but I haven't seen too many wrestlers that sold so little or produced such little offense from such constant motion. I'm always waiting for his energy to pay off but after the ring entrance find myself constantly bored.

 

Sorry -- didn't notice the Brody thread till just now.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I always thought Ole Anderson stunk. He bored me to fucking tears. I remember hating Andersons matches even though I thought Arn was awesome. I always liked his promos, but in ring he always left me cold.

[Dylan Waco]

Ole is a great promo, but he absolutely sucks in the ring.

[KrisZ]

Ole was one of the last of the old school tough guys and he & Gene projected an image that few have ever done. You bring up wrestling to people in my area over the age of 40 that don't watch anymore will bring up him & Gene.

[rzombie1988]

On Taylor I agree that he was better as a heel, but I can't think of anything he's ever been involved in that drew me in on any level. Brad Armstrong is a guy that often got branded as a good hand who was hurt by being bland, but Brad seemed like The Rock next to Taylor. Maybe I'm watching the wrong matches.

My favorite Taylor match was his Battlebowl 1991 tag against Lex Luger and Arn Anderson. Taylor turns face during the match and the crowd eats it up. I gave it a really high rating.

[Matt D]

Lex and Arn have a really great chemistry in that match.

[Dylan Waco]

Ole was one of the last of the old school tough guys and he & Gene projected an image that few have ever done. You bring up wrestling to people in my area over the age of 40 that don't watch anymore will bring up him & Gene.

My area too Kris

 

A part of me thinks he was a more interesting wrestler to watch in the 70's.

[rzombie1988]

I don't know that anyone likes him, but Dino Bravo may be the single most boring wrestler to ever step between the ropes.

Dino Bravo is my least favorite wrestler ever. I know, good in the early 80's, but those years don't make up for all the bad WWF years.

[WingedEagle]

Ole was a phenomenal promo. The man did a great job combining evil, maniacal and intelligent. Shia LaBeouf would've gone home without his lunch rather than face off with Ole.

[ohtani's jacket]

Or, to use a another example: check out the once-a-decade Sight & Sound top ten lists for movies. (These are the fellows who hyped Citizen Kane into being the greatest movie of all time.) They do two different polls: one with film critics, and another with veteran directors. And every time, the two lists don't match. At best, only half the lists overlap. The directors keep voting for Raging Bull, the first two Godfather movies, Bicycle Thieves, and various others which never show up on the critics' list. Meanwhile, the critics insist that 2001, Tokyo Story, The Searchers, and Battleship Potemkin are among the definitive GOATs, while the directors mostly ignore those.

The directors voted Tokyo Story number one this year and 2001 joint second. The directors' top 10 films all finished in the critics' top 50 with The Bicycle Thief/Bicycle Thieves finishing the lowest at 33. That's not too bad considering 358 directors vote and 846 critics with very few of the same films appearing on ballots.

[blueminister]

I don't know/care about the methodology of the S&S poll but I think the idea that, say, The Searchers is a critical cause celebre that isn't a definitive GOAT among film directors would be news to actual film directors. You're kind of using the fact that critics place slightly greater weight on historical importance to overstate the variance of opinion in the film community. Wrestling insiders' logic in making value judgments is more insular because, unlike film, they're a deliberately insular community that internalizes the value judgments of the "other side" more into their thought process, even when they're defying it. Wrestling thought operates under a self-reflexive "workers/consumers" division that hasn't existed in film since the American New Wave.

[goodhelmet]

Some of these other topics reminded me of Dory Funk Jr.

 

Such a painful experience watching a Dory Funk Jr. match.

[KrisZ]

Depends on the Dory matches.....Dory had some runs where he didn't do the technical stuff and just was beating guys up with forearms.

[goodhelmet]

I enjoyed the two Bruiser Brody matches (shock of shocks) and the Lawler match a little. Dude, what other Dory matches are good because of Dory?

[BrickHithouse]

Never liked the Undertaker. Aside from the undead gimmick bullshit, I didn't like the idea of taking an athletic big guy and saddling him with a slow, methodical style, especially after thinking he was pretty damn good as Mean Mark. Never have liked him as an adult, a carryover from the disdain I had for the gimmick as a kid.

 

Can't stand Rey Mysterio, either. Can't really explain this one. He's a fantastic wrestler, I just don't like him at all. My wife loves the guy, and that just makes things worse.

[PeteF3]

I'm about the only guy online who still likes Dory, it seems. Even on Classics he's invariably the top guy mentioned in a "Most Overrated" thread.

 

I thought Dory was the MVP of the '75 Open League, which is not a small feat considering that was a tournament that included Baba, Jumbo, Destroyer, Harley, Murdoch, and Horst Hoffman--not to mention Dusty and Abby. Dory/Horst is a MOTYC, Dory/Jumbo looks great even though we only have the last 10 minutes of a 30-minute draw, and he even has a fun match beating the shit out of Abdullah the Butcher and actually showing some fire. It's sort of damning with faint praise but that tournament also had the best Baron Von Raschke match ever.

[Tim Evans]

I enjoyed the two Bruiser Brody matches (shock of shocks) and the Lawler match a little. Dude, what other Dory matches are good because of Dory?

I liked Dory and Marti Funk vs Carlos Colon and Moolah from Puerto Rico. I forget what year it was though. Also some of his matches from the old BANG tv show with Adam Windsor and Samson. Doubt you could find those matches though.

[JerryvonKramer]

Isn't Dory the poster boy for why a wrestler needs more than just ring skills? The reason no one likes him is because he has no charisma at all, he shows very little emotion ever. He only came alive on the All Japan set in the singles match again Brody.

 

I bet you that someone having the exact same matches as Dory, doing the exact same moves only showing intensity, emotion and so on wouldn't be half as hated on.

 

The weirdest thing for me though is that while Dory gets a lot of heat from pretty much everyone for being boring as hell, no one ever even seems to talk about Jack Brisco. I mean at least people talk about Dory, even if it's only to rag on him. Brisco had a rep as the GOAT for ages and these days is more or less ignored. Name never even comes up in the GOAT discussions.

[Dylan Waco]

There is less footage of Jack as a singles guy than Dory

[soup23]

Qualifying this a bit because I know there is a ton more of the guy I need to see, but people have been pimping Satanico as a WOTYC for 1990 and 6 months in, I am just not seeing it. I would not call him a bad worker at all but I would safely have Dandy, Atlantis, and Azteca ahead of him for the year just in Mexico. I look forward to hopefully my opinion changing.