Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair

[Loss]

Why can't I find the post you guys are quoting about checking whether or not the hypothesis gels? Who made that post?

[NintendoLogic]

OJ.

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...p;#entry5530949

[Dylan Waco]

I want to be clear about this with the understanding coming in that some people will think I'm being mean or an asshole or that I may hurt some people's feelings - I don't really think any sane person believes that. I think that's total bullshit or the position of insane people. If it wasn't why would we ever watch people's work past their prime? Why include it on the yearbooks?

The argument is not that it's irrelevant in the sense that watching it is meaningless. It's that Greatest of All Time is the highest possible bar, and debating the GOAT is a very specific argument. You can appreciate things a wrestler did post-prime without factoring them into the thought process for GOAT discussions.

 

But since we're talking about it, I'm relatively sure I haven't seen anything that Funk or Lawler has done in the 90s or 2000s that touches Flair/Vader at Starrcade '93, the Ironman with Bret, the Flair/Steamboat matches in '94, Arn at Fall Brawl, the marathon performance that the Royal Rumble, the Regal series or the Tenryu matches from SWS. They have probably had some stuff that's as good as Flair's best matches with Hogan and Savage. But if anything, by ignoring that stuff, I am selling Flair short, not inflating his case to stack the deck in his favor.

 

I think Flair was a good wrestler through 94 (I don't think Flair v. Arn is even close to as good as a lot of post-94 Flair and Lawler, but that's neither here nor there). I can see no good reason not to include that stuff at bare minimum in a discussion of him as a GOATC. I have no clue why we are supposed to pretend that guys good performances aren't a factor in how we assess their careers in the context of GOAT discussion. It makes zero sense to me on any level. I just can't take that opinion seriously at all. The idea that we just say "well these matches might be good, hell they might be great, but they are after the arbitrary cutoff we have established for when they are allowed to count in a GOAT calculus" is a position that strikes me as far more bizarre and at odds with how I view wrestling than "Bret Hart is better than Ric Flair."

[anarchistxx]

To gleefully use a BOB DYLAN example, we're like some old guy who thinks the latest Dylan album is better than any of today's new music.

This is how I feel about the praise for Jerry Lawler.

 

It's like the music forum I'm on, where most people's end of year lists have a blend of new guys and old guys, of electronic, hip hop, jazz, soul, hyped records, indie rock, RnB, ambient, metal etc. Jessie Ware, VFTL, Actress, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Beach House, OF, Allo Darlin, Andy Stott, whatever has clicked.

 

And then you'll have a few of the older guys who will all have Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bill Fay, Van Halen as their top five, and inist the old guys are still putting out music better than anyone else. They are the Jerry Lawler's and Black Terry's and Terry Funk's. The same guys never list the latest Beach Boys or Paul McCartney though - they are Ric Flair and Hogan, good in their time but well past it now.

 

--

 

I don't really want to get into this argument, as I've only seen a handful of the matches over the past few years, so I'll bow out before my argument gets destroyed and abused. Just wanted to agree with the analogy.

[Dylan Waco]

I just want to note that I think it is hilarious that people are still voting in this poll daily.

[Dylan Waco]

To gleefully use a BOB DYLAN example, we're like some old guy who thinks the latest Dylan album is better than any of today's new music.

This is how I feel about the praise for Jerry Lawler.

 

It's like the music forum I'm on, where most people's end of year lists have a blend of new guys and old guys, of electronic, hip hop, jazz, soul, hyped records, indie rock, RnB, ambient, metal etc. Jessie Ware, VFTL, Actress, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Beach House, OF, Allo Darlin, Andy Stott, whatever has clicked.

 

And then you'll have a few of the older guys who will all have Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bill Fay, Van Halen as their top five, and inist the old guys are still putting out music better than anyone else. They are the Jerry Lawler's and Black Terry's and Terry Funk's. The same guys never list the latest Beach Boys or Paul McCartney though - they are Ric Flair and Hogan, good in their time but well past it now.

 

--

 

I don't really want to get into this argument, as I've only seen a handful of the matches over the past few years, so I'll bow out before my argument gets destroyed and abused. Just wanted to agree with the analogy.

 

Black Terry is a terrible argument. You can make the argument about Lawler if you want, but it requires an actual argument and not a run-in post. You freely admit you aren't going to do that so I guess I should treat this as a troll post. Still BT is a really terrible argument here because no one was touting Black Terry as a god among men until he got old/recently.

[anarchistxx]

It isn't a troll post, just a badly worded expansion on what I thought was a good analogy. As I said just about everyone in this thread is more knowledgeable and articulate on the subject then I am, so a long argument is only a waste of time for all involved. On the recent Jerry Lawler matches I've seen I would find it entirely absurd to put him in even a top thirty in the world, but that is symbiotic of the change of fashion regarding smark tastes.

 

As for Black Terry, I'm only going on the handful of pimped matches I've seen - an old guy working a fairly limited style who got praised a lot by people who liked the matches far more than I did. He never seemed to get effusive praise before, indeed his name had never cropped up particularly to my knowledge until 2007 or so, as you say yourself. Bill Fay is maybe the better musical analogy to him - a guy who went fairly unknown and forgotten for years, before releasing a 2012 album which gained a lot of hype for what was in effect just basic traditional songwriting and a classic pretty archaic sounding style.

[Dylan Waco]

I cannot imagine anyone thinking Black Terry was average/middling if they had watched the matches that were pimped in 2010. Even people who have drastically different wrestling tastes than me and drastically different Lucha tastes than me thought those matches were great. I want to know what pimped matches you watched, but maybe this isn't the thread to have that discussion.

[El-P]

Simon Reynolds approves Dan's posts.

 

(so, is it ok to use the word "trend" now ?)

[ohtani's jacket]

I was around when you first started posting online as you may recall. People definitely didn't want Hogan on top, but I seem to recall an unbelievably devotion to the notion of Ric Flair as the best ever to the point where people would argue that his work in the second half of the 90's was still outstanding and among the best in the world.

I remember a lot of sentimentality surrounding Flair due to the way Bischoff had treated him and his return to Nitro. One group of fans seemed to want him to reunite the Horsemen with Arn and Benoit and Malenko and have one last glory run and another group of fans wanted him to jump to the WWF and be Vince's corporate champion and have one last glory run against Austin. As I recall, there were a lot of guys at the time who claimed to be reared on Crockett who hated Vince and the WWF and death rode him during the difficult points in '97 (finances, Pillman's death, Montreal) and were gleeful during WCW's big business run. On the other hand, you had WWF fans who thought every Tuesday when the WWF won the ratings was like their team winning the Super Bowl and that if anybody jumped from WCW to WWF it was one more nail in Turner's coffin, but I don't remember Flair being an internet darling work-wise. People fantasy booked him, but Benoit and Foley were the internet darlings.

 

In fact back then the Flair boosters were insistent that longevity was the key to accessing wrestlers and that isolating peak above longevity was a literally insane position. As long as I've known you you've been a peak guy. I use to be a Flair booster and a longevity guy. Now I don't think longevity is the most important thing in the world and that peak is more important. But I don't think having good matches post prime is literally irrelevant, nor can I treat that opinion seriously.

I agree that Flair boosters would have pointed to his longevity back then, but bear in mind that circa '98 he was only four years past arguably the last good year of his career. They hadn't seen the second WWF run yet. He hadn't quite soiled his legacy as he may have today.

 

If you have good matches past your prime then a lot of wrestling fans will say "thanks, I'll take that," but I don't care about Flair's good matches post 1990/91, so why should I care about Lawler and Funk's good matches? Are they really that good that I'm going to change my mind about them? I like Funk's run in WCW in '94 a great deal, but it doesn't make me think anymore of Funk and I wouldn't have thought any less of him if it didn't happen. It's not as though it's some kind of eye opener about how good Terry Funk was and how we just never knew.

 

And what was Flair supposed to? Traverse the indies? Work shows in one territory for two decades? Funk and Lawler were at a certain level in wrestling where they were respected names without being the biggest names in the business and could adapt and thrive on smaller stages. Flair is one of the bigger names in the history of the sport and demanded a larger spotlight. It's difficult to imagine Flair following a similar trajectory as Funk and I don't see where there was anywhere for him to fit in like Lawler. I mean, on some level wasn't Lawler a commentator and part time wrestler and wasn't Funk working the indies? Was that really for Flair? What was he supposed to do exactly?

 

The big difference now is that different old guys are being pimped because the landscape has changed. The idea that Bock gets special points in the rear view because of "veteran appreciation" is just bizarre - people may not have been praising Bock as much back then but he was always regarded as good and the Hennig matches are about the only 80's AWA matches anyone talked about with regularity up until the release of the AWA 80's sets. The idea that no one thought Terry Funk's post-prime was really good is just silly. I exist and on top of that the number of ECW marks on the net back then was unbelievable.

Firstly, I want to know if you think that 80s Bockwinkel is one of the best workers of the decade, because if you don't then what I'm about to say is redundant, but do you really think that up until the release of the 80s AWA set that people would have contemplated Nick Bockwinkel, in his 50s, as one of the best workers of the 80s? I'm talking about the concept not whether Bockwinkel was watched 15 years ago. I know that Bockwinkel wasn't watched 15 years ago. The concept of Bockwinkel being great in the 80s and great in his 50s could not existed without the present mindset. That's my argument.

 

I don't think anyone considered Funk the GOAT back then. I know that you always mentioned him as a guy you considered a GOAT contender and that you've always been consistent with that, but if there were were people sreaming "look at how good this ECW stuff is, Funk must be the GOAT" I wasn't paying attention.

 

There have always been some old guys that were seen with favor and some that weren't. The difference now is that there are people who think lots of the old guys are best in the world level in real time.

Who was seen in favour? Was Baba seen in favour? Was Choshu seen in favour? Didn't that Williams guy try to get people to see those two differently? Was Perro seen in favour? Caras? Mascara Ano 2000? Universo 2000? How about Hogan and Piper? Sure there were Funks and Hamadas and guys I may have forgotten, but wasn't Atlantis vs. Villano quite an exception when it won MOTY in 2000?

 

I'm not holding it against Flair. I'm saying it's a plus for Funk and Lawler. It's not a negative for Flair unless you want to make it such by stressing output as the be all and end all.

If you're comparing the three then how can it be a positive for two and not a negative for the other? That doesn't seem like an even playing field.

 

If you do that I see no way that you can say "some output matters and other output doesn't" unless you are just outright lobbying and trying to figure out the best argument for your preferred guy. We all do that to one extent or the other, but I prefer it not be that blatant. Loss has clarified his view and I'm not accusing him of that, but there was confusion.

It seems to me that Loss is trying to find output from a comparative period. If Funk, Lawler and Flair were all in their primes during roughly the same time then you ought to be able to compare their output from their best years. Hence, there's no need to bring post-prime work into the equation because you're essentially comparing when they went head-to-head. They all have footage missing from the 80s, they're all iconic 80s workers with strong runs, honestly who cares which of them was better in 2011? It might as well be a footnote when it comes to comparing them as workers.

 

But yes I do think it is "important" enough to note that guys continued to be good after their prime. Frankly I can't think of a single reason why you would exclude that from a discussion. It does not mean you favor longevity over peak. It means you don't pretend huge chunks of people's careers that were good don't exit.

You'd exclude it from the discussion because it's not important. If you take a film director, you look at the films he made during his artistic and commercial prime first. You don't look at the films he made when he couldn't get funding or he was no longer given A-list projects. If he had a swang song, great, but if he didn't (and most don't), you throw it out. I have never seen an argument about film where a director's oeuvre was considered in its entirety. The early films where they're still finding their feet are chucked out, and the latter films where they're washed up are chucked out and what you're left with is the best that they were capable of. Some critics and fans may find the early pictures interesting as well as the latter day efforts, but I think it's only natural to look for the best in everything.

 

Beside, I don't think it's necessarily convenient to chuck out Flair's post-prime. I find myself agreeing with Loss on a lot of this. Flair has a lot of stuff that holds up against Funk's stuff and Lawler's stuff post 1990. As far as I can tell, the sum total of Lawler's good WWF output is five or six matches. The Kiss My Foot stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see, the Jake Roberts stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see. Loss has mentioned some of the things he's found annoying about Lawler on the 1990 yearbook. Flair's been examined and re-examined for years now. Turn the microscope on Lawler and it might not be so pretty. It is way too easy to say that because Lawler had the odd good match here and there from Memphis that showed up on tape that he's been good for centuries. And the mindset is totally different. People want to find good Lawler matches. They go trawling for good Lawler matches. I respect that. That's the best possible use of the internet in terms of wrestling fandom. But do you honestly think that people go looking for great past his prime Flair matches? I don't think people watch a random WCW television match from '97 and say "wow, Flair was still good here." It's always a bit disappointing because people have an image of prime Flair that they don't have of Terry Funk or Jerry Lawler. I think it's much, much easier to say that a '97 Lawler match is a bigger positive than a '97 Flair match without going into details.

 

And this is where we disagree. I think there is plenty Funk and Lawler did post-90 that is good enough to note in a GOAT conversation. I don't think Flair has as much and he certainly has much lower lows than the other two. Even if you want to ignore Flair's lows (which I don't really have a problem with), I think Funk and Lawler were both more interesting wrestlers, with better performances than Flair from 94 onward at the latest.

You're probably right, but I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why it matters. I understand that you think it strengthens Funk and Lawler's case, but to me, take Stan Hansen for example. If Hansen had never had the 1993 that he had, I don't think it would make an iota of difference how I would appraise him as an 80s worker against Funk, Flair and Lawler and as an all-time worker on the basis of that. And his '93 was better than anything Funk, Flair or Lawler did from the 90s onwards, arguably. It's a feather in the cap not a dagger.

 

I've written hundreds and thousands of words about both over the years. I have zero problem with someone disagreeing. But when some starts from the position of "eh, Lawler fan writing this, who gives a fuck" which is basically how I took your statement (and see no reason to take it otherwise frankly), then what's the point of engaging them at all? Why have a message board? Why not just allow my thoughts to be self contained if everyone is going to immediately start from the position of "X is fanboy for Y" without at least considering why that is the case?

I've read a lot of your stuff. I know you have no problem with people disagreeing and that you're always up for a debate. Like I said, I'm dealing with hypotheticals here. You're laying out your opinion on Lawler in the past few years like it's an accepted fact, in a GOAT argument. As far as I'm aware, not too many people argue with that opinion. Maybe some guys here, on Wrestling KO, deathvalleydriver, I don't know. I haven't seen the matches and I don't know whether I'd agree, but that's not important for the sake of my argument. I just don't see how you can drop that in a GOAT argument. It's so fringe and carries so much weight if it were verified that it's just a throwaway comment in my eyes. I mean, if you're going to say that Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2010 or 2011, twenty years after the hypothetical cut-off point that has been suggested, that's a huge statement. You don't get too many people in entertainment fields who show up twenty years later and are the very best at what they do. That makes Lawler really special. Is he deserving of being singled out like that? I'll assume you think he is.

 

All of that is fine and dandy and you can think those opinions are stupid. But if you don't tell me why those opinions are stupid, I'm probably just going to assume you are a dumbass troll and nothing you ever say should be treated seriously. Anybody who wants to look can see things I've written or said about Lawler in 2011 or Funk in general with very little effort. As throwaway lines in this thread they don't mean much and I'm not going to break down in detail what I like about those respective things here because the general point isn't about them, it's about the viewpoint that ALL post-prime work is completely irrelevant in assessing someone's career as an all time great.

It depends on the nature of the post-prime work. From what I have seen, Black Terry and Navarro are better now than they were in their primes and I would include both of them as all-time great luchadores. Casas has managed to stay relevant by working well with younger talent and is arguably the ultimate adapter. Panther I would kind of call bullshit on the past few years adding to his status as an all-time great because I think he's clearly physically past his prime and I don't like his present style anywhere near as much as the work from his prime. I think it works on a case by case basis, but for the sake of GOAT arguments you've got to apply it evenly to everyone and I just don't see it as useful.

 

I want to be clear about this with the understanding coming in that some people will think I'm being mean or an asshole or that I may hurt some people's feelings - I don't really think any sane person believes that. I think that's total bullshit or the position of insane people. If it wasn't why would we ever watch people's work past their prime? Why include it on the yearbooks? Why ever talk about how guys have adapted well as their bodies have broken down? Why bother to give our opinions on anything that doesn't occur within someone's prime as a wrestler if it is completely and totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and can add nothing at all to our understanding of a particular wrestler?

Of course it adds to your understanding of a particular wrestler, but it adds to your understanding of their career not whether they're the greatest of all-time. Theoretically, the GOAT doesn't need to have a great post-prime. Theoretically, the greatest of all-time could have been cut down in his or her prime. It is in no way, shape or form a necessity to have been good post-prime. If you're going to be a stickler about it, you might as well say that a good wrestler has to have a good post-prime and make a rule of it.

 

This isn't even about GOAT at this point to me, it's about the idea that ONLY people's primes matter at all and everything else is trivial bonus material at worst. I don't respect that opinion.

 

This isn't about longevity for longevity's sake. I have zero problem with someone saying that peak should matter the most, or even that peak should matter far more than anything else. But the idea that anything that occurs outside of someone's peak is "eh, whatever" material? I can't wrap my head around it as a concept at all.

Because everybody gets a peak no matter how good they may be. Post-peak nothing is guaranteed. The idea that there are these smart wrestlers who truly get it and are great into their 50s, to me, overlooks the fact that it's a crapshot whether you'll even get to your 50s as a worker. Not many do, whether they're good, bad or indifferent. If you're going to have a GOAT argument then you need to find the fairest way to do it and when you have guys whose careers overlap each other's as easily as Flair, Funk and Lawler's do then it's really easy to compare peak with peak. If it were a dead heat then maybe you could bring the extraneous stuff in, but where would be the fun in that? Best guy from the 80s sets is the most fun argument from my point of view. 1990s, there are better workers to argue about.

[ohtani's jacket]

To gleefully use a BOB DYLAN example, we're like some old guy who thinks the latest Dylan album is better than any of today's new music.

This is how I feel about the praise for Jerry Lawler.

 

It's like the music forum I'm on, where most people's end of year lists have a blend of new guys and old guys, of electronic, hip hop, jazz, soul, hyped records, indie rock, RnB, ambient, metal etc. Jessie Ware, VFTL, Actress, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Beach House, OF, Allo Darlin, Andy Stott, whatever has clicked.

 

And then you'll have a few of the older guys who will all have Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bill Fay, Van Halen as their top five, and inist the old guys are still putting out music better than anyone else. They are the Jerry Lawler's and Black Terry's and Terry Funk's. The same guys never list the latest Beach Boys or Paul McCartney though - they are Ric Flair and Hogan, good in their time but well past it now.

 

--

 

I don't really want to get into this argument, as I've only seen a handful of the matches over the past few years, so I'll bow out before my argument gets destroyed and abused. Just wanted to agree with the analogy.

 

I think there's some truth to this, but I will say that guys like Dylan or Phil watch just about everything.

[Loss]

I want to be clear about this with the understanding coming in that some people will think I'm being mean or an asshole or that I may hurt some people's feelings - I don't really think any sane person believes that. I think that's total bullshit or the position of insane people. If it wasn't why would we ever watch people's work past their prime? Why include it on the yearbooks?

The argument is not that it's irrelevant in the sense that watching it is meaningless. It's that Greatest of All Time is the highest possible bar, and debating the GOAT is a very specific argument. You can appreciate things a wrestler did post-prime without factoring them into the thought process for GOAT discussions.

 

But since we're talking about it, I'm relatively sure I haven't seen anything that Funk or Lawler has done in the 90s or 2000s that touches Flair/Vader at Starrcade '93, the Ironman with Bret, the Flair/Steamboat matches in '94, Arn at Fall Brawl, the marathon performance that the Royal Rumble, the Regal series or the Tenryu matches from SWS. They have probably had some stuff that's as good as Flair's best matches with Hogan and Savage. But if anything, by ignoring that stuff, I am selling Flair short, not inflating his case to stack the deck in his favor.

 

I think Flair was a good wrestler through 94 (I don't think Flair v. Arn is even close to as good as a lot of post-94 Flair and Lawler, but that's neither here nor there). I can see no good reason not to include that stuff at bare minimum in a discussion of him as a GOATC. I have no clue why we are supposed to pretend that guys good performances aren't a factor in how we assess their careers in the context of GOAT discussion. It makes zero sense to me on any level. I just can't take that opinion seriously at all. The idea that we just say "well these matches might be good, hell they might be great, but they are after the arbitrary cutoff we have established for when they are allowed to count in a GOAT calculus" is a position that strikes me as far more bizarre and at odds with how I view wrestling than "Bret Hart is better than Ric Flair."

 

If I haven't already, it's worth clarifying this point. I think good performances in isolation are nice, but they don't tell us much. They aren't part of a larger run of high-quality work. And the run is what I'm interested in when discussing the GOAT. Flair's high-quality run, his prime, was over by the time those matches happened. I think most aging great wrestlers are capable of pulling a three to four-star match out on occasion after the glory days are over. Give me four good matches from a wrestler that happened over a five-year period, or four good matches that happened from another wrestler over a two-month period, and I will pick the wrestler who had the two-month run every time. It's the succession that's impressive to me, because it demonstrates that the match wasn't a fluke. I think it's also harder to have a series of good matches in a short period of time than it is to just have one and then disappear. This is why I value the prime so much, because that's usually when this sort of thing happens.

 

Wrestlers who have great matches that pop up on tape a time or two a year are just that -- wrestlers who have great matches that pop up on tape a time or two a year. It's definitely better than having bad matches pop up, but it's not enough to make anyone a GOAT. I'd say the same thing if we were getting 2-3 praiseworthy Ric Flair matches a year now.

[El-P]

If you take a film director, you look at the films he made during his artistic and commercial prime first. You don't look at the films he made when he couldn't get funding or he was no longer given A-list projects. If he had a swang song, great, but if he didn't (and most don't), you throw it out. I have never seen an argument about film where a director's oeuvre was considered in its entirety.

Seriously ? I mean, maybe it is because here in France the auteur theory pretty much still is the predominant cinema critic ideology, but to me it's pretty much always what happens when discussing the merits of directors.

 

(this is a footnote in the discussion though, as I pretty much agree with a lot of what you're saying here. I've watched most of the famous Lawler matches in the WWE the last few years, and thought it was "fun for a 60 year old guy", but to hear about Lawler being a great wrestler in 2011/12 is just insane to me. I have seen some indy stuff he did from earlier in the decade too, mostly against Funk, and again it was "fun for what it was". Then again, I don't think Jerry Lawler is a GOAT worker either)

[Childs]

Count me in the camp that thinks it's bizarre to discount everything a guy does post-peak. It seems to me that finding a way to crank out productive years past your physical prime is absolutely characteristic of the best of the best. It's certainly treated that way in sports. If you're comparing the greatest basketball players, do you just toss out everything Kareem did after 1981? Of course not. The fact that a faded Kareem was able to remain a significant offensive force on elite teams for another five or six years is a testament to how great he really was.

 

Now, if you believe Flair's peak was so much better than Funk's that it wipes out any advantage Funk might have in mid-40s adaptability, that's a fine argument. It's also fine to argue that Flair's best post-peak performances were better than Funk's. But if you concede that Funk had a better post-peak career and refuse to count that as a point to his advantage, I don't get it.

 

And I don't think it's a performance art is different than sports thing. When we talk about Bob Dylan's legacy, it matters that he was able to come back with "Blood on the Tracks" in 1975 and that he was able to put his old man croak to great use on "Love and Theft." I'm not a hardcore film geek, but isn't Scorsese's ability to do vital work in the last 20 years part of the reason he blows away a contemporary like Brian De Palma?

 

I'm totally on the board with the idea that peak matters most, but I'm suspicious of anyone who categorically refuses to look at the whole picture.

[Loss]

Who categorically refuses to look at it? Definitely not me, and not OJ either. I have watched six yearbooks chock full of Ric Flair matches, angles and promos, and I'm in the early stages of a seventh one. But this is a GOAT conversation, not a debate over how long a wrestler is good, or even the usefulness of watching and enjoying wrestling that takes place after the peak years are over.

 

Terry Funk doesn't have a Blood On The Tracks in the 90s or 2000s. He just doesn't. Neither does Jerry Lawler. For that analogy to work, Terry Funk would need to be having U.S. indy matches that were as good as anything happening in the entire world during the same time period. Blood on the Tracks was as good as any popular music in 1975. Funk didn't. He had some good stuff. So did Flair. So did Lawler. None of them were Misawa, Liger or Kobashi.

 

When a wrestler's case has been made, I don't see anything they can do afterwards to undo it. Hulk Hogan stayed on top too long and started actively turning people off of WCW, to a point where WWF midcarders were drawing higher quarter hours. He is now working in a useless wrestling promotion that can't draw viewers or generate PPV buys. Does this in any way impact the argument for Hulk Hogan as the biggest wrestling star of all time? No, because no one compares Hogan in 2000 under Vince Russo's booking to Steve Austin as the Sheriff of Monday Night RAW in 2004 when they're trying to make a point about their relative stardom. And why would they? So why the focus on old, broken down Flair? It doesn't change who he was once upon a time. Nothing he does now can.

[Dylan Waco]

If you have good matches past your prime then a lot of wrestling fans will say "thanks, I'll take that," but I don't care about Flair's good matches post 1990/91, so why should I care about Lawler and Funk's good matches? Are they really that good that I'm going to change my mind about them? I like Funk's run in WCW in '94 a great deal, but it doesn't make me think anymore of Funk and I wouldn't have thought any less of him if it didn't happen. It's not as though it's some kind of eye opener about how good Terry Funk was and how we just never knew.

 

And what was Flair supposed to? Traverse the indies? Work shows in one territory for two decades? Funk and Lawler were at a certain level in wrestling where they were respected names without being the biggest names in the business and could adapt and thrive on smaller stages. Flair is one of the bigger names in the history of the sport and demanded a larger spotlight. It's difficult to imagine Flair following a similar trajectory as Funk and I don't see where there was anywhere for him to fit in like Lawler. I mean, on some level wasn't Lawler a commentator and part time wrestler and wasn't Funk working the indies? Was that really for Flair? What was he supposed to do exactly?

I like Funk's run in 94 a lot period, whether it be SMW, WCW, ECW, random indies, FMW, et. In 93 he had some indy matches I love and a match with Tony St. Clair from Europe that blew me away when I watched it on Will's set. In 97 - when you could easily argue he was physically shot - I couldn't believe how good he was in the ECW stuff I watched, especially in non-t.v. matches where he easily could have done very little to nothing and people would have been happy to see him.

 

Last night I watched Funk v. Windham from PR in 86. I love the match, though there are flaws with it that would drive some people crazy. I also really love the Martel match from the same tourney. I also really enjoy Terry's run in the WWF for what it is, though you could argue there are no great matches, just a string of good matches with Terry carrying shitty/green/old as dirt guys to entertaining and watchable matches.

 

I am being told that 85-86 should count in his calculus because it's between 76-89. 90-97 apparently can't at all. Even 94 which we agree is a very good year for Funk (forgive me if "very good" is something you think is excessive) can't count. This despite the fact that you could argue that Funk's performances and output were better in 94, more varied in 94 and there was more meat in 94. It still can't count because it didn't take place during the right period. Those Funk v. Hogan matches (which I love to be fair), which are as formula driven and samey as any matches you'll ever see? Well they can count, but Funk having great matches with Sabu and Shane Douglas on house shows (one of which where he flipped to work heel because of setting and it was like a switch going off and completely seamless) in 97 can't because he was past his prime physically and it wasn't at the level of his 1989 work.

 

Now it may be true that Funk in 94 won't make you think anymore of Funk - but it does make me think more of Funk because he was still going, still doing good shit, still working at a high level. More to the point if Funk had never worked WWF or PR in 85/86 would you think less of him? I very much doubt it. But somehow that counts in the calculus solely because of when it occurred? You will never convince me that is a sensible way to talk about wrestling, GOAT or otherwise.

 

On the particulars of Flair he could have changed his style working in the big leagues or at least amended it to reflect new realities. He did that eventually and I thought the results were good. But it took him a long time. I'm not even saying he should have become American Onita in 1997, just that the "well what the hell was he supposed to do?" excuse doesn't carry a lot of weight with me (or truck...doesn't truck...that is the phrase right?). Hogan was the biggest babyface in the history of wrestling, when he got stale and people starting ripping his head off of their foam fingers he went heel and reinvented himself (which improved his in ring work too at that point if you want to keep the comparison tight). Surely you wouldn't argue that Flair adapting his work in mild ways to reflect his declining athletic skill set would be more difficult and/or radical than that?

 

 

Firstly, I want to know if you think that 80s Bockwinkel is one of the best workers of the decade, because if you don't then what I'm about to say is redundant, but do you really think that up until the release of the 80s AWA set that people would have contemplated Nick Bockwinkel, in his 50s, as one of the best workers of the 80s? I'm talking about the concept not whether Bockwinkel was watched 15 years ago. I know that Bockwinkel wasn't watched 15 years ago. The concept of Bockwinkel being great in the 80s and great in his 50s could not existed without the present mindset. That's my argument.

 

I don't think anyone considered Funk the GOAT back then. I know that you always mentioned him as a guy you considered a GOAT contender and that you've always been consistent with that, but if there were were people sreaming "look at how good this ECW stuff is, Funk must be the GOAT" I wasn't paying attention.

I think it's pretty clear that Bock is one of the best wrestlers of the 80's. I also don't even think it's open for debate that there were people who thought he was one of the best in the 80's years ago. It's something I have heard for years from a very select group of fans that grew up on the AWA and/or had actually watched AWA. The difference now isn't some sort of "veteran appreciation in reverse" gimmick being worked by message board posters. It's that people are actually getting to watch the matches. I don't want to speak for Matt D, but fuck it I'll speak for Matt D when I say that a guy like Bock is pretty his exact kind of wrestler. And I don't think that's because Bock was older then. Hell he sure doesn't look old in those matches.

 

On Funk I always considered him as you know. In the SC poll I voted him second under Flair, but that was at a point when I was operating far more on rep than rewatching and thinking about the matches. That's not to say I wouldn't think about Flair for number one now if we were ever to do it again because I would. That's also not saying Funk was seen as the GOAT back then because of ECW, but you are moving the goal posts there. On this point the question was "were old guys getting significant praise over six yeas ago." And I think Flair, Funk and even Bock show that the answer is yes.

 

Who was seen in favour? Was Baba seen in favour? Was Choshu seen in favour? Didn't that Williams guy try to get people to see those two differently? Was Perro seen in favour? Caras? Mascara Ano 2000? Universo 2000? How about Hogan and Piper? Sure there were Funks and Hamadas and guys I may have forgotten, but wasn't Atlantis vs. Villano quite an exception when it won MOTY in 2000?

See above. I also wouldn't use WON as a metric of meaning in this discussion. I don't think it's ever been heavy on pushing Lucha, certainly not since the height of AAA. Even now I don't see Dave or his readers giving old guys any sort of push. Casas/Panther getting any kind of showing in this years Awards was a near miracle. WON readers don't give a fuck about IWRG, Jerry Lawler indy matches and care a lot less about Finlay than people who are on boards like this or DVDVR.

 

If you're comparing the three then how can it be a positive for two and not a negative for the other? That doesn't seem like an even playing field.

I'm not interested in an even playing field. I'm interested in trying to see who I think is better.

 

There is no objective metric and I don't really understand why we have to pretend we can get to one. Even if we stick with peak alone it's not "fair." The peaks of Funk and Lawler are longer than the peak of Flair according to you. That's not a "level playing field." At his peak I don't think Flair was near the level of El Dandy, but Dandy's peak was shorter (so far as the footage tells us anyhow). I guess if we are being fair we should isolate Flair's best three consecutive years with Dandy's so we can level that playing field. There are a lot of people who thinks Funk's absolute peak were those six months in 89. Maybe we should scrap ever thing else for the purposes of the GOAT debate and look solely at the best six months of each guy in order to be fair and level the playing field. Then again that might not be fair either. We would need to make sure they wrestled the same number of matches. Even then you'd probably want to adjust for booking advantage, otherwise the playing field isn't even. Also might want to note who worked gimmick matches, how many studio matches there were, who the opposition was so we could make a straight comparison on the talent they were working with, et. Then we might get CLOSE to evening out that playing field. Maybe. But without knowing certain climate and environmental factors how could be sure? We would probably need to assess the pollen count in the Carolina's. Hey, Bock worked Denver, what effect does the high altitude have on the ability to work long? We can keep figuring and we might get close to even eventually.

 

Or we could admit that an even playing field isn't possible because people have different careers. You have to do the best with what you've got.

 

It seems to me that Loss is trying to find output from a comparative period. If Funk, Lawler and Flair were all in their primes during roughly the same time then you ought to be able to compare their output from their best years. Hence, there's no need to bring post-prime work into the equation because you're essentially comparing when they went head-to-head. They all have footage missing from the 80s, they're all iconic 80s workers with strong runs, honestly who cares which of them was better in 2011? It might as well be a footnote when it comes to comparing them as workers.

Where is the Flair footage from the 70's relative to the Funk or Lawler footage? That's not fair! We should probably toss that aside. Now they did basically go head-to-head with footage we can point to from 82-08 or so. But evidently head-to-head ONLY matters during prime years. Everything else is irrelevant or trivial. Sure there might be plenty of good stuff post-prime. Sure there may be years in a guys alleged "prime" where we have little footage (or at least little pimped footage), but hey it's in that arbitrary period where we are allowed to consider it in discussing ALL TIME performance, so we'll pretend that's not true or somehow doesn't matter. Sure there may be periods after a prime where a wrestler has better performances and more output than he did during periods in his prime, but that's just a quirk and we can't make exceptions in our objective assessment tool or the space time continuum might fracture. Sure there may be years after someone's prime when they manage to be one of the better guys in their country or on earth, but what can that really tell us about their prime and since prime is all that matters in a discussion about the greatest of ALL TIME, we have to be honest with ourselves and just admit those years didn't really happen.

 

You'd exclude it from the discussion because it's not important.

To you it's not important. I don't agree. At all. On any level.

 

Beside, I don't think it's necessarily convenient to chuck out Flair's post-prime. I find myself agreeing with Loss on a lot of this. Flair has a lot of stuff that holds up against Funk's stuff and Lawler's stuff post 1990. As far as I can tell, the sum total of Lawler's good WWF output is five or six matches. The Kiss My Foot stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see, the Jake Roberts stuff is some of the worst shit you'll ever see. Loss has mentioned some of the things he's found annoying about Lawler on the 1990 yearbook.

I don't care if it's convenient. I'm not trying to throw Flair in the trash and say he's not the GOAT. I'm merely arguing that post-prime isn't an irrelevancy in GOAT discussion. There is stuff post-prime that would help Flair's case.

 

On Lawler I think he had more than five or six good matches in the WWE in the last couple of years so we just disagree. I also disagree with Loss about Lawler as a heel and think things like Arn v. Flair which he really likes and that Flair v. Luger match from the Clash in 90 which he really likes were really disappointing and/or very by the numbers matches that did little for me.

 

I would rather talk about those things then pretend they don't exist.

 

Flair's been examined and re-examined for years now. Turn the microscope on Lawler and it might not be so pretty. It is way too easy to say that because Lawler had the odd good match here and there from Memphis that showed up on tape that he's been good for centuries. And the mindset is totally different. People want to find good Lawler matches. They go trawling for good Lawler matches. I respect that. That's the best possible use of the internet in terms of wrestling fandom. But do you honestly think that people go looking for great past his prime Flair matches? I don't think people watch a random WCW television match from '97 and say "wow, Flair was still good here." It's always a bit disappointing because people have an image of prime Flair that they don't have of Terry Funk or Jerry Lawler. I think it's much, much easier to say that a '97 Lawler match is a bigger positive than a '97 Flair match without going into details.

I think most of the people who pimp Lawler do go into the details. If you disagree please point to big time Lawler advocates known for arguing by assertion. We lived through an era of "Flair is still great" post-prime. If you don't remember it that's fine, but I do. There were people arguing Flair was one of the best wrestlers in the States during his Evolution period where he was horrendous to the point where I honestly think he may have been the worst wrestler on the planet. There were lots of people arguing that he could still go in the last couple of years of WCW. Do people look for past-prime Flair matches now? Well I've talked about the American Onita run many times and did so in real time so there is that. If someone wanted to go back and look at late WCW for Flair matches they love there is nothing stopping them. It's not my fault that the perception is that Flair sullied his legacy and a lot of people think Lawler managed to stay pretty good.

 

You're probably right, but I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why it matters. I understand that you think it strengthens Funk and Lawler's case, but to me, take Stan Hansen for example. If Hansen had never had the 1993 that he had, I don't think it would make an iota of difference how I would appraise him as an 80s worker against Funk, Flair and Lawler and as an all-time worker on the basis of that. And his '93 was better than anything Funk, Flair or Lawler did from the 90s onwards, arguably. It's a feather in the cap not a dagger.

All time isn't a synonym for 80's. If people want to talk about who was the best in the 80's of course you talk only about what occurred in the 80's. If people want to talk about who the best ever was (which is basically just code for "best guy we have enough footage of" to be fair but whatever), I don't think we should pretend "ever" or "all time" pertains to an arbitrary time period we assert as being the peak of their careers.

 

I've read a lot of your stuff. I know you have no problem with people disagreeing and that you're always up for a debate. Like I said, I'm dealing with hypotheticals here. You're laying out your opinion on Lawler in the past few years like it's an accepted fact, in a GOAT argument. As far as I'm aware, not too many people argue with that opinion. Maybe some guys here, on Wrestling KO, deathvalleydriver, I don't know. I haven't seen the matches and I don't know whether I'd agree, but that's not important for the sake of my argument. I just don't see how you can drop that in a GOAT argument. It's so fringe and carries so much weight if it were verified that it's just a throwaway comment in my eyes. I mean, if you're going to say that Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2010 or 2011, twenty years after the hypothetical cut-off point that has been suggested, that's a huge statement. You don't get too many people in entertainment fields who show up twenty years later and are the very best at what they do. That makes Lawler really special. Is he deserving of being singled out like that? I'll assume you think he is.

I was asserting my opinion in a thread filled with them. I wasn't dragging in WON Awards for unknown reasons. I wasn't pointing to the WKO 100 and saying "here is what people with a similar view on wrestling to me think." I was saying that Lawler in 2011 was an arguable top ten guy. You can take that as hyperbole, shitty opinion, short sighted opinion, praise of Lawler, indictment of modern scene, et. What I would prefer you not do is say "well it happened after the year when his prime ended so regardless of whether it's bullshit or something I would agree with, it's completely worthless nonsense that doesn't matter."

 

It depends on the nature of the post-prime work. From what I have seen, Black Terry and Navarro are better now than they were in their primes and I would include both of them as all-time great luchadores. Casas has managed to stay relevant by working well with younger talent and is arguably the ultimate adapter. Panther I would kind of call bullshit on the past few years adding to his status as an all-time great because I think he's clearly physically past his prime and I don't like his present style anywhere near as much as the work from his prime. I think it works on a case by case basis, but for the sake of GOAT arguments you've got to apply it evenly to everyone and I just don't see it as useful.

I don't see the idea of radical egalitarianism in wrestling comparisons to be particularly useful. Good work is good work is good work. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be. More importantly if we are leveling, the idea that we would stop just at comparing peaks is completely insane to me. And yet if I were to say "well Flair had an advantage in the fact that as champ we got more recorded matches and he often got to work with really talented guys when he came into places instead of having to work guys like Da Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon and Brody nearly every night, so maybe for some of these years we should adjust things to give Jerry Blackwell a fair shake" people would think I was lobbying for a favorite. If we have to look at peak only in the interest of fairness, then we'd better get real serious about looking at other things in the interest of fairness. Otherwise it just comes across as bullshit to me.

 

Of course it adds to your understanding of a particular wrestler, but it adds to your understanding of their career not whether they're the greatest of all-time. Theoretically, the GOAT doesn't need to have a great post-prime. Theoretically, the greatest of all-time could have been cut down in his or her prime. It is in no way, shape or form a necessity to have been good post-prime. If you're going to be a stickler about it, you might as well say that a good wrestler has to have a good post-prime and make a rule of it.

There is nowhere in this thread or any other discussion of GOATC's where I have ever said a good post-prime is required. There is nowhere in this thread where I have said that peak shouldn't be the most important part of the equation. But I reject the notion that something that adds to our understanding of a wrestler's career can have no bearing at all on GOAT discussion because it occurred outside of a prescribed time period. "All time" doesn't mean "some of the time, when we decide these guys were at their best."

 

Because everybody gets a peak no matter how good they may be. Post-peak nothing is guaranteed. The idea that there are these smart wrestlers who truly get it and are great into their 50s, to me, overlooks the fact that it's a crapshot whether you'll even get to your 50s as a worker. Not many do, whether they're good, bad or indifferent. If you're going to have a GOAT argument then you need to find the fairest way to do it and when you have guys whose careers overlap each other's as easily as Flair, Funk and Lawler's do then it's really easy to compare peak with peak. If it were a dead heat then maybe you could bring the extraneous stuff in, but where would be the fun in that? Best guy from the 80s sets is the most fun argument from my point of view. 1990s, there are better workers to argue about.

Where is the fun in creating artificial rule sets that eliminate massive portions of guys careers WHEN THEY WERE GOOD? If we are looking for the "fairest way" why do we stop with peak and not make radical adjustments for other things that clearly play a role in peoples careers? Yes everyone gets a peak and a lot wrestlers don't even live til they are fifty, but it doesn't mean those who were very good after their peaks and into their fifties weren't very good after their peaks and into their fifties.

 

Honestly the difference of opinion is so massive here I don't think it can be bridged at all. I just don't get the argument on any level.

[Matt D]

 

Just pretend Dylan is the Monstahhh Meng.

[Loss]

I'm fine with concluding that the difference in how to approach this is irreconcilable. I feel like I've clarified my original point, which is all I cared about doing.

[Dylan Waco]

If I haven't already, it's worth clarifying this point. I think good performances in isolation are nice, but they don't tell us much. They aren't part of a larger run of high-quality work. And the run is what I'm interested in when discussing the GOAT. Flair's high-quality run, his prime, was over by the time those matches happened. I think most aging great wrestlers are capable of pulling a three to four-star match out on occasion after the glory days are over. Give me four good matches from a wrestler that happened over a five-year period, or four good matches that happened from another wrestler over a two-month period, and I will pick the wrestler who had the two-month run every time. It's the succession that's impressive to me, because it demonstrates that the match wasn't a fluke. I think it's also harder to have a series of good matches in a short period of time than it is to just have one and then disappear. This is why I value the prime so much, because that's usually when this sort of thing happens.

 

Wrestlers who have great matches that pop up on tape a time or two a year are just that -- wrestlers who have great matches that pop up on tape a time or two a year. It's definitely better than having bad matches pop up, but it's not enough to make anyone a GOAT. I'd say the same thing if we were getting 2-3 praiseworthy Ric Flair matches a year now.

Give me all of the really good Ric Flair matches in 1983.

 

I've got...v. Gordy, v. Kevin Von Erich, v. Race, (not Starrcade which was a shit match), v. Jumbo and since I am feeling extremely generous v. Brody from St. Louis. I literally can't think of anything else. It is possible there are other matches and I am forgetting them so by all means mention them here.

 

Now give me a list of any and all Flair matches you can think of from 83 that we have on tape and/or have seen.

 

Here is Funk from 94 via Will's Set which I have watched beginning to end.

 

Terry Funk vs. Shane Douglas (TV 1/18/94)

Terry Funk vs. Pat Tanaka (TV 1/25/94)

Terry Funk vs. Sabu vs. Shane Douglas (ECW 2/5/94)

Terry Funk vs. The Bullet (Texas Death Match) (SMW 2/13/94)

 

Terry Funk vs. Sabu (WWN 2/28/94)

Terry Funk vs. Sabu (MTW 4/9/94)

Terry Funk vs. Sabu (Texas Death Match) (MTW 4/15/94)

Terry Funk vs. Sabu (TV 4/19/94)

Terry Funk vs. Chris Benoit (NWA 4/23/94)

Terry Funk vs. The Sheik (FMW 5/5/94)

Terry Funk & Arn Anderson vs. Sabu & Bobby Eaton (ECW 5/14/94)

 

Terry Funk vs. Sabu (Texas Death Match) (5/15/94)

Terry Funk vs. Tully Blanchard (Slamboree 5/22/94)

Terry & Dory Funk vs. Public Enemy (ECW 6/24/94)

Terry & Dory Funk vs. Scott & Steve Armstrong (SMW 7/1/94)

Terry & Dory Funk vs. Scott & Steve Armstrong (SMW 7/3/94)

Terry Funk vs. Brian Pillman (Pro 7/16/94)

Terry & Dory Funk vs. Public Enemy (No Rope Barbed Wire Match) (ECW 7/16/94)

 

Terry Funk & Bunkhouse Buck vs. Arn Anderson & Dustin Rhodes (BATB 7/17/94)

Terry Funk, Dory Funk & Bruiser Bedlam vs. Bob Armstrong, Tracy Smothers, & Road Warrior Hawk (Coward waves the Flag) (SMW 8/5/94)

Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack (ECW 8/13/94)

Terry Funk, Bunkhouse Buck & Arn Anderson vs. Brad, Brian & Scott Armstrong (WCWSN 8/20/94)

Terry Funk & Bunkhouse Buck vs. Dusty & Dustin Rhodes (Clash 8/28/94)

Terry Funk, Arn Anderson & Bunkhouse Buck vs. Ricky Steamboat, Dustin Rhodes & Sting (Main Event 9/11/94)

Wargames (Fall Brawl 9/18/94)

Terry Funk vs. Tito Santana (NWC 10/8/94)

 

Terry Funk, Arn Anderson, Bunkhouse Buck vs. Nasty Boys & Dustin Rhodes (Handheld 10/16/94)

Terry Funk, Arn Anderson, Bunkhouse Buck vs. Nasty Boys & Dustin Rhodes (Main Event 10/23/94)

Terry Funk & Bunkhouse Buck vs. Nasty Boys (Havoc 10/23/94)

Terry Funk & Hiroshi Ono vs. Shoji Nakamaki & Nobutaka Araya (Ring Surrounded by Fire Match) (IWA Japan 11/13/94)

 

Are all of these matches great? No. Are all of these matches good? There are a couple I don't enjoy, but virtually everything on here is something I would rate. Is it possible that the best Flair match or couple of Flair matches are better than the best Funk match on here? Yes, though I like Wargames 94 more than any of those Flair matches at bare minimum and I think Funk is great in that match. Is this a minor sample for Funk? No way in hell. In fact it's more than we have from a lot of the years we believe to be his peak years. Is it Funk wrestling the same guy on the same stage over and over? No, it's Funk wrestling various people, in a variety of different matches, in promotions all over the place. It may also be worth noting that this is not all the Funk that exists from 94.

 

Now if someone wants to argue that a lot of this Funk stuff sucked or wasn't any good that's fine. I don't agree at all and think it was a damn good run. But we can disagree on that.

 

What we can't disagree on is that there is a lot of meat here. This isn't some guy past his prime working a few quality matches in isolation. Maybe I'm wrong on Flair in 83 and I'm forgetting some obvious stuff, but looking at this if the metric has to do with volume of performances we have available and can point to, Flair is straight up fucked in this comparison.

 

But wait! Flair's 83 is in that prescribed time period where we have decided he was at his peak so those matches should count in GOAT discussion and we can call that a "good year" even if we don't have much else (if I'm wrong I'm wrong on that by the way). Funk's 94? Well it's after that prescribed period and sure the matches might not be in isolation and we may think some of it is really good and we may think it was as good or better a year than some of the years in Funk's "peak" and we may think there is clearly more meat here than Flair in 83 but....uh....um...fuck...uh....its not in that prescribed period?

[anarchistxx]

I cannot imagine anyone thinking Black Terry was average/middling if they had watched the matches that were pimped in 2010. Even people who have drastically different wrestling tastes than me and drastically different Lucha tastes than me thought those matches were great. I want to know what pimped matches you watched, but maybe this isn't the thread to have that discussion.

I've only watched 2009 stuff:

 

Negro Navarro, Trauma I, Trauma II vs. Black Terry, Cerebro Negro, Dr. Cerebro (IWRG 4/16/09)

Negro Navarro, Trauma I, Trauma II vs. Black Terry, Cerebro Negro, Dr. Cerebro (IWRG 4/23/09)

Black Terry/Shu el Guerrero v. El Signo/Negro Navarro (IWRG 8/20/09)

Black Terry/Cerebro Negro/Dr. Cerebro v. Oficial 911/Oficial AK47/Oficial Fierro IWRG (11/9/09)

 

People were arguing him as wrestler for the year and I didn't see it in these matches.

[Loss]

Here are all of the Ric Flair matches from 1983 that exist on tape:

 

Ric Flair vs Terry Gordy (WCCW 02/04/83)

Ric Flair vs Bruiser Brody (St Louis 02/11/83)*

Ric Flair vs Barry Windham (CWF 02/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Mark Lewin (New Zealand 03/03/83)**

Ric Flair vs Denny Brown (CWF 03/05/83)

Ric Flair vs Masa Fuchi (Mid Atlantic TV 03/09/83)

Ric Flair vs Austin Idol (Alabama 03/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Kevin Von Erich (WCCW 04/01/83)

Ric Flair vs Tony Atlas (GCW TV 04/03/83)**

Ric Flair & Rip Oliver vs Roddy Piper & Billy Jack Haynes (Portland 05/14/83)

Ric Flair vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW 06/08/83)

Ric Flair vs Dusty Rhodes (CWF 06/83)**

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (St Louis 06/10/83)**

Ric Flair vs Greg Valentine (06/12/83)

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (Mid Atlantic TV 08/19/83)

Ric Flair & Bob Orton vs Bill Howard & Golden Boy Grey (St Louis 09/??/83)

Ric Flair & Wahoo McDaniel vs Tom Lintz & Golden Boy Grey (Mid Atlantic TV 10/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Mr. Wrestling II (11/10/83)

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (Starrcade 11/24/83)

Ric Flair vs Pat Rose (GCW TV 11/26/83)

Ric Flair vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW 12/10/83)

Ric Flair vs Great Kabuki (AJPW 12/12/83)

Ric Flair vs David Von Erich (WCCW 12/25/83)

 

* We also have clips of a matinee show the two worked earlier in the day

** Clipped

 

(There may be other matches I've listed that are only available clipped too. I don't know because I haven't seen them.)

 

I don't know the answer to your question. I haven't seen every single one of these matches. The Kabuki match is really good, and I also liked the Windham one.

 

I can say we didn't include the Funk/Douglas 45-minute match on the '94 yearbook because Will hates that match and thinks it's shitty. The Night The Line Was Crossed was ... yeah. I thought the WWN match with Sabu was great, didn't think much of the Funk/Arn vs Eaton/Sabu tag, thought the Tully match at Slamboree was too one-sided, thought the Funks vs PE matches were wildly overrated, thought the Clash tag match was fun, and thought War Games was great. Of the stuff I've seen that is listed, at best I see two legitimately great matches: War Games and Funk vs Sabu from WWN.

 

Meanwhile, I can't name three Harley Race matches that I'm sure are better than the one that ended in the Flair injury. I can't name three singles Jumbo matches that I'm sure are better than the draw. I'm not sure there is a Kabuki match better. I haven't watched the Texas set yet, so drawing a point of comparison is tough, but I really liked the matches with David, Kevin and Gordy last time I saw them. I liked the Windham match. The Valentine match was also one I was only half-ass paying attention to, but remember enjoying. MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana would be MOTY for 1983 if I had to pick one at this point, but I'd probably put Flair vs Jumbo at #2. But I have a lot of viewing gaps.

 

The bigger key to all of this is that even if you think people were better than Ric Flair in 1983, he was in the conversation. 1994 Terry Funk is a perfectly good year, but it's not a GOAT-level year, because there were too many things happening elsewhere that were better.

[Matt D]

So we grade on a curve when comparing bodies of work after all?

[Dylan Waco]

Here are all of the Ric Flair matches from 1983 that exist on tape:

 

Ric Flair vs Terry Gordy (WCCW 02/04/83)

Ric Flair vs Bruiser Brody (St Louis 02/11/83)*

Ric Flair vs Barry Windham (CWF 02/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Mark Lewin (New Zealand 03/03/83)**

Ric Flair vs Denny Brown (CWF 03/05/83)

Ric Flair vs Masa Fuchi (Mid Atlantic TV 03/09/83)

Ric Flair vs Austin Idol (Alabama 03/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Kevin Von Erich (WCCW 04/01/83)

Ric Flair vs Tony Atlas (GCW TV 04/03/83)**

Ric Flair & Rip Oliver vs Roddy Piper & Billy Jack Haynes (Portland 05/14/83)

Ric Flair vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW 06/08/83)

Ric Flair vs Dusty Rhodes (CWF 06/83)**

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (St Louis 06/10/83)**

Ric Flair vs Greg Valentine (06/12/83)

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (Mid Atlantic TV 08/19/83)

Ric Flair & Bob Orton vs Bill Howard & Golden Boy Grey (St Louis 09/??/83)

Ric Flair & Wahoo McDaniel vs Tom Lintz & Golden Boy Grey (Mid Atlantic TV 10/??/83)

Ric Flair vs Mr. Wrestling II (11/10/83)

Ric Flair vs Harley Race (Starrcade 11/24/83)

Ric Flair vs Pat Rose (GCW TV 11/26/83)

Ric Flair vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW 12/10/83)

Ric Flair vs Great Kabuki (AJPW 12/12/83)

Ric Flair vs David Von Erich (WCCW 12/25/83)

 

* We also have clips of a matinee show the two worked earlier in the day

** Clipped

 

(There may be other matches I've listed that are only available clipped too. I don't know because I haven't seen them.)

Offhand counting other Funk matches I know of from 94, Funk has at least a ten match advantage.

 

I don't know the answer to your question. I haven't seen every single one of these matches. The Kabuki match is really good, and I also liked the Windham one.

 

I can say we didn't include the Funk/Douglas 45-minute match on the '94 yearbook because Will hates that match and thinks it's shitty. The Night The Line Was Crossed was ... yeah. I thought the WWN match with Sabu was great, didn't think much of the Funk/Arn vs Eaton/Sabu tag, thought the Tully match at Slamboree was too one-sided, thought the Funks vs PE matches were wildly overrated, thought the Clash tag match was fun, and thought War Games was great. Of the stuff I've seen that is listed, at best I see two legitimately great matches: War Games and Funk vs Sabu from WWN.

Night the Line Was Crossed is shit. Funk's the best guy in it BY FAR (I don't think many people would dispute that actually), but it's a bad match. When Worlds Collide tag is okay. My impression of that is that Eaton and Arn didn't want to be there and it showed. I like the Tully match from Slamboree a lot. It's not a great match, but it's fun. I think it destroys the Flair v. Brody match that included on Flair's good list. Funks v. PE aren't anything special and I don't really know who rates them. Love the Clash tag, love Wargames. Really love one of those Sabu v. Funk MTW matches. Enjoy all the Funk in WCW stuff a lot. Really like Funk in SMW too. That IWA match is a pure spectacle and kind of a mess, but Funk is really amazing in it as crazy old coot trying to kill people and possibly himself.

 

Meanwhile, I can't name three Harley Race matches that I'm sure are better than the one that ended in the Flair injury.

Not sure I could either, but I have virtually no memory of the Race matches I have watched over the years so that doesn't tell me much.

 

I can't name three singles Jumbo matches that I'm sure are better than the draw.

Man alive I think those are overrated matches. I think at best Flair is Jumbo's fifth best gajin opponent. I like his best matches v. Martel, Bock, Funk and Kerry better. It's possible if I went back and watched more 70's stuff more names would get tacked on. I like Flair v. Jumbo, but I really don't like it nearly as much as most people.

 

I'm not sure there is a Kabuki match better.

I remember liking at least one or two Kabuki matches a lot on one of the 80's sets. I don't remember if I've seen Flair v. Kabuki or not. I do know Funk v. Sabu matches from 94 were among the best in Sabu's career. I'm certainly "not sure" there are better Sabu matches out there.

 

I haven't watched the Texas set yet, so drawing a point of comparison is tough, but I really liked the matches with David, Kevin and Gordy last time I saw them.

I like the Gordy match, but didn't think it was out of this world. I liked the Kevin match a lot. I know I have seen Flair v. David but I don't remember when it was from and I know I didn't think much of it but then I'm not high on David.

 

I liked the Windham match. The Valentine match was also one I was only half-ass paying attention to, but remember enjoying. MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana would be MOTY for 1983 if I had to pick one at this point, but I'd probably put Flair vs Jumbo at #2. But I have a lot of viewing gaps.

Need to see Windham and Valentine matches. 83 had a lot of stuff I liked from the AWA and some stuff I really like from NJPW and some stuff I really like from Portland and Final Conflict and that tremendously great 2/3 falls Von Erichs v. Freebirds match and of course Chicana v. MS-1. Flair v. Jumbo isn't in my top ten for that year. Possibly not even my top twenty. Now Wargames 94? My U.S. match of the year for that year and in my top ten for the year over all.

 

The bigger key to all of this is that even if you think people were better than Ric Flair in 1983, he was in the conversation. 1994 Terry Funk is a perfectly good year, but it's not a GOAT-level year, because there were too many things happening elsewhere that were better.

Flair in 83 isn't a greatest of all time year. Even if I had the same view of Jumbo match you had I can't see any way someone could look at the output of Flair in 83 and say "holy shit this is one of the best years in wrestling history" or anything even close to that. There are many, many guys who have better years, particularly if we are looking at "runs" as you say you favor. Was he in the conversation for being the best in the world that year? Probably but how much of that is pure rep and how much of that is him benefiting from rep and the stronger 82 he had come off of? Besides we've already established that being in the discussion for best in the world isn't all that important...or I guess that only applies if you are in that discussion post-prime? More than that why does his 83 "matter" as a peak year but his 90 where we have more footage and probably at least as many good performances doesn't?

 

But beyond that the point is not that Funk was better than Flair in this equation. I don't know that I would say that. The point is that their are obvious flaws in this "peak" equation, and talking about how things in isolation aren't that important and runs matter more doesn't always help the peak narrative. For footage reasons and other reasons it can often hurt it.

[Loss]

No, Ric Flair in 1983 is not one of the greatest single years a wrestler has ever had. Neither is Terry Funk's 1994. But the list of wrestlers better than Ric Flair in 1983 is going to be shorter than the list of the wrestlers better than Terry Funk in 1994. Ric Flair's best stuff is a perfectly good comparison to the other best stuff taking place that year, even if it falls short. Lawler/Dundee, MS-1/Chicana, the Freebirds/Von Erichs feud, "Forever!", Choshu/Fujinami and whatever Buddy Rose may have been doing. Do you consider Funk's '94 stuff in the same category as the J Cup, Misawa/Kawada, Vader/Takada in UWFI, Big Egg Universe, Queendom and the Tenryu/Onita feud? Or even the Flair/Steamboat revival, the Bret/Owen feud, the first ladder match, Bret vs Kid or the LLT match with the Rock & Rolls and the Bodies.

 

And besides, Flair's 1983 is not a run by itself. It's a chapter in a longer 8-year run. Funk was active in 1993 and 1995. Some years within that time period were better than others. Same for Flair. 1982-1989 was the run, and some years within it are better than others. But if 1983 is the worst year of his prime, it's pretty hard to take that as a major insult.

[Childs]

I don't think the point is that Terry Funk's 1994 should be a leading note in his case for GOAT. I think it's that he had a hell of a year when he was 50 and 30 years into his career. That's not typical and therefore adds mass to his GOAT argument.