Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair

[Loss]

The only point that I want to specifically respond to is 1983. What I have typically said about being best in the world is that even if it's not a full consensus pick where All Reasonable People agree, if the case is there, the case is there. I have never said that Flair was the unquestioned best in the world every single one of those years. I have said he is a pretty solid pick every single one of those years. So to answer your question, no, I don't think he should be ignored because you can think of a few guys you liked better.

 

On a different topic, year-by-year best in the world threads would be a lot of fun. We aren't ready for it yet, but something to keep on the backburner.

[Dylan Waco]

Like the year by year idea and I'll probably do my 77-84 thread eventually.

 

I guess I would just disagree with you because I don't think Flair is a solid pick in 83. Perhaps it's just what I've seen or bias. But I think he's clearly a peg below some of those guys I mentioned unless I'm forgetting some key matches of his (which is possible).

[goodhelmet]

For the 80s, we are almost there. For the 90s, we can do it easily.

[Ditch]

Random thing:

 

People who are more WWF/WWE oriented tend to prefer Bret. Yet Flair absolutely crushes Bret as a promo... which you'd think might make him appeal more to WWF/WWE fans.

 

I get why in-ring work is the crux of the matter; that's how I tend to rate guys. But promos have pretty much been ignored here and I think it's such a cut-and-dry difference that to say Bret's in-ring work was SO MUCH BETTER than Flair's as to negate the promos as well seems far-fetched. Then again I think saying Bret's body of work matches Flair's is far-fetched...

[MJH]

Random thing:

 

People who are more WWF/WWE oriented tend to prefer Bret. Yet Flair absolutely crushes Bret as a promo... which you'd think might make him appeal more to WWF/WWE fans.

I'd imagine that being "WWF/E-oriented" has a lot more to do with the company's vastly greatly international exposure, and thus what most, if not all, wrestling fans outside of NA/Japan grew up with, than people being "promo fans"...

[ohtani's jacket]

Surely, there were twenty workers better than Terry Funk in 1994. Best in the world is such an exaggerated talking point.

 

And just because some workers are great into their 50s (which, honestly, is a talking point that only started five or six years ago and previously would have been a joke), you can't hold it against guys who weren't. It's not normal for a guy to be great into his 50s. You're talking about special cases. Does anybody judge El Dandy or Emilio Charles, Jr. on how broken down they became? No, they just say "fuck this, I'm going to watch some prime El Dandy and Emilio Charles, Jr." Maybe it's a plus in Tenryu's case, but on the flipside it took him a long time to get good. Casas, Panther, Navarro, Black Terry and Solar are all great workers in their 50s, but we're missing their primes, so how do you judge their careers? Lawler in his 60s is judged one of the best of the world by super Lawler fans and Funk being great in the 90s is a really favourable take as well.

 

I think the age thing should be factored into the conversation more carefully is all.

[Matt D]

Being great into your 50s means you really GET it. You get wrestling. When the physical tools aren't what they were, the ability to still be great is one of those things I think might be the real sign of a great wrestler. At least by my criteria.

[WingedEagle]

Being great into your 50s means you really GET it. You get wrestling. When the physical tools aren't what they were, the ability to still be great is one of those things I think might be the real sign of a great wrestler. At least by my criteria.

No doubt about it. Only the best are able to overcome their physical limitations. This goes back to the point that while many can lay out a great match, not everyone can go and execute it.

[Exposer]

I find it incredibly impressive when wrestlers in their 50's are able to adapt to their limitations and work at a high level. It absolutely should benefit them in these types of discussions.

[ohtani's jacket]

Then a hell of a lot of workers didn't really get it, including Bret Hart.

 

I think "my criteria" is pertinent in this case. Satanico is one of the greatest workers I have ever laid eyes on. He turned 50 in 1999, but the last match of his that I'd call great was against Pirata Morgan in 1993 when he was 44 or so. Satanico wasn't a bad worker in his mid-late 40s, he just lacked something from his earlier work and there were much better workers in Mexico at the time which made Satanico second tier. But stick mid-40s Satanico in CMLL today and he'd be one of the best in the world, as the saying goes. Some fans, and I'm one of them, can't relate to the Sombras and the Volodars and what have you. Some do and don't like maestro workers, at least not quite as much as some of us do. Fredo or Bihari or Cubsfan are unlikely to have the same top 10 as me and they're probably objectively right considering the way the business works.

 

I love 70s World of Sport. It's easy to consider it prime stuff because of the limited footage. But you'd be surprised by how many of the best workers were in their 40s and 50s and how much of it was past their prime stuff. Can't be so sure about their work without that prime because what seems great in the 70s made seem worse if that prime was available. I also hate most of the young boys, so it's blinkered.

 

I think it's important to consider any biases we might have before saying it's because a few lucky guys get it.

[WingedEagle]

It should benefit them. At the same time, I don't penalize anyone for losing it long after their primes. Willie Mays is no less a GOAT candidate due to his years with the Mets, or Jordan with the 'zards (though that's more like Funk in the '90s than Flair in the aughts). Once you've established an especially great body of work, that should stand on its own apart from the crap that may manifest at the end.

[Matt D]

It should benefit them. At the same time, I don't penalize anyone for losing it long after their primes. Willie Mays is no less a GOAT candidate due to his years with the Mets. Once you've established an especially great body of work, that should stand on its own apart from the crap that may manifest at the end.

Someone can argue this but wrestling is an art as much as a sport and Baseball isn't (not that there aren't elements of psychology in baseball but this is a totally different conversation).

 

I think we can learn, in part, just how good someone is by seeing what they can (and do) do when they can't rely on physicality. How well they can control a crowd. How good their timing is. If they are talented enough to figure out a way to work around it. By watching what they do and why they do it.

 

I am amicable to the idea that it can do more good for a wrestler to have a great post-peak than harm a wrestler that has a poor post peak. But again, as always, to me what's more interesting is the why of it, not necessarily the binary Y or N. Why can Lawler still control a crowd at his age? How does he do it. How can he have a great match with a math teacher at age whatever, you know?

[goodhelmet]

Surely, there were twenty workers better than Terry Funk in 1994. Best in the world is such an exaggerated talking point.

 

And just because some workers are great into their 50s (which, honestly, is a talking point that only started five or six years ago and previously would have been a joke), you can't hold it against guys who weren't. It's not normal for a guy to be great into his 50s. You're talking about special cases. Does anybody judge El Dandy or Emilio Charles, Jr. on how broken down they became? No, they just say "fuck this, I'm going to watch some prime El Dandy and Emilio Charles, Jr." Maybe it's a plus in Tenryu's case, but on the flipside it took him a long time to get good. Casas, Panther, Navarro, Black Terry and Solar are all great workers in their 50s, but we're missing their primes, so how do you judge their careers? Lawler in his 60s is judged one of the best of the world by super Lawler fans and Funk being great in the 90s is a really favourable take as well.

 

I think the age thing should be factored into the conversation more carefully is all.

I have made this point before but maybe you missed it. It isn't a knock on Flair as much as it is a feather in the other guys cap. And Tenryu was pretty awesome from the get go. I know Jerry didn't think so but the DVDVR panel was on his jock early.

[Dylan Waco]

Surely, there were twenty workers better than Terry Funk in 1994. Best in the world is such an exaggerated talking point.

 

And just because some workers are great into their 50s (which, honestly, is a talking point that only started five or six years ago and previously would have been a joke),

Maybe there are twenty. I can't think of twenty offhand, but I wouldn't say it's impossible.

 

Also the parenthesis here is bullshit. Funk was doing great shit in his fifties over ten years ago. Same with Tenryu. I don't recall people thinking they were "jokes" at the time.

 

you can't hold it against guys who weren't. It's not normal for a guy to be great into his 50s. You're talking about special cases. Does anybody judge El Dandy or Emilio Charles, Jr. on how broken down they became? No, they just say "fuck this, I'm going to watch some prime El Dandy and Emilio Charles, Jr." Maybe it's a plus in Tenryu's case, but on the flipside it took him a long time to get good. Casas, Panther, Navarro, Black Terry and Solar are all great workers in their 50s, but we're missing their primes, so how do you judge their careers? Lawler in his 60s is judged one of the best of the world by super Lawler fans and Funk being great in the 90s is a really favourable take as well.

 

I think the age thing should be factored into the conversation more carefully is all.

No one is saying "well let's hold it against guys that they weren't great into their fifties." What I"m saying is lets NOT hold it against guys that they WERE great into their fifties. I'm arguing that that sort of thing shouldn't be excluded from GOAT discussion, not that it should be a prerequisite for serious GOAT consideration. There is a massive, massive difference between those two things.

 

I don't even know what to say about the rest of that paragraph. By that standard we shouldn't ever listen to what anyone has to say about anything because hell they might be "super" fans of someone and their take may be "really favourable."

[ohtani's jacket]

Also the parenthesis here is bullshit. Funk was doing great shit in his fifties over ten years ago. Same with Tenryu. I don't recall people thinking they were "jokes" at the time.

I don't think it's bullshit. When I first came online, people generally thought that old guys sucked. Nobody wanted to see old guys on top, nobody wanted to see them wrestle and nobody appreciated what they were able to do despite their advancing age. You didn't see a lot of praise for older workers. You wouldn't have seen people praise Bockwinkel as someone who was great into his 50s unless you were talking about a very small section of older fans. Funk and Tenryu may have been popular, but they were hardly being pimped as the GOAT and people didn't consider them better than the current workers at the time. Guys in their 50s as best in the world didn't become a talking point until people starting thinking the guys in their 50s were better than the guys in their 20s and 30s, which started happening about five or six years ago, possibly even earlier than that. I want to say it's a trend that began with Liger and Kikuchi in NOAH, Tenryu and Navarro and Terry and Solar and has worked its way back through older footage retroactively. Initially, it reflected disatisfaction with the current state of wrestling and now it's a type of veteran appreciation.

 

 

No one is saying "well let's hold it against guys that they weren't great into their fifties." What I"m saying is lets NOT hold it against guys that they WERE great into their fifties. I'm arguing that that sort of thing shouldn't be excluded from GOAT discussion, not that it should be a prerequisite for serious GOAT consideration. There is a massive, massive difference between those two things.

But you are holding it against Flair when you say he doesn't have the longevity of a Funk or a Lawler. As soon as you say it's important then it becomes detrimental to Flair's case.

 

I can't be bothered going back through this thread and making sure that I've got everyone's position correct, so bear with me, but if Loss is saying that Flair vs. Funk vs. Lawler should be compared stretch runs at their peak then I completely agree with him. I would put Flair's 82-89 against Funk's 76-89 and Lawler's 77-89 (don't know if I got those years right, they're off the top of my head.) I don't think that anything Funk or Lawler did after 1990 or so is good enough that it makes a difference to the argument unless the argument is purely longevity. For every good bit of Lawler and Funk post-90, there's something Flair did post-90, but it's all post-prime and not very important.

 

Also, and I don't know if anybody brought this up, but Flair's was the toughest act to change. Funk had already changed his act well before he got into his 50s. Lawler never really even had to change his. How does Flair change from being the Nature Boy to something else? Is it possible? Should he have changed his gimmick to the settled down Nature Boy? Perhaps he could have laid it all on the table as the bankrupt, co-dependent Nature Boy? Like Hogan it was always going to be the same schtick getting worse and worse.

 

I don't even know what to say about the rest of that paragraph. By that standard we shouldn't ever listen to what anyone has to say about anything because hell they might be "super" fans of someone and their take may be "really favourable."

Would you listen to a super Rotundo fan or take it with a grain of salt? If you make a statement like Jerry Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2011 or Terry Funk was really great in ECW, and I'm being hypothetical here, do you not expect people outside of your circle to check whether your hypothesis gels? We're not talking gospel here. Jerry Lawler as one of the best in the world is a contentious statement. It may be true, but there are going to be people who disagree. Plenty of people. Terry Funk as top 20 in 1994 is another contentious statement. I've got nothing against contentious statements, most of us make contentious statements and a lot of us argue things strongly, all I'm saying is that if I'm unsold on Lawler then to me "Lawler's still really good even now" is a lot more palpable than "Jerry Lawler was minimum top five in the world last year. Minimum." That's one thing, but then if you use it in an argument against Flair as GOAT my natural reaction *might be* "oh, bollocks, I don't give a fuck about Jerry Lawler in 2011 and Funk's garbage wrestling period was annoying." And I'd have the same reaction if someone overpimped Flair's '91-93 WWF run or his late 90s WCW work. It would be one thing to point to 1998 Flair performances that are good, but another entirely to start ranking Flair as top 20 for the year.

[Loss]

I can't be bothered going back through this thread and making sure that I've got everyone's position correct, so bear with me, but if Loss is saying that Flair vs. Funk vs. Lawler should be compared stretch runs at their peak then I completely agree with him. I would put Flair's 82-89 against Funk's 76-89 and Lawler's 77-89 (don't know if I got those years right, they're off the top of my head.) I don't think that anything Funk or Lawler did after 1990 or so is good enough that it makes a difference to the argument unless the argument is purely longevity. For every good bit of Lawler and Funk post-90, there's something Flair did post-90, but it's all post-prime and not very important.

YES! Thank you for succinctly saying what I have not been able to verbalize in quite the proper way for whatever reason.

[Matt D]

Initially, it reflected disatisfaction with the current state of wrestling and now it's a type of veteran appreciation.

No.

 

Just no.

 

There are a lot of reasons for it, a bunch, and we've talked about it more and more, but there's been a trend of appreciating working smart over working hard over the last five years. That's not just dissatisfaction and it's not just "a type of veteran appreciation." It's part of why people liked Mark Henry or Chris Masters as well. It's not just old people. It's part of a completely different trend than you're talking about. And that trend has its pros and cons and its causes and reasons, but I really, truly don't think it's what you're saying. People consistently pull out specific examples. They pull out specific matches. They break things down. They back up what they say. It's not just some whimsy. It's not just some whim. People support their arguments. They make arguments in the first place. People are backing up what they're saying all over the place, both in dismantling some things and building up others.

 

You can't dismiss it like that because it fits into some nice little box and thus is easy to ignore.

[Loss]

I would rather say the trend has been to value working smart as much as working hard. They aren't mutually exclusive, and they don't have to be competing interests either. Does anyone look down on wrestlers for putting forth a strong effort?

[Matt D]

If you had to choose between the two, I meant.

 

Obviously, quite often the best situations involve both, but I think working smart without working hard is valued far more now than it used to be, and working hard without working smart is valued a lot less than ten years ago.

[Loss]

On that, we agree.

[ohtani's jacket]

Initially, it reflected disatisfaction with the current state of wrestling and now it's a type of veteran appreciation.

No.

 

Just no.

 

There are a lot of reasons for it, a bunch, and we've talked about it more and more, but there's been a trend of appreciating working smart over working hard over the last five years. That's not just dissatisfaction and it's not just "a type of veteran appreciation." It's part of why people liked Mark Henry or Chris Masters as well. It's not just old people. It's part of a completely different trend than you're talking about. And that trend has its pros and cons and its causes and reasons, but I really, truly don't think it's what you're saying. People consistently pull out specific examples. They pull out specific matches. They break things down. They back up what they say. It's not just some whimsy. It's not just some whim. People support their arguments. They make arguments in the first place. People are backing up what they're saying all over the place, both in dismantling some things and building up others.

 

You can't dismiss it like that because it fits into some nice little box and thus is easy to ignore.

 

What you're saying about working smart over working hard may be true, but consider this:

 

When Yokota, Chigusa and Asuka retired and came back in the mid-90s, people didn't all of a sudden appreciate them because they worked smarter than the girls who worked harder (Hokuto, Toyota, Kyoko et al.) And it's not like smart work wasn't appreciated back then.

 

You didn't see much praise for Perro Aguayo or Caras and his brothers when Santo and Panther and Casas were having great matches and especially not during the boom in AAA popularity with the likes of Mysterio Jr., Psicosis and Juventud regardless of how smart Perro and Los Hermanos Dimanita worked.

 

People didn't feel the need to go back and revisit Jumbo or Hansen or Choshu or Fujinami in great detail when Misawa, Kawada, Taue, Hashimoto, Liger and others were in their primes.

 

If there had been a bunch of rookies who had debut in the 90s and gone on to do great things in the 2000s and so on, I suspect there wouldn't be quite as much appreciation for older guys as there is today. It's not only about working smart, but also stylistic. Modern wrestling is worked a certain way the world over. Old guys tend to work the way they've always known. Some of them like Casas adapt, guys like Finlay and Navarro have arguably gotten better, but a lot of times you'll hear a review that says "this was like an old-school XYZ match," i.e the old way was the right way, the better way, the smart way to work. Even the newer guys who get pimped tend to remind people of the older guys. I don't think anyone on this board is the type of fan who thinks NJPW's Dome Show was the greatest thing because they're caught up in the now. 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. That may not be totally fair, but if I said I don't gravitate towards Black Terry and Navarro and Virus because I haven't liked a newly pushed luchador since Angel Azteca I would be lying. And if I said I would have loved Black Terry and Navarro ten years ago, I'd be lying.

 

And why are you always making out like it's whims? I thought Loss articulated quite well the changes in people's attitudes. Even when we're dealing with older footage, people get fed up with the same old, same old. I love the changing landscape of wrestling opinion, I'm just trying to articulate it for what it is or at least how I've viewed it.

[Matt D]

To deal with the last point, I think a lot of people here go out of their way to avoid those pitfalls of just being fed up, and they try to overcome such things, especially in comparisons. If I say I think Wrestler X is better than Wrestler Y, then I don't want you to think that's just because I'm bored with Wrestler Y and Wrestler X is new to me, basically. Yes, that may be a human instinct, but I think people do a pretty good job of fighting that and backing up their opinions here.

 

As for the rest, I think the traits that we like in the old wrestlers we like are also ones we gravitate towards in today's wrestlers, and a lot of the time we go out of our way to find those traits where we can. Dylan, for instance, just reviewed that House of Hardcore show and found a ton of stuff to like, and it'd fall along a lot of the same lines that he has in his like for Buddy Rose or whoever else.

 

I think, maybe, you're generalizing too much.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think it's bullshit. When I first came online, people generally thought that old guys sucked. Nobody wanted to see old guys on top, nobody wanted to see them wrestle and nobody appreciated what they were able to do despite their advancing age. You didn't see a lot of praise for older workers. You wouldn't have seen people praise Bockwinkel as someone who was great into his 50s unless you were talking about a very small section of older fans. Funk and Tenryu may have been popular, but they were hardly being pimped as the GOAT and people didn't consider them better than the current workers at the time. Guys in their 50s as best in the world didn't become a talking point until people starting thinking the guys in their 50s were better than the guys in their 20s and 30s, which started happening about five or six years ago, possibly even earlier than that. I want to say it's a trend that began with Liger and Kikuchi in NOAH, Tenryu and Navarro and Terry and Solar and has worked its way back through older footage retroactively. Initially, it reflected disatisfaction with the current state of wrestling and now it's a type of veteran appreciation.

 

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. 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

But you are holding it against Flair when you say he doesn't have the longevity of a Funk or a Lawler. As soon as you say it's important then it becomes detrimental to Flair's case.

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 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.

 

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.

 

I can't be bothered going back through this thread and making sure that I've got everyone's position correct, so bear with me, but if Loss is saying that Flair vs. Funk vs. Lawler should be compared stretch runs at their peak then I completely agree with him. I would put Flair's 82-89 against Funk's 76-89 and Lawler's 77-89 (don't know if I got those years right, they're off the top of my head.) I don't think that anything Funk or Lawler did after 1990 or so is good enough that it makes a difference to the argument unless the argument is purely longevity. For every good bit of Lawler and Funk post-90, there's something Flair did post-90, but it's all post-prime and not very important.

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.

 

Would you listen to a super Rotundo fan or take it with a grain of salt?

I read Jerry's threads.

 

If you make a statement like Jerry Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2011 or Terry Funk was really great in ECW, and I'm being hypothetical here, do you not expect people outside of your circle to check whether your hypothesis gels?

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?

 

We're not talking gospel here. Jerry Lawler as one of the best in the world is a contentious statement. It may be true, but there are going to be people who disagree. Plenty of people. Terry Funk as top 20 in 1994 is another contentious statement. I've got nothing against contentious statements, most of us make contentious statements and a lot of us argue things strongly, all I'm saying is that if I'm unsold on Lawler then to me "Lawler's still really good even now" is a lot more palpable than "Jerry Lawler was minimum top five in the world last year. Minimum." That's one thing, but then if you use it in an argument against Flair as GOAT my natural reaction *might be* "oh, bollocks, I don't give a fuck about Jerry Lawler in 2011 and Funk's garbage wrestling period was annoying." And I'd have the same reaction if someone overpimped Flair's '91-93 WWF run or his late 90s WCW work. It would be one thing to point to 1998 Flair performances that are good, but another entirely to start ranking Flair as top 20 for the year.

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.

 

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?

 

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.

[goodhelmet]

If you make a statement like Jerry Lawler is one of the best in the world in 2011 or Terry Funk was really great in ECW, and I'm being hypothetical here, do you not expect people outside of your circle to check whether your hypothesis gels?

I am going to piggyback off Dylan's post on this point and be the little sidekick like the toadie in the Christmas Story.

 

Not only do we expect people outside of our circle to check it out but we encourage it. Overall, these opinions aren't given at least by myself, Loss or Dylan because we read an Observer article or PWI Magazine. All of us have watched hundreds of matches by these guys, are able to recognize strengths and weaknesses and then explain why our guy was the hot shit. We also value different things in our wrestling. Why would we want people outside the circle not to check our statements out? I want more people migrating to this board. I want more people buying my comps (Flair in the Horsemen Set is an excellent choice. Already have a Terry Funk set complete. Jerry Lawler super career set on the way). I want more people to discover the stuff we have discovered and talk about it. The last thing we want is someone to dismiss an opinion because we are super fanboys.

[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 at 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.