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Where the Big Boys Play #43


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I'm so high on Garvin right now and I know there's some emotion and hyperbole talking but I don't think there's a better trilogy of matches in NWA/WCW outside of Flair - Steamboat than the three Garvin matches. (I need to rewatch Luger vs. Flair from Wrestlewar 90).

 

85 studio matches is sensational, 87 Detroit is magical and surely a contender for "best TV match ever", the Starrcade match is so good it starts out with a hostile Chicago crowd and actually turns them around.

 

I'm not sure if Flair has better chemistry with anyone than with Garvin.

 

I've got some thinking to do over the awards, but I'm deliberating on puting some of the Garvin matches above the Funk matches.

 

 

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I wonder if Tully is a little bit of a "reverse Windham" -- a big match player. Didn't seem as awesome in many of these TV matches. And it's going to hurt his push for top 3.

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Also, just out of interest I did a bit of a search online to see if ANY of the dozens of "Top 10 Flair matches" or "Top 5 Flair feuds" even bother to give Garvin an honourable mention. Massive blank.

 

Plenty of listings of stuff like Vince in 02 or Shawn in 08, plenty of Race in 83. You won't find Garvin anywhere.

 

Out of curiosity, I went and looked at Scott Keith's review of Starrcade 87.

 

He gave that match **1/2.

 

Outside of this little corner of the internet, it's difficult to find Garvin getting any dues at all anywhere beyond being some chump who accepted a title he was going to drop.

 

I point this out only to underline what I said at the end of the show and his legacy totally being soured by that idea. "Smart" fans.

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I'm so high on Garvin right now and I know there's some emotion and hyperbole talking but I don't think there's a better trilogy of matches in NWA/WCW outside of Flair - Steamboat than the three Garvin matches. (I need to rewatch Luger vs. Flair from Wrestlewar 90).

Have we made you watch the Garvin vs Savage ICW cage match yet? I forget.

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That tag match is one I'd never heard of before. There's an absolutely incredible moment where Arn has Garvin trapped in a body scissors and Garvin is trying to stand up out of it, and he absolutely levels Arn with one of the greatest forearm punches ever, like it crushed Arn's head against the mat. Crockett's call of the finish was spectacular too, and shows that he really did get what needed to be put over: "GARVIN JUST KNOCKED RIC FLAIR, THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, OUT! COLD!" Too short and one-sided to be called a great tag match but definitely one of the most fun and heated sub-10-minute matches ever.

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I would not call Tully a reverse Windham. You really have to look at the sample size. You are looking at Tully at about 5 t.v bouts . That really isn't a fair sample size to give him the label of big show worker.

You're right. I have seen quite a lot of Tully from 85-86 on the Horsemen set and he's actually phenomenal kicking the shit out of jobbers etc. He was just a bit disappointing in a couple of matches here. Actually, I'll qualify that a bit: he didn't get enough on offense in those matches. Nothing was actually wrong with the work he did, bumping and selling were still great.

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I rewatched the Flair/Garvin TV match from '85 and the Starrcade '87 match. Both are excellent, but the Garvin title win is a cut above for me, and something that after a rewatch I'm completely comfortable calling a 5* match. It was as good as any match I've ever seen.

 

I liked Starrcade, but it was missing my favorite aspect of the Detroit match, which was the slow build to a crescendo. They just started tearing into each other right away at Starrcade, where the Detroit match teased the stiffness in brief exchanges then made us wait for them to really lay everything in. Garvin working basic holds early in the Detroit match was what really gave it the big match feel.

 

The acoustics were better at Starrcade, and I loved Flair's audible yelp when he sold every single blow there. But that's one reason I'm not overly excited about their 30 minute handheld cage match from '86, even though I watched some of it and it looked great too -- a big part of the fun of Flair vs Garvin is hearing them lay in their shots.

 

Just an awesome series.

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I was a huge Soap Opera guy and my favorite was the short lived "Santa Barbara" on NBC. I also watched Ryan's Hope on ABC aloong with General Hospital and One Life to Live. Days of Our Lives on NBC was another one I liked. There was so much mystique to them prior to the internet age as the shows wouldn't have preveiws of the next episode or recap the previous one which meant you had to see every episode or you could miss something. My mom was into Soaps and we use to record them and watch when we got home. I would even ditch some of my classes to get home in time for a real hot episode back when I was a school kid in the 80's

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I was a huge Soap Opera guy and my favorite was the short lived "Santa Barbara" on NBC.

Dude, I was fucking hooked on Santa Barbara. I got the chicken pox when I was 14 and was laid up on the couch for 2 weeks. We didn't have cable or a remote control, so I just left NBC on all day. Santa Barbara had just started a week earlier so I didn't have to learn all the normal soap sub plots and man it hooked me in bad. I watched it for years.
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I was a huge Soap Opera guy and my favorite was the short lived "Santa Barbara" on NBC.

Dude, I was fucking hooked on Santa Barbara. I got the chicken pox when I was 14 and was laid up on the couch for 2 weeks. We didn't have cable or a remote control, so I just left NBC on all day. Santa Barbara had just started a week earlier so I didn't have to learn all the normal soap sub plots and man it hooked me in bad. I watched it for years.

 

 

Yup I had a major crush on Eden Capwell

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