WON HOF 2013 discussion

[GSR]

Anyone voting for AJ Styles for the WON HOF is just comically bad.

Has Dave or anyone mentioned what was the catalyst for Styles getting on the ballot? Sabu, The Dudleys and Kane have all been mentioned as weak candidates, but I can at least see reasoning for each of them. I'm struggling to come up with anything for Styles.

[Dylan Waco]

Last year there was some talk about whether or not anyone who had worked all and/or the bulk of their career in TNA could ever even be considered a serious contender, let alone get in. Dave mentioned that AJ would be eligible this year and he had thought about putting him on the ballot but didn't want to do it if he couldn't get at least one person to commit to voting for him. At the time everyone was balking, my guess is a voter heard the audio in question and said "I'd vote for AJ" so Dave added him to the ballot

[soup23]

What is the cutoff year wise for the Historical and Modern performers? Seeing Ivan Koloff in the same category as AJ Styles and Edge seems odd.

[Kevin Ridge]

So is this like Baseball where people with ballots aren't required to show how they voted? Like when Aaron Sele gets a vote and we don't know who picked him, will that be similar to AJ Styles getting a random vote.

 

Seriously though, how many folks have a ballot for this and is there some type of breakdown between journalists, wrestlers and others working in the business? I would think the PED/Steroid issue has zero issue by the wrestling journalists. Nor is there any of that silly first time ballot crap some Baseball people get where they refuse to vote anyone in the first time no matter how great they were. Baseball requires at 75% vote for guys to make it. What is the WON requirement?

[Ricky Jackson]

60% of the vote.

[evilclown]

60% of the vote.

Sixty percent of voters who vote in that region or timeframe. For example, I won't vote in the Mexican category because I don't have the knowledge to do so. But that isn't the same as a negative vote. Me not voting for Atlantis doesn't penalize him.

 

I suspect plenty of the other voters aren't so scrupulous and vote where they probably shouldn't.

[Kevin Ridge]

I find 60% of North American voters to be really low as far as voting someone in.

[rovert]

Anyone voting for AJ Styles for the WON HOF is just comically bad.

Mookie has probably pulled up the stat before but AJ probably has 100s of ****+ matches in the Observer. If there is any justification for him to be argued it would be that.

 

 

On an Observer mailbag radio segment Meltzer said he would consider putting Minoru Suzuki back on the ballot. Obviously that didn't happen.

[Indikator]

@Jetlag: For Gordienko you should look at Vance Nevada's career record. There is not really too much for his case. I was about to say that he was compared to Billy Robinson what Wolfgang Saturski would be compared to Horst Hoffman - just to pull out something out of my ass. Of course with so few Euro tournament results around it might even turn out that Saturski could even surpass him. (btw, I can shill the 50s stuff I have already entered in WD, the sad thing is that I have next to nothing for the following decades).

 

*searches through files*

I can't find an instance of Thesz wrestling George Pencheff, so maybe it's just by chance that we have a Gordienko hype and not a Pencheff hype.

 

@pantherwagner: Yeah, if you have Moolah you might as well get other shameless (and some just as successless) self promoters like Georg "Schurl" Blemenschütz (longtime Vienna wrestler/promoter who was even called the "Mumie vom Heumarkt" (Mumie=mummy)) and our beloved icons Bulldog Bob Brown & Al Tomko

 

Some thoughts

 

Gene & Ole Anderson

The Assassins (Joe Hamilton & Tom Renesto)

Von Brauners & Saul Weingeroff

The more I know about the Andersons the less I want them in. At some point I might even start a "Aldo Bogni & Bronco Lubich > Andersons" debate, and if I get to hate Ole maybe even "George Becker & Johnny Weaver > Andersons". The Von Brauners, in this case we are talking about the first version which had it's height from 1960-1965, which isn't too long. B They did feud with the Assassins during that time frame, which should tell you that the Assassins will likely have a better case. I would rate the Von Brauners probably above the Kentuckians (Grizzly Smith/Luke Brown version), it would really be interesting to compare them with the Fabulous Kangaroos. A Gordy list for that team might be superb, as most of the somewhat older wrestling fans are aware of the adoration that team has received even long after Heffernan was gone from the US scene.

Somebody would have to buy the Florida Mat Wars publications by RVK and check out their other work in mainly Georgia and JCP to come to a conclusion regarding the Von Brauners.

 

The only musts for the other guys are imo John Tolos and Enrique Torres. I expect Wilbur Snyder and Pepper Gomez to reach the HOF fairly easy in the long run. Then it gets interesting, the more I know about them the more I would like to root for Ciclon Negro, for me he is with George Becker and Duke Keomuka one of the most underrated guys today.

Tim "Mr. Wrestling" Woods and Red Bastien will probably get there as well, I wouldn't mind that too much. And I am totally ignoring the question if in the next few years the current crop of wrestler will water down things brutally. Kinji Shibuya might just be a more forgotten Red Bastien. Rip Hawk might have a better case in a team with Swede Hanson. Again, I would say Hawk/Hanson > Andersons. Count Billy Varga and Dutch Savage were very likely too regional. I might call that Ole Anderson syndrome. Dick Hutton doesn't have much outside of Canada going for him. For June Byers I need to look at her title reign.

 

But if I then look at the modern performers category I wonder who of the above persons should not picked prior to them.

 

The Sharpes have a really good case with California, Canada and the advent of puroresu.

 

For the Euro guys somebody just needs to convince me why Billy Joyce should be included, not really sure why people bring him up. Everybody else was that good or successful. And if I would have to name another person I would instantly say Hermann Iffland (He posed for a picture with Prince Philipp once - how can such a person not be in every HOF?

 

When the Ken Andersons and the Batistas are in the HOF you will also have the Ozeania guys. Colon is a sure pick, Lewin and Barend might pass the mark with a good write up easily. DeNucci has the problem that in the latter part of his career he was a victim of the downfall of the Northeast wrestling scene. I can not find enough merit for Arion, Kox and Milano. I should note that I will hopefully be able to take a good look at the Australian scene in the next few years.

 

It will take quite some effort to convince me that Dave Brown belongs in here

[Dylan Waco]

I'm hardly an advocate of The Andersons, but what about them makes them unappealing?

 

Becker should be on the ballot, but he'd likely fall off immediately.

[Indikator]

I don't want to say that they are bad, it's just that other teams are probably more deserving. Just like one could say that the Kentuckians were good but the Kangaroos were better.

 

There is some frustration on my part regarding these things as most people don't give a damn about much besides their childhood territory, but that doesn't apply to this case that much. I will probably want to strangle certain people when I will try to make my case why Duke Keomuka might be the most successful Texan wrestler of all time.

[Dylan Waco]

Hell I'll listen to that argument, Keomuka is a guy who has been unexplored despite being very well regarded in certain circles.

 

I just hope people will be open minded with their votes. Obviously I have my guys who I push for, but it's not just about them getting in to me, it's about them and others not being dismissed for silly reasons.

[Bix]

I've been talking to Dylan about Lewin the last couple days. The more I think about him, the more he seems like someone who *could* be a really strong candidate with more research, but his career is "mysterious" with his best runs are in far flung corners of the world that aren't well researched. You could say the same about King Curtis but he had a fairly long run anchoring Hawaii and Lewin didn't really have a home base after he left Buffalo.

 

25 year run as a worldwide main eventer at the bare minimum (if you use the formation of the team w/ Don Curtis and his '83 run in New Zealand as the start and end points, respectively), but you could argue longer easily both before (teaming with his brother) and after ('84 Maritimes run as top face, Purple Haze, WCCW run w/ Brooks & Gang). Dylan made a comparison to Ivan Koloff, which kind of makes sense,

 

I'm under the impression he still wrestled regularly in Asia after that (he's listed as retiring in 1998, the hype for his shoot interview says he wrestled almost the entire second half of the century), too, and since he married into a rich family, so it wasn't out of necessity.

 

The big negative would be his rep as a booker: Bring in King Curtis and Big Bad John, use a lot of blood, get business sky high, business dies when fans get sick of the blood and he can't adjust. How much of that is BS, though? The territories you always hear associated with this are Detroit, Calgary, and Australia. Calgary I can believe, both stylistically and because I trust Ross Hart's assessment of that type of stuff. Detroit being burnt out on blood seems unlikely for obvious reasons. Australia did fine after, Barnett still had no problem using him and Curtis as talent so I'm skeptical it was THAT bad, and Barnett selling had little to do with wrestling.

 

I guess there's some research into Australia & New Zealand I could try to find, but what about Hong Kong, Singapore, etc? Are there attendance figures for Detroit?

[ohtani's jacket]

The guy to contact about New Zealand wrestling is Dave Cameron. Keep in mind that New Zealand had a population of just over 3 million in the 70s and Lewin would have been selling out town halls the size of World of Sports shows, which didn't impress Dave when discussing that territory.

[concrete1992]

AJ Styles being on the ballot. That's a real thing. Huh?

[Johnny Sorrow]

Shouldn't Dave Brown be a no brainer as an announcer?

[Indikator]

If I had to choose then I would vote for Frank Bonnema instead of Brown.

 

If Brown is a no brainer then Dave Prazak will have to get in as well at some point. To me Brown is more on the level with guys like Lord Zoltan or Henry Rogers, the guy who promoted that Malden, Missouri outlaw fed for 25 years. I have a soft spot for them but it's a Hall Of Fame and not a Hall Of Fame Academy (obscure Euro casting show reference)

[JerryvonKramer]

It may be because I've read an awful lot about him recently, but I think Ivan Koloff is the strongest name left on the modern US ballot. He had an extremely solid career for over 20 years, main evented everywhere, had a legendary feud with Bruno which drew well, held the WWWF World title in 71, challenged for the NWA title in St. Louis and elsewhere, challenged Backlund for the WWF title in his second run in New York, good run in Georgia, good runs elsewhere, and anchored the Crockett tag division in the 80s with a variety of partners and never really fell off as a performer. I don't think anyone else on that list has a career in that sort of league. Although welcome the Patera counter from Dylan. Maybe, arguably, Patera had higher peaks, but I think Ivan had a much longer career as a top heel and had a great 1980s, whereas Patera fell off. Finally, a perhaps more tangentially, Ivan was by far the best of the "Russians" and defined the role in an era when there were an awful lot of them.

 

Other than that, exactly the same as last year, I think Gene Okerlund is a slamdunk non-wrestler pick and can't believe he's still not in there.

 

I may attempt a Gordy list for Ivan.

[Loss]

I will beat the drum for Jerry Jarrett again.

[Matt D]

Ken Patera deserves extra points for his role getting Flair into the business

[WingedEagle]

I will beat the drum for Jerry Jarrett again.

Always a name that's intrigued me. I'm not referencing the list of who's in while posting this, but what's the case *against* Jarrett as opposed to other territorial promoters who are in?

[Matt D]

Every pro hates him for being a shitty payoff guy so no one in the business has anything good to say about him?

[Dylan Waco]

Actually I've been careful to say in this thread and elsewhere that I think Ivan is the best guy on the modern performers ballot. I don't think Patera is terribly far behind him, but Ivan would be one. It's just that after Ivan and maybe the RnR's Patera is the next best guy

[JerryvonKramer]

Actually I've been careful to say in this thread and elsewhere that I think Ivan is the best guy on the modern performers ballot. I don't think Patera is terribly far behind him, but Ivan would be one. It's just that after Ivan and maybe the RnR's Patera is the next best guy

Sorry Dylan seem to have missed where you said this.

 

I think I agree with you although I can see a strong argument being made for Slaughter based on his mainstream overness and late WWF World title run. Meltzer seems to put a lot of weight on real-world impact and stuff like the GI Joe deal might go a long way in his mind. Lesnar's UFC stuff will also probably help him.

 

Ivan should be a lock this year if the voters are informed and vote fairly.

[Dylan Waco]

I have wavered on Sarge over the years. He is a serious candidate, with major positives. I would have no problem if he got in. But the more I look at things, the more I struggle with him relative to others. I don't think he compares favorably to Patera, Morales, Mr. Wrestling II, RnR's or Murdoch, though that doesn't necessarily mean he shouldn't get in