WON HOF 2013 discussion

[KrisZ]

That is wow.........again only one guy I voted for got in

 

Dr. Wagner Sr.

[tofu_chipmunk]

It was an all foreign class, with Japanese women's wrestling promoter Takashi Matsunaga in his first year ever on the ballot, going in with almost landslide numbers. Others in are France's Henri Deglane, who was profiled in last week's issue, as well as Mexico's Dr. Wagner Sr. and current CMLL headliner Atlantis, and Japan's Kensuke Sasaki and New Japan top star Hiroshi Tanahashi, the latter coming off two straight Wrestler of the Year awards. Deglane, the first Olympic gold medalist in wrestling who became a major world champion and was among the most important figures in the history of wrestling in Montreal, Boston and Paris. Wagner Sr. had been close in the voting for several years and only missed by one vote last year; as did Sasaki. Atlantis and Tanahashi, both of whom spent the past year active in main events, gained significant ground over last yaer.

 

Unlike last year, where there were five extremely close calls, this year there was only one, the case of Carlos Colon, who came one vote shy this year after being two votes shy last year.

Does this make Carlos Colon the Donn E. Allen of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame?

[W2BTD]

OMG Colon.

 

Also gutted at the RnRE not making it again. I figured them for near locks this time.

[KrisZ]

Hiroshi Tanahashi, 36, is the biggest star in today's Japanese pro wrestling world. While not coming close last year, he followed it with another year of having incredible main events in the ring. He was the key guy during a period where New Japan's business showed significant increases. His Jan. 4 main event this year at the Tokyo Dome with Kazuchika Okada became the first Internet PPV show to top 100,000 buys worldwide, with roughly 99% of the viewership being from Japan.

 

You could make a strong case for him as the best in-ring performer in the business today. But he's the leading star in New Japan Pro Wrestling's comeback from being in terrible shape a few years back to being the No. 2 pro wrestling company in the world. He's also won the Lou Thesz/Ric Flair award the past two years. The only two-time winners historically have been Harley Race, Ric Flair, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, John Cena and Chris Jericho, all Hall of Famers. And he was largely responsible for putting over his successor to the top spot, Okada, in one of the great in-ring programs in modern pro wrestling. To me, he had clearly established the credentials, but the only question was as an active performer who is still considered the top guy in his promotion, would people hold off on voting for him.

 

Both for his role as the ace of the promotion in building the company while playing a completely different role than any prior superstar in Japan had ever played, and doubling with his blow away matches, which he's really been doing for a decade, to me it made him a strong pick, as he fits the criteria for drawing power, influence, being the key performer in a strong growth period of a major national promotion, and his in-ring is without question Hall of Fame standards.

 

Tanahashi did what may have been a first in this year's balloting, in that every wrestler who voted either from Japan or who had worked significant time in Japan in the past decade voted for him. He also had strong support among reporters, and surprisingly given he's a current performer, among historians, who tend not to vote for younger wrestlers.

That last sentence pretty much sums up everything doesn't it.

[Timbo Slice]

Hogan was a top draw without PPV. Tanahashi was the top draw in NJPW without iPPV.

Hogan was a draw regardless of PPV numbers. Tanahashi is a draw regardless of iPPV numbers.

 

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You're saying that Tanahashi's iPPV numbers are a main contributor to him as a draw. It was used while he was on top. There's a big difference between someone being the cause for using a technology and a technology being used because it's beneficial to the company while the draws are at the top of the card.

[jdw]

Again, here are the wrestlers who were voted in that can be seen as going in solely on work:

 

[...]

 

There are additional arguments for some of them (and you have to take note of when they were inducted, as Kobashi didn't have the long Noah run as champion when he went in), but I think we can agree that everyone on this list was a workrate candidate, more or less.

Want to have that qualifier at the top before looking at these.

 

Aja Kong

Workrate didn't drive her in. In fact, it was a negative as Dave kept banging the "Another Dump but not as good" and "Aja wasn't as good as Bull" drum when talking about her.

 

What got her over the top was people articulating her impact on getting Joshi over to Men, and quite wisely using Dave's own words at the time to get that point across. Dave forgot it, but some of us didn't.

 

"Impact" and being the top woman in the 90s glory era of the promotion got her over the top. But it was a struggle to get there.

 

 

Akira Hokuto

Would agree.

 

 

Bull Nakano

Not entirely sure in 2001. I think three years as the top dog in the post-Crush Girls company as they re-marketed themselves was as important. Dave pushed her work, but by 2001 it wasn't something like Hokuto or Toyota's.

 

Chris Benoit

Yep. Work drove that. He got in *before* the big push in 2004.

 

Chris Jericho

I think this is what drove it:

 

2008 & 2009 WON Wrestler of the Year

 

He'd been on the ballot how long before getting in the Class of 2010? He got in the very next year after his second WOTY award.

 

Now "why" he won those two awards might have a lot to do with work. But that was the cha-ching for a lot of voters.

 

 

Eddy Guerrero

Eddy got in for dropping dead.

 

Yeah, his justification is largely work. But it didn't get him into the HOF in 2005, or in 2004 after the big push and Mania Moment. He dropped dead and went into the Hall.

 

 

Hiroshi Hase

Hase got in half for work, and half for people delusionally giving him way too much credit for his front office work with New Japan while providing extremely few specifics on exactly what major things Hase was responsible for (as opposed to, you know... Choshu). Without the work, he doesn't go in. But without the bullshit, he also doesn't go in.

 

 

Jushin Liger

Yep.

 

Kenta Kobashi

Yep.

 

Kurt Angle

Yep. Though people would point to him supporting the work with the accomplishments, and there probably are some who gave Gold Medal bonuses.

 

 

Manami Toyota

Yep.

 

Shawn Michaels

You're forgetting the "influence" and "impact" bonuses people were giving to justify him going in, along with trying to give him as much business credit as possible for his 1996-98 run.

 

Honestly, the reason Shawn went in was the "I really, really, really like/love him" factor, then building a case to support voting for him.

 

 

Ultimo Dragon

I'd agree on that, though people tried to pull the "trainer" rabbit out of the hat. I think Shawn, Hase and Dragon all fell into the "we really like this guy" category at the time of their election, and arguments in favor of them we crafted to support the cause.

 

As much as I don't especially like Shawn as a worker or as a character or as a person, he's one of those guys who if the rule was you can't get on the ballot until you're 45, I would have had a much easier time supporting his candidacy in 2010 in contrast to thinking he wasn't worthy back when he really was on the ballot.

 

John

[KrisZ]

Next year's additions to the ballot will be:

 

1) Junkyard Dog - The biggest drawing card in the history of Mid South Wrestling, who later was one of the top stars in the early years of the WWF national expansion. JYD's weakness is that he was a less than mediocre performer who had to be carried in the ring, and due to drug and weight issues, he fell out of the spotlight abruptly. His gimmick was later taken by MMA star Quinton Jackson.

 

2) Minoru Suzuki - A college wrestling star who became enamored with the teachings of Karl Gotch, Suzuki, Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock started Pancrase, the first pro wrestling organization to do shoot matches in modern times. After Suzuki's shooting days were over due to repeated concussions, he returned to worked pro wrestling and has been one of Japan's biggest stars for many years. While more a freelance opponent who headlined against the top stars of a number of different promotions, Suzuki probably falls short in traditional measures of a Hall of Famer. His two strengths are being along with Funaki, the major person who was influential in doing pro wrestling without high spots and predetermined winners, and his unique ring style that appears to be unprofessional non-cooperation to outsiders, but those in the business say it's a genius style of work, out of the box, creative and he's an exceptional worker.

 

3) Akira Taue - One of the big four native superstars of the All Japan 90s boom period, who had incredible matches with Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama and others. Taue has been on the ballot in the past and gotten no support. He had as many great matches as all but a few of his era, and headlined big shows that sold out. But Taue was the fourth guy in the tag match, and wrestlers who worked with him at the time considered him difficult and nowhere near the talent level of the other top All Japan stars.

 

4) Jun Akiyama - To me, Akiyama epitomizes a guy who has been a great pro wrestler for decades but is right under the threshold. He was a natural in the business, very much like a Kurt Angle or a Jack Brisco, who was good from day one. But while a great wrestler, he never could hang when the spotlight was on him as the top star in Pro Wrestling NOAH, as they kept having to go back to Misawa and Kobashi even after their bodies were thrashed and they wanted to hand the top spot to Akiyama. He was a better wrestler than Sting. He was not as famous as Sting. But they were similar in the sense they were part of the top package for a long time, but never really succeeded when handed the ball to carry things.

 

5) C.M. Punk - Punk has had a good run in WWE. He's been the No. 2 full-time performer in American wrestling for most of the past several years, behind only John Cena. Punk really is one of the best promos in pro wrestling history, very good at match layout and as a performer, I consider him a major overachiever, as he's not really a great athlete, but is good enough and clearly makes up for it in smarts to put together great matches. How he's viewed will likely tell the fate of a lot of future candidates.

[mookeighana]

Eddy Guerrero

Eddy got in for dropping dead.

 

Yeah, his justification is largely work. But it didn't get him into the HOF in 2005, or in 2004 after the big push and Mania Moment. He dropped dead and went into the Hall.

 

Though isn't there a piece to the argument that some voters just won't vote for an active guy if he's under 40 and still working in a major federation? There's at least some voters that were waiting until he was clearly done before they were going to include him on their HOF ballot (i.e. the "I won't vote for Cena... yet" argument).

 

But yeah, I agree there was a huge emotional sway that changed voter's people's minds -- still, at least a portion of it was probably a few minds changing with a fair assessment of his body of work.

[Dylan Waco]

Positives of this years class

 

Two Luchadores got in, which opens up that ballot for more guys down the road.

 

I have no major problem with any of the people who got in (Tanahashi was inevitable), and the one landslide pick was a guy who absolutely deserved to be in already.

 

Negatives

 

Atlantis going in before some of the other Luchadores on the ballot is nuts.

 

I think the historians voting for Tanahashi is telling because that is a group of people who historically would not have voted for someone with his drawing record. Whatever you think of Tanahashi's case I think a precedent has been set and established for this generation. At this point anyone who argues against Mistico or Bryan but voted for Tanahashi should not be taken seriously at all.

 

Colon not going in is shit and I think the category he is in is actually hurting him at this point.

[Dylan Waco]

One more positive - Patera got 15% and stayed on the ballot. The fact that he got 53 votes is actually shocking to me and means that either A. my work has penetrated out of the bubble some or B. he got a lot of votes from wrestlers.

[jdw]

Ay W2BTD, please stop doing the podcaster equivalent of of subtweeting. It's kind of lame: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2013/11/0...power-struggle/

 

Also lame? Calling me out at the F4W board over something I posted here.

Yes - lame.

 

First of all, we already hashed out that Bix was mistaken, as the post I copy & pasted and called him out on at the Observer board was indeed something he posted on the Observer board. Apparently he posted it in both places. Try to keep up.

I thought the bitchfest on your podcast after several times swearing off of the discussion here was lame. Could give a shit about what you post on the WO-4 boards.

 

 

Second, with all due respect, I will talk about whatever the hell I want on my show. If that's lame, so be it.

Of course. It's just lame to repeatedly check out of this discussion, come back, check out again and then run off to your podcast and bitch some more.

 

RE:Akiyama - I am on record as saying I would probably vote for him. Need no convincing there.

And I think what some of us are pointing out is that we don't think Jun is a HOFer. If Tanahashi is sub-Jun, it doesn't help him.

 

 

RE Bix's long post on workrate inductees: Basically this sums up the point I've been trying to make all along, that a guy like Tanahashi has a much better chance of getting on on work & work alone than some of the (I wont use the phrase of death again because it was taken the wrong way) candidates talked about here. This is really all I was saying all along. He falls more in line with what your typical voter would consider a "great worker".

Of course. All of those guys who have gotten voted in hit their working peak after 1990.

 

The people that Dylan and Bix and others have pointed out earlier hit their work peak before 1990, and for the most part had their career effectively done by that point.

 

Which is something that the rest of us point out every time you get back to the meme that "you guys don't understand the voters and what they voter for". No, actually, we do understand all to well. It's why some of us said several years ago that Danielsen would be a lock to go in the HOF even before he got the big push in the WWE. We know the voting pasterns, and know that the voters are going to pick Current and Recent work guys while not bothering to put the time and effort into Past work guys.

 

John

[jdw]

Eddy Guerrero

Eddy got in for dropping dead.

 

Yeah, his justification is largely work. But it didn't get him into the HOF in 2005, or in 2004 after the big push and Mania Moment. He dropped dead and went into the Hall.

 

Though isn't there a piece to the argument that some voters just won't vote for an active guy if he's under 40 and still working in a major federation? There's at least some voters that were waiting until he was clearly done before they were going to include him on their HOF ballot (i.e. the "I won't vote for Cena... yet" argument).

 

But yeah, I agree there was a huge emotional sway that changed voter's people's minds -- still, at least a portion of it was probably a few minds changing with a fair assessment of his body of work.

 

I don't recall what the flip in voting % was. Also suspect that there might have been some folks for whom "dropping dead from drugs" wouldn't pull in a sympathy vote for. All that said, I do think the act of dying rapidly hastened Eddy getting into the HOF. :/

 

John

[jdw]

One more positive - Patera got 15% and stayed on the ballot. The fact that he got 53 votes is actually shocking to me and means that either A. my work has penetrated out of the bubble some or B. he got a lot of votes from wrestlers.

53 votes is 15% in the NA Group? 353 votes total?

 

Yeah, Dave is handing out a lot of ballots these days.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

I would note that this thread is how HoF debates should be done. When clown said "eh Ivan Koloff, prove it" people actually did the work and tried to offer something up. That's what I've done with Patera. Years ago it's what James Phillips (I think) did with Kong who was stonewalled for years.

 

To me there needs to be cases made for guys. That's half the point of the Hall of Fame.

[jdw]

Dave's response to my question on "why uptick if attendance is flat?" regarding NJPW attendance: @davemeltzerWON

 

"Company switched for usual Japan fake #s to more real #s with new owner. Biz actually up about 45% y-to-y"

"For example, the 29,000 Dome would have been announced at 50,000 other years."

They have been so consistent in how they announce the 1/4 attendance over the years:

 

Announced vs Dave (via prowrestlinghistory.com)

1997 62,500 vs 52,500 (19.0%)

1998 65,000 vs 55,000 (18.2%)

1999 62,500 vs 52,500 (19.0%)

2000 63,500 vs 53,500 (18.7%)

2001 62,001 vs 52,000 (19.2%)

2002 51,500 vs 52,000 (-1.0% yeah... that does look a bit odd)

2003 50,000 vs 30,000 (66.7%)

2004 53,000 vs 40,000 (32.5%)

2005 46,000 vs 46,000 (0.0% yep, that one too... I think Jason may have gotten a non-Dave for these two)

2006 43,000 vs 31,000 (38.7%)

2007 28,000 vs 18,000 (55.6%)

2008 27,000 vs 20,000 (35.0%)

2009 40,000 vs 27,500 (45.5%)

2010 41,500 vs 20,000 (107.5%)

2011 42,000 vs 18,000 (133.3%)

2012 43,000 vs 23,000 (87.0%)

2013 29,000 vs 29,000 (0.0%)

 

Anyway, they did get insane with their Dome numbers at the least. They were bad after the bottom fell out in 2002/03, but then took it to another level.

 

What's kind of funny is that 2006/07 is when the Nakamura/Tanahashi era of them really anchoring the company took off... or didn't take off.

 

John

[Loss]

Nobody who was a territorial star is going to get in as a workrate candidate other than maybe Red Bastien.

 

Again, here are the wrestlers who were voted in that can be seen as going in solely on work:

 

Aja Kong

Akira Hokuto

Bull Nakano

Chris Benoit

Chris Jericho

Eddy Guerrero

Hiroshi Hase

Jushin Liger

Kenta Kobashi

Kurt Angle

Manami Toyota

Shawn Michaels

Ultimo Dragon

 

There are additional arguments for some of them (and you have to take note of when they were inducted, as Kobashi didn't have the long Noah run as champion when he went in), but I think we can agree that everyone on this list was a workrate candidate, more or less. There are 13 wrestlers on this list. 8 are Japanese. Benoit's formative training was in the NJPW dojo and he made his mark there as a junior heavyweight. Jericho first made his name in Mexico and Japan plus his career inextricably linked to Benoit: A Benoit match got Jericho his job in WCW and they had their first great WWF matches with each other. Eddy was similar.

 

They only ones completely removed from magical international workrate land are Michaels, a guy who stood out as the best worker in a company with a lot less great workers and Angle, he of the go-go-go style. Only Michaels worked the territories but wasn't any kind of star until they had died off. The first class had very few candidates who would be seen as primarily going in for work, and the only ones who were American territorial stars were Ted DiBiase and Ricky Steamboat, both of whom became national names after the expansion.

 

An American territorial star just isn't going to go in on work. That's just not the perception of the voting pool, and I'm going to blame Dave a little bit for that with how much he discourages evaluating older wrestlers with hindsight on newly found footage and that type of stuff. American territorial stars aren't seen as "great workers" to that degree to where enough of the non-wrestler voters (and even some of the wrestler voters) are going to vote them in. It has nothing to do with merit as much as, along with some other factors, Japan has always been the land of escapism for five star matches to get away from those dastardly cartoon angles that clueless American promoters force on us.

 

After the WWF expansion and especially the dark period for American wrestling in the early to mid '90s, Japanese wrestling wasn't just something cool to check out anymore. Disillusioned fans were sold on Japanese wrestling (or ECW or SMW or ROH or AAA during their boom period) because it was a current alternative. Nobody was pushing "Hey, watch some old wrestling" because there wasn't a lot you could track down and the focus was always on an alternative and thus something relatively current.

 

When most of the voting pool thinks of "great workers," they're going to put Japan first because that's where they went for great wrestling when American wrestling sucked. Watching a lot of older wrestling, as a thing, is an incredibly recent phenomenon, as in the last 10 years for DVDs and the last 5 for YouTube. A whole lot of footage came out of the woodwork and technology changed: DVDs were incredibly cheap and could be duplicated quickly without quality loss. YouTube and other sites allowed people to enjoy old wrestling for free. If you wanted to spend your time watching older wrestling, there was a ceiling to it financially and in terms of how much you'd be able to find, so it was never the alternative.

 

Hell, aside from Ric Flair matches, territorial footage was rarely pushed as something you checked out for the in-ring action. The focus was on angles. Memphis wasn't really thought of as a place to look for great matches in part because nobody thought there was anything to dig up. World Class tapes were heavy on the famous angles and skits. The awful "every title changes hands" episode UWF TV was considered an all-time great installment of wrestling television programming. And so on. Japanese wrestling was happening "right now," with all sorts of home videos and eventually special shows on a magical all-wrestling network allowing everyone to see full matches so TV time constraints weren't an issue much of the time in the '90s.

 

Obviously it'll be different for younger fans, but old territory footage was always the lowest priority behind Japan, ECW, SMW, AAA, workrate indies, etc, and the lack of complete matches of note meant it wasn't a destination for "workrate" fans. That carries over now, so:

 

Even if Buddy Rose had great matches every week where he had to constantly be on his toes and mix things up due to the limited roster, the main house show being on TV, and the same fans being at the live show every week, he's not going to be seen as a candidate based on work because he wasn't a "great worker" as the hardcore newsletter reading fans are concerned, especially due to how little footage was available.

 

Dundee was a little more on the radar of newsletter fans because of how hot Memphis was among tape traders and even had matches on Jeff Bowdren's top matches of the '80s list, but because he was a Tennessee wrestler doing Tennessee style matches that weren't traded around a lot, he's not seen as a "great worker" by writers and wrestling people couldn't carry him either because so many saw "Tennessee" as a dirty word.

 

And that doesn't even touch on what Will and I mentioned earlier about wrestlers who will refuse to vote for certain wrestlers for reasons having nothing to do with merit.

This is really a fantastic post that I think anyone who throws out "What about Buddy Rose and Bill Dundee?" should really check out and think about. The people who are in on work alone are smark darlings. If you want to make the case for Buddy Rose or Bill Dundee to HOF voters on work alone, rather than pointing out undiscovered great matches or pointing out specific things you enjoy in their performances, it's better to point to WON star ratings and remind people of praiseworthy things said by hardcore fans about both guys *at the time*, or to positive things other wrestlers have said who have worked with them.

 

I don't agree with that, but it's the system in which the HOF exists. I do think Buddy Rose has a case even within that way of approaching the debate (Curt Hennig famously approached most ideas presented to him in the WWF by asking what Buddy Rose would do in this situation), but as has been mentioned by a few people, people take their personal experiences into HOF voting when they probably shouldn't.

 

Also, how we define "great workers" and how people within wrestling define "great workers" varies. Someone who had some great output, but had a rep for working too stiff, or not calling spots loudly enough, or calling spots too loudly, or not leaving themselves open enough when taking strikes, or causing a freak injury has no chance of going into the HOF based on work. We separate that from performance and output. People inside wrestling don't.

 

None of this will change until Dave changes his mindset on watching old footage and re-evaluating workers with modern eyes. It's a major blind spot for him. He seems to think wrestlers only work matches for the here and now audience and that it doesn't matter what a match looks like years later because standards change all the time. However, he also mentions frequently that wrestling changes all the time and that he has to keep up with those changes to stay relevant. Setting aside bootlegging and tape trading, a change has happened with retrospective DVDs, YouTube and 24/7. I'm curious how wrestlers see it, but I don't think when the Undertaker has a match at Wrestlemania, he's not wrestling it in a way that he wants remembered positively years from now. It's part of his legacy, and WWE markets old footage now. The "here and now" argument regarding who wrestlers are working for may have been relevant at one time, but it isn't anymore, and I really do think Dave would benefit from changing his paradigm and also encouraging his readers who may see it differently to do the same.

[jdw]

I would note that this thread is how HoF debates should be done. When clown said "eh Ivan Koloff, prove it" people actually did the work and tried to offer something up. That's what I've done with Patera. Years ago it's what James Phillips (I think) did with Kong who was stonewalled for years.

 

To me there needs to be cases made for guys. That's half the point of the Hall of Fame.

Totally agree.

 

James put together the piece on Aja after a number of us had been batting her around for several years, and specifically after post-HOF issue when Dave crapped on her. That was time to get it organized, and "BTW... here are Dave's quotes from the WON's in the early 90s about Aja to support the point we're making".

 

The HOF in the end is just a freaking list. There's not alteration of Hase's career one way or another by being on that list. There's not a lot of illumination of his career either by being on that list. The illumination would have been by having some long discussions about him while he was a candidate. That didn't happen.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

You mentioned Akiyama earlier, I'll be honest, I'd consider Jun much more strongly than Tanahashi because I think he was a better worker, but also because his drawing record - flawed as it has been at times and terrible as it may be in 2013 alone - is stronger as a body than Tanahashi's.

There is some humor in the fact that Jun in 2001/2002 and again in 2003 put up drawing numbers in NJPW that Tanahashi has never matched.

 

I tend to think that Jun bombed as a successor/heir to Misawa when given repeated chances. But if we apply the "That's a tough standard for Tanahashi to be forced to match" rule when comparing Tanahashi's success to when New Japan was actually a successful company... well, Jun kind of does pretty okay. Dittos Sasaki, who I think is wildly overrated as a draw and have pointed it out in earlier threads this year.

 

2001-03 is only a few years removed from business being strong. Tanahashi is now a decade and a half removed from when business was strong. The bottom has not only fallen out of the wrestling business, but K-1 and MMA too. At least a decade ago, the business could leech off MMA. If Tanahashi is any kind of draw, it's the difference between 3-4k and 8k on a non-sell out Sumo Hall show. You have to seriously question whether drawing an extra 3k in 2012/13 is harder than selling out Sumo Hall on consecutive nights during a hot period. It doesn't make Tanahashi a HOF draw, because he's clearly not, but there were guys who ride the wave during hot periods who wouldn't draw much more today and who were never in a situation like Tanahashi where you're scraping to draw 3k more from a small market. Workers who folks would give some sort of cred to for drawing power in the 90s weren't able to stop the rot when they were still headlining. Is that on the talent or the promoters? Because if it's on the promoters then the promoters ought to get more credit for the hot periods and then the drawing power of some of these 90s stars is questionable. Why is Aja Kong considered a draw? The gates Aja has drawn for a long time now ought to be considered a negative if people are being consistent.

 

I don't want to ruffle any feathers here, but there inconsistencies on both sides of this argument. People mention Rose's reputation as a worker among other wrestlers, since when did the opinion of other wrestlers suddenly matter? I bet it doesn't matter about Brody or Sayama. Dandy should go in for work? Where is a proper critical appraisal of Dandy's work? Is Rose a better big match worker than Tanahashi? I thought Rose's big matches were on the Tuesday shows. Is Regal a better big match worker than Tanahashi? When did he get to work big matches? The latter two points may not have been made, but I don't see the comparison point between Rose and Tanahashi other than people wanting to mention how great Rose is again.

 

Anyway, the Tanahashi argument reminds me a bit of the Sting argument in that you have to make a lot of concessions for both men and ideally a HOF'er doesn't need concessions made for him, but I guess it's a moot point now that Tanahashi has been elected.

[JNLister]

Looking at the figures for Brits this year and seeing Pallo didn't get any bump as leading candidate once McManus got in and "freed up" a spot I suspect it may be many years before anyone gets in. With Daddy on 38% (a big rise), I get the impression that a fair proportion of the European voting group is split between "would never put Daddy in" and "will always vote for Daddy ahead of anyone else, often as the only UK pick". In turn that creates a logjam that Daddy won't get in, but eats up enough votes that it makes it very hard for anyone else to get on 60 percent of ballots.

 

There appear to be 120 people voting in the Europe category, which is staggeringly high.

 

It's also amazing how many people on the ballot (in all categories) got identical or near identical percentages to last year.

[Loss]

People mention Rose's reputation as a worker among other wrestlers, since when did the opinion of other wrestlers suddenly matter?

It's being mentioned specifically because it's something Dave values as important. It's a (possibly misguided) attempt to work within the existing framework.

[ohtani's jacket]

People mention Rose's reputation as a worker among other wrestlers, since when did the opinion of other wrestlers suddenly matter?

It's being mentioned specifically because it's something Dave values as important. It's a (possibly misguided) attempt to work within the existing framework.

 

All right, if that's the case then fair enough.

[pantherwagner]

Positives of this years class

 

Two Luchadores got in, which opens up that ballot for more guys down the road.

 

I have no major problem with any of the people who got in (Tanahashi was inevitable), and the one landslide pick was a guy who absolutely deserved to be in already.

 

Negatives

 

Atlantis going in before some of the other Luchadores on the ballot is nuts.

 

I think the historians voting for Tanahashi is telling because that is a group of people who historically would not have voted for someone with his drawing record. Whatever you think of Tanahashi's case I think a precedent has been set and established for this generation. At this point anyone who argues against Mistico or Bryan but voted for Tanahashi should not be taken seriously at all.

 

Colon not going in is shit and I think the category he is in is actually hurting him at this point.

I also have no problems with anyone that got in. I'm surprised both Sasaki and Tanahashi got in this year, but I also think they were going to get in at some point anyway.

 

I'm going to reference a Yohe joke from 2005 or 2006 on Wrestling Classics: "It looks like being a WWE main eventer automatically gets you into the WON HOF". Obviously his statement doesn't seem to be true anymore but I wonder if we are having a shift in influence due to the new voters in and Japanese main eventers from the last 15 years will have it easier than ever. Next year will be a good test with Taue and Akiyama on the ballot, but Suzuki should be the most interesting name to follow.

 

Agree that Atlantis going in before the other luchadores is insane, but also think he's done enough to be in. Also I think that it's great that Wagner Sr. got so much support and finally got in, but there are several names I'd put before him, some on the ballot and some not. I think that in a way it's odd how much support Wagner Sr. has gotten (reminds me of Lizmark back in the day) but it's hard to get a lot of people outside of the lucha bubble behind a Mexican guy.

 

I feel bad for Colon but I can't imagine that people voting for him in 2013 won't vote for him next year. The category has hurt him but not as much as I'd have thought, and he's a hard to place guy anyway.

[Bix]

Portland was a weekly territory. The Tuesday shows were about monthly but IIRC it wasn't necessarily as a rule.

 

In addition to what Loss said, to me, personally wrestlers' opinions matter on Rose because it's substantive praise that can be seen in watching the matches. The rep is that he was a genius at taking the crowd up and down with a creative flair as a promo and booker, and that's what you see when watching him. If the praise for Brody was more substantive, it wouldn't be discarded as easily.

[Jimmy Redman]

Also in the context of HOF voting, there are wrestlers who vote.

 

And for a guy who's career is as removed from the present as Rose, for people who aren't going to go back and watch stuff themselves, his reputation from the time is the only thing they can really go on in appraising his working ability. The same way that we treat historical candidates of whom we have little to no footage.

[Dylan Waco]

You aren't following the argument OJ.

 

The argument isn't "listen to what these wrestlers say on Buddy Rose!" It's the fact that is a metric that has been extolled as super meaningful by Dave before I personally don't give two fucks what people thought of Rose as a worker at the time, but the fact he is that he was well thought of, which supposedly "matters more" than people like us praising him now that we have footage to prove it.

 

My problem with Joe's point is that he was basically saying "sure within the isolated niche that is PWO Rose is thought of as an all time great," and while it is true that this little niche are the people most interested in watching the footage that exists, it is a massive stretch to say Rose wasn't thought of highly before hand. He was. It's just he never worked for a major promotion for any real length of time and he didn't have Dave talking him up in every issue of the Observer for two straight years.

 

Also, on Tanahashi as a draw, I think it's unfair to say the Ippv stuff doesn't matter because hey it's a new technology and anyone could have done it. But I also think it is nuts to say "he's the biggest Ippv draw of all time" in 2013, because the medium is relatively new, we don't even have solid numbers on it and if we are being honest Okada heating up is much more closely connected (on paper anyhow) to the NJPW turnaround than Tanahashi himself who was flat for years.