WON HOF 2013 discussion

[jdw]

If you take Dave's argument seriously, it's hard to imagine why he would bother running pieces like Pat's Henri Deglane bio.

Well, there is that.

[KrisZ]

The thing I don't understand about Dave using Maeda is the fact that Maeda is an easy HOFer. Helped start an entire movement, great performer and a tremendous draw for quite a long time.

[ohtani's jacket]

Eh, that's a weak argument. Debate doesn't happen because a HOF has flimsy standards. Debate happens because the standards are so high that you're raising the bar for present and future candidates. If that bar keeps getting lower, all you're going to do is flood it with substandard candidates.

Which is no different from any other HOF. None of them are perfect beasts. Every year the International Rugby Board hands out international rugby awards chosen by a select group of ex-players. Every year there is controversy. This year the International Rugby Players Association have decided to run their own awards also chosen by ex-players. They're just as head scratching. It doesn't matter whether it's the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame or NBA All-Star voting, it's never perfect and people will always disagree. To argue that the WON HOF is a clusterfuck because people don't like certain people who got voted in is a pretty flippant remark. Good things happen in regard to the Hall and not so good things, but the Hall itself has merit otherwise this thread is a colossal waste of time.

[Bix]

I'm pretty sure Dave was talking about Hans Schmidt. Backlund isn't a guy with just a little bit on tape, a ton of his biggest matches are available.

[kjh]

The thing I don't understand about Dave using Maeda is the fact that Maeda is an easy HOFer. Helped start an entire movement, great performer and a tremendous draw for quite a long time.

I guess Dave still believes what he said in the old WrestlingClassics.com thread over 9 years ago to still be true:

 

"Maeda wouldn't have a prayer if he was on the ballot today. His legend hasn't grown and he's pretty much forgotten since the style his popularized became obsolete. You can argue that's a good reason to extend the age limit, but I think it's a good argument not to, because I feel based on influence while he was active, he should be a lock. Even in Japan, Maeda's influence is forgotten by many these days because the feeling is Funaki and Sakuraba are the modern legends were more influential to business, and Takada is considered the bigger star because his being the face of Pride has kept him a celebrity in the public eye."

 

Of course, his influence was so forgotten in Japan that Maeda was hired as a consultant by K-1 for their MMA promotion in 2005.

[jdw]

I'm kind of torn on Dave's comments. On one hand, I don't believe that revisionism belongs in hall of fame discussions. If you were to examine the case for Sayama, for example, I think you'd need to take into account how he was viewed from '81-83 among Japanese fans to get a proper historical account of him. I don't think it makes a shred of difference what tape watchers think of him thirty years later. I was reading some bios on Walt Bellamy after he died the other day and you could give numerous reasons for why his early numbers was so good through re-evaluating the era, but to me that's a side issue and misses the point of a Hall of Fame. A Hall of Fame surely most enshrine those players who best represented their era regardless of critical appraisal. For many Japanese fans, that early 80s era is best represented by Choshu and Sayama and just because there's been a positive rethink on Choshu lately and negative criticism towards Sayama doesn't make one less of a Hall of Famer than the other.

Let me split this into two.

 

On Sayama, is anyone arguing that Sayama shouldn't be in the HOF? Even if one thinks he's a shitty worker, are there people who think the impact/influence isn't worthy of getting in the HOF?

 

I think he's a HOF. He was a no brainer to me in 1996 when Dave flipped the page and Tiger Mask's picture was there:

 

jdw: "Yes."

 

DM: "Of course."

 

If Sayama were on the ballot this year, I'd voter for him. Easy, and I'd have a hard time thinking of anyone on the ballot this year other than Matsunaga who I would vote ahead of him if I was limited to 1 vote.

 

So back to this one:

 

I was reading some bios on Walt Bellamy after he died the other day and you could give numerous reasons for why his early numbers was so good through re-evaluating the era, but to me that's a side issue and misses the point of a Hall of Fame. A Hall of Fame surely most enshrine those players who best represented their era regardless of critical appraisal.

Here's the problem... or problems.

 

Belemay became eligible in 1981. The people closer to when he played didn't think he a sure shot HOFer. It took Belemay until 1993, 13 years of eligibility, to get in. You can look up the guys who got in before him:

 

http://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/hof.html

 

Now it's the Naismith HOF, which covers Pro + College, so someone like Bill Bradley has items in both and would never get in for just his pro career. But there are centers Willis Reed, Nate Thurmond, Wes Unseld, Dave Cowens, Bill Walton and Bob Lanier who came along after he debuted, along with Neil Johnston and Clyde Lovellette who played before him. Even in that batch, none of them are top tier (Russell, Chamberlain, Jabbar, Moses Malone, Olajuwon and O'Neal), though an exception can be made for Walton because his College was top tier with the pros being gravy.

 

Belemay just wasn't highly thought of in the 1981-92 period.

 

Okay, what about his contemporaries?

 

All-Star Games

1962 NBA

1963 NBA

1964 NBA

1965 NBA

 

Awards

1961-62 NBA Rookie of the Year

0 All NBA Teams (a bit hard with Russell & Wilt

 

This was the only time he got an MVP vote:

 

http://www.basketball-reference.com/awards...s_1963.html#mvp

 

1 point (i.e. the final vote on someone's ballot), tied with John Barnhill and behind Red Kerr and Terry Dischinger.

 

Those guys I mentioned above who came along after him? Reed, Unseld, Cowens and Walton won MVP's (and titles as well), while Thurmond (2-8-9), and Bob Lanier (3-4-10-13-14) ran circles around Belemay's recognition.

 

What happened with Belemay wasn't that people thought he was great when he played (they didn't), or instantly after he retired (they really didn't). It's that over time, being 20-14 PPG-RPB and 7th on the RPG list made him look better than he was. It was Stats, not how people thought of him in the era, or how he reflected it.

 

So in turn, people coming around after that enshrinement (and frankly even before it) to point out that his stats are wildly inflated and he wasn't really that great isn't revisionism. It's dealing with what got him in (Stats) with deeper analysis (Contextualizing those Stats), along with pointing out how he was thought of in the era. It's actually trying to correct what was revisionism.

 

 

On the other hand, Dave doesn't give enough credit towards positive revisionism. There's any number of films or albums or even wrestlers who wouldn't enjoy the same level of popularity today if we only took into account how they were viewed upon release or at the time they worked. Revisionism can be a positive and a negative, but I kind of think the judging of work is a sticky area. I would hope that voters are fair minded about that, but who knows.

Agree with this.

[KrisZ]

Star Trek is a great example of how revisionism works the right way.

[jdw]

Of course in the case of Brody and Sayama it's a different situation in many ways, but here is the thing - for all the anti-Brody and to a lesser degree anti-Sayama people that have come to that perspective through "revisionism," I don't know if any of them would oppose either for an HoF. If I were a voter and I had a ballot I would vote for both.

Exactly.

 

 

I'm not sure there are very many candidates that have actually emerged through revisionism. It's probable that Buddy Rose got on the ballot because of it to one degree or another, but he didn't last. Fujiwara and Dandy haven't gotten on the ballot yet, and a part of the case of one, if not both, extends beyond work. Patera got on the ballot, but it wasn't because of detailed analysis of his in ring career.

Backlund. A large chunk of it was more info (MSG book) coming out. But there was some revisionism.

 

Schmidt wasn't revisionism, but more info being dug up.

 

It's really hard to point to many.

 

 

Which brings me to another point. This talk of how wrestlers were perceived in their era often strikes me as a cover for "how I perceived this wrestler, when I watched him." All too often legit questions, or interesting research is brushed aside with "you weren't there, you didn't know."

Yeah, there is a good deal of that.

 

And yeah... I get the irony.

 

 

A few examples that are notable:

 

Meltzer saying that The High Flyers really weren't that over and/or weren't all that big of a deal in the AWA because "he saw them live" and they got boos and ridicule all the time. This is compounded by the fact that Dave saw them in the worst market the AWA had, a point he disputed recently, but my follow up post with details was ignored.

Yep. That's a tough one.

 

 

The old argument touted by myself for years - and more importantly, others who were fans during his peak - that Backlund wasn't really that big a deal/he wasn't over and it was the titles that drew. Or the promotion. Or the heels. Except when you watch the footage, look at the history and talk to casual fans it's hard to defend this argument. At all.

 

There are so many subtangets of that that have had to be killed off as well, though who knows... a lot of those live on depending on who is writing history.

 

 

People who were fans during the 80's, insisting that Jerry Blackwell couldn't have possibly been a drawing card, or even all that important of a star, because they didn't perceive him that way at the time. Except the footage, history, results and those who were AWA fans from the Midwest/Canada all point in another direction.

 

Yep.

 

 

My point is that the goal should be to look at all the available evidence - including perspectives from the era of course - when trying to make serious conclusions.

This is true.

 

John

[Timbo Slice]

Eh, that's a weak argument. Debate doesn't happen because a HOF has flimsy standards. Debate happens because the standards are so high that you're raising the bar for present and future candidates. If that bar keeps getting lower, all you're going to do is flood it with substandard candidates.

Which is no different from any other HOF. None of them are perfect beasts. Every year the International Rugby Board hands out international rugby awards chosen by a select group of ex-players. Every year there is controversy. This year the International Rugby Players Association have decided to run their own awards also chosen by ex-players. They're just as head scratching. It doesn't matter whether it's the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame or NBA All-Star voting, it's never perfect and people will always disagree. To argue that the WON HOF is a clusterfuck because people don't like certain people who got voted in is a pretty flippant remark. Good things happen in regard to the Hall and not so good things, but the Hall itself has merit otherwise this thread is a colossal waste of time.

 

You have ballots that are being handed out like hotcakes regardless of knowledge on the candidates, where many voters are simply taking guys words without doing any type of research themselves or collaborating on efforts with those who are. It's akin to giving a Hall of Fame ballot to a guy with season tickets for a baseball team and them showing up to two or three games a year instead of the 81. "Yeah, I got season tickets to the Red Sox. Did they make it to the World Series this year?"

 

There is a weird age requirement rule that's antiquated to say the very least.

 

I have a lot of people in a lot of Hall of Fames who I don't believe should be in and many who aren't that should be in. That's because people went out of their way to do research to the point where the cases are a lot stronger because of it. That research led to people seeking out the answers themselves and a better sense of what it means to be someone who is Hall of Fame caliber. I feel like a lot of that is getting lost in the WON HOF due to apathy, lack of interest in looking at wrestlers who aren't current, and/or refusal to accept some of the facts that are being presented in those arguments. That's a problem for any HOF, let alone one that many historians of its ilk think is getting flimsier by the year.

[jdw]

The "Akira Maeda wouldn't get into the Hall Of Fame at age 45" talking point that Meltzer brought up again seems ridiculous today when Masakatsu Funaki got voted in and the dearth of superior candidates that are left on the Japanese ballot.

UFC baby!

 

Yeah... I know that Funaki didn't fight in UWF, and it's a big stretch. But some such nonsense about MMA would be the reason.

[KrisZ]

The one thing that the NFL HOF does as good as anyone is the voting committee meets before the final elections and certain members of the committee must present the case of their pet project then debate the questions from the others. These debates go for hours sometimes. I seem to remember Cris Carter himself was debated for over 3 hours a couple of years ago.

[jdw]

Either make it about work or make it about drawing and titles. This halfway house fudge is a total mess.

Why?

 

Liger isn't a HOFer as a draw. Hogan isn't a HOFer as a worker.

 

I think they're both HOFers. There certainly is room in the HOF for both.

 

John

[jdw]

I haven't listened to today's podcast about the HOF but Dave said that he doesn't think he has any influence on anyone's votes regarding the HOF.........

That's hilarious.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

I'll be honest. I worry FAR less about historians and reporters - including the ones I strongly disagree with - than I do with most of the wrestlers who vote. I am more than certain that there are some wrestlers who vote, take it seriously and try and do real research on the candidates, but I wouldn't bank on the % of wrestler voters who are doing this being high. Or even close to a majority for that matter.

[jdw]

Eh, that's a weak argument. Debate doesn't happen because a HOF has flimsy standards. Debate happens because the standards are so high that you're raising the bar for present and future candidates. If that bar keeps getting lower, all you're going to do is flood it with substandard candidates.

There's been debate about the Baseball HOF since it was created. At various times, the standards were lowered so low that if we use those standards we'd have a slew of mediocre people in it (i.e. far more than we have at this point). Instead, on some of the worst, people have looked at Ross Youngs and Chick Hafey's stats in total and gone:

 

"Right... those don't mean anything. We'll just ignore them rather than apply them to other folks. Dear god those are awful."

 

Debate happens for one reasons, and one reason only:

 

People Care

 

Either about the HOF in general or a candidate.

 

When they don't care, they don't debate.

 

John

[jdw]

The thing I don't understand about Dave using Maeda is the fact that Maeda is an easy HOFer. Helped start an entire movement, great performer and a tremendous draw for quite a long time.

I don't get this either. If Dave thought he was a HOF and Maeda wasn't getting in, all he would need to do was write a one page article explaining what Maeda did. It wouldn't need to be overly detailed: a simple USA Today Bulletpoint article.

 

John

[goodhelmet]

Also, why are guys like Alan or John Lister or Dave Musgrave qualified to vote for the Rock N Roll or Murdoch? Why is anybody but Jose allowed to vote for the luchadores? Why is anyone younger than jdw qualified to vote for the 1970s guys? This just doesn't make sense.

Here's the thing:

 

I didn't watch any of those guys in the 1970s. I didn't start watching pro wrestling until 1986 when I was 20 years old.

 

By Dave's logic, a lot of us would be limited in what we could vote on. Dave himself would be limited as well: guys like Snyder were well past their peak when he started watching, as was Torres.

 

John

 

 

John, I was just picking on you for being old. My point stillstands but I had no idea you didn't start watching until 1986. You are simply unqualified to vote since I started watching in 1980 and Tony Atlas was fucking OVER in 1980. You wouldn't know because you weren't there man.

[jdw]

I'm pretty sure Dave was talking about Hans Schmidt. Backlund isn't a guy with just a little bit on tape, a ton of his biggest matches are available.

I thought so as well, but Hans died before he went in the HOF. Hard to imagine that Dave saying people in the business don't think he could work would hurt Hans' feelings now 3 years after he dropped dead.

 

There is a ton of tape on Bob. But I get the sense from these discussions that Dave seems to think people watch 5-10 matches when pimping Wrestler X, rather than trying to find every Backlund / Fujiwara / Lawler / Colon match they can track down.

 

John

[jdw]

John, I was just picking on you for being old. My point stillstands but I had no idea you didn't start watching until 1986. You are simply unqualified to vote since I started watching in 1980 and Tony Atlas was fucking OVER in 1980. You wouldn't know because you weren't there man.

 

And didn't think you were picking on me. I wanted to run with your point to take it to its logical conclusion: I'd be limited as a voter, Dave would be, Yohe would be, we all would. It quickly gets silly if we follow Dave down that logical rabbit hole.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I wouldn't bank on the % of wrestler voters who are doing this being high.

I would.

[shoe]

I haven't listened to today's podcast about the HOF but Dave said that he doesn't think he has any influence on anyone's votes regarding the HOF.........

That's hilarious.

 

John

 

 

Agreed that is hilarious. Dave is a real life Pied Piper when it comes to influence.

[Grimmas]

I find it really strange that Sting is on the ballot, but Lex Luger is not.

[pantherwagner]

The solution that makes the most sense is a Caribbean, Central & South America pool, but you run into the problems I outlined above. I couldn't begin to tell you if Jack Veneno & Relampago Hernandez from the Dominican Republic, Jose Azzari from Guatemala, and others are worthy ballot nominees because my knowledge here is basically null. It's an area still unexplored for the most part in terms of research. Martin Karadagian, were he not already in, would have been a shoo in for such a candidate pool.

Jose Azzari drew some great houses but his career was cut short. Mil Mascaras defeating him in the ALLL tournament kind of killed him as a hero, and even though they drew 42,000 (apparently) for the final night and similar numbers for the first two nights of the tournament, the promotion lost tons and tons of money running it and closed shop. I can't imagine how could you lose money if the operation was run like a real business.

[ohtani's jacket]

If Sayama were on the ballot this year, I'd voter for him. Easy, and I'd have a hard time thinking of anyone on the ballot this year other than Matsunaga who I would vote ahead of him if I was limited to 1 vote.

Sayama's reputation is one of work and influence as much as drawing, at least that's my understanding of it. If he were on the ballot this year, I'm sure opinion on his work wouldn't be an issue as the sphere of Dave influence regarding his work is greater than our circle, but I have a hard time believing there wouldn't be any revisionist arguments about how good a worker he was. Theoretically, that would weaken his case, at least in the eyes of this board. It wouldn't stop him going into the Hall because he's not a work only candidate, but it's the best example I could come up with for "judging work on how it was viewed at the time" vs. "judging how it's viewed now." I don't really have a problem with judging through 1982 eyes in this context. I think the problem with Dave's argument is when he dismisses things out of hand because nobody thought so at the time.

 

What happened with Belemay wasn't that people thought he was great when he played (they didn't), or instantly after he retired (they really didn't). It's that over time, being 20-14 PPG-RPB and 7th on the RPG list made him look better than he was. It was Stats, not how people thought of him in the era, or how he reflected it.

 

So in turn, people coming around after that enshrinement (and frankly even before it) to point out that his stats are wildly inflated and he wasn't really that great isn't revisionism. It's dealing with what got him in (Stats) with deeper analysis (Contextualizing those Stats), along with pointing out how he was thought of in the era. It's actually trying to correct what was revisionism.

Okay, but if saying that Bellamy was underrated and suffered from playing on bad teams and being traded a lot instead of putting up his early numbers for the Knicks, who he probably would've been drafted by in an ordinary year, is revisionism then is Dave's point correct or are you advocating deeper analysis and contextualization?

[ohtani's jacket]

You have ballots that are being handed out like hotcakes regardless of knowledge on the candidates, where many voters are simply taking guys words without doing any type of research themselves or collaborating on efforts with those who are. It's akin to giving a Hall of Fame ballot to a guy with season tickets for a baseball team and them showing up to two or three games a year instead of the 81. "Yeah, I got season tickets to the Red Sox. Did they make it to the World Series this year?"

 

There is a weird age requirement rule that's antiquated to say the very least.

 

I have a lot of people in a lot of Hall of Fames who I don't believe should be in and many who aren't that should be in. That's because people went out of their way to do research to the point where the cases are a lot stronger because of it. That research led to people seeking out the answers themselves and a better sense of what it means to be someone who is Hall of Fame caliber. I feel like a lot of that is getting lost in the WON HOF due to apathy, lack of interest in looking at wrestlers who aren't current, and/or refusal to accept some of the facts that are being presented in those arguments. That's a problem for any HOF, let alone one that many historians of its ilk think is getting flimsier by the year.

I understand your points about hotcakes and apathy, but if you were to appoint a screening committee and an honours committee and have a select group of people vote in Hall of Famers, the quality control would probably be better, but I think Dave would lose interest quickly and probably his readers too. I'm sure the majority of voters don't take it any more seriously than the WON end of year awards, but even with ballots that are well thought out I've noticed a pretty big discrepancy in who gets voted for. I think the key thing is that are people working hard to heighten the awareness of different candidates. Overlooked historical candidates have been voted in & the bios for Atlantis and Wagner were informative if nothing else. People's research could do with more support, but overall the good outweighs the bad in my view.

 

Modern stars going in too early is going to continue to be a problem as is workrate favourites being inducted who didn't draw, but that's indicative of the state of the business, particularly in Japan. I doubt Dave is going to close shop on Japan until someone comes along who can sell out famous buildings.