WON HOF 2013 discussion

[Dylan Waco]

Why doesn't Farmer come here Dylan?

I doubt he even knows it exists. I don't talk to Matt much other than in exchanges on Classics. I think I've messaged him a handful of times mainly to ask a question or get info about something.

[Matt D]

I contacted him through FB when I had to get a fact checked for what I wrote about Buddy in 79.

[JerryvonKramer]

If there's one guy who'd be a tremendous addition here it's him.

[Cox]

Is there any real case for Bullet Bob? I desperately want to believe somehow, someway he can at least stay on the ballot, but I don't think it looks too good for him since nobody seems to be talking about him.

[evilclown]

Is there any real case for Bullet Bob? I desperately want to believe somehow, someway he can at least stay on the ballot, but I don't think it looks too good for him since nobody seems to be talking about him.

Bob is like a great double A hitter who can't touch a major league curve ball. He's pretty damn good playing the Mud Hens in small towns down south, but he was never going to play first base for the Mets.

[Matt D]

Did he ever get the chance to? Was he just content in his fiefdom? Were the bigger players just uninterested in him or did he just come along at the wrong time?

[KrisZ]

Bob wanted to stay home so that's why he worked Georgia, Florida, Southeastern, and the like. He worked New Japan's original tour and did a couple of shots for WWWF in the early 70's but he was a homebody just like Lawler in a way.

 

Ron & Robert Fuller were the same way and a lot of others as well.

 

I love Bob Armstrong to death but I couldn't vote for him in the HOF. He never was the main guy in the biggest promotion he worked (GCW)

[Cox]

Man, if KrisZ can't even make a HOF case for Bullet Bob, he must have no prayer. Oh well. We'll always have his awesome SMW run at least.

[KrisZ]

Bob never held the Georgia Heavyweight Title when it was the top title or the National Heavyweight Title when it was the top title.

 

He never even held the TV title. He held the Georgia Tag Titles, Macon Heavyweight Title, Columbus Heavyweight Title, Georgia Brass Knuckles Title but never the big titles in his home promotion.

 

The funny part was he held the Southern titles in both Memphis & Florida and of course was the ace of Southeastern/Continental but they were a very small promotion.

[Matt D]

Did they make any of those titles for him or were they preexisting?

[KrisZ]

Which titles.....all of them were preexisting

[Hollinger.]

To answer one of Dylan's questions about shots against Bruno. Here's a quick tally of guys with multiple singles matches against Bruno during his reign. If you meant specifically at MSG, I'd have to look again. Working on tallying up the others through at least Backlund.

 

Gorilla Monsoon - 105

Waldo Von Erich - 77

Killer Kowalski - 71

Toru Tanaka - 63

Bill Miller - 55

Hans Mortier - 51

Baron Mikel Scicluna - 44

George Steele - 34

Luke Graham - 33

Jerry Graham - 26

Curtis Iaukea - 24

Smasher Sloan - 22

Ivan Koloff - 20

The Beast - 18

Bulldog Brower - 17

Bill Watts - 16

Virgil The Kentucky Butcher - 15

Freddie Blassie - 14

Tarzan Tyler - 14

Bull Ortega - 13

The Golden Terror - 12

The Shadow - 12

Bull Ramos - 11

Gene Kiniski - 11

Magnificent Maurice - 11

The Sheik - 11

Johnny Powers - 10

Karl Kovacs - 9

Klondike Bill - 9

Buddy Austin - 8

Tank Morgan - 8

Brute Bernard - 7

Skull Murphy - 7

Crusher Verdu - 6

Lou Albano - 6

Tony Altimore - 6

Tony Nero - 6

Dan Miller - 5

Frank Martinez - 5

Joe Quinones - 5

Pedro Rodriguez - 5

Boris Malenko - 4

Frank Hickey - 4

Giant Baba - 4

Johnny Valentine - 4

Rocky Fitzpatrick - 4

The Destroyer - 4

Bepo Mongol - 3

Geto Mongol - 3

Gordo Chihuahua - 3

Johnny Barend - 3

Ray Stevens - 3

Art Nielson - 2

Bob Boyington - 2

Bobo Brazil - 2

Bull Johnson - 2

Cal West - 2

Duke Hoffman - 2

Joe Cox - 2

Johnny Boyd - 2

Jos LeDuc - 2

Jose Quintero - 2

Mitsu Arakawa - 2

Ox Anderson - 2

Paul Reinhardt - 2

Rocky Cookson - 2

The Black Demon - 2

The Crusher - 2

Tiger Jeet Singh - 2

[jdw]

I'm not averse to Okerland, but I don't think he's one of the five best guys in his category.

I don't disagree with this at all as I'm not a Gene fan, but who would you rank above him?

 

Jerry Jarrett

Don Owen

Takashi Matsunaga

Stanley Weston

Jimmy Hart

 

Those are all people I think are safely better candidates than Okerland.

And it's more than that:

 

We as voters aren't forced to vote for 5 guys.

 

If we think there are only 4 guys worthy of a vote, it doesn't mean we have to pick Gene as #5.

[Dylan Waco]

Thanks for that Hollinger. I look forward to seeing tallies for the other champs going forward. I should have figured that a homesteader like Monsoon would be one. That sort of list isn't the be all and end all but it does help you spot anomalies and at least gives you an idea about what was what with some of the guys being brought in as challengers. Good work.

 

To John's point about the five non-performers, my point wasn't so much that voters have to pick five guys and Gene doesn't cut it, and more that even if you think Gene is deserving, it's hard for me to see him as one of the five most deserving guys in that category.

[jdw]

To John's point about the five non-performers, my point wasn't so much that voters have to pick five guys and Gene doesn't cut it, and more that even if you think Gene is deserving, it's hard for me to see him as one of the five most deserving guys in that category.

 

I gott your point. I was going more to BrickHithouse's question, which is why I kept it in the quote. "5 more deserving" isn't a criteria. It's whether the voter things Gene himself is worthy or not.

[jdw]

I just don't find Koloff's case compelling.

 

John has kindly listed 10 matches over the course of a decade, against opponents who generally did amazing box office no matter who was across the ring from them. If you cherry picked the ten most important moments of Sting's career, or even Nash's career, they'd be equally impressive.

 

Is this really a Hall of Fame case? Opponent for Sammartino and Backlund?

Not really the reason I listed the matches. As was pretty clear in the post, I was trying to point to the Andersons and Ivan being of the same era, not different ones. That were just pointing to when his high points, the big things point to when starting an Ivan case, would point to. Pretty much what people do about most candidates: what are the high points, then what else is there.

[ohtani's jacket]

To answer one of Dylan's questions about shots against Bruno. Here's a quick tally of guys with multiple singles matches against Bruno during his reign. If you meant specifically at MSG, I'd have to look again. Working on tallying up the others through at least Backlund.

I don't see Spiros Arion on your list. Is this everybody?

[jdw]

If you subscribe to the Dick Murdoch as measuring stick idea, Koloff wins out aside from stardom in Japan and in-ring work, which he was no slouch at. Well, Murdoch was also a bigger star in St. Louis but that's not the be all and end all.

Ivan wasn't a Destroyer / Fritz / Funks / Hansen / Brody level star in Japan, but this is a rather interesting trifecta in the 70s:

 

06/29/71 NWA Intl Title: Giant Baba (2-1) Ivan Koloff

07/01/71 NWA Intl Tag: Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Dutch Savage

 

04/18/73 IWA World Tag: Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (2-1) Strong Kobayashi & Great Kusatsu (title change)

04/30/73 IWA World Tag: Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (2-0) Great Kusatsu & Rusher Kimura

05/14/73 IWA World Tag: Great Kusatsu & Rusher Kimura (2-1) Mad Dog Vachon & Ivan Koloff (title change)

05/15/73 IWA World Title: Strong Kobayashi (2-1) Ivan Koloff

 

12/04/75 NWA NA Tag: Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Greg Valentine

09/03/76 NWA NA Tag: Seiji Sakaguchi & Strong Kobayashi (2-1) Ivan Koloff & Superstar Billy Graham

12/02/76 NWF Title: Antonio Inoki (1-0) Ivan Koloff

 

That's JWA, IWE and New Japan's primary singles and tag titles. To a degree, All Japan replaced JWA: when Baba left, the promotion was effectively dead. Ivan didn't get a second bits at Baba was he was effectively a NJPW guy with his 1975-76 tours.

 

Again, Ivan wasn't huge~! over there. But that's not something without substance.

[jdw]

Do we have a sense of how many voters take their HOF selections seriously? Or more specifically, how many would go beyond their gut impulses (that guy was a star!) to read something like Dylan's Patera research?

Few.

[jdw]

A few years ago I ran some numbers ( http://theboard.f4wonline.com/viewtopic.ph...371640#p2371640 ) trying to extrapolate based on Dave's clues in the Observer results about how any voters he had in 2010, in particular in what was then called "US & Canada Modern" there was about 181 voters participating. Based on a series of tidbits, I ended up with a list that was predominantly current wrestlers and retired wrestlers my (guess was 120 current wrestlers, 45 former wrestlers, 6 historians, 10 reporters but that feels skewed). I am rethinking those numbers because I believe theres more than 20 non-wrestlers vote for modern wrestlers and the basis of voters must be broader than I estimated.

 

There are a good number more than 6+10 historians+reporters. While there are quite a few more wrestlers & insiders, I think we know more than 16 wrestlers and reporters who voted in 2010... in the sense of we probably could name that many.

[KrisZ]

My ballot is pretty locked in right now but I have 1 spot I'm leaving open for various reasons with one them being Friday night and how Atlantis & BP will come out of the show.

[Dylan Waco]

Just on this board alone I suspect we have close to sixteen historians/reporters who have ballots.

[evilclown]

Not really the reason I listed the matches.

TOO BAD!

 

As was pretty clear in the post, I was trying to point to the Andersons and Ivan being of the same era, not different ones. That were just pointing to when his high points, the big things point to when starting an Ivan case, would point to. Pretty much what people do about most candidates: what are the high points, then what else is there.

Exactly. That's what we call a jumping off point. And jump we did! I think Ivan is very interesting. But I really think his is kind of the standard "good wrestler" career and less a "hall of fame" career. But it always comes back to New York. I am torn.

[Dylan Waco]

clown who are the guys you are locked in to this year? Who are the guys you are fence sitting with? Who are the guys you are interested in but don't know enough?

[JerryvonKramer]

I got a bit lost earlier when we were talking about Wahoo being an anchor in Mid-Atlantic. Why did people start talking about self-promotion? Was he in the office there? I thought Wahoo was just a star who was used as a headliner there for some time.

 

The question I asked got a little lost in the shuffle:

 

Ivan's strength -- that he was a top guy brought into every major territory for high profile runs -- is also a kind of weakness. "Well why was he never an anchor?"

 

Ivan's candidacy may well rest on this question: "How many guys outside of the NWA champ of that era were considered good enough to have a similar career as a kind of 'traveling top heel'?" Everyone traveled around to an extent, but I don't know if there are a huge amount of guys in that class. If you can count them on one hand, then that's surely a boost for Ivan's case. If you can find 20 other guys who had big runs in all the places he did, then he's simply typical of the era. From the stuff I've looked at in recent times listening to Matysik, researching bios for the Titans show, reading through random 70s cards and so on, I think it's more towards the former -- but I'd be willing to listen to a counter argument.

How typical was Ivan's career? Can anyone list any other guys who are not in the HoF who had one to match it?