2014 Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame thread

[KrisZ]

Well if you are going to keep the categories at least try to have it make sense in some areas especially with Americans in the Japan category....which I really don't think they even need to be in unless the bulk of their career was there.

[kjh]

 

I write more about this in the F4W coming out today but the 15 year rule badly screwed up Mexico this year as it looks like a lot of Mexico voters (half?) only voted for Cien Caras. Other than Cien Caras and, for some reason, Huracan Ramirez, EVERYONE went down, with some by huge margins, plus frontrunner the frontrunner newbies ranged from disappointing (Misioneros de la Muerte, who actually came in 3rd place with just 36%) to pretty bad (Ultimo Guerrero at 24% and Los Brazos at 16%). While a lot of that is the fault of the voters, Dave needs to take stuff like this into account. Who are these people voting for Cien Caras that don’t see any of the other Mexican candidates as top 10 on the ballot?

I believe it's people who don't vote lucha, but have heard Cien Caras is a slam dunk and don't want him to fall off. So, they vote for him in the lucha category only and no one else.

 

I guess to see that is see how many total voters there were this year in lucha compared to last year.

 

Some rough calculations:

 

There were 98 Mexico voters this year and 331 votes for Mexican candidates, giving an average of 3.38 Mexican candidate votes per ballot.

Last year, there were 92 Mexico voters and 420 votes for Mexican candidates, giving an average of 4.57 Mexican candidate votes per ballot.

 

That's a significant drop, but 120 of the votes last year went to Atlantis and Dr. Wagner Sr, so it seems that many people who voted for those two candidates last year didn't use their free slot to vote for a different Mexican candidate this year. This could be affected by the 15 year rule, as people who vote strategically may have decided to use their free vote (or drop one of their Mexican votes from last year) to save people up for the chopping block in other regions.

 

The drops for L.A. Park and Dr. Wagner Jr. can also partially be explained by being out of the major leagues for much of the year. Like most candidates who have recently died, Garza's support dropped off one year removed from his death.

 

Cien Caras moved from 41 to 53 votes, so the 15 year rule bump only led to 12 new votes. Caras did very well with historians this year, so maybe they were swayed by his well known record crowds, while other candidates drawing power isn't as well researched. But still, I think the hypothesis that lots of new people voted for Caras alone doesn't seem to be that well supported from the data available to us. However, I'm sure a handful did and in a region with as few voters as Mexico that could make a difference.

 

Obviously this is a bigger issue in the rest of the world region where there's sole Carlos Colon voters and sole Killer Karl Kox voters hurting the other candidates.

[pol]

Given that it's pretty much a requirement to be familiar with every guy in a category to be able to responsibly vote in that category, there definitely needs to be either more restrictions placed on what categories you can vote in, or the method of getting in needs to be changed to requiring some absolute number of votes, and I have no idea how that would even work.

[EvenStevenBooking]

Listening to the Sin Limite podcast, why do people always point to the two week span of RAW ratings going up as proof as Edge as a HoF draw? Smackdown ratings went up when Mark Henry was champion and, as good as he is, no one is arguing him for the HoF. Edge was a guy like Kurt Angle: ratings didn't go down when he was champion/main eventing, but they also didn't go up.

[BillThompson]

Because Melzter loves Edge and doesn't like Henry.

[WingedEagle]

Meltzer was reading an email from someone asking about Edge. He wasn't making the case for him based on ratings during those few weeks.

[goodhelmet]

Was it the "more 4 star matches than anyone else" argument?

[kjh]

Meltzer seems to be in his own bubble regarding Edge. He called Edge a Hall Of Fame worker without a doubt in the Observer. But if that's the case, then why isn't he getting more votes from his peers like Dick Murdoch and Yuji Nagata got?

[Loss]

If he thinks Edge is a HOFer and can make the case in his favor, that isn't particularly bothersome on its own even if I don't agree with him. Where I have a problem is his argument that RAW and Smackdown were two different territories and that Edge somehow had this remarkable accomplishment headlining on both shows. I'm sure we could come up with quite a few wrestlers during the brand extension years that also did it. But more than even that, it suggests that headlining on the RAW shows and headlining later on the Smackdown shows is analogous to headlining in MSG and headlining at The Omni in the late 70s-early 80s. I'll never accuse Dave of dishonesty, but it's an argument that doesn't make sense.

[KrisZ]

Big Dave also headlined both RAW & Smackdown and was a better draw than Edge.....

[shakla]

There's a WO website poll up now/yesterday (11/23 technically), "Who is the strongest Hall of Fame candidate from this list?". The first poll has everyone who will be added/returning to the 2015 ballot at this point. Also included is Ricki Starr. I thought he might be worth looking into after reading his bio in WON.

[Al]

 

In the same show Dave also mentioned how he doesn't feel there isn't anyone in the HOF who doesn't belong there, which I'm hoping was him trying to be trollish because he can't seriously believe that.

 

 

There's some validity to that argument, at least in that there are no slam dunk candidates. But if the Hall of Fame doesn't induct anyone, it will whither and die.

[funkdoc]

 

In the same show Dave also mentioned how he doesn't feel there isn't anyone in the HOF who doesn't belong there, which I'm hoping was him trying to be trollish because he can't seriously believe that.

 

 

There's some validity to that argument, at least in that there are no slam dunk candidates. But if the Hall of Fame doesn't induct anyone, it will whither and die.

 

 

eh, there's a lot of slam-dunk candidates in lucha since the voters there can never seem to agree enough - too much of a good thing atm! colon also should be considered one, but i guess you could count the unofficial blackball against him.

 

your statement probably holds a lot more water with the US & japan regions, especially japan. it's funny - you would expect the US to be the most overrepresented region in this thing, but the bulk of the weakest inductees came from the japan category. ultimo, hase, sasaki, dr. death, masa saito, the shootstyle guys if you don't buy the "MMA = wrestling" idea...maybe it's the history of japan being seen as the land of magic & workrate!