Greg "The Hammer" Valentine

[ohtani's jacket]

The Slater cage match is a good 'un. I like their TV match as well. 

[MichaelZ]

Valentine has been rising in my estimation. The matches and feuds with Wahoo, Piper, Tito, and Garvin are all great and well-regarded for good reason. I haven't watched the Backlund matches but I am sure that is a stong feud as well. Some supplemental pieces I've seen make his case more well-rounded and corrected some assumptions and misconceptions of mine.

- He and Fujinami made a more natural pairing than I had expected. It made me think that Valentine could make it work against a wider variety opponents than I would have thought otherwise. Valentine vs anyone feels like a dream match

- He changed his style just a bit and was effective as a babyface before he left mid-atlantic, and the praise for his work against Slater is in line with my feelings. 

- I thought of the Garvin feud as a last hurrah of sorts, but the next year his cage match against Carlos Colon showed he still had more to give. 

I am excited to watch more Hammer going forward and expect him to do well.

[Tetsujin]

Valentine is one of the guys I definitely wanna focus on when searching for new boys on my list. I've only watched the two Piper matches (the dog collar one being fucking phenomenal) and some random WWE stuff he was in (some Rumbles, SVS, those kind of things). I've heard he has some classics with Backlund (still on my to do list), but I don't exactly know where his case resides apart of those couple of matches against Piper and Bob. Any recs?

[Childs]

The Santana series from 1984 and 1985 is some of the best WWF stuff ever. His matches against Flair from Mid-Atlantic were quite good as were some of his battles with Wahoo McDaniel and Dick Slater. He's got the Garvin slugfests from late in his WWF run. There's a cage match against Carlos Colon from Puerto Rico. 

For anyone interested in more detailed Valentine talk, this thread is for you: 

 

[Ricky Jackson]

9 hours ago, Tetsujin said:

Valentine is one of the guys I definitely wanna focus on when searching for new boys on my list. I've only watched the two Piper matches (the dog collar one being fucking phenomenal) and some random WWE stuff he was in (some Rumbles, SVS, those kind of things). I've heard he has some classics with Backlund (still on my to do list), but I don't exactly know where his case resides apart of those couple of matches against Piper and Bob. Any recs?

As far as vs Backlund goes, there are five matches at MSG over a 5 year stretch:

*2/19/79

3/26/79

10/19/81

*11/23/81

*4/23/84

The starred ones are must see. There are also two Spectrum matches, 12/12/81 and 1/16/82 (cage) worth watching if you can find them 

[Tetsujin]

I watched the MSG 1989 match against Ronnie Garvin. It also was the first Garvin match I've ever saw. And holy shit, the strikes and overall offense in that match has aged extremely well. You can show random clips of these two fucking bastards destroying each other here, and nobody would dare to say it's an 80s WWE match. Crazy fight, and I'm very interested in discovering more of both of these lunatics.