Bill Dundee

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[KrisZ]

Superstar is one of those rare cases where he has had great matches in 5 different decades as he is a timeless worker sure he isn't as "good" as he was 30 years ago but his ring smarts is unquestionable and he can navigate his way around the ring like no other. Dundee & Lawler is one of the most legendary love/hate relationships we have ever seen in wrestling where they had some of the all-time classic singles matches and as a tag team they were just as great.

 

Dundee will forever be tied to Lawler inside the ring but he had some really great matches against a wide variety of opponents over the years in Memphis and when it came to charisma very few could touch him inside and outside the ring. I think the one regret we have in Dundee's career was when he booked Mid-South he wasn't able to work higher on the cards which was great in a way since he couldn't give himself a megapush but still I think him working in more main events would've been awesome.

 

Dundee was short in stature but his heart and passion was the size of the Great Khali and he is truly a legend in the sport.

[goodhelmet]

My working #2.

[Lee Casebolt]

Someone give me a quick primer to the essential Dundee (non-Lawler division)?

[Dylan Waco]

My working #2.

 

I can't tell if you are kidding

[funkdoc]

i feel like goodhelmet is seriously going for some strategic voting with all his memphis & lucha guys

[goodhelmet]

Hah! Dundee won't be my #2. I was kidding. I made a tribute to Jerry Lawler that was 80 discs. If I took out the Bill Dundee stuff, it would still be over 50 discs. If I made a tribute to BIll Dundee, it could be a 30 disc set. Without Lawler on the set, it would be about 8 discs. I don't think that is a footage issue either. Lawler just had more great matches with more people than anyone else I can think of. He also got more out of guys lower on the work rate totem pole than anyone else I have seen. Dundee was great but he didn't have the high end stuff outside of Memphis/USWA that even Lawler was able to produce. He'll be hovering around my Top Ten though for sure.

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

I did my due diligence on Dundee. Maybe had seen a couple of his matches going into this, so I wanted to knock off about another 20 or so to try to get a rounded opinion on him. Here are my thoughts:

 

Pros

• I think it's safe to say that Dundee/Lawler is one of the best match-ups in wrestling history. They just had incredible chemistry with one another, and every match of theirs I saw (maybe 5) was outstanding, and had me wanting more.
• Great punches. Not at Lawler's level, of course, but great nonetheless. I especially dig his jabs.
• Great tag worker. The Lawler/Dundee team were excellent, but I saw him shine with a number of different partners. Particularly strong at working shtick in a tag setting.
• Great brawler. As a face, but especially as a heel, he was so intense, and when he got out of control, it was really something (see the Dundee/Landell Vs Mantel/Lawler tag, for instance).
• Great gimmick match worker. The scaffold match with Koko Ware, the bullwhip on a pole match against the Fantastics, Texas death match etc.

Cons

• Does he have the matches? As Will alluded to, when you take away the stuff with Lawler, where is the real high end stuff? I would say it's a knock on him in general that he wasn't able to replicate the magic he had with Lawler in the rest of the his career, at least to a consistent level (from best I can tell).
• May have been a bit too reliant on his stock-in-trade: punches and shtick. I don't see a tonne of versatility, despite evidence that he was a very good technical wrestler. I understand the argument that his act worked for him, but I think he could have stretched himself more.

I'd baulk at calling Dundee a lock for my ballot, though I think it will be difficult finding 100 guys better. He just seems like the sort of guy where if you put him in the right situation against the right guy, he's going to produce something great, but if you take him outside of that box, you might just get good. That maybe doesn't sound like a huge knock, and it really isn't, because having consistently all-time great matches with one opponent is certainly something that should at least put you on the radar for a project like this. But, if I'd seen him have a classic with an Eric Embry, or Tommy Rich or a great straight match against John Tatum (and who knows, those matches could be out there) then I'd feel more comfortable calling him a lock. As it is, top 50 seems about his ceiling.

[goodhelmet]

I did my due diligence on Dundee. Maybe had seen a couple of his matches going into this, so I wanted to knock off about another 20 or so to try to get a rounded opinion on him. Here are my thoughts:

 

Pros

• I think it's safe to say that Dundee/Lawler is one of the best match-ups in wrestling history. They just had incredible chemistry with one another, and every match of theirs I saw (maybe 5) was outstanding, and had me wanting more.
• Great punches. Not at Lawler's level, of course, but great nonetheless. I especially dig his jabs.
• Great tag worker. The Lawler/Dundee team were excellent, but I saw him shine with a number of different partners. Particularly strong at working shtick in a tag setting.
• Great brawler. As a face, but especially as a heel, he was so intense, and when he got out of control, it was really something (see the Dundee/Landell Vs Mantel/Lawler tag, for instance).
• Great gimmick match worker. The scaffold match with Koko Ware, the bullwhip on a pole match against the Fantastics, Texas death match etc.

Cons

• Does he have the matches? As Will alluded to, when you take away the stuff with Lawler, where is the real high end stuff? I would say it's a knock on him in general that he wasn't able to replicate the magic he had with Lawler in the rest of the his career, at least to a consistent level (from best I can tell).
• May have been a bit too reliant on his stock-in-trade: punches and shtick. I don't see a tonne of versatility, despite evidence that he was a very good technical wrestler. I understand the argument that his act worked for him, but I think he could have stretched himself more.

I'd baulk at calling Dundee a lock for my ballot, though I think it will be difficult finding 100 guys better. He just seems like the sort of guy where if you put him in the right situation against the right guy, he's going to produce something great, but if you take him outside of that box, you might just get good. That maybe doesn't sound like a huge knock, and it really isn't, because having consistently all-time great matches with one opponent is certainly something that should at least put you on the radar for a project like this. But, if I'd seen him have a classic with an Eric Embry, or Tommy Rich or a great straight match against John Tatum (and who knows, those matches could be out there) then I'd feel more comfortable calling him a lock. As it is, top 50 seems about his ceiling.

 

Two things you absoolutely have to give Dundee credit for...

 

1. Being a great tag worker. Lawler & Dundee is one of the greatest tag workers ever. He also had great teams with Dutch Mantel, Buddy Landel and even got a good match out of Crockett era Jimmy Garvin by his side.

 

2. One of the greatest studio match wrestlers on record. Dundee was great at the little things that we had to put plenty of his studio matches on the Memphis set because we couldn't leave them off. That tiny studio with the close cameras really demonstrated how good Dundee was on a week by week basis.

[DR Ackermann]

There are a whole bunch of nothing matches between Dundee and John Tatum from the USWA TX TV show in 1990. They're nothing because they just furthering an angle and aren't given much time to be more than that. However they're all still really fun. John Tatum doesn't bring much besides shtick and a good punch, but Dundee does so much with the little stuff to make it a lot of fun. Without Dundee those matches would have been pretty worthless. He's the William Regal of brawling and I think if we had a lot more footage from the Mid South Coliseum he'd be an EASY top 30 pick.

[Tim Evans]

Dundee's best feud besides the Lawler one was vs Wolfie D. You can't get much better than a feud based on real heat that got turned into an angle. Plus it had a lot of layers like Dundee teaming with his hated rival Lawler vs his son and Wolfie. Then PG13 loses a loser leaves town only to come back under masks. Then Bill gets his son to turn on Wolfie and it ends with Wolfie joining up with BIll Dundee. Great stuff. Dundee is a lock on my list.

[Wade Garrett]

He is a sure thing as far as I'm concerned. The guy just gets how to be a pro wrestler. He's scrappy as hell.

[Dylan Waco]

Been thinking a lot about him this week, and he's a guy who is really hard to place. On gut he feels like a top half guy, but I want to go back and watch a wide range of his stuff. I'm tempted to just go YouTube hunting, but I want to open this up to suggestions.

[GOTNW]

I included Dundee because I felt I enjoy Memphis too much to only rank Lawler, and also because, uhm....I like him a lot and he has great punches? I don't know what to say about him after all these gigantic posts. I also remember watching a match of his vs. Tommy Rich where they just wrestled, don't think a single strime was throw, and it was really, really good so RANGE~. That said looking at the DVDVR 80s set results I wonder why there is such a huge gap in how much Dutch Mantell (who probably would've made my list if I dove into his stuff enough) and him are revered.

[JerryvonKramer]

Dundee also has a lot of energy and motion in his work. Or in other words he has what you'd conventionally call "good workrate".

 

I'm just curious GOTNW, you aren't into 80s US wrestling generally, but you are into Memphis?

[GOTNW]

To be fair it has made me want to rewatch Mid South stuff (I know you're quite high on that) because I really disliked that type of brawling when I was younger. I'm not sure how the two would compare.

 

There is a lot of US stuff I'm kicking myself for not having had the time to watch (just like other places). I love Dustin/Goldust but couldn't rank him without taking a focused look at his WCW stuff. Not doing the Golden Era workers justice was a person failure. I'd like to dive into Ron Garvin and Tommy Rich and Wahoo and some others. I liked Eaton a lot from little I'd seen. But I know what I like and I don't see Savage, Steamboat, Windham etc. ever being these great wrestlers for me like they are other folks. I watched a Flair-Steamboat house show match from 1989 because I did love that feud when I watched it a few years ago, and, I don' think reading my review of it would be much easier for someone who likes it than me reading jdw's off the Akiyama-Kobashi 1998 one so why even bother? Watching Memphis has softened my stance on it, and has made me appreciate the charm of studio wrestling, but those do have different goals than the ones I'd watch when going through the ***** thread or the stuff that ranked highly on the DVDVR sets. Really the big exception I have is Bockwinkel and my theory on that is that is simply due to him growing up as a wrestler in a setting I prefer (50s/60s) and picking up good habits while also obviously being incredible. Funk and Hansen I feel did/would fit right into Memphis.

[JerryvonKramer]

I only ask because if it is that big vast unexplored country, I can only be slightly envious, because I've found the sense of discovery with the territories more rewarding than practically anything else in my footage watching over the past 5 years.

 

It's not so much the matches or the work even, it's just getting into the different vibes of every place, from Florida to Portland to Georgia to Crockett to Memphis to Mid-South / Houston to the old WWF and beyond, they all have that special unique vibe. And it's one of those things that sometimes I worry about younger fans never getting. I'm not like Pete or Johnny or Will either, I'm younger than them and grew up 1000s of miles away. ALL of my territory watching has been on disc, through comps and on youtube etc. It's not an "older days were best" thing, it's a "man these places were SPECIAL" thing. And outside of the confines of GWE, I do hope guys like you have the time and space to explore in your own time. It's less about workers than it is about settings, landscapes, members of the crowd. Unique atmospheres. World of Sport is also somewhere that has that. People can tell you about those things, but just exploring on your own and feeling like you are the only person in the world watching that stuff is where the deep love comes from I think. As much as anything else. It's something beyond star ratings or anything like that. I only say this to you GOTNW because you're one of a few fans who has the potential to go on that journey. In a way, the work is secondary.

[Dylan Waco]

To my eyes the biggest difference between Dundee and Dutch is that Dundee has a LOT more volume.

 

I do think that Dundee is an extremely versatile worker, who was very adept on the mat as well as brawls. He was also a great tag worker and great studio worker of course. What hurts him is that he really doesn't have any classics outside of matches involving Lawler (I'd listen to argument for the Scaffold match with Koko, but I'm not sure I'd buy it), which makes you wonder a bit. He was clearly a great wrestler with a very broad skill set - great punches, strong mat worker, good highspots, great Memphis timing, et. - but he lacked a second or third dance partner who he could really paint the town red with.

 

I like him a lot, and he ranked well on my list, but he's hair below the true elite.

[elliott]

I ranked Billy Dundee 32nd and I feel like I blew that one. I love Bill Dundee. I think all around the Lawler vs Dundee rivalry is probably the best rivalry in the history of wrestling. That alone gets you on the list. But 32nd feels really high. I'd feel better about it if there was anything close to the level of the Lawler feud that didn't involve Jerry Lawler. Like if he had one more match that was as good as like the 5th best match he had against Jerry Lawler, I'd feel better about putting him in the top half. I really love him. He is actually a great all around worker. But 32 is too high. 

[KB8]

I had Dundee at 26 in 2016, which I'm not kicking myself over, but he's probably more likely to land in that 30-40 range next time. Or, you know, I go on a Lawler v Dundee binge and he ends up 20 spots higher. I get the knock that he never had any amazing stuff with someone other than Lawler, but to some extent I think the fact he had SO MUCH awesome stuff with Lawler even it up a bit. Sure, it would've been cool if he had a Dutch Mantel or an Austin Idol, but it is what it is. The four or five amazing Lawler matches are still amazing matches, and it's not like they're all the exact same. Dundee is also an unbelievable 'little things' wrestler and I put a ton of stock in that. Great tag wrestler (sneaky great Mid-South run with Terry Daniels and then Dutch), arguably the best studio match wrestler ever, almost certainly the best scaffold match wrestler ever. He's the Superstar and he ruled. 

 

BILL DUNDEE YOU SHOULD WATCH:

v Jerry Lawler (Memphis, 8/22/77)

v Tony Charles (Memphis, 6/16/79)

v Tojo Yamamoto & Wayne Farris (Memphis, 3/7/81)

v Sweet Brown Sugar (Memphis, 6/21/82)

v Jerry Lawler (Memphis, 6/6/83)

w/Terry Daniels v Dirty White Boys (Mid-South, 5/11/85)

w/Dutch Mantel v The Fantastics (Mid-South, 9/22/85)

v Jerry Lawler (Memphis, 12/30/85)

w/Buddy Landell v Jerry Lawler & Dutch Mantel (Memphis, 3/10/86)

v Jerry Lawler (Memphis, 7/14/86)

[cubbymark]

Bill and Buddy Landell in Memphis around 85-86 even though it was a short run was really good.