Lou Thesz

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Timbo Slice]

Is there enough footage of Thesz that can put him amongst the top guys here? Thesz is one of those guys I'm not too knowledgable about from a footage perspective.

[Loss]

There is a pretty decent chunk of Thesz out there, actually. Probably a dozen matches or more.

[Phil Schneider]

A bunch more dropped last week with the Chicago Film Archives too

[Loss]

I really enjoyed the Rikidozan matches from 10/57 when I watched them years ago.

 

10/07/57 (Part 1 of 60-minute draw)

 

10/13/57

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og0b1QyxnFg

[Microstatistics]

No one has discussed Thesz since 2014?

Anyway, he will likely be my highest ranked Golden Age wrestler. Great world champion who was effective as both a no nonsense, respectable babyface and subtle, roughhousing heel.

[Dav'oh]

I can't help but feeling that Lou Thesz is the elephant in the GWE room. I spent a lot of time reading the Thesz forum over at WrestlingClassics, I've watched what I can of him, and it's hard to make a case against him. Theoretically, that should make it easy to make a case for him. Maybe, because wrestling is all about emotion, and Thesz rarely showed or engendered much emotion, he gets put in the "too hard" basket? Just spitballing here. I'm seriously considering his best dance partner, Rogers, for the top of my list so I'd be remiss not to do due diligence on Thesz at some point between now and 2026.

I mean, if I may be so bold, you'd mess with Ric Flair. You'd mess with Mitsuharu Misawa or Daniel Bryan. You wouldn't mess with Lou Thesz (or Andre the Giant (Akira Maeda excepted), or several others, come to think...). Not that that's the crux of the matter, but I think it's an important consideration in the case of Thesz as it speaks of his near-unrivalled wrestling abilities, knowledge and respect.

I'm happy to be wrong, though.

Edit: I don't mean you or I, personally, would mess with them. I mean their opponents, should they have a mind to.

[elliott]

9 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

I can't help but feeling that Lou Thesz is the elephant in the GWE room.

Yeah. 

At some point @ohtani's jacket or anyone else with a mind to rate Thesz really highly, I'm gonna request a case & a primer because I want to spend some real time watching Thesz this time around.

[ohtani's jacket]

I would start with the Hans Schmidt fights as they're great matches. Then I would watch his matches with Gagne and Carpentier. If you like those, there are plenty of other matches to enjoy vs. Ray Gunkel, Ruffy Silverstein,  and more. There's also some maestro stuff from the 70s. 

Here is his Microscope thread -- 

This thread also has Thesz matches included:

 

[Childs]

I've read OJ's Thesz thread and watched the most pimped matches (which are great). But I don't have a feel for how complete a picture we have of Thesz the worker. I'd be interested in hearing from OJ or anyone else on that particular point. If there are big gaps in our ability to assess him, what are they?

[ohtani's jacket]

I have a hard time thinking about Thesz in those terms because every Thesz match that is unearthed is a treasure trove. My stock answer would be that we don’t have as much 60s footage as we do 50s footage, and what we do have from the US in the 60s doesn’t have the same appeal to me as the 50s television wrestling. Theoretically, Thesz should have still been good throughout most of the 60s, but we don’t have a lot of film. As far as his individual traits as a worker go, that’s not something I’ve thought about a lot. I don’t really need Thesz to be anything more than how he presents himself in those 50s matches. 

[Grimmas]

On 5/26/2021 at 8:12 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

I have a hard time thinking about Thesz in those terms because every Thesz match that is unearthed is a treasure trove. My stock answer would be that we don’t have as much 60s footage as we do 50s footage, and what we do have from the US in the 60s doesn’t have the same appeal to me as the 50s television wrestling. Theoretically, Thesz should have still been good throughout most of the 60s, but we don’t have a lot of film. As far as his individual traits as a worker go, that’s not something I’ve thought about a lot. I don’t really need Thesz to be anything more than how he presents himself in those 50s matches. 

Can you actually make a case for him top 10?

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, he's a better wrestler than just about everyone else, so yeah. 

[Grimmas]

49 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Well, he's a better wrestler than just about everyone else, so yeah. 

If true, it should be pretty damn easy then, eh? Go for it, make your arguments based on the footage we have.

[elliott]

Nevermind 

[strobogo]

 It's fascinating how many people and entire genres of wrestling took directly from Lou. Be it the standard NWA Champion touring match, the basics of puro, backdrops, powerbombs, STFs, the dropdown/leapfrog/dropkick spot, Thesz Press. His influence is still very, very directly active even in 2021. And it turns out he was fucking awesome. I've only seen probably 15 matches of Lou Thesz and this dude was fucking great. As great as his reputation would suggest.

[JewishJoshiStan]

Philosophy, y'all: 

Do we put more into Thesz's ability to compel people that what he was doing was real than, say, Shawn Michaels' (because the historic importance of Kayfabe varies between the two)? My feeling is I might be unfairly biased in the direction of candidates like Lou or Verne Gagne simply because people really did think what they were doing was real. 

Then again...I hate that Shawn is so bad at producing the same effect....  

[club]

I’d say for me it more comes down to enjoying one style over another. I suppose in the Thesz era the challenge was to produce something that fans could accept as legit whilst also being entertaining, whereas later on there wasn’t that constraint and so there was a wider scope for doing entertaining stuff. But having that wider scope doesn’t mean it’s always going to entertain.

[strobogo]

I think "fans thought it was real" in other eras is hella overstated. There are newspaper articles going back to the late 1800s/early 1900s talking about the worked nature of pro wrestling. There's no way you can watch stuff from the 40s/50s and truly believe the audiences thought it was 100% real athletic competition. Most of that kind of talk is from old timers gassing themselves up in later eras than the Thesz era anyway. 

And on the legit whilst also being entertaining tip, there are a ton of Lou Thesz spots that are still regularly done all the way up to 2023, including comedy and high spots. 

 

[NintendoLogic]

I continue to maintain that an appreciable segment of the fanbase believed wrestling was at least partially real. I don't know how else you explain all the instances of fans trying to shoot or stab heels. Newspapers reporting wrestling as a work doesn't mean anything. A small but non-trivial percentage of the population continues to deny the link between cigarettes and lung cancer (6% according the most recent Gallup poll on the subject) even though cigarette packages themselves tell you that smoking will kill you.

[ohtani's jacket]

23 hours ago, JewishJoshiStan said:

Philosophy, y'all: 

Do we put more into Thesz's ability to compel people that what he was doing was real than, say, Shawn Michaels' (because the historic importance of Kayfabe varies between the two)? My feeling is I might be unfairly biased in the direction of candidates like Lou or Verne Gagne simply because people really did think what they were doing was real. 

Then again...I hate that Shawn is so bad at producing the same effect....  

Even when Thesz and Gagne were in their primes, there were plenty of wrestlers working in a Shawn Michaels vein. It was never the case that there were all of these wrestlers working a believable Lou Thesz style. That would be my wrestling nirvana if it were true.  It just so happened that Thesz and Gagne were better at actual wrestling than the Buddy Rogers style guys. Some people might argue that the Buddy Rogers types were better at working the crowd and getting the matches over, and that may be true, but it basically comes down to personal preference. I have a certain amount of respect for guys who can work the Buddy Rogers style well, but I'm never going to rate them above someone who can wrestle.

[Embrodak]

On 1/7/2023 at 12:57 PM, NintendoLogic said:

I continue to maintain that an appreciable segment of the fanbase believed wrestling was at least partially real. I don't know how else you explain all the instances of fans trying to shoot or stab heels. Newspapers reporting wrestling as a work doesn't mean anything. A small but non-trivial percentage of the population continues to deny the link between cigarettes and lung cancer (6% according the most recent Gallup poll on the subject) even though cigarette packages themselves tell you that smoking will kill you.

I think it’s probably geographic, too. Crowds in NYC were going to be different from crowds in the Deep South, in terms of how much media education/exposure they had. Plus there’s a bit of that Fox Mulder “I want to believe” aspect.

[GOTNW]

It's interesting how, for all the talk about the 2006 list being so go-go action oriented, and having taken place at a board literally called "Smarkschoice" with voters using intellectual usernames such as "Benoitsmark" and "This is Workrate", the old timer candidates actually performed better there. Thesz barely made the top 150 last time and was #82 in 2006.

When I was making my list last time a part of me wondered whether I was subconsciously influenced by being a contrarian weeb, but I've ultimately come to the conclusion that even if that were true, it is much more likely to be affected in whether I rank someone like Akitoshi Saito or Buzz Sawyer than the top of my list. In actuality I just don't like how American wrestling developed once Harley Race and Ric Flair became important. This is probably part of what made Thesz so interesting to me, together with the reverence for him in the UWFi and among the Catch wrestling circles (amusingly, you could argue Thesz-worship among the Japanese was them being reverse weebs - a Samurai to a Westerner is a Cowboy to an Easterner). Still, that's really no guarantee his work would be on that elite level. Luckily, it is.

OJ's responses like "he was just the best wrestler" may seem a bit dismissive, but they are true . But it isn't a statement which is just true on an ontological level, where I would confidently co-sign a statement saying "Lou Thesz is the best American wrestler of all time". It is also true in a sense that the appeal of Lou Thesz and the presentation of Lou Thesz is that he is the best wrestler. In that he doesn't really differ much from a Bret Hart, and you can look at no-nonsense straightmen like Jack Brisco and Dory Funk Jr. as continuing in his style and lineage. I would describe Thesz as being magnetic in his simplicity. Ed "Strangler" Lewis, who was a big inspiration and influence on Thesz, left the same impression on me in the unfortunately limited footage we have of him.

 

Ultimately, what I think makes Lou Thesz one of the greatest of all time are the following:

-he worked in a setting which I like stylistically (a strong emphasis on matwork and legitimate wrestling skills) and which fit his strengths

-he not only had a great understanding of real grappling, but knew how to transfer it into a working environment and build beautiful mat sequences around it

-despite playing a stoic character, he had a great sense of emoting; Thesz losing his temper just means more

-he could spice up the grappling with striking and "tricks" like the palm striking his own hand into a Back Elbow, which could be useful both as a revenge towards rule breaking heels and when he was playing a (mostly subtle) heel

-he could go through any of the 4 combinations of the traditional roles and types of a pro-wrestler (face/heel x technician/brawler) while staying true to himself and the quality of his work

-he worked many greats, but never looks like the lesser great (just for 1970s, where he was already a veteran, he looks completely at home in the clips we have of him going at it with Johnny Valentine in Florida, and clearly outperforms Gotch in their tag vs Inoki and Sakaguchi)

-he had a very sophisticated understanding of selling and structuring matches (Thesz vs Gagne 1952/1/25 is to Golden Era prowres what Misawa vs Kobashi 1997/1/20 is to King's Road)

 

I think the beauty in his work is ultimately what sets him apart from wrestlers like Bret and Dory. I might appreciate the thought Bret put into structuring his matches and that he took the business seriously, or the mechanical ability of Dory which could produce epicness against elite opponents like Inoki and Jack Brisco, but neither of them feel complete. Thesz is - which is why I see him more as a comparison to Misawa and Santo in the category of elite stoic wrestling characters who were just "the best". Maybe you could nitpick about Santo here because he had the whole gimmick, but I would turn that around and argue that, with him having the gimmick, it was almost a prophecy for him to be the best. And the beauty of their work is what connects them in my mind. With Misawa, it can be a Forearm barrage or a Sliding Dropkick; with Santo it can be a Hammerfist to get into position for the Camel Clutch or a beautiful Plancha; with Thesz it is a beautiful Drop Toe Hold, a tight Headlock, and, when he loses it, a brutal Knee lift.

 

In conclusion, I have Thesz penciled in my top 10, with a chance of him making my top 5.

[Control21]

I totally approve of ranking Lou Thesz that highly. He's currently in my top 25 but has a decent chance of moving up.

[Tetsujin]

How much footage do we have of him? I'm planning to do a deep dive into his stuff to try to consider him seriously.