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Who are the top 10 lower mid-carders in history?


JerryvonKramer

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Being top of the card buys you a lot of other things, not just "opportunity". It buys you time and attention from fans. It buys significance. It buys weight and gravitas. If you're exploring Puerto Rico you start with Colon, not with whoever is bottom of the card.

 

Try to imagine Jumbo vs. Tenryu as a mid-card feud. Is it as good? Does it mean as much? Can you think of any mid-card feuds that have that same level of weight?

 

What I'm saying is that I think a lot of people who are touting "card placement doesn't matter" aren't being true to themselves as fans or to the game itself. The things that matter to fans, the things that stick in the memory, the moments of "greatness" mostly tend to come from featured matches in the main event. If the match is over World Tag Titles or the IC/US title it's "featured" -- or at least it was before parity booking and the burial of secondary titles happened. We can't pretend that none of these things factor into our thinking.

 

Johnny Rodz was a pretty good worker, he was. But nothing he ever did ever mattered in the overall scheme of things. And no one talks about Rodz as a great. That's just the way of things. His job was to be a "good hand" and that's what he was.

 

These things can work for and against guys in the main event. I think the level of vitriol thrown HHH's way is often a bit over the top, because he was super visible and failed in the role. We might think of Luger as an analogy -- although clearly Luger was better than HHH, he was a whipping boy in online communities for years. But look at the nominations. Luger and Triple H have threads to their name, Outlaw Ron Bass doesn't.

 

My point is simply "don't pretend it doesn't matter" -- and I mean "don't pretend it doesn't matter more than simply 'opportunity'". Bill Thompson's accusing me of making a strawman. I'm not, him and various people have flat out said "card placement doesn't matter" in their estimation. They aren't being truthful.

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But you still haven't explained how you'll weigh it. Is card placement something you'll actually factor in comparing workers? If so, how?

I think it factors in before such a comparison takes place. i.e. With limited time and energy, whose work should I explore first: Dolph Ziggler's or John Cena's? You know it's Cena every day of the week. He takes priority because he's more important, simple as that. Maybe I never get round to Ziggler.

 

It's just the way things are. On Titans we've watched tons of workers, but it's Backlund who eats up a lot of the attention. Even if I'm not his biggest fan, I'd have to tell anyone considering workers from the early 80s to start with him if they are going to look at WWF. You start with Backlund, not Bobby Duncum. You start with Cena, not Ziggler.

 

But beyond that, it won't factor in because ... well, anyone who is going to be considered seriously for a GWE 100 is going to be exceptional in some way. No one even gets on the radar unless they've done something remarkable to stand out -- and that's very hard to do from the lower card, which is why no one is talking about those guys.

 

And, yeah, Arn probably finishes above Harley in my list. But in some ways there are things to even out the fact one was NWA champ and the other wasn't. Arn enjoys a lot of advantages over a guy like Harley (almost entire career on tape, peak was more recent, style most of us grew up with, worked in places most of us are fond of, etc. etc.), and he worked almost all his career in the upper midcard having meaningful matches, so it's not a particularly uneven fight.

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A lower midcarder is someone who beats JTTSs but typically loses to midcarders and above. Lower midcarders mostly don't get put in featured feuds and seldom get titles, although they might on occassion get title shots.

 

Some lower midcarders:

 

Brad Armstrong in WCW

Sam Houston in JCP

Tommy Rich in WCW in the early 90s

Koko B. Ware in WWF

The Bolsheviks in WWF

The Orient Express in WWF

The Killer Bees in WWF

Albert in WWF circa Attitude Era

Owen Hart in WWF before his push in 94

 

These are all lower midcarders.

 

A "true midcarder" is someone on the level of, say, Dino Bravo in 1989. Bravo would not be a lower midcarder until his hair went dark circa late 91 /early 92. Midcarders who are firmly in the midcard (as opposed to lower or upper), might have feuds, they might even have transitional secondary title reigns, but mostly they are placeholders on cards. It's "another match" to eat up some time. Rick Martel spent most of his time around here when he was "The Model".

 

An upper midcarder is someone who is featured and who might headline house shows. The IC champ or US champ. Tag champs. Guys with strong pushed characters who have had main event runs before (DiBiase, Piper, Jake, Dusty in 89 etc.) are upper midcarders.These guys are usually given time and space to shine and will be in matches that add value to a card. It might not be a main event, but it might give someone ANOTHER reason to see a show. Many of these will be de facto GWE worthy, but then many of them will spend their careers shuttling back and forth between here and the main event.

 

Hope that clears things up. Tell me if you disagree.

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Someone who was higher on cards has an inherent advantage over someone who was lower on cards in a project like this. I'm not sure why people are finding this hard to understand. It's a simple point that Parv might be complicating a bit, but then again I have no idea where this thread was splintered off from and what kind of kickback he was getting on this simple premise.

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Because in certain posts there is an implication of "well if was/is so good, why was/is he/she stuck working in the lower midcard?" Which is a logic that 1) seems ridiculous to me because I don't need the approval of a booker to think a guy is at a certain level when it's all opinion anyway, and 2) between this and the Vince thread, implies a paternalism that offends me on a level beyond the context of wrestling.

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Because in certain posts there is an implication of "well if was/is so good, why was/is he/she stuck working in the lower midcard?" Which is a logic that 1) seems ridiculous to me because I don't need the approval of a booker to think a guy is at a certain level when it's all opinion anyway, and 2) between this and the Vince thread, implies a paternalism that offends me on a level beyond the context of wrestling.

 

Yeah.

 

A GWE project is obviously heavily based on ring work, where as with card positioning the ring work is only part of the equation, and in certain times & places, the smallest part of the equation.

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A lower midcarder is someone who beats JTTSs but typically loses to midcarders and above. Lower midcarders mostly don't get put in featured feuds and seldom get titles, although they might on occassion get title shots.

 

Some lower midcarders:

 

Brad Armstrong in WCW

Sam Houston in JCP

Tommy Rich in WCW in the early 90s

Koko B. Ware in WWF

The Bolsheviks in WWF

The Orient Express in WWF

The Killer Bees in WWF

Albert in WWF circa Attitude Era

Owen Hart in WWF before his push in 94

 

These are all lower midcarders.

 

A "true midcarder" is someone on the level of, say, Dino Bravo in 1989. Bravo would not be a lower midcarder until his hair went dark circa late 91 /early 92. Midcarders who are firmly in the midcard (as opposed to lower or upper), might have feuds, they might even have transitional secondary title reigns, but mostly they are placeholders on cards. It's "another match" to eat up some time. Rick Martel spent most of his time around here when he was "The Model".

 

An upper midcarder is someone who is featured and who might headline house shows. The IC champ or US champ. Tag champs. Guys with strong pushed characters who have had main event runs before (DiBiase, Piper, Jake, Dusty in 89 etc.) are upper midcarders.These guys are usually given time and space to shine and will be in matches that add value to a card. It might not be a main event, but it might give someone ANOTHER reason to see a show. Many of these will be de facto GWE worthy, but then many of them will spend their careers shuttling back and forth between here and the main event.

 

Hope that clears things up. Tell me if you disagree.

That does clear things up. I was just confused about who and what defines the term.

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My point is simply "don't pretend it doesn't matter" -- and I mean "don't pretend it doesn't matter more than simply 'opportunity'". Bill Thompson's accusing me of making a strawman. I'm not, him and various people have flat out said "card placement doesn't matter" in their estimation. They aren't being truthful.

 

But, we are being truthful and you're being bull headed in thinking, "They see things differently than me, that's simply not possible so they clearly aren't being truthful!" It's a total strawman argument, one that you've created yourself and one where you refuse to acknowledge the points made by others because they don't coincide with the argument you want to make. It's a pretty weak argument at that, and a poorly constructed strawman to boot.

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Look, I think the problem here is less about the issue being argued and more about people rejecting the attempt to put a control on how they vote. I doubt you'd find many people who would say that a guy who was opening shows/jobbing regularly to midcarders while not being involved in featured stories was greatly important to his/her promotion while this was going on. And if that happened to be the majority of their career, odds are they didn't do much of note within the business, which is probably an agreeable statement. That won't stop some people from really enjoying the work they did and possibly thrwing them a sentimental vote somewhere down their lists.

 

I can tell you this for sure. Trying to tell people that they shouldn't do that and it's wrong won't get you anywhere. Nor will telling them they can't. And for statistical reasons I think that it's just silly in the first place. Let's say somebody or a few people do vote for Johnny Rodz. Is that somehow going to skew the voting and throw the whole poll off? Because out of all the people voting, the odds are pretty slim that you're going to get a vast majority voting for the exact same career lower midcarder and putting them ahead of someone more deserving. In fact, the few votes they do garner for being a favorite will very likely not put them on the final list anyway. Are you telling me you think that there aren't 100 main event/upper midcard/midcard guys who will get more votes than a Brad Armstrong or Johnny Rodz or Koko B. Ware will? That seems like a really low probability. I get that you want to avoid the poll being skewed by bad voting Parv. And I do think that this kind of thing has the best intentions behind it. But the truth is, it comes off as heavy handed at it's very best and I really don't think it's all that necessary.

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To be honest, I don't care about any of that. People can vote for who they want and will. When did I say they couldn't or even shouldn't? And, yes, I don't see very many lower mid-carders being in the final 100. Which I guess was my point in the first place.

 

I just maintain that anyone who says that card placement "doesn't matter" isn't being truthful with themselves or the reality of how wrestling works. If that stance rubs some people up the wrong way, well sorry, get over it. Since when did PWO become the make a wish foundation? Now we have to skirt around saying stuff like that in case it offends someone's sensibilities? "Paternalism"? Give me a break for god's sake. Sorry if I'm being unusually grumpy about this, but I've seen everything now. Lower mid-carder rights? Really?

 

Because in certain posts there is an implication of "well if was/is so good, why was/is he/she stuck working in the lower midcard?" Which is a logic that 1) seems ridiculous to me because I don't need the approval of a booker to think a guy is at a certain level when it's all opinion anyway, and 2) between this and the Vince thread, implies a paternalism that offends me on a level beyond the context of wrestling.

Maybe it's because my default setting is to think about the 70s and 80s, and the territories and so on, rather than about current WWE. In my thinking, if a guy had any sort of talent or charisma (or "look", which I guess falls outside of our criteria) and got over, he found himself rising up the card. It's not a simple 1:1 correlation, but anyone who gets a reaction and gets over, will find themselves given a push and usually in the upper mid-card for a good portion of their career at the very least.

 

Maybe things don't work like that in current WWE -- although I seem to recall pushes for Punk, Bryan, the Shield and various others who have gotten over, so even that is overstated -- but the E in GWE is "ever" and in most promotions in wrestling history, the way things have worked is good reaction = push. As I said in a previous post, there is an element of smarkdom of always assuming the worst of the bookers and assuming that they have a base level of incompetence. That's not true really. Most promoters who made money had to listen to the crowd.

 

I'm still not really seeing any examples of super-workers who spent their entire career low down on the card. Childs put it pretty well here:

 

 

Card placement matters for the main reason is opportunity. Main Eventers get more opportunities to have big matches at the top of the card, but why is that relevant?

I don't want to put words in Parv's mouth, but I think he's arguing that main eventers don't simply stumble into those opportunities. They earn them by being great. And as a corollary, he's arguing that most wrestlers who were truly great earned strong card placements. So practically, it's rare to find career lower-card workers with strong cases for this list.

 

Broadly, I agree with that line of thinking, though it has its limits, given the number of stiffs who've been thrown into main events over the years.

 

Of course it's complicated by politics, fetishes for big muscle dudes, and so on. But bookers are seldom so blind that they completely squander talent. If someone spends their entire career curtain jerking, there's a reason for it. Whether it's lack of talent, lack of ambition / happy to stay in comfort zone (old Vince Sr WWF had a ton of those guys), lack of charisma, drug issues, or whatever else.

 

Don't really understand why people wouldn't be comfortable co-signing that.

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Your willingness to dismiss/ignore any point that runs counter to your argument is quite astounding, I'll give you that much. Whatever, you've shown time and again in this topic that you're not willing to actually engage on the topic and instead would rather spout empty rhetoric to prop up your strawman. What a waste of time.

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I think this is mostly a semantics debate. Parv isn't saying U.S. champs are never better than world champs, he's saying featured performers are usually better than non-featured performers. So Regal, while never a headliner, routinely received 10-15 minutes of time to work TV matches and often received even more time than that on pay-per-view. So this doesn't apply to him. "Card placement" is probably the incorrect choice of words here. It isn't about main events or midcard as much as it is wrestlers given the appropriate time and focus to produce plenty of stuff worth watching.

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Card placement counts in the sense that the higher somebody was on cards, the more they had opportunity to shine, thus there is a definite advantage that long term main eventers have over undercard guys. I don't think card placement matters in terms of breaking down candidates and saying, "well, this guy was a main eventer and this other guy never was, so the first guy was obviously better". Everybody here is smart enough to understand that simply isn't true.

 

The list is going to be dominated more by main event level workers as opposed to undercard workhorse/enhancement types, that I have no doubt. I think that's all Parv is trying to say.

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A lower midcarder is someone who beats JTTSs but typically loses to midcarders and above. Lower midcarders mostly don't get put in featured feuds and seldom get titles, although they might on occassion get title shots.

 

Some lower midcarders:

 

Brad Armstrong in WCW

Sam Houston in JCP

Tommy Rich in WCW in the early 90s

Koko B. Ware in WWF

The Bolsheviks in WWF

The Orient Express in WWF

The Killer Bees in WWF

Albert in WWF circa Attitude Era

Owen Hart in WWF before his push in 94

 

These are all lower midcarders.

 

How many of these workers were career lower midcarders?

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Your willingness to dismiss/ignore any point that runs counter to your argument is quite astounding, I'll give you that much. Whatever, you've shown time and again in this topic that you're not willing to actually engage on the topic and instead would rather spout empty rhetoric to prop up your strawman. What a waste of time.

Since I'm never one not to stick my nose in where it doesn't need to be, I have to say you're being about ten times more pointlessly stubborn than Parv is being.

 

 

Now that I'm done giving away two unwanted cents, what Joe posted above is dead on. If you work main events, you get more opportunities for good matches. You guys have made Joe the calm voice of reason. Just think about that for a moment.

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