Norman Smiley

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[...TG]

I'm sure he's more than the "big wiggle" guy I remember from the death throes of WCW. Anyone have any recommendations?

[alexoblivion]

Not a lot of his Black Magic run is online, so it seems like he is going to be a tough sell, unless you have the footage. How much of his stuff even made the 90's yearbook? I seem to recall his match against LA Fiera being in the DVDR lucha 64 tourney at one point.

[Brandon-E]

I'm sure he's more than the "big wiggle" guy I remember from the death throes of WCW. Anyone have any recommendations?

These are his best matches.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojVKp88T_Yc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YZ_ZvmEt5s

[Cap]

Smiley is someone I'd like to give some serious consideration to if i can get my hands the lion's share of his shoot style work in Japan. I've only been able to find a couple of matches and I really enjoyed them. He could be a dark horse for my list of the footage is available.

[strobogo]

Every UWF show was on the various archive google drives for a couple of years so I'm sure that stuff is still pretty easy to find. In fact:

 

User Account (archive.org) I've seen most of his UWF work and while it's much different to what you got out of him in WCW, he wasn't exceptional in that style or company and it probably wouldn't change your opinion of him all that much unless you truly have only seen him in WCW 2000.

[Jetlag]

I actually think his best stuff is in WAR in the mid 90s. He was just allowed to let lose and be a stiff technical bruiser like a more shooty William Regal. Granted, that lasted only about one tour. God damn I wish he had done more stuff like that, or at least that we had more of his indy career on tape. The UWF stuff is cool but I'm not sure he's better than random eastern europeans having brief stints in RINGS.

[Cap]

I see a couple on there not available on youtube/dailymotion. I'll check those out soon.  I'm not a cool kid who knows all the archives, so I've still had trouble finding about half his UWF matches.

I have enjoyed what I have seen from him in that setting. The sample size is small of course and I don't think he was quiet doing it long enough to really hit his stride, but he flashed in the Anjo match and the 6/11/88 yamazaki match. It also isn't so much that I'd put him on my list if he had 9 matches like those as much as it is building a fairly intersting case around diversity of performance over time.

I also should check out the WAR stuff apparently.  Sounds dope.

[JewishJoshiStan]

I'll have more to say as I accumulate but: 

1. He's a real possibility for me
2. I'm not as inclined to dismiss his goofball work as others are in here; to me it's part of his diverse case rather than the part to ignore (in part because I'm not the hugest Shoot-style person). 

[cad]

On 5/1/2015 at 6:46 PM, ...TG said:

I'm sure he's more than the "big wiggle" guy I remember from the death throes of WCW.

He went to Japan and worked shootstyle, went to Mexico and was a heavyweight champion, went to the US and quickly grasped what got US workers over at the time. He was a smart guy who could adapt to whatever was in front of him, but he wasn't very smooth (sweet windup bodyslam aside) and his WCW run might actually be the most over and most successful he ever was. Not really the place or the style to produce much in the way of excellent matches, though. It makes sense that someone like that would end up as a longtime trainer.

His Wikipedia page says that he's also a vocalist who specializes in Gregorian chant. Somehow I don't expect that revision to last much longer.

[Control21]

His UWF work and Lucha stuff are enough for me to consider him as a top 100 candidate. It's incredibly good