Rick Rude vs. Ted Dibiase

[Loss]

1. "Heavy Metal" Van Hammer

[Goodear]

 

... esp if we are going on just work rate.

 

Has anyone anywhere said this is what we're going on?

 

 

Work rate is a terrible 'statistic' that should die in a fire regardless. It literally rewards a lack of selling, pacing and storytelling so there can be more moves. Its doesn't even successfully define its parameters. UGH.

[concrete1992]

Poor use of the word work rate that is all.

[jushin muta liger]

I was one of those people that was that felt sympathy for Parv about the "greatest" vs "favorite" argument but for him to say that he is not voting other workers like Lucha and Joshi is pretty bad.

 

EDIT: I missed the post where Parv wasn't writing off other styles and Parv brought it up to me. My fault entirely and I apologize to Parv for that.

 

This project has not gone to waste for myself personally and I wasn't even planning on submitting a ballot because of my big blind spots. I said in "Everyone Submit A Ballot" Thread that there won't be a lot of WOS guys or Memphis guys on my ballot and Will joked that I shouldn't submit one. I said that because I haven't gotten to them but you what I have gotten to in the last 12 months: Lucha and Joshi.

 

I have myself constantly lurking through boards trying to find recommended Lucha matches, looking at old Toreo results, looking at Luchablog through 90's CMLL TV results, reading multiple times Ohtani's Jacket's thoughts and stories on 80's AJW and Loss' Joshi thread. And the Genesis of it started partly because of this project.

 

I haven't participated in the threads cause 1) My job takes up a lot of my time and 2) I'm still learning about these wrestlers from different places.

 

So for the people here running the board, the project wasn't to waste as I've watched new wrestling cause of this. Take it for what it's worth and if you don't value my thoughts, I'm not gonna care cause I'm submitting a ballot that has to be counted.

[BillThompson]

 

 

... esp if we are going on just work rate.

 

Has anyone anywhere said this is what we're going on?

 

 

Work rate is a terrible 'statistic' that should die in a fire regardless. It literally rewards a lack of selling, pacing and storytelling so there can be more moves. Its doesn't even successfully define its parameters. UGH.

 

 

If that's how you define workrate, because let me tell you something workrate has many different definitions these days.

[ohtani's jacket]

What led to this whole thing, was that it seemed to me that the snap decision between "Ted or Rude" wasn't really being arrived at after a process like this. I mean, some people were making the decision based on it, but others were making it on factors that seemed to me to be more arbitary "who would I rather watch right now?" (for instance). That question "who would I rather watch right now?" seems to be the question that Matt D and others who envision the project as a litmus test for current hotness are trying to answer. To me that has nothing to do with Greatest Wrestler Ever. "Okay, but Parv, you can still vote, etc." Sure, but to me -- for right or for wrong -- it really matters what everyone else thinks they are trying to do here. Like, there is no reason at all for me to spent time, energy, and effort arguing with a guy who is just going to turn around and say "yeah, but see, I'm just bored of this guy, and I'm into this guy right now". Like, alright, but we're doing different projects. And the way this thread has gone, it seems like more people want to do that project than the one I've described above. It's not me being childish, or taking my toys home, or anything like that, it's me saying "okay, if that's the project, it's not the one I've been doing, I'm not interested in that project much and therefore I'm out". I hope that makes sense. Top 100 Greatest to me means Greatest. It doesn't mean Top 100 Current Consensus Hotness or Top 100 Guys I Happen to Love.

 

I think you've explained your reasoning well. Anybody who's followed your podcasts or the written pieces you've done will know that you're generally consistent when it comes to these sort of projects, but as the type of voter you refer to throughout, allow me to say a few words. I participated in a 70s music poll where my list was full of nothing but funk, soul and jazz records with outlaw country being the only other genre represented. No, I tell a lie, there were blues records on it too, and a bit of MPB (mostly Jorge Ben), but I ended up voting for an outlaw country album as No.1 on top of a plethora of funk and soul. I ignored all of the classic 70s rock albums for the simple reason that I hadn't heard them. Instead, I went down all sorts of obscure routes and had a whale of a time. When we did the 60s poll, my ballot was so jazz heavy that you might as well have retitled it "The 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of the 60s," but man did I explore every corner of jazz on that one. Again, I ignored all of the famous 60s albums. It's only been this year that I've listened to all those records; off my own back and not for the purpose of any poll. If I ever participate in another 60s or 70s music poll perhaps I'd produce a more balanced ballot, but I'm basically the kind of voter you dislike. If I were voting on the best films of the 40s, I could never, ever, bring myself to vote Kane as No.1. I'd rather put it at 50 and find 49 other films to vote for, or not vote for it at all; that's how bad I am.

 

So, a couple of points:

 

* The same picks always finish high regardless of voters like me. The top 10 in this poll will invariably involve some combination of Flair, Funk, Hansen, Jumbo, etc. regardless of whether people like me vote just as The Godfather always wins, and Strangelove and Vertigo, and so on and so on.

 

* Not everybody approaches these things by starting with the classics and branching out just as not everybody has the stamina to go through the a wrestler's entire back catalogue the way you do. I admire what you do, but people go down rabbit holes; they get into stuff. There are positives in people watching something new or different for the first time even if they don't hit all the must-sees before the ballot's due. Maybe they'll get to them next time, or maybe they'll do what I always do after a film poll -- check out the highest ranked stuff that wasn't on my ballot.

 

* Matt's point about it being a snapshot is really a comparison being how tastes have changed between 2006 and now. It's a snapshot of the last 10 years just as the Smarkschoice poll was a snapshot of how people felt in 2006 and the years leading up to that. There are certainly some of us who are beyond the point of discovering a few of the workers you've been adamant about so far, but the workers who are going to fall furthest on the ballot are easy to predict due to trends on here and DVDVR since the original poll took place, and really it has more to do with a natural process of voters who took part the first time disappearing or moving on to other things than a deliberate, conscious rejection of the norm.

 

* From my own point of view, it always bothers me when there's a music poll and a few token picks like Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder do well. Or a film poll where there's maybe a Kurosawa film or a Herzog film here or there. I understand why people might have a ballot full of punk or rock albums and a few Motown records here and there, but there's a drawback to focusing so heavily on the classics. If the people on this forum had only focused on the classics in the past five or six years, and gone round and round in circles on the stuff where the groundwork was already laid for us, there's dozens of workers who we wouldn't be discussing this time.

 

* "Who would I rather watch now?", to me, is a legitimate tiebreaker for two guys I wouldn't give a moment's thought to otherwise. This idea that Rude and Dibiase are there as these two noted workers and I'm supposed to be ever conscious of how they rank in relation to one another is something I can't relate to. I enjoyed Rude during the WCW poll we did, but that feeling's gone. I dug the Dibiase/Magnum TA matches I watched recently, but I'm not going to pick a match at random to watch from either guy and the way I feel about either of them at any one time is not fixed. Objectively, I could weigh their careers up against each other the way you'd like me to, but what's the point in doing that if I'm not excited about voting for either? That's taking your sprouts analogy to an extreme. I realise you care more about the process than whether folks vote for one guy or the other, but I don't think you're paying enough respect to people defining their own personal tastes and putting their own personal spin on what is essentially their hobby.

 

* And finally, I don't like the Sight and Sound analogy because what we do is nowhere near established as S&S. We're not even two lists into attempting to be the S&S of wrestling criticism. There's a long way to go before an analogy like that can be made, IMO. By which I mean S&S being some kind of bible as opposed to a list that's made once every 10 years.

 

 

[El-P]

I participated in a 70s music poll where my list was full of nothing but funk, soul and jazz records with outlaw country being the only other genre represented. No, I tell a lie, there were blues records on it too, and a bit of MPB (mostly Jorge Ben), but I ended up voting for an outlaw country album as No.1 on top of a plethora of funk and soul. (…) When we did the 60s poll, my ballot was so jazz heavy that you might as well have retitled it "The 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of the 60s," but man did I explore every corner of jazz on that one.

 

Ok. Can I see those lists ? Please ? (I'd love to have those references)

[GSR]

 

 

I participated in a 70s music poll where my list was full of nothing but funk, soul and jazz records with outlaw country being the only other genre represented. No, I tell a lie, there were blues records on it too, and a bit of MPB (mostly Jorge Ben), but I ended up voting for an outlaw country album as No.1 on top of a plethora of funk and soul. () When we did the 60s poll, my ballot was so jazz heavy that you might as well have retitled it "The 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of the 60s," but man did I explore every corner of jazz on that one.

Ok. Can I see those lists ? Please ? (I'd love to have those references)

Same here if you're able to pm me them.

[jdw]

If you go the GWE loses one of its pillars. You've been committed to the project more than just about anyone. I think it's a waste of your discoveries thus far not to vote. For every comment you receive in this thread there will be a guy who checks out Jack Brisco, or someone else, because of your hard work. Instead of worrying about canon, why not count the small victories?

 

I'm kind of stupified that Jack Brisco is a "discovery".

 

I get that Dory Jr is a "re-evalution" rather than a discovery. People pimped his as a great worker back in the 70s and well into the 80s. Then assholes like me and Jewett started talking about Dory being as boring as all fuck in the ring and having wise ass ways of expressing it. So now the work Parv has done can get people looking at him in a different way from those who think/thought he was boring as all fuck.

 

But Brisco? Come on. At the same time those of us said that Dory was putting us to sleep in stuff like his match with Brisco, we were putting over Brisco as the far better worker. Then put over him carry Jumbo to a good match when Jumbo was young. Then put him over for having a terrific match with Jumbo when Jumbo was more grown up. Then put him over for having matches with Baba that ran circles around the boring ass draw with Dory that we all blamed on Dory. And on and on.

 

Pimping wrestlers didn't start this year, or last year, or just on this board. Guys like you and me and Dylan and a host of people here go back online more than a decade and a half, some of us 20 years. Let's not pretend that fire keeps getting constantly discovered for EVERYONE that's talked about.

[dawho5]

First things first.

 

Parv, take a week or two to think about it. Don't go into threads (especially this one) talking about anything related to GWE. Think about your list and what it means personally to you. Think about all of the people who have looked at older matches or wrestlers that may have been forgotten directly because of you. Because these are the things you should be highlighting when you think about this project. Will watched Dory, Jr. matches on purpose because you pimped them. Doesn't matter that it didn't change his mind. He took the time to look at them because you suggested it. I don't think you see the influence you have when you skip the part where you turn people off to your way of thinking by becoming overly abrasive about things. And I'm not saying that as a major criticism of you, because I would guess that every one of us has been abrasive when describing something we love to people who don't necessarily buy into it. I'm just suggesting that if you look at things straight on, you'll see that you do a lot of good in relation to this project.

 

Also, if OJ is PMing those 100 album lists out, I would love to get a copy. Because 70s funk and 60s jazz are areas of music that are incredibly intriguing and I only have a few names to start with.

[El-P]

We should rename that thread "20 jazz funk greats"...

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, I didn't mean that Parv literally discovered Brisco. I meant that Brisco has been a discovery for him during the viewing period, as in he's discovered how good a worker Brisco was. Brisco's not a guy who gets talked about a lot around here. I don't think there was a Brisco thread in the Microscope until Parv made one. A lot of folks who come through here weren't around to read what was written about Brisco on The Other Arena, and the stuff being available on YouTube or Ditch's site is not quite the same as when All Japan Classics were in vogue; not to me anyway. Discovery is the wrong word, but Parv's thread about Brisco certainly got me to watch a couple of Jack's matches, and certainly I think the Brisco nomination thread would be dead if not for Parv.

[ohtani's jacket]

BTW, I'll send out the lists when I get home from work.

 

For some reason, this thread is starting to remind me of efforts to reinstate the Macho Man.

[goodhelmet]

 

This project has not gone to waste for myself personally and I wasn't even planning on submitting a ballot because of my big blind spots. I said in "Everyone Submit A Ballot" Thread that there won't be a lot of WOS guys or Memphis guys on my ballot and Will joked that I shouldn't submit one. I said that because I haven't gotten to them but you what I have gotten to in the last 12 months: Lucha and Joshi.

 

 

 

I'm glad you know that I was only joking and won't ban you if you don't watch Memphis wrestling.

[dawho5]

But I think you do owe it to yourself to watch memphis wrestling. Six discs in and I am loving a lot of it. The "hide the foreign object" routines get tiresome, but the rest of the set is glorious.

[dexstar]

Not that anyone cares about my lurker opinion, but don't get lost in the forest with this argument or whatever, please. Put aside the methods and opinions and such - the GWE project has produced some incredible content for myself, a life-long wrestling fan who is thoroughly enjoying just hearing the differing views and methodologies at work. I don't know if there's a person on this earth that my personal taste would run more counter to than JVK, but I still enjoy hearing his thoughts

[jdw]

 

I grew up reading peak jdw and Boston Idol on tOA, this is nothing.

 

Exactly. This is mild stuff. tOA had worse, be it regulars including myself or the semi-regular run-ins by the Bob.com Crew for flame wars. There was worse on the variety of sites CTC posted on, for a name out of the past. DVDVR had worse. I remember worse WrestlingClassics where Mask or Naulty would shutdown conversations because one of their sacred cows (either wrestlers or posters) was getting taken to the woodsheed. This is mild.

[thebrainfollower]

I actually thought that was one of the rules of the project, we were only allowed to talk about what people did in ring. We could not take into account promo skills, impact, merch sales, cultural impact or how long they were on top.

 

If I am wrong about that I profoundly apologize.

 

Either way I feel while I have watched a lot more 70's-90's All and New Japan, I am still too weak on Lucha and Joshi that I take MY opinions seriously, let alone expect anyone else too.

[jdw]

The way I look at it is that how "great" someone is, is still subjective to the voter. The Beatles could be the most acclaimed band of all time, but if I don't like their work, why should they be on my greatest bands ever list? That's just me being dishonest to myself if I put them on there just because OTHERS consider them to be great. That way of thinking doesn't work for me.

 

I'm mixed on this.

 

When I did an NBA Top 50 earlier this year, I had Kobe ranked #7. My Lakers Fans friends would tell you that I'm the biggest Kobe Hating Lakers Fan that there is. I appreciate the 5 titles he helped the team win, cutting the gap to the Celtics to 1 title (or 0 titles depending on how one counts). But there's never been a Laker player that has annoyed the fuck out of me as much as Kobe, not even that looney Billy Thompson in the 80s. But...

 

I can't take my personal hate for Kobe, and for the fashion in which he chose to play (rather than play the way I wanted him to), and say that he isn't a Top 50 player. It's even stronger than that: I couldn't put together a list that didn't have him in the Top 20 without basically copping to "I Know Not A Damn Thing About Hoops". I probably could explain away not having him in the Top 10, but even there I didn't think I would be honest.

 

Love the titles he's won us. Have enjoyed some thrilling times. Just hate him as a player/worker/performer.

 

But...

 

Looking at my list, I left off some guys who made/make other people's Top 50 such as George Gervin and Allen Iverson. Why? I largely hate pure gunners who could give a shit about their teammates and who don't really win much at all. Gervin won nothing, and had a decent chance to make a Final but he specifically choked out in a big quarter. AI did make a Final, but it was out of a shitty East that the horrible Nets won the next two years.

 

It's a big bias that I have, growing up hating guys like World B Free.

 

So...

 

I'm mixed about the concept.

 

If I were to do a ballot, someone like Kobashi would be my own personal Kobe. There are parts of him that I liked quite a bit, such as up to 1993... possible extending to May 1994. After that he increasingly annoyed me. I like Shaqsawa and Duncwada better. But it would be pretty impossible for me not to have Kobashi somewhere on the list, and likely somewhere fairly high. The annoyance that I have for Kobashi is similar to the annoyance that I have for Flair, with the slight difference that I loath putting on most any Flair match now, while I'll pop in something with Kobashi through the mid-90s fairly easy. But they both were extremely effective workers, and the stuff that annoys me often entertained the fans, they have a big body of work, yadder, yadder... Kobashi like Flair would be in the top quarter of the list.

 

In contrast, Toyota annoyed the fuck out of me as well. It's possible that I would draw the line on a "gunner" like her, and toss her off the list like I did with Iverson. In a sense, Toyota didn't "win" anything as the promotion started its decline with her on top, and her one trip to the "Final" (Monday Night Sensation) was set up by Aja and interpromotional matches that made it easy for Toyota.

 

If I didn't care for the Beatles, they'd strike me as closer to Kobe/Kobashi/Flair than Iverson/Toyota: there's just too much there, from a variety of angles if one wishes to dismiss the "quality" one, to dismiss them off a Top 100/50 list.

[goc]

 

 

I grew up reading peak jdw and Boston Idol on tOA, this is nothing.

 

I remember worse WrestlingClassics where Mask or Naulty would shutdown conversations because one of their sacred cows (either wrestlers or posters) was getting taken to the woodsheed. This is mild.

 

That guy is a complete dick, not even the worst of this board can compare to how much of an ass that guy is.

[jdw]

Not all styles are created equal. Outside of Necro, how many indie death match workers will make ballots? I'll have more to say later, a lot of which won't go over well.

 

 

[thebrainfollower]

You think this is bad. I belong to the Doctor Who Gallifrey Base message board, where we get banned, shut down, threads closed, so often it's not worth the time for me to risk a post.

 

And once on the classic horror film board I dared state my Elm Street theory (That Elm Street's success was that it's an UNINTENDED AIDS parallel). One guy got so offended he wished that I GOT AIDS to learn "how wrong I was".

[thebrainfollower]

As to JDW's point, yes you are right. Not all styles are equal. That stuff Necro does IS garbage IMO.

[jdw]

Rather than simply quote the whole thing, I just want to see that this is a really good post:

 

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31028-rick-rude-vs-ted-dibiase/?p=5706476

[dawho5]

I'm with jdw on Kobashi. I hate a lot of his habits after 1995, perhaps earlier. But they guy has so much going for him that he's firmly at 23 or 24. I'm not sure who my Iverson (by comparison) would be, but I have seen enough Manami Toyota to know that she is not for me. Great highspots for sure, but the total package is missing for me.