elliott Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Although I guess we have got to the heart of a distinction between: 1. Who is the best worker? and 2. Who had the best career? They aren't the same. For GOAT I'm looking for a combination of those two things. If I was rating purely based on who I think the most talented worker was, the list would look really different. And when I've tried to devise methods of looking just at workers divorced from their actual matches and careers it gained ... precisely zero traction. So I should be preaching to the converted on this. So how much higher will Hulk Hogan be than Ric Flair or Ted Dibiase or Jumbo Tsuruta? Genuine question. Not trying to be a dick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 I don't really mean career in that sense, that is in terms of drawing or being a big star. Not sure why you asked the question really, seems pretty obvious to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Although I guess we have got to the heart of a distinction between: 1. Who is the best worker? and 2. Who had the best career? They aren't the same. For GOAT I'm looking for a combination of those two things. If I was rating purely based on who I think the most talented worker was, the list would look really different. And when I've tried to devise methods of looking just at workers divorced from their actual matches and careers it gained ... precisely zero traction. So I should be preaching to the converted on this. But when we watch guys we're judging them primarily on No.1. You might watch a match and think about where it fits into the context of a guy's career, but first and foremost you're judging the bout on the work. When I watch Jumbo work a boring control segment, I don't think "wow, what an amazing two decades the guy had." Similarly, if I watch an outstanding Kawada performance, I don't think "I wish we had more of this over a longer period." It seems to me that as you go through the Excite Series that there's something about Kawada's work that doesn't resonate with you as opposed to the career argument. The career thing is so arbitrary to me. The peak vs. longevity argument has always been a part of these debates, but ranking the guy with the better career seems pointless. How do you determine whether Flair or Jumbo had a better career than El Hijo del Santo or Liger? You place a huge emphasis on output as well as variety of opposition, but lucha guys ran laps around the number of guys Flair and Jumbo faced and other workers like Liger have the same amount of longevity. I'm not knocking you for holding Flair and Jumbo up as your standard. But how do you correlate that with Breaks where we don't really know how many four star matches he produced with how many different opponents? The way I see it is that relatively speaking Kawada didn't have that bad a career compared to Jumbo, so the question is how do they compare as workers not is there a guy who faced more deadset legends over a decade span as Jumbo while still working the Sam Houstons of the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If the career thing is arbitrary, then everyone should have Barry Windham in their top 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Not really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Who had the best career as a piece of criteria means who translated their work from bell-to-bell to have the greatest reach in making themselves a star and making others stars, who impacted the generally accepted style the most and who racked up the most great matches along the way? In other words, who made being a great worker mean the most? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If the career thing is arbitrary, then everyone should have Barry Windham in their top 10. Agreed. Talent in practice matters more than just having the talent. But whether they realize it or not, everyone has already agreed to that in terms of how they are ranking guys anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If the career thing is arbitrary, then everyone should have Barry Windham in their top 10. If they think he's one of the 10 best workers they should since it's not like his career was bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If the career thing is arbitrary, then everyone should have Barry Windham in their top 10. Agreed. Talent in practice matters more than just having the talent. But whether they realize it or not, everyone has already agreed to that in terms of how they are ranking guys anyway. Yeah, I don't even know what people are arguing about now, so gonna leave it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohtani's jacket Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If the career thing is arbitrary, then everyone should have Barry Windham in their top 10. Agreed. Talent in practice matters more than just having the talent. But whether they realize it or not, everyone has already agreed to that in terms of how they are ranking guys anyway. Everyone in the top 100 is bound to have talent. Talent in practice for the majority of people relates to matches and performances and not careers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 A career of matches and performances. We are arguing the same thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 How much variety does it take for variety to become "wide variety?"I can speak to this directly. Let's start with Jumbo, a guy who didn't travel that widely, taking in both singles and tags, and see ... Dory Funk Jr, Jack Brisco, Terry Funk, Harley Race, Ric Flair, Billy Robinson, Rusher Kimura, Animal Hamaguchi, Kerry Von Erich, Stan Hansen*, Ted Dibiase, Dick Slater, Nick Bockwinkel, Rick Martel, Riki Choshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Toshiaki Kawada, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi. That's 20 different guys he had 4+ star affairs with in singles or tags. Not even starting to scrape around or dig deep. That's top end, we could also then go into the merely "very solid ***1/2 - ***3/4" category and we get Doug Furnas, Dan Kroffat, Ricky Fuyuki, The Road Warriors, Bruiser Brody, Mil Mascaras, Manuel Soto, Gypsy Joe, Kevin Sullivan, Tommy Rich, Bob Roop, Bob Backlund, Horst Hoffman, Dos Caras, Pat O'Connor, Ken Mantell, Dick Murdoch, Fritz Von Erich, Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, Curt Hennig ... how deep do you want to go. He has the goods, he has more goods. Could do same with Flair. I don't see how you see this expectation of a GOAT candidate as "limiting". It's saying "wow, that's a GOAT career, this guy had it, this other guy over here, he didn't". * See 10/21/86 20? Tsuruta Taue Fuchi Inoue Fuyuki Kikuchi Kabuki Ace Ogawa Kobashi Gordy Williams Rude Hansen That's people in 1990-91 that Kawada had Meltzer rated **** matches in singles or tags. That's 14 in just two years. That's not even starting to scrape around or dig deep. Obvious people like Misawa (who he didn't have a match opposite of in that year), or the Can-Ams, or Jun, or Albright, or Baba, or Bossman, or... well... a fuck ton of wrestlers that he was in ****+ matches against. I mean, it's Meltzer's ratings, and plenty of us disagree with them. But the guys you listed were by your ratings, and you have some match with Flair rated above the famous match with Mil, and I've yet to see any Flair-Jumbo match that's close to the Mil match. I don't even want to get into rating the Backlund & Roop tag or the Rich match or the Hennig match as ***1/2, which even a noted delusional Jumbo Mark like myself wouldn't get close to. So **** is a pretty subjective and goofy standard. We're at the point of making up standards as we're going along when the prior one didn't work, ala Jumbo Was Lazy. Flair and Jumbo has more variety in their career. I doubt anyone is seriously going to deny that. On the other hand, believing that Misawa, Kobashi and Kawada didn't have variety in their careers is just misstating reality. They didn't have as much as Flair and Jumbo. But they also had interesting things like Bossman passing through the promotion and each one of them having a ****+ tag with him in it that would rank among the handful of best matches of Bossman's career. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 "Noted delusional Jumbo mark"? This is where we've come to? Fair point though re: those matches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 "even a noted delusional Jumbo Mark like myself" It's difficult to be more clear. When someone as delusional about Jumbo as myself doesn't think the Hennig or Rich or Backlund & Roop tag (and good lord... I'm as delusional of a Backlund Mark as there is) doesn't think those are ***1/2+ matches, they probably aren't really ***1/2+ matches. I like the Rich match for what it is. Fun to see Jumbo have a watchable match with Rich. The Backlund-Roop match really isn't any good. It's worth watching since it's our earliest Backlund footage of any note. But it's poor relative to Bob's matches that come later, and poor relative to good Jumbo matches. The Hennig match is more interesting from Hennig's career than Jumbo's. There's stuff in it that I like, there's some cool stuff, but it's too often a choppy and not well executed match after the early solid hammerlock & top wristlock exchanges. Not all of it are Curt's issues, either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Let's not get nit picky though, since the point being made is very obvious and you even said you agree with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 If you go up and see where I initially made the point about those three matches, it was in relation to someone potentially running in to dump on Meltzer's ratings: all ratings can be reasonably disagreed with. I used three of you matches as an example where I wouldn't agree. I didn't/don't agree with Dave's ratings all the time, either That was the point: any list that we used to do this would be open to questionable ratings by people looking it over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 I don't disagree with that. And if someone thinks literally all of Kawada's matches were great, then sure, there's no way around it. And same with any other guy. For me, I think it's clear Jumbo and Flair are best in the category of variety of great matches vs. Different opponents over time. That's for me. Maybe for you, it's someone else. If you want to argue over specifics then it is what it is. I am going to review matches of his and other top tier candidates against randoms in the next few weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 I have no idea who had "most" or was the "best" at this concept. In part because "great" is a fuzzy word, but also because we haven't seen a ton of shit. But even if we took what's available, we could take Rey Jr and two people who have watched just about everything of his (say Dylan and then say someone who loved the AAA/WCW version of Rey like Meltzer), and then totaled up all the people that they say Rey in "great" matches against, the number were be rather staggering. More than we likely would get to with Flair or Jumbo, in part due to availability issues but not entirely. My guess is that we could do the same with Liger, especially if we get someone who really likes juniors style work... because those folks REALLY like juniors stuff. Hell, I was at a Liger match that I thought was a perfectly fine ****-ish level match (which appears to hit the "great" standard here), and some other folks thought it was *****. So... yeah. Kobashi might get there too since people thought he had **** matches against everyone, well into the 00s. So I don't know. But more to the point: I don't really care if Jumbo is #1 in "most", or Flair is #1 in "most", or Liger is, or Rey is, or Kobashi is, or Terry Funk is. That's not terribly important, or at least not to me. I think what's important is being able to say/show that Wrestler X had great/good/solid/all-time classic/MOTYC/EPIC~!/whateverthefuck matches against a wide number of opponents. It's of value to say that Kawada had excellent matches involving a wide variety of opponents while Sting (to pull a name out of my ass) had them against a more limited number of opponents. One might think Stings matches with Flair, Vader and Foley are all-time classics because they float your boat, but moving outward from there it gets thinner in terms of opponents. There's value in knowing that, and in people being able to add some more quality Sting opponents (which there are) to the list. But when it reaches a certain threshold, it really doesn't matter anymore. If Jumbo is 40, Kobashi is 41, Flair is 42, Liger is 43 and Rey is 44, it doesn't really mean anything at that point... other than Flair hit Life, the Universe and Everything. We've reached the point of marginal return. I frankly don't know if we've reached the point of marginal return at a lower level of 30... or 20... or who knows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dawho5 Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 It seems like the point jdw is making has more to do with how personal taste is going to affect a lot of top 10s/20s. There are guys who we all know are great pro wrestlers but just don't work as well for us as other people in that category. And the ones we prefer will be the guys we put way up at the top. It's not because they are by some device of measurement "better" than the others. It's because out of that group of wrestlers they are the ones we prefer. I know Kobashi is a great pro wrestler. He's been in tons of matches that he had a very large part of making great. He does not, however, make me as a wrestling fan happy with a lot of his habits. Kawada on the other hand is right up my alley. He's one of the reasons I still watch wrestling. So would I rank him above Kobashi? 100 times out of 100, yes. But do I admit that there are valid arguments for Kobashi and accept the fact that there will be plenty of lists that put Kobashi above Kawada? Absolutely. And I take no issue at all with the idea, because if that's what you like your vote should reflect that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 I actually made a similar point on Episode 5. Parv admitted he won't be putting many lucha wrestlers on his list because he didn't get it. Joshi wrestlers... probably none. Shootstyle guys... I don't see Parv putting these guys high on his list. If we have to accept common wisdom and reputation, we should all have HBK and Angle clocked in our Top Ten. We shouldn't trust our eyes and put Bruiser Brody, the best and most influential brawler of all time on our list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliott Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 Pulled a double at work today so I have some catching up to do on this and the other threads but I did want to ask one thing... I don't really mean career in that sense, that is in terms of drawing or being a big star. Not sure why you asked the question really, seems pretty obvious to me. I'm honestly still not clear. What tools are you using to come to your conclusion of "who had the best career" if it is different from "who is the best worker" but aren't considering it in terms of drawing or being a big star? Also, I think continually pointing at Windham is a red herring. No one who advances the argument that Windham had the talent and potential to be a GOAT wrestler actually advances the idea that he was a legit GOAT candidate. Or if they have I certainly haven't seen it happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimmy Redman Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 I think it means in cases where a guy's talent level is seen as less than his output (e.g. a guy like Edge who was in a bunch of great matches helped by gimmicks and what not) or more than his output (e.g. a guy like Regal who is great but hasn't always had the opportunity to show it). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliott Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 If this post by Loss http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/32049-fair-for-flair-a-mini-series/?p=5705055 accurately reflects what Parv means then, then it is more clear to me what he's trying to say and it isn't a criteria that I'm considering. Mostly for Kurt Angle/HBK/Sabu/Hogan related reasons. I'm trying to keep it simple. "Who was the best in ring worker ever" (based on available footage that ive seen personal preference yada yada yada). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted October 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 Elliott, it comes down to talent vs. Output. Will give you two concrete examples. Ted DiBiase is the first. Everyone knows I'm a Ted guy. He was hyped as one of the best workers of the 80s, top 3-5 in the US, loved by Meltzer, respected in the business, a guy who can bump, sell, feed, great timing, smooth as hell, great execution, great punches, could brawl, work technical, etc. Etc. A ring general who was rated so highly that the greatest minds in this business consistently put him in positions where he had to try to get something against a more limited opponent he was trying to get over ... Hogan (79, 88), JYD, Duggan, Hercules, Dusty, Virgil, and so on and so on. I rate Ted highly, but the argument I come against again and again is "where are his great matches?" Talent vs. Output. Ergo we get the scenario where guys are trying to prove that Big Boss Man was "better" than him in WWF. Akira Taue is the second example. On paper, he is not a guy with the skills of a DiBiase. He's awkward, his execution is often sloppy-looking, he just doesn't have that same level of smoothness and sense of control to his work that a classic ring general like DiBiase has. And yet, Taue has been in more great matches than about 95% of wrestlers that have ever lived. Talent vs. Output. You might call this the Taue conundrum. Who is better Taue or DiBiase? Well if you were starting a promotion and wanted a worker to build things around, DiBiase has the sorts of tools you'd want. But Taue was in more great matches. So who is better? Do you see? It becomes easier to see why "career" matters the lower down the list you go. If DiBiase had a different career, let's say he became NWA champ or went to Crockett instead of WWF in 87, and could point to a list like Flair's, the conversation would be different. DiBiase had the potential to have a career like that, but it's not the career he had. There is no way that a single person taking part in this process isn't taking that into consideration ranking various guys. The Dibiase complex, the Taue conundrum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 The Dibiase complex, the Taue conundrum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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