Should I Vote For Jumbo?

[Loss]

Well, considering how much he has challenged himself and how much sheer footage he has watched for this project, attacking JVK eventually gets old.

[ohtani's jacket]

My two cents -- I'm not big on re-watching stuff since there's a ton of stuff out there I still haven't seen. There's a lot of workers whom I've closed the book on, and for me that type of closure is more helpful than not. Naturally, that means I find those workers less interesting than the ones I'm following now, but if I were thinking of voting for them, I'd probably try to recollect how I felt about their high points and whether those memories compelled me enough to vote for them. I don't much care for Liger or Jumbo, for example, but I do have fond memories of some of their key match-ups such as Liger vs. Ohtani or Jumbo vs. Tenryu. So rather than being into the worker as such, I'd have to weigh up how much those memories mean to me and whether I like the match-ups primarily because of Ohtani and Tenryu or if that's what I consider optimal Liger/Jumbo and how much I value that. There's no way I'd feel compelled to vote for anyone on principle.

One thing I don't really agree with so far is the suggestion that Inoki, Mascaras or Toyota were carried in their best stuff. Those bouts strike me as a step-up in performance as opposed to carry jobs.

[Childs]

One thing I don't really agree with so far is the suggestion that Inoki, Mascaras or Toyota were carried in their best stuff. Those bouts strike me as a step-up in performance as opposed to carry jobs.

 

Who said that?

[ohtani's jacket]

That seemed to be the implication to me. That those workers' best bouts were directly attributable to other wrestlers.

[supremebve]

I don't think that those wrestlers are incapable of greatness, they just weren't consistently as good as some other people who were less well known than them. For the most part everyone we're discussing is capable of greatness, but I don't think Inoki, Mascaras, or Toyota should be automatically included because of their reputations as great workers. If you think they're great go ahead and put them in, but I think those three in particular don't hold up very well upon closer examination. They have their peaks, but I think they all have some deep ass valleys that I think are deeper than their peaks are high. All three of them were more than capable of great performances, I just don't think that they reached that level often enough to vote for them.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't think anyone has voted for anyone on rep.

[supremebve]

I don't think anyone has voted for anyone on rep.

Maybe not, but that may just be my interpretation of those particular careers. I've watched a decent enough of all three of them, and I don't see it. Inoki has some really good performances, but there is so much boring nonsense. Mil Mascaras was lazy and uncooperative as much as he was good. Toyota was good at a lot of different things, but I'd pick 5-10 other Joshi wrestlers before I'd pick her. When I say that people may be voting for them based on their rep, I'm saying that all of them seem to have reputations that I don't believe they've earned. I think the bigger issue for me is that there are people who I feel are deserving based on limited viewing, but I very well could be overrating them because I've only seen good stuff. I've seen a lot of Jumbo matches, but mostly I've only seen his great matches. I neither have the time nor interest in finding his average to bad matches. If I was to only watch Triple H's best matches, and just plain ignored all the week to week bullshit that happened over the years I'd have a much higher opinion of him. Triple H wouldn't be Jumbo, but he'd be much higher on my list.

[Woof]

"If I was to only watch Triple H's best matches, and just plain ignored all the week to week bullshit that happened over the years I'd have a much higher opinion of him."

Therein lies one of the main problems I have with the project overall and why, in the end, I don't sweat it.

There are too many wrestlers, wrestling too many styles, over too many eras, with inconsistencies in footage availability, quality, and type. No one on this board has the ability to look at every name in contention with a full-on microscope. For some guys the footage doesn't exist, which means we maybe miss their peaks. But it also means for others who do have a lot we see their valleys.

 

On top of that it's next to impossible to completely filter out our own personal history as fans. Some guys we grew up on and our opinions on them are tainted by what they meant to us and how we viewed some of their matches at the time. Sometimes the nostalgia helps (especially if we haven't revisted those matches in later years), and sometimes it hurts (as in the Triple H case, because most of us lived through his reign and remember all the crap). Other guys we're basically spot-checking select matches to see if our personal opinion falls in line with the general reputation. It's all a crapshoot in the end.

I'm looking at my list as "of all the guys I have had the chance to see, here are the ones who I feel delivered the most consistent enterainment in whatever role they were aksed to fill". I already know that I'm leaving guys off that if I had the time to really look into I would probably like and would find their way onto my list. So be it. I hold no delusion that the final list is going to "mean" anything in the long run. Putting it together is a destination point that has allowed me to really expand what I watch as a fan, and the aftermath will be more of the same. The purpose of this project to me isn't to answer an unanswerable question, but rather a way to shine light into the corners of this hobby that we don't always look at. I may shake my head when I read some of ya'lls opinions on guys I love, but in the end it just serves to validate for me that my own opinion is just that - my own - rather than me being brainwashed into accepting a universal take, since it's quite clear at this point there IS no such thing.

Vote for whoever you want. It's not gonna effect any of these guys' lives. And no matter WHAT you do, we're still gonna be debating this shit into infinity. Why else would we be here?

[Loss]

Toyota hit a high level more often than all but a few wrestlers in history. The case against her is definitely not one of mediocrity, but rather that in doing so, she created a body of work where much of it didn't withstand the test of time. I think this is where watching in context can be helpful -- if you watch a bunch of 1993 wrestling, for example, and see what Toyota was doing in comparison to wrestlers in the WWF, WCW, AAA, All Japan and New Japan during the same time frame, it's very easy to say "This isn't my thing, but I still respect it and I'm comfortable calling it great anyway". My ranking of Toyota bears that out, but I'm curious if other people who have watched multiple yearbooks find themselves looking at matches the same way.

[soup23]

I feel the yearbooks help out with Waltman in that way. 1990 US wrestling was littered with some weird stuff that at its best, it felt like a victory lap for the relics of the 1980's. That still created some amazing matches in Flair vs. Luger and RNR vs. MX but when you look at what Waltman and Lynn were doing, it really feels like a vision of what 1990's wrestling could and in many ways DID become. Watching that in context is huge instead of just seeing their three matches at ***1/2, ****, and ****1/4 stars.

[Loss]

I don't know that a Super Workhorse Hulk Hogan draws the sympathy required for a match to make sense with Hulkamania as a narrative conceit, as a performative phenomenon where Hulk Hogan becomes a sort of audience surrogate/avatar that gets miraculously revived and super-powered by the "power of his Hulkamaniacs." It might work in an NWA setting where legitimacy carries the day, but I'm skeptical that it takes off in that period of the WWF where conflict is framed as a larger than life struggle.

 

I mean, yeah, it's ridiculous. The big comeback, the wagging finger, the big boot and leg drop that miraculously carries the same impact as an intercontinental ballistic missile...all of it is completely absurd. But it's basically the concept of Hulkamania manifested in the ring itself and, without that reinforcement of the concept in the ring, I don't know that Hulk and Hulkamania engage fans in the same way, no matter how jacked up and charismatic Hogan would become. (And I feel like you can look to the later periods of Hulk as a babyface, where the sympathy was gone and his connection with the fans had disintegrated, as to how intrinsic that synergy was to his success.)

 

If you compare Hogan to someone like Duggan in Mid South, this is where I think the proof is that he could have been better and still been Hogan. Duggan as a top babyface wasn't doing much more than Hogan in terms of bumping or wrestling moves, but there was a grittiness and intensity to it all that gave it that extra umph that makes watching 1984 Duggan matches enjoyable in 2016. Hogan has matches I'd say that about too, no doubt, but I would actually argue that his popularity started to wane as his working style became more automated. I think Hogan working in the spirit he was from 1984-1987 all the way into the 90s would have changed my perception of him. It definitely would have helped him in the 1990s, where he'd only dust off the actual wrestler under the gimmick on special occasions. I love the Bash at the Beach match with Flair, and Hogan worked a great match with Tenryu in late 1991. In both of those, he put in the effort but he still managed to be true to his facade. At one point, Hogan seemed like a real guy who just happened to be larger than life. Then he started marketing helmets and always wearing red and yellow and doing just enough to get by. His whole presentation became a saccharine one, which was what made WCW fans turn on him the moment he walked through the door. While still popular long after the peak of Hulkamania, he was never 1985 popular as a babyface again.

[Matt D]

Duggan couldn't even be Duggan in the WWF though.

[Loss]

Duggan chose not to be Duggan in the WWF. That makes it seem like if he had been, he wouldn't be over.

[Matt D]

Did he choose not to be Duggan or was it forced on him either by his opponents, the agents, the differences in crowds, the travel schedule, or some other factors? Was Duggan only so good in Mid-South because of crowd expectations, opponents, and Watts riding him so hard?

[Loss]

We can only assume most wrestlers who weren't as good in the WWF chose to scale it down because of a grueling schedule, which makes guys like Savage and Steamboat who were much closer to their ex-WWF standard even more impressive.

[supremebve]

Toyota hit a high level more often than all but a few wrestlers in history. The case against her is definitely not one of mediocrity, but rather that in doing so, she created a body of work where much of it didn't withstand the test of time. I think this is where watching in context can be helpful -- if you watch a bunch of 1993 wrestling, for example, and see what Toyota was doing in comparison to wrestlers in the WWF, WCW, AAA, All Japan and New Japan during the same time frame, it's very easy to say "This isn't my thing, but I still respect it and I'm comfortable calling it great anyway". My ranking of Toyota bears that out, but I'm curious if other people who have watched multiple yearbooks find themselves looking at matches the same way.

I wouldn't disagree with this, as I'm currently watching a lot of joshi from that era. My argument against Toyota is that I find myself more enthralled with everyone else in those matches. Toyota is mostly really good, but I don't value her style nearly as much as I value someone like Mayumi Ozaki. When I first learned that there was a such thing as Joshi, Manami Toyota was the wrestler who I heard about the most. When I actually started watching, she was in a lot of the best matches, but she was often my least favorite part. Not saying she's bad, just not good enough for her to get into the best 100 wrestlers of all time in my view.

 

Duggan chose not to be Duggan in the WWF. That makes it seem like if he had been, he wouldn't be over.

You are still assuming that Duggan would have been allowed to be Mid South Duggan in the WWF. The WWF of that era was not a place where people went to have great matches. They wanted to get characters over not wrestlers over. Duggan being a big goof with a 2x4 was much more important in that promotion than being a good wrestler. It isn't a coincidence that so many great wrestlers from the territories got to the WWF and stopped having great matches. Hogan somehow still had great matches in the WWF, despite the fact that the style seemed to neglect the quality of their matches. Hogan gets into my top 100, because somehow some way he was able to have good to great matches even when no one seemed to give a crap how good his matches were. There is a value to being able to get things over even when the way you get them over is nonsensical.

[Loss]

Duggan wasn't trying to have good matches in Mid South either. At least I don't think he was. If anything, I think the WWF during that era had far more sense of calculation behind everything. He just happened to be having better matches working the house style. The WWF house style wasn't conducive to great matches, no doubt, but a select few guys still had them in spite of that, which demonstrates that (1) it was possible and (2) the ones who did are deserving of praise for delivery in a landscape where they should not have been able to do so. Hogan's black mark in my eyes is that he actively dumbed down the house style in the WWF. Hogan strikes me as being to wrestling what Chili's and Outback Steakhouse are to restaurants.

[Matt D]

Reading Dave's commentary through 1984 is fascinating because he had initial optimism about Hogan and that slowly faded through the year to the point he was ready to quit entirely.

[supremebve]

Duggan wasn't trying to have good matches in Mid South either. At least I don't think he was. If anything, I think the WWF during that era had far more sense of calculation behind everything. He just happened to be having better matches working the house style. The WWF house style wasn't conducive to great matches, no doubt, but a select few guys still had them in spite of that, which demonstrates that (1) it was possible and (2) the ones who did are deserving of praise for delivery in a landscape where they should not have been able to do so. Hogan's black mark in my eyes is that he actively dumbed down the house style in the WWF. Hogan strikes me as being to wrestling what Chili's and Outback Steakhouse are to restaurants.

That is a valid opinion. Where to put Hogan is probably the hardest decision I'll have to make on my final list. He's someone I think belongs, but there is so much to think about both positively and negatively.

[funkdoc]

 

it's hard to respect traditional wisdom when you grew up on the likes of Moneyball and A People's History of the United States

 

it's doubly hard to respect traditional wisdom when evaluating its sources in this particular business, and seeing how many of them are outright con men or at least non-analytical types (not a fan of "idiot savant")

 

the tl;dr version of my solution to this is "judge each case on its own merits, but give the benefit of the doubt to those less privileged within the subculture". would like to hear more from others who feel somewhat similarly!

 

I don't know if I feel similarly quite yet. Can you define "less privileged", naming specific wrestlers who you think are?

 

 

trying to keep it short again:

 

i would argue the most valuable type of privilege in general is one's reputation within the business, but reputation among the newsletters/smart fans is also important and especially so for a project like this. Lex Luger is a guy who was hurt pretty badly in both categories, although he doesn't have a particularly strong in-ring case for top 100 anyway so that's less of a loss. Mil Mascaras is probably a better example along those lines, but he also has the "legend" thing going for him which makes it trickier.

 

the Barbarians and Tentas of the world are the kind of guys who suffer in category 2 but tend to be fine in 1. Dory is probably the strongest example of that, to give a different stylistic case. guys who do well in category 2 but not 1 are rarer, since a lot of popular smart-fan opinion is received wisdom from "insiders"...Taue is the best one i can come up with right now. Flair is, of course, the perfect 10 in both.

 

i will again go back to the fact that the entire smart-fan canon is largely the product of one guy, as that's a major reason i'm so skeptical of it. there's always room for subjectivity in match analysis, and that's where your decisions re: benefit of the doubt inevitably factor in.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

Toyota hit a high level more often than all but a few wrestlers in history. The case against her is definitely not one of mediocrity, but rather that in doing so, she created a body of work where much of it didn't withstand the test of time. I think this is where watching in context can be helpful -- if you watch a bunch of 1993 wrestling, for example, and see what Toyota was doing in comparison to wrestlers in the WWF, WCW, AAA, All Japan and New Japan during the same time frame, it's very easy to say "This isn't my thing, but I still respect it and I'm comfortable calling it great anyway". My ranking of Toyota bears that out, but I'm curious if other people who have watched multiple yearbooks find themselves looking at matches the same way.

I wouldn't disagree with this, as I'm currently watching a lot of joshi from that era. My argument against Toyota is that I find myself more enthralled with everyone else in those matches. Toyota is mostly really good, but I don't value her style nearly as much as I value someone like Mayumi Ozaki. When I first learned that there was a such thing as Joshi, Manami Toyota was the wrestler who I heard about the most. When I actually started watching, she was in a lot of the best matches, but she was often my least favorite part. Not saying she's bad, just not good enough for her to get into the best 100 wrestlers of all time in my view.

 

But Mayumi Ozaki worked essentially the same style as Toyota; she just happened to be one of the greatest actors in wrestling history and an all-time great seller. You might get a bit more character work with Ozaki, and she was more willing to bleed than Toyota, but the same execution issues are there, the same structural flaws, the same pacing problems; and if you want to talk about wrestler's valleys, Ozaki's work takes a plunge after 2000-01. I mean, really, Ozaki is one of the worst examples of a valley there is. She's like Ohtani except that no-one can really defend the past 15 years or so and come up with evidence of where she's still good. Despite all that, I still love Mayumi Ozaki and think she's one of the hundred greatest wrestlers of all-time.

 

Toyota's had a rep since the heyday of the dirt sheets and the early days of the internet and she's had a counter rep for almost as long. The backlash against Manami Toyota started a long time ago. Nothing is ever as good or as bad as people say, and I know I was able to find a balance with Toyota in my own viewing, but her rep is a double-edged sword. People are just as likely to not vote for her because of her negative rep as they are to vote for her because she was a 90s favourite. I think that's particularly true of people who are influenced by what they read on the boards and by people they share the same tastes with. Or people who don't have the time or inclination to explore a worker who turns them off. I mean with a guy like Inoki it's easy to think "yeah, I don't really like him and I'm sure what people are saying about him is true" and then not watch stuff. I've been kind of surprised by the two most recent Inoki matches I watched ('71 against Brisco and '69 against Dory), and I'm starting to wonder if people aren't basing too much of their opinion on his work from the 80s when he was entering into his third decade in the business and already had a full two decades worth of work behind him. Maybe folks are looking at the wrong stuff. I'm not sure yet, but it's worth exploring so that's what I'm doing.

[supremebve]

 

 

Toyota hit a high level more often than all but a few wrestlers in history. The case against her is definitely not one of mediocrity, but rather that in doing so, she created a body of work where much of it didn't withstand the test of time. I think this is where watching in context can be helpful -- if you watch a bunch of 1993 wrestling, for example, and see what Toyota was doing in comparison to wrestlers in the WWF, WCW, AAA, All Japan and New Japan during the same time frame, it's very easy to say "This isn't my thing, but I still respect it and I'm comfortable calling it great anyway". My ranking of Toyota bears that out, but I'm curious if other people who have watched multiple yearbooks find themselves looking at matches the same way.

I wouldn't disagree with this, as I'm currently watching a lot of joshi from that era. My argument against Toyota is that I find myself more enthralled with everyone else in those matches. Toyota is mostly really good, but I don't value her style nearly as much as I value someone like Mayumi Ozaki. When I first learned that there was a such thing as Joshi, Manami Toyota was the wrestler who I heard about the most. When I actually started watching, she was in a lot of the best matches, but she was often my least favorite part. Not saying she's bad, just not good enough for her to get into the best 100 wrestlers of all time in my view.

 

But Mayumi Ozaki worked essentially the same style as Toyota; she just happened to be one of the greatest actors in wrestling history and an all-time great seller. You might get a bit more character work with Ozaki, and she was more willing to bleed than Toyota, but the same execution issues are there, the same structural flaws, the same pacing problems; and if you want to talk about wrestler's valleys, Ozaki's work takes a plunge after 2000-01. I mean, really, Ozaki is one of the worst examples of a valley there is. She's like Ohtani except that no-one can really defend the past 15 years or so and come up with evidence of where she's still good. Despite all that, I still love Mayumi Ozaki and think she's one of the hundred greatest wrestlers of all-time.

 

Toyota's had a rep since the heyday of the dirt sheets and the early days of the internet and she's had a counter rep for almost as long. The backlash against Manami Toyota started a long time ago. Nothing is ever as good or as bad as people say, and I know I was able to find a balance with Toyota in my own viewing, but her rep is a double-edged sword. People are just as likely to not vote for her because of her negative rep as they are to vote for her because she was a 90s favourite. I think that's particularly true of people who are influenced by what they read on the boards and by people they share the same tastes with. Or people who don't have the time or inclination to explore a worker who turns them off. I mean with a guy like Inoki it's easy to think "yeah, I don't really like him and I'm sure what people are saying about him is true" and then not watch stuff. I've been kind of surprised by the two most recent Inoki matches I watched ('71 against Brisco and '69 against Dory), and I'm starting to wonder if people aren't basing too much of their opinion on his work from the 80s when he was entering into his third decade in the business and already had a full two decades worth of work behind him. Maybe folks are looking at the wrong stuff. I'm not sure yet, but it's worth exploring so that's what I'm doing.

 

This kind of goes back to the there is no way to possibly watch enough wrestling to judge all these wrestlers for their entire careers. All of the Ozaki and Toyota matches I've watched are from the 90's. I wanted to learn more about the style so I sought out the most notable matches. I wish I could have watched their entire careers play out, but that just plain isn't possible for me. You hit the nail on the head for why I like Ozaki over Toyota though. She puts so much personality into everything she does that I can forgive flaws in her work that I can't with Toyota. It feels like Ozaki puts more thought into her work to me. I think the biggest thing that I've decided about this project is that I'm going to compile my 100 and then judge their peaks against each other. I think that is the most fair way to do it. I'm much more interested in how great a wrestler was at their peak than whether or not they were great for a long time.

[ohtani's jacket]

I also think peak vs. peak is the way to go, but on a case by case basis. Some workers have peak in their favour and others benefit from longevity. It's a matter of balancing that out.

 

One thing I'll say for Toyota is that she was an extremely driven young woman and a ferociously hard worker. You pretty much had to be to make it in All Japan Women. I think she put thought into her work but from an athletic viewpoint. Not everyone can be a great character because it takes a certain amount of acting skill and the ability to performer. Toyota's character work was okay at times and she became more comfortable with it as she grew older, but her focus always seemed to be on outshining everyone athletically and I tend to judge her on that even if it's not my favourite thing in wrestling.

[Jimmy Redman]

I think there's a great point made by OJ that there are more ways to put thought into your matches than just by character work.

 

It's one thing to think a fast-paced or spotty style is bad or not for you or not as good as other styles, but so many people seem to categorize it as mindless or shallow, almost like the faster you work the dumber you work, or if you're not thinking about character work you're not thinking, which I find fault with as a blanket thing. There are very intelligent spotfests out there.

 

I agree with OJ about Toyota. She clearly put more thought into her stuff than most, thinking about how to stretch the physical limits of a wrestling match like few people were willing or able to before or after her. You don't happen across that kind of ambitious reach by accident. She was thinking just as much as Ozaki, it just manifests itself in different ways in a match.

 

It's the same point I was making about Kofi Kingston, of all people. He clearly puts a lot of thought into his matches, which you can see from his match-to-match stories, the kind of counters he comes up with, and the creativity of his finishes. He's thinking a lot, just about the physical side, and about his spots.

[Matt D]

I don't think it needs to be an either/or thing, though, and the people who will do best on most people's lists are likely wrestlers that can manage both things well, or that don't sacrifice one for the other, or that don't rely on one as a crutch.

 

(I don't think my list is necessarily most people's lists, by the way)