Wrestlers who had a lot of great matches but aren't great

[JerryvonKramer]

I enjoyed Danish Dynamite's post.

 

 

 

I actually think if Bret had the exact same career anywhere other than the WWF most people would find the idea of him as a top ten guy to be pretty laughable. I honestly believe that a part of the reason he rates so well for people is because Bret stood out as something different in the WWE environment and because WWE storyline, build, and presentation was generally speaking better put together than what has been seen in other "national" U.S. promotions over the last thirty years.

 

I think is almost unquestionably true. I don't see what's wrong with folks acknowledging how much the environment and presentation may play into their rankings. Booking is a factor in opportunity and presentation that impacts the material we all had to work with. Bret Hart Top 10 All Time is still lunacy in my eyes, but it would make all the sense in the world and be completely unobjectionable by tipping the hat to what's driving it.

 

 

I'd also co-sign both of those posts.

[JerryvonKramer]

Part of Bret's impressiveness, and why he ranked in my top 20, is exactly that -- that he had the run he had in the WWF. I think you could argue that having a 4-star match in the WWF was harder than having a 5-star match in All Japan. Because he spent most of his career in the WWF, he had no chance of producing a body of work like the All Japan guys or Ric Flair. The divide is that I don't see that as a factor in voting at all. You did what you did, and that's what you did.

 

How many times have I used the phrase "well it was him, it wasn't someone else". That applies to anyone. The What If stuff means nothing to GWE.

 

What If is Barry Windham NWA Champ 1987. What if is Kawada 6-year triple crown reign. What if is Steven Keirn WWF champion. What if is Curt "Red Rooster" Hennig. There's literally zero point in it.

[Grimmas]

 

Part of Bret's impressiveness, and why he ranked in my top 20, is exactly that -- that he had the run he had in the WWF. I think you could argue that having a 4-star match in the WWF was harder than having a 5-star match in All Japan. Because he spent most of his career in the WWF, he had no chance of producing a body of work like the All Japan guys or Ric Flair. The divide is that I don't see that as a factor in voting at all. You did what you did, and that's what you did.

 

How many times have I used the phrase "well it was him, it wasn't someone else". That applies to anyone. The What If stuff means nothing to GWE.

 

What If is Barry Windham NWA Champ 1987. What if is Kawada 6-year triple crown reign. What if is Steven Keirn WWF champion. What if is Curt "Red Rooster" Hennig. There's literally zero point in it.

 

How much was Windham hurt by not being NWA Champion in 87? How much was Kawada hurt by not having a 6 year reign? How much was Keirn hurt by not being WWF champion? How much was Hennig helped by not being Rooster? How much was Bret hurt by being in 90's WWF?

 

Those are all handicaps or helpcaps (in Curt's case). Now of those things change the input, just the output. I valued the input more than you and a lot of others it seems. Why keep harping on this, we all used during metrics to gain our lists.

 

Looking at the final results, once everything is revealed, the amount of folks I have in the top 100 will be at the same level as you.

 

Actually, fuck this Parv. When all is done I am going to make a thread breaking down our lists comparing them to the final 100 and see who made a better list.

[JerryvonKramer]

How much was Windham hurt by not being NWA Champion in 87?

He could have been a #1 guy but he's a top #20 sorta guy instead. It definitely has made a difference.

 

How much was Kawada hurt by not having a 6 year reign?

He might have had more #1 votes because of it. Some people see that inability to work as ace or champ as something important.

 

How much was Keirn hurt by not being WWF champion?

I think most of the Backlund votes would be Keirn's instead.

 

How much was Hennig helped by not being Rooster?

Look at where Terry Taylor ranked.

 

How much was Bret hurt by being in 90's WWF?

He's not hurt by it, he's helped by it. He massively over-indexes because of working in one of the most visible promotions and being put over as their best guy for so long.

 

Those are all handicaps or helpcaps (in Curt's case). Now of those things change the input, just the output.

The inputs stay the same, but the output matters more to a GWE case. This is plainer than any other case with Barry Windham. He could have been #1, he had all the skills to be #1, he didn't have the career that means he could be a viable #1 guy. It's as simple as that.

 

I valued the input more than you and a lot of others it seems. Why keep harping on this, we all used during metrics to gain our lists.

I am harping on it because "input" seems to me to be a convenient way of looking past the careers that guys actually had. Why isn't Barry Windham your #1?

 

Looking at the final results, once everything is revealed, the amount of folks I have in the top 100 will be at the same level as you.

 

Actually, fuck this Parv. When all is done I am going to make a thread breaking down our lists comparing them to the final 100 and see who made a better list.

I've said before, that our lists are really pretty similar. My list is also similar to Childs's list and also to Pete's sans a couple of Lucha and shoot-style guys. And in all those cases -- as well as Chad's and Loss's lists -- I've had people on my list in the EXACT same position as any of you guys did.

 

We are arguing about a philosophy more than anything else. Well, that, and why Bret Hart isn't really a top 10 guy.

[Cap]

The utility of what if is certainly limited, but it is completely pointless. We are dealing with wrestlers from a 50-60+ year span from across the world. The contexts and careers are so different that there have to be some imaginative tools for creating comparisons. I agree its not something to harp on or get too caught up in. It certainly could be used as a shortcut justification to get around arguments based on output, but I also have a hard to believing that it is a fruitless mental exercise for people taking part in a project like this.

[JerryvonKramer]

The utility of what if is certainly limited, but it is completely pointless. We are dealing with wrestlers from a 50-60+ year span from across the world. The contexts and careers are so different that there have to be some imaginative tools for creating comparisons. I agree its not something to harp on or get too caught up in. It certainly could be used as a shortcut justification to get around arguments based on output, but I also have a hard to believing that it is a fruitless mental exercise for people taking part in a project like this.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential.

 

What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I?

[Dylan Waco]

 

My post was a direct response to Danish Dynamite's contention that Bret is viewed differently because of where he worked. I agree but think he is viewed better for it.

 

Bret's career no doubt would have been very different had he worked different places. But guy with middling tag team, who had a five year peak light on volume but high on memorable "big" matches, and then had good matches here and there for a couple of years in a place where he was irrelevant...I mean it's really not that impressive a resume from my perspective. Even if I was higher on Bret's peak years than I am (and I wouldn't say I'm low on them) and higher on the Hart Foundation than I am (and I am pretty low on them), I struggle to see how Bret approaches top ten level. I've just not heard a compelling argument for him. I'd pretty much have to view his peak as one of the best in wrestling history to get him into my top twenty given how I feel about his pre and post primes.

I guess I'd like to see this mythical long list of guys with long peaks and volumes upon volumes of great output. I'm sure I could be just as casually dismissive on their careers as well.

 

 

I don't think I'm being casually dismissive at all. Not in the least. I'm assessing Bret's career precisely as I see it and not pretending I see something that I don't see.

 

If people think Bret's peak is otherworldly, or that the Hart Foundation were a very good and/or great team, or used some entirely different method of thinking about their list than I did I'm sure they could arrive at different conclusion. But there is no criteria or rough criteria I've seen put forward where I really understand the idea of Bret as a top ten guy. I suppose Matt or someone could put forward the idea of Bret as a top tier "logic" candidate and I could maybe see that, so there is that.

 

I'm not trying to demean anyone's process or criteria or ballot. But I also don't have much use for the anti-discussion tendency of people who can't handle the idea of any challenge, criticism, or even desire to get to the root of why they rated someone somewhere. To me that's half the fun of the project, and I expect people to do the same with my picks if they don't get them.

 

As for your more specific question, I think there are quite a lot of people with more volume than Bret, and the number of people with five year peaks or longer is pretty large I would argue. In fact I would say absent Nick Bockwinkel, I'm not certain I can think of a guy who has been tossed around as a top tier contender by a bunch of people with a peak that is shorter in length than Bret's. There are people like Ohtani , Dandy and Hokuto who's peak was arguably a little shorter, but I would argue that their peaks were higher too for whatever that is worth, and I don't have either of them in my top tier either. I may be forgetting someone of course.

 

In any event I did rate Bret, and I've thought from the very beginning of this process that he would do quite well. I just don't see him as an elite worker.

[Dylan Waco]

 

The utility of what if is certainly limited, but it is completely pointless. We are dealing with wrestlers from a 50-60+ year span from across the world. The contexts and careers are so different that there have to be some imaginative tools for creating comparisons. I agree its not something to harp on or get too caught up in. It certainly could be used as a shortcut justification to get around arguments based on output, but I also have a hard to believing that it is a fruitless mental exercise for people taking part in a project like this.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential.

 

What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I?

 

 

I generally try to get rid of the "what ifs" but I do think there is a fundamental aspect of analysis that inevitably leads people down that road at times even when they don't realize they are doing it. At the risk of provoking eye rolling I'm going to invoke a Flair example again because it's useful and one of the first ones that comes to mind.

 

For years one of the defenses of Flair's stock defensive spots/Flair Formula and giving a ton to his opponents was "well he was a traveling NWA champion in an era where people didn't know what was going on from town to town, so you can't knock him for working to that reality." Now on the one hand that is an acknowledgement of a truth that is important. But on the other hand the obvious counter argument is "so what, this isn't a "what if" exercise, Flair did wrestle that way and it was stale, boring, et., et., et." n

 

Now regardless of where you fall on the Flair debate, or even if you disagree wholesale with the idea of that critique of Flair I think you can see my point - sometimes rationalizations that seem/are logical are effectively the same as "what ifs."

[Matt D]

I am looking forward to talking about Bret (who is not in my top 10, by the way, and was never someone who had a shot at that, but that does rank high).

[Grimmas]

One more time... I don't use what ifs, it's just a term used to explain things to you.

 

I don't go.. man what if Christian was in the NWA in the 80's.. obviously I should vote him in on my list. It's more, Christian never got pushed as a top guy, but damn he was awesome in the chances he got. If you look at his skills and ability he had would shown through in TNA and WWECW. He deserves on my list, even if he didn't get the chances that others did.

[pol]

 

 

Read the post by Stacey summarizing my thoughts. Listen to the Super Show where I lay out my case. If you don't agree with me fine, but I think Bret Hart is a better pro-wrestler than Kenta Kobashi.

It seems nonsensical for people to claim that Grimmas' position is indefensible. I'm not qualified to judge on the merits until I watch a whole bunch of Japan stuff, and re-watch all the Bret Hart matches I grew up seeing on TV, but it seems really dubious for various people to conclude there is no legitimate way to reach Grimmas' conclusions. This ranking process is inherently subjective and people are allowed to come up with different criteria in arriving at their results ...

 

The debate is at an impasse and over now as far as I'm concerned. But I don't like one side being cast as a set of heels here, not the case.

 

To me Steven frequently comes off like Carey here, fittingly another Canadian:

 

 

The guy at wheel is reeling off all these amazing Kobashi matches and all these things Kobashi does better.

 

And he's just saying "no Bret is better, no Bret is better" over and over again. The whole debate, in my view, came off like that. And it's why I've never been comfortable removing output -- that is hard, tangible evidence -- from the equation. There has to be evidence to back up claims. The realm of pure subjectivity in any debate descends to the level of that gif. I mean cool, if that's what you want, great, but it doesn't lend itself to actually getting to heart of anything.

 

 

How is Steven not providing evidence though? It seems to me that he's just looking at performances, rather than matches.

[Loss]

Something that tells me we're not terribly far apart: I'm almost certain that Lex Luger has more ****+ matches than Steve Austin. Far more, even. Yet I can't imagine ranking Luger above Austin, and I'd be really shocked if anyone did.

[Cap]

 

The utility of what if is certainly limited, but it is completely pointless. We are dealing with wrestlers from a 50-60+ year span from across the world. The contexts and careers are so different that there have to be some imaginative tools for creating comparisons. I agree its not something to harp on or get too caught up in. It certainly could be used as a shortcut justification to get around arguments based on output, but I also have a hard to believing that it is a fruitless mental exercise for people taking part in a project like this.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential.

 

What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I?

 

Yeah, that is what I said. As you can see from my post I clearly said it should be used to the extreme and provides a useful and reasonable way to get around other types of arguments. That is a spot on example of what I am talking about.

 

No... that is not at all what I mean. I simply think it can provide a reasonable way providing a relatively minor check against an emphasis on matches or the implicit bias that something like visibility and opportunity might provide. I even think it is almost natural to make those comparisons (though not as detailed as the examples you provide) when trying to make sense of such a gigantic pool of wrestlers who exist in practically different worlds. It is one among hundreds of ways of thinking about this, not THE way to discern who is better.

[goodhelmet]

But there is no criteria or rough criteria I've seen put forward where I really understand the idea of Bret as a top ten guy.

 

 

 

IF WWF is your favorite territory or WWE style wrestling is your favorite type of wrestling, I could easily see somebody putting Bret or HBK or Austin or Cena in their Top Ten. I have maintained all along that the type of wrestling/territory you enjoy would determine rankings. I ranked 4 luchadors in my Top 20. Many more followed. How many luchadors are in Parv's total list? He dismissed shoot style outright. I don't think I had any Japanese women on my list. People have attempted to dismiss the emotional reaction that wrestling provokes and try to make this an exercise in mathematical equations.

[Grimmas]

Something that tells me we're not terribly far apart: I'm almost certain that Lex Luger has more ****+ matches than Steve Austin. Far more, even. Yet I can't imagine ranking Luger above Austin, and I'd be really shocked if anyone did.

Exactly.

 

Really have no problem with anyways lists. Just the way Parv has talked about it in this thread.

[Danish Dynamite]

 

But there is no criteria or rough criteria I've seen put forward where I really understand the idea of Bret as a top ten guy.

 

 

IF WWF is your favorite territory or WWE style wrestling is your favorite type of wrestling, I could easily see somebody putting Bret or HBK or Austin or Cena in their Top Ten. I have maintained all along that the type of wrestling/territory you enjoy would determine rankings. I ranked 4 luchadors in my Top 20. Many more followed. How many luchadors are in Parv's total list? He dismissed shoot style outright. I don't think I had any Japanese women on my list. People have attempted to dismiss the emotional reaction that wrestling provokes and try to make this an exercise in mathematical equations.

Completely agree!

And it's not a jab at BIGLAV from me, 'cause I love that shit (and it's also wonderfully Parv-personal even though he shocked himself with some rankings).

 

I love WWF! Especially the hated 85-92 years, but also 82-84 and some of 93-96. I dislike few promotions more than WWE.

I also absolutely love Mid-Atlantic, NWA/WCW 83-93, all things Mid-South, 80's Memphis, almost 30 years of All Japan, much of AWA and more. And my very personal bias and tastes clearly show.

How the hell you guys made me watch, like, partially love and eventually rank Lucha to the extend I have over the past two years of this project, I'll never know. But good job...

 

And maybe you guys are right, that Bret would lose some (many maybe) of his wwf fans if he's had the same career but somewhere else. I still believe he would win a similar amount of new fans (especially on a board like this) if he'd just not been a 90% wwf guy. Not talking about NWA, but if he'd done his 85-89 work on the AWA set he'd shoot up as an undiscovered great and would jump up a lot of lists.

 

But hey, it's completely theoretical and I readily acknowledge the opposing stand :-)

 

Thanks for the reactions to my comment. I really enjoy reading your thoughts on all this. I know only a few wrestling fans here in Denmark, and even the guys who have seen 2000+ matches from a lot of territories and eras still claim Undertaker and Shawn best match ever and both in the all time top 5 workers... So... What a relief this place is, to rank and talk wrestling with guys generallly biased in the same direction as me ;-)

[JerryvonKramer]

That's one of the little things I love about BIGLAV, people look at numbers and assume I'm making it a maths problem.

 

But if you drill into it, you'll see my personal takes all over it. Especially the massive low-balling of HBK and Rey.

[ohtani's jacket]

I thought you claimed you weren't lowballing anyone. BIGLAV was a complicated beast.

[JerryvonKramer]

Not in my eyes I wasn't, but my eyes are still my eyes.

 

The system was there to ensure that guys like HBK and Rey and so on weren't just dismissed entirely because of my own negative hang ups "over-indexing". I still gave them lower ratings in categories where fans of theirs would have given bigger numbers. Especially in the G rating, which is where I can register the fact that I think HBK vs. Taker is a bloated wank-off self-conscious epic and Rey vs. Eddie is a **1/2 match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Ha ha, I almost spat my beer out on that Rey/Eddie rating.

[Danish Dynamite]

Not in my eyes I wasn't, but my eyes are still my eyes.

 

The system was there to ensure that guys like HBK and Rey and so on weren't just dismissed entirely because of my own negative hang ups "over-indexing". I still gave them lower ratings in categories where fans of theirs would have given bigger numbers. Especially in the G rating, which is where I can register the fact that I think HBK vs. Taker is a bloated wank-off self-conscious epic and Rey vs. Eddie is a **1/2 match.

Excactly. Inspired by your biglav (and all the FIFA and PM games 1-20 rankings) I used a very simple version just as a guideline.

And the point isn't to make it any less subjective to me. 'Cause people would stil grade every number according to their own taste.

To me it was more to assure my own rankings wouldn't be based primarily on my mood on the day of ranking, so my list wouldn't be completely different two days later. And so I didn't just completely dismiss someone that I could actually appreciate when giving them a chance, just because I actively hate one aspect of their career. It also helped me keep a few very big vanity picks in check and off the list :-)

[Danish Dynamite]

Ha ha, I almost spat my beer out on that Rey/Eddie rating.

What? You think his rating is too high? I think it's fair ;-)

[ohtani's jacket]

The Rey/Eddie match he's talking about is one of the best experiences I ever had watching pro-wrestling. The only thing that compares to me is Bret/Diesel from Survivor Series '95. So yes, I think it's amusingly low.

[Tim Cooke]

Are we talking the Havoc 97 match or the June 2005 Smackdown match?

[Cap]

The havoc match? oh boy