Booker Ratings

[JerryvonKramer]

Booker ratings:

 

In light of recent convserations, thought I'd have a bit of fun with this. I have taken some well-known promoters and rated them out of ten in six areas. Let me run through the six criteria:

 

Mastery over crowd: How much did they dictate to the crowd vs. how much did they let the crowd dictate to them where the former is 10 and the latter is 0.

Innovation: How many new ideas did they bring to the mix?

Angles: What was their record like at booking legendary angles and feuds?

Quality of Cards: What was the quality of wrestling on their cards generally like?

Finances: How good were they are watching the bottom line and making money?

Talent spotting / New stars: How good were they are spotting new talent and making new stars?

 

Take a look at these and feel free to add your own!

 

Vince Sr.

 

Mastery over crowd: 10

Innovation: 0

Angles: 8

Quality of Cards: 2

Finances: 8

Talent spotting / New stars: 2

 

Bill Watts

 

Mastery over crowd: 8

Innovation: 7

Angles: 10

Quality of Cards: 7

Finances: 6

Talent spotting / New stars: 10

 

Giant Baba:

 

Mastery over crowd: 10

Innovation: 2

Angles: 6

Quality of Cards: 10

Finances: 7

Talent spotting / New stars: 9

 

Vince Jr. / Pat Patterson (80s)

 

Mastery over crowd: 10

Innovation: 10

Angles: 10

Quality of Cards: 4

Finances: 10

Talent spotting / New stars: 6

 

Vince Jr. (90s)

 

Mastery over crowd: 7

Innovation: 10

Angles: 10

Quality of Cards: 6

Finances: 7

Talent spotting / New stars: 10

 

Vince Jr. (00s-present)

 

Mastery over crowd: 0

Innovation: 3

Angles: 4

Quality of Cards: 9

Finances: 10

Talent spotting / New stars: 7

 

Verne Gagne

 

Mastery over crowd: 5

Innovation: 0

Angles: 6

Quality of Cards: 4

Finances: 6

Talent spotting / New stars: 1

 

Jim Crockett Jr / Dusty Rhodes

 

Mastery over crowd: 4

Innovation: 9

Angles: 8

Quality of Cards: 9

Finances: 0

Talent spotting / New stars: 6

 

Eric Biscoff

 

Mastery over crowd: 3

Innovation: 7

Angles: 4

Quality of Cards: 8

Finances: 2

Talent spotting / New stars: 0

 

Paul Heyman

 

 

Mastery over crowd: 6

Innovation: 9

Angles: 8

Quality of Cards: 3

Finances: 3

Talent spotting / New stars: 8

 

----

 

Let's leave it there. Add your own!

[Grimmas]

Heyman not having a mastery over crowd of 10 feels very wrong.

[soup23]

Interested in the ranking of Vince from the 90's in mastery over crowd. Besides the Austin rise (which they gave him an avenue at first to do due to the curtain call) and the Rocky heel turn to the Nation, I felt they generally got the reaction they set out to achieve.

[JerryvonKramer]

Interested in the ranking of Vince from the 90's in mastery over crowd. Besides the Austin rise (which they gave him an avenue at first to do due to the curtain call) and the Rocky heel turn to the Nation, I felt they generally got the reaction they set out to achieve.

Hogan-Sid 92

Luger 93

Rocky Maivia

Shawn-Sid 96

 

Heyman not having a mastery over crowd of 10 feels very wrong.

If a dog begs for a bone and I give him a bone and then he loves me for it, and then tomorrow the same thing happens, is it mastery?

[El-P]

Heyman tricked people into thinking the Public Enemy were a big deal and that Taz was the baddest motherfucker alive. If that's not mastery over crowd and producing, I don't know what is.

[JerryvonKramer]

Heyman tricked people into thinking the Public Enemy were a big deal and that Taz was the baddest motherfucker alive. If that's not mastery over crowd and producing, I don't know what is.

It's a mixture of things, but there is no way Heyman is a 10 in that category.

 

A 10 is Vince Sr faced with the hottest wrestler on the planet in 1978, who'd sold out MSG a ton of times, in Billy Graham and refusing to turn him face and giving the belt to Backlund REGARDLESS. AND still getting Backlund over, selling out MSG, etc.

 

It's Baba faced with Kenta Kobashi in 1992-3 and saying to both him and the crowd, "no kid, you have to wait your turn. And I'm going to make you wait".

 

And the fans essentially accepting that their will was overturned.

[soup23]

The Heyman rankings are fascinating:

 

Mastery over crowd: 6

 

I would bump this up. Heyman knew which legends could come in and create the desired reaction he was garnering in his universe. Really besides the over-reliance of Justin Credible in the latter years, I can't think of an ECW competitior that Heyman really missed on in getting the desired reaction. In his universe, he was able to sell his fans that RVD, Sabu, Sandman, Raven, Dreamer, Taz were the perennial underdogs that could just as easily be going against Mr. McMahon and tackling the NWO.

Innovation: 9
This feels a bit high but is close to where I would rank it. Going through the 90's yearbooks, there was a lot of promotions that were running garbage style brawls around the time period Heyman gained control of ECW. Sabu was already a known entity working this type of style. I feel like much like ROH just being the central hub for this trend in wrestling, ECW provided the same harbor.

 

Angles: 8

This feels spot on. Heyman is strong in this area and the ECW angles that are memorable are still as relevant when thinking about angles from the time period 20 years after the fact.

 

Quality of Cards: 3

As much as I really hate ECW as a style, this probably could be bumped up slightly. The major cards that ECW offered were mostly met with praise in the current period. The fan cams we have seen show a really good mix of undercard wrestling with garbage brawls up top.

 

Finances: 3

Too high. Paul finances is an embarrassing situation from his reliance on Vince funding to asking talent to float him money. I sincerely feel that there is no reason ECW couldn't evolve in an indy promotion with garbage on top and been successful in the 2000's if there was a more sound financial backing within the braintrust.

 

Talent spotting / New stars: 8

Heyman gave opportunity to those that haven't had much before. Yet, I do think in the 2000-2001 area, he really missed the boat on bringing in a lot of talent that was just dying to break out. Hard to imagine some of the ECW stuff in 2000 when there was a reserve of guys that were really big deals just 1-2 years later.

[soup23]

 

Interested in the ranking of Vince from the 90's in mastery over crowd. Besides the Austin rise (which they gave him an avenue at first to do due to the curtain call) and the Rocky heel turn to the Nation, I felt they generally got the reaction they set out to achieve.

Hogan-Sid 92

Luger 93

Rocky Maivia

Shawn-Sid 96

 

Heyman not having a mastery over crowd of 10 feels very wrong.

If a dog begs for a bone and I give him a bone and then he loves me for it, and then tomorrow the same thing happens, is it mastery?

 

 

Hogan/Sid 92 is an interesting thing. I am not sure if Hogan was refusing to refine his role at all or if Vince should have strong armed more. Still, it was a pretty isolated moment with huge backlash that happened at the Rumble 92. This is why I negate the Sid vs. Shawn match as well. Look, SID has something that elicits cheers at certain points. People realize how foolish they are so they quickly move away from it but it is there.

 

Luger in 93 is a good example and Diesel I guess in 95 although he was pretty stubborn with that one giving him a year long reign. I actually think Vince could be broken into two rankings from the 90's as I see his back half as a 9 or so and the front half in the 7 range.

[Grimmas]

 

Heyman tricked people into thinking the Public Enemy were a big deal and that Taz was the baddest motherfucker alive. If that's not mastery over crowd and producing, I don't know what is.

It's a mixture of things, but there is no way Heyman is a 10 in that category.

 

A 10 is Vince Sr faced with the hottest wrestler on the planet in 1978, who'd sold out MSG a ton of times, in Billy Graham and refusing to turn him face and giving the belt to Backlund REGARDLESS. AND still getting Backlund over, selling out MSG, etc.

 

It's Baba faced with Kenta Kobashi in 1992-3 and saying to both him and the crowd, "no kid, you have to wait your turn. And I'm going to make you wait".

 

And the fans essentially accepting that their will was overturned.

 

Your bias is showing...

 

Taz as the baddest mother fucker on the planet. RVD as the world's greatest wrestler. Dreamer as a big time hero. Public Enemy as a great tag team.

 

Heyman owned that crowd.

[goc]

Verne at 1 for new stars seems really silly when you consider that Hulk Hogan became a top star babyface in the AWA first, not anywhere else. If Verne doesn't give Hulk a big push in AWA I don't know if he gets on Vince's radar to build the WWF around. "But he didn't give him the belt!!!!" doesn't really change the fact that Hogan was AWA's top babyface from not very long after he got there until the time he left.

 

That's also not counting that he made Rick Martel his World Champ, pushed Curt Hennig hard, that AWA was the first place the Roadies went after Georgia, the Blackwell face turn, etc.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

 

Interested in the ranking of Vince from the 90's in mastery over crowd. Besides the Austin rise (which they gave him an avenue at first to do due to the curtain call) and the Rocky heel turn to the Nation, I felt they generally got the reaction they set out to achieve.

Hogan-Sid 92

Luger 93

Rocky Maivia

Shawn-Sid 96

 

Heyman not having a mastery over crowd of 10 feels very wrong.

If a dog begs for a bone and I give him a bone and then he loves me for it, and then tomorrow the same thing happens, is it mastery?

 

Hogan/Sid 92 is an interesting thing. I am not sure if Hogan was refusing to refine his role at all or if Vince should have strong armed more. Still, it was a pretty isolated moment with huge backlash that happened at the Rumble 92. This is why I negate the Sid vs. Shawn match as well. Look, SID has something that elicits cheers at certain points. People realize how foolish they are so they quickly move away from it but it is there.

 

Luger in 93 is a good example and Diesel I guess in 95 although he was pretty stubborn with that one giving him a year long reign. I actually think Vince could be broken into two rankings from the 90's as I see his back half as a 9 or so and the front half in the 7 range.

 

I mean there's more to it, I guess. There were a lot of acts in the 94-6 period who had really lukewarm heat. It was a shitty time, but was any single member of the Million Dollar Corporation over? Save perhaps Ted himself (and even that was diminishing returns).

 

I feel like in 1987 Koko B. Ware would have got bigger pops than Sparky Plugg did in 95.

 

In the later period, more people were over up and down the card. But still: X-Pac heat was a thing.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

 

Heyman tricked people into thinking the Public Enemy were a big deal and that Taz was the baddest motherfucker alive. If that's not mastery over crowd and producing, I don't know what is.

It's a mixture of things, but there is no way Heyman is a 10 in that category.

 

A 10 is Vince Sr faced with the hottest wrestler on the planet in 1978, who'd sold out MSG a ton of times, in Billy Graham and refusing to turn him face and giving the belt to Backlund REGARDLESS. AND still getting Backlund over, selling out MSG, etc.

 

It's Baba faced with Kenta Kobashi in 1992-3 and saying to both him and the crowd, "no kid, you have to wait your turn. And I'm going to make you wait".

 

And the fans essentially accepting that their will was overturned.

 

Your bias is showing...

 

Taz as the baddest mother fucker on the planet. RVD as the world's greatest wrestler. Dreamer as a big time hero. Public Enemy as a great tag team.

 

Heyman owned that crowd.

 

I think as much as he owned the crowd, the crowd owned him. In a way that simply isn't true for Baba or Sr. Give me some examples of Heyman really defying his crowds and still getting over with it.

[GOTNW]

Obviously Riki Choshu is the greatest booker of all time Built up new generations for New Japan three times (the Tenzan/Nagata generation is a little sketchy but without Choshu there to set up their rise it would have been even worse once he was out). Drew more money in the 90s than New Japan did when wrestling was actually popular in New Japan. Even outdrew WWF in either 95 or 96 which is INSANE.

[Matt D]

My gut says that this is an ol' Parv special where you're fixiated on something, here the idea that a booker should always defy the crowd and that everything that's happened to make wrestling something you no longer love is based off of that, and you're trying to quantify and classify it, using a number of other metrics to muddy the water so it's not so blatantly clear this is what you're doing (though it is) and also because you do honestly and earnestly find all of this interesting. You roll a rock down the hill. It becomes a snowball. You still want the rock to get there though.

 

You have completely dismissed that there are times where going with the crowd is the right thing to do in the short, medium, and maybe even long-term and actually, seemingly, punished promoters for doing so.

[goc]

My gut says that this is an ol' Parv special where you're fixiated on something, here the idea that a booker should always defy the crowd and that everything that's happened to make wrestling something you no longer love is based off of that, and you're trying to quantify and classify it, using a number of other metrics to muddy the water so it's not so blatantly clear this is what you're doing (though it is) and also because you do honestly and earnestly find all of this interesting. You roll a rock down the hill. It becomes a snowball. You still want the rock to get there though.

 

You have completely dismissed that there are times where going with the crowd is the right thing to do in the short, medium, and maybe even long-term and actually, seemingly, punished promoters for doing so.

Based on this post we really need a re-evaluation of 90s Vince's Mastery score. He went with the crowd on Austin and made his top babyface a guy who drinks beer, flips off his boss and does the Stunner to women? He should have told the crowd to fuck off and pushed The Patriot.

[Grimmas]

 

 

 

Heyman tricked people into thinking the Public Enemy were a big deal and that Taz was the baddest motherfucker alive. If that's not mastery over crowd and producing, I don't know what is.

It's a mixture of things, but there is no way Heyman is a 10 in that category.

 

A 10 is Vince Sr faced with the hottest wrestler on the planet in 1978, who'd sold out MSG a ton of times, in Billy Graham and refusing to turn him face and giving the belt to Backlund REGARDLESS. AND still getting Backlund over, selling out MSG, etc.

 

It's Baba faced with Kenta Kobashi in 1992-3 and saying to both him and the crowd, "no kid, you have to wait your turn. And I'm going to make you wait".

 

And the fans essentially accepting that their will was overturned.

 

Your bias is showing...

 

Taz as the baddest mother fucker on the planet. RVD as the world's greatest wrestler. Dreamer as a big time hero. Public Enemy as a great tag team.

 

Heyman owned that crowd.

 

I think as much as he owned the crowd, the crowd owned him. In a way that simply isn't true for Baba or Sr. Give me some examples of Heyman really defying his crowds and still getting over with it.

 

Bringing in Sid and having him be the most over guy in the company.

 

If anybody in ECW should had failed it was Sid.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

My gut says that this is an ol' Parv special where you're fixiated on something, here the idea that a booker should always defy the crowd and that everything that's happened to make wrestling something you no longer love is based off of that, and you're trying to quantify and classify it, using a number of other metrics to muddy the water so it's not so blatantly clear this is what you're doing (though it is) and also because you do honestly and earnestly find all of this interesting. You roll a rock down the hill. It becomes a snowball. You still want the rock to get there though.

 

You have completely dismissed that there are times where going with the crowd is the right thing to do in the short, medium, and maybe even long-term and actually, seemingly, punished promoters for doing so.

Based on this post we really need a re-evaluation of 90s Vince's Mastery score. He went with the crowd on Austin and made his top babyface a guy who drinks beer, flips off his boss and does the Stunner to women? He should have told the crowd to fuck off and pushed The Patriot.

 

No, no, all it means is that you can't be a 10 in all categories, and that it might not even be DESIRABLE to be a 10 in all categories.

 

90%+ of bookers would have turned Graham face in 78 and given Kobashi the triple crown a lot earlier than Baba did.

 

With a 10 in that rating ALSO comes a certain rigidity and brittleness. No one has really commented, for example, on the 0 I have Sr for innovation or on the 2 I gave Baba. Their firmness of principle might mean that sometimes they might have missed opportunities and / or left money on the table. For them, the principle and staying in 100% control of the direction was more important.

 

I mean we might add a category for "opportunism", which is essentially spotting a tendency in the crowd and capitalising on it to the max. See also Vince with Hogan in 84, Vince with Austin in 97. But that's not "mastery over the crowd", it's something else.

[goc]

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities.

 

He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities.

 

Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0.

[Matt D]

I forever feel that he should have turned Greg in response to Martel getting the belt.

[goc]

 

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities.

 

He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities.

 

Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0.

 

Hogan became a star babyface in the AWA. That's just a simple fact. Before that he was almost always a heel. So you're just going to ignore that Hogan was still the top star even though he didn't have DA BELT~! And ignore that it just wasn't possible because Verne had a deal with All Japan and Hogan was a New Japan guy? Are you now going to tell me that ridiculous theory that if Hogan was made AWA champ he'd have never left for WWF and all of wrestling history would have changed?

 

Martel was a "known quantity" sure but where else did he got pushed to the level he got pushed to in the AWA? He was a tag champ in WWF, he wasn't getting pushed at the World Title level.

 

Punishing him for training Flair & Steamboat and "letting them go" is pretty stupid as well since guys never stayed in the territory they started in. You HAD to leave that territory after a while because the fans had seen you at your greenest and doing nothing but jobs in opening matches, you had to go somewhere else to start becoming a star.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

 

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities.

 

He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities.

 

Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0.

 

Hogan became a star babyface in the AWA. That's just a simple fact. Before that he was almost always a heel. So you're just going to ignore that Hogan was still the top star even though he didn't have DA BELT~! And ignore that it just wasn't possible because Verne had a deal with All Japan and Hogan was a New Japan guy? Are you now going to tell me that ridiculous theory that if Hogan was made AWA champ he'd have never left for WWF and all of wrestling history would have changed?

 

Martel was a "known quantity" sure but where else did he got pushed to the level he got pushed to in the AWA? He was a tag champ in WWF, he wasn't getting pushed at the World Title level.

 

Punishing him for training Flair & Steamboat and "letting them go" is pretty stupid as well since guys never stayed in the territory they started in. You HAD to leave that territory after a while because the fans had seen you at your greenest and doing nothing but jobs in opening matches, you had to go somewhere else to start becoming a star.

 

Even for a Verne apologist, I don't think it's a stretch to say that making new stars was not his strongest suit.

 

What number would you give him? Are we arguing the toss of the difference between 1 and 3 or the difference between 1 and 7? I could stretch to 3 at a push, but no higher.

 

I also don't think Verne made Hogan a star, Rocky did and having a very distinctive look plus electric charisma did. Verne just so happened to luck out on the timing of the run. It was obvious Hogan was going to be a star in 1980. He wasn't some unknown, he was co-maining MSG with Andre.

 

If Verne was a promoter with a real eye for talent and vision, he COULD have been booking Flair vs. Steamboat on top in 1980. He could have! What did he actually book? Himself vs. Bockwinkel, Chapter 322.

[goc]

 

 

 

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities.

 

He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities.

 

Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0.

 

Hogan became a star babyface in the AWA. That's just a simple fact. Before that he was almost always a heel. So you're just going to ignore that Hogan was still the top star even though he didn't have DA BELT~! And ignore that it just wasn't possible because Verne had a deal with All Japan and Hogan was a New Japan guy? Are you now going to tell me that ridiculous theory that if Hogan was made AWA champ he'd have never left for WWF and all of wrestling history would have changed?

 

Martel was a "known quantity" sure but where else did he got pushed to the level he got pushed to in the AWA? He was a tag champ in WWF, he wasn't getting pushed at the World Title level.

 

Punishing him for training Flair & Steamboat and "letting them go" is pretty stupid as well since guys never stayed in the territory they started in. You HAD to leave that territory after a while because the fans had seen you at your greenest and doing nothing but jobs in opening matches, you had to go somewhere else to start becoming a star.

 

Even for a Verne apologist, I don't think it's a stretch to say that making new stars was not his strongest suit.

 

What number would you give him? Are we arguing the toss of the difference between 1 and 3 or the difference between 1 and 7? I could stretch to 3 at a push, but no higher.

 

I also don't think Verne made Hogan a star, Rocky did and having a very distinctive look plus electric charisma did. Verne just so happened to luck out on the timing of the run. It was obvious Hogan was going to be a star in 1980. He wasn't some unknown, he was co-maining MSG with Andre.

 

If Verne was a promoter with a real eye for talent and vision, he COULD have been booking Flair vs. Steamboat on top in 1980. He could have! What did he actually book? Himself vs. Bockwinkel, Chapter 322.

 

You're completely ignoring the realities of how wrestling worked to say that it was feasible that he could have taken two totally green rookies and built them to top stars without ever letting them go to any other promotions. That's NOT how things worked in that time period plus it discounts the idea that Flair or Steamboat might have just wanted to leave on their own for various reasons, like maybe it's just really fucking cold in Minnesota in the winter and it'd be better to go to Florida.

 

And as for the Hogan deal, I'm really not sure how obvious it was because no one else decided to push Hogan as a top babyface until he landed in the AWA. He was a co-main event heel vs. Andre because he was really big. You wouldn't pump up Big John Studd's resume based on that same criteria. Hogan even traveled around as the Andre opponent sometimes when Andre would go out to other territories so it's not like other promoters didn't see the guy in person and could have had the idea of trying to lure him away to push him big as a babyface. None of them did.

 

As for the score, yea I just think 1 is way too low.

[Matt D]

An interesting comparison is to look at what heels old Verne fed to himself in the 80s relative to what heels old Fritz and old Watts fed to themselves in the 80s.

[JerryvonKramer]

You're completely ignoring the realities of how wrestling worked to say that it was feasible that he could have taken two totally green rookies and built them to top stars without ever letting them go to any other promotions. That's NOT how things worked in that time period plus it discounts the idea that Flair or Steamboat might have just wanted to leave on their own for various reasons, like maybe it's just really fucking cold in Minnesota in the winter and it'd be better to go to Florida.

This is just an excuse. If he REALLY wanted those two, he could have got them. Verne had one of the biggest territories, and personal connections with both of them. They were both big regional stars by 1978.

 

Vince Sr REALLY wanted Backlund, and he got him. And Backlund was a complete unknown in New York. Flair was a Minnesota boy.

 

I mean, who knows, maybe Verne was on the phone every day in 1978 trying to get him to come back. Maybe.

 

But the fact remains that Verne had the two biggest stars of the 1980s (Flair and Hogan) working for him at different times, and he lost them both. History has to judge him harshly.

 

What other stars did he make anyway? I don't see a JYD or Tommy Rich or Piper or DiBiase or even a Boogie Man Jimmy Valiant among the AWA alumni.

 

Someone like Don Owen would get a monster rating in this category, but Verne? His bag of tricks was mainly relying on old already established stars. Even in the earlier period, he took guys who were mainly already big names elsewhere. Ray Stevens, Wilbur Snyder, Billy Robinson -- none of these guys were really stars "made" by Verne.

 

The closest is probalby Jim Brunzell and his son.