Favourites that you soured on...

[Dewar]

I'm not a big Sami fan, but he had a pretty good match with Mark Haskins during season 3 of British Wrestling Weekly that would be worth searching for.

[fxnj]

 

 

I'd say that most of elliott's criticisms of Misawa and King's Road in general are reflections of the fact that it was the same handful of guys wrestling each other over and over again. There's not much you can do to make the tenth iteration of Misawa/Kawada interesting besides turn the volume up. The problem is that the Four Corners were too good for their own good. No style is sustainable in the long run without periodic injections of fresh blood. But King's Road wasn't a style that you could just plug anyone into, and the only wrestler All Japan developed in the 90s who could work at that level was Akiyama. It's no accident that most of the great All Japan matches between 1998 and the split involve Akiyama in some way. It's also no accident that All Japan was stagnant for most of 1997. All the big matchups had pretty much been beaten into the ground at that point, and Akiyama hadn't yet made the leap to top-tier status to freshen things up.

Agree with this. My biggest criticism of 90's All Japan and what ended up being their biggest handicap was the lack of variety. Different combinations of matches between the same guys (barring some gajin) over and over can become tedious and since no one else was really able to work at their level, there was no significant change-up. They were kind of stuck and escalation was the way to go forward. The alternative was completely abandoning the style and starting over (sort of) but that's implausible.

 

I get where you're coming from, but on the other hand, I just watched the entire PR set that had a shit ton of Abby vs Colon matches that I was fully expecting to be the same match over and over again. But each match was different and they didn't at all fall back on "Lets just do more stabbing in the face this time" when it came time for the next match.

 

I again point to Kobashi vs Hansen as an example of a series in All Japan that brought different ideas and structures. Again, maybe this has as much to do with the points they were at in their career and the sort of organic inevitable differences you're going to get. But doesn't that sort of reflect poorly on the pillars when the only ideas they (the pillars) have when wrestling their peers is "MORE BABY MORE!" as the years pass?

 

Doesn't it say as much about Misawa not being able to have have a compelling match with someone on the level of a Johnny Ace as much as it does about Ace?

 

Take Tamura for example. He had great matches with Volk Han, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, Vader etc. You know, great workers. But he also figured out to how to have an awesome match against Gary Albright and compelling matches with weirdos like Tom Burton and Billy Scott who weren't on his level or the level of the other greats.

 

I'm not necessarily disagreeing that Misawa relied too much on bombs and it does count against him a bit that he ended up killing himself instead of knowing his limitations and wrestling a much safer style, but that criticism gets a pretty big caveat from me in that it seems to a large extent it was him not wanting to let down the fans rather than not understanding how to work a different way. Meltzer mentioned after he died that the reason he didn't wrestle a big match with Kobashi after 2003 was they didn't feel they could live up to what the fans would expect of such a match-up, and the guy was also really banged up in the months leading to his death but kept touring anyway due to pressure of not wanting to let NOAH down as its only big draw. I think part of what makes so endearing his persona as the stoic ace who just did what was expected of him without complaining is that that was largely was the ideal he aspired to be in real life, albeit to a fault.

 

I also think you're exaggerating in treating Kobashi/Hansen as some outlier compared to the big Misawa matches in how they managed to keep things fresh despite facing each other many times. If you gave proper analysis to the Misawa/Kawada and Misawa/Kobashi matches you would find just as many differences between them that have little to do with bigger moves. The 10/92 match has Misawa and Kawada wrestling while still teaming together and, though it's a nice showcase for both guys, it's clearly wrestled with Kawada as the subordinate going in trying to prove himself, and it leaves little doubt afterwards that Misawa was the champ. 6/3/94 has them wrestling more as familiar equals with Misawa showing vulnerability while we also see Kawada show frustration and desperation from still not being able to beat Misawa. Their 5/98 Tokyo Dome match has the roles reversed with Kawada wrestling a very smart match against a hurt Misawa who, despite a valiant effort, comes up short against his long-time rival. They're all great matches but each tell distinctly different stories.

 

The earlier claim that 90's AJPW was "bloated title match after bloated title match" is totally off. One of the main reasons the period is so highly regarded is actually the high quality of the random TV bouts and how the guys struck just the right combination of character work and action to make many of the build-up tags and six-mans great while leaving the truly epic moments for the big matches. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the people complaining about "excess" in long pimped classics (like Matt D, no offense) are guys who just dove right into those big matches without taking time to understand the proper context. The context that you get from watching those build-up matches is that the promotion was always heavily built on hierarchy, and the 90's crew respected that. Those big moves you might think had their credibility killed by being kicked out of in big matches were often treated as serious near fall in tags to build up their credibility. They didn't kick out of finishers in big matches because they had no idea how else to pop the crowd, but because that's the clearest way to show the audience where guys stand on the hierarchy and, yes, to show growth within the hierarchy.

 

I'm not going to deny that the 1998 Ace match was uninspired. I'd say the same for the 1997 Williams and Akiyama matches. But you seem too generous to him in giving Kobashi as a counter example of someone who didn't do such matches. I guarantee you that you'd think similar things about Kobashi's GHC reign if you ever watch it, especially in regards to something like the Nagata match as something that should have felt a lot more special than it did. Everyone has off nights, especially when they're wrestling full time in a style as hard on the body as these guys did. It's insane to expect guys to have great matches every night. Even something like the Hansen/Funk pairing wasn't a classic every time if you watch their 1986 match. The reason you couldn't plug just anyone into 90's AJPW style wasn't that the 5 guys doing it were so much more skilled than everyone else but that those 5 guys were the only ones crazy enough to destroy their bodies with the head drops they were regularly doing. But the actual structures could be replicated without the head drops without losing much, as can be seen in a lot of matches from AJPW since Akiyama took over. I think it's unfortunate that the 90's guys wrestled how they did when the matches could have been just as good and the wrestlers in much better shape today if they had taken a safer approach.

[fxnj]

Flair has been mentioned before in this thread, but no one has yet made a detailed case against him in this thread, so I'll go ahead and do it as he is by far the biggest example to me of a favorite I soured on.

 

I got into wrestling right around the time of Ric Flair's retirement angle in WWE, so I pretty much bought into the idea being pushed that he was the GOAT. I watched a lot of his 80's NWA title defenses on YouTube and WWE 24/7 around this period and thought they were great. As the years went on, though, I found myself in a similar spot as I've seen people here as growing tired of watching his often by the numbers work and had a hard time keeping my attention for his longer stuff, but I still gave him a degree of begrudging respect. If I had voted in GWE he probably would have made my ballot just because the idea of not voting for a guy so widely respected and who I used to really enjoy watching would have felt weird.

 

The moment where I soured on him came in the last few months, when I started diving into Golden Age footage and some stuff from even before that. That's when I started to form the opinion that he and Race actually marked a turning point to degeneracy in the pantheon of NWA champs. I've written about in the past and feel it's relevant here, so I'll copy it.

 

Similarly, the 80's also saw the crafty champ in Thesz phased out in favor of the bitch heel champ in Race and Flair. Thesz might have heeled it up on occasion and tried to put over the skills of his opponent, but it was nowhere near to the extent that I'd call him a prototypical Flair as I've seen him characterized. He was a guy who, even in selling, never looked like the match was totally out of his control or that he was outmatched like I've often seen from Flair, and didn't rely on fouling nearly as much. The NWA champs of the 50's didn't forget to show themselves as being just as capable as their opponents and, partly due to that, stuff like Thesz/Gagne and Carpentier/Gagne reaches far greater heights of emotion and drama than any of that banana peel shit I've seen from the 80's. This is another case where Rogers's line about insulting the audience's intelligence is applicable as I've seen Race show himself as being really good in a role of a crafty champ in AJPW yet he felt the need to dumb things down into working as a bitch champ for US audiences.

I find it pretty odd that a forum where people speak out against "excess" and use a term like "workrate dogma" unironically still champions a guy like Flair. People often use excess in the context of guys shrugging off big moves, but in Flair matches I find the opposite kind of excess in play as he sells way too much for the challenger and goes way over the top with his stupid begging off and flop spots he does every match. It damages the credibility of the championship and presents a view of wrestling that's more like a cartoon rather than a sport like his predecessors tried to present. Flair was also very much a workrate guy who cared little for the matwork the NWA style was built around in the days of Thesz. Flair's matwork lacked much of the detail work seen in the Golden Age and even 70's champs, just feeling like going through the motions. I've seen even JvK agree on me with this point while also arguing that Flair's decision to emphasize workrate over matwork could have played a part in birthing the Meltzer workrate culture. In comparison to Thesz, Flair strikes me as a guy whose work is largely predicated by his ego. Whereas Thesz respected his opponents and adjusted his working style to match them, Flair insisted on dragging his opponent into his formula and expected the fans to get off on the workrate.

[JerryvonKramer]

The last "crafty" champ was Brisco, although he was more babyface than Thesz. If you watch what footage of Terry Funk there was from his run, he worked more like Race and Flair. I've seen old-time guys level the "degeneracy" talking point at Funk too, that he was too cartoony, that he brought down the seriousness of the title match, that he worked too weak and bitched etc., etc.

 

Times change, and tastes change. The touchstone for Thesz, O'Connor, Kiniski, Dory and Brisco was legitimacy and wrestling as real sport, the touchstone for Funk, Race and Flair was to give people a great night out and be value for money entertainment. I find watching 1950s Thesz stuff hard going, a 50+ minute match that never gets off the mat is hard going. Given that there is a ton of footage out there from Chicago and elsewhere from that period that is seldom discussed here, I'm guessing a lot of people feel the same way. Nobody likes Dory vs. Terry from 81.

 

I kinda like workrate, action, and big performances. Even with someone like Dory, the long mat classics with Inoki put me to sleep, it's all-action Dory I like. Workrate absolutely remains something I value.

 

However workrate =\= stupid or lacking in psychology.

 

We had a discussion around what I've come to see as completely overplayed talking points around "excess" here, would be interested in your takes, especially around the relationship between character and psychology: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31793-jvk-reviews-pimped-matches-from-late-90s-10s/?p=5774144

[Matt D]

Truly the unsophisticated words of an undereducated, working class lout, lacking some sort of visceral thrill in his daily life and trying to make up for it though a voyeuristic vicariousness when it comes to men backhand chopping each other at high speed and frequency. Probably works in a coal mine and can only make analogies based on cheese appetizers. This is exactly why the Victorians insisted all the museums be free of charge.

[ohtani's jacket]

People wanted a great night out in the 50s as well. You think the folks at the Hollywood Legion Stadium aren't looking to be entertained? There is a touchstone for the workers you mentioned of wrestling as real sport, that's true. But the Golden Era product was ready made for TV. It's full of larger than life gimmicks, but much like French catch or WoS, it manages to strike a balance between sport and entertainment. And for what it's worth, the serious sporting wrestlers did drop titles to the gimmick workers. Just not the big prize.

 

I don't think you can blame Flair or Race for speeding things up. That was the evolutionary path of wrestling everywhere, and to be honest it wasn't even that quick by the standards set by other late 70s workers. The difference between Flair and other NWA champions is that Flair made the bouts about him and not the championship. The precursor to that was clearly Buddy Rogers, but he didn't have a dynastic run.

 

Harley is interesting because he had some pretty strong ideas about what he thought was good wrestling but didn't quite have the personality that Flair had. I wonder whom Harley would have wished to be like.

[JerryvonKramer]

Truly the unsophisticated words of an undereducated, working class lout, lacking some sort of visceral thrill in his daily life and trying to make up for it though a voyeuristic vicariousness when it comes to men backhand chopping each other at high speed and frequency. Probably works in a coal mine and can only make analogies based on cheese appetizers. This is exactly why the Victorians insisted all the museums be free of charge.

Sip of sparkling water for the working man.

[JerryvonKramer]

People wanted a great night out in the 50s as well. You think the folks at the Hollywood Legion Stadium aren't looking to be entertained? There is a touchstone for the workers you mentioned of wrestling as real sport, that's true. But the Golden Era product was ready made for TV. It's full of larger than life gimmicks, but much like French catch or WoS, it manages to strike a balance between sport and entertainment. And for what it's worth, the serious sporting wrestlers did drop titles to the gimmick workers. Just not the big prize.

 

I don't think you can blame Flair or Race for speeding things up. That was the evolutionary path of wrestling everywhere, and to be honest it wasn't even that quick by the standards set by other late 70s workers. The difference between Flair and other NWA champions is that Flair made the bouts about him and not the championship. The precursor to that was clearly Buddy Rogers, but he didn't have a dynastic run.

 

Harley is interesting because he had some pretty strong ideas about what he thought was good wrestling but didn't quite have the personality that Flair had. I wonder whom Harley would have wished to be like.

How much do you think that the biggest stars of that era were more people like Wild Bull Curry or Fred Blassie rather than Thesz who was just about the idea of the title and the champ?

 

One thing I've been interested in also is how Sam Muchnick wouldn't book Abby because he was "a gimmick" but frequently booked Dick the Bruiser.

 

Can a guy like The Bruiser be seen as a different type of legit? Surely a bit of him in Harley too.

[ohtani's jacket]

The babyfaces in the 50s were obviously a llot more wholesome than later on, but I'm not sure that Thesz represented the ideal. Thesz seemed more like son of immigrant parents ideal for past generations whereas a an All American like Wilbur Synder was more of a new generation type. The promoters had plenty of gimmick workers to line up against their All American babyfaces. There were Japanese heels and German heels, exoticis, and everything in between. Wrestling crowds inherently love to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy. If 50s wrestling had been X guy in black trunks vs. Y guy in black trunks, it would have appeased graps fans like me but it's really closer to classic pro-wrestling than shoot style.

 

Regarding rhe Abby/Bruiser thing, I'm not s big fan of the Brruiser but he was several degrees removed from Abby. And when he was younger, he was actually a pretty good performer.

[Loss]

Where does this idea that Flair didn't do matwork come from? Most of his title matches do a lot with a headlock. The figure four I consider matwork. Garvin worked a front facelock for a big chunk of their title change. Steamboat worked a hammerlock at Wrestle War '89. I can think of dozens of other examples. I don't really get it.

[stro]

Personally, back to the topic of AJPW there is stuff in the direct aftermath of the exodus that I enjoy more than most acclaimed mid 90s matches. Hansen/Kae vs Tenryu/Kawada or Fuchi vs Chono have a rawness to them that is nearly impossible for me to find in any given Four Corners match.

 

Flair did a lot of mat work, but mat work that went nowhere and didn't contribute to the story of the match. Ric Flair has always driven me crazy doing 25 minutes of chops and arm work to set up the figure four.

[Matt D]

A quick (overly personal, I admit) point on "giving too much:"

 

The only Bockwinkel matches I am relatively down upon are the ones vs Verne right around 1980 where I think he gives Verne almost the entirety of the match, stooging and bumping around the ring with a sort of verve and exuberance that you wouldn't really expect out of him. To a lesser extent, he works this way against Hogan and JYD. It's one reason why (Pete and) I thought the Atlas match that recently surfaced was so remarkable, because he makes Atlas look like a mat whiz instead of working like this which he could have easily done. It's much more of a traditional world title match.

 

When it comes to comparative categorization of matches, I know Loss is a proponent of using time as the primary key field. Every match in January, 1990 around the world, etc. I am much more interested about situations. Broadly that could be narrative based: Big vs Little. Old vs Young. Strong vs Sneaky. But it could also be more purpose-driven. Return matches. Retirement matches. Matches to lead to a turn. Matches to establish a young lion as a star. And yes, matches vs the Boss, like Hansen vs Colon, for instance.

[fxnj]

The last "crafty" champ was Brisco, although he was more babyface than Thesz. If you watch what footage of Terry Funk there was from his run, he worked more like Race and Flair. I've seen old-time guys level the "degeneracy" talking point at Funk too, that he was too cartoony, that he brought down the seriousness of the title match, that he worked too weak and bitched etc., etc.

 

Times change, and tastes change. The touchstone for Thesz, O'Connor, Kiniski, Dory and Brisco was legitimacy and wrestling as real sport, the touchstone for Funk, Race and Flair was to give people a great night out and be value for money entertainment. I find watching 1950s Thesz stuff hard going, a 50+ minute match that never gets off the mat is hard going. Given that there is a ton of footage out there from Chicago and elsewhere from that period that is seldom discussed here, I'm guessing a lot of people feel the same way. Nobody likes Dory vs. Terry from 81.

 

I kinda like workrate, action, and big performances. Even with someone like Dory, the long mat classics with Inoki put me to sleep, it's all-action Dory I like. Workrate absolutely remains something I value.

 

However workrate =\= stupid or lacking in psychology.

 

We had a discussion around what I've come to see as completely overplayed talking points around "excess" here, would be interested in your takes, especially around the relationship between character and psychology: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31793-jvk-reviews-pimped-matches-from-late-90s-10s/?p=5774144

That's an interesting point about Terry Funk. I'm not familiar with what old-timers have said about him, so I never thought of him as being like Flair or Race due to the lack of footage. I'm not really surprised though, given that my thoughts on the Funk/Jumbo NWA title match last I watched it was it was a great mat-based title match marred by some bitch champ goofiness.

 

There's nothing wrong with being bored by matches from the 50's and digging the bitch champ style and I don't expect to convince you otherwise. For the point on workrate, though, I should clarify that my issue is not with going from matwork to a workrate based style but with the things surrounding the matwork that were lost in that transition. If you have even a cursory understanding of how the holds used are meant to hurt, there's all kinds of great details to enjoy in Golden Age matches in the application and selling of holds. The constant struggle for control, back-and-forth exchanges, and cumulative selling gives it the feel of a chess match.

 

Flair's formula loses much of that. In a Flair match the challenger is in control from the beginning while Flair does all his chickenshit spots, and that continues until the face slips on a banana peel so Flair can get his shit in before the cheesy cop-out finish. The things that made the 50's matwork matches so interesting are largely de-emphasized to accommodate the workrate. I also feel that the crafty champ formula gives a much more interesting showcase to the challenger as you see them have to outsmart and outwrestle the champ instead of just ragdolling them without much struggle. Buddy Rogers and Gorgeous George might have done the begging off at points, but their style was still pretty far off from what Flair did.

 

But I also don't begrudge Flair as an individual too much for this as I agree that how he wrestled was as much a reflection of changing trends as it was a reflection as on his own stylistic preferences. That's why you don't see me pimping much stuff from 80's US territories.

 

I agree that excess is a played out talking point and I have been writing here for years about why I think its simplistic and restrictive to look at matches to see whether or not they pass some arbitrary point of "excess"/"overkill." My usage of it in regards to Flair was primarily to offer a counter example to the talk of excess through spamming near falls, but my view point has always been that it's far more productive to focus on the context of the supposed excess than the excess itself. On that front, I would have no problem conceding that Flair's formula is praiseworthy when judged in the context of 80's territorial wrestling even if it's not a style I care much for. I think that terms like excess and overkill do have a place in wrestling discussion, but primarily to describe the viewer's own tastes and the point where a match diverges too far from them regardless of the talent on display rather than as an indictment of the matches themselves.

 

The point about making the distinction between someone's character and their psychology is interesting. I alluded to something similar in my earlier quote when I noted how I enjoy watching Race in AJPW even if I'm not a fan of his US work as the bitch champ. It disappoints me that he chose the working style he did in the US, but I still have high respect for him because I don't doubt that he had the ability to have worked as he did in Japan every time out if he wanted to. At the same time, I still don't rate him as highly as the AJPW natives or the NWA champs before him who did work my preferred style more often. It is an important question to ask for something like the GWE, but it seems to ultimately boil down to the old debates about working for the audience at the time vs. people watching on tape decades later and objectivity vs. subjectivity, neither of which have a definitive answer.

 

Flair did a lot of mat work, but mat work that went nowhere and didn't contribute to the story of the match. Ric Flair has always driven me crazy doing 25 minutes of chops and arm work to set up the figure four.

Yeah, this. I didn't say that Flair didn't do mat work, just that it felt like he was going through the motions when he did it. He might have let the other guy put him in a headlock at the start of a match, but it was never sold to mean anything and was quickly forgotten. Look at how the headlock is worked in Thesz/Gagne and I think it will be clear where I'm coming from on that point. I'll grant that he was good working the figure four, but I'm not really sure if I'd consider it traditional mat work as its just a single submission hold.

[JerryvonKramer]

I guess a frustration for some of us over the years is that these accusations against Flair tend to come up on the most general level rather than through the discussion of specific matches. When we try to bring talk to specific matches, it doesn't seem to get followed.

 

So which matches do you have in mind?

 

Jumbo? Taylor? Garvin? Wahoo? Steamboat? Luger? Race? Dusty? Kerry? Tenryu? Lawler? Dibiase?

 

I look at those twelve different opponents and see twelve 12 completely different matches, worked differently, and they are each good or memorable for their own different reasons.

 

The point has been made many times yet never adequately addressed.

 

To the extent that any of these has matwork, the one vs. Jumbo is probably the most mat heavy. Although you do see some of that stuff in the Taylor matches, there is some old-school NWA sequences in there, headlock countered by headscissors into the roll up attempts etc. etc., I mean it's not like he couldn't do the stuff. The Ron Garvin matches feature a good few of those exchanges, although rightly people probably remember the chops more (awesome).

 

I guess I just question the extent to which Flair really was "rag dolling" like a bitch in any of these matches. It's not my memory of them.

 

I think I've watched every Harley NWA title defence on tape, and he seemed to spend much more of his matches ragdolling than Flair, two of my least favourite matches ever are Race vs. Backlund and Race vs. Steamboat because they have babyface 95% on offense with no heat sequence. Race is terrible for bitching out completely, which is ironic because he's probably the best offensive wrestler of his generation.

 

I feel like Flair always got in more time on top, and that even the account given by fxnj here is too simplistic and reductive in its generalisations. It's not true that the babyface would always get 20 minutes to shine to start before a transition. Sometimes he'd do some hold-counter hold stuff, sometimes he'd control a bit. The transitions when they do come tend to be very good also (always think of Luger Starrcade '88), and Flair is generally underrated (as much as the #1 GWE pick can be underrated) for they way he could go to work on a leg. Go and watch something like his Jimmy Garvin match, whatever you make of the match he fucking destroys Garvin's leg in it.

 

Where I will agree is that I always get the sense that Flair himself would rather keep things moving and doesn't care for time spend on the mat. For a philistine like me of just can't stand drawn out matwork, he actually keeps things quite interesting cos they are never gonna lay there and he's going cry out "OH NO!" In pain so the guy sitting back in row Z is in no doubt that the move is hurting him. For some, cartoony, for me great work to make a boring hold more interesting.

 

Flair did do matwork though, even if it was a little begrudgingly and de-emphasised by the structure of the match. I'd love someone to break down a Flair vs. Garvin mat exchange and tell me what exactly Thesz and co are doing that is so next level beyond it. I just see the same exchanges over and over again. Dory has about six or seven he cycles through, but it seems like everyone else has the same ones.

 

Headlock-head scissors sequence

Hammerlock-pin sequence

The bridging sequence

Back-slide sequence

Greco-Roman knuckle lock sequence

 

Etc. Etc. When I watch 50s stuff, all I see is several of those standard sequences we've all seen a million times strung together for an hour before some arbitrary and incidental finish.

 

Maybe if more people could go into detail and break down some of it, show us what they are doing that is next level beyond what we'd see out of Flair or Jumbo matwork, it might help more people get into it.

 

Thesz or even Verne who died and got some shine time got very few GWE votes or attention. I'll freely admit typical Verne matches bore the shit out of me.

[ohtani's jacket]

The Golden Era greats were overlooked during the GWE voting. It's an era that people haven't watched a lot from for fairly obvious reasons. I hadn't watched much from it until recently and am still busy exploring it. So far it's been full of good workers I've barely even heard of much like WoS when I first began exploring that.

 

Anyway, Flair was an okay mat worker. I don't think he'd make a list of the top 100 mat workers ever, but he was ok. I don't think he compares to Thesz in any way, shape or form on the mat. When I think of Flair, the first thing that comes to mind is the arc in his matches where he'd go from being the Nature Boy to his hair being a mess, the crimson mask, that deranged look in his eyes and the screaming ("Noooo!") When I think of Thesz, I think of those shots he'd fire, sometimes provoked and sometimes unprovoked. There's an edge to Thesz that Flair couldn't ever hope to replicate. Thesz was a dangerous man. Thesz could hurt you. Does anyone believe that Flair could shoot on a guy or hook them?

 

Irrespective of that, I agree that the work Thesz did on the mat led somewhere whereas for Flair it was filler. That's what happens when a match is built around working holds vs. working spots. If you look at 50s workers, Flair is much closer to a Gorgeous George or a Baron Michele Leone than he is Thesz. He's more talented than those guys but he worked in the same fashion. I don't think it's s big deal. It's s different way to work and if it works for some wrestlers than so be it. Just don't peddle that Flair was the perfect all-round wrestler. The perfect performer maybe but not the complete wrestler.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't think anyone has peddled that he was perfect.

 

I am interested still to know what a Thesz did that later workers did not do though, on the mat I'm talking. I see a lot of standard sequences in those matches, sequences I see later guys doing. Is it more a case of the "edge" and perception of him as a shooter, or is there other stuff he's doing that I'm missing?

 

Something like a detailed breakdown comparing holds and sequences in something like Verne vs. Thesz to something like Flair vs. Jumbo highlighting why one is better than the other would be much welcomed, but I would not be the guy to do it.

[Matt D]

The Golden Era greats were overlooked during the GWE voting. It's an era that people haven't watched a lot from for fairly obvious reasons. I hadn't watched much from it until recently and am still busy exploring it. So far it's been full of good workers I've barely even heard of much like WoS when I first began exploring that.

 

 

I wanted to vote for Mighty Atlas but I thought you'd mock me too much if I did.

[stro]

I would argue that Flair was sloppy as fuck when he did any technical stuff, was terrible at calling his spots, was terrible about improvising, his main spots made little sense, his psychology was generally terrible (the Flair/Vader matches being so praised has always confused me, Flair, never known for brawling in his entire career, out brawls and punches Vader multiple times in both of those matches).

 

At this point in my life, having seen so much of Flair from all eras of his career, I firmly believe that if he hadn't have been the promo guy he was, he would have had a Terry Taylor level career and would never been in the running for greatest ever. I could name probably 50 guys that are better than Flair. Including Terry Taylor. I think the mythology of Ric Flair came from so many people who became big in the late 80s-90s being kids or teens and seeing Ric Flair as the guy, then idolizing him, then those people took over the business and kept building his legacy over the past 25 years.

 

Give Ric average promo skills, and I don't think people would so easily overlook his fairly average ring skills.

[ohtani's jacket]

I just bought a house and haven't gotten an Internet connection yet so I can't compare those matches. The Jumbo match seems like a bit of an outlier when it comes to a typical Flair match unless you're trying to say that Flair as a fish out of water is as good or better than Thesz/Gagne, which I have a hard time believing because I can't think of any Flair bout I'd say was unequivocally better than Thesz/Gagne. Even if people are generalising, Thesz generally had a strategy to work a particular body part or parts and would work those holds for longer than Flair. More often than not, the holds would factor into at lest one of the falls Thesz won whereas the early matwork in Flair matches rarely factors into a typical Flair finish. Fxnj already cited the importance of the headlock in Thesz/Gagne. The closest comparison I can think of to that is the importance of the chicken wing in the Steamboat Clash match.

[JerryvonKramer]

I just bought a house and haven't gotten an Internet connection yet so I can't compare those matches. The Jumbo match seems like a bit of an outlier when it comes to a typical Flair match unless you're trying to say that Flair as a fish out of water is as good or better than Thesz/Gagne, which I have a hard time believing because I can't think of any Flair bout I'd say was unequivocally better than Thesz/Gagne. Even if people are generalising, Thesz generally had a strategy to work a particular body part or parts and would work those holds for longer than Flair. More often than not, the holds would factor into at lest one of the falls Thesz won whereas the early matwork in Flair matches rarely factors into a typical Flair finish. Fxnj already cited the importance of the headlock in Thesz/Gagne. The closest comparison I can think of to that is the importance of the chicken wing in the Steamboat Clash match.

I'm mainly just talking on a much more basic and fundamental level. What exactly do they do and why is it good? What do they do that later wrestlers don't do? Etc.

 

It's the sort of thing that requires understanding and explanation. I picked Thesz vs. Gagne because I've seen it, I marked for the tiny (weensy) bit of stooging Thesz does late on but mostly found it dull, and Flair vs. Jumbo cos it is comparable in length and features longish mat sequences, but the specific examples are less important than gaining the understanding of what exactly makes the stuff good in your view. I don't think it is self-evident or obvious. We have reviews on this site where people are calling Jumbo vs. Terry Funk "slow". Some people (me especially) will need some guidance to see the value. What I see when I watch 50s stuff is a 70s match with the spots cut out, and so it feels like it "never gets going".

 

For example, to me, the headlock sequences are all the same. One guy works a headlock, the other guy counters with a head scissors or body scissors, or else tries to lift himself out of it with a headstand (or whatever). They work around in various combinations, with some opportunistic pin attempts along the way. Eventually (10, 20 minutes?) they will transition to something else.

 

If someone could walk through a Thesz headlock sequence pointing out exactly why it's interesting and when, rather than just "just a headlock", it might help get this stuff more over with fans of later wrestling.

[fxnj]

I was basing my thoughts on Flair's formula on one of the Butch Reed matches.

 

 

Given that it's him in one of the most prolific years of his career against a local guy I think it's a fair representation of what his touring match was like. First 12 minutes of the match dominated by Reed. Ric Flair then does a figure four and runs through his spots for a bit before the match goes back to Reed in control before the bullshit finish. I would be open to the argument that he was more thoughtful for some of his bigger matches, but I still think him being too giving and too liberal in doing shit like the flop is a problem with a lot of the matches where he built his rep as a broomstick guy. I watch something like the GAB cage match with Ricky Morton and I can't help but think it would be much more rewarding viewing if, instead of pinballing around the first 10 minutes of the match, he went straight to working the nose and, after some struggle and cut-offs, they did the big face run of offense towards the end and saved the big bumps for then. It's far more satisfying to me to see escalation in the action instead of knockouts and begging off just a few minutes into the match.

 

Thesz/Gagne is a masterclass in escalation and selling. They already start at a higher level of intensity than most Flair matches with the caution and tension with which they approach even a collar-and-elbow tie-up, but then there's a disrespectful shove from Thesz, some cheap shots a bit later in the match from him, and soon there's retaliation from Gagne. It is a mat-based match, but it's far from accurate to say they never get off the mat as the striking exchanges are an important part of the match that mirrow the escalating intensity in their approach to the mat.

 

https://youtu.be/yvv1wvegguA?t=16m44s

 

Here we have Gagne grabbing the headlock off a rough tie-up. These guys have already thrown some strikes at each other standing and they're soon going to start doing it on the mat. Notice the struggle over the headlock takedown and the nice snap and thud when Gagne gets the takedown. Notice the fierce expression on Gagne's face as he applies the headlock, how he wrenches the headlock in, and how he shifts his body weight to make it uncomfortable for Thesz. Notice how Thesz keeps squirming and the struggle surrounding him trying to get onto his knees. Notice how Gagne wastes no time in how he keeps going back to the head lock after it's released, as if he wants to teach Thesz a lesson for the disrespect earlier in the match. Notice as well the progressive selling from both guys with Thesz selling slowly losing consciousness from having a guy crushing down his arms over his head while Gagne seems to be tiring out from having to apply the head lock for so long. Notice how Thesz unsuccessfully goes for the backdrop several times until, just when it looks like he is about to lose consciousness, he musters his last bit of energy to finally hit it and win the first fall, ending in both guys looking like they have almost nothing left.

 

The second and third falls have some great stuff as well with Thesz putting on a clinic in working the subtle heel. He picks just the right moments for cheap shots and both guys use a lot more strikes than they did in the first fall to reflect the escalation. Because of how spent both guys were as the first fall ended, there's a sense that a single good shot could end the match, and that leads to some really hot moments, like when Thesz collapses off a Gagne shoulder block on a rope break. All the mat work they do in the latter half looks very hard fought compared to the start of the match and I also love how they mix in the strikes. It's a 60 minute match but it feels very tightly structured and just flies by to me for how they work in that escalation and milk every move to feel meaningful.

 

For comparison, I think Jumbo/Flair 1983 is a very good match, but nowhere near as good as it got pimped during the DVDVR voting or an all-time classic like Thesz/Gagne. To me, the match doesn't really get going until the last 20 minutes with Flair getting busted open and giving a spirited comeback. Much of what they do before that seems a bit shapeless, though I do give Flair credit for wrestling what seems to be a more back-and-forth style than his usual US touring match and also being sensible about when to use his signature spots.

 

I wouldn't put the mat work (or most of the brawling, for that matter) on the same level as Thesz/Gagne. They do a greater variety of holds, but they don't milk them nearly as well as Thesz and Gagne do. For example, there's a point early on where Jumbo catches Flair in an octopus hold and they fall to the mat, and Flair barely even tries to fight back. There's also a Flair's arm work vs. Jumbo's back work dynamic in the first half of the match they don't really do much with. It just strikes me as a bloated 60 minutes with portions where they're only doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff. They tried, but I don't think it's a particularly good example of mat work in a heavyweight title match, even amongst matches where that's not the focus. The 90's AJPW guys weren't known for their mat prowess, but I wouldn't rank it above the stuff in the beginning of the 6/99 Misawa/Kobashi match, and I'd also say Misawa/Kobashi did a better job of using it to segue into the rest of the match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Parv, if you found the Thesz/Gagne match dull then I'm not sure there's much point walking through the bouts. I'm not sure how you can ignore the narrative running through that match and conclude it was two guys in black trunks doing standard spots for 50 minutes. This seems like it's going to go nowhere like Dandy/Aztecs and Bossman/DiBisse. I will say this, though -- a year ago I would have claimed that Thesz and Gagne were boring too. So keep an open mind about their stuff.

[JerryvonKramer]

fxnj - fantastic post, thanks a lot for that. I might see if I can check out a few more 50s matches in the next week trying to keep this way of looking at them in mind.

[NintendoLogic]

Where does this idea that Flair didn't do matwork come from? Most of his title matches do a lot with a headlock. The figure four I consider matwork. Garvin worked a front facelock for a big chunk of their title change. Steamboat worked a hammerlock at Wrestle War '89. I can think of dozens of other examples. I don't really get it.

 

There may have been a lot of working of holds, but there wasn't much in the way of hold-counterhold mat wrestling, which I think is what most people think of as matwork. And when it did happen, it was usually canned sequences like hammerlock->drop toehold->front facelock->grounded hammerlock. The typical Flair title match probably had as much working of holds as the typical Triple Crown match of equivalent length, and people bitch about the lack of matwork in All Japan all the time.