Johnny Valentine

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

Reel said: 

"We don't have a ton of footage of Valentine, but every time he shows up, I can't help but think he's one of the best wrestlers I've ever seen. He's physical and can convincingly brutalize people like in the 1972 tag below, but when he has to sell, he's great at that too, stumbling around in a mad daze. The best matches we have from him, he's in his 40's and he's out there with guys like Wild Bill Curry basically inventing BattlArts in 1969."

[elliott]

The Wild Bull Curry match is incredible. Stupefyingly great performance from Valentine. I really want to vote for him on limited footage. Hoping more stuff is uncovered over the next 5 years. 

[Reel]

If I had to project how good I think he is in the scheme of all the wrestlers I've ever seen, I think he might be top 10, but obviously, that isn't what GWE is about, so I'm gonna try and sneak him in on the bottom of my ballot on the basis of the 3 matches I put in the nomination thread and the little bit of other footage, mostly clips from Florida, that we have.  

[elliott]

2 minutes ago, Reel said:

If I had to project how good I think he is in the scheme of all the wrestlers I've ever seen, I think he might be top 10, but obviously, that isn't what GWE is about, so I'm gonna try and sneak him in on the bottom of my ballot on the basis of the 3 matches I put in the nomination thread and the little bit of other footage, mostly clips from Florida, that we have.  

I totally agree with this sentiment. We're going to have the exact same struggle with him it sounds like. If we can get like 10 more matches I'd feel better about voting for him. 

[Shrike02]

33 minutes ago, elliott said:

I totally agree with this sentiment. We're going to have the exact same struggle with him it sounds like. If we can get like 10 more matches I'd feel better about voting for him. 

To varying degrees I feel the exact same way with Nick Bockwinkel and Pat Patterson. I want to put them both in my top 20 but the footage doesn't really justify it on what's out there, but it's not hard to extrapolate how great they really were.

[GOTNW]

The Bull Curry match and what we have of the 1974 Wahoo one are great, but OJ's recent thread has inspired me to take a look at some of that stuff and man, Valentine looks like an absolute world beater in the Florida footage. Him and Thesz in particular seem to have had fantastic chemistry, just working super tight, going after each other's throat.

There's a nice amount variety in the footage too:  Valentine works as a vicious aggressor in the Jack Brisco match as well as in the tag vs Brisco and Paul Jones, but is in more of a selling role when he eats a big beatdown from Tim Woods. But the best match of the all looks to have been the Paul Jones one, it helps the clip we have isn't that short (around 6 minutes), but by all means it had to have been an amazing brawl. If you enjoy quality face punching you're really doing yourself a disservice by not checking it out.

This dude has to rank for me, I refuse to even entertain the idea there are 100 people who were better at fake fighting than him.

[elliott]

2 hours ago, GOTNW said:

The Bull Curry match and what we have of the 1974 Wahoo one are great, but OJ's recent thread has inspired me to take a look at some of that stuff and man, Valentine looks like an absolute world beater in the Florida footage. Him and Thesz in particular seem to have had fantastic chemistry, just working super tight, going after each other's throat.

There's a nice amount variety in the footage too:  Valentine works as a vicious aggressor in the Jack Brisco match as well as in the tag vs Brisco and Paul Jones, but is in more of a selling role when he eats a big beatdown from Tim Woods. But the best match of the all looks to have been the Paul Jones one, it helps the clip we have isn't that short (around 6 minutes), but by all means it had to have been an amazing brawl. If you enjoy quality face punching you're really doing yourself a disservice by not checking it out.

This dude has to rank for me, I refuse to even entertain the idea there are 100 people who were better at fake fighting than him.

 

This is the 2 minutes and 30 seconds of clips from July 1973 or some other match?

[GOTNW]

There's also a 4 minute clip from September of the same year which has some artistic interventions in it, but by what we see it might have been even more heated than that one.

[Rah]

3 hours ago, GOTNW said:

But the best match of the all looks to have been the Paul Jones one, it helps the clip we have isn't that short (around 6 minutes),

Have you seen their rumble in the cage?

[ohtani's jacket]

Wahoo McDaniel vs Johnny Valentine 1974 -- When people think of Wahoo McDaniel vs. Johnny Valentine, I guess they think of the chops and clubbing blows, but what this clip showcases is Valentine's masterful selling. He sells in a very slow, deliberate way to the point where when he finally takes a bump it's like a redwood falling down. He was brilliant at selling exhaustion and putting over blood loss, and he would make those fantastic choking expressions with his eyes bulging and his tongue poking out. The match feels strangely paced because of the cuts. There's no way to tell how well they transitioned between heat segments, and a lot of the heat is on the ref, which isn't something I enjoy in professional wrestling, but the big takeaway here is Johnny's great selling.

Wahoo McDaniel vs Johnny Valentine (studio confrontation 6/74) -- this was clipped, but it must exist somewhere in full. Wahoo is on fire here. He pummels the crap out of Valentine. 

Harley Race vs. Johnny Valentine - NWA St. Louis 3/7/1975 -- Talk about the perfect opponent for Harley. This is everything you'd want from a true Harley Race match. Harley is at his best when he's working guys over with that short little punch of his. Johnny Valentine is one of the all-time great brawlers and sellers, and he can dish out the punishment as well. 

Johnny Valentine vs. Johnny Weaver with Bearcat Wright as referee 1974 -- Brother, this had some amazing standing punch exchanges. Johnny took over at the end too, which is something that's perhaps been missing from these other clips. I actually liked the ref shtick here. 

Johnny Valentine vs. Paul Jones (cage match) 1975 -- this was more of a fence match than a cage match, but amazing heat for Jones, and great, stalking heel work from Valentine. Jones' bladejob looks great. Valentine works like a monster. Again, you can't really tell how well paced the match was, but you can see the patterns in how Valentine worked to the point where you can pretty much imagine what happened between the cuts. 

[ohtani's jacket]

Johnny Valentine vs. Bob Bruggers (Mid-Atlantic, 1970s) -- this clip gives you an insight into what the beginning of a Johnny Valentine match was like. Maybe a little slow for some people's tastes, but you can see the same clear psychology that's in Greg's matches, i.e. grab a hold and don't let go.

Johnny Valentine vs. George Steele -- another match that shows the basic Johnny Valentine lock up, punch combos, and elbow drop that were the foundation of his offense. 

Super Destroyer & Johnny Valentine vs. Sonny King & Swede Hanson -- great looking performance from Valentine, who, accounting for inflation, made Sonny King look like a trillion dollars in today's money. 

Johnny Valentine vs Johnny Weaver -- Two fantastic looking clips with tremendous heat. Valentine sold Weaver's sleeper like a life or death struggle. 

[strobogo]

The match with Buddy Rogers in 1953 looks like it must have been a tremendous sprint. Both guys look incredible in the clips.

[elliott]

6 hours ago, strobogo said:

The match with Buddy Rogers in 1953 looks like it must have been a tremendous sprint. Both guys look incredible in the clips.

Really amazing 2 minutes and 40 seconds. How does it compare to a WWE Highlight video of a match? 

[strobogo]

Why do you have such an issue with people reacting positively to clips

[elliott]

I think if someone reads the thread and gets excited to see Buddy Rogers vs Johnny Valentine they should be aware that its less than 3 minutes of wrestling. 

Its less disappointing to hear it up front than to read some glowing review go searching for something and then find out its like just a couple of minutes. 

I watched all of the Johnny Valentine footage that is available. Its the first thing I did when this project was announced.  He looks fucking incredible but ultimately its a really disappointing (and really short) journey because we're looking at 3 matches and then a bunch of clips. I do think he's a more viable low end candidate than someone like Londos because he actually meets the criteria of 3 full matches, but in addition to that we do have longer more extended clips. There are lot more 8-11 minute videos of Johnny Valentine where he looks great that we can look at which is a lot more useful than 45 seconds of newsreels. We also have a lot more footage of the era that he worked so we can get a better idea of what his contemporaries actually looked like to better place him in a real context. 

[strobogo]

So do you want people to just not comment on clips or something

[Grimmas]

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

So do you want people to just not comment on clips or something

A nice disclaimer would be nice, just so I know what I am getting into it. I really hate thinking I am getting a match and it's a clip instead.

[El McKell]

They did make it clear it wasn’t a full match here. Although maybe it because it’s so short Elliot can complain, I dunno 

[elliott]

4 minutes ago, El McKell said:

They did make it clear it wasn’t a full match here. Although maybe it because it’s so short Elliot can complain, I dunno 

It turns out that person is a troll who has been banned multiple times from this site. So it was my mistake for engaging. 

[El McKell]

If it is who you think it is, they aren’t a troll they’re not insincere they were banned for being very rude to other members, name calling etc 

[strobogo]

1 hour ago, elliott said:

It turns out that person is a troll who has been banned multiple times from this site. So it was my mistake for engaging. 

I've literally never been banned here. I've posted on multiple boards under this same screen name for ages and even ran my own site for a while. It took like 2 fucking years to even get approved to post here. I said in my post that they looked great in the clips. How is it trolling to say it was clips and said both guys looked great in it?

[GOTNW]

I finally watched the JWA matches.

The Valentine/Kiniski vs Inoki/Baba bout it absolutely terrific. Valentine basically works exactly like you'd expect him to-stalling, pacing, impactful offence, timing, everything is there. I checked Cagematch to see whether they were a regular team, and I assume they might not have perfect records for older matches, but they don't appear to have been one. That would make it more impressive they managed to mash so perfectly-their division of labour was spot on, they knew exactly when to interfere or take over and really looked like an all time great tag. Amazing star presence, amazing heat, incredible attention to detail. My favourite moment of the match was probably when Baba tried to drag Kiniski from the apron and Valentine blocked it by grabbing Kiniski's other leg. It doesn't sound very impressive in text form, but that's the beauty of prowres-it's not rocket science, you take a simple idea, structure it and dramatize it and its meaning increases exponentially in the heat of the moment. And speaking of heat, boy was there any. They walked the line of having complaints to the referee and their clique get but managed to do it so it resembles the situation on a basketball court after a controversial ref call more than the silly stuff WWE's done in the last 30 or so years, and the crowd really responded like an angry sporting crowd. An absolute classic and a spectacle of a match.

The Valentine/Kroffat vs Oki/Yoshimura tag isn't as spectacular, but that is hardly surprising. Kroffat has a couple of good moments here where he stooges, but isn't particularly interesting when working holds. Think Randy Orton-nothing wrong mechanically with his Hammerlock, but it's just not fun to watch. Yoshimura and Oki are good workers but don't do much here, especially Oki. Valentine does a lot more wrestling in this match and is as gritty when working holds as you'd hope, but it's not just that he grabs really good holds-his body positioning, facial expressions and body language are all on point, selling the intensity of the holds and glueing you to his work. In the finish of this match he basically did the Bryan Danielson "MMA" Elbow Spam, except it looked much better than Danielson's usually does.

Speaking of Elbows-did anyone in history have a better Elbow Drop than this guy?

So yeah. Johnny Valentine. Great wrestler, will rank for me. I get people have reservations over the amount of footage, I will just note that if the criteria for research was as strict as it is in some people's "my best wrestlers list", almost no sociological or public opinion studies would ever get done.