1980

[Grimmas]

Who is the greatest wrestler of the year?

[Tetsujin]

Maybe one of the big Portland boys like Buddy Rose, Roddy Piper or Rick Martel.

[SAMS]

Unless Jaguar Yokota is on fire from April - December I feel like the shortlist is:

Buddy Rose

Terry Funk

Bob Backlund

Steve Grey

Johnny Saint

maaaaybe Fujinami

Honorable mention to both Sammartino and Zbyszko just for their feud together

[Jetlag]

It's probably Buddy Rose.

You might also give outsider consideration to Jackie Sato or Jaguar Yokota if you like their style. The World of Sport situation is a bit frustrating for individual workers, while we have lots of excellent wrestling most guys only show up on TV a handful of times per year, and we don't even have all the TV.

[Kadaveri]

Jaguar might be the best 18 year old wrestler ever in 1980 but she's still far from the finished product. I wouldn't say she's a BITW contender until 1982.

[Reel]

7 hours ago, SAMS said:

Honorable mention to both Sammartino and Zbyszko just for their feud together

Larry Z had a really strong 1980 outside of the Bruno stuff too, including that 'never in a million years would you think this would be great on paper' match with Ivan Putski. 

But I agree, its probably Buddy. Fujinami is great in 80 too though. 

[SAMS]

6 hours ago, Reel said:

Larry Z had a really strong 1980 outside of the Bruno stuff too, including that 'never in a million years would you think this would be great on paper' match with Ivan Putski.

Is this at the Spectrum in August?

In terms of the AJW crew, the one who's impressed me the most has actually been Mami Kumano, as I thought her work in tags as part of the Black Pair was good but she also brought it in a singles setting as well.

For WoS guys, totally agree. I don't think that either Saint or Grey turn up on tape more than 4 times each, but at least their two matches together (granted the second one being mostly clipped) are strong MOTYC.

Ultimately the answer is probably a Buddy Rose, but I will say that I think Terry Funk was superb, at least through the first 1/3 of the year. While Rose was carrying guys like Frank Dusek to good matches, Funk was doing the same in All Japan with a guy like Ray Candy. Plus he turns up in Georgia to feud with Dusty, and while I'm not sure anything other than clips of their Omni matches together exist, the TV stuff Funk is in is a blast.

[CheapPop1999]

16 hours ago, Reel said:

including that 'never in a million years would you think this would be great on paper' match with Ivan Putski. 

Putski is a surprise through 77 and 80 so far for me. He's limited, but he's quite the little powerhouse and is super over with the big crowds. I think the camp of the VHS text "POLISH POWER" pulsing on the screen during his entrances does it for me a little bit too.

[Reel]

16 hours ago, SAMS said:

Is this at the Spectrum in August?

Yes, I believe it got a fair amount of hype when Titans covered it..

[Shrike02]

49 minutes ago, Reel said:

Yes, I believe it got a fair amount of hype when Titans covered it..

Very justifiable hype, I'd say.

[Ricky Jackson]

Here's Larry Z vs Putski for all interested. Definitely one of the great surprises of my old Titans of Wrestling pod. And yes, Larry had a great 1980. Also some really good matches against Backlund from the Spectrum

[SAMS]

Okay, I finally made it through to late August and watched this match. I'll just echo the sentiments of everybody else above to say that this was a great match. Their match together in July was so good that initially confused myself and thought that that one was this one. The fact that Larry was able to deliver two of these with Putski certainly is a feather in his cap for 1980 and gives credit to the argument that it wasn't just all about the Bruno feud.

[SAMS]

This is kind of turning into a Larry Zbyszko celebration thread, but his Spectrum match against Backlund in October is just another fantastic match to add to his collection. Such a excellent performance, and at this point I think, if we went just by quantity of quality matches on tape, his only competition is Fujinami.

Rose is carrying a promotion, but purely in terms of top tier matches, I don't think he can match these two, and Terry Funk suffers from not making tape enough.

[Ricky Jackson]

I need to check out that July 80 Larry Z vs Putski. I see they also wrestled on the June Spectrum show, which was apparenly televised but doesn't seem to be out there 

[SAMS]

After completing my watch project for 1980 I'd pretty comfortably say that Terry Funk would be my vote for wrestler of the year.

However I would break down the rest into the tiers below. I think the first two are pretty self explanatory but the third tier is a mixture of people who were great when I saw them but they had limited footage, or those who were occasionally great, but also had issues with inconsistency. All tiers are alphabetically ordered.

Best In The World
Larry Zbyszko
Tatsumi Fujinami
Terry Funk

Great Workers
Andre the Giant
Bruno Sammartino
Buddy Rose
Jim Breaks
Ken Patera
Mark Rocco

Flashes of Greatness
Abdullah the Butcher
Antonio Inoki
Bill Dundee
Billy Robinson
Bob Backlund
Dynamite Kid
Jackie Sato
Jaguar Yokota
Jay Youngblood
Johnny Saint
Jon Cortez
Mami Kumano
Mighty Inoue
Nick Bockwinkel
Rick Martel
Ricky Steamboat
Steve Grey
Vic Faulkner

[Mr JMML]

Fujinami's 1980 is incredible.

[highflyflow]

After going through the year 1980 in full, four best in the world contenders stood out for me:

• Tatsumi Fujinami
• Larry Zbyszko
• Bob Backlund
• Buddy Rose

That ended up being the order I ranked them in. Some other workers that I thought were excellent that year but not quite up to the level of that top four for various reasons were Jackie Sato, Jim Breaks, Terry Funk, Ken Patera, Andre the Giant, Bruno Sammartino, Nick Bockwinkel, Rick Martel, Roddy Piper, & Mark Rocco.

[EnviousStupid]

Abdullah the Butcher ought to be in the conversation. Great tags and brawls, but in 1980 he also got to show flashes as a face in Japan opposite The Sheik in their matches. His best singles matches against Terry Funk, Dory Jr., Dick Slater, all arguably happened that year as well.

vs Dick Slater (March 28th)

vs Terry Funk (April 18th)

vs The Sheik (May 2nd)

vs Dory Funk Jr (June 29th)

vs Terry Funk (November 1st)

vs The Sheik (December 1st)

w/ Tom Kamata vs Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta (December 9th)

w/ Tom Kamata vs The Great Mephisto & The Sheik (December 11th)

[tcg91]

Man, I hate lists sometimes! I wanted to come up with a top 20, but this is heavily influenced by lack of footage for many wrestlers. Billy Robinson is in my match of the year, but he falls into that category, like Steve Grey or others.

10. Stan Hansen
This was the year of Hansen fighting Antonio Inoki 10 times in singles matches and, while none of them was a masterpiece, it was a very good series in terms of Hansen evolving and becoming more dangerous as it progressed. To me, this was the year Hansen became a better overall performer.

9. Ken Patera
Quite possibly the best year of Patera’s career. His Texas Death Match against Bob Backlund is must-see stuff, but he also proved to be very versatile, doing remarkable work against Pat Patterson and Inoki. He consistently made a simple bearhug look like the most lethal submission move imaginable.

8. Jumbo Tsuruta
He still wasn’t at his peak as a performer, but he was featured against all the gaijins invading All Japan and that helped his progression massively. His bout against Dick Slater is remarkable, but he also had a great match with Harley Race in a year when Race wasn’t exactly on fire.

7. Dynamite Kid
His matches against Tatsumi Fujinami might not have been as historic as the later Tiger Mask bouts, but they were way better in the ring. He was also the perfect foil for Mark Rocco in the UK and the little footage I have seen from Stampede confirms that Dynamite was incredible in 1980.

6. Bob Backlund
Discovering that Backlund was not a boring champion (at least in the ring) became one of my favourite wrestling findings. Apart from his masterpiece against Patera, Backlund’s year was remarkable for the way he made his opponents look (a green Hogan above all) and for how hard he worked in multi-promotional showcase matches that were usually treated as throwaways, such as his matches against Dusty Rhodes and Hansen in Japan.

5. Terry Funk
1980 doesn’t feature an all-time great singles match from Funk, but his performances were consistently outstanding. Whether it was tagging with Dory in the RWTL, or facing Abdullah and Jumbo, his opponents always thrived and looked better when Funk was involved. It’s a shame none of his American matches with Dusty from this year are available on tape.

4. Buddy Rose
Easily the best heel of the year, his work in Portland was a blast. Rose could look dangerous and technically brilliant while also being goofy and obnoxious at the same time, mastering his character and serving as the perfect opponent for Piper and Martel. His ability to wrestle long matches over 3 falls and perform well with different tag team partners was one of the highlights of 1980.

3. Nick Bockwinkel
Aside from his masterpiece against Billy Robinson, Bockwinkel was an excellent competitor throughout 1980 and performed better than any of the NWA World Champions that year. It’s no surprise that Dory, Baba, and even Verne Gagne all had strong matches against him. While he isn’t my #1, Bockwinkel was probably the best wrestler in the world in 1980.

2. Rick Martel
An amazing babyface and a tremendous performer. His feud with Buddy Rose carried Portland for months and produced great singles and tag matches for the territory. Martel and Piper worked surprisingly well together as a team, despite being so different. It’s a shame Martel didn’t do anything noteworthy during his All Japan tour that year.

1. Tatsumi Fujinami
None of Fujinami’s matches would make my top 3 or even top 5 matches of 1980, but he was the most consistently excellent performer of the year. I genuinely haven’t seen him have a match that was less than good. He was clearly the ace of the junior heavyweight division, taking on gaijins from all over the world  (Dynamite Kid, Chavo Guerrero, Steve Keirn and others), while also elevating local talents and giving Kengo Kimura possibly the best singles match of his career.