Dave Meltzer stuff

[KrisZ]

What I am curious of though is you said that you could pick 100 guys who are better than Lawler....come up with the list and maybe we can understand your point better.

[W2BTD]

Loving Memphis wrestling isn't something exclusive to this community. I don't know how old W2BTD is or where he grew up with but age and region will affect your perception of what great wrestling is.

 

Agree completely. For the sake of full disclosure, I'm 37 and grew up in New Jersey.

 

Obviously people love Memphis wrestling, i'm not saying they don't. I do think it's fair for me to say that it was never a quote unquote workrate territory. Same for ECW. Same for Detroit. I'd argue Smokey Mountain, too. That's not to say that these places weren't any good. That's not to say there is no art involved in working those styles or inherent skill in getting over in those places.

[goodhelmet]

I guess it just depends what you mean by workrate territory. WWF was not known as a workrate territory either even when Bret and Shawn were on top.

[W2BTD]

What I am curious of though is you said that you could pick 100 guys who are better than Lawler....come up with the list and maybe we can understand your point better.

 

I could do this, and honestly forget since 1980 which was the basis of the poll, I could easily give you 100 active guys who I think are absolute no brainers, but let's be completely honest, what is the point? We can all predict what happens from there.

 

Here's the thing, there won't be a middle ground here. This will sound like a troll, but I promise it isn't. If I made a list of my own personal top workers of all time, Lawler might not crack my top 1,000. These types of debates come down to style bias. But my larger point here is that I don't think Lawler was ever considered an all time great bell to bell worker universally by the masses. I don't like Jumbo either, but he was, so I get his inclusion and accept that im the outlier. There was probably a time when the consensus was that Jumbo was the best in the world. I'd rather jump into moving traffic than watch Dory Funk Jr, but again, put him in a poll like that and I dont bat an eye. So this isn't just a Lawler thing for me.

[goodhelmet]

The problem is who you consider the masses. You clearly see Meltzer's niche community as part of the masses but this one is excluded.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Y'know, being a great worker has nothing to do with moves or mat work or "scientific" wrestling.

[goodhelmet]

This deserves its own topic. I don't want to detract from the Meltzer talk too much.

[Steenalized]

The weird thing with Bryan is the amateur types haven't really gotten it right, either.

 

Look at the results on redbubble.

 

Unlike some of the other characters, there's not really anything great for Bryan.

 

I don't know if he's the easiest wrestler to design for.

The Sriracha American Dragon one is pretty awesome. The rest are all the same

[Dylan Waco]

A few things.

 

1. There is a difference between work and workrate. They are not synonyms. Having said that Joe is someone who is on record saying all he wants is "action." I'm not saying this to be dismissive, I'm saying this because if we are talking "style preferences," I think it's fair to say a guy who only cares about action is probably not going to be as high on Lawler as I me or Will or whoever. This isn't to say Lawler matches don't have action, but rather if that is all you care about, or the main thing you care about, and if you do see workrate as the most important aspect of work (and based on how Joe is using that term here I think it's fair to say he does), chances are Lawler is not going to be in your top class of workers.

 

2. On the flip side of that, I think invoking "style preferences" is often a way to avoid meaningful discussion. More importantly than that I don't think style preferences entirely account for why someone wouldn't have Lawler in their top 1,000 of all time, or even see Lawler as a relevant option in a poll like this. I mean I'm not sure I would have Joe's favorite guy in my top 5,000 of all time, but I absolutely understand why he was in a poll like that, particularly one on the Observer site where Dave has been beating the drum for the guy for several years now. My own view of him doesn't prelude me from seeing that others are huge fans of him.

 

3. In many ways this reminds me of the earlier Tanahashi discussion where Buddy Rose came up and Joe said that it was obvious Buddy wasn't considered an all time great worker because if he was he would be in the Hall of Fame. I thought then, and I think now, that that argument presumes all sorts of things about how voters actually vote, that probably aren't true. In the case of Joe (and some other voters, particularly a few newer voters), he may have voted for Tanahashi on work alone even if he wasn't on top of a major promotion for a decade, and being talked up by Dave for the last few years as the centerpiece of a resurgent promotion. But in the case of many older voters and Japanese voters it was clear that stardom/perceived stardom was at least as big a factor as work. Buddy not getting in had little to do with the perception of him as a worker - which has always been at worst positive, and more often than not extremely positive - and everything to do with the perceptions of his stardom.

 

4. My point in saying that is that I think there is a tendency we all have to see what we want to see. I can agree that Buddy was not a huge national or international star, or that Lawler was not a workrate guy, or that Tanahashi is at worst the second biggest star in Japan right now. But that does not mean that Buddy wasn't viewed as a tremendous worker in his time, or that the perception of him hasn't been (generally speaking) very strong forever. It doesn't mean that Lawler is only viewed as an all time great worker in tiny segments of wrestling fandom, or that the perception of him is that he was a legend for reasons that have little to do with in ring work. It doesn't mean that Tanahashi was voted into the Hall of Fame as a "work" candidate.

 

Having said all that I wouldn't expect people like Lawler, or Hansen, or Negro Casas to be in an Observer poll like that, even if I think the idea that Bret Hart or Tanahashi is better than either of them is laughable. It's just not going to happen over there. What's important to note though is that Dave's voice does not speak for everyone, and if anything speaks for an increasingly smaller segment of hardcore fans as time goes on.

[W2BTD]

In this case Dylan, falling back on "style preferences" isn't a way to avoid meaningful discussion, it's a truth to avoid a pointless discussion when asked to list my 100 names.

 

Here's four names that I would consider absolute no brainers: Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards, Kurt Angle, Dynamite Kid. My list would be full of people like that, so you can only imagine the shitstorm of a circular argument that would cause, no? We all know the dominant opinion of those guys here. And it's all rooted in style preference.

 

I mean, i'd take 90% of the current Dragon Gate roster over Lawler, with little hesitation or thought. And nobody is right or wrong,because if you are talking Lawler & Bill Dundee (don't get me started on THAT guy, lol) vs Masato Yoshino & Ryo Saito, clearly it's just a matter of what style you like better because comparing Memphis to Dragon Gate is pretty silly because you are going to find very little overlap of people who love both. Generally you are going to like one, the other, or neither. Because they couldn't possibly be more different.

 

I mean, i'll break down Lance Storm vs Jerry Lawler all day if you want, but are we going to find any middle ground whatsoever?

[Dylan Waco]

I don't know if I agree that you are going to find little overlap between Dragon Gate fans and Memphis fans. I don't have a fixed opinion on that one way or the other because I don't see people as falling neatly into one group or another. Obviously there are tendencies and trends and styles that don't appeal to some people. But I know people who like modern DG and like 80's Memphis. I see no reason to believe that fandom of one means you won't be a fan of the other, just because I am a fan of one and not of the other.

 

But moving beyond that I'm not sure the point of discussion about workers is to find a middle ground, but rather to discuss your views, likes, what you see as important in wrestling, what you see as worth going out of your way to see, et. Breaking down/walking through what you like can and does often lead to middle ground, or at least understanding a perspective, but I don't thin that's the key reason we do it. To be honest I'm not sure what the purpose of a board like this even existing is for if it's all about a few people preaching the gospel of a handful of favorites over and over.

 

I mean I wouldn't want to be in the position of defending Lance Storm against anyone (honestly he's a horrific wrestler, almost amazing how bad he was when I watched back all the ECW stuff and notably this opinion was shared by others who disagree with me on tons of things) let alone Jerry Lawler, but I also don't see anything innately wrong with the discussion just because the assumption ahead of time is that no middle ground can be reached

[W2BTD]

OK. Then here you go. I'll stop at 100. No particular order. As they come to mind. Have at it.

 

1. Davey Richards

2. Eddie Edwards

3. Kurt Angle

4. Dynamite Kid

5. Lance Storm

6. CIMA

7. Masato Yoshino

8. Akira Tozawa

9. Naruki Doi

10. Masaaki Mochizuki

11. Shingo

12. YAMATO

13. Dragon Kid

14. Genki Horiguchi

15. Ryo Saito

16. Hiroshi Tanahashi

17. Kazuchika Okada

18. Shinsuke Nakamura

19. Tomohiro Ishii

20. Tetsuya Naito

21. Satoshi Kojima

22. Jushin Liger

23. Prince Devitt

24. Kota Ibushi

25. KENTA

26. Naomichi Marufuji

27. Taiji Ishimori

28. Mitsuhara Misawa

29. Kenta Kobashi

30. Toshiaki Kawada

31. Bret Hart

32. Shawn Michaels

33. Antonio Cesaro

34. El Generico/Sami Zayn

35. Daniel Bryan

36. CM Punk

37. Ricky Steamboat

38. Randy Savage

39. Jun Akiyama

40. Austin Aries

41. Samoa Joe

42. Christopher Daniels

43. 2 Cold Scorpio

44. TJ Perkins

45. Roderick Strong

46. Arn Anderson

47. Dolph Ziggler

48. Rey Misterio Jr

49. Chris Hero

50. Dean Malenko

51. Eddie Guerrero

52. Chris Benoit

53. Sabu

54. Terry Funk

55. Steve Williams

56. Steve Austin

57. Scott Hall

58. Booker T

59. Shuji Kondo

60. Koji Kanemoto

61. Art Barr

62. El Hijo Del Santo

63. Adrian Neville/Pac

64. La Parka

65. Minoru Suzuki

66. TAKA Michinoku

67. El Samurai

68. Shinjiro Otani

69. Owen Hart

70. Bam Bam Bigelow

71. Vader

72. Sting

73. Davey Boy Smith

74. Frankie Kazarian

75. Jake Roberts

76. Bobby Fish

77. Kyle O'Reilly

78. ACH

79. Kevin Steen

80. Michael Elgin

81. Jay Lethal

82. Ricochet

83. AR Fox

84. Johnny Gargano

85. Chris Masters

86. Juventud Guerrera

87. Psichosis/Nicho

88. Blue Panther

89. Volador Jr

90. La Sombra

91. Ray Cometa

92. Mascara Dorada

93. Negro Casas

94. Seth Rollins

95. William Regal

96. Fit Finlay

97. Rob Van Dam

98. Jerry Lynn

99. Bobby Eaton

100. Great Sasuke

[W2BTD]

I mean, I don't want this to turn into a Jerry Lawler bash session. But I can literally type forever.

[Dylan Waco]

I mean, I don't want this to turn into a Jerry Lawler bash session. But I can literally type forever.

 

I actually don't care if it does turn into a Lawler bash session, but the next step is to say what you prefer about these guys to Lawler. Though I have been crazy enough to make such lists and literally defend EVERY single name on it, I don't expect that out of you (or anyone else really). But I would be interested to see what you prefer about say TJ Perkins to Lawler as a worker, and I would also be curious to know how much 80's Lawler you have seen.

 

I am a list guy of course, but it's usually the discussion that fuels or comes after the lists that makes the lists worthwhile

[W2BTD]

 

I mean, I don't want this to turn into a Jerry Lawler bash session. But I can literally type forever.

 

I actually don't care if it does turn into a Lawler bash session, but the next step is to say what you prefer about these guys to Lawler. Though I have been crazy enough to make such lists and literally defend EVERY single name on it, I don't expect that out of you (or anyone else really). But I would be interested to see what you prefer about say TJ Perkins to Lawler as a worker, and I would also be curious to know how much 80's Lawler you have seen.

 

I am a list guy of course, but it's usually the discussion that fuels or comes after the lists that makes the lists worthwhile

 

 

Dylan, there is literally zero chance i'm breaking down every guy on that list vs Lawler, lol.

 

I can summarize the crux of every defense with "I don't like the 80's Memphis wrestling style" (but love the promos and angles), but that kind of brings us back to square on.

 

Perkins, to me, is one of the underrated flyers of his era. Great athlete, innovative, smooth, crisp looking offense, good bumps, everything you want out of a fast paced junior worker. He's a very quirky guy, and I think his inability to stay one place and sink his teeth into a promotion for longer than ten minutes has sort of made him the most incognito talented wrestler of the last decade.

[Loss]

There are lots of things Dave can be criticized for, but not giving Memphis wrestling its due is not something I'd mark against him. He gave extensive coverage to the USWA long after the point that it was relevant, all the way to the bitter end in 1997. He's always been a big Lawler supporter too. He didn't neglect Memphis or Mid South. He neglected Portland. He probably neglected the AWA. But one reason Memphis wrestling has been canonized at the level it has been is (which may not be much) is because of WON coverage of things like the all-talking episode to build to Lawler vs Dundee Loser Leaves Town and the Lawler/Mantell vs Dundee/Landell Texas Death Match in '86. He has also called Watts and Jerry Jarrett the two best bookers he's ever seen in terms of producing exciting television.

[Slasher]

OK. Then here you go. I'll stop at 100. No particular order. As they come to mind. Have at it.

 

1. Davey Richards

2. Eddie Edwards

3. Kurt Angle

4. Dynamite Kid

5. Lance Storm

6. CIMA

7. Masato Yoshino

8. Akira Tozawa

9. Naruki Doi

10. Masaaki Mochizuki

11. Shingo

12. YAMATO

13. Dragon Kid

14. Genki Horiguchi

15. Ryo Saito

16. Hiroshi Tanahashi

17. Kazuchika Okada

18. Shinsuke Nakamura

19. Tomohiro Ishii

20. Tetsuya Naito

21. Satoshi Kojima

22. Jushin Liger

23. Prince Devitt

24. Kota Ibushi

25. KENTA

26. Naomichi Marufuji

27. Taiji Ishimori

28. Mitsuhara Misawa

29. Kenta Kobashi

30. Toshiaki Kawada

31. Bret Hart

32. Shawn Michaels

33. Antonio Cesaro

34. El Generico/Sami Zayn

35. Daniel Bryan

36. CM Punk

37. Ricky Steamboat

38. Randy Savage

39. Jun Akiyama

40. Austin Aries

41. Samoa Joe

42. Christopher Daniels

43. 2 Cold Scorpio

44. TJ Perkins

45. Roderick Strong

46. Arn Anderson

47. Dolph Ziggler

48. Rey Misterio Jr

49. Chris Hero

50. Dean Malenko

51. Eddie Guerrero

52. Chris Benoit

53. Sabu

54. Terry Funk

55. Steve Williams

56. Steve Austin

57. Scott Hall

58. Booker T

59. Shuji Kondo

60. Koji Kanemoto

61. Art Barr

62. El Hijo Del Santo

63. Adrian Neville/Pac

64. La Parka

65. Minoru Suzuki

66. TAKA Michinoku

67. El Samurai

68. Shinjiro Otani

69. Owen Hart

70. Bam Bam Bigelow

71. Vader

72. Sting

73. Davey Boy Smith

74. Frankie Kazarian

75. Jake Roberts

76. Bobby Fish

77. Kyle O'Reilly

78. ACH

79. Kevin Steen

80. Michael Elgin

81. Jay Lethal

82. Ricochet

83. AR Fox

84. Johnny Gargano

85. Chris Masters

86. Juventud Guerrera

87. Psichosis/Nicho

88. Blue Panther

89. Volador Jr

90. La Sombra

91. Ray Cometa

92. Mascara Dorada

93. Negro Casas

94. Seth Rollins

95. William Regal

96. Fit Finlay

97. Rob Van Dam

98. Jerry Lynn

99. Bobby Eaton

100. Great Sasuke

I am confused. Are those guys you enjoy watching more than Jerry Lawler, or are you legitimately arguing they are overall better than Lawler?

 

My sensibilities probably leans strongly towards yours in terms of what I look for in my ring work, but I have to admit Jerry Lawler's greatness in his ability to work. Sometimes, for some guys, less is more, and it really comes across well in a match. Granted, Lawler's not likely to bust out Canadian destroyers or Five Star Frog Splashes but it is a credit to him that a simple fist drop is just as popular, that lowering his strap elicits a reaction much superior to most of the guys on that list. Jerry Lawler IS great, no getting around it.

[W2BTD]

That's 100 random guys who popped in my head who I think are legitimately better than Lawler bell to bell.

 

I'd argue your second paragraph speaks more to the idea that Lawler is more charismatic than the guys on the list, not necessarily a better worker. No argument there. The discussion that led to the list was a poll on the Observer site which was heavily implied to be a list of great workers, which Lawler was not included and somebody took offense to (since Tanahashi was included, which personally I find absurd because to me Tanahashi is a million times better than Lawler). I argued he didn't belong on such a list.

 

This discussion also falls into some gray areas and the differences between work/workrate that Dylan alluded to earlier. Guys like Lawler & Hogan could get more out of less because of their charisma. That doesnt make them great workers in my opinion. You don't have to be a great worker to be a great pro wrestler who gets over and draws money. Im strictly talking bell to bell workrate.

[Slasher]

I can't argue with the general idea you are talking about-

 

Except to me, and maybe it is me alone, I define terms to the literal sense differently:

 

Pro Wrestler- What people seem to associate as the overall package, I see it as strictly a wrestling term. Ie: mat wrestler, high flier wrestler, etc. This is where I measure their strict ability to wrestle without the frills or the added measures like "charisma".

 

Worker- to me, that represents the whole package. You are working for everything you got. Some harder than others. You don't wrestle by doing mannerisms. You don't wrestle by stalling outside the ring. But you do WORK those things to elicit reactions.

 

Am I stupid for seeing things that way? Maybe.

[Matt D]

There are lots of things Dave can be criticized for, but not giving Memphis wrestling its due is not something I'd mark against him. He gave extensive coverage to the USWA long after the point that it was relevant, all the way to the bitter end in 1997. He's always been a big Lawler supporter too. He didn't neglect Memphis or Mid South. He neglected Portland. He probably neglected the AWA. But one reason Memphis wrestling has been canonized at the level it has been is (which may not be much) is because of WON coverage of things like the all-talking episode to build to Lawler vs Dundee Loser Leaves Town and the Lawler/Mantell vs Dundee/Landell Texas Death Match in '86. He has also called Watts and Jerry Jarrett the two best bookers he's ever seen in terms of producing exciting television.

 

That's interesting. He also reported on Portland way longer than he should have. My gut was that he didn't do it for the sake of Memphis and Portland but because they had weekly TV and they could make the world of wrestling look bigger than it was at the time. It was a reactionary move in a transitional time.

[KrisZ]

Dave made various trips to Memphis over the years so yeah I know he was into Memphis and he was pretty positive towards the territory but it always seemed that it didn't get the love that other territories got. Dave was way more into World Class than Memphis and TV availability was probably the reason as well as Dave lived there for a while but still.

Regarding Joe's list....I now fully understand what he is into as a fan and that's cool because that was the point of getting him to put out his 100 names but if you don't think Memphis could be all-action at times then you are mistaken because I think everyone who watched a good sample size of Memphis stuff from the 80's could tell you that it definitely wasn't a mat based territory. Memphis was more known for their wild brawling and a forerunner for what became ECW.

 

It's a shame we never got a Lawler/Flair houseshow match on tape because even though he has so many great matches with many great opponents a definitive Flair match could've opened more eyes to him. If you don't think having a great match against Flair doesn't help someone who rarely worked him...just check out the AWA results and how the Bock match ranked.

[cm funk]

His love of Tanahashi is getting to be too much. On that Observer Sin show he went on and on about how Tanahashi is the best in the world and so on.

 

There was a poll of the best wrestlers from 1980 till today and Tanahashi was included, but not Lawler or Funk. It's too much already.

 

 

The peak of the Tanahasi love on that show was Mike already declaring him WOTY for 2014 and even Dave had to slow him down and say, "It's February"

 

As far as Bryan's merch goes, I've bought one wrestling t-shirt in my entire life (Jerichoholic).....but I hear Dave and Alvarez harping on how terrible his merch is and I don't really see what's so terrible about it. I wouldn't buy any of it, but I wouldn't buy any of the shirts WWE makes. I think the maroon colour scheme works for Bryan, and those simple YES YES YES or NO NO NO shirts appear to have been big sellers based on how many of them you'd see in the crowd.

 

And whoever said that talk about merchandise started because of CM Punk.....you can't be serious. Merchandise has been a talking point since the 80's. I'm sure if somebody wanted to bother going back through the Observer archives you would find lots of talk of guys who move merch. God, just in the attitude era, you don't think Dave was talking about DX and Austin moving merch? Or the nWo shirts? Or ECW shirts? The idea that nobody was aware of merch moving until CM Punk in 2011 is absolutely absurd

[goodhelmet]

What did I miss? Who said merch wasn't being moved until CM Punk?

[Jimmy Redman]

I think what has changed with the merch talk, if anything, is that now with the dominance of the "WWE brand" in terms of the traditional measures of drawing (houses, PPV buys, etc.), a guy selling merch is one of the only ways left to demonstrate being a draw and making the company money as an individual.

 

Hogan, Austin and etc. sold merch, and it was talked about, but it wasn't basically the major measure of their popularity, because they also drew monster houses and PPV buys and ratings.

[cm funk]

That mainly had to do with merch not being an issue at the time. It's recently become a talking point as Bryan has started getting over, with him not getting as big a push because his merch wasn't a top seller. So recent stories from the WWE brass are making it known that merch is a big talking point for a guy getting a big push, which coincided with Punk's run.