The Microscope

I was listening to Steve Austin's podcast and he mentioned that Bob Orton, Jr. is one of his favourite wrestlers to watch. What is the best stuff to watch from him? He always seemed great on the 80's set matches, but he seems like a guy like Bossman where he is great, however doesn't have many great matches. Although his prime may be in he 70's, I am not sure. The arm cast gimmick was really great though.

I've always been a huge fan of Larry, my fandom for peaked during his run as AWA champ, he could get a watchable match out of any opponent. The only peer I can think of for pure heel hate was Tully Blanchard. Larry could be teamed with Arn, Rude or whoever and you can bet the chant you'd hear would be "Larry Sucks" I know he gets a lot of flack for his stalling techniques but I think it was used effectively because fans who otherwise would just be going along with the show or bored would be actively rooting for whoever Larry was up against to just kick his ass, thus an effective heel. I love Larry's promos. He always sounded intelligent & like he believed ev…

As I work my way back through 1988 & 1989 Clash's & PPV's (particularly the Clash's), the running theme is that The Fantastics are the best workers on nearly every show they appear on. I remembered them being really good, but they were really, REALLY good. And '88-'89 may not even be their peak. I'm a Midnight's fan but The Fantastics blow them away during the period. Anyway, I couldn't find a thread, so here it is. Let's talk about The Fantastics. Interested to see what people think, and i'll have more detailed thoughts later.

I think what I love about Austin is that he is not a prodigy. He works fuckin' hard and smart. He got a head because of effort. I love when a hard worker gets rewarded. Don't get me wrong, I think he always had it, but he did not always know how to convey "it" to an audience. What you see him in WCW is him putting together the whole package in terms of ring presence, timing and showmanship. He never had the biggest arsenal, but he always knew to make the most out of it. For now, I am going to focus on the tail end of his WCW career: his post-Blondes period and WCW US Championship reign. Flair seemed to have big plans for him in January of '94 before it kind of fizzled. He…

It's well known that Dave Meltzer always thought of DiBiase as a technical wrestler and as one of the best in the world. That opinion has since been challenged on boards like this and DVDR and DiBiase no longer enjoys his position as being a "top 5 worker anywhere in the world for the 1980s". Will is one of the more vocal defenders of DiBiase and his line is that we shouldn't think of Ted as a technician but as a brawler and that his best matches in MidSouth are bloody brawls. I was reading one of the books I got recently: The Prowrestling Hall of Fame: The Tag Teams by Greg Oliver and Steven Johnson. DiBiase and Steve Williams have an entry. Let me quote from it:…

I need to finish up my 80s WWF tag team watching, but I am close enough to done that I am starting my next project: WCW's midcard from approximately GAB 1991 -Bash at the Beach '94. So I am definitely going to need a Brian Pillman thread to house this all. So after Pillman delivered one of the greatest performances in Wargames history. He had a heated feud with Barry Windham that could have elevated him to the World Title contender status. You could tell how much Flair loved working with Pillman and how much of a star vibe Pillman had in 1991. Then they ran the angle where Pillman is retired, but comes back as the Yellow Dog. I kinda shit on this angle in a '91 year…

So I've always been a huge Waltman fan. From the days on the indies with Ricky Blues and Perry Saturn and Bill Wilcox..... to when he hit tv with Global and was redefining the flying wrestler in the United States..... And then his WWF run. Amazing debut and I really have to give him even more props for sustaining his heat for those first couple WWF years from 93-95, given how badly Colin Delaney has kinda failed in the same role. I got to thinking of all my favorite Waltman stuff and it was really interesting to see how many roles this guy excelled in during his career. You had him as the underdog babyface in WWF - Razor matches, the classic Bret match, wh…

Always thought he had a bright future but he came a few years too late. I thought he was an excellent douche bag heel almost the same style as some of punks stuff. Not really sure I can point to that one big match of his though. I like his roh stuff and his matches with homicide were good along with the dusty Rhodes from ecw but I dont know if those would be his stand out matches or not. He was a great blader too for what its worth. I know that's not a great quality to look for but I always thought he wore the crimson mask well and he looked good bleeding

So what would everyone's picks be for the matches where famed JCP referee Tommy Young contributed the most? I have a friend who's getting a lot of indy bookings as a ref and I want to show him Tommy's best stuff. I can come up with the consensus best matches Tommy refereed but I'm more looking for his standout performances.

So I have been talking with a few people about Lex Luger. I feel his mistake was going to the WWF so that got me thinking... Do you feel the same way and also who else if any do you think would have been better off by staying in the NWA/WCW?

Besides Savage, Backlund is my favorite 80s WWF performer and it seems that jdw has already done a pretty good exploring him, which only makes my exploration of him that much more enjoyable. Even in my formative years as a fan, reading about the '94 Backlund angle intrigued me as it was the story of a man who snapped because he had hit rock bottom and there is nothing more dangerous than a man who just doesn't give a fuck anymore. However, it has only been recently that I have actually watched Backlund's work from his prime. I like grappling and chain wrestling a lot and that is what I figured I would get with Mr. Backlund, but I have found him to be pretty much in …

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on Koko. He was always one of my favorites growing up watching WWF. I loved The Birdman gimmick and thought with a solid push considering how popular he was maybe he could have gotten the IC title. After watching the Memphis set my fondness for Koko grew and I thought he was much more versatile and a better worker than he is given credit for being. People always crap on his HOF induction but I had no issues with it. What do you guys think of The Birdman??

Cody Rhodes is from the generation of inoffensive wrestlers. You know when everyone kinda just looked and wrestled like Randy Orton. I never hated Cody and never liked him. He always just elicited apathy from me. The "Dashing" Cody Rhodes bit and subsequent mask stuff at least gave him a hook, but in the ring I always found him overly mechanical and just someone who thinks too much in the ring about what he is doing. Even on first pass when he united with his brother, I was totally focused on the rejuvenation of Goldust. I thought Cody was his usual adequate self. Goldust was just overshadowing him. Watching the matches back (and watching the PPV matches for the first tim…

In the Fave Five thread, I talked about how Bret Hart is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time, and I will always maintain that his very best matches rank among the very best in wrestling history. Others aren't nearly as enamored of him. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to seem like I'm calling anybody out, but I've seen plenty of posts denigrating him both here and at places like DVDVR and WKO. There have been a ton of wrestler-specific threads sprouting up as of late, so I figured the time was right to discuss this. What's everyone's take on Bret? Is he the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be? Or will putting the letter …

This comes up enough and I know some people hate it but we could at least have a master thread for it and try and discuss this intelligently. I want to broach the topic in the form of a question - if we were doing another Greatest Wrestler Ever poll would Michaels make your top hundred? We can bring the comparisons in from there and talk about him up against other guys, et.

The ALL PURPOSE Necro Butcher Thread

There seems to be a lot of hate around the interwebs for Shane Douglas, and I've never quite understood why. The Dynamic Dudes stuff was before my time, but I'm guessing almost no one could have succeeded in that role. My first exposure to Douglas was as a white meat babyface in WCW. Even as a kid, I hated white meat babyfaces, but Douglas made it work - first as a singles wrestler and then as the tag team partner of Ricky Steamboat. It would be easy and convenient to credit Steamboat, but Douglas "got over" with me even before that team. Fast-forward a year or two later: Douglas was now a heel as "The Franchise" of ECW. Say what you want about his "shoot" promos …

I watched the Steamboat/Orndorff match from Halloween Havoc '93. These two match up well and they have a good match in them, but it just can't seem to come out. There's so much dead time and there are a few times where they cross signals. That said, Orndorff is a talented wrestler, to a point where it seems like there would be an excellent Orndorff match somewhere out there, but I have yet to find it. I liked the Santana match on the WWF set, the Olympia match on the Mid South set, a Piper match from MSG, and his Cactus Jack match from SuperBrawl III, and those are all matches that have their moments, but I wouldn't call any of them great. He's a guy I really wa…

I have really grown to enjoy Sgt Slaughter's work from my limited viewing of his matches. His matches with Sheik are all they are cracked up to be. Plus I liked his WWF heel runs in '81 & '83. Even his Desert Storm match with Hogan in '91 is wicked good. Since my interest has been piqued in Nikolai Volkoff, I remembered I gave a cursory glance at a tag match with JYD against Sheiky & 'Ol Nik in the Spectrum No Holds Barred. Sgt. Slaughter & Junkyard Dog vs Iron Sheik & Nikolai Volkoff - Philly 11/84 The babyface shine seemed so weak and stilted. JYD looks like a broken down man at this point and is having a lot of trouble moving. All his offense…

Triple H has always been someone who was just there. When I was younger, I just accepted he was "great" because they told me he was. No doubt, Triple H has been in great matches. For example, I consider the Royal Rumble street fight one of the better matches in WWF history, but even then I never had a really strong attachment to him. When I got back into wrestling in 2003, I believed the story that it was not HHH's fault that 2003 sucked something fierce, but it was his opponents. In retrospect, he definitely needs to take a lot of the blame for 2003 with his long, long promos. The reincarnation of DX was pretty friggin' awful, but still I never really hated HHH. Maybe, I…

Muraco is one of my favourite wrestlers ever. However, Muraco is one of those guys that never gets talked about. I think this happens due to lack of footage. There is almost no footage of his San Francisco, Hawaii or Georgia runs. There is promos that are amazing, but not much in the ring. Even the matches with Jack Brisco are clipped. What does exist is a few great years of him in the WWF, then the period of him getting fat and lazy and horribly miscast as a babyface. You can find some great matches in that period, though. The Backlund matches were pretty awesome, as well as the Snuka matches. Watching him at his best, he is great though. His selling is awesom…

Sting has the excellent Vader series. Then there was that time he wrestled Vader. After that, he had great matches with Vader. Luger had the strong Horsemen run, the Flair series, and great matches with Tommy Rich, Brian Pillman and Dick Murdoch. I think there are others. For ring performance, I prefer Luger. All of you Sting fans can list how he was the franchise player, he sold out an outhouse in Tupelo and how he was cool in the rafters. I'll take late 80s / early 90s Luger over Sting's entire career every day of the week.

Mutoh is probably the most famous Japanese wrestler in America except maybe Jushin Liger and Yoshi Tatsu (I keed, I keed) though I believe most people seem to be down on his work. I presume there are some Muta marks as the gimmick definitely lend itself to creating some buzz as The Great Muta is a wicked cool gimmick. I find his matches to be really polarizing and maybe it deals with how much effort he puts in. But I think he just has a weird sense of psychology. It is hard to place your finger on, but there is something off-kilter about most Muta matches. It is usually he is trying to hard to be clever like when he goes under the ring. Usually his best matches are his st…

This question was posed to rovert by shawmic in the New Japan thread and I thought the thread had the possibility to be derailed by name calling and such. Anyway, rovert, why do you like Devitt? What about his style makes him a good wrestler? What are the best matches you would point to in showing what a great wrestler he is?

I love me some Phil Hickerson and it's a shame that he never fully devoted himself to the business because whenever he came around he was easily one of the best guys on the Memphis roster. Hickerson worked regularly in the late 70's mainly teaming with Dennis Condrey in one of the greatest tag teams of the era but footage of that team is extremely rare and when the 80's started Phil disappeared. Phil had outside ventures such as running a night club and being a radio DJ based out of Jackson, Tennessee and he basically took the first 4 years of the 80's off until returning with The Spoiler (Frank Morrell) to start a feud with the New Fabs (Eddie Gilbert & Tommy Rich). …