NintendoLogic

Is it really that difficult to understand? Yes. If you disagree please tell me what "technical wrestling" is. Pins, submissions, leverage-based takedowns. Catch-as-catch-can style techniques.

Here's the description for the Best Technical Wrestler category: Is it really that difficult to understand?

Personally, I think the best way to get into a style is to just dive right in and watch as much as you can until things start to make sense. If there are elements of the style that you don't quite understand, you can ask questions. But if those elements are a complete turn-off, you're probably never going to be a fan.

I would throw out the results with Sting in the semi-main, especially if Hogan or Flair is in the main event. It wasn't like he was Bruno Sammartino and voluntarily stepped down after drawing huge for years.

Sting for HOF: he never had a decisive role in wrecking a company! More pompous than deciding that something isn't worth discussing if it didn't happen in 80s WWF or 90s WCW?

Any thoughts on Jovan Belcher? The Benoit parallels should be pretty obvious. A couple of quick thoughts from me: One, if the autopsy reveals even a hint of steroid use and/or brain damage, the ensuing shitstorm will absolutely dwarf the Benoit coverage. It could reach the level of the Black Sox scandal. Two: If Roger Goodell's record of disregard for player safety didn't already put him in Vince McMahon territory, his insistence that the show must go on a la Over the Edge surely has.

I don't know if they want to face the potential embarrassment of falling short of the record set by the NBA All-Star Game. I don't think that's an issue. Like with the Super Bowl, most of the attendees are from out of town. Hell, Detroit's pretty much a post-apocalyptic wasteland and it hosted a recent Wrestlemania.

This is precisely my problem with Vickie Guerrero today. The only comeuppance she ever gets is of the goofy slapstick pie-in-the-face variety, which would be fine if she were a harmless comedy act like heel Santino. But she's frequently the focal point of the show. She's currently feuding with John Cena, for chrissakes.

A Hall of Fame is supposed to celebrate extraordinary achievement. What about Sting was objectively great? No one's claiming that he was a super worker. As for drawing, even if we assume for the sake of argument that he drew better than anyone else in early 90s WCW, that's hardly a feather in his cap. Being the tallest pygmy is not a HOF qualification. Neither is being a guy who was in the mix during, but not the main catalyst of, a boom period. The only thing extraordinary about Sting's career was his push, which is explicitly not what the WON HOF is supposed to be about.

I'm rather shocked that you think a Sting/Bret comparison works in Sting's favor. What exactly does Sting have over Bret? Was he a better worker? A bigger draw? More influential?

The Sting debate kind of reminds me of the sabermetrician/traditionalist divide in baseball. You can point to all kinds of numbers showing that Sting wasn't really the featured guy in WCW all that often and usually didn't do great business when he was. But to a lot of people, it felt like Sting was the top guy, so he must have been.

Didn't All Japan sell out their Budokan shows just by selling tickets to those in attendance at the previous show without announcing the card?

According to Dave, Sting barely moved any merch at all and WCW execs lamented that the Little Stingers they kept pushing didn't actually exist.

I defy anyone to name a single thing wrong with this match.

I think Orton is good in that you can plug him in with anybody and he'll hold up his end. But he's not going to carry a lesser worker to greatness. Dave recently said that he thought the three best workers in WWE were Orton, Rey, and Bryan because they have good matches and aren't generic WWE style workers. I found this mind-boggling since to me, Orton is practically the poster child for the cookie-cutter WWE style.

Wasn't Hansen blackballed in the US for several years after the whole deal with the AWA?

Again, if you don't think Punk or Danielson have done enough yet to merit induction, don't vote for them. I don't see the issue.

So Orton's best matches are against Foley in Foley's signature gimmick match and against Cena during a period when Cena was a borderline superworker. Sounds about right.

Dave fed up with the idiots on the board:

It has to be a positive influence.

Here are the matches that were in the OP that I subsequently dropped: Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Jack Brisco (8/28/76) Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dynamite Kid (2/5/80) Nick Bockwinkel vs. Billy Robinson (12/11/80) Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (3/23/81) Jim Duggan vs. Ted DiBiase (3/22/85) Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage (Wrestlemania III, 3/29/87) Ultimate Warrior vs. Rick Rude (Summerslam, 8/28/89) Sting's Squadron vs. Dangerous Alliance (Wrestlewar, 5/17/92) Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude (Beach Blast, 6/20/92) Bret Hart vs. 123 Kid (Raw, 7/11/94) I also had the following matches in an earlier draft of the list: Bob Backlund vs. Greg Valentine (2/19/79) Devil Masami vs. Chigusa Nagayo (8/22/85) Manami Toyota/Toshiyo Yamada vs. Mayumi Ozaki/Dynamite Kansai (11/26/92) For the most part, these are matches I found myself liking less the more I watched them, which would seem to indicate inappropriateness for a desert island list.

Plus, wrestling in America is as unpopular now as it's ever been. Cena's not the main problem, but he's not completely blameless either. I see this a lot, but there were no $10 million on-sale ticket days happening in 1994. So they've managed to preserve Wrestlemania's value as a special attraction. What about the other 364 days of the year? For that matter, how did the last Rock-less Wrestlemania do? It did a hell of a lot better than anything in the mid-90s. In 2010, WWE did 3,631,100 PPV buys. 61% of those were domestic, which comes out to a little over 2.2 million. By comparison, they did 2,252,200 buys in fiscal 1997 (that is, the period ending in April 30 of that year and beginning on May 1 of the previous year) and 2,831,700 buys in fiscal 1996, all of which were domestic. The comparison looks even worse when you consider how much bigger the PPV universe is today than it was back then. Also, I said that wrestling was at a low point, not just WWE. Compare mid-90s WWF+WCW+ECW+SMW+USWA+whatever else to today's WWE+TNA+ROH+whatever else.

HOF eligibility is strictly opt-in. If you don't think someone's ready to be inducted yet, don't vote for him. I don't see the problem. Anyway, I said earlier in this thread that the only guys not yet eligible who are strong candidates are Punk, Danielson, and Mistico.

Plus, wrestling in America is as unpopular now as it's ever been. Cena's not the main problem, but he's not completely blameless either. I see this a lot, but there were no $10 million on-sale ticket days happening in 1994. So they've managed to preserve Wrestlemania's value as a special attraction. What about the other 364 days of the year? For that matter, how did the last Rock-less Wrestlemania do?

I've decided to cull the list a little more, bringing it to an even 40. I dropped a few matches that were too short and/or gimmicky. In so doing, I conformed not only with my preference for straight wrestling matches but with my OCD need for nice round numbers. I don't foresee any more major revisions of my list, but you never know with this sort of thing.