ohtani's jacket

Danny Boy Collins was awful.

I just watched a bit of it on youtube. It was okay but the 2011 Muppets are to the 80s Muppets what 2011 WWE is to the 80s territories. Nevertheless, how is this any different from the usual backstage vignettes? They've been doing comedy in these things for years now and they've always made a mockery of kayfabe. I get where you're coming from, but the WWE is so far gone now down the entertainment route that I don't see why anyone would bat an eyelid at this sort of thing.

How many times did Lawler turn? Because if you want to get into the logic behind pro-wrestling a guy who turns back and forth a lot doesn't make a lot of sense.

Villano III vs. Rambo, mask vs. mask, 10/25/87 This was awesome. I don't know how much of it exists on tape since it was a Cronicas y leyendas de la lucha libre hatchet job that I watched, but I presume it's the whole thing since it's a handheld shot from ringside. Whatever the case, it was every bit as bloody and violent as the pictures suggest: And everything you'd expect from a Rambo vs. Villano mask match. In fact, having watched their later hair matches it's pretty much the capper. In lieu of a review let me just say that you know you're watching a hair match when Villano looks like that in the opening fall.

El Canek vs. Don Corleone, UWA World Heavyweight Championship, 2/14/82 This was okay, but I was expecting something different. I guess I was anticipating some sort of non-existent Ray Mendoza mat game from Canek, but it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill Canek match from this era. Canek was a guy who could do a lot of things athletically, but he was a bit of a boring prick really. The highlight here was Don Corelone, who had a great build for pro-wrestling and moved really beautifully. He was spry throughout this bout and did a number of cool spots, but they never went anywhere because of how lazy Canek's pacing was. Heavyweight bouts are obviously going to be wrestled slower than other lucha libre bouts to distinguish the weight classes from each other, but Canek loved the resthold/action/resthold/action pattern of heavyweight wrestling and seledom did anything to lengthen or shorten the periods of action and inaction. There was no flow to this and no discernable theme, but it all built to a tope like a lucha libre title match is supposed to, so I suppose it was job done as far as Canek was concerned. It didn't help that the crowd wasn't mic'ed, either. Without crowd noise, matches always look muted. The handheld footage of this show is much better than the Japanese TV coverage, IMO.

Why would anyone be surprised that Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero were the only picks on everyone's list? They were internet darlings at the time.

Atlantis, Lizmark, La Fiera, Ringo Mendoza, Fuerza Guerrera, Black Man, Mano Negra, Dos Caras, Javier Cruz, Gran Cochisse, Americo Rocca... Mexico was stacked beyond belief in the 80s.

Trash.

The answer is Yoshiaki Fujiwara.

I watched the Eddie Guerrero/Scorpio TV title match, which was okay but not great. Neither guy could adjust for the length and just kept pushing it along. Scorpio was great at dropping bombs, but I fail to see how anyone would regard him as a complete worker and Eddie's babyface acting was terrible up until 2004.

I really wanted to like it. I had this whole big idea worked up that I could watch bunches of Shane Douglas and Scorpio ECW matches, but unless there's something a little more solid and a lot less extreme I think I'll pass.

The opening exchanges are poor then they take it to "the extreme" with some convoluted spots on the outside and off the top rope mixed in with some inspid crowd brawling. The pre-match angle of Douglas not respecting the TV title is "who gives a shit?" material, the post match shoot promo is nauseating and Scorpio not going for the pin and attacking Douglas at the end is tripe. I dunno, I got away more enjoyment out of Douglas tagging with Steamboat and Scorpio tagging with Bagwell than I did from this match. I'm not a big fan of Arn's singles stuff from '92 (i.e. against Dustin and Big Josh), except for perhaps some of his shorter stuff, but his work in tags destroys this match seven times over.

Man, I just watched that Douglas/Scorpio match from '96 and I'm sorry but that was a fucking awful match, angle, post-match promo and spectacle in general.

Go back through the early parts of the thread. Lots of wrestlers names got tossed out. Several times. John Only Mad Dog gave a list of his 10 best workers. I want to see your Arn Anderson/Ricky Steamboat-less list. And as for Buck? Why not? Roll with it. Not everybody is going to agree with every single "project", but for those of us who hadn't watched a lot of early 90s WCW "Dustin of the Day" was an eye-opener. Dustin wasn't without his flaws and many of his matches were poor, but I still like him enough to go deep into that list. Pimping Buck, even if it's ridiculously left field, is still better than rolling out the Dean Malenkos and Chris Jerichos. I dunno. Maybe I'm just bored.

If the 90s had plenty of great wrestling matches then who were the 10 best workers? I'm not seeing a lot of commitment to the topic here.

If someone gets excited about Tito Santana's El Matador work and says it's great, it's not that difficult to conclude whether the person thinks it's truly "great" or is simply excited about what they've watched. The usage of the word is not that important compared to how compelling the person's enthusiasm is. It takes more than one person to decide that Tito Santana's El Matador work is great. If other people watch it and agree, it may or may not take on a life of its own, but it's a damn sight better than people clinging to the same 20 year old opinions. Nevertheless, this is getting off topic. The great matches criteria doesn't work, hence the difficulty in putting together a top ten. If there were workers with a laundry list of great matches it wouldn't be a problem, but there aren't and so different criteria must be applied. If people think Bret is the guy, then Bret's the guy. I don't ever want to watch another Bret Hart match so long as I live, but as Dylan said everyone after Bret is where it gets interesting. The fact that a top 10 doesn't immediately spring to mind is not a very good reflection on 90s wrestling, and it's not as though we haven't revisited it either. It's funny because it seemed great at the time.

Rude had a nice run in WCW as a marquee heel at the US title level, but he was a limited worker. Since when did Bret Hart have great matches past '96/97? His WCW run was awful.

The only problem is that he was boring as shit. I don't really agree with the notion that you have to had wrestled the majority of the 90s to qualify. In a perfect world, there would have been workers who were great for the entire length of the decade but there wasn't. A couple of peak years ought to be enough.

I think this is especially true in 2011 where you have guys (like me!) who think that everything is overrated and that the 13th best Arn Anderson performance in a Dangerous Alliance tag match is better than the best formerly pimped 90s match. Seriously, though, we've seen everything and thrashed it out a million times before. I think for many people it's a case of, "well, what else can I enjoy from the 90s?" Then maybe you have a guy who thinks "perhaps Tito Santana's run as El Matador is underrated", and off he goes. And I like that. I like that a lot. Lists like this should be idiocentric, otherwise we might as well look up Meltzer's list of star ratings or Loss' favourite matches and ring the bell.

Oh, and Jerry, you really need to stop judging everything based on PPV matches. There is no way that Arn vs. Flair is a top 5 match on any list bar "matches I never want to see again in my life." Thank you.

Judging this sort of thing by the number of great matches a worker had doesn't get us anywhere. Look at Eddie Guerrero's 1997: great heel turn, fantastic acting, but all he has to show for it match wise is one all-time great match against Rey Mysterio, Jr. and one or two other TV matches against him. Even if you look at his US work from '94-99 it's hard to find too many truly great matches yet many people liked Eddie as a worker and would consider him for the top 10 on that basis. Bret's best year was arguably 1994 and even then he only has the two matches against Owen, the TV match against 123-Kid and the Steiners tag if you're being generous, but again people liked the run. And that's what it boils down to for 90s US work -- great runs, not great matches. Flair's last great run (in my opinion) was 1990 and that was solely on the basis of big theatrical matches with Luger. Owen had a great run in 1994. Doink the Clown had a run in 1993, and on it goes. But I can't think of any two workers who was as consistently good week in, week out as Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat in 1992. It helped that WCW had a strong angle that year and great TV (for the first six months, anyway), but Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat were the MVPs of the heel and face sides, IMO. The argument that Arn was only solid is probably true, but solid (and by solid I would consider it truly entertaining) beats out 90% of the other wrestling in the 90s. No, he wasn't as shit hot as Tully Blanchard in the mid-to-late 80s, but US wrestling in the 90s wasn't anywhere near as good as US wrestling in the 80s so I don't see how that detracts from what was the best stuff of the 90s: the Dangerous Alliance feud. There are workers who I think had longer stretches of being solid than Arn and Steamboat, namely Windham from 1990-93 and Dustin Rhodes from '92-94, but I don't think either of those guys were ever as good in the ring as Arn and Steamboat at their best. Anyway, this is a tricky subject for the precise reason that there weren't endless great matches from US workers in the 90s. Personally, I would place consistency and "solid, but truly entertaining" above any other criteria. Hell, going off the deep end for a second, Arn's contribution to the Studd Stable feud is better in my eyes than anything Shawn Michaels did in the entire decade. But if matches are the criteria, I'd like to see the winner.

I don't think anybody for the rest of the decade touched what Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat were doing in 1992.

I think it depends on the style of wrestling. Many of the WoS guys looked great in their 50s and so do a lot of the older luchadores. The reason for this, presumably, is because they weren't huge bumpers. There's a big difference between the mat workers who look great and guys like Pirata Morgan and Emilio Charles, Jr.

Personally, I like the consummate showman heels like Satanico and Mick McManus. Any heel that does the same thing each match but is brilliant each and every time is a master performer in my books.

The British wrestling scene began struggling in the early 80s. Even before World of Sport was taken off the air, Joint Promotions was running fewer shows. The defections to All Star Promotions left it looking like '93 CMLL.