El-P

She's poisonous to the product. At this point she's way worse than Dixie, who was simply a terrible promo and an idiotic character (and was hotter too) in an irrelevant promotion. Stephy is just grating and hurts whatever she touches with her insecurity, castrating tendencies and just fucking WWEUniversetm awful acting.

Oh yeah, Ross was almost unbearable in UWF. The story of Rosss being that all-time greatest announcer ever really derives from WWE history again. He could be great. He could be downright annoying and grating too at points.

Yes. Which is pretty easy since I've never seen a DiBiase match or performance I'd really call *great*. I thought Buddy Robert was the best worker of the three at this point. Still, Gordy was at least very good there too.

Agreed. Been watching a lot of WCCW lately, and it really was the last piece of the puzzle, but Gordy really didn't have much very strong matches there. Then again, nobody seemingly did. And working mostly against the Von Erichs, well. Gordy did the best work possible in this context. There's something of an overgrown Terry Funk about young Gordy. Ruled it in Japan both in the 80's and 90's. Carried the team with Doc before Doc became what he became. Was terrific in MId-South. But yeah, if you're going by legit out of this world great matches, there's something missing, but let's be honest, we're not into DiBiase territory here, Gordy had plenty of excellent matches on his resume. As far as comparison goes, Windham was better, because peak Windham I'd put against anyone, Misawa included. Heel Blackwell maybe was on the same level or even better than Gordy, I dunno. Face Blackwell certainly wasn't. All the other guys are below Gordy (although Race is the closest).

NXT Takeover is this week, right ? Finally something I might watch, and enjoy.

Ah ah. ! That's funny as shit.

Well, I can play the petty quoting game too : So sorry. As far as Race goes, I'll write stuff about him whenever I feel like it and certaily not pertaining to Flair. You'll have to live with your assumptions in the meantime.

Holy shit, seriously ?

Please explain to me what *my* notion of Harley Race is. Since I haven't made one post about Harley neither in the Microscope nor the GOAT poll sub-forum, good luck sir.

The whole thing is great. It doesn't mean I can't judge the individual performances. And Hamaguchi and Fujiwara's really weren't up to their working standarts to me, and their segment didn't do much for me, I think it was kinda goofy to be honest (as Fuji can be at times, as opposed to great, although the shit eating grin at the end was awesome). Yatsu, Takada, Fujinami & Choshu were the clear standouts in this thing.

This is so much bullshit. Get over by yourself and they will break you because you're "not supposed to".

Oh yeah. They showed up all the other guys. (BTW, I was quite disapointed with Animal Hamaguchi and Yoshiaki Fujiwara in this, two guys I'm a big fan of) But yeah, Yastu was first and foremost a tag guy since his peak came with the Ishin Gundan. But what a great worker for a few years.

I didn't realize the Houston footage was this early. And yeah, cocaine is one hell of a drug.

Well, it's true that working with the Von Erichs just isn't the easiest way to have really good matches. It never kept Terry Gordy and Buddy Robert from looking excellent though, and Chris Adams from looking really solid.

Duh.

So yeah, I'm watching a bunch of WCCW, and here are some Flair matches showing up. Most of them against Kerry, but here I get this match against Terry Gordy, on January 11, 85. Gordy is a babyface at this point, turning after showing respect toward Kerry von Erich after an excellent Texas Death match against Killer Khan. So there we get a rather short Flair match. Flair's pre-match antics with Sunshine are pretty classic. The match, on the other hand, is not. This is the typical exemple of Flair forcing his fomula and spots on a guy who just wouldn't work that way. Gordy is a big guy crazy bump taker and first class brawler. Stuff Gordy almost never do : press slam, figure four. Stuff Gordy is very good at : crazy brawling, big bumps. What do we get here ? Well, Flair first seems to want to work on Gordy's arm. Then tries a piledriver and seemingly works toward the neck with some restholds headlock then a few neck twists. Then finally gets to a piledriver. Ok. Then goes…. to the figure four of course, despite not having worked on Gordy's knee one bit. And of course, it gets reversed into a badly applied small package, because that's a token Flair spot. Flair is a figure four specialist, or so we're told, but everyone can counter him when he tries to apply it. Cool Flair spot that pops the crowd. Dumb psychology when you spent the last few minutes of match working on your opponent's neck. Anyhoo. Then we get Gordy doing what ? Well, Applying the figure four of course. Because that's what Gordy does in a match usually…. Yawn. Likewise press slams. He does it twice to Flair here. Again : cool Flair spots to pop the crowd. Press slams ? Ok, Gordy's a big dude, that makes sense, although it really never did it to a Von Erich boy when he was the Freebird monster and workhorse. Let's say that's the way Gordy works as a face (of course, it's really not, but hey, gotta give Flair some flack here). Figure four ? Okaaaaaay, let's say it's a revenge spot, because Flair tried it earlier. So it's actual… good psychology ? Of course, that's pushing it way beyond the realm of match analysis toward the "let's make shit up to justify every Flair spot". We know it's just a Flair spot, really. And Gordy isn't using the figure four, like ever. Still, kayfabewise, Gordy the big goofy looking brawler is a better technician than Ric Flair. Okay, enough justification, we know it's just a damn Flair spot. Everybody else does it, so why not Gordy ? And then, we get a shit finish with an awkward back suplex, with Flair using the ropes with one feet while the four shoulders looked flat on the mat. Gordy thinks he won, but Flair really did. You know, lot of Flair matches had those kind of anticlimatic finishes. Really not a great finish guy (and don't tell me it's because of the 80's or WCCW. The Von Erich and the Freebirds had tons of hot finishes to their matches). Gordy vs Killer Khan was much better because both worked the gimmick very well and told a story. This was just Flair doing a bunch of his cool spots with Gordy until a flat finish. We didn't really see Gordy beat the shit out of Flair like he should, or Flair actively killing Gordy's leg trying to put down the big guy, with Gordy doing his Terry Funk on growth hormones selling. It was a good little match with a bunch of token spots which really had no meaning apart from "and now, for your viewing pleasure, the Ric Flair show". But nothing new really. This probably has been written 20 years ago already. Flair would make my top 20.

This is obnoxious as fuck, really. I'd rather take one exemple of why Flair was not a smart worker in the GOAT poll thread at this point, although talking about Flair really is boring to me.

When I talk about Edge being the one who introduced stupid looking indieriffic moves with physics that don't make any sense, I think that one is the all-time worse. Plus, you forgot to mention that to accomplish that, Edge himself was talking an ass bump. It's basically Edge taking an ass bump so his opponent takes a regular back bump. Looks awkward as hell, doesn't make sense in any way shape or form. Just fucking grab the guy's head and throw him back on the ground instead of pulling his ears/whatever while you're going along for a useless and stupid bump yourself.

Have been watching a bunch of WCCW over the last few months. Not impressed. Nothing strikes me as particulary good yet.

I'll give you that. I actually really enjoyed her at that Mania, doing a totally decent Woman tribute act at ringside. That's the last time I enjoyed Stephy (and HHH for that matter).

Oh fuck. Anyway. If anyone can supply me with say, 20 MNM matches (apart from the WWECW one of course, been there done that), I'll probably check them out.

Thanks. I'll check it. Wait, LOD ? What ?

Grimmas, on 02 Oct 2015 - 7:39 PM, said: Well Stephanie is a good promo... In some alternate universe maybe. And like I mentionned before, it's really unfair to say X or Y is a good "promo" these days, since no one expect maybe one or two people cut actual promos anymore. They're all terrible actors badly delivering terrible written lines, really. I've seen better acting in 90's French porn or AB sitcoms. Ok, maybe not AB sitcoms.

Come on. Triple H made Booker T and Chris Jericho into legit main eventers too. He's a star maker and he got over just as big as The Rock and Steve Austin back in the days. And Stephy is a great promo. Get with the program people, you'll get them on TV until you (or WWE) die now.

Ok people. Me want match list. I really liked the December to Dismember match against the Hardies, and the act looks terrific. If I watch some 00's WWE in the time I got left, this will be it.