Discuss here.

I want for Arn to be on my list because he is a personal favorite, but I am not sure he has the matches. He has plenty of good matches and a few great ones, but nothing truly elite. I am having a hard time even deciding what his best match is since most are jumbled up in that "very good" tier.

 

If I could put him on my list by virtue of having some of my all-time favorite one-liners and stooging spots, I would. The "look how smart I am!" point to the head right before eating a fist to the face; always winding up with his head stuck in-between the two rings in a War Games match; "He's just a man!"; his goose bump inducing introduction of Flair during his 1998 return, ect. I love all of that.

I'm gonna find some room for him on my list, I think. Up there in the discussion for best tag wrestler ever, great psychology, snug work, great timing, great talker. If he isn't on my list, I'll be surprised.

I don't know if this is his greatest match, but it's certainly my favorite: The Enforcers (Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko) vs. Dustin Rhodes and the returning Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat at Clash of the Champions XVII on November 19, 1991.

What's an outright bad Arn performance? What's a not very good Arn performance? I'm just curious what people can source. He's got lows that are higher than most people's, no?

I'd say his stuff with The Renegade was probably his career low.

Arn was a guy who could eat up 10-15 minutes on a card and deliver. He could work anywhere on the card from main event to opening match. A great promo, and specialized in tag matches. He always had sound psychology in the ring. He should make my list.

I'd say his stuff with The Renegade was probably his career low.

 

I might rewatch that match tonight. I'm kind of curious how savvy he is in it. Granted, I penalize a guy like Shawn for being clever in the ring but using that for something other than the good of the match, so I'm tempted to if Arn did as well. It shows me a couple of things if that's the case. It's not exactly the same as some of Shawn's greatest hits mind you, but there was a ton of backstage drama about that match.

I recall Arn selling his ass off for Renegade and stooging like mad for him. It's more "career low" in a "I can't believe they asked him to do that" sort of way.

 

Same with the awful "main event" of GAB 91 (vs. Rick Steiner).

 

Arn is Mr. Consistency. He'll always give you 7/10 or 8/10, but he'll seldom give you 10/10. By the same token, he'll seldom give you 5/10 either.

 

I can't really think of an outright bad Arn performance and I've seen a lot of his matches. I wasn't a fan of his match with Regal when I saw it years ago, but am reserving judgement till I hit again it with Chad.

I don't disagree with Jerry about Arn -- not a ton of home runs, but he'll get you 50 doubles and a great OPS. How many great singles matches does he have? How many long singles does he even have? Was the Big Josh match his longest? There are probably countless tag or multi-man matches he was a part of that were great, but the list of 1 on 1s probably has a lot of doubles. I can't imagine my list without Arn.

People seriously need to see the late 91 Arn vs Windham TV match. I THINK OJ likes that one too. It's probably on dailymotion as part of a WCW Pro Chicago or something but I'd have to track it down.

I tried searching for that recently and couldn't find it. If someone can find it, I really want to watch it.

Arn elevated everything he was in, and his volume of good stuff is huge. Great tag worker, excellent TV singles worker, added all kinds of nifty touches to multi-man matches. Could swing from comedy to deadly seriousness as smoothly as anyone. He's a guy you'd want in your wrestling company and the perfect representative of the MattD school of what makes a wrestler good (or at least my interpretation of that). A worthy top 50 pick.

I tried searching for that recently and couldn't find it. If someone can find it, I really want to watch it.

 

Some guy on Dailymotion uploaded the episode but made it private.

Arn elevated everything he was in, and his volume of good stuff is huge. Great tag worker, excellent TV singles worker, added all kinds of nifty touches to multi-man matches. Could swing from comedy to deadly seriousness as smoothly as anyone. He's a guy you'd want in your wrestling company and the perfect representative of the MattD school of what makes a wrestler good (or at least my interpretation of that). A worthy top 50 pick.

 

Completely agree. This is Arn in a nutshell.

I tried searching for that recently and couldn't find it. If someone can find it, I really want to watch it.

 

Looks like it was taken down. Sorry. I'll keep an eye out though.

 

EDIT: Or what OJ said.

 

EDIT2: Arn is pretty much the perfect representative of the Matt D school of what makes a wrestler good, yes. BUT because of that, I'm going to put him under further scrutiny than I would otherwise. Including watching Renegade and Erik Watts matches.

Arn is one of my five favorite wrestlers ever, but I also think he is an easy pick for this project on merit. If you want to argue that he lacks that one definitively great singles match I suppose that's possible, but hes been in some tremendously great tags and multi-man matches where he's been a stand out performer. More importantly I would argue that Arn was one of the single most consistent wrestlers I've ever seen. He broke in as a big player in 85 and was effectively done by early 96 IIRC, and I really don't think he lost much of anything at any point, as he always had good matches against anyone he was asked to work with during that stretch. Even in 95 WCW which was the absolute shits in many ways, Arn had a good year, to the point where I think he was the best guy in WCW and arguably even the entire U.S. that year. He also gets extra points for me for having two of my all time favorite offensive spots - the Arn spinebuster and the Arn DDT. That is to say nothing of his stooging and the multiple roles he could play even within the context of a single bout. He's obviously not a tip top tier guy, and I'm thinking he'll be middle of the pack on my ballot, but if someone argued him up around the 25 mark I wouldn't think it was odd

I won't have him in the Top quarter but he'll rank well. I think the Regal match may be his best singles match ever but I love that match so there it is.

I don't know how Mookie's algorithms will work, but if virtually everyone has Arn in their top 50, but only a handful of guys have El Dandy ranked high up, what happens does Arn finish higher than El Dandy?

 

I ask because I think there's a realistic chance that Arn will be one of the guys with the highest percentage of ballots even if no one has him top 10.

Arn has a few standout singles matches that I think are great. The first two that come to mind are the Regal match and his WCWSN match with Dustin Rhodes in 1992, but there are definitely others. The Barry Windham 2/3 falls match, Flair at Fall Brawl '95, a long-ish Ron Garvin match in the 80s and probably more. I don't really see that as an issue for Arn. His career isn't chock full of them, but they are there.

It depends. If ten guys have Dandy averaged at the tenth spot (lets say at 90 points a pop) for 900 points. Arn averages out at 50 on 25 ballots (1250 points) then I think Arn goes ahead unless there is a bonus system for Top Ten placements.

Interesting. So in theory if 100% of people put Arn as their #50 pick, he could end up as something like #30 overall.

 

I'll say now, watch Arn as a darkhorse for a top 20 finish overall. He's one of the few guys who I think has practically universal love.

Dude, I am not a math expert. I really should let mookieghana answer that on. Then again, if people are doing their due diligence and then not putting Dandy on their ballot, their ballot is shite.

Yeah, quick math shows that being on a lot of ballots means more than high placement in this point system unless you're near the bottom.

He was the master of the studio match . He had matches in the 3 star range with Denny Brown , Mike Jackson, and maybe Sam Houston . It says something about being able to that with underneath talent.