What's more important to you: how great wrestlers were at their best, or how great wrestlers were over the course of their careers? This is something that comes up a lot when talking about baseball's Hall of Fame and I was wondering how people here applied it to this project. For me, I generally think about wrestlers in terms of how much they've done rather than best vs. best. Some questions:

 

How long is a peak to you? How many matches or what amount of time is required for someone to establish greatness?

Is it possible for someone to make your list without ever having been great at any point in his/her career?

Who's your top all peak candidate?

Who's your top no peak candidate?

This is THE question to me. People have been using it in whichever way it furthers the case of the guy they want to further the case for.

 

I don't know how to look at this. There are guys I see shitty later in their career and I think of it negatively, while there are others who have a short peak which I think of as strong.

 

This shouldn't be a case by case basis, but luckily I have a year to figure it out.

How do you take a guy like Volk Han, for example, who made tape around 50 times, and compare him to say, Bret Hart who has made tape thousands of times?

 

I bring this up because in my opinion, Volk Han has about 5 matches that are better than any match Bret Hart has ever had. So, peak Volk Han vs peak Bret Hart is clearly in the favor of Volk Han. But, what about the hundreds of matches that Bret proved to be a great worker in compared to the 50 matches of Volk Han? It depends on how you measure quality over quantity.

 

Bottom line, 'peak' performances/periods are usually tie-breakers of sorts when comparing workers, but you can't ignore everything else. However, how a performer was at his absolute best to me is probably the most important thing when looking at a worker historically.

I think we've had a thread on this before, haven't we, right at the start?

 

But, anyway, longevity only factors in for me when the peak is very close; I'd rather write one Hamlet than a dozen Streetcars.

Another word to take into consideration is consistency.

If peak is all that matters then we might as well only judge each wrestler by his single best match or performance and ignore everything else. A guy's whole career needs to be taken into account as much as possible in relation to everyone else he's being graded against.

 

Let's say Wrestler A was decent at best for 10 years but had an amazing peak for 1 year. Wrestler B had a 1 year peak that was just a notch below Wrestler A's, but he sustained a non-peak performance that was very good to great for 8 years. Who would you rate higher? I think it would be silly to say that Wrestler A had a better claim to Greatest Wrestler Ever than Wrestler B.

 

I think you also have to take into account outside factors like physical well-being. If a wrestler's physical deterioration in his 50s prevented him from being able to move around the ring, I wouldn't necessarily hold that against him. If he was in his 50s and could go but didn't try I would hold that against him in relation to other 50 year-olds who were still willing and able to go.

I'm more of a career guy, which includes all the peaks and valleys. It's why I think for instance that a guy like Lawler has his case as a possible #1 strengthened by his later career work while guys like Flair and Funk are hurt by their twilight years.

 

I think a distinction I make, that I'm not sure applies to anyone else, is that career and peak may be the same thing in some cases. For instance Han's peak is pretty much his entire career, same thing for a guy like Thatcher where there's not much of his green work available and he has yet to reach the point past his peak. Basically, I judge what a worker gives me, all of it, the good and the bad.

At the end of the day I think everyone will have their own way of balancing peak vs. longevity. It should be easy for those with similar longevity in that a higher peak may serve as a tiebreaker, but if you're looking at something like Priest Holmes vs. Jerome Bettis or similar analogy of someone with a higher peak but less years on top it gets dicier. Personally, I can't justify a high, if any, placing for someone like Volk Han. But others will and that's cool. They're the ones who value his work more than other rasslers.

An addendum: I'm not saying one truly great match trumps a truckload of very good matches... but I think being great over a period of two years betters being very good over a longer span because, ultimately, reaching that level of being great is rare.

 

There's no hard-and-fast rule, of course, but the greatest of all time, to me, means who was the greatest at their greatest, not who was very good/better over the longest period.

As a Christmas gift to all of you, I will go out of my way not to further reply to this thread.

I'm more of a career guy, which includes all the peaks and valleys. It's why I think for instance that a guy like Lawler has his case as a possible #1 strengthened by his later career work while guys like Flair and Funk are hurt by their twilight years.

 

 

I would hold Flair's twilight years against him much more than Funk's. Flair sucked at times because he didn't try at all, whereas Funk sucks because his body is broken down.

I'd say Flair sucked because he tried to be the same old Ric Flair, and he couldn't do it anymore. The better old man Flair performances are when he just goes full on crazy with lots of bleeding and weapon shots. Basically when he takes the old man Funk approach.

Just out of curiosity, what would everyone's lists look like if your ranking was based solely on best individual match or performance?

As a Christmas gift to all of you, I will go out of my way not to further reply to this thread.

 

Hey, you took my line!

Just out of curiosity, what would everyone's lists look like if your ranking was based solely on best individual match or performance?

Buddy Rose and El Dandy 1 and 2

I would add Dick Murdoch and Rick Rude.

What are the specific performances for those four?

Rude vs. Warrior

 

Murdoch vs. Nightmare

Just out of curiosity, what would everyone's lists look like if your ranking was based solely on best individual match or performance?

 

Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Hokuto.

My Internet is fucked up right now and posting via phone sucks. But I would say there would be a good bit of overlap near the top of my lists for best peak and greatest overall. Part of what makes guys like Hansen, Flair, Lawler, Jumbo, Satanico etc my greatest of all time workers is that they have longevity and the highest peaks. If I did a top 100 matches of all time it would be dominated by guys like Flair, Lawler etc. The top 3 would be different though. I would put Sangre Chicana #1 overall easily for the MS-1 and Perro matches. Hokuto would be #2 for the tag with Kandori against Aja and Bull. The Destroyer would be #3 for the draw with Baba. After that it would be the usual suspects. Choshu would take a huge jump just looking at peak.

 

Just out of curiosity, what would everyone's lists look like if your ranking was based solely on best individual match or performance?

Buddy Rose and El Dandy 1 and 2

 

 

I would add Dick Murdoch and Rick Rude.

 

Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Hokuto.

These responses have made me 75% more likely to vote based on peak.

I don't really see why it's one or the other. Some people are great peak candidates and some people are great career candidates and you weigh them up against each other. It seems odd to me that you would have a list where the top spots were full of one or the other.

Yeah, I'm with OJ. It can be both. Doesn't have to be one or the other.