Who is the greatest booker ever?

[Mad Dog]

 

Heyman's run was kind of short though. By the time you get to 1998 the booking starts to decline.

Would you attribute this to a lack of creative quality or the continued exodus of talent? After all, he had such a strong run in 2002 with Smackdown and it says a lot that he got guys like Sandman and Public Enemy over to god like status to the crowds he was working.

Burn out and losing touch with the fanbase I think. I think his 2002 run is a little overrated.

[Sean Liska]

Were this a "greatest booker today" thread, Mark Dallas (ICW) were to get my vote. From glorified yardtard fed during the UK indy drought to running shows at the O2 Arena, and all with a focus on local talent.

 

To compare him to somebody being discussed, he's the Scottish Heyman. He makes Chris Renfrew worth watching and Renfrew makes Sandman look like Mick Foley.

100% agree and ICW is my favorite product out there right now. I feel like people here would really enjoy it, I need to try to get people into it. The funny thing is they market themselves as this ECW-style crazy promotion, and yet the in-ring style is secretly the closest to 80's American style that you'll get right now, and I mean that in a very good way. They don't have guys trying to outdo Misawa-Kobashi in each match like so many groups, it's very fundamental solid stuff. I just love that in this era of so many bland workrate indies, they have on old-school focus on characters, stories, blood feuds with satisfying payoffs, it's a mixture of the Memphis/Alabama style of booking with some ECW/Attitude Era type characters, huge fan.

[Laz]

I'm literally watching Fight Club 67 right now. The opening match is a "let's make this an impromptu tag" deal and the best talent overall is Wolfgang, but I'm geared to see how it goes because I know that what happens will actually feed into the arcs of all involved.

 

Also, Wee Man rules.

[Dewar]

Were this a "greatest booker today" thread, Mark Dallas (ICW) were to get my vote. From glorified yardtard fed during the UK indy drought to running shows at the O2 Arena, and all with a focus on local talent.

 

To compare him to somebody being discussed, he's the Scottish Heyman. He makes Chris Renfrew worth watching and Renfrew makes Sandman look like Mick Foley.

 

I am on board with this.

 

When Gabe books a show that sells more than 3,000 tickets, he can enter the discussion as best booker ever.

[Loss]

Vince McMahon has many strengths as a booker, but I've always seen his bigger strengths as being a strong hypeman and visionary (read: promoter) and producer. He's also tremendous at thinking outside the box, the end result of which is the occasional blockbuster amidst a sea of failures. But overall, Vince runs away with the greatest promoter of all time title. It's not even close. In fact, he's so good at promoting that he's created the post-booking landscape that we live in now, one where it's less the angle or the match that sells the show than it is the chance to experience the brand itself. To me, Vince can craft angles and is good at it, but it's not his strength. He's better at coming up with concepts and laying out an overall direction.

 

I'll also throw out Dutch Mantell as a dark horse. Yes, his TNA run was horrendous (everyone's was, pretty much), but he created the hottest period in the history of Puerto Rico.

[Loss]

A lot of the Watts booking doesn't age well, particularly before Jarrett's crew came in and popped the territory. Dundee turned things around with elements of Memphis booking and Eddie Gilbert kept it interesting doing the same, but take that stuff out and you have pre-1984 Mid South, which had some really good stuff and was successful, but wasn't nearly as exciting as a television product, which is Watts' primary case.

[El-P]

I'll also throw out Dutch Mantell as a dark horse. Yes, his TNA run was horrendous (everyone's was, pretty much), but he created the hottest period in the history of Puerto Rico.

 

Not at all. He was responsible for the women's division rise, which was excellent and actually drew ratings, and pretty much everything good in TNA while Russo was also there can be attributed to Mantell.

[El-P]

A lot of the Watts booking doesn't age well,

 

Agreed. UWF is overrated as all hell (and even Mid-South is to some extent).

[Mad Dog]

It's TNA so it gets overlooked but Scott D'amore was probably the only good booker they had. He laid a lot of the groundwork for the few successful years they had. He successfully navigated them through their first national level exposure, gained enough traction for them to do house shows and booked well enough for them to do some okay buy rates.

[El-P]

Agreed about D'Amore. I've said it recently, D'Amore's TNA is so easy and fun to watch, producing a lot of legit great matches thanks to Joe/AJ/Daniels.

[Richeyedwards]

 

I'll also throw out Dutch Mantell as a dark horse. Yes, his TNA run was horrendous (everyone's was, pretty much), but he created the hottest period in the history of Puerto Rico.

 

Not at all. He was responsible for the women's division rise, which was excellent and actually drew ratings, and pretty much everything good in TNA while Russo was also there can be attributed to Mantell.

 

 

I may be wrong but I thought that mantell at one point left all of the mens side of things alone and focused purely on the knockouts and I think this coincided with the start of the great awesome kong vs kim feud.

[El-P]

 

 

I'll also throw out Dutch Mantell as a dark horse. Yes, his TNA run was horrendous (everyone's was, pretty much), but he created the hottest period in the history of Puerto Rico.

 

Not at all. He was responsible for the women's division rise, which was excellent and actually drew ratings, and pretty much everything good in TNA while Russo was also there can be attributed to Mantell.

 

I may be wrong but I thought that mantell at one point left all of the mens side of things alone and focused purely on the knockouts and I think this coincided with the start of the great awesome kong vs kim feud.

 

Not sure if he just left the men alone, but he went on record saying he was the one responsible for creating the women's title and booking Gail vs Kong to kickstart the whole thing and ran with it. And yeah, I'm going through it these days, it's simply awesome indeed.

[Mad Dog]

I would DVR TNA just for the women's stuff in that era.

[Sean Liska]

All right I change my Vince vote to Jerry Jarrett.

[peachchaos]

I have trouble keeping Jarrett's ideas separate from Lawler's. I know they would switch off every six months, but are these periods documented anywhere?

[Robert S]

Strange that nobody mentioned Eddie Graham, considering how influential he was in the 1960ier and 70ies. Or is that a case that people consider him more as a promoter than a booker (even though according to Kevin Sullivan Graham was pretty hands on with the booking until the end)?

[Shrike02]

This is a run-off between Vince and Baba.

[Laz]

If it's between the two? Vince gets the edge. The whole world knows what the WWF/E is. AJPW? Not so much.

[Sean Liska]

Strange that nobody mentioned Eddie Graham, considering how influential he was in the 1960ier and 70ies. Or is that a case that people consider him more as a promoter than a booker (even though according to Kevin Sullivan Graham was pretty hands on with the booking until the end)?

I think it's more that we don't have as much easy to follow weekly TV from him like we do Memphis, Mid-South, Dallas, AJPW, etc.

[Al]

Strange that nobody mentioned Eddie Graham, considering how influential he was in the 1960ier and 70ies. Or is that a case that people consider him more as a promoter than a booker (even though according to Kevin Sullivan Graham was pretty hands on with the booking until the end)?

The praise I see most often for Graham is for his finishes (I guess making him a good "producer" in the modern wrestling vocabulary.)

[Loss]

Strange that nobody mentioned Eddie Graham, considering how influential he was in the 1960ier and 70ies. Or is that a case that people consider him more as a promoter than a booker (even though according to Kevin Sullivan Graham was pretty hands on with the booking until the end)?

 

He mentored the people that are considered to have the best wrestling minds in the early video footage era. Watts, Jarrett, Dusty.

[SmartMark15]

While certainly not the greatest booker of all time, I believe Gedo deserves some credit for getting New Japan out of a huge commercial and critical slump and elevating them to one of their most successful periods yet. He's clearly tapped into something that has captured the imaginations of a large sector of pro wrestling fans.

[BrianB]

Maybe if we had a clearer picture of Pat Patterson's contributions, he'd be more in the mix. Vince has some great arguments, but he's got a lot of misses and dogshit. He's more undeniable as a promoter.

 

There must be a bunch of great Dusty stuff I need to see. Because his tail run in JCP and his stints in WCW arguably disqualify him from this conversation.

[PeteF3]

I feel like Antonio Pena needs to at least be in the team photograph here, even if not at #1. As Bix said on the latest BTS...strictly in terms of booking wrestling--angles, gimmicks, finishes, feuds and payoffs, etc., not promoting or marketing or even running an organization--he may have had an even better mind for the business than Vince. Pena also had a hand in designing costumes and masks for his guys, which I don't think any other booker anywhere can say.

 

'85-'86 Crockett is some of the best wrestling anywhere in any time period, and Dusty was the man behind it.

[goc]

I have trouble keeping Jarrett's ideas separate from Lawler's. I know they would switch off every six months, but are these periods documented anywhere?

I feel like it's usually fairly obvious watching Memphis when Lawler is the one booking because you have goofy gimmicks and Lawler being like the only guy with an actual program. Jerry Jarrett would get my vote for greatest booker.