What about Flair?

[Steenalized]

I like Flair and I have liked him for a long time. That said, what he does isn't very high on my list of priorities as a wrestling fan anymore. When it comes to American wrestling the only styles I really love are brawls, David vs Goliath matches, and tags. Flair is great at these but he's not the best at them either. When it comes to Americans I'll definitely have Lawler, Hansen, and Funk ahead of him. Throw in Japanese and Mexican workers who perform styles of matwork and match layout I prefer and Flair is someone who might not make my top 20.

You and me have the same tastes, apparently. As far as Flair goes, I do think he's an all time great, but he's not going to be number one for me and he never had a shot. He's just not my style of wrestler and it comes to a point where the talent gaps are so thin that I'm going largely on stylistic preference. Like Grimmas and Dylan got at, Flair also has the benefit of being in the position to have as many "great matches" as possible. But to me that means very little, since I rarely have the interest in watching anything approaching minutes, let alone going past it or well past it. I don't think having stellar broadways is the end-all, be-all of wrestling talent. Not that Flair was only good in these things, obviously not, but when I narrow it down to what I enjoy in wrestling and what I'm looking for, Flair falls behind others. Funk and Hansen, his apparent rivals for the purpose of this thread, being two of those. I'm sure it'll be blasphemy on some level to Parv, but Cena will probably right alongside Flair in my rankings. Wouldn't shock me if Cena came out higher.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

Great match theory is akin to this actor was in a lot of great movies, so therefore he is the best. You can put in great performances but the circumstances and co-actors can stink. That is why I am against the great match theory, personally.

 

For example, you can probably point to more great Triple H matches in 2000 than Regal. However, I would argue that Regal is the better wrestler.

This analogy is off because wrestlers have more creative input into matches than actors do into the process of filmmaking. The analogy doesn't work, because you have guys like Hitchcock who say "actors are like cattle". Films don't rest solely on the performances of actors because it is and has always been "a director's medium".

 

Wrestling matches are not "the road agent's medium" are they?

 

There's no part of this analogy that works at all. And I'm loathe to come up with an alternative because I'm not sure that an analogy helps.

It's best not to argue about film, but we've all seen movies where an actor's performance made a film, and people who don't actively seek out auteur's work and simply go to whatever's at the cinema have probably seen numerous examples of an actor saving what would otherwise have been a lousy picture. The other day I watched Maggie Cheung elevate an average romantic comedy in what was an otherwise competently directed film, but without being on set it's impossible to know exactly what went into that collaboration.

 

The great matches argument is an interesting one, but it's not all that complicated. Emilio Charles Jr is a guy I love, but he's not a great singles match worker. That's something I've had to come to terms with over the years, and instead of exonerating him for it, I've accepted it as part of who he was. If I compare Emilio, who has the character work I like and is great in trios, with Santo, who has the classic singles matches, should I be honest and rate Santo higher or put Emilio above him because of my personal quirks and because it amuses me to do so? To me the obvious answer is that it doesn't have to be one way or the other. What I need to do is weigh up whether I value Emilio's heel work more than Santo's great matches. There doesn't have to be a consistent criteria. Sometimes I can go with the character actor types and sometimes I can go with the laundry list types. You seem to be doing the same with Flair and Arn, who feel miles apart in terms of match output.

[Hollinger.]

Another issue with the Great Matches argument is that the average matches are just as important to the discussion. When you're talking top 10 of all time, everyone in consideration is going to have a lengthy list of great matches. And while there's subjectivity involved in discussing them, you're talking about stuff that a majority of people can look at and agree it's great. To me, the separation starts to come further down the list. Just sticking to guys frequently mentioned in this thread, if you toss me six hour DVDs of 2.5-3 star matches from Flair, Hansen, Funk and Lawler, Flair is probably the disc I'm least interested in watching. He's probably at the back end of my top 10, and no doubt one of the greatest of all time, but the other three are far more interesting to me with their "typical" performances.

 

That's probably incoherent and half-baked, but I'm at work and trying to juggle my thoughts intermittently with other things.

[jdw]

This thread goes pretty much the exact direction one would expect it to have gone when the first post was made. Given pretty much everyone in it has been in several Flair Threads like this on PWO in the past, you kind of wonder if there's any value in it. Each side probably could have just linked to the old threads where the arguments are all fleshed out in much more detail and humor for that matter.

 

Anyway, two point.

 

On this:

 

Lots of people have written about how over-the-top and overwrought Kobashi was. Dylan has often said Kawada wasn't the best guy on his own tag team in the late '80s.

 

Childs is right.

 

People have been critical of the All Japan guys since the late 90s... in real time. They were getting five snowflakes in some circles, people were circle jerking to them, and some of already were starting to go, "Hey... wait a minute... let's talk about this." Didn't make some of us too well loved.

 

Of course that's been forgotten over time and all that remains is the aura and rep of folks being myopic All Japan marks. Reality was a bit different. Before one claims that's old, and not recent, one can sift through the Yearbook threads and find plenty of AJPW matches that got critical thinking.

 

* * * * *

 

Second point: the most useful posts in this thread, possibly the only useful ones, are Daniel talking about Santo. Less for Santo in specific, but the whole of line of thought he's trying to get across that reaches a summation in the post about Charles.

 

Flair is Flair, and as Dylan gets across, thread like this only make folks dig in deeper with their votes for or against Flair. One could say it's a waste, since the thread covers old ground less well that it was covered back in the "old". But on occasion as the eyes glaze over the discussion leads one of the posters off on a side bar that's good and thought provoking. That's the one in here.

[Phil Schneider]

Great match theory is akin to this actor was in a lot of great movies, so therefore he is the best. You can put in great performances but the circumstances and co-actors can stink. That is why I am against the great match theory, personally.

 

For example, you can probably point to more great Triple H matches in 2000 than Regal. However, I would argue that Regal is the better wrestler.

 

I don't think that is true at all. I have 13 Regal matches at Epics in my C+A Regal, and that is without reviewing a bunch more which I know would make the cut, I can really only think of 3 or 4 EPIC HHH matches

[elliott]

I had no idea where to post this but I got the quote from the Kawada thread and it is so Flair specific I decided to respond to it here.

 

Although why Flair is the only barometer I don't know, I prefer multiple barometers.

 

I agree that Flair shouldn't be the only barometer but he is a good one for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, the overwhelming majority of people participating in this project and that run in our circles are extremely familiar with Flair. So if someone compares Negro Casas to Ric Flair its going to mean more than comparing Negro Casas to Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Is it lazy to always use Flair as the barometer? Absolutely. But he's a good barometer because everyone knows him. He's the easiest control in our experiments.

 

Flair's candidacy for GOAT is so strong because it encompasses a lot of ideas we tend to look for in a GOAT. You can make a case for Flair based on peak and longevity. You can point to a ton of great matches. He has a huge list of great matches against a large variety of different opponents. He has great long matches and short matches. He has great matches against great workers. Great matches against lesser workers. Long rivalries and short feuds. So you can take just about any situation and find an example of Flair doing it and comparing it to a different worker.

 

What makes Flair a candidate for GOAT ever also makes him a good barometer for other GOATC. How does wrestler x's longevity compare to Flairs? Do they have a lot of great matches against a variety of workers in a variety of situations? How high did wrestler x peak meaning were they a best in the world candidate for a number of years or not really?

 

If you determine that wrestler x is comparable to Flair in those areas you have to them examine things on a deeper level and consider any differences in their candidacy like Kawada being arguably the best tag worker ever or Funk having a more relevant post prime and figure out what all that stuff means.

 

Ok, take Satanico for example. I've spent a lot of this project looking at Satanico footage to determine if he's a legit contender for GOAT or just someone I want to be a legit contender for GOAT. I don't have the benefit of 100s of matches from his 80s prime but I'm using the tools that are available to get an overall picture of Satanico as a GOATC. Does he have GOATC longevity, peak, great matches, variety of opponents, versatility, the ability to excel in different settings, etc etc. With Satanico I've tried to examine the full picture to get a sense of his place in something like this. The full Flair picture as been on display for decades and we all know what it is.

 

I get why people are bothered that Flair is constantly put under the microscope and is so heavily scrutinized when other workers aren't. But it isn't happening on the level it does because he's a good barometer for the 95th best worker ever. It happens because he's a good barometer for the 3rd best worker ever, the 4th, 5th whatever. And when you get to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc you're dealing with guys who are going to have a lot of similarities in the broader sense of their overall case. That's why you're going to see the seemingly harsher/nitpicky criticisms of Ric Flair. When it comes to separating #1 from #3, you're going to have to look deeper beneath the broader case that got the guys into contention for GOAT.

 

Sorry for the non-sensical rambling. I got on a roll and I'm very tired so it is possible that I repeated the same thing over and over. If so, my bad. I refuse to proof-read.

[jdw]

Flair is the barometer because he has been the consensus GoaT for pretty much the entire history of hardcore wrestling fandom. He is the starting point for these discussions. This isn't laziness.

 

That Flair didn't win the last GWE, and might not win the new GWE, doesn't change that. We are a fly on the ass of hardcore wrestling fandom. That the small circle of fans here might pick someone else doesn't change the reality that there remains a strong consensus among hardcore fans that Flair is the GoaT. More than that, the only person who would challenge that consensus is someone who won't make the Top 10 here... probably won't even come close to getting in the Top 20.

 

So Flair is the barometer.

[DR Ackermann]

Its spelled "thermometer."

[jdw]

I kind of like irony implied in "atmospheric pressure". We all would like to think of this as gradient akin to "temperature gradient", if we're honest there always has been and always will be a lot of pressure in how one properly measures GoaTdom.

[Wade Garrett]

Anybody here live in Crockett country and see Flair from let's say 76 onward? If so how old were you? Home arena? I'm real curious. Cause I was there and I was 18 in July of 76.

 

A lot of fans and critics/observers never saw Flair in that period on a weekly/monthly basis and have no fuckin clue how and why the guy got to where he got in September of 81.

 

Flair wasn't always formula.

[JerryvonKramer]

I love Wade Garrett.

[KrisZ]

Flair didn't start relying on formula matches until probably his 2nd run as NWA Champion......The Ric Flair of the late 70's-early 80's is a different beast than 1985 Ric Flair

[elliott]

Editing this back in because Parv was quick on the draw and managed to respond before I changed the post to "nevermind."

 

What I said was that I reject the notion that we can't criticize or seemingly have opinions unless we watched guys live week to week.

 

My original post was probably snarkier than it needed to be and I'm sorry for that and am glad I was able to edit it because I don't think (at least I hope) that wasn't really Wade's point.

 

I would kill to have week to week footage of everyone. Not just to compare guys to Flair but because wresting is awesome, especially wrestling from that era.

 

Wade, please regale us with awesome stories of younger, pre touring champ Flair.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't accept that notion either elliott, but I do think Wade is great.

[elliott]

I don't accept that notion either elliott, but I do think Wade is great.

 

We agree on that. Wade rocks

[Wade Garrett]

Were you in Crockett country then too KrisZ?

[KrisZ]

No I was born in 1979 in Georgia but I've seen enough of Flair from that era from different places to see that he was working fairly different than he did in the mid-late 80's.

[Matt D]

I do think there's something to say about having to work in front of the same crowd every week or every other week. We just so rarely see have that level of footage from the territories except for in a studio setting with job matches which isn't the same. In Memphis, somewhat, and certainly in Portland for 79-81 or so, where we have week to week big matches. Also, a bunch of guys at Arena Mexico every week throughout the years.

 

I'd love to have that sort of footage for every wrestler on this project.

[JerryvonKramer]

70s Flair is more brawl-y from what I've seen. More towards Wahoo.

 

Early 80s he mixes in more throws and technical aspects.

[elliott]

70s Flair is more brawl-y from what I've seen. More towards Wahoo.

 

 

GOD I want a treasure trove of complete 70s Flair matches. Especially vs Wahoo.

[Wade Garrett]

I put Scott era JCP #1 OVERALL as far as US promotions are concerned. I didn't see Grahams Florida from 68-76 though.

[Wade Garrett]

We can all judge the wrestler by what we have on tape. That tape may not cover an entire career though. So if someone makes a broad or sweeping assumption on the wrestlers entire career (that's not available) it's wrong.

 

When I think of Flair I think of 70's Flair throughout the 80's. I didn't like watching Flair beyond 89 by the end of 1990. But in the mid to late 70's Flair was fuckin awesome to watch. He had an energy about him and work ethic that shined through each and every time I saw him. He was 'it' in the moment but also ahead of what was 'it' at the same time. If that makes any sense.

 

Everyone have a great night. 7pm on the westside and time for some coors, jd, pizza, and pool.

[Matt D]

I've made this point before, but I really think that it wasn't Flair that changed, necessarily. We knew what we were getting five, ten, fifteen years ago.

 

It was us that changed, what we value. At least a lot of us.

 

Workrate, bumping, cardio, energy, even stiffness and execution. All of those are things that a lot of us valued much more ten years ago.

[JerryvonKramer]

I still value all of those things.

[Matt D]

We know. We know you value action and a visceral, gripping feel in matches and suplexes. We even know you value cardio now. Other people here still do too, but not everyone values those things as much as they used to, as much as we were supposed to in years' past.

 

I think the story of this poll compared to the last is the freedom from old dogmas due to the rise of the post-workrate paradigm and people who have come to value smart over hard.

 

Even then you are arguing AT people who will still have him at 3 or 6 or 15 out of every wrestler ever because they still see him as the best at certain aspects. They just have come to value those aspects less than others (some of which they still rate him highly in, just not highly enough) which along with the discovery and propagation of new footage is one of the only reasons to even do a poll again.

 

So you can do another project on why workrate still matters and why our growth as viewers and people thinking about this stuff over the last 10 years is just relativistic bullshit that has no basis in reality or you can let go and accept that some people's metrics have shifted before you drive all of us insane.