2008 Running Pro Wrestling Thread

To finish your thought Harley:

(in order)
1. Steamboat
2. Dusty Rhodes
3. Harley Race
4. Sting
5. Terry Funk
6. Randy Savage
7. Magnum T.A.
8. Hulk Hogan
9. Roddy Piper
10. Lex Luger

I’m sure I left a few out (Barry Windham, Both Garvins), but I don’t even have Michaels on this list. Maybe he’s toeing the company line with that comment.

 

It's been done before. And done quite well, I might add

 

Piper should be higher up the list, and Greg Valentine should get a spot somewhere in the bottom of the list. Really, you could do a top 20 and still miss a lot of good workers (particularly when you start throwing in wrestlers from around the world).

 

How would you rank your list, Meat?

 

I don't know that I could do a top 10 justice since there's probably 50 guys at bare mininum he's had awesome matches with. But factoring in history and importance:

1. Steamboat
2. Dusty
3. Piper
4. Sting
5. Race
6. Greg Valentine
7. Funk
8. Windham (as much for their matches when Windham was a young'in in Florida)
9. Savage
10. Ricky Morton (it didn't last long, but they were pure magic together that one summer -- 86, I think. This by rights should have done for Morton what it did for HBK when they had that great match a few weeks before the Rockers broke up)

Magnum T.A., Curt Henning and HBK just miss the list, and there's probably a whole host of overseas wrestlers I'm not factoring in (did he ever do prolonged business with Bruiser Brody?) Hogan and Luger probably had more impact, but the goodness of those matches were at least 80 percent Flair (see also: Koloff, Nikita and Von Erich, Kerry)

 

Don't forget about Flair's feud with Von Erichs in WCCW. Flair and David had some good matches. And as did Flair and Kerry Von Erich.

Also, Flair's feud with Wahoo McDaniel in the mid-70s was a classic.

 

Uh oh, someone's praising the Von Erichs!

*waits for Claws to drop the hammer*

 

I'm not a Dust fan, but I'll give the guy some props. Mostly because of the stick — he was a fat, out-of-shape blob, though he could actually work some and his facials were great.

1. Rick Steamboat.
2. Harley Race.
3. Greg Valentine (you have to appreciate the 1970s feuds).
4. Wahoo McDaniel.
5. Shawn Michaels.
6. Mr. Wrestling II.
7. Dusty Rhodes.
8. Randy Savage.
9. Terry Funk.
10. Roddy Piper (not much of a Piper fan, either).

Noticably absent from my list is another piece of shit, Hulk Hogan. For there to be an actual "feud," one wrestler must not have to job to the other 99% of the time.

 

Did HBK and Flair wrestle when Flair was still in WWE back in the day? If not, I don't see how people can put Michaels up so high on the list already when they haven't even wrestled. To me a feud isn't really a feud unless there's a match or two in it.

 

I put Michaels on my list because of the workrate, but you're right — there really isn't/wasn't much of an actual "feud".

Flair/Luger was a decent feud, considering Natch carried Luger to the best matches of his career. Flair/Windham actually was a much better working feud, but didn't seem to have the intensity.

 

Whatever. If I'm ranking Flair's top matches, I agree with MM and also think there's probably a few matches with Japanese stars that need to be included on any top 10 list.

 

They had one match a week or two before Shawn superkicked Jannetty through Beefcake's Barbershop window. If you ever see that segment, Shawn mentions how he gave Flair "the wrestling lesson of his life."
I recall it was an excellent match, in which Flair gave Michaels 90 percent of the offense, but pulled it out after Jannetty's interference backfired.

Oh, and my list of Flair's best opponents:

1. Steamboat
2. Morton (in his book, Flair says that he was so good, it was like a vacation for him)
3. Dusty
4. Sting
5. Wahoo
6. Funk
7. Race
8. The Von Erichs
9. Windham
10. Savage