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Don Corleone





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Member Back to Top Post by Kick Your Face on jdw



posted 11-29-2003 10:46 PM



Dave Meltzer wrote:



> If you were to talk with the wrestlers at

> that time (mid-80s) that worked with

> him, you would get a very different opinion.



I know, Dave.



But I've also been with you when one wrestler is putting over the greatness of another wrestler and the two of us rolled our eyes. Rey and Konnan putting over Sabu is one the comes quickly to mind. Sean Waltman doing the same does as well, but then again Sean was stoned out of his mind so everyone at the table rolled their eyes.



You recall Terry Funk telling us that Tanaka was better than Misawa, Kawada and Kobashi back in 1996 after Terry's match with Pogo? This is Terry, a guy you go a long ways back with and respect on a number of levels. But you and I were literally laughing at the one.



What about all the old timers who bagged on Ric Flair for "working the same match every night"?



There was a time when, with respect to judging work, you took the opinion of wrestlers only so far. You not only knew, but also would articulate, that wrestlers were often nutty in juding work. Even wrestlers you liked and respected.



> Everyone respected that when he wanted to go,

> he could go with anyone, but his reputation

> was that he was a lazy worker unless there

> were TV cameras.



It's a bit odd that you never wrote this in the WON back in the day, Dave. Whereas when Savage or Bret Hart or even Shawn Michaels took nights off when the cameras weren't rolling, you would hammer them. With Jumbo, it's only a recent explanation that you've rolled out.



> I got that from Brody (who always complained

> that I overrated him),



I find this rather hard to believe, since you didn't rate Jumbo very high during the time the WON existed _and_ Brody was alive. It really was only after Brody died that you started writing that Jumbo was "picking up his game".



> Terry Funk (an example of which I saw live

> when Jumbo wouldn't do squat on a night

> when Terry had decided he wanted to put on a

> great match, and Jumbo was the type of

> wrestler that even Terry couldn't overcome

> when he thought it was too cold to wrestle),



This simply isn't credible, Dave. When wrestlers took nights off at shows you saw live, you wrote about it in the WON. You've been consistent about this for 20 years, even with wrestlers that you personally like. Laziness on house shows, when the camera isn't rolling, is something you always use to hammer people on.



In the match in question, you wrote literally nothing about the match other than "*1/2". Even more poblematic is what you wrote in reviewing a later Funks match on the series:



"Although the Funks looked good in this match, they are not what they once were in Japan. Terry in particular was greatly bothered by a bad back suffered in Puerto Rico in September and couldn't take any bumps and was in pain every time he tried to move."

-Dave Meltzer, 12/21/87 match covering Budokan final night



It was Terry who couldn't do anything during the series, Dave. He had an excuse, no doubt, with the bad injure that at the time looked like it might end his career. Do you honest expect us to believe that a Terry Funk who couldn't bump on the biggest show of the series would have earlier in the series decided to have a "great match" on a non-TV spot show match in a "cold building"? It's not credible. If you had written something about it at the time, as you always did on things like that, one would them have to try to deterime if Terry was blowing smoke like he was nearly a decade later with Tanaka. But since it's not in there, and as far as I can recall in reading the WONs never was in there until the last year or two, it really comes across that your memory being off.



> Kroffat, Furnas, Zenk



I respect Kroffat and Furnas, but I take this with a grain of salt. I've seen things in the WON the were directly from one or the other of them (either spoken to you infront of me, or things you mentioned to me as being from them and then later ending up in the WON), and this is something that you never put in the WON. Considering you pretty consistently had Jumbo in the Top 10 while the careers of Kroffat, Furnas and Jumbo overlapped in the WON, I'd have to believe it would be something you'd mention.



Zenk has very little credibility when it comes to judging work, or speaking with candor. His track record on both is pretty horrendous.



> and Foley just off the top of my head and

> probably others, so it was not one bitter

> person.



More on Foley below.



As far as "more than one person", I'd again point to all the old-time wrestlers who over the year have rated Flair down for "wrestling the same match every night". Or even Bret Hart ripping Flair's abilities when the two worked together in 1992 in the WWF. You were able to look beyond that, Dave.



> It was his 80s reputation among people who

> worked with him day in and day out.



Then why is it absent from your writing in the era, Dave?



> Brody's take was that Jumbo made so much money

> early in his career and was guaranteed his

> position whether he worked for it or not, that

> he had nothing driving him.



I tend to take most everything Brody is on record as say with a grain of salt. Other than perhaps the stuff about flushing David Vion Erich's dope down the hotel toilet. But other than that, if one actually watch's Jumbo's work in the era, you see a guy who was working extremely well.



> I think when he got older, the fact the young

> guys in the company were so good that it drove

> him because his last four or so effective

> years, he was as good as anyone ever, in my

> opinion.



Agreed that he was pretty darn good from 1989-92. But one can go back to 1985 and 1986 and 1987 and 1988 and see him driven to have good matches, simply on his own desire. I'd again point to the match above, one that you when watching it thought "Jumbo didn't want a match this good". In reality, the match was exactly as good as Jumbo wanted it.



> However, wrestlers who saw him nightly during

> even that period disagreed with that viewpoint.



Except the are two problems with that.



One, as mentioned before, is that you never wrote that at a time when you would mention it about others. Choshu, for example, often got mentioned as taking matches off, but "firing up" for Big Matches. That tag never got applied to Jumbo by you.



The second is that when you were over there watching Jumbo during that "great era", he was pulling in high star ratings from you, even in matches that weren't shot for TV.



It doesn't add up.





> Basics on his rep. First off, if he didn't

> consider you at his level, he wouldn't do

> anything for you. I saw that on numerous

> occasions with good working but mid-level

> Americans so I think that's valid, and that

> was even in his hot period.



You'd have to cite the matches so that the rest of us can go back and watch the tapes.



> If he wasn't in the mood, you couldn't get

> a match out of him. It was more frustrating

> to people because he was so talented than if

> he was a slug. The New Japan guys in the

> early 80s used to laugh at Jumbo & Tenryu

> because they thought they were working an

> outdated style and felt them being on top was

> why New Japan was kicking All Japan's ass at

> the time.



Tenryu sucked. Everyone admits that.



The problem with Jumbo working an outdated style is that it was dictated by his opponents. Here's the guys he wrestled title matches against from 1981 (the dawn of Sayama) until Choshu & Co. came in:



* Abdullah the Butcher

* Dory Funk Jr. & Terry Funk

* Jack Brisco

* Jimmy Snuka

* Dick Slater

* Killer Tor Kamata & the Great Martialborg

* Billy Robinson & Genichiro Tenryu

* Gypsy Joe

* Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka

* Ric Flair

* Tiger Jeet Singh & Umanosuke Ueda

* Alexis Smirnoff

* Tor Kamata

* Nick Bockwinkel & Nikolai Volkoff

* Nick Bockwinkel

* Tommy Rich

* Harley Race

* Bruiser Brody & Stan Hansen

* Bruiser Bordy

* Tiger Jeet Singh & Killer Tor Kamata

* Mil Mascaras

* Stan Hansen & Ron Bass

* Bruiser Brody & Nikolai Volkoff

* Ted DiBiase

* Stan Hansen & Alexis Smirnoff

* Terry Funk & Ted DiBiase

* Nikolai Volkoff

* Jose Lothario

* Stan Hansen & One Man Gang

* Steve Olsonoski

* Terry Gordy & Michael Hayes

* Rick Martel

* Greg Gagne

* Kerry Von Eric

* Billy Robinson

* Bruiser Brody & Crusher Blackwell

* Terry Gordy



Now perhaps we can objectively look at the list and ask which of the wrestler on it were able to transition from the "outdated" style to the "non-outdated style" that Choshu & Co. worked?



Hansen obviously, though your writings in 1986 were that Hansen had better matches feuding with Jumbo, and Choshu had better matches feuding with Jumbo, than Hansen and Choshu had feuding with each other. Ironically Hansen and Choshu got the credit for the quality of their matches with Jumbo, and Jumbo didn't. [Smile]



Gordy.



And that's really it. DiBiase was decent in Japan to limits. He worked the older style, and not the Choshu & Co. style. The Hansen & DiBiase matches against Choshu & Yatsu paled compared to Jumbo & Tenryu's.



Oh, and of course Jumbo was able to work the non-outdated working style. In the end, when one watches his matches with Choshu & Yatsu, and with Tenryu, and later with the kids, it's clear that Jumbo worked the "non-outdated style" better than any heavyweight of his generation - Choshu, Fujunami, Tenryu, Yatsu, and on and on.



So perhaps, if one wants to knock the quality of his work in that ear for being "out dated", one might want to look at the workers he was stuck with. We know that now of those smacktalking New Japan heavyweights ever had better matches with Hansen, Gordy and Tenryu than Jumbo did.



Again, this knock of Jumbo's work fails when one actually looks at it. Unless we want to blame Jumbo's regular opponents like Flair and Brody for dragging him down into the old, outdated working style. I suspect you don't want to go that far?



> In the early 90s, when I thought Jumbo was

> the best guy in the business, Foley came back

> from a tour and saw me at an Arezzi

> convention. He went up to me and was vehement

> about disagreeing after being there for

> a month. He said that when he worked singles

> with Jumbo, Jumbo only wanted to do three

> moves, didn't want to give him anything, and

> only wanted to work 5-6:00 (and that was a TV

> match). He couldn't see how I could rate a

> guy like that top three in the world.



There are several ironic things about reading that now.



The first is that it made no impacting on how you rated Jumbo that year (1991), since come the end of the year you rated Jumbo higher as a worker than you ever had, or ever would.



The second is that none of that made it into the WON.



The third is your review of the match:



"3/31[/91] - [...] 2. Tsuruta beat Cactus with a back suplex. Cactus took a few incredible bumps [description of the bumps...] but needs more hot offensive moves for Japan. ***"

-Dave Meltzer, 04/29/91 Wrestling Observer Newsletter



Granted, *** was the worst rated match by Jumbo in the series, even below a match he had with Taue who you pointed out for the 20th time wasn't as good as the rest of the main eventers. But the one negative thing you had to say about the match wasn't aimed at Jumbo not wanting to do anything, but rather at *Cactus* for not having any good offense for Japan.



The fourth is actually rewatching the match.



Jumbo does more than three moves - the Jumping Knee, the Abdominal Stretch, the Cobra Twist, a Jumbo Backdrop on the floor, the Jumbo Lariat, a second Jumping Knee, and the Jumbo Backdrop to win.



The problem, as you pointed out in your review, is that Mick doesn't have any good offense in return. It's ironic that Jumbo actually gives Mick most of the match, but all Mick has for offensive are elbows, punches, kicks, stomps, headbutts and clubbering arms, a hip toss counter, a running back elbow, posting Jumbo, a medicore backbreaker to set up the elbow off the apron. Oh, and several bumps - the elbow (which Jumbo lets him hit), one over the baricade, one off the Jumbo Lariat to the floor, and a nice one on the Jumbo Backdrop on the floor.



What's somewhat ironic watching it now is to notice that none of Mick's bumps really get much for pops. The biggest one is for his bump over the baricade, but if you listen closely (really, you don't have to listen closely since it's obvious), you'll notice that the pops are bigger for Mick tossing Jumbo to the floor (a noticable 'Booooo' pop because the fans want the match to stay in the ring), and for Jumbo in the ring calling Mick to come back in and wrestle (because the fans want the match in the ring and not garbagey). Mick's other bumps really don't get much pops for *the bump*:



* fans pop for Jumbo's lariat, and his signal for it, not for Mick's admittedly great sick bump.



* Fans pop for Jumbo hitting the backdrop on the floor, not for Mick trying to splat himself.



* they is very little pop for the elbow to the floor, which is Mick's one signature cool spot.



Really it's not Jumbo who treats Mick bad in the match - it's the fans who really couldn't care less about him. Jumbo let's Mick do his "show", which includes four of Mick's sick bumps for the era, and hit his one key move of offense (since even as you admitted, he didn't have an cool offense for Japan). And then took it home.



Lastly, it's worth noting that Mick was the designated jobber in the Carnival that year, even in a year they had split groups. Mick finished with _zero_ points, even jobbing to a mid-carder like Dan Kroffat and a prelim worker like Johnny Smith. Mick got to "look good" against prelimers like Inoue, Slinger, Teranishi, Ogawa and King in non-tourney singles matches. But it's enlightening to note that Catus went short with with most of them (6-7 minutes with everyone but King), *and also* went only 8 minutes when jobbing to guys like Taue and Kobashi (the Kobashi one being non-tourney).



In contrast, Jumbo went eight minutes with Kroffat, which is the same as Taue went with Kroffat and Kobashi went with Furnas in tourney matches. Kroffat and Furnas were mid-carders, and the booking was designed to make them look better against Jumbo than prelimers like Cactus.



This is why you didn't comment at all about the match being short at the time - you knew All Japan booking, and given the length of other matches, that's exactly as long as Baba would have wanted it to go.



Perhaps when complaining to you Mick thought he had a **** match in him against Jumbo. That's doubtful, since even the Jumbo vs. Kawada and Jumbo vs. Hansen matches you wrote well of in that tourney topped out a ***1/2. Mick wasn't the worker those two were at the time, and as you point out, didn't have the cool offense for Japan. He did have quite a few garbage spots that he could have used, but you know as well as anyone, All Japan wasn't about that at the time.



Rewatch the match, Dave. It's pretty much as good of a match as Jumbo could have had with Cactus in an *All Japan setting* in 1991.



> In late 1984 in Nagoya, they ran the big angle

> where Choshu and company arrived to set up

> Choshu vs. Jumbo as the big money program for

> 1985. The decision was made by Baba after the

> tour, and after seeing Choshu's Army work a

> few live matches, that there would be a

> working problem. Baba changed his mind on the

> original angle, feeling is that the new

> style they imported was much faster-paced,

> and Jumbo wasn't going to adapt. He also saw

> that the guys they imported working their

> asses off every night, and that would create

> problems on non-TV nights. He took Jumbo out

> of the key position in the program and put

> Tenryu in. Tenryu, while not as talented,

> would and did adapt. If there was nothing to

> his reputation of being lazy, then Baba

> himself, who knew Jumbo better than anyone,

> was also guilty of being fooled.



This is a myth. It's bit like claiming that Hansen was booked into a feud with Baba when he came in because Baba knew that Jumbo couldn't work with Hansen, while he could. What really happened is that Hasen was put into a feud with Baba while the story of Jumbo chasing the International Title was being told. Baba, with his usual long term outlook, knew he would get to Jumbo vs. Hansen down the road.



Jumbo, Choshu and Tenryu was no different. Jumbo was the established main event anchor of the promotion. The company had been trying to get Tenryu up to that level for more than a year, with the UN title and the Int'l Tag title with Tenryu essentially moving into Jumbo's old role as Jumbo moved into Baba's role of anchoring the company. None of it really worked, largely because Tenryu wasn't very good and didn't have much of a personality.



Baba knew he could always get to Jumbo vs. Choshu, whereas Tenryu needed to be elevated and get over to give the All Japan side someone *other than Jumbo* to carry the feud. Go back and watch those Choshu Invasion shows and see the garbage on the All Japan side that Jumbo was having to carry while on the other side Choshu, Yatsu, Animal, Saitoh and even Khan were wrestling circles around the likes of Okuma. That feud dies if they don't get a second person up there and over.



Which is what they did. And by the second half of the year, after Tenryu had been established, it was time for Baba to start putting focus back in Jumbo in it. Which is what he did, both with the singles match and with Jumbo being the one to heel it up to turn Choshu & Yatsu the "faces" in the feud on some level.



> As far as a guy who, on a big show, understood

> his role and usually went over on younger guys

> while giving them hope spots and having great

> matches, he was totally awesome.



That he was. Even on the non-big shows.



> His matches with a young Kobashi and Kawada

> were perfect,



Yep. What's kind of ironic is that the noted match with Kobashi (and the very good one they had the year prior) were not on big matches, and Kobashi was about the #10 sloted guy in the promotion (if that). They weren't "big matches".



> his matches with Tenryu rank with just about

> anything



The one I've seen from 1987 was mediocre, almost entirely due to Tenryu. I haven't seen the second one from 1987 yet as it's not easy to track down. The one from 1988 is probably as good as any mens match in 1988, due largely to Jumbo. Of their three in 1989, the first is okay, but abridged due to the injury. The third is nothing too special. The middle won was better than any of the Flair vs. Steamboat matches of 1989. Their 1990 final match was pretty so-so.



It's a good, important series to watch. But they really only hit home runs in 10/88 and 6/89. Tenryu just wasn't good enough at the time to hit great matches every time out.



> and his match with Misawa that I was at, in

> one night, created a legend and spurred the

> Budokan Hall sellout streak. Not to mention,

> I've seen people cry at wrestling, but never

> seen a match, where when it was over, more

> than half, and maybe three-quarters of a crowd

> of nearly 15,000 were in tears like the June

> Misawa-Jumbo match.



The 6/90 Jumbo vs. Jumbo was an all-time classic. Considering he wrestled an all-time classic as early as 6/76 against Terry, and had many in between including in the period where he was allegedly lazy, it is saying something about his longevity.



"Jumbo was lazy" is a bit like the "Brody and Flair did nothing but spots, didn't slow down, and didn't grab holds in their 1983 draw" - memories and "insider information" that's not supported by the tapes.



John







That was probably the most interesting discussion that I've ever read on a message board.