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OCT WRESTLING CHIT CHAT THREAD


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I once read a comparison between Malenko and Bret Hart that put it well:  Bret learned to wrestle in the Dungeon, Malenko wrestles like he's in the Dungeon and no one's watching.  Talented guy, but didn't connect with fans without a good foil on the other side(i.e. Jericho).

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I think it says alot that Dean was easily the most over cruiser on the roster.  People forget that Rey went through a period of people not giving a shit about him for a while.  Dean always got huge pops, and was able to translate that into a run against a few heavyweights like Jarrett.

 

He had the Nashville crowd at Starrcade 1996 rocking during his match with Ultimo Dragon. I can imagine it was no small feat to get an nWo-era Southern crowd like that into a cruiserweight match.

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I think he's super underrated when it comes to introducing cruiser wrestling to the US. This is because he wrestled like Tully Blanchard or those dudes but against the aerialists. The only aerial move he did was the nasty stomach buster from the top rope, and that doesn't really count. He wrestled a style people who grew up on wrestling -- especially southern wrestling -- were used to seeing. I think a lot of that stuff would have been cast as a total novelty act if it wasn't for him making it look like aerial moves could beat a really high-end technical master.

 

i think this nails it right on the head. Without Deano bridging the gap, WCW's burgeoning cruiserweight division would've been DOA. Perhaps this is why WWE was never successful with their own division. you had "real wrestling" and then you had "flippy wrestling". Dean wrested the "real" style in the "flippy" world, which made it work.

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Dean got labelled as a "charisma suck" or whatever for working in a vacuum. I thought that wasn't a good argument -- his gimmick was The Shooter or some derivative and he was always just focused on his opponent and winning matches. He was a technical master there to pick his foe apart and was purely focused on just that point.

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And, as we've mentioned, try finding a show past about late 96 where he wasn't getting a reaction.  Dude popped when he came out, popped for his offense, went crazy for his finish.  I'm not sure where this "wrestled in a vacuum" shit comes from.

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I find the idea that you have to have good matches with bad wrestlers to be good stupid. 

 

Particularly in cases like this, when the other half of the argument is "he had good matches with good workers, so the other guys are all good workers and he is not".

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I think he's super underrated when it comes to introducing cruiser wrestling to the US. This is because he wrestled like Tully Blanchard or those dudes but against the aerialists. The only aerial move he did was the nasty stomach buster from the top rope, and that doesn't really count. He wrestled a style people who grew up on wrestling -- especially southern wrestling -- were used to seeing. I think a lot of that stuff would have been cast as a total novelty act if it wasn't for him making it look like aerial moves could beat a really high-end technical master.

 

i think this nails it right on the head. Without Deano bridging the gap, WCW's burgeoning cruiserweight division would've been DOA. Perhaps this is why WWE was never successful with their own division. you had "real wrestling" and then you had "flippy wrestling". Dean wrested the "real" style in the "flippy" world, which made it work.

 

 

I always thought the big problem with the WWE's cruiser division was that, much like their women's division and at various times the tag division, nobody existed within the division except a champion and a top contender.  Taka vs. Brian Christopher....then the next month BC stops being on tv and it's Taka vs. Scott Taylor...then the next month Scott Taylor joins Christopher in the "where are they now" file and someone else shows up to fight Taka.  The division failed because there was no division.  In WCW you had a whole group of guys fighting and having matches away from the belt.  It made it seem like the belt was something worth fighting for and not just a merry-go-round of random challengers.

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Wait, what?  Didn't Flair and Arn have a particularly good PPV (I think) match?   Arn went for DDT, Flair held ropes and got the figure four but Arn small packaged him?

 

Or am I remembering 10 matches and combining them?

 

Yeah, it was a solid match but it's one of those things where you just don't want to see obvious best friends wrestle. I think Funk said the same thing in his book about his match with Dory. With the Malenko Bros. match, it was just two technicians going face to face and there wasn't some angle made up to try and sell the match.

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I think he's super underrated when it comes to introducing cruiser wrestling to the US. This is because he wrestled like Tully Blanchard or those dudes but against the aerialists. The only aerial move he did was the nasty stomach buster from the top rope, and that doesn't really count. He wrestled a style people who grew up on wrestling -- especially southern wrestling -- were used to seeing. I think a lot of that stuff would have been cast as a total novelty act if it wasn't for him making it look like aerial moves could beat a really high-end technical master.

 

i think this nails it right on the head. Without Deano bridging the gap, WCW's burgeoning cruiserweight division would've been DOA. Perhaps this is why WWE was never successful with their own division. you had "real wrestling" and then you had "flippy wrestling". Dean wrested the "real" style in the "flippy" world, which made it work.

 

 

I always thought the big problem with the WWE's cruiser division was that, much like their women's division and at various times the tag division, nobody existed within the division except a champion and a top contender.  Taka vs. Brian Christopher....then the next month BC stops being on tv and it's Taka vs. Scott Taylor...then the next month Scott Taylor joins Christopher in the "where are they now" file and someone else shows up to fight Taka.  The division failed because there was no division.  In WCW you had a whole group of guys fighting and having matches away from the belt.  It made it seem like the belt was something worth fighting for and not just a merry-go-round of random challengers.

 

 

You hit the nail on the head here. Even as a kid, it felt like there was Taka and then nobody. Kaientai had a fun little run but that was vs. heavyweights as well. They just never got behind the division enough to make it matter like WCW did (or just let them because they weren't paying attention and the wrestlers were getting over without permission). 

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Wait, what?  Didn't Flair and Arn have a particularly good PPV (I think) match?   Arn went for DDT, Flair held ropes and got the figure four but Arn small packaged him?

 

Or am I remembering 10 matches and combining them?

 

Pillman hit Flair with an enziguiri, leading to a DDT for the pin.

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