Quote:
Originally Posted by gusmahler
Decided to try to quantify the 80s from a kayfabe perspective. I took the PWI top 4 for wrestler of the year and gave them 4 points for 1st all the way down to 1 point for fourth.
Top wrestlers of the 80s:
Flair: 27 points
Hogan: 18
Backlund(!): 12
Savage: 8
Race: 7
Luger: 4
Bunch of other people with 1, 2, or 3 points, so those 6 stand out.
Vince Sr. built WWF around Backlund for the first part of the decade. But he's not nearly as fondly remembered as Flair or even Hogan. Even with the hatred Hogan has in the IWC, he's begrudgingly acknowledged as one of the biggest stars of all-time.
Surprised at how low Dusty was. He only got a single 4th place award. According to this stat, he's exactly as important as Nikita Koloff, which seems really off.
For the record, the other people who finished in the top 4 in the 80s are (in order): Lawler, Martel, Bockwinkel, Kerry Von Erich, Andre, Tommy Rich, Verne Gagne, Steamboat, Steve Williams, Nikita Koloff, Slaughter, Snuka, Dusty, Iron Shiek.
If you include tag teams, Road Warriors would be at the top of the list. I didn't total that award, but they won 4 times and no one else won once.
You have to realize the Backlund was the world champ in one of three big federations from 80-83. Actually 79, but for your purposes I only used 1980. I don't know if you were familiar with the ranking section of PWI, but monthly they had the top 10 from every territory, and then did a top 10 overall. The world champs from the AWA, WWF, and NWA were usually the top three, but sometimes one would slip to #4. It was also relatively the same for the yearly rankings they did. Another thing to factor in with regards to backlund is that PWI and all of its sister publications were based out of NY which was the heart of WWF land. So this also had an effect on how the wrestlers were seen.
The other thing is that wrestling in 1982 was way different from wrestling in 1985 due to the influence of cable TV. I think this is why some of the numbers look the way they did. I think a better time frame would have been 1984-1989.
As for your Dusty point, that makes sense. With the exception of that one week after Starrcade 85, I don't think he was ever world champion in the 80's, and with out that he was on the downside of his career and his work wasn't nearly as good as it was in the 70's. Without that belt he really wouldn't warrant a rating in the top 4 at the end of any year.
Edit: I guess I should have checked before typing, but apparently Dusty had the title in '81 for 88 days. For some reason I thought his first two reigns happened before '80. I was wrong. I also completely forgot about his 14 day reign in 86 at the Great American bash, but I don't think that was long enough to register on the yearly PWI rankings. What year did Dusty get his 4th place vote?
Last edited by ChachiArcola; 08-17-2017 at 08:25 PM.