Wow, we're on the same wave length. My neighbor always bought every PPV, so we got to watch every one live, but those occasional "free PPVs" were so cool.

This.

E.g., Nature Boy Buddy Rogers was taken in Round 6. This guy was the biggest draw in the entire world for a decade. Yet midcarders that I had to Google to see who they were (e.g. Johnny Nitro and Nigel McGuinness) were drafted ahead of him.

I'm also shocked that my favorite wrestler of all-time hasn't been taken yet. Good thing I'm not in this draft, I would have wasted a 2nd or third round pick on him.

Meh, I really don't know **** about very many wrestlers prior to the 1990's, and this draft wouldn't be very fun for me if I was drafting a bunch of guys who I've never even heard of....I prefer to just stick with what I know

I'm the same as Shark, except going back to about 1985.

Everyone on my team hit their peak before I was born (1989). Even though I never watched any of it live, 80s wrestling > everything else. Attitude era WWF (especially 99) is probably the most overrated wrestling.

I feel the opposite way, what I've seen of real old-school rasslin bores me to tears, while I can still go onto Youtube and still get enjoyment out of pulling up some classic Attitude Era moments/matches

Yeah it's hard for me to pick anyone from before even like 1996 and have any idea who they are or what they were about. In sports drafts you can look up statistics and get an idea of how good someone was, but it's hard to differentiate the kayfabe accomplishments someone has with the actual value they would bring as a worker, mic guy, etc. I decided to take two older people last round and nobody really liked it, so meh.

Maybe I'm a bit bias, but I strongly disagree. The storylines/gimmicks/matches of the attitude era were brilliant, imo.

Outside of the main events nothing was even watchable in my opinion while Russo was booking the WWF. Austin and The Rock are obviously awesome, but the midcard was so godawful. I don't think the WWF was any good until they acquired Angle, Jericho, and Benoit at the end of that year.

Yeah, Angle and Jericho were pretty sweet pick-ups

One of the things thats great about these drafts though is the opportunity to learn about players/wrestlers etc that you didnt grow up with, from people that did and/or just know more about them anyway

Keep in mind the demographics of the people drafting and judging. Most of us probably haven't turned 30 yet. That affects how things are viewed.

Very true, one guy whose early days I was particularly interested in was Terry Funk, he sounds like he was way more awesome then I ever would have thought.

60s wrestling can be very boring. But Buddy Rogers practically invented the heel. He was the first big heel of the TV era. Half of the mannerisms of heel Flair (knowingly or not). For an entire decade, people paid to see him lose. I don't know how Rogers would do in the ring with these new guys, but he was great on the mic and would still be great on the mic today.

I've been watching constantly since the mid 80's. And went through the tape phase, old school phase, regional watching, etc.

Now maybe this isn't the point of the fantasy thread. but keep in mind that guys like Buddy Rogers, Nick Bockwinkle etc just didn't have the same amount of experience that the new generation have. That audience was SO much smaller, sure there was the occasional WWWF show at MSG that sold out in the 60s 70s, but the guys of the last 20 years do 9 tv appearances a month, 20 house shows and the way in which wrestling is dissected and analyzed today is just insane. Guys like CM Punk, Nigel, Austin, Rock, are perfecting a craft.

I guess a not terrible analogy would be to compare a lot of the stars of yesteryear to the old pre internet poker. And that the information available, the amount of hands being able to be played now compared to old school BM makes the newer players have an advantage in the craft. Basically I see a lot of the 60's/70's picks as Chip Jett, and the ROH picks as Shannon Shorr.

.02

-IMS

matt, the 60s/70s guys wrestled a whole lot of matches back then too and were working almost nightly. Cable TV certainly creates a different animal, but as far as in ring stuff, they had it pretty honed in on how to get their audiences into it. It was a more intimate era because there wasn't cable tv and the house show was the driving point of business. It was also different in that a lot of guys were keeping to kayfabe and that will create its own culture in of itself

one thing that I think that the older days had over today is that the level of athelete was fairly better back then. They were grabbing guys who were high level collegiate wrestlers and football players at a fairly decent clip. It also enabled them to get a lot of Heavyweights too. Its not as common these days for a guy who was as decorated as Jack Brisco in College to go to professional wrestling, and instead those guys are starting to go into MMA (and for a while they just ended their competitive careers and went into other walks of life)

I think every promotion should have some sort of identity and style that it brings. This has been done throughout history and is still very applicable to today (and is still practiced very much). To have a successful promotion, you also need guys who can bring out the best in each other so that you can put on entertaining matches since that's generally why we watch wrestling in the first place.

The style of the promotion itself is just a backdrop as not every wrestler will fit into that particular style. Obviously a good mix of guys is what is best and its a matter of finding those guys that will fit a vision that you think can bring the best out of them, and that's where finding guys that compliment each other well fits in. I'm not saying that if you have chris benoit that you exactly need eddie guerrero to play off of him, but instead you want a guy that you think can work with Benoit and make for good viewing. Putting someone like Sandman against Benoit doesn't really do much for either guy since it will be hard for both of them to really bring out what each does best.



I'll use an example from my Fed, take someone like Kofi Kingston. He does a rather up tempo style based around some more flying moves and we have Terry Funk who was more of a brawling and mat based wrestler. But, my reasoning for why I think they fit is because Funk is very adaptable, but more to it, I think both of the styles can make for a good match with each other because while they have different styles, the way that both of them wrestle/wrestled can work well and of course it helps that Funk was a monster heel that can do well on the mic and Kingston is certainly improving on the mic.

On top of that though, both of the guys fit fairly well in with how both deezy and I want the general style of our fed to be. We want an athletic and more sports based style. Obviously not everyone we have picked fits squarely into that idea, but its more creating an over riding style and then finding some other guys that don't neccessarily fit the exact style, but can add to it.

What this also does, is give the fans something as a base to work with, and a sort of expectation of what they will see, to which we can then work from there

+1 to both of these

Assani supports this long-winded post saying a lot without saying anything.

Yeah, if you notice I've drafted all older wrestlers with my last 4 picks(Johnny Valentine, Dory Funk Jr., Fred Blassie, Lou Albano) because I think theres tons of value there. Legends of wrestling from many year ago >>>>>>>>>> midcarders from today and I don't think its even all that close.

That perfectly summarizes why he annoys me. He's constantly like Assani on Assani's worst days, but without any of the awesome to ever balance it out.

Agreed completely.

I think KDawg has been very valuable ITT, f the haters.

He is not to blame for your poor reading comprehension.

Foley, Vader, Brody, Bigelow, and Muta in addition to those 4. Your fed is going to have some epic brawls.

Yes, that second part is clearly the case.

FWIW KDawg I just got around to reading your breakdown of my roster. I'll probably respond to it in a day or two, I'm sitting in the airport and don't really feel like writing that much right now.