Bravo for exploding forum taking out an entire Gelgarin post.
So here we have Irish, a perfectly competent poster who unfortunately seems distracted by the visual of Tasty taking me roughly from behind - lining up alongside JG, a man lacking the first clue what he is talking about and serving only to undermine his own argument. At least Shattered Dreams gets bored after five minutes.
As a second aside, I honestly can't believe that either of you are still arguing the point with Tasty regarding physics, this is stuff that should have been covered in high-school. You cannot propel yourself straight down from the top of a triangle, and a 450lb fat man is going to be far, far easier to displace from a ladder. This stuff isn't hard.
Tasty has already done a fine job is sweeping JG under the metaphorical carpet, but I'd just like to add my support to the statement that JG is displaying wholesale ignorance whenever he tries to talk about Lou Thesz. It's actually worse than reading Xfear pontificate on Verne Gagne. Then again, I scrolled to the start of this debate and noticed that you invoked the eyeball argument, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Now, to matters of real importance, Irish.
You skipped over a few of my arguments in lieu of trying to be childishly mean to Tastycles (a man who fought in a war for the likes of you). I'd hate to do the same to you so although it pains me to do it, I'll bust out one of those old school point by point breakdowns.
And you're dead off about over rating the SHW's. In fact, thanks to some of these efforts in the tournaments, the SHW's are only NOW starting to get the recognition they deserve. Again, you won't see me back guys like Bastion Booger, Earthquake, Tugboat, One Man Gang, or Haystacks Calhoun. I back guys like Vader, Andre, Bam Bam, Yokozuna, and more recently Paul Wight because they bring much more to the table than JUST size. Sadly folks like you and your forum life partner Tastycles try to poison the minds of fans by childishly calling SHW Pro Wrestling athletes fat. You're trying to write them off because of their weight, and it's not only desparate, it's also sophomoric.
Sophomoric? No, not really. Put down the thesaurus and pick up an introduction to physics, it'll serve you better in this debate.
Now, I know this is going to hurt your world view Irish, but I think you're old enough to be told.
Big Van Vader was fat.
I'm sorry, I know it was hard to hear, but it's true. It's not immaturity on my part, it's not a week attempt to discredit his ability, it's a simple truth. Big Van Vader was fat.
On the BM index he would register as morbidly obese, and even allowing for the fact that the BM index is a pile of shit, he would still qualify as highly overweight on any reasonable scale.
This is not to take away from his ability and his accomplishments such as they were. I can accept the mans talent whilst not denying the self evident truth. The man was fat.
Being fat and heavy makes it harder for you to climb a ladder. That's why you don't see many fat firemen. It makes it much easier for you to be displaced from a ladder (PHYSICS) and would likely result in you suffering more from falling off a ladder.
Simple.
And don't vote against Vader just because he's "fat" or Thesz just because he's old-school.
Nobody is voting against Vader just because he's fat. We're voting against him because he's completely inferior as a professional wrester. The fact that he's a fat man competing in a contest that heavily disadvantages fat men is just one of the many reasons we have.
Perhaps ladder matches were a new idea to them, but they'd had some form of exposure to gimmick wrestling. Plus, Thesz wrestled at a time when high spots were massively rare, vs the guys like Hart and Benoit who wrestled when high spots were very common. So there was FAR Less of an adjustment for those guys than there would be for Thesz, who was one of the best in the world at keeping his feet planted on the ground.
Exposer to gimmick wrestling? So we're falling back on the assertion that hitting someone with a chair is a precise art that needs to be studied. I have a folding chair in my study, just for an experiment I picked it up, took it outside, identified a young Arabic gentleman and cracked him across the head with it. It was easy.
I'm not sure what Thesz
being one of the best in the world at keeping his feet planted on the ground is supposed to mean. I'll concede that he didn't make a habit of missing flying moves like Vader did, but he spent plenty of time in the air and on the mat.
Held up Kane at Money in the Bank last year, long enough for him to win it. Also held up Mark Henry, and Vader is twice as agile as Henry is.
Besides, my argument is not that Vader is lightning fast and will scale the ladder the way Maurice Jones Drew ran a 40-yard dash. My argument is that after the Mastadon brutalizes Thesz, he'll have plenty of time and will not, in any way, struggle to scale a simple ladder.
So instead of the stipulation favoring Vader, now the stipulation is irrelevant and can be ignored until Lou Thesz has been incapacitated. That's fine to me since there is absolutely no way in hell that Vader, a man who lost matches to mediocre opponents on a regular basis, is going to destroy Lou Thesz, a man who went undefeated against the entire planet for year after year.
Once you get beyond the right hook then Lou Thesz (a southpaw) is superior in in every relevant aspect of this contest, and would have Vader down clutching his knee long before the big man come close to incapacitating him.
Ok, here's another point. It's a lot harder for Thesz to get a 450-lb Vader OFF of the ladder than it is for Vader to get a 225-lb Thesz off the ladder. Vader's weight IS the ladder's stability. And again, I reference Kane and Henry. Or even the number of times BOTH Hardys AND Edge and Christian stood on a ladder at once for some high spot - that's 1000+ lbs and the ladders held up fine. Vader weighs 450 and you think the ladder is going to snap like a Spanish announce table? Are you serious?
No, I think it's going to fall down. A 450lb mass distorting the center of gravity will make it unstable. Stephen Hawking agrees with me.
Um, dude...YOU brought it up.
I was trying to be preemptive, but as a matter of fact that JG guy had already brought it up.
The Hansen eye match ended in a draw.
Unlike the matches against Antonio Inoki, Ken Shamrock, Kane, Mark Henry, Otto Wanz, Riki Choshu, El Canek, Singh, Tatsumi Fujinami, Scott Norton, Rambo, Tony Halme, Sting, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Nobuhiko Takada, Randy Savage, Yokozuna, Jake Robberts, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Sid Vicious, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, Undertaker, Justin Bradshaw, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Yoshihiro Takayama, Jun Akiyama and Shinya Hashimoto.
If the man is going to get squashed by Ken Shamrock, Mark Henry and and crack addled Jake Roberts then he is not going to stand much of a chance against Lou Thesz.
No lie, I just read up on DOn Leo Johnathon, and I'm underwhelmed. He really doesn't have NEAR Vader's credentials.
Dude, you really need to concede the fact that Vader would be a challenge the likes of which NOBODY had seen up to that point. Nobody did what Vader did in the ring at that size, which is why I continue to safely call him the greatest Superheavyweight in history.
Ahh, I see your evil plan at last. If you can get everyone in this tournament to vote based on five minutes reading then you've got a decent shot. DLJ was as strong as Vader, he was able to lift Andre the Giant. He was faster than Vader (Vader could hit an ugly moonsault from the top rope, DLJ could hit one standing then nip up immediately after. He was also a highly skilled martial artist and, as I have said before, could be incredibly brutal (as anyone who reads what he did the Andre can testify). He never put his eye back in which I guess means he lacks
Magical Vader Power but he's one of the most talented super heavyweights in wrestling history and he presented no challenge to Lou Thesz.
One of the worst and most flawed arguments I've ever heard. You're basically arguing that Vader is at disadvantage for getting himself DQ'ed when you're trying to get someone over him in...wait for it...a NO DQ MATCH!?
You make it sound like Thesz is a rocket scientist and Vader is f'ing Kamala. I'll always give you the fact that Thesz is a smart man - a true thinking man's wrestler, but Vader wasn't just a savage. He was a smart, albeit brutal, SHW, and his manager is often considered one of the smartest guys in history.
No I'm not arguing that Vader will get himself disqualified. I'm arguing that he is stupid. He was stupid enough to cost himself plenty of matches he was in control of. He was stupid enough to constantly go for slow, telegraphed high flying moves that could and would cost him matches. He was outsmarted by opponents like Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels and lost matches because of it.
Gel, your knees argument is really the only one you can base this argument on, but I also remind you that Vader's knees didn't stop him from defeating Sting more often than not, or from beating Cactus Jack, or from beating The Undertaker. Thesz's back cost him his undisputed reign at the hands of Edouard Carpentier, and if you think Vader can't target a man's back, ask Joe Thurman.
One: in matches involving both Vader and Sting, Vader has won four and lost five. If you limit it to singles matches then Vader has won two and lost three. Check your facts.
As for Edouard Carpentier? That's all you got? One loss, compared to the countless number of opponents who have easily had Vader's number. Mark Henry defeated him in five minutes. Ken Shamrock made him tap for mercy in four (Vader's crappy legs again). Jake Roberts needed approximatively three to claim victory. Thesz was lasting longer than that against better opponents when he was a 74 year old with a fake hip.
Try harder.
