No Austin was the top draw from 1997 to 1998. He was hurt most of 99 and 2000 and Rock shouldered most of the load, but, once again your delving away from the topic at hand. And Shawn was the guy from around 1996 to 1997, Bret will be remembered as the guy but he was never much of a draw which I'm almost sure you know.
But Undertaker was never THE guy; just one of them.
We had just seen Austin vs Mankind. Rock was still a mid carder with the Nation at this point.
So Undertaker was the top guy then, or was it still Stone Cold. That was pat of my argument earlier, that Taker either loses to the top guy, and when he is champ he's champ of the B show, and playing second fiddle to someone else.
Misawa never played second fiddle. All Japan had primarily 4 guys that made up it's main event, and he was considered the most marketable and most popular of the bunch.
He wasn't during 1997 or 1998, but throughout the course of the 90's he was seeing as how he was the only guy Vince had who was a big deal from the beginning of the 90's until the end of it
You [and apparently Meltzer - you wouldn't happen to be Dave in disguise?] don't seem to be able to grasp the simple concept of big draw does not equal biggest draw.
I'll expect you to vote Goldberg over Gagne and Hart over Rikidozan using the same subjective bias.
But he remained at the top for his entire career. I feel like your trying to change my argument here which I don't appreciate.
You mean the "Taker wins cuz Melter said so argument?" Don't patronize me.
If you feel as if you lost just say that you lost and vote for Taker don't put words in my mouth.
How would I have lost? You never once proven that Taker was a bigger draw than Misawa. Just that he was a "big draw."
And while we're at it Misawa wasn't the undisputed top guy in AJPW Kawada, Kobashi, and Hansen could all make that claim.
Kobashi was similar to Shawn Michaels where he had plenty of awesome matches, but was never a proven draw as a top guy. Hansen was an "attraction draw" like Undertaker, and Kawada was interchangeable with Taue. Ask yourself, who because president of AJPW after Baba's death? Misawa. And why? Because he was the most popular and trusted star in the company... hence the reason why a majority of the other stars followed him to NOAH.
A lot of people may have a lack of knowledge of the Kings Road era in Japan, but, I am not one of them so you can keep all of that Misawa was THE guy bullshit.
As opposed to whom? Taue? Nope, Kawada, probably not? Kobashi? You can't be serious.
No this was not Taker's prime. I don't know if Taker's had apoint in his career where you couldn't consider it his prime seeing as how he's always been a selling point from the time that he got there up until this very day.
When was his prime then? In 2007 when he was very likely the second biggest star in the company, but WWE was drawing a hell of a lot less overall? Pick one.
@Echelon - To argue who is in fact a bigger draw I've decided to do so research and look into some things. These things are attendance numbers.
Now I know that Misawa has sold out Budokan Hall a butt load of times, I can see that so what I'm going to do is a little bit of math here. Now Misawa has only done better than 16,300 fans attendance wise twice in his career, Showdown at the Egg on May 1, 98 and May 2 99 for the Baba Memorial Show. Now I don't like to often count memorial shows as often the deceased draws but for arguments sake I will.
Showdown was 58,300
Baba was 55,000
Both very good numbers. He also did numerous Budokan Hall shows and I saw a number of them at 16,300 (I assume that's a sellout). Now lets say Misawa sold out 30 of them (as in he was the main event and that's probably a fairly accurate number actually lets add another 5 which brings it to 35). You may not like it but I'm not counting shows where he packed a 1,500 seat building. I know he's sold more than that but as you can see he's done very well for himself business wise.
Now I'm gonna do the same for Taker. Same rules apply I'm only gonna count events that he was the main event in. I won't even count Wrestlemania 24 as I feel the real main event was Flair vs. HBK even if it didn't go on last. With that said I'm counting WM 25 and 26 as I feel HBK vs. Taker was in both cases the top match on the card even if it didn't go on last. I'll also count all shows Taker was in the main event in.
So lets start at Survivor Series 91 as I feel its a good place to start (If I count matches where Misawa was against a big star I can do the same for Taker, only fair):
I will even change the color of ones where he was definitely in the drawing match.
1) Survivor Series 91 - 17,500
2) Summerslam 94 - 23,000
3) Survivor Series 94 - 10,000
4) Royal Rumble 96 - 9,600
5) IYH: Buried Alive - 9,649
6) IYH: Final 4 - 6,3,99
7) IYH: Cold Day In Hell - 9,381
8) KOTR 97: 9,312
9) Summerslam 97: 20, 213
10) IYH: Ground Zero - 4,963
11) IYH: Bad Blood - 21, 151
12) Royal Rumble 98 - 18,542
13) Summerslam 98 - 21,588
14) IYH: Breakdown - 17,405
15) IYH: Judgement Day - 18,153
16) IYH: Rock Bottom - 17,677
17) Over The Edge - 16,472
18) Fully Loaded - 16,605
So There is 18 main event Pay Per Views (not just shows) in 8 years and 17 in 5. Now I'm gonna skip WAY ahead because this will take forever. Lets start at Wrestlemania 23 and move on.
19) Unforgiven 07 - 12,000
20) Cyber Sunday 07 - 10,094
21) Survivor Series 07 - 12,500
22) Armageddon 07 - 12,500
23) WM 24 - 74,635 (Not counting it)
24) One Night Stand 08 - 9,961
25) Summerslam 08 - 12,480
26) WM 25 - 72,744
27) Breaking Point '09 - 12,000
28) EC 2010 - 17,000
29) WM 26 - 72,219
30) HIAC 2010 - 17,500
31) WM 27 - 71,617 (yeah I'm counting it, it was the top match on the card)
So Thats 31 shows that Undertaker main evented, 26 that I counted where he was the top match on the card as in the main event.
You are forgetting two things...
1.) WWE has the luxury of touring in big cities, some with a population in excess of 1,000,000. All Japan worked in prefectures with a population of a tenth or less of that, and that's hardly their fault.
2.) Lets look at some adjusted numbers, and I picked two random events in the same time period.
http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=2059
1999 - Raw is War - Phoenix Arizona. Pulled 13,538 people with a population of roughly 1,300,000
Main event? Undertaker vs The Rock.
http://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=92169
1999 - AJPW Event - Bunkyo, Tokyo. Pulled 2,100 people with a population of less than 193,000.
Main event? Gary Albright, Takao Omori & Yoshihiro Takayama vs Masahito Kakihara, Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa
That means that WWE pulled in 6.5 times as many people with roughly 6.7 times the potential audience. If you were to have allowed AJPW the audience of the WWE, they would have drawn roughly 14,070.
Remember that Undertaker was not in the main event most nights, where as Misawa was.
WM 25-27 did better than any card Misawa has ever been on. Yes I know he was in Japan but if Inoki can draw 150,000 in South Korea and 80,000 paying customers in Pakistan then there's no reason Misawa can't either.
That was North Korea... and pro wrestling wasn't the only thing offered at the event... and I'm sure many were forced to go. Inoki was a one of the two Japanese stars I consider bigger draws than Misawa... the other is facing Bret Hart this round.
Now I certainly don't negate all that Misawa has done but there's no coincidence he kept going back to the same buildings to draw when he has a million other places to do it in, its because he can't do it. When I got those attendance numbers for AJPW almost ALL off them were at Budokan Hall (In 80 shows 4 of there top selling shows in AJPW history were somewhere else, only doing better than Budokan hall 4 times, twice didn't have Misawa as the draw).
That's like saying WWE doesn't draw as much in other cities like they do in MSG because they suck. Could it be that All Japan had more people to draw from in the heart of Tokyo than the boonies? The random one I drew was in a ward called Bunkyo where both All Japan and New Japan are known.. that random show was standing room only since Korakuen Hall only has a capacity of 1,800.
So I get Misawa is a big draw in Japan, I get he's a big wrestler in Japan but I just named you shows where The Undertaker (as the main event mind you) drew more money than Misawa and I did it very easily I may add. Most of those shows WEREN'T in the same city and some of them were it a different country altogether. I'm not racist saying Japan doesn't count because it does, all I'm saying is Rest of World as whole > Japan and I don't think that's racist at all.
They drew more because WWE has access to cites with bigger populations. Adjust for that inflation, and All Japan easily draws just as much. I negated this bullcrap with my first post if you even bothered to read.
My point is Undertaker can draw, he has often drawn more money than Misawa and in a few cases blew Misawa's best attendance figures out of the water.
Hopefully this post will educate you on how wrong you are. 50,000 was much larger than anything Undertaker pulled.
Not only that I've seen numerous times I've seen the Undertaker wrestle (hundreds if not thousands) and 1 thing is always certain. In any given event he will get one of the top 3 reactions of the night EVERY SINGLE TIME.
That says nothing as Japanese fans don't make allot of noise. That's not a good basis for quality when comparing two guys from different countries. Learn from your ignorance.
I get you like Misawa, I'm not biased towards American wrestling in the tournament.
I like Undertaker better, but Misawa was the bigger star and he should win this.
I voted Thesz over Billy Graham (one of my all time favorites), I took Hansen (a guy who did big business in Japan) over Big Show so maybe you should watch it when you are saying a guy is racist, doesn't know much about wrestling outside of America and will always go for the American.
So... why are you voting at all?
I vote for who I think will win a match in certain circumstances so I voted for Undertaker. I've proved to you he can draw just as much as Misawa can if not more. I have more than enough good reasons and evidence to put Taker over Misawa and so does most who will vote for Taker.
You vote for the guy that's objectively a bigger star, and that's Misawa; why? Because he was the bigger draw.
Take your head out of Misawa's ass and see that. You have all the reason to vote for Misawa but don't think that he's better because he drew well in one place and did jack anywhere else. When I say that its not a knock its a FACT.
You probably would have sounded less stupid if you had stuck with "Undertaker wins cuz he's Undertaker."