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Post by Cap on Jul 18, 2019 15:09:09 GMT -5
I probably don't get more pure joy watching anyone else in wrestling. Its crazy how much fun it is to watch Stan Hansen do his thing. He and Kobashi represent my favorite pairing of all time.
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Post by bossrock on Jul 20, 2019 14:40:11 GMT -5
Almost everyone seems to disagree with me on this one, but I say Stan Hansen is the greatest brawler ever. There's never been anyone who could create such a sense of chaos and intensity than he could. My favorite kind of brawling is the wild and out of control type, and no one tops Hansen in that regard. He's arguably the greatest heat worker ever in the relentless pace he would work in beating the crap out of his opponent whether it be throwing a few errant kicks, dropping a knee, or grabbing anything that wasn't nailed down. His selling is also some of the best I've ever seen. He's had a few performances where he no-sold a bit too much (usually when tagging with Brody), but most of the time he did a terrific job of conveying the tough guy who's not phased by certain strikes but once you hurt him, you hurt him bad. He's very much like a wounded animal who panics and flails around, but he's still just one devastating lariat away from winning. He's also someone who didn't have too steep of a decline near the end of his career as he was still at least a very good tag worker in the late 90's.
Top 5 candidate if not the GOAT.
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Post by elliott on Jul 20, 2019 15:55:20 GMT -5
Wait, there are people who don't think Hansen is at least a contender for best brawler ever? He finished 3rd during GWE and I don't think it was for his technical prowess.
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Post by bossrock on Jul 20, 2019 17:46:32 GMT -5
Wait, there are people who don't think Hansen is at least a contender for best brawler ever? He finished 3rd during GWE and I don't think it was for his technical prowess. Ha, I mean most people I talk to would say Funk.
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Post by elliott on Jul 21, 2019 3:26:53 GMT -5
Its the all time 1A & 1B example. During GWE goodhelmet posted a Terry Funk vs Stan Hansen poll and it broke me inside. I thought about it for like a week.
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Post by Cap on Jul 21, 2019 8:39:36 GMT -5
I'd probably call him the greatest brawler ever if you put a gun to my head right now. He is at least in the conversation with no more then 3-4 others.
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Post by elliott on Aug 6, 2019 12:47:07 GMT -5
I think Hansen is best wrestler ever at projecting his character through ring work. In a sense he's one of the smartest character actors in the history of televised performance art. I've seen 100s of hours of Stan Hansen televised performances and I don't think there was ever a single moment where he did something that didn't make sense for Stan Hansen to do.
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Post by nintendologic on Aug 11, 2019 16:34:58 GMT -5
You know what, early to mid-80s Hansen is kind of a piece of shit. He could give Bruiser Brody a run for his money when it came to guzzling opponents, and he never made even a token attempt to sell damage to his lariat arm even though it got worked over in a significant number of his matches. If you take away his matches with Terry Funk, I'm not sure Hansen was significantly better than Brody during that period. For my money, the Tenryu feud in 1988 is when he turned the corner and became an elite worker.
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Post by bossrock on Aug 11, 2019 16:52:55 GMT -5
You know what, early to mid-80s Hansen is kind of a piece of shit. He could give Bruiser Brody a run for his money when it came to guzzling opponents, and he never made even a token attempt to sell damage to his lariat arm even though it got worked over in a significant number of his matches. If you take away his matches with Terry Funk, I'm not sure Hansen was significantly better than Brody during that period. For my money, the Tenryu feud in 1988 is when he turned the corner and became an elite worker. I haven't seen a ton of his early 80's stuff aside from Andre and Funk, but he was fantastic in the Colon feud from '86-'87. Bumped and sold like crazy while still having that aura of danger.
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Post by elliott on Aug 11, 2019 17:03:59 GMT -5
You know what, early to mid-80s Hansen is kind of a piece of shit. He could give Bruiser Brody a run for his money when it came to guzzling opponents, and he never made even a token attempt to sell damage to his lariat arm even though it got worked over in a significant number of his matches. If you take away his matches with Terry Funk, I'm not sure Hansen was significantly better than Brody during that period. For my money, the Tenryu feud in 1988 is when he turned the corner and became an elite worker.I completely disagree with this. It ignores his fantastic rivalry with Giant Baba for one. But also presumes his great runs in AWA, Puerto Rico, WWWF and NJPW didn't happen. Not even looking at tags, pre 1988 Tenryu feud Hansen has... vs Destroyer vs Inoki (several) vs Backlund (several) vs Andre vs Baba (several) vs Colon (several) vs Bockwinkel vs Hennig vs Blackwell vs Slaughter vs Leon White Yeah, that dude sucked before 1988..... I know you're going to say "I was just talking about early-mid 80s ALL JAPAN!!!" which I'll just go ahead and take a dump on right now. The best feuds of early-mid 80s AJPW before the Choshu invasion were Hansen feuds, specifically Hansen vs Baba & vs Funk. During the exact same time period that he was allegedly a "piece of shit" worker, he was having an all time great feud in Puerto Rico with Colon and then going to AWA and leading green as grass Vader to an awesome, 20+minute long title match. This isn't exactly the output of a "piece of shit" worker. That he worked differently in AJPW than he did in PR or AWA and had great matches in a variety of places is actually a credit to his ability. Lastly isn't it super weird to call someone a "piece of shit worker" but then limit it to a specific point in their career that ignores the all time great matches they had before that period, the all time great matches they had after that period and then being specifically told to ignore the all time great matches DURING that period as well. Don't just ignore the great matches he had around the world at that time. Ignore the great matches he was having in this promotion that he allegedly sucked in at the time he allegedly sucked and you'll see that he sucked at at this time and place. Come on.
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Post by tetsujin on Aug 11, 2019 17:07:53 GMT -5
You know what, early to mid-80s Hansen is kind of a piece of shit. He could give Bruiser Brody a run for his money when it came to guzzling opponents, and he never made even a token attempt to sell damage to his lariat arm even though it got worked over in a significant number of his matches. If you take away his matches with Terry Funk, I'm not sure Hansen was significantly better than Brody during that period. For my money, the Tenryu feud in 1988 is when he turned the corner and became an elite worker. I strongly disagree with this. Hansen being a bad seller is something that his matches with André, Colon, Funk, Baba, Hennig, Bock etc prove to be wrong. At least when it comes to single matches.
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Post by bossrock on Aug 11, 2019 18:41:03 GMT -5
One thing I've liked about Hansen hitting the lariat even after his arm was worked over is that it's such a quick strike. It's not like his finisher was a powerbomb or chokeslam that required a lot of strength.
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Post by nintendologic on Aug 11, 2019 19:25:12 GMT -5
You know what, early to mid-80s Hansen is kind of a piece of shit. He could give Bruiser Brody a run for his money when it came to guzzling opponents, and he never made even a token attempt to sell damage to his lariat arm even though it got worked over in a significant number of his matches. If you take away his matches with Terry Funk, I'm not sure Hansen was significantly better than Brody during that period. For my money, the Tenryu feud in 1988 is when he turned the corner and became an elite worker.I completely disagree with this. It ignores his fantastic rivalry with Giant Baba for one. But also presumes his great runs in AWA, Puerto Rico, WWWF and NJPW didn't happen. Not even looking at tags, pre 1988 Tenryu feud Hansen has... vs Destroyer vs Inoki (several) vs Backlund (several) vs Andre vs Baba (several) vs Colon (several) vs Bockwinkel vs Hennig vs Blackwell vs Slaughter vs Leon White Yeah, that dude sucked before 1988..... I know you're going to say "I was just talking about early-mid 80s ALL JAPAN!!!" which I'll just go ahead and take a dump on right now. The best feuds of early-mid 80s AJPW before the Choshu invasion were Hansen feuds, specifically Hansen vs Baba & vs Funk. During the exact same time period that he was allegedly a "piece of shit" worker, he was having an all time great feud in Puerto Rico with Colon and then going to AWA and leading green as grass Vader to an awesome, 20+minute long title match. This isn't exactly the output of a "piece of shit" worker. That he worked differently in AJPW than he did in PR or AWA and had great matches in a variety of places is actually a credit to his ability. Lastly isn't it super weird to call someone a "piece of shit worker" but then limit it to a specific point in their career that ignores the all time great matches they had before that period, the all time great matches they had after that period and then being specifically told to ignore the all time great matches DURING that period as well. Don't just ignore the great matches he had around the world at that time. Ignore the great matches he was having in this promotion that he allegedly sucked in at the time he allegedly sucked and you'll see that he sucked at at this time and place. Come on. Sorry for not making myself clearer. By "piece of shit," I was referring to his professionalism, not his working ability. He was certainly capable of producing exciting cooperative matches, but he often chose not to. He actually talked about it in his autobiography. He had good cardiovascular conditioning, so he'd stay on his opponents until they blew up and then take the match where he wanted. He said guys would complain that he didn't give them anything, but wrestling is a business and he did what he had to do to keep himself strong. As morbid as it is to say it, I kind of think Brody dying made Hansen a better worker. Brody and Hansen were like Gordy and Williams in that they seemed to encourage each other's worst tendencies.
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Post by elliott on Aug 11, 2019 19:48:29 GMT -5
Hahahaha, sorry for taking such a harsh tone because that is very different I would still disagree though on the general point though, even if Stan talked about it. I'd be interested in knowing who specifically was complaining about Hansen not giving them enough in the ring. I wrote a few really long Hansen posts during GWE when MattD and I were going back and forth about his 80s AJPW work. forums.prowrestlingonly.com/topic/28583-stan-hansen/?do=findComment&comment=5711498That's probably the key one. For the TLDR crowd, basically Hansen did not eat his major opponents alive during the 80s: Inoki, Andre, Baba, Funk, Backlund, Jumbo, Tenryu, Colon, Slaughter etc. He took the fight to them but did more than his fair share of bumping, selling and even stooging in some cases. That he didn't bump & sell his ass off in Brody tags against mid-card and prelim wrestlers in the quest for 4 star matches from tape traders is a good thing. Hansen should not have done those things and we would/should criticize him for those things just like we do Vader for bumping too much or Flair working even with Sam Houston.
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Post by elliott on Sept 18, 2019 0:07:28 GMT -5
Since I've been watching a lot of gaijin in 90s AJPW and Kobashi matches lately, I ended up watched the 7/93 Hansen/Kobashi match again for like the 50th time. I love that match so much.
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