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Post by elliott on Feb 2, 2020 19:54:33 GMT -5
I usually like to do really different matchups for these comparisons, but this is fun one that doesn't come up as much as variations of Arn vs Eaton vs Morton.
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Post by KB8 on Feb 7, 2020 11:38:35 GMT -5
At first glance I thought I'd pick Arn without too much trouble, but I've watched and re-watched quite a lot of Tully over the last year or so and man that little weasel was fucking awesome.
Top Matches
Both have a ton of really good to great tag matches, a lot of which as a team. The Horsemen stuff together is a wash, basically. Tully has the Dynamic Duo stuff with Gino that I stupidly never bothered to really check out until last year, and it fucking rules. Arn's tag stuff outwith the Tully team edges it, especially with the Dangerous Alliance run that produced a fuckload of good to great regular tags and multi-man matches. In singles I think Tully has at least three absolute corkers that are better than any Arn singles match. Like, for the latter I guess I'd pick his Saturday Night (1/92) match with Dustin. It's great. The Windham match from later in the year is really great as well and probably about on par. But Tully/Garvin (Worldwide), Tully/Steamboat (Starrcade) and Tully/Magnum (Starrcade) are all a step above that for me. Arn has a couple non-Tully Wargames, though. And he's a huge part of them. Ah fuck it.
Winner: Draw
Versatility
Both of them are excellent singles, tag and multi-man workers. Both are great brawlers, though I guess Tully has that showcase singles match brawl that Arn doesn't. Neither are amazing mat wrestlers, but perfectly good in much the same ways. Arn always gets the praise for being an awesome stooge as well as a plausible badass, sometimes all within the same match, and rightly so because sure enough he's an awesome stooge and a plausible badass. Tully is obviously an all-time weasel, but I think HIS ability to come across as super vicious is pretty underrated. He can be a frenzied little bastard when he needs to be and you buy him as being someone who'll fight to the death when the chips are down. It's probably a cop out but I'm calling this another draw.
Winner: Draw
Consistency
I haven't seen much of any of Tully's Southwest run, which is a decent chunk of time (although it's hard to judge someone on those first few years of their career). He was awesome in the earliest Houston footage we got of him from NWA On Demand and he was never less than that up until the end of the WWF run. After that I don't have a clue how much of him I've seen but it won't be much. That match with Funk at Slamboree '94 fucking rules, though. Early Arn is fine and by mid-late '85 he was mostly really good. Great for the rest of the decade and then had an unbelievable year in 1992. I don't think he fell off a cliff after that, but I do think he dropped a bit in '93 even if he was still no worse than good. Probably stayed at that level until '95 and at points hit great. Fuck sake, this is close enough that I'm tempted to go with another draw. Arn by the slimmest of margins.
Winner: Arn
Charisma/"It" Factor
This is probably a preference thing. Do you prefer Arn as the Horsemen's enforcer, or Tully as the weasel you wanted to slap the piss out of? I'll go Tully by virtue of the fact he might be the best there's ever been at that.
Winner: Tully
Promos
Tully is a really good promo at worst and at times a great one, but Arn is elite tier and feels like a genuine GOAT contender.
Winner: Arn
Elevating Others
I'm not really sure. I think twenty years ago conventional wisdom would've been that Tully led Magnum to a classic I Quit match, but the idea that Magnum wasn't very good has been blown to bits by this point. Who had the best match with young, greenish Luger? Arn had that really fun match with Alex Wright so he maybe shades it.
Winner: Arn
Offense
Arn has some of the best stomps ever and all sorts of really good limb work and the greatest Spinebuster of them all. Tully's slingshot suplex is gorgeous, but his major strength isn't necessarily his offense.
Winner: Arn
Selling
Tully's blood-drenched "what the fuck am I even doing this for?" selling while trying not to get his clock cleaned is tremendous, as is the way he conveys a sense of desperation when he has to go toe to toe with Magnum or Garvin or whoever. Arn's more stoic in that regard but it's not like I think he's necessarily worse in this category overall. Probably a preference thing again.
Winner: Tully
Rewatch Valley
I'm going through Will's Horsemen set right now and it feels pretty clear that I could watch both of these guys through that entire run several times. But Arn's early 90s WCW run, particularly in '92, is some of my favourite stuff ever and I actually have rewatched 1992 Arn as much as basically any wrestler ever. Wargames are also just about the most rewatchable wrestling matches around and Arn has more of them. Thus.
Winner: Arn
Elliott’s Bonus Question (Brody/Nigel)
There's probably an obvious answer to this that I'm drawing a blank on. I really don't know. Maybe the Alex Wright match, considering Arn was late-career by that point, gives him the edge. But then maybe Alex Wright was actually okay (I can't remember one way or the other now)? I've seen enough Crockett TV footage where both guys are taking random ham n eggers and producing something fun that I'l call it a draw.
Winner: Draw
Arn - 5
Tully - 2
Draw - 3
Most of these really could've gone either way. My opinion of Tully was always high but over the last couple years the gap has closed quite a bit (for context, I had Arn at 29 and Tully at 78 on my GWE ballot, and Tully would absolutely be higher today). I certainly wouldn't scoff at the idea of Tully > Arn at this point.
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Post by elliott on Feb 8, 2020 16:08:03 GMT -5
Top Matches - Tully. This one was easy for me. I love Arn and don't subscribe to the idea that he didn't have any MOTYC's or anything like that. But Arn doesn't have the MOTDC like Tully/Magnum and Tully/Garvin. I'm not sure there's an Arn singles match I like as much as Tully vs Steamboat. Arn plays a big role in basically all the WarGames as a workhorse, but I wouldn't single him out as the reason those matches were great. Same thing with the Andersons vs RnR's matches. I'm also a big fan of the Tully/Garvin Taped Fist match from 86 GAB and Tully/Dusty First Blood from Starrcade 86.
Versatility - Arn. Agree with everything KB8 said and would say the only reason I would give Arn the edge here is that Tully could really only be a heel. I don't think Tully would ever get that "he might be an asshole, but he's our asshole" respect that Arn was able to get from WCW fans. I also think Arn is a little bit better as a plug & play/utility player sort of guy. He'd be better as the 5th guy in a trios, whereas Tully strikes me as someone who if he isn't a featured player he's being wasted. Arn was more capable of stepping it up when needed and taking a backseat when needed.
Consistency - Draw. I kinda wanted to go Tully here. Arn has the rep of someone who was consistently very good from around 85-95 and I think overall that is a fair assessment. But I've watched a ton of JCP lately and I'm not in love with Arn the singles wrestler in those early years. He's solid for sure and the Andersons vs RnR Express tag matches are some of my favorite matches. But I've watched a number of disappointing singles matches Arn had against Garvin, Wahoo, Windham and Manny Fernandez. And they weren't disappointing because of length or opportunity, but because they were just rather dry & aimless TV matches. Not really bad more "fine but forgettable." Adding the spinebuster & DDT were actually a big help to Arn as a singles worker because it gave him some signature spots to build around or use as big transitions. Tully's only really disappointing matches are when Dusty decides he doesn't want to do anything and thats hard to hold against Tully.
I made it a draw in the end, only because of Tully's disappearance after WWF. The little bit a stuff that he did in the 90s that I've seen he still looks awesome. But Arn is so good in the 90s that it makes up for the earlier disappointing singles matches.
Charisma/"It" Factor" - Tully. Arn's charisma is more in a regular guy kinda way. Tully was a larger than life character. Arn is like an old (even when he was 25) alcoholic bar philosopher in a small town who somehow makes a lot of sense and you start thinking "wait is this guy smart, wtf happened why is he here" and then he casually drops a few racial slurs and its like "oh, that's why. He's a drunk racist asshole." Tully's an 80s High School Movie Villain all grown up. Rich kid, star athlete in HS who dated the hot cheerleader, but would drug her & other girls, drink & drive, do coke, literally never ever held accountable and somehow always slipped through the cracks. Legacy & athletic scholarship & parental payoffs got him into an Ivy or near Ivy league school where he continued his antics until graduating and getting into pro-wrestling.
Promos - Arn. Arn is a top 5 promo ever. I like Tully a lot as a promo and doing outside of the ring stuff, but when I think "great promo" Arn is literally one of the first names that comes to mind.
Elevating Others - Tully. Close and really depends on what you prefer/how you choose to define this. Arn's gift was being able to have a quality match with literally anyone which helped give young/not good wrestlers credibility with the fans because of his ability in the ring and history with the company. But Tully had the gift of elevating a match from a great pro-wrestling match to a life experience that transcends wrestling. Gotta go Tully.
Offense - Arn. I love Arn's offense once he started doing the spinebuster and eventually ddt. Great puncher too.
Selling - Tully. This is another really close one because Arn was truly great here. He could sell and maintain tough guy credibility, but also stooge & make a fool of himself as well as anybody. But Tully vs Garvin is literally an all time classic where Tully gets the shit beat out of him for 30+ minutes.
Rewatch Valley - Draw. These guys careers are so intertwined with each other it seems silly to pick one over the other.
Bonus Elliott's Question (Brody vs Nigel or best work associated with a crappy wrestler) - Tully. I love Dusty, but by the mid 80s he's not very good. Dusty still had some juice and was super over, but was in no way consistent and still shit the bed in big time matches on occasion (Starrcade 85). Tully could push Dusty to a higher level than anyone else in that era though. I don't count the Magnum match because Magnum was awesome and had a bunch of great matches before the accident.
I would have to revisit the Renegade matches for Arn, and I'm honestly probably not going to do that. But I can't imagine Renegade had a match as good as Tully/Dusty at Starrcade or 4/86 Texas Death match.
Also, Alex Wright was good and probably should have been a huge star. Should've gone to WWF in 1997. He's only 44. Just 2 years older than AJ Styles.
Anyway
Tully - 5
Arn - 3
Draw - 2
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Post by KB8 on Feb 8, 2020 17:49:18 GMT -5
Charisma/"It" Factor" - Tully. Arn's charisma is more in a regular guy kinda way. Tully was a larger than life character. Arn is like an old (even when he was 25) alcoholic bar philosopher in a small town who somehow makes a lot of sense and you start thinking "wait is this guy smart, wtf happened why is he here" and then he casually drops a few racial slurs and its like "oh, that's why. He's a drunk racist asshole." Tully's an 80s High School Movie Villain all grown up. Rich kid, star athlete in HS who dated the hot cheerleader, but would drug her & other girls, drink & drive, do coke, literally never ever held accountable and somehow always slipped through the cracks. Legacy & athletic scholarship & parental payoffs got him into an Ivy or near Ivy league school where he continued his antics until graduating and getting into pro-wrestling. This is tremendous and I'm stealing it. |
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Post by Cap on Feb 8, 2020 18:45:37 GMT -5
It is pretty spot on
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