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Chat Area => Archives => Topic started by: foosinaround69 on October 31, 2007, 01:53:48 PM
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I have hearing about this match for sometime now . Now I am wondering if it will take place. A few of us were talking about it at our weekly tourney in Mich and wondering what you fellow foosers thought. I think it would be a match to see. If it happens. As for who will win??? Well to me Rico has to be the best I've ever seen and until someone does what he has... I would have to go with him. Don't get me wrong Johnny has a great game no question, but Rico has played on everything and has shown he can beat anyone anywhere. I think the game has changed since Johnny has won a championship and with the rollover and europin being more used today than it was years ago, it is harder to stop. None the less I would love to see a match like this. Happy foosin guys!!!!!!!!
P.S. Who will win?????
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Well I guess you guys must not really care too much about this match huh? nobody has said anything .... Interesting...Horton must of done some people wrong or something!!!!!
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Fred would beat Johnny!
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Yup, Horton is weak, Freddy would have him for lunch.
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Don't get me wrong i am not a Horton fan. But back in the day johnny was just as much a freak as Fred....his pull shot was blinding fast and his passing series was strong. Today no way hands-down Fred would dominate...
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People are just tired of Hortons crap.The guys wacko.
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Who is this Horton guy?
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Okay I just went and watched some video of Johnny Horton. I have watched a lot of video of Fredrico and in my opinion from what I saw on video Fred would eat Johnny for lunch.
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I had the chance to see Johnny Horton play in Tampa, Atlanta, and DFW Worlds from 1991 through 1995, not too far past his prime, when I heard his videos were as equally in demand as well as every other video, combined. I also had the fortune to watch Rico play and practice between 1997 & 2002 at Worlds in Dallas.
At their peaks, I believe both Johnny and Rico shared the same intensity for every ball, whether in singles or doubles, no matter whose possession it was, and noted this constant revving intensity throughout a match. Technically, it seemed Johnny Horton, in his prime, was superior as a goalkeeper to Rico as he is today. It looked like the same intensity in profiling and remembering which D to use, immediately against any attacking forward or goalkeeper that I saw with Johnny during the mid 90's, Rico showed in the reverse, seeming to figure out how to destroy any 5bar and goalkeeper D so fast and locking on. Johnny had an awesome pull then, with a ridiculously fast 5bar & 3bar reaction time, but nowhere as machinelike as Rico's 5bar series & 3bar shooting. I have rarely ever seen another human scrap for a ball as insanely as Johnny in his prime and I've seen him trap loose balls with his 5bar or 3bar end figure on the wall, at or above the rod, so many times.
For scrapping and grinding out a game, I would put Johnny in his prime, ahead of Rico, but for incredible machinelike technique and ability to simply outscore just about anyone, almost faster than any other human, I'd have to go with Rico. And their primes were in different eras before Snake and after Snake, so of course Rico would win over a slowed Johnny nowadays, on a Tornado or any other table. That's in singles. For dubs though, especially the past three years, Rico and anyone on the planet have nothing on a Tornado over a certain "clutch" team from Texas & Minnesota. Rico may have also started to lose his peak in Tornado singles, too, since he can't even touch a certain cheesehead in a back brace and traction lately. I'd like see if Rico can dominate again with the Warrior.
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"For dubs though, especially the past three years, Rico and anyone on the planet have nothing on a Tornado over a certain "clutch" team from Texas.
Huh???
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Sorry Brad,
Will edit that... hehehe .... Texas and Minnesota....
My bad.... But they ARE "clutch", or "money", or whatever you can call em..
Kinda interesting thread though... is Rico on the way out of Tornado domination after so long?
He may still dominate the rest of the world's tables, anyway, including Bonzini.
What will the "Rico ist Gott" & "Rico ees bebeDieu" fans do then?
After outlasting the "Billy wouldacouldashoulda_indeed_didalikeaSpreeda" fans, what now?
And if Tornado kicks the coinbucket, will Rico crush on the slower noticktack Warriors?
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THE TEAM that foozkillah is talking about is
Dave Gummeson and The One and Only T-MAC, Tracy McMillin.
I think they are the only team to beat Rico and Todd in the World Campionships twice, but I could be wrong! Was there a story going around about a double dip?
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Oh yeah, the question is Rico vs. Horton. Even though he's not in his hay day, Johnny would give Rico a good match, and if by some chance he got in Fred's head, Rico would have a hard time recovering before Johnny took him out. Rico is without question the best of this era, but IMHO, Johnny is the "greatest get in your head fooser" of all time.
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Foozkillah....
I'm not sure if you are saying that tony can't tic tac pass on the warrior??? or what??? But, if u haven't had the chance to watch it go down, you should! I'm pretty sure he gets the ball when ever he wants it. Even though the table doesn't really lend it self to a tic tac series, he basically out wills the table with ease.
As for Horton vs. Rico Rico for sure. But Horton is still really!!! fun to watch play. And I do think he's cleaned up his act a little..but i could be wrong.
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Foozkillah....
I'm not sure if you are saying that tony can't tic tac pass on the warrior??? or what??? But, if u haven't had the chance to watch it go down, you should! I'm pretty sure he gets the ball when ever he wants it. Even though the table doesn't really lend it self to a tic tac series, he basically out wills the table with ease. ...
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Exactly what I said.... If you do not buy a time-machine (perhaps from Walmart or Target... and make sure it's on rollback or on sale...) and jump back to your childhood, eliminate your own self, and restart with that unique left hand grip that Tony did as a child, and then make sure you're in the same group of fellow foosers he grew up with, till your breakout on tour, I would say, why yeah, especially with the softer balls, that the Warrior won't allow you or your basic standard normal human player to pick up fiendishly extreme tictac'ing as easily, right along with Tony on the IFP tour. And you would have to make sure you had the same constitution as Tony, fall off a high ladder, get laid up in traction, and play at the highest level, winning this or that table's singles title, before you're completely healed and prolly in hideous pain.
But if you do, I'd love to buy that used time-machine after you're done with it.. there's this girl I know I should've never broken up with... and these other three I'll make sure I never meet.
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What do you mean we can't just leap frog the hotel to the other side? That guy Clark outside just did! Honest!
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WashedUpOB,
Playing on a Warrior, no wingers, with ramps, with prolly the best and grippiest North American balls besides the Bonzini cork balls, WOULD NOT BE A NEUTRAL TABLE, but an added advantage for Rico. Rico has won World Titles since the mid-90's on Tornado's, so Tornado would prolly be the ONLY neutral table. Unless they found an old Legend or even a Striker table to play on, with their original slick (compared to Euro balls that is) balls.
It would be quite intriguing, however, if they did play on an original million-dollar-game TS browntop, or one of those mid80s Dynamo tables with the thin rubberized handles.
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Friends,
The part about the 'which table they should play' really drives home just how great Rico is. The Tornado table is the least friendly table to the front pin style Fred uses, yet he is still able to adapt and be better than anyone else (barring an occasional loss here and there). Let them play a match on all the ITSF tables, then realize the conversation is really 'who is the better Tornado player', because unless you limit the bias of 'overall best player' you're not telling the whole story anyway. Rico probably plays Tornado less than 25% of his competitive time, yet look at the results and almost impenetrable domination.
Tyler
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Bob,
Good points, all the way around. It's a shame they couldn't have met while both were in their prime!
Tyler
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Tyler,
I'd also have to add that in prolly 90% or more of all of Johnny's wins, he's had to battle Pro and ProMaster level money (North American) players from the final 16's on.
Rico and many Euros will tell you that about 70% of those Euros he played and plays (and crushes consistently) over the past 15 years were and are still at the equivalent of SemiPro or lower levels...
The best soccer players in America know where the baddest soccer is played, not in America, and the best basketball players in Europe know where the baddest proball is played, not in Europe. I seriously doubt Rico will ever brag about crushing the equivalent of 10,000 SPs and Amateurs in his Euro career. Johnny can, (and did hahaha) certainly about his tour career.
And you can only argue about singles, because many of Rico's wins here were with Todd or another American PM, not some Euro he could ostensibly trust, to block money players from where pro foosball was invented.
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Bob and Bri,
All valid points, and again I must add that I wish there were a way to do a real apples to apples comparison. As for the European competition Rico faces - he goes to Bonzini Worlds and usually mops everybody up, regardless of how they might objectively be rated - he goes and beats the best there is virtually every time. Same with Garlando, TechBall, Jupiter, and pretty much any other table you can name, including Tornado.
As for Horton - he dominated his era which had a very different set of dynamics. From the mid 70's until 1981, the only big game around was Tournament Soccer, and Horton was among those/the one who set the standard. Then TS dissolved, Dynamo cloned the Brown top TS before redesigning their tables, Stryker had a small tour, along with a couple of others, including the one man goalie Tornado. The biggest difference was that for 15 +/- years virtually all the key tour players followed the same variety mix of tables at the same time. Everyone who was anything was primarily TS for 6 years, then an 80's mix followed in the 90's by a Tornado dominant sport. Rico plays at least 5 different tables, all with different 'feel', basically at the same time. To play Tornado only a fraction of the time then come to an almost exclusively Tornado country (and a really big country at that!) and still do what he does...amazing to me. And don't forget that Inside Foos has made it easy to sit and study his game, piece by slow motion replay piece, so that by now you would think more players would have made a bigger dent in Rico's record, unless his foosball mastery is simply that far above the rest.
Again, I wish they both could have somehow met on their best table, both playing at their prime, etc. but alas, that can never happen. The closest comparison would be a Rico near his prime playing Horton who is long past his, played on Tornado.
Take care.......................................Tyler