The Thread Killer

Either more than a bit odd, or one giant leaping case of "hey everybody look at me."

June 6, 1999. Terry Funk vs. Sabu, in one of the scuzziest strip joints you're ever likely to see. In front of 300 people at most. The same summer he fought Abdullah The Butch at an Applebee's in Toronto, which I had to miss, sadly. But this was one of the happiest days of my life, because I got to see Terry Funk wrestle live, and shake his hand. (And I also got to flee in terror when Sabu flew into my row and would have landed on me had I not hauled ass.) I love Terry Funk because as somebody else said, he is everything right about Pro Wrestling. He was my #2 vote (behind Misawa) and that took a lot of soul searching, for a long time he was #1. I've never seen a Terry Funk show or match when I came away feeling bad about it, because he was always so much damn fun.

Consider the source and take it with a grain of salt...but Dynamite Kid talks about Lawler being in Japan briefly in his book. He claims that Lawler was complaining that none of the guys he fought in Japan would sell for him the same way they did when he had fought them in Memphis (I believe he used Killer Khan as an example.) Billington also claims that Jimmy Valiant was working too light and being goofy, so the Japanese talent wouldn't sell for him either.

All I know is they were responsible for not one, but two of the worst Pay Per View matches in history. First at Unforgiven 2001 against Taker and Kane, and then at Wrestle-1 in January 2003 against Muta and Goldberg. The second match was extra painful because it was so damn long. Like 18 minutes, and it seemed like an hour. I was watching that Wrestle-1 Main Event with a friend I've known for over 30 years, and we've watched a ton of wrestling in that time, and after we both agreed that may have been the worst match we'd ever seen...and that covers a lot of ground.

Just curious...why did you want to see Jumbo or Kobashi outside the Top 10?

It's always a good time for Kamala. Andre vs. Kamala, in a cage, from Toronto, complete with top rope action from Andre! This is why Kamala made my list (as #100.)

So...social skills are not your thing, huh?

Watch his match with Kawada at CC 1995 and see if you think Khali could have done that. Yeah, that. Or the Misawa match. Or any of the tags he was in. Or like, the fucking Marufuji match. Taue was awesome and there's no way you could plug a random stiff like the Great fucking Khali into that scene and get the same result. That is utter, utter nonsense. Taue was fucking great and actively contributing to those matches as much as any of them. But because he's awkward and looks like Giant Baba, he gets no credit for it. Total bullshit. I wouldn't say Taue gets no credit, but I would say that it takes time to appreciate how good he is. With fans like ragemaster, maybe he doesn't appreciate all the differences between the Mainstream American and King's Road Style, or more likely - perhaps he has not seen all of Taue's body of work. If you don't care for a guy's performance in a Tag Match, you're not likely to seek out his work in a singles match, and in Taue's case, you probably should. When I first saw a match featuring "The Four Pillars of Heaven" at first look I thought Kobashi was the biggest star, simply because I was used to watching North American wrestling and Kobashi's style was more what I was used to, with the dramatic behavior. Secondly I was impressed with Kawada, who to me exuded bad-assery. Then Misawa, I saw that he had the skills (and then some) but at first I was taken aback by his stoicism at times. And originally yes, I didn't "get" Taue at all, I thought he was the weak link and wasn't ass good as the other three guys. Now, I rate the four totally different. In my opinion the problem is that a lot of fans read the names Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi and Taue and just look up one of their Tag Matches on YouTube, watch it, and then make snap judgements. That was the mistake I made - although I didn't use YouTube, I did just kind of jump into the King's Road stuff. It wasn't until later I understood that going straight to watching the Tag Final on 12/06/96 was kind of like watching only the scene in the Italian Restaurant where Michael shoots everybody, but then claiming you watched The Godfather and don't see the big deal. Yeah, you saw a vital part, but not the whole picture. I honestly think new fans need to start with the match where Misawa unmasked and moved forward using this list as a guideline, get into the awesome Jumbo and Company vs. Misawa and Company Tag Team matches and Six Man matches (during many of which, Taue was rocking his super-cool fro.) If they then work their way up into the eventual split of Misawa and Kawada and formation of The Holy Demon Army, by the time they get to some of Taue's "peak" performances in 1995, they can see a fuller picture of the important role he played in 90's AJPW. And that's not even getting into some of the underrated stuff he ended up doing in NOAH. Now having said all that, if you look at all the work Taue did through the 90's in AJPW and you still end up comparing him to The Great Khali? Then I submit you have the brain damage brought on by taking the marijuana pills.

I'm not advocating democracy. I'm fine with you and Will turning PWO into a brutal dictatorship. I, for one, would welcome our new overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a loyal, long time member here, I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Um...what? GWE equivalent of Vince taking wrestling from smoke-filled venues to what it is today. My thought process was: "How could anybody have ever seen even a handful of Japanese Main Events and not seen a match with Kobashi?" Unless Kobashi is still too stoic with not enough intensity and facial expressions. That is one of the main knocks against him.

Not going to happen. Yea number of posts is a silly metric but a list of people who were only active in the discussions threads would be an interesting list. I've been a member at this board since the get-go, pretty much. I visit this board every single day, some times multiple times a day...and I'm pretty sure I read practically every nomination thread, or at least most of them. But I work a 4 day week of 12 hour shifts in my job, and it's not a job where I can get online much, if at all. I just don't have the time to get into prolonged discussions online on a regular basis. Sure I get days off, but I always have so much crammed in that I have to do when I'm not at work. But there were people for this project who made my ballot, or who got ranked higher (or in rare cases lower) based solely on discussions I read here. I did not actively "participate" in these threads aside from listening to the discussion and checking out recommendations. Are we back to the idea that my ballot might not have counted for as much because I didn't have time to discuss each nominee at length? Because after that it will be straight into the idea that my ballot shouldn't count because I don't like Joshi, or Lucha is not my favorite style...and next thing you know, you've got four guys left voting. There are a couple of guys on my ballot that I was upset to see place so low, in a couple of cases they didn't even break the Top 100. I wasn't happy, but I got it. I knew being a fan of FMW/ECW and not Joshi or Memphis was going to put my ballot at odds with other ballots. I'd like to think if challenged, I could defend my ballot. And now I really want to learn more about some of these guys, like the World of Sport guys, or Casas for example. But the way some people taking this so seriously that they are bitching about so many results, or that some people don't deserve to be on the list, or saying they aren't going to continue to follow the list, or they want to see the ballots broken down into different categories based on different criteria...kind of sucks all the fun out of this project.

Um...what?

I agree, when I scrolled down and saw his name there, I was legit shocked. I had him as my #7, and I'm not a New Japan guy. That ranking was purely based on footage I sought out based on the recommendations from other fans. (Recommendations of the "AJPW isn't the be all and end all, New Japan had some good stuff too, pull your head out of your ass and watch this match" variety.)

I agree with you, although I had them fairly close to each other. Shawn was a better tag worker (Rockers), Heel (DX), and babyface (just using 2008 as an example). I don't know if it's a fair comparison or not, but I'd rate Shawn's post-comeback over what we got out of the short-lived Bret in WCW era. Don't get me wrong, I think Bret was great, but I ranked Shawn higher. I don't think Shawn Michaels was a better heel than Bret. Bret was pretty awesome at playing a multi-dimensional heel during the whole "Canada vs. The U.S." deal. Michaels in DX just his tired old "too cool for school" routine. And as a face? Michaels came across as incredibly disingenuous. There was a reason people cheered for Sid when Sid turned on him.

Well let me tell you my friend, if you like Japanese women in one-piece bathing suits screaming, are you in for a treat.

You are right, it is striking, and probably not quite right. I personally didn't help by not voting for any women. I decided early in the process that I couldn't because I'm just not familiar enough with the style. I have tried watching Joshi several times, and although I've been impressed by the work, I've always found watching women beating each other in that manner a bit unsettling. For that reason I've just never stuck with it. I wonder how many people feel the same way as me, that they recognised that some women 'should' be on their list just didn't feel they had enough knowledge of the genre to rate them fairly. I agree with this sentiment. I had no women on my ballot. I have tried to watch Joshi several times over the years, and I have never really cared for it, honestly. In my case, it's not that I find it unsettling that it's women beating on each other, but for whatever reason it just doesn't draw me in, or connect with me. I can watch it and recognize the skill of the participants, but I have just never had any desire to follow Joshi or put any effort into watching a significant amount of it. I couldn't put any of the big names from that style on my list when I really don't have the knowledge of it, or the desire to learn more. Some people feel that way about FMW and garbage wrestling, some people don't like shoot style or lucha. I just never much cared for Joshi. I did put a lot of thought and research into my list, I read all the nomination threads for people whom I had seen and sought out footage for some of those whom I had not, or for those who I had not decided where to place...but I still don't have any women on my list. Then again, I didn't vote for Brock Lesnar, CM Punk, or even Tully Blanchard, either. So it's not like any of the people on the list today made it from my ballot at the expense of a woman that I could have voted for instead. I had Finlay but lower, and Harley Race but much higher.

I have a question... Michael Elgin is listed as a nominee in the nominee folder. His name does not appear on this list as having received zero votes. His name is also not listed on Woof's master list of the Honorable Mentions. He didn't appear in the first 50 votes of the Top 100, unless I missed it. Since there is no way he could have received enough votes to make the top 50, what happened to him? I only ask because if he did make the Top 50, I need to go and buy a bazooka, so I can shoot myself in the face.

I have a ton of shoot style stuff on VHS in a box in my crawl space, covered in dust. I've got UWF, UWF-I, Pancrase, KINGDOM and even the first bunch of U-Style shows in there. Problem is, I don't own a VCR and don't have the equipment or knowledge needed to transfer them over to DVD-R or avi or whatever. Or the time. That means if I want to watch any of my old shoot style stuff, I either have to buy a VCR and hook it up to my home theater just for that purpose, or put in all the time and effort and cost to convert all that stuff, or buy it all again which I can't afford. That's why if it's not posted online somewhere, I likely wasn't able to check it out for this project. I have so much wrestling on VHS it's ridiculous, I'm glad technology advanced, but it really hurt my wrestling viewing.

I actually read her autobiography, and in all fairness, by her own admission Chyna had a messed up life long before she got to the WWF. Even if she had never put on a pair of wrestling boots, she had a pretty big bag of hammers to carry around with her. Granted, what happened to her during and after her time in the WWF certainly didn't make things any better, and I'm pretty sure it made things a lot worse...but I don't think anybody can lay the emotional damage she suffered at the hands of Vince and Co. on this one.

Juvenile idiocy. Historical fascination, similar to Lemmy's collecting of Third Reich memorabilia. A hateful gang mentality they grew out of. Again, I'm not on their side. Just not comfortable with completely slating them as humans based on tattoos I don't know the story behind and backed up by no tales of bigotry in a business full of it. I can buy getting a racist tattoo that you later regret, fine. I once worked with somebody who did that, they were in a skinhead gang on the streets and whilst incarcerated. Once they got out they renounced their ways, and one of the first things they did was get the tattoo changed so it didn't look like the SS symbol anymore...they didn't display it with pride. As sek pointed out, one of the Harris Brothers was suspended from TNA for wearing a t-shirt with some sort of white power/Nazi slogan or saying on it, that is a fact. If that doesn't prove that the dude has issues, I don't know what does. And leave Lemmy out of this, dammit.

double post

Apparently I have "reached my positive quota of votes for the day"? Damn. The same thing happened to me when I tried to like El-P's post about Onita in the reactions thread. Who is this board to tell me when I've reached my positive quota for the day? Don't tell me how to feel, dammit.

It's unfortunate that this is not the forum for such a discussion, because this seems to be leading into a very interesting debate about mental health and the moral and legal responsibility of people with mental health issues, along with the responsibilities of the legal system when dealing with people with mental health issues. There are some excellent, well thought out posts with valid points being made on both sides of the argument here, which I'd love to continue...but unfortunately this is Pro Wrestling Only and I don't want to get too far off topic.

The funny thing about Onita is that pretty much all the guys coming after him and did garbage stuff totally ignored why Onita was so great at it and why he made a shitload of money : milking and selling. That's why watching the very early Onita FMW matches against martial artists is so revealing of what Onita is all about, because he basically worked the same way then : getting his ass beat, selling like a motherfucker, milking every comebacks like crazy. And then of course you got all the Onita mystic with the post-match crying and promo, which is insane even if you don't understand the language. But really, Onita wasn't about taking insane bump and bleeding like a stuck pig. Well, he was, but that's just a part of it. The main thing is that he milked and sold like a mofo. That's why he made shitload of money while all the garbage idiots (Abyss, looking at you) coming after just destroyed their body for basically nothing because all they got out of Onita was : taking bumps in barbwires. That was just a spectacular choice. Onita was like Takada, a master of epic spectacle. Excellent post. That really summarizes what was great about Onita, better than I ever could. I had Onita as my #20, and El-P's post does a great job of explaining why.

I must have missed the post in this thread where somebody said they loved Steve Austin. I also must have missed the post where Steve Austin's conduct was some how connected to Chris Benoit murdering his wife and child.