anarchistxx

Interesting. The idea I have of early ROH is two bland guys in MMA shorts and kickpads doing AJ cosplay for 45 minutes while the crowd is doing dual chants. Maybe I'm completely off on this, and in this case well, one of these days, why not. I didn't know TNA audience were responsible for "this is awesome" chants. Damn them then. There is a surprising amount of variety. Early on you get skinny fucks doing stupid flips off cages on wooden floors, so not so good. Later on, you have Homicide and Steve Corino in a barbed wire gore fest on the same card as Samoa Joe & AJ Styles having a pure wrestling battle over the strap. In 2004 stables start to emerge and you get a few genuine heels. By 2005 there is real variety on the cards, high flying spotfests next to long workrate matches with the occasional comedy match thrown in or a Liger/Kobashi/KENTA/other showing up for a random match to make things feel exciting. There are also good storylines and running feuds, Low-Ki/Homicide vs Samoa Joe/Jay Lethal running on and off leading to some fantastic matches, CM Punk's title reign when he flipped and threatened to take the strap to WWSE, best of five series, cage matches, garbage brawls, pure wrestling, bit of everything. By 2006 you have Danielson as the heel champion having long, classic matches on every card and managing to make them all feel individual and different with loads of cool little touches. You have big personalities like Alex Shelley and Jimmy Jacobs. You have the ROH v CZW feud with lots of violent, bloody matches and a storyline that felt genuinely exciting and special at the time. And also workers like Chris Hero and Necro Butcher and others who didn't necessarily fit the blueprint for ROH in 2002 but fitted in well. It also went downhill around this time, with charisma vacuum rubbish like BJ Whitmer, Adam Pearce and Davey Richards moving up the card to replace all the talent lost to WWE and TNA. One of their biggest problem in 2006 was too many chefs - they couldn't pace a card or wanted every match to feel special, so you had the second match on the show going twenty five minutes with tons of high spots and near falls. it just exhausts the crowd and takes away from the main event. So it definitely isn't just a bunch of AJ cosplay, at least not from late 2003 onward where people started developing characters and they got an identity. Sure, there is still the 'pure wrestling' jargon and the slightly smug smart crowd (though they didn't get too annoying until 2006 or so) and a lot of workrate matches that feel like wrestlers have spent too much time watching Puro tapes and not enough time developing charisma and personality, but a lot of the stuff is very enjoyable, reflected by the high placing of a ton of the workers in this poll.

Danielson absolutes smokes AJ Styles in ROH. No comparison. Styles often just felt like someone passing through, in random matches that were usually solid but never felt particularly special. In comparison Danielson felt like a huge attraction, had a unique connection with the crowd, excelled as both a face and heel, had long, beautifully worked matches with a variety of opponents. Stuff like the 75 minute match with Aries are probably a bit tedious now but it was what people wanted to see at the time and it was cool to see the workers developing and testing their limitations. His WWE work left me a bit cold until he got really hot as a babyface. Felt his heel run took away most of the cool little touches he brought as a heel in ROH.

I wouldn't judge the promotion on that match - it was pretty much an anomaly at that point since the fans were incredibly excited to see Kobashi and he gave both them and Samoa Joe what they wanted, which was a facsimile of a 90s AJPW main event, just without any of the important context. Most of the pimped matches from the promotion bear little resemblance to it, either in terms of the match or the crowd reaction. ROH from 2003 until 2006 is very good. Worth watching, especially considering you are putting yourself through hours of self flagellation watching TNA. ROH was the far superior product at that moment in time. From late 2003 onward they also started having some cool feuds and storylines, so it isn't just a ton of workrate matches back to back with no reason to care about them. The crowd is also pretty cool up until all the "This is awesome" bullshit crept in - I remember ROH fans mocking the shit out of TNA fans for inventing that one until they adopted it themselves. The Samoa Joe & Bryan Danielson title reigns are both worth exploring in full, and there are a ton of great individual shows with a good variety of wrestling and some really good talent. Unified from 2006 might be a good place to start - super hot sold out UK crowd, and a bunch of solid matches other than the tedious Davey Richards twenty minute wankathon.

Irony of Danielson beating out the four pillars is that he made his name working a style and promotion that completely fetishized the style they invented. Arguable that ROH never even exists in the form it did without 90s AJPW, the debt is clear in almost all the big matches.

21 people not voting for Kawada at all is pretty mindblowing. He has at the very least three candidates for the best match of all time and he was a pivotal part of all of those matches. Not as if he fell off a cliff either, he had some very solid work from 2000-2006, albeit at a time when most fans had given up on All Japan. Would love to hear explanations from those who left him off their lists.

If Akiyama was in those tags instead of Taue, would you think he was the weakest worker? (I know some people wouldn't, but you kind of get the point for why that argument is a little silly, right?) Probably, but Akiyama has a far, far stronger case as a solo performer, so that argument is mostly irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, Taue wasn't being carried in those matches and is a fantastic wrestler, but it also helped massively he was working tags with some of the best in history.

William Regal finishing ahead of Akiyama feels really off. Can't even make the longevity/consistency debate since Jun has cemented his claim over the last decade massively and has excelled in different phases of his character. Don't think it is a stretch to say that Akiyama has probably been involved in five times more truly great matches in his career. For a long time the premier Regal match was said to be the Pillman Memorial classic with Benoit, and Akiyama probably has ten better matches than that in the 90s alone. Feel like to make it this high you should be churning out classic matches on a regular basis, and I don't think William Regal has ever done that. Sort of a better version of Finlay, great at stiff, fun television matches with neat little touches. Akiyama was helped by wrestling some amazing talent and getting to go long and epic in the way Regal never got to, but still don't think the placings make sense. Taue seems high as well, he has solo gems but a good proportion of his best stuff is in tags where he is the weakest worker.

William Regal finishing so high is somewhat bemusing. I imagine he benefited from a consensus. Remarkably consistent career, Can't imagine anyone going all in for him as their absolute favorite of all time though. Did Katsuhiko Nakajima place yet? I must have missed him, no way he is this high surely.

Not sure he does really. He has never made me emotionally invested in his matches the way she can. The John Cena matches that have me transfixed are either due to the context (RVD @ ECW Arena) or the opponent (Daniel Bryan) or the situation (CM Punk @ Money In The Bank). His matches are also elevated by the perverse interest in seeing how the crowd reacts. He usually delivers in his big matches, but I've also seen him have some awful spectacles when in there with a Randy Orton or a charisma vacuum like Alberto del Rio. I don't find many of his supposed carry jobs to be that interesting. Sure, it is easy to criticize Toyota for the go go style and lack of selling, but what about John Cena working the same bloated WWE style main event for over a decade? Of the fact that even as a prolific television worker he has a real lack of top matches in that setting, and really struggles to make his minor matches mean anything. He's never been in a match as incredible as Dream Rush, or as exciting as Dreamslam II, or as engaging as the hair match with Yamada. Toyota/Inoue going an hour absolutely smokes that incredibly tedious Orton/Cena IronMan.

TV wrestling at the minute does absolutely nothing for me. There is no reason to get invested in most of it, whether that be the booking that makes every finish meaningless or the lack of credible, interesting, fleshed out characters on the roster. Sure, there are a lot of matches that fit the definition of a good television match - I suppose what used to be called workrate matches. Problem is, seeing Kevin Owens wrestle Dolph Ziggler or even Cesaro for fifteen minutes just does nothing for me because none of it means anything. There was a time I might have agreed with you, when The Shield were having those fantastic six mans and Goldust & Cody were pulling out the stops and Daniel Bryan, CM Punk et al were wrestling on television every week. Now I think they are in a massive rut, despite the number of ostensibly good matches they are churning out. A *** match is only a *** match if you care about it.

John Cena seems absurdly high. Still not sure if I even consider him to be a great wrestler. He is certainly a great big match wrestler. But does he have the body of work to compete with Kong or Hokuto or even Toyota? Maybe if you love modern WWE style. He is clearly a beneficiary of the fact most people have seen most of his stuff and the fact he has been able to work on top for a decade and thus in a position to have the top match on the card. Doesn't have too many glaring flaws either, although his matches do tend to drag massively in the middle before they go home with the nearfalls and table spots and drama. Have no problem with Steve Austin finishing above him. He brought an intensity and charisma that elevated his more minor matches, and I'm not sure John Cena ever managed that. He was hurt in this respect by overexposure - it is hard to make television special when you are wrestling them every week for a decade.

This is true, but it is only recently that people have started to pimp him properly as a best in the world type of guy. At the peak of ROH he wasn't considered one of the top talents even on the roster if my recollection is correct. His TNA matches received more of a 'bright spot on a terrible show' type reaction unless he was in there with someone like Samoe Joe, at which point he was considered the weaker participant of the match. It seems strange to me that his stock has risen so highly so quickly. Not really seen enough of his work since 2007 to make a judgement though, other than his recent NJPW and WWE work.

I find Aja anything but boring. Had that aura and innate charisma that was engrossing. The perfect foil for most of the AJW roster at that time. Have seen very little of her work after 1995, but her peak is astonishing.

I found the idea that Finlay was the best in the world in 2006 ridiculous at the time, and still think it absurd now. He was just having solid little matches with nice little touches in a style different to everyone else on the card, not churning out classics every show. It was unexpected and enjoyable rather than exciting and incredible. People seemed to be in raptures that he struggled over every move and hit some nice strikes. My opinion at the time was that he was perfect for a solid, unspectacular midcard effort that was pretty faultless for what it was...but he was either unwilling or unable to take his matches to the next level and deliver on all the build. That is admittedly in stark contrast to most top WWE guys, who know how to generate excitement and interest down the stretch but are so unable to create any build or tension in the first half of a match that all the nearfalls and counters become meaningless, so he benefits from that comparison somewhat. That was the year of that Benoit/Regal/Finlay comp of all their matches, so I imagined he was at his peak in terms of smart fan acclaim. It seems his appeal still holds strong.

Hokuto & Breaks both made my top fifteen. Sucks to see them below Cena & Punk & Andre, especially the former because she has the conventionally great matches to back the claim up. Whereas Breaks, incredibly charismatic and accessible though he is, worked a niche and style that is often hard to compare to a regularly structured match. Pretty sure it was The Wrestling Channel that exposed me to Jim Breaks. We in the UK didn't realize how lucky we had it back then, ROH, CZW, Puro (NOAH and AJPW at least IIRC), classic wrestling, lucha and a ton of other stuff showing up on that channel, TNA and WWE both on weekly television, random stuff like NJPW popping up on Eurosport, randomly finding obscure sleaze like the Naked Women's Wrestling League on random Sky channels. Of course, you can get most of it online now, but it was cool and pretty unique to have a time where so much wresting was available on television.

CM Punk as a worker is much inferior to Samoa Joe, in my opinion. Joe is on another level when watching them in ROH side by side. Probably a good example of better worker vs better career, though, since Punk has ended up with probably the better resume and certainly a much longer peak.

Never rated Sgt Slaughter that highly myself, although never dug too deeply into his stuff outside his pimped WWF work. The much vaunted Iron Sheik match didn't do much for me. I do absolutely love that Steamboat/Younblood vs Kernodle/Slaughter match that appears on this random set of NWA discs I have, where one disc is almost entirely heavily clipped JIP Flair matches from 1977 house shows.

Incredible. One of those fantastic wrestling moments. I found out recently that Terri Runnels and New Jack were randomly dating in 2013.

Same with everything. So many football/soccer players from the 80s and 90s ended up messed up on alcohol and drugs and with financial problems, whereas players today are given so much more education about that kind of thing, and the emphasis on healthy living/athleticism/sports science have taken away a lot of the crazy elements of the football lifestyle in those days. The disadvantage is that you get less mavericks drifting into these sports and less personalities. The plus side outweighs that though, people with healthier bodies and minds who will live longer. Wonder how much money Chyna actually made from the boom. She was a huge attraction when I was a kid, probably just below the main event male stars in terms of a superstar that everyone wanted to see and talked about.

I'm out of the loop. Her certainly never used to be pimped on that level. His haircut alone precludes him from taking the title at the minute surely.

AJ Styles is the best worker in the world all of a sudden? The matches were fairly unmemorable and Jericho was typically sloppy, but they were still some of the more interesting things on the card. And the storyline was really well written as were the promos - supposedly by Y2J himself. Actually had me invested in the match, which is a rarity in this era of WWE where they churn out solid matches week after week without a solitary fuck given because there is no reason to care. At least they weren't just pointless indie workrate matches and actually had some direction.

Hogan represents the wholesome, moralistic, respectable facade of the 80s. Flair represents the sleazy, money hungry, decadent truth.

Cesaro is one of the most glaring to me. A few hundred places too high. Really don't think his WWE work has been anything more than consistently solid and enjoyable, and his indie work is extremely average in comparison to his peers on the list.

This isn't the 'Most Influential Wrestler Ever' list though. Elvis Presley redefined what a rock star could be but his albums don't stand up next to Revolver or Blue or Blood On The Tracks or Dark Side Of The Moon. Wouldn't you include Elvis on a list of 100 Greatest Rock Stars though? Probably, but such a list would probably be judged on charisma, presence, impact, iconic status etc rather than the merits of their recorded output. I wouldn't include him on a list of Top 100 Music Artists.

Hogan incredible in the ring seems like a silly willfully revisionist super-smark statement from 2016. He made the 2006 list, btw. I know, I voted for him myself on that list. I was something of a WWE mark at the time and grew up on video tapes of his Wrestlemania matches. I still enjoy some of his work, and appreciate how he does less with more and uses his charisma to elevate things. But that doesn't change the fact he was poor on offence - very little of his stuff looks remotely dangerous - poor at selling believably, mediocre at carrying a match. He is another solid hand that feels too high up the list. His WWF matches in the 80s are mostly overrated to me, a lot are just solid contests that benefited from the lack of athleticism and quality wrestling in the promotion for much of that period. He wrestled dozens of matches between 1997 and 2001 and brought very little to any of them. His run since 2003 can;t have helped his case. Haven't seen much of him from 1993-1996 but you don't see too much of it pimped heavily. I just don't see him as a top tier candidate. It isn't that important, not as if he is top thirty or something and I actually quite like the guy, especially as a heel....just feels a little off him being considered a better worker than Hase or Toyota or even Rude.