Timbo Slice

Didn't show enough fighting spirit.

With Kobashi over Kawada, The List truly being booked like Baba circa 1995. Misawa the one true ace. Lawler should have been Top 5. Flair was my #1 coming in and he dethroned him. Memphis haters couldn't keep him out of the Top 10, though, so at least we have that.

Lawler will be 10th. I figure with number o ballots being a big deal, Kobashi will reach Top 5. Flair will be #1. Bryan is the wild card here.

One thing I realize on the list is that the numbers always skewed towards number of ballots more than placement. Savage is really the first guy with both. Anderson ranked highly mainly by being on 94% of the ballots.

I'm such an unabashed Taue mark that him not being Top 25 saddens me. I still had him ranked over Akiyama because I enjoyed his NOAH run so much, and while his post peak isn't as long as Akiyama's, I think it's still comparable. There's an argument made that in every singles match he had in NOAH that it was that wrestler's best NOAH match, maybe outside of Misawa. Also sad there was never a Taue/Takayama match or a Taue/Suzuki match. There are definitely issues I have with the list (For example, so many workers getting discounted for not having as much new stuff since the 2006 list while BRET HART is gonna make the Top 25) but overall, I can't complain too much. Regal making the Top 25 is unbelievable.

Santo got jobbed. I had Casas over him too (by one spot), but him not being in the Top 25 is just bewildering to me. He barely made tape in the time since the 2006 poll yet when he did, it was still tremendous. I understand a lot of the guys Lucha fans found were new and exciting, but that's one hell of a pendulum swing. My own fault for getting into Lucha too late in the project to see for myself, but even if Santo's greatest hits are a few years older, I'm not sure that makes them less great.

Will try and post more reactions when I get home from Vegas and shake off the mental fog, but outside of the Styles placement (and eventual Michaels placement), I'm happy right now with what I've seen.

Styles that high really is the most egregious recency bias pick we have. It's like people took the last two-three years and extrapolated it over his entire career while also leaning on the "only decent thing about TNA" crutch. He's one of the best going right now, but man alive the recency bias with his selection bugs me. Expected Fujiwara higher as well. But Top 40 is Casey Kasem territory, so I'm cool with it.

Hokuto finishing below Andre is hilarious. Lesnar finishing above both of them is even more hilarious.

I'm down to see where Lesnar ranks simply because I made the Han comparison and still think it's apt.

I wouldn't go that far, but I do feel like Han worked towards those spots we've all come to be wowed by in spite of the match.

The Kohsaka match from 98 was pretty remarkable for Tamura, too, and the first match I saw outside the Han matches that sold me on him. He also had the Mishima and Ito matches from U-STYLE, with the Ito match perhaps being the best in the history of the promotion. I get the argument about those Han matches being better representations of the style, hence why people lean more on what Han did. I just don't see Han being able to have the matches that Tamura had with guys that were either on the fringe or wholly not shoot-style workers, and I've always liked that more about Tamura, no matter how smooth Han was in the ring.

They gave it away to an extent by hyping up the shows this weekend on this week's TV, but yeah, Finn coming up to join the guys is the right call. Although now you don't really have someone worthy to drop the belt to outside of Nak, who doesn't need the belt and will never probably never need it, even though we all know that match is coming.

Honest question: Do any of those who voted Han higher or didn't vote for Tamura think Han had a better non-Tamura match than Tamura had with Vader?

Ohtani's peak from 95-97 is stratospheric. Unbelievable. After that, he does some decent/good stuff in NJPW in the late 90s, then bulks up to heavyweight and doesn't really do much until he becomes the #2 guy to Hash in Zero-One. He has some good stuff with Kojima, but I think a lot of it is forgettable. The one thing he does later in his career that pops me is the Nak IWGP title match with his ode to Hash stuff, which really turns what could have been a good match into a great one. Good stuff in NOAH during that time, too although it's not all that great. Meanwhile, Togo is a top flight lucharesu worker from 94-97, then comes to WWF and gets badly glossed over (which is why people are down on him mostly) then returns and starts slimming down, changing up how he works. From there, it's a lot of moving about the Japanese Indy scene, but if you match up his 2000s with Ohtani's, Togo has more standouts, albeit not in arenas a lot of people looked towards. Here are all the links to what the Segunda Caida guys where watching. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2010/09/complete-and-accurate-dick-togo.html?m=1 Togo gets high marks for versatility, which allows him to work damn near everyone in a believable manner. If you put his career up there start to finish in a 20 year span, I don't think you can say Ohtani was that good for that long. That being said, I do think Ohtani's peak was better, and I valued high end stuff better than good stuff over a given time period.

Peak vs. peak, I think Ohtani has Togo beat, but it really is close. I'm also a huge Ohtani mark, so that's what put him a few more spots above Togo in my book, but I do think Togo's had the better career overall, even if it didn't hit the highs Ohtani's did.

Thought Mutoh might have been lower on the Top 100, but as I said in that quote, he's incredibly polarizing. If you are a big fan of his highs, you'll rate him highly.

I'm seeing a lot of Angle talk with blanket adjectives about him being "impressive" and "memorable" without much deep dives, which is basically the most Kurt Angle description of Kurt Angle ever.

Samoa Joe still rules. All is right with the world.

Man alive. I guess my record keeping hasn't been as good as I thought. Or my memory.

Togo being in the Top 75 is awesome. He was probably the first guy I dove into when I started getting back into wrestling a few years back, and it started with that Honda match. Truly one of the best overall wrestlers I've ever seen, and I think it's pretty sad that he didn't get a better run with the bigger Japanese promotions. That being said, it allowed him to do basically whatever he wanted and he wrestled all over the world, so it wasn't all bad. I'm now 63 left for the Top 70. Still waiting on Benoit, Michaels, Angle, Christian (Who I now want to get to the Top 50) and three others that are escaping me right now.

I think there's plenty Jericho has done well, but it seems like it's good in a timely manner. At the time of JeriShow, the Rey feud and the Michaels feud, general consensus was that it was all great stuff. As time went on, I think people just either got over it or forgot about it. What hurts Jericho for me is that while I can go back and enjoy older stuff and still think highly of it for basically everyone on my Top 100, I don't know what Jericho has does that for me, if there is anything.

Also, Hogan himself has said he just kept working heel as a babyface so I don't see it as some revelation that he was an asshole.

His rep hasn't, but to me, the more I watched, the more I saw who I thought were better than Hase. Basically all the Hase that is out there is out there, and I thought he was good, but didn't do anything that stood out to me in terms of all time status. He's a good worker though. Atlantis the next to drop. Glad to see him make it to the Top 75.

So I'm in a spot where of the last 74, I have 67 (!!!) in play right now. Meaning no to me on Benoit, Jericho, Angle, Michaels, and 3 others. Alright then. While Hogan's charisma can't be denied and he wasn't nearly as bad a worker as some have suggested, I just became so tired of him growing up I didn't even think of him anywhere near this project. Loss' point about Hogan is fantastic and 100 percent correct. He's the worker that represents what dumb people think Springsteen was saying in "Born in the U.S.A."