Timbo Slice

I think the Bayley/Banks stuff is more amazing when you actually consider the environment it's in that they had those two matches that were that great and did what they did, all inclusively. The last time I remember any match that hit me on a level like that was the Shield/Wyatts EC match. Even Bryan winning the title at WM was a bit anticlimactic, yet they made it awesome with the HHH match and the way they booked the Triple Threat. Even if it was hokey. There's tons of bullshit on a weekly basis nowadays that take away from what you watch, but the really good stuff truly shines through in spite of it. Both matches are that way, but Becky/Sasha is even moreso considering the setting.

Great stuff, guys. The Gordon Solie angle shit was aces.

Dylan's thoughts echo mine in a lot of ways, but I push Brooklyn over the top because it was a unique atmosphere that added something that's hard to quantify to the match. I totally get why people pick that over Brooklyn, though. The first thing I thought about in trying to compare the two matches was the first two Jumbo/Misawa matches, where the first one had something the second one could never, ever duplicate. The second match was phenomenal due to how the character work between the two had been added to in the three months leading up to the rematch, and it led to people thinking the second match was better in many ways (an argument that's got just as much on either side as this one does). Now I can't wait for the Year End Wrestling Culture show because when we do our Top 10 matches, I'm gonna be very interested to see how Dylan and I match up with those four matches.

The subtleties here that end up exploding at the end of the match made this unique. Danielson loved working with Nigel and both of them are receptive to how the other guy wants to lay out the match, which means there's some really great bits throughout that actually make it a lot more than your normal ROH-style main event, which Danielson loved to subvert anyways. First thing here is when Nigel gets himself DQed and they get everyone from the locker room out to force him back into the ring. Wish they had actually had a visual restart instead of having it announced while they were going at it, but it still worked because it made Nigel an obvious heel from the start, which again detracted from the 50/50 stuff. That started the avalanche of heeling to follow, where it was obvious Danielson was whooping up on him and Nigel was going to have to change things up and the only way was for him to do something dastardly. The lariat to the side of the head where it hit Danielson in the surgically repaired eye and the headbutts after Nigel told Danielson he was weary of concussions totally made the match for me. The paradigm shift when Nigel hits the first headbutt because he knows he couldn't beat Danielson straight up and had to take shortcuts was great, as was the opposite when Danielson could have gone to the elbows and it cost him. It seems obvious now, but everything here was done in a way to totally turn the ROH style on its head in a way. Kudos to both guys for extending the feud out logically in a way that made Nigel an even bigger jackass and a top-flight heel.

Prazar had a tendency to get grating at times, though. I can see what Parv's saying there. The color stuff is way better than Prazak's actual call.

What's the date on that, OJ?

Wow. So Shoemaker's actually writing for ESPN, if you can believe it. With a horrible title, of course: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/14166316/pro-wrestler-survival-guide

Bluetista.

Hope Eric turns in a ballot just to see how high he rates Pain. If he's on an IWA-MS card, you watch the match and enjoy him just brawl with anyone and everyone. Fewer wrestlers for me that are more fun to watch than Bull Pain.

Hashimoto absolutely destroying Masato Tanaka in 2002 is one of my favorite Hash matches ever. Might be the best brainbuster he ever did, too. I watched the Chosyu main from the '97 Dome Show and realized Hash made that match by basically beating the shit out of the old man. Chosyu picked his spots but I thought Hash beating the shit out of him made it at least enjoyable. Not a great match, but one of Hash's strengths was making something that could be mediocre into something that at least had something to it, which he almost did by osmosis anyways by being Hash. Can't remember if Riki was the booker at the time, but if he was, he sure took one hell of an ass whooping.

Figured I'd get this started ahead of RAW. No Nikki, who is injured, depriving us of Queen's Road. Stoked for NXT this week, but that's about it. RAW's gonna have to come out of nowhere again.

I can't remember which Ito match I watched of hers, but I remember enjoying it to an extent. I don't know if it was better than even the 3/26/95 title win, but it was still really good stuff.

Got to work with Grantland's Ben Lindbergh this summer with the Sonoma Stompers and he and Baseball Prospectus' Sam Miller are writing a book about their experiences running the baseball operations department. Lowe, Barnwell, Rembert, Jonah, the NBA Shootaround crew...they'll have their contracts honored but nobody's staying for long, I'd assume. Editorial at ESPN is gonna be nothing like what they had at Grantland. And who knows if they'll all just follow Bill to his venture. What's really interesting is a ton of those guys now have some name power to the point where they can be significant contributors, but we shall see. This is truly sad, though. Few websites out there really go after content like they did.

Wait, really? Not seeing it at all. Not even sure if he's Top 250-500 material.

I guess this is where I'll make my argument for Brock as a HOFer while also trying not to troll Dylan out to have his counterpoints, although I understand the reason why he leans that way on Lesnar. I'm going to do this based on the HOF criteria, which is in-ring work, drawing power, and historical significance. So here goes: -In-ring work aspect I don't think needs to be argued, as previously stated, from a quality standpoint. Quantity of quality is a limiting factor, but I think a lot of what is being put on Brock has to do with him up and leaving for eight years before coming back. As a wrestler, only has six years under his belt really (7-8 if you want to talk OVW), but I think he's in the conversation along with guys like Akiyama as being very good from the very start. That being said, he has his company's matches of the year for each of the last three years, and the match he got out of Taker last night is a downright miracle in some aspects. His quality can not be denied, and when talking about guys like Tamura or Han, even though stylistically they are different and the atmosphere as to how they got to that particular number of matches might be different, on a purely comparable match-by-match basis, he's got more than enough. -The drawing power is a hang-up that was what made me do this in the first place, with Dylan's argument about what he's getting paid being a detriment to the company. I agree with him there, but in reality, that's hamstringing Brock for doing things his way. He wanted limited dates, he got limited dates. He wanted a comparable or even better than salary than his UFC contract, he got that, too. It is a classic overreaction for a talent based around a promoter's desire to dig into the past because he doesn't take the time to create new stars or take advantage of guys who could be stars like he once did. When he was at the top of the card during the first parts of his career, he was definitely a sizable draw, but he wasn't a slam dunk as a draw, either. Now, this is where the MMA argument truly splits and I'm still having a hard time trying to decipher it, to be honest, although I feel like it should be a similar argument to his in-ring work. He's been presented as a main attraction and as a draw, but at the same time, asking him to live up to the money he's making is completely undercutting him. That's not even on Brock. It's Vince paying that much for a limited attraction guy in the first place. His post-MMA drawing power might not be as considerable as it was in the UFC, but he's still been someone they've weighed on plenty for and he's come through way more often than he has. Buy rates when he was near or at the top of the cards was good, and he did pop the non-Network cards well. I think more than perhaps anyone on the ballot, he's a product of his drawing environment and can be an easy scapegoat for the down times. I don't even look at his UFC drawing power because I'm not gonna be one of those guys to consider it, but his UFC background has transferred some to his WWE drawing capabilities, booking be damned. Since beating Taker, I'd say the booking has been much better to show his ability to draw, but it's not outwardly apparent to the point where it's a lock to say he's a top-flight draw. Bottom line, though, looking at him as direct return on his investment in a company that STILL doesn't know what to do with its Network revenue 18 months after the fact is a tough knock on him. -The historical significance part is the one part that I'm fairly confident is what pushes me over the top on him, as there's probably nobody currently going right now outside of established guys like Cena and Taker where it's obvious that he's going to be someone looked back at fondly. However, his significance is almost directly tied to the state of the business at the time, where he came in when the company was at a lull, popped it for a year before Trips killed his momentum dead, and only got going again after what ended up being one of the more gutsier booking decisions in a long time with him going over Cena. I think he'll end up looking better as the years go on, but I don't think it's as cloudy now as people make it out to be. His significance currently can't be questioned, and only the decision-makers stop it from being more obvious than it already is. That's a lot like my ROI drawing argument, but I don't think you can put on Brock what Vince, Dunn and Co. are too stupid to figure out sometimes. I will say this: He's not a guy I would put #1 on a ballot of 10 guys right now, but he's someone I feel confident casting a vote for, and someone who ends up looking a lot better than so many of the other modern/Japanese candidates that are being talked about. I understand many want to look at longevity (which is the only argument I'd hear for Sting, even though it's now obvious that basically his entire career was spent as a secondary draw) but one can be significant in a short period of time. I was more qualitative here than quantitative (mainly for time and tl;dr sake) but the idea here is to say that he's definitely a viable candidate, albeit not a slam dunk.

Saku and Yano is the best tag team in NJPW and they should run it more often. Won't make the list, but he's intriguing.

My point is that people use that more as a crutch to the argument they'd rather get across, which takes away from the match itself in a lot of ways.

It's like Parv has been listening to Grimmas' and mine's conversations over the past couple days or so. Arn is tops for me. Agree on Smothers, Eaton, Kawada, Windham, but DUSTIN right now might be my #2. Gotta think it over.

That's a good one. Forgot the Panther/Virus match, which is what all mat workers should watch if they want to work the mat well.

The Fujiwara/Mochi match Dylan mentioned was crazy. Need to go back and rematch. Hash/Zangiev was first to pop to mind, then Kid/Owen from KOR, then Arn/Tully vs. Lex/Barry.

Monster Ripper in the Mid 80's was something else. Played her role well. Banks is the best going right now but she needs a decade of Eddy-type stuff to be considered as highly for this list as she is in general right now. She might be the craziest Lou Thesz winner of all time, though. Like the Bernie Sanders of the WON Award voting process.

This is actually something I think about a lot with Kandori/Hokuto, because there's so much inference from the previous injuries that Hokuto has had that a lot of people just assumed that was the story (although I think it might have been confirmed later on about the specific moves Hokuto sold big stemming from past injuries), but I wonder just how much is what we infer as opposed to what was actually presented. That can also be the difference between really getting into a match or not, I feel.

The great divide in wrestling psychology is workers trying to tell a story by doing moves because they're the ones organically popping the crowd and pandering to the fans. Main reason people aren't big fans of 2.999 wrestling is because the majority of it is pandering to the fans desire to see big moves, which is a lot of what the modern style is based on. For a long time, the onus was on the fans to react to what was being done in the ring as opposed to the guys in the ring reacting to the fans (although there are definitely exceptions). There's a lot of balance in the two ideas because they're not mutually exclusive, but at the same time, it's a train of thought that is what makes people don't like NXT or PWG and so on.

Yeah, the difference Loss is talking about is a truly huge fundamental issue in deciding what's "smart" wrestling. Do you work within you and your opponent or work to pop the crowd? I think that's actually what's going to separate a lot of lists here.

I think they're very similar. Aja's got more "standout" work, but Dynamite's style was probably a bit better to take in than Aja's, who was based a lot more around looking like a monster instead of running people over like Dynamite did. I'm an unabashed Aja mark, too. The more I think about her, the more I want her higher up on the list for me. She's one of the most underrated workers ever.