Timbo Slice

Brock's best matches (Eddy, Reigns, the last few Cena matches, with Extreme Rules a GOAT contender for WWE) are better than Ogawa's best (Kawada, Fujiwara) and Ogawa doesn't get a sliding scale just because he had decent matches with guys that weren't good at all. I totally respect that he got watchable matches out of them, but they weren't better than say, Brock vs. Rock at SummerSlam. Hell, the Hogan SmackDown! match is as entertaining an extended squash as Brock had. The penalties for guys like Angle and Triple H that Brock gets aren't squarely on Brock, especially considering he wasn't "in control" of those matches because he was expected to follow those guys, and on the other hand, Ogawa's not going to get penalized for the Inoki bullshit booking he had for basically his entire peak. So that's a wash to me. The WM XIX match with Angle was a good match, just a dicked up finish. I hate the ironman match, too. The Taker Hell in a Cell match is a better spectacle than a lot of people give it credit for. I know you're saying I'm underselling Ogawa, but you're underselling Brock and harping on the stuff he's done bad just like I've done with Ogawa. The Japan stuff was shit because New Japan was booked like shit and Brock didn't give two shits. That's being thrown into the equation here with Brock for me, but the stuff that I've enjoyed of his outweighs a lot of that. For Ogawa, the best I can say is that I was pleasantly surprised when he was in a good match for me. As far as what Brock does better than Ogawa, I'd objectively say that he's better at move execution, better at making other guys look good, he's a better bumper/seller than Ogawa (the way he bumps and sells for Big Show's offense in his matches is some of the best bumping I've ever seen from a guy his size, so as far as making shitty guys look good, that's two things in one), and most importantly, he's the only guy wrestling today that regardless of who he's facing, I have to watch him wrestle. That aura totally adds to his presence in the ring and makes his matches seem huge. It's something that's totally innate and happens with very few wrestlers that are even a part of this. Ogawa's not going to make me do that, even when people were talking up his big singles matches in HUSTLE, and I enjoy Ogawa matches when he's matched up with someone I enjoy. If the subjectivity is too much, then this is an apples and oranges discussion more than anything else.

I've never seen a match where Ogawa was clearly the best worker in the match, whereas I've seen a lot of Brock matches where he was the best worker in the match. There's a difference between being in great matches with great workers and being a great worker yourself. He was fine in the matches that were mentioned, but I never thought to myself that Ogawa was some great worker from what I saw. Saying he's better than Brock, who actually has a legitimate case for this list, just doesn't sit well with me.

ROH isn't screwing up Dalton Castle in the least, but I don't know if WWE could actually do something with him on the big stage.

People saying he's better than Brock in the Brock thread makes me laugh. He was a surprising wrestler because he he sucked for so long that when he did have a good performance, it was literally jaw-dropping because of it, but yeah...none chance.

Did we get a time as to how long he was in the ring?

Granted, that's one hell of a cherry picking, but find me an Ogawa match better than Lesnar/Eddy or Lesnar/Reigns and I'll believe you, because while he might have been in some heated matches, I don't think Ogawa was ever in a good singles match.

Holy shit, I didn't post on TAJIRI until now? What the hell? Yeah, Tajiri is gonna get on at the bottom of my list. He's got the enjoyable quality to him, he propped up ECW in 1999/2000 as a WOTY candidate (And, as I pointed out in the best wrestlers of the 90's post, he's probably got the best case of anyone in such a down year) and from there on was a great worker in a lot of different spots. I actually think his WWE run is criminally underrated, especially the stuff with Eddy, which must have been like spinning gold for the writers trying to get those two personalties on TV together. He really reminds me of the Japanese Finlay from a match perspective, as he's very flexible and fungible in the sense that you could put him in any promotion in the world and he'd make it something good.

The one thing that is going to hurt the Bucks in this voting process is that their whole persona is basically flipping the bird to anyone who thinks they suck, and there's a lot of people who don't like them outside of the fans who find the irony hilarious. They can go, though, and while I don't think they have a standout match to hang their hat on, they have plenty of stuff that's good, some stuff that's great, and enough for consideration.

I wonder if they'd have the balls to put Ibushi through again after the New Japan Cup. Showed he could draw a crowd with AJ and him graduating to the main event at the Dome would be a great thing. The other route I see them going is Nak winning and giving him a title win at the Dome. That being said, I want Honma in the final. I know people will say Ishii, but Honma in the final might be one of the most heated matches New Japan has had in quite some time.

I think the more I think back, I'm going to have him relatively high, top half of my list. His resume is too good not to consider that high up. It's between him and Cena for the best wrestler of his generation, I think.

It's also taking advantage of the large NY and Northeast markets, which are flush with a lot of the most diehard indy fans and would probably love to see NXT on a big stage. It's a good move, a bold step forward, and if it's successful, Trips is more savvy than even I would have thought.

He's probably the most divisive indies-based candidate on the list because I'm not sure there's a guy with a higher ceiling than Ki, but at the same time, I think he decided that stiffness for the sake of being stiff was paramount in his matches above all else and it suffered. I'm not sure I really saw him carry a guy to a truly great match, although he was great in squashes, but I also think he was a victim of bad timing, as if he was still a relatively name a couple years later, he would have been in NXT. It's really weird to try and figure out where he is in the end, but I'm not sure he has enough when you consider as wide a scope as we're talking about with all these candidates.

I think people are doing that with anyone they consider in their top ten. Not to the extent that people are doing with Flair. It's been mentioned before, but the scrutiny he's being held to is much more than other #1 candidates. Although the recent comments about people on this board not liking high spots and favoring Lawler because of it (or something along those same lines) makes me crack up. I've never seen Flair throw a dropkick in my life. If wrestling was about highspots, Super Dragon would be #1 and the Motor City Machine Guns or Blood Generation would be the #1 tag team. My point is similar to what Loss said months ago when the scrutiny got heavy in the first place. People will talk so much about the negative aspects of a wrestler that the positive aspects that stand out much more get glossed over. It's oversaturation and it's overexposure to an extent, but it also reeks of people trying to cut the others down just because. It's not constructive, and unless people are constructive and detailed about their criticisms about somebody, I'm not going to pay them any mind whatsoever.

One thing I'm really unhappy about with all the Flair talk is that it's becoming more and more apparent that people are taking too fine a microscope to him and that while I understand why people want to do it, the weight as to how much they're looking under that microscope is really outweighing everything else that makes Flair a singular talent in the first place. If you look that hard at all the talents, the faults are going to be glaring regardless just because of what's being looked for.

The trimmed fat one is the first title change. Starcade is actually a well worked 50+ minute match. It's WrestleWar that's the boring one of the bunch. In hindsight, there's a big bunch of "want to believe" in people praising it at the time and since through the roof. The Chicago and New Orleans matches are the better ones, and someone else can weigh in on the handheld ones from the same period. There was a handheld from Landover (the Philadelphia match was great, too) floating around right after Steamboat won the title (March 18 or 19, I want to say) that when I first saw it, I thought it was right up there with the Chicago/New Orleans matches. For what its worth, I still think Chicago is the best of the trilogy, with New Orleans second and Nashville third, but that Landover match to me is better than the Nashville match and rivals the New Orleans match.

There's a lot of talk about Flair trimming the fat, so to speak, and it's why a lot of people like the WrestleWar match so much as opposed to the 60-minute Steamer matches he had, but Garvin always matched up well with Flair, too, and I think it was just one of those things where two guys clicked right away. Just that the booking screwed them from having a longer series that could have been worthwhile.

I think they're a fringe team that had a unique look and talent set, but they were never really that good unless it was a car crash of a match to me. They've had some pretty good peaks, but I don't know if they're a Top 25 team.

I remember going through the pre-Hogan WCW PPVs and Clashes just to see how they stood out and man alive I was not impressed. They had some good matches in Japan, but they were the lesser half of the match without a doubt. I can't think of a team I watched where I wanted to like them so much but came away so thoroughly unimpressed. Too bad, and I was the one who nominated them.

It's between them and the Fantastics for me as my favorite team from the time period, and I think that the Rose/Somers feud might be better than RnR/Midnights for me, too. Easy Top 10, maybe even Top 5.

I fucking loved this team. Popped big as an 8-year old for when they lifted the belts from the MVC to the point where I remember vividly running down the hallway yelling to my mom that they won. Looking back, I loved all their big tag work, and the SuperBrawl match with Eaton and Anderson is an all-time favorite for me. I'll find a spot for them.

The quintessential JCP face team that knew how to work the overbearing heels, with Final Conflict being an absolutely insane match for the time and one of the greatest tag team matches of the 80's. Longevity will hurt them, as well, but Steamboat was too good to keep in a tag team after a while. I think I'll find a spot for them.

Smoothest motherfucking heel team ever. I didn't get to watch this version as much as the Lane version at first, but Condrey was SO good in this setting and Bobby was such a natural that it's tough to go back to the newer team, even if the newer team had the Fantastics to work with more along with the RnRs. I might go Top 5 with them.

They're like The Awesome Twosome for me in that they worked so well together for a short stint that it's hard not to appreciate what they did, but I really want to find room for them because for a project like this, even if you aren't together for long, if you're a good team, you have to have that show off more than longevity sometimes.

I think they're overrated because of the Rockers stuff, and while they were an uptempo team, I don't see them as a top-tier team. They were fun to watch, though.

I think they have a shot here, even though they weren't together for that long. Some really great tag matches in the period, and the more you see them work against all those teams, the more you appreciate them. They shouldn't have broken them up when they did, even though Simmons had star potential at the time, but they had a good run and will be a tough team to keep off the list for me, although it would be at the bottom.