Loss

Paul Heyman was making $250,000 guaranteed money a year at the time, which was unheard of for a manager. Kip Frey signed him to a huge deal. Watts actually campaigned for the job on finding a way to get rid of him. He tried marginalizing him in the booking in an effort to make him get mad and quit, and when that didn't work, they hired a PI to follow him on the road and caught him falsifying a receipt on an expense report and used that to fire him. Heyman sued, and there you go. But I do agree he would have been great paired with them. It's just that Watts was doing what he could to get Heyman out the door.

Misawa isn't "random wrestler #77". Terry Funk isn't "random wrestler #77". Neither is Tenryu or Kawada. All of them are brought up as #1 contenders. I don't think the scrutiny for Flair should stop. I think it should be applied equally across the board.

Terry Funk is a true multinational. He probably lobbied Congress to pass favorable free trade deals.

Flair has absolute built-in advantages I won't even pretend to deny. He is an institution. To me, there are only a handful of wrestlers that have been vetted to the degree I was talking about at this point. I see that as cause for excitement about all that still lies ahead, not reason for defeat. Those guys are Flair, Michaels, Bret, Jumbo and Kobashi. I feel like we are still in the formative stages for pretty much everyone else.

That is in so many ways my point, and I agree that getting the name out there at first and doing more in-depth critique later has value. But again, I suspect most voters won't rank someone number one who is still in the first phase. They will rank them, just not at that level. It's not bias toward wrestlers in a specific country or style. It's that.

It's hard for me to know how truly great a wrestler is until I also understand their shortcomings, if that makes sense.

I should also clarify that if I had it my way, all wrestlers would be even more critiqued than Flair has been. I hardly see that as the gold standard, but rather the best we have. I want everyone in the top 50 to have a podcast series and 20+ pages of discussion. And even in the case of Flair, I do think there's more work to do. Most of his matches that made tape don't have a review here, for one. But we will get there eventually for everyone if we stay the course.

Great post as well. And I should be clear that no one is automatically entitled to their spot on the list, regardless of their previous placement. That's in the spirit of PWO in my mind. It's more that you'll find enough Flair debate to see he didn't get a high ranking just by coasting on reputation. We put him through the ringer and he survived.

Look at the threads. He has gotten way more scrutiny in this project than any of the other names you mentioned. It's not inherently unfair to criticize Flair. I'm just saying if you look at the threads, you won't see anyone else getting that scrutiny for this project.

This is where I have a disconnect from so many people and I'm still trying to understand this. The disconnect isn't with the idea that anyone but Flair can be number one. The disconnect is the idea that coming up with something fresh should be a deciding factor in how I rate wrestlers just for the sake of it, and that reaching similar conclusions that people did in the past is somehow of less value because it's less unique of an opinion. To me, that comes across as being more about self-expression from the voters than an appreciation of the talent and merits of the wrestler himself (or herself), and I just have trouble with the idea that old opinions are bad simply because they are old opinions. It disappoints me because I have always defended Pro Wrestling Only against criticisms from the outside that we are primarily interested in tearing down conventional wisdom so that we can replace it with our own unique brand of fascism. To me, the mantra is going after Flair, Michaels, Angle or Tanahashi or whatever other darling has never been to ensure that we decide they aren't as good as others say they are in the end, but rather just that we would treat them the same way we would treat any other wrestler. No one is sacred, and any claims of greatness will be put through the ringer, regardless of the historiography that comes with saying it. If we reached the same conclusions about wrestlers that fans reached 30 years ago, so be it. We just wanted to get there in a way that was ours. However, when I read posts like this, it suggests that somehow the project has failed because the conclusions reached are too similar to those in the past. That strikes me as the message board equivalent of pink hair and a nose ring. Ric Flair has been -- by far -- the single most scrutinized and debated wrestler of the past 18 months at this board. He has gone through the critical ringer more than anyone. I said at the time that this bugged me, not because I think Flair is beyond reproach, but because I don't think the same level of scrutiny has been applied to anyone else. For whatever reason, most wrestlers -- Terry Funk, Stan Hansen, Negro Casas, Jerry Lawler, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Genichiro Tenryu and Randy Savage, to name a few -- have generally been approached in their threads from a perspective of affirming their status, while Flair and Jumbo have not. Maybe that comes with the territory, but posts like yours suggest that it's more that the idea is to put anyone but those guys in a top spot and work backwards from there, and I have a real issue with that. Again, I don't think the issues have anything to do with a bias toward mainstream wrestling or American wrestling, and I wish someone would engage me on this point. I think it's the idea that people want their top picks to be time-tested to see how they feel about them over a number of years. GWE is *not* the ideal format for discovering new wrestlers, even if it has served that purpose for many posters here. To me, it's a bit too pressure-packed to try to get to know a wrestler while figuring out their place on an all-time list. That's why I do not believe the top picks on this list represent a bias toward safe picks or mainstream picks or American guys or anything like that. Instead, I think what's motivating it is that the top spots are largely going to guys who people know they aren't going to get tired of a year from now.

Of course. It doesn't change the fact that this list overall is more US mainstream oriented than the previous one. Numbers don't lie. I want to give this some context now for people who weren't around in 2006. There used to be cries of "puro elitism" (not my phrase) that probably had some truth in them. So yes, this is list is more oriented toward mainstream U.S. names, but it's not fair to say that's because we've closed our minds or anything like that. If anything, most voters in 2006 had their minds closed to great territory wrestling. Now I think people don't care where great wrestling takes place if it's great wrestling, but that wasn't the mentality then at all. It wasn't so much about nationality as it was brand loyalty to a company, and that has absolutely fallen out of style. And good riddance.

Taue in the Carnival final vs Misawa in 1995 is a great example of him controlling the tempo, bringing great offense and pretty much building the match. Misawa's credibility enhanced it in a way that he couldn't have had that match with anyone else, but the match is far more a testament to Taue.

I've come to think that more than "mainstream bias", what we're seeing is that voters will rank a guy who they've only recently discovered, but no matter how good they are, they often don't consider them for top level spots until they've had time to see how their work endures over time on a personal level. Bockwinkel broke through that to a degree, which is a huge deal. But I think that's what at play here more than anything else, although there is probably truth in the other theories put forth too.

Even Snuka didn't bomb every time out. I agree that Steamboat has some tendencies that I'm not crazy about, but I eventually chalked it up to personal tastes far more than flaws in his game.

Holy Bockwinkel! I wanted to rank him way higher than I did but couldn't justify it based on the limited wrestling I've watched. But I do think him finishing above names like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels is a hell of a testament to how much people fell in love with him as a result of his AWA, Memphis and All Japan work. Perhaps Bockwinkel should be even higher, but for a guy whose case at this level is relatively new (meaning within our circle, it gained traction with the release of the AWA set), it's a hell of a number. Awesome.

Or maybe you're just being really overly fucking defensive and I just thought it would be an interesting question to ask.

No superdelegates here. Direct democracy all the way.

OK I meant that rhetorically and should probably stop joking. Thread doesn't need my help continuing to sink.

If Bret Hart forms a promotion with no TV in 1991 he's lucky if he draws half the numbers my local backyard/indie fed does ("my", I don't have anything to do with it). What a mark. Bet his nudes wouldn't look half as good as well. Takada nudes? Girl, don't be playin' ...

Um...what? GWE equivalent of Vince taking wrestling from smoke-filled venues to what it is today.

El-P, did you edit your "bah", or did goc add it in?

I wasn't aware there were other websites.

Kelly did an hour podcast making Savage's case. 3 to go.

Santana feud getting more praise. More Steamboat matches aired on 24/7. Lawler feud getting spotlight. Rock N Roll Express feud getting more spotlight. Ron Garvin cage match.

I'd like the Savage as #1 people to explain themselves. For all the focus on Bret, that's pretty nutty in itself, is it not?