Loss

So we're clear, I rated Bret in my top 20 because he had the run he had in a company where having it was pretty damned hard, and because the greatest performances in his catalog rival those of anyone in the world at the same time.

That's surely born out by his rating. This countdown started at 1, right?

Oh, you're preaching to the choir, I think Bret was completely abysmal and unredeeming. It's just that in 1997, he went from completely unwatchable to merely laughably bad.

Final Four, Sid title change from Raw the night after Final Four (which was better than the Shawn matches), Terry Funk retirement match ...

1. Bret Hart's 1997

The journey described at the start was any way you want it, that's the way you need it, any way you want it.

I don't mean to be all Hillary Clinton, but progress is slow, painful and incremental.

Casas is the first ranking to truly bother me, especially considering some of the guys who will fall higher and have no business doing so. But I still think the only thing anyone can reasonably expect is that some people watch some wrestling they wouldn't have watched if not for this project, that some future journeys are inspired as a result of the project and that we each make individual lists that we can live with. The countdown is fun, but to me, it's like a potluck where everyone brings their favorite dishes from around the world and then we throw them all in a blender. It's fun to see what turns up simply as a matter of curiosity, but trying to digest that is only going to give you heartburn.

I'm more interested in viewing this list as a case of stock going up, stock going down. So you see cases like Steve Austin with a mild decline, Buddy Rose with a huge increase, etc. There's no Right Way To Look At This List, but for me, more so than the number next to the name, that's what's telling.

This may or may not be the case, but I think we should do the legwork and *then* form a conclusion, rather than working backwards.

Santo above Shawn and Cena. This list couldn't be more mainstream if Maroon 5 was talking about it on a special episode of Oprah that takes place in a Wal-Mart where everyone is eating McDonald's.

Back in the early 00's, people following NEO would argue that Yoshiko Tamura was one of the best active worker. I wonder what I'd think of this if I revisited that dark period of joshi. I loved The Bloody too. Greatest worker no one knows about (that being said, I have no idea what I'd think about her today). She, Azumi Hyuga and Arisa Nakajima are the 2000s wrestlers I want to really watch and understand the most.

Santo in this spot may be frustrating for the purists among us, but as someone who seems to be seeing the glass as very much half full on these rankings, I'll just point out that he's directly above John Cena and Shawn Michaels. And that would be my stock reply to every single complaint about where he landed.

After having watched hundreds of Joshi matches in the final weeks before the poll I just can't agree with this even though I really want to. Do I believe that people (perhaps myself included) oversimplify Joshi and other styles at our worst? Almost certainly yes. That said the criticisms I have pointed to about Joshi as a style are criticisms that could apply to Nagayo and Jaguar before Toyota was even on the scene. That she was the absolute worst expression of those habits and flaws I won't argue, but she was in no way the first, nor was she an anomaly. Going through the footage I discovered that I much prefer almost all of the Joshi workers as tag wrestlers. I've thought a lot about why that was the case, and the best I can come up with is that it seems to have forced their hand a bit more on selling, and made the "go-go" elements a bit less eye roll-y to me. In any event there are certainly people who understood build (Kudo) and could sell there ass off (Hokuto), but part of what makes them stand out is that they are exceptional. If the idea is that the discussion of Joshi as a style is too absolute in its criticisms I suppose I could buy it, but if the discussion is that there aren't consistent and unique trends within the style that many people will find problematic I think it's way off base The idea is more the former than the latter, that discussion of Joshi of a style is too absolute in its criticisms. There are definitely house style things that people would find problematic, but even then, I would argue that those things are often limited more to AJW specifically than all of Joshi. In fairness, I should point out that AJW was for all intents and purposes "all of Joshi" until the late 80s and was still the lion's share of it through the 90s. But I do think people who find aspects of the AJW working style grating would really enjoy JWP, GAEA, ARSION, Oz Academy and possibly NEO, Jd' and LLPW too. The points on Jaguar and Chigusa are worth exploring more, and I'm not sure I can fully do that justice here. What I think is a great example of an unapologetically Joshi match is Yoshiko Tamura vs Toshie Uematsu from GAEA in 1997. It's a phenomenal match, and there is nothing at all about it that feels like an outlier to the popular Toyota-led style of the time, but it also feels a bit more grounded. I haven't talked about that much in the context of GWE because it really is a one-off match and neither wrestler has much of a case outside of it. But I mention it because I'd be curious how that match looks side-by-side next to the Jaguar and Chigusa stuff from the 80s. To me, that's the match to watch and say, "Ok, if you don't like this match, then yeah, I guess Joshi just isn't for you", because it has all of the house idiosyncrasies but as a match, the only real critiques I could imagine for it would be rooted in style more than layout or execution.

"Watch every match from 1979-1982" is not bad advice necessarily, but what do you say to the fan on the go? Helping them prioritize among what's there during that time would probably be useful.

Mid South and Memphis sets, I think. The common wisdom at the time of the last poll was that The Fantastics were the much better team. Frank Jewett of tOA also suggested Morton as FIP was myth and that it was usually Robert Gibson in the role, based on a skewed sampling of matches he watched.

Nearly all JWP 1.0 (1986-1991), with a few notable exceptions. ARSION is filled with that stuff until near the end of 1999 too. Tons and tons. JWP is like The Ramones of wrestling. They'd release a full card on commercial release that would be 45 minutes.

I find that all women in Joshi are often grouped together and accused of the same sins in a way that doesn't seem fair. When I think of bloated matches, I definitely don't think of the common 10-minute specials in ARSION and JWP. When I think of wrestlers who don't sell well, I don't think of Akira Hokuto. When I think of wrestlers who work too fast a pace to allow everything to have meaning, I don't think of Megumi Kudo. When I think of wrestlers who work a go-go-go style, I don't think of Mariko Yoshida. When I think of veterans who overreach, I don't think of Devil Masami. In other words, it feels like Manami Toyota is being used as the barometer for Joshi, which I understand since she's part of the majority of the classically pimped matches. But I wouldn't call her the best representative of the style by any means. Not everyone worked like her, which is why she got over. Stuff was praised at the time because she was such a phenomenal athlete and it was something very different from the norm. Wrestlers who worked more traditionally didn't get as much love from Westerners because we already had plenty of that stuff for free on WCW TV or wherever. I love Toyota. She was an acquired taste for sure, but I do. Still, I respected her much more -- and enjoyed women's wrestling from Japan way more -- when I began to treat her as the anomaly she was.

So you know, we would have pulled together with bail money.

Buddy Rose ranked above The Rock, HHH, Chris Jericho and Mick Foley. That's not "mainstream bias".

Any reason you can't celebrate the huge jump?

Does anyone remember Earth vs LONCE at DVDVR? I think that would be an ideal format for the next go-round. Comparison threads vs individual wrestler threads.

Am I wrong to think calling Fujiwara a shoot stylist is too narrow a label? Maybe I am. I just see his career as having wider scope than Han or Tamura, and maybe even more than Takada or Yamazaki. Do people think of guys like Naruse, Nagai and Kakihara primarily as shoot stylists? Takayama I know people see as more than that.

I don't quite see it that way. I see it more as a case where "revisionists" (for lack of a better term) don't have diametrically opposed takeaways after from watching the footage from those who did at the time. It's more that the differences in opinion from generally established canon get more discussion because they warrant more discussion. But it's not like the idea that Ric Flair or Jushin Liger is a great worker is controversial in any corner of wrestling fandom online. Brock and Kurt are surprisingly high, no doubt, but I don't think that serves as a referendum on the entire process. We spend a lot of time talking about Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, Tiger Mask and Hiroshi Tanahashi because the opinions some hold are a little more rare. But it's not like our ideas about All Japan in the 90s, for example, are all that controversial -- be it here or anywhere online. Nomination threads are great, but sometimes they made cases for greatness that weren't necessarily quantified. To a novice, pointing out someone's greatness may mean anything from that wrestler being a number one contender to that wrestler being somewhere non-specific on the list, which is why quantifying it is important. I'll also add that individual threads for each nominee -- and this is just a thought I had today -- fosters siloed discussions of wrestlers when the whole purpose of the project is to make comparisons. Ultimately, I think the comparison threads probably were more fruitful in terms of getting others to compare like wrestlers with unlike wrestlers. You could argue that in terms of a new way to look at and think about wrestling, this list shows how tiny what we sometimes think of as our circle really is compared to Internet-based smart wrestling fandom at large. But I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't already know that, or expect the results to show anything but that. Can you explain what you mean by quantifiable? Are you talking about a system like BIGLAV? Do you mean a list of matches or a specific length of high end output? Do y o u mean the volume of discussion that took place? I mean if you are advocating for a new wrestler, you can't just make a post about why he's great. You have to specific top 10 great, top 50 great, etc. You also have to make comparisons, because the word "great" means different things to different people. And I look at the thread for Tamura and think, well, making Tamura comparisons to Han is preaching to the converted. You want Tamura to place high, compare and contrast him with Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. Make comparisons of wrestlers that seemingly have little in common if the goal is to get new people on board. Then they at least have reference points that they know.

While it happened anyway in many cases, with more hindsight, I'd probably also argue that GWE isn't the best platform to get people thinking about new wrestlers they haven't even seen before. I mean, it did happen in some cases anyway and that's wonderful, but I think a more organic process sees us getting to know a wrestler on his or her own terms first, long before even thinking about making comparisons to other wrestlers. This had a lot of us getting our feet wet and trying to wrap our heads around the totality of that wrestler all at the same time. Goodhelmet's approach of only ranking guys who were already time-tested wasn't something I agreed with when he first said it, but there is value in that.