Loss

Those guys ranked over guys like Yoshihisa Yamamoto and Espectrito who have been active participants in some of the greatest matches in wrestling history, so I don't see how fans of Yoko, OMG or Tenta have any reason to be bothered.

Your loss. BattlArts is awesome. If you aren't a stiffness mark, I do still think there's lots to love about BattlARTS. For me, it was the way they blended so many styles under one roof.

I really love Dump Matsumoto. I wish I had ranked her.

Koshinaka really flew around by the seat of his pants. Sorry, had to get that one out of me before it poisoned my brain.

I moved all the posts about Rick Steiner's ranking and Great Match Theory in the reaction thread here so we can keep that conversation going in one place.

I like Koshinaka and actually agree with El-P's take on him. Not on my list, but someone I enjoy much of the time. It's just that most critique has pointed out his prolific butt offense.

Blah. I watched a shitload of NJ from the 80's last year and Kosh was terrific. The Takada feud is classic. And in the 90's he was the miracle worker of turning shit into something fun, plus some usually strong performances on G1's. But butt offense.

80s NJ set and yearbooks didn't reflect well on him. I think people have had it with butt offense.

In response to the Bret-Kobashi point made in the other thread, I would rank Kobashi higher but not because he had 125 ****+ matches to Bret's 50 (just making up numbers to make my point -- those are probably nowhere near anything useful) but more because when I look at his overall career, I see more consistency from Kobashi across big and small shows. It's interesting because Bret Hart had better matches with dentists, pirates and clowns than he did Vader, Buddy Landell and Tom Pritchard. Call it the "on paper" factor -- I penalize wrestlers who have matches that on paper look like they should be good that are nothing remarkable at all. Then when I look closer at that, I realize that examples of Bret Hart having strong "one off" matches with someone that were not part of an ongoing feud are pretty rare, which in turn leads to the more holistic discussion of his run that I think we all want. Input or output -- whichever your focus, I think we're all going to the same destination.

I do agree with this general point. Given two wrestlers my instinct says to rank closely, the guy with 12 ****+ matches doesn't go above the guy with 11 ****+ matches. But it's also hard for me to think of examples of that in practice. To me, there is a big output gap between Bret and HHH that favors Bret.

Does HHH really have a lot of great matches? Sure, he has some, but just thinking through his career in my head, I can't come up with a dozen.

The Great Match Theory debate popped up again in the list reactions thread, and rather than go down that rabbit hole there, I feel like this is worthy of a topic on its own. My questions are: - Who are some wrestlers who have a long list of great matches that aren't great? - What is it about those wrestlers that made them have so many great matches in spite of not being great? - If great performances don't result in a great match, why is that? What do you think is usually missing in a not-great match that contains at least one great performance?

I'm going to start a thread asking for examples of people with long lists of great matches who aren't great, so we don't detour this thread too much.

I have no issue with that at all. Number of great matches is absolutely a factor for a lot of people, self included, but to imply that anyone thinks it's the only thing that matters ... I thought we knew each other better than that.

It just bugs me because it's thrown out there and suddenly this thread needs an Under Construction sign because of all the locked-in narratives that are being built. I sound more worked up than I am, but it is something that is already showing signs of taking a life on of its own.

There is no single person on this board who looks at great matches and excludes all other factors entirely. Not one. It's a strawman.

I agree. Great wrestlers should have terrible matches.

Based on what, exactly?

Another compact and chaotic match, this time a tag match that was wrestled like it was a Texas Tornado brawl, whether it was one or not. I think this suffered a little bit only because Hansen and Colon were so ridiculously "bigger" and more charismatic than their tag team partners, but the junior team members did work hard and this was lots of fun. ***1/4

Another great, compact brawl with a very different feel from the previous one. When Colon missed the jumping knee in the corner, I thought, he's Stan Hansen and they're doing a brawl, no way is he going to go after the knee, but he did! And it was great! And he managed to do limb work that fit the chaotic nature of the match. They followed suit with Hansen missing a lariat and crashing into the ringpost which led to Colon targeting Hansen's arm during the mayhem. This feels like a super high rating for a match this short, but if anything, I wanted to go higher. I do think of the two brawls, this is the slightly better worked ones, although both have their merits, and I'm starting to get a feel for Carlos Colon as well. He was definitely impressive in this match. ****

This was an awesome, compact brawl. It felt like an abridged version of MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana as far as the match layout, with Hansen overwhelming Colon right away and immediately establishing the violent nature of the match, only for Colon to get a comeback before Hansen caught him with a loaded lariat. I also really liked how Hansen kept the violence in check because it helped the structure. In the beginning, he accidentally (??) slugged the ref when the match was at its most heated, then surrendered to his authority and begged him not to disqualify later in the match. I know Hansen more at this point, so he stood out more than Colon, but I am excited about continuing this series. ****

Thanks for that explanation. Which came first -- Dave getting back to covering it more, or hardcore fan types showing interest in it and really liking it?

Ha! There are definitely a few times I am in the middle of making a point and completely lose my way for sure. I'm sure you had similar momentary lapses. Still, we kept just soldiering on. When it comes to wrestling, that's love, right?

Haha, well, I did give Matt a personal heads up on that one.

Well that's mean. Fat jokes about Margaret Cho? Come on, dude. It was ill-advised, but I definitely wasn't cracking on Margaret Cho being fat. I actually meant it more as Morishima looking female because of the hairstyle than anything. Still, Morishima-Margaret Cho comparisons were all the rage in 2007 online, but yeah, stupid post from me. I'm sorry.