Loss

Mine would be Perro Aguayo vs. Jerry Lawler sometime between 83-84. I meant our "perfect match" in terms of the voter on the board who most closely aligns with our own views

We don't have to put this on Grimmas, but I do like the idea of trying to figure out who our "perfect match" is after this is over.

Other than Jimmy Redman, are there any women who submitted ballots? I ask because the way wrestling is going, I see more female fans as hardcore types over the next decade, and that would make an interesting then-and-now comparison in 2026.

"Vows are spoken To be broken Feelings are intense Words are trivial" -- Depeche Mode, "Enjoy The Silence" When the idea of revisiting the Greatest Wrestler Ever project was initially presented to me, I loved the thought of it. I was nearing the end of a 1990s yearbook project, which had rekindled a spark that been gone since Chris Benoit killed himself and his family, and this would give the wrestling fan in me new and fairly organized purpose. I was also interested in the historiography of the collective tastes of hardcore wrestling fans. What had changed about our opinions since the initial poll from the now-dormant Smarkschoice.com in 2006? Perhaps more interestingly, what about our tastes had stayed the same? If I had stayed on that course, the project certainly would have produced far less headaches for me than it ultimately did, and it would have been an incredibly fun experience from beginning to end. But I had to take a detour. The yearbook project that I was finishing served two purposes from my perspective -- to see all of the most acclaimed matches of the time period, and to see a decent amount of the potentially great matches that were overlooked in the moment. It was a deep dive and took half a decade for me to complete. So I entered the GWE project with that same mindset -- the desire to watch it all, review it all and form opinions on it all. That was my first mistake. Realizing the investment such a venture would require of me, it was about 18 months ago that I started a thread asking how others would feel about extending the deadline -- not just by a few days or weeks, or even by a few months. I wanted to extend it by a few years! That request got the types of "What's wrong with you?" responses you might expect, but it came from a realization of all the footage that I hadn't seen. When I was neck deep in the yearbook project, I made a conscious choice to forsake all other wrestling watching, not only as a practical matter so I could finish in this lifetime but also because I wanted to fully immerse myself in the time period and not be distracted by other contexts or projects du jour. Time, however, did not pause while I was stuck in the era of Newt Gingrich, America Online and Crystal Pepsi. So I hadn't seen so much of the heralded great wrestling of this decade, and I hadn't had a chance to immerse myself in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s the way I had the 1990s. I felt like I shouldn't be thinking about the Greatest Wrestler Ever until I had a chance to do a full plunge on wrestling's recorded footage history. As I later said in a way intended to make fun of myself, but as something lost on me at the time, my goal was to make a list that was both soulless and factually correct. If I could see it all, I could not only turn in a ballot, but I could turn in an omniscient ballot -- one that was truly considered from all eras. When other voters rejected the idea of an extended timetable, I took my interest in the project and left, vowing not to submit a ballot. I even got hotheaded about it and took my complaints to Twitter, which led to a brief falling out with my friend Dylan Hales after he gave me a dose of truth in a response that I did not want to hear, but needed to hear all the same. Perfection was in a violent war against good, and I was a soldier for flawlessness. For months, I told myself I would say nothing bad about the project publicly so I wouldn't rain on the parade of others, but privately, I thought the idea of the project was ridiculous and egotistical. "Who do these people think they are, that they are truly able to figure out the greatest wrestler ever without watching everything they can get their hands on?" I asked myself. Over time, I realized that my purity protest was a form of paralysis, as while I was lamenting that people were going to make ballots without aiming to watch at the least the praised highlights of every nominated wrestler's matchography, other voters were in the trenches doing the real work. Longtime U.S.-only fans gave international wrestling they had never seen a try, and aimed to understand it with an open mind. Younger fans looked into older wrestling. Older fans even looked into newer wrestling. The more I saw this, the more I came to terms with the idea that I was actually the one being egotistical. While they were exploring wrestling from all countries and time periods, I was more preoccupied with what everyone had not seen -- so sure only I had the answer to approaching this project correctly that I could not even leave the starting gate. It was my loss, no pun intended. It was here I realized that what project leader Steven Graham said on day one was absolutely correct-- this is a snapshot in time. That the question "Who is the greatest wrestler ever?" cannot be definitively answered is not reason to give up on trying to answer it. The weight, scope and seeming impossibility of the question is actually cause for celebration, because it encourages an incredibly rewarding expedition, one where we get to watch, enjoy and evaluate great wrestling of all kinds. Of course no one of us can definitively answer the question, but taken together, maybe we can take a damn good stab at it, which is what the countdown that will come in the month of April aims to ultimately represent. All of us are smarter than any of us. I did not have these same qualms a decade ago when I participated in the original poll. It was during this time that I really started watching wrestling I had only heard about, wrestling that had previously been inaccessible to me. If the 2016 poll represents the end to the bootleg-driven "Footage Explosion" era, as some have aptly called it, the Smarkschoice poll was the denouement of VHS. Nearly five times as many voters participated this time around and it's not because the community is larger, but rather because footage has been democratized through YouTube, torrents and more economically feasible bootlegging. Because of that, accepted fan narratives have become more splintered than ever. In the era of the videotape, a fan may spend up to $20 for a single video, and if he was on a budget, he needed to ensure the most bang for his buck. So he largely relied on the opinions of the vocal few to make educated guesses on what to purchase. This practice led to most hardcore wrestling fans seeing the same footage and forming similar opinions. Perhaps in some cases, those who invested so much money in the footage also felt the need, even subconsciously, to justify their purchase through praise. The story of 2016 is a different one. There is still some footage that is easier to find than other footage, and that will likely always be the case, but with less risk in watching different forms of wrestling comes less stakes in criticism. A fan who found a match for free on YouTube may have an easier time panning it if he doesn't particularly enjoy it than a fan who paid $12.00 for a video of the same match based on reputation. That is not to attack the character or motives of wrestling fans of yesteryear as much as it is to demonstrate the difference in the hardcore fan economy between then and now, and how that might influence conventional wisdom. The differences do not stop there. While Smarkschoice had a forum to nominate and discuss wrestlers, there were no guidelines beyond that. Voters were allowed to name anyone on their final ballot, nominated or not, and there was no minimum threshold for nominating a wrestler. We modified our approach in 2016, requiring at least three match reviews to nominate anyone. We then limited voting to only nominated wrestlers. While these factors represent major change in approach from 2006, perhaps no singular event is cause for greater difference in the two polls than the Benoit family tragedy in 2007. Different fans had different levels of response to it, but almost everyone was affected in some way. It was not so much that our opinions on Chris Benoit changed, although he was one of only two wrestlers on every ballot in 2006, the other being the late Eddy Guerrero. It was more that Benoit was the posterboy of a meritocratic, maximalist approach to wrestling that fans like us really appreciated. Just as it did within wrestling itself, Benoit's actions forced many of us to re-think our values. Were we part of the problem? Were we rewarding and endorsing a philosophy on wrestling that required a level of sacrifice that resulted in personal destruction? It was by no means a self evaluation in which everyone partook, but it did have an impact on a significant portion of our community. Some fans chose to focus less on the physical components of being a great wrestler and more on the mental ones. Discussions of wrestling psychology became more prevalent, as did a proverbial line in the sand between those who enjoyed more "basic" wrestling and those who still preferred big spots and matches primarily fueled by daredevil action. Nothing was settled, nor did anything aim to be settled, but far more than in 2006, the final poll results demonstrate that struggle between competing philosophies, a struggle which ultimately led to a beautifully decentralized form of wrestling canon. Who is the greatest wrestler ever? I have my opinion on the matter, just as we all do, but hell if any of us really know. However, I do suspect the voters of 2016 have advantages that allow us to approach the question and get closer to the ever-evasive truth -- inasmuch as truth can exist -- than the voters of 2006, just as the voters of 2026 will seek to answer the question from a better place than we are now. In the meantime, we can be fully assured that the wrestlers who do well in this poll have been thoroughly vetted, debated, argued, criticized and defended.

On a different note, I'm so glad I got the all-time vapid quote, "Champions behave like champions before they are champions" as a parting gift. I hope Roman Reigns has a cat whose breath smells like cat food.

Just like most people who cheered Dusty Rhodes in JCP didn't think they were getting manipulated. I agree that they are missing the condescension piece, but that's a two-way street.

I don't. That's wrestling, and promoters have manipulated fans since the beginning of time. They complain, but they are fans. They support a medium that we all love. If they deserve ridicule for being manipulated by Vince, so does every fan that has ever responded to something the way a promoter wanted. I mean, there were people on Twitter who I think somehow convinced themselves subconsciously that Shane would run Creative and that Raw's quality would improve if he beat Undertaker. That's a sign that the work is in full effect. Ridiculing fans that get worked misses the whole point.

Again, because they got their way -- Daniel Bryan was willed into the WM30 main event, which is what fans wanted. Roman Reigns wasn't coronated at WM31, which is what fans wanted. I could see how some fans would take away the lesson that they could have sustained it had they kept the pressure on, or had Bryan not had an injury. I agree that WWE has a model that's working because they're pissing people off in a way that actually yields more financial investment from those same people. I just don't feel the need to insult the people who are part of that like you are. They can do what they want. I just know I don't want to be part of that anymore.

Heel stable modeled after the Four Horsemen having good, long matches against babyfaces who could work most weeks. Lots of bloody angles and focus on titles. Eugene as Rick Steiner. Shelton Benjamin as Sting.

2004 Raw is the closest WWE ever was to being Jim Crockett Promotions.

But fans had no way of knowing that at the time. They willed him into the main event and WWE put him over convincingly on that show. That was the culmination of the movement. A lot of us thought it was a new chapter because of how they structured the entire card by putting The Shield over the NAO, Cesaro over Big Show and Lesnar over Undertaker. Then they put an exclamation point on a new direction the next night on RAW. WM30 seemed like WWE saying "You want new stars? Fine, here you go." Turns out that RAW was the end of it but how would anyone have known that then?

It has nothing to do with people not "blindly loving WWE" it's about the idiocy of spending hundreds of dollars a year on something that you do nothing but complain about. And continue to justify it with this lie that "well if I just go to the show and give them a reaction they don't like, they'll change!" How can you scream from the hilltops how much you want WWE to change while giving them the financial security that ensures they don't have to? Because it worked once (with Daniel Bryan) and there is the belief, however misguided, that they can force WWE's hand again.

To me, getting so bothered by people who don't blindly love everything WWE does and still care enough to get mad when they do stupid stuff is far more of an issue than people who still watch and complain.

That's where the people who complain and still watch are so important. We know they don't blindly love everything WWE churns out, so if they are praising something, it's worth seeing. A WWE where only people who loved it watched would leave the rest of us with no compass at all.

The reason to keep watching wrestling we don't like is that as a moment's notice, it could get better. Even if the change is not permanent, WWE has a tendency to have moments of greatness that come out of nowhere. So I actually *admire* people that complain and keep watching because it shows their love for it, and belief in its potential to be awesome. My decision comes because I realize it will never be a hybrid of territory and Japanese wrestling adjusted to 2016 times with more glitz and huge crowds, with Vince completely discarding his bias for big guys and shameless pursuit of mainstream respectability. I held on to that hope way, way longer than I ever should have, which is on me. I leave in peace.

There has never been a gay character in a mainstream wrestling company. It's all implications and assumptions. I don't see an issue with asking the question as much as I see an issue with people in wrestling never having the courage to just say what they mean.

That show was sort of a reminder to me that WWE will never really be what I'd love for it to be, no matter how talented their roster is. And I don't even say that to complain -- they had better things to do than try to craft a show to appeal to me. I'm just peacefully stepping away from it for the most part. It does more to cause me frustration than provide enjoyment. I had made peace with this once before, then Daniel Bryan came along and I got lured back in. He was an anomaly, not a signal of a better functioning WWE. And that's ok -- they drew 100K people last night and the people who complain the most vocally about their booking are the ones who fork over the most money. It's a model that's working even if there's no precedent for it. But as long as it's working, it's guaranteed fans looking for change will have no peace. It's just not for me. Someone call me when they are building around Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn as their top stars, promos aren't scripted verbatim, the announcers sound like real people, the heavy-handed, self-serving PR stops, fans cheer and boo in a way that's aligned with WWE's vision and the McMahon family aren't TV characters and maybe I'll reconsider.

I expect HHH to do be doing at least one match a year for at least the next 20 years.

I feel like he's 90% entrance and look, which admittedly means he'll probably be successful in WWE, but I just haven't seen it beyond that.

I don't know yet. I'm open to ideas. Whatever makes the most people happy.

Well that means Undertaker is winning if that's true. I think if Undertaker-Shane closes the show, that means Shane is winning.

I've come to conclude that most guys who are draws are that because of time, place and opportunity more than because they have some intrinsic quality that other wrestlers who are great but didn't really draw don't have. Superdraws like Hogan and Austin are the exception, but those guys are rare.

I think the contrast is what makes Nakamura work. And on that note, show me a drag queen that isn't tough as nails and capable of holding their own in a fight, and I'll show you my billion dollar bank account.

I don't think it was a criticism of Steve Borden as a person as much as it was a statement about attachment as a wrestling fan. I love Ric Flair far more than Sting, but there is such a passive aggressive fury behind everything Flair says. Bubbling just under the persona, you see a very depressed, very sad, very angry man who never quite figured out how to come down from greatness. He's been slowly becoming that person for a quarter-century now and now, he can't even hide it. So Steve Borden is an infinitely more well-adjusted person than Richard Fleihr, but in the world of wrestling, Sting can't even come close to comparing.

This may be my favorite post ever on the board.