Loss

It was effective because it was set up during the match. It was likely more effective to fans who were ready for Nash to get his. You don't need promos to set everything up. But if you're in an environment where promos matter and can help and you're not using that tool in the toolkit to do anything, you're only limiting yourself. If you're going to overcome that, you have to be pretty incredible at something else to justify it.

I'm not telling anyone else what they should be doing or not doing.

It's not realistic and I don't think it has to be but the question becomes did they condition the crowd to give them the reaction they wanted before they did it. And they did, and one reason was because of what preceded it in the match itself, while another was Nash just being a relentless bully toward him in ... the promos that set up the match.

If it helps, I sort of imagine my own pre-submission process as a list of the 100 greatest wrestling *stars* ever, and then when you start drilling into the specifics, some people fall more down the list and others emerge. So Hogan starts at the top because of the reactions he was able to generate and how great he was at being Hulk Hogan. Then you start looking at times he struggled, times something didn't click, areas where he was weak as a performer, and some things work against him and some don't. Eventually he ends up where he should be. Some ranked above him do so because of some truly great skills shining, and some just win wars of attrition.

Of course it matters. Imagine Rey vs Nash and they do the double shoulderblock spot, but Nash bumps while Rey stands there and flexes. That would suck.

Yes, it requires a ton of nuance. No disagreement there. I wouldn't hold that against Eaton because he was rarely in a role where he was expected to talk for himself and his failure to do so hurt what he was trying to do. (And at this point, I'd probably rate Tully higher anyway, but that's a different topic.)

Hogan got much smaller in the early 90s and lost something. Sure. Other wrestlers have gone through changes in body type and adapted, whether it's junior to heavy or thinning down to become more mobile. Hogan struggled to keep his aura as his body changed because his body was so much of his gimmick. That's a valid criticism that should work against him on a project like this.

Everything a wrestler does in the context of performing is something they're pulling from a toolbox. Body alone wouldn't make anyone a serious contender on a list like this. Wrestling in a way that goes against that look would matter. I think we're saying the same thing.

Not much. It's not a trade-off. I haven't once argued that if you're a great promo, you don't have to be great in the ring. It's one aspect of performing she could halfway do, but she couldn't do anything in the ring, so she doesn't even register in a project like this. To me, Greatest Wrestler Ever should be Best All Around.

"This is awesome" is a funny thing to bring up because to me it shows that people are reacting to the matches themselves and judging that instead of the individual wrestlers within them, and I've always argued that it makes more sense to rank matches than wrestlers, but few agreed with me. Yet "This is awesome" is the fanbase doing exactly that.

Let me continue with the Hokuto example to explain where I'm coming from. She grabs the mic, she says something about Kandori, Kandori gets furious, they have to be separated. The crowd reaction increases. That's all I need to know to declare her a great promo. I'd say the same for American wrestling. When I'm judging a promo, I'm not judging their words, I'm judging conviction, delivery and impact. If they say something witty or memorable, that's a bonus, but that's not the inherent point of a wrestling promo. On the contrary, someone like HHH may get a reaction cutting a promo too, but I don't consider him a great promo, and it's not even because of what he says. He's the master at clever burials. It's because there's a phoniness in the delivery and he's full of try-hard. There are environments where promos don't matter. It shouldn't be held against wrestlers that they aren't doing great ones in those cases. Also, there are environments where the wrestler's words to pre-condition an audience can make a good match great or a bad match worse. Ultimately, you judge them most on what they do in the ring. But if they're able to pre-condition an audience to respond to their match in a certain way, that's not a skill we should dismiss as unimportant in a project like this, especially when many people have built successful careers off of doing just that. In the end, the match still has to deliver too. I don't think me considering promos would have a major impact outside the margins anyway. And it's not even just promos. I just don't like saying it's just "in-ring". How wrestlers make their entrance, how committed they are to their gimmick, how effective they are at working angles ... those are important aspects of performance too, and there are endless ways to demonstrate that. I'm focusing on promos to make my point, but my point is that all of that should matter.

Lots of great American promos come across as super forced and overbearing too. See Savage, Randy or Piper, Roddy. They're both great at it still. If you don't trust captive crowds to tell you anything, then that's our real divide, because I think they tell you everything. There are always outliers, but it's very rare that a match I personally enjoy falls flat with a live audience, or a match I hate is eaten up by a live audience.

Promos are not part of the match itself. Promos are part of the performing job of a professional wrestler though. And I think every aspect of how wrestlers perform in front of audiences should be fair game.

No. There are plenty of great non-English speaking wrestlers that I'd never defend as great promos. Hokuto speaks with conviction and delivers well, and she tends to get the intended reaction. That transcends language. If she was talking about making cereal and I had no idea, that would be hilarious, but I can infer that's not happening based on how audiences respond to her.

My point here is that I'm trying to break this notion of looking down a checklist of things and the wrestler has to tick off a series of boxes. Promos matter in some environments and don't in others. When it matters, it should count because it's part of the composite view we have of wrestlers. If you're looking for a single standard you can hold everyone to, that single standard is that they leverage everything available to them in their environment to do their job well.

Because promos are part of the show. We don't rate action stars entirely based on fight scene quality. And people compare foreign films to American films all the time.

Wrestling is less about what you say than how you say it. I don't need to speak Japanese to know that Akira Hokuto is a great promo.

My point is, promos are part of generating that live response. The role of a pro wrestler is to convince people to want to see them take on foes. You can do that by it being exciting every time you do take on your foes, you can do that by making yourself loathsome and people wanting to beat you up, you can do that by getting people to rally behind you. My issue is that not that we should factor in drawing power. It's that we should look at every aspect of performance, including promos in environments where that matters, because I think compartmentalizing everything is an overly narrow focus.

No, and this wouldn't be basing it on the money either. It would be basing it on how crowds respond to it.

I'm not going to tell anyone that they're wrong about how they watch wrestling or approach this project, because I don't think that's particularly useful. That said, I do think it's an interesting approach to consider literally everything, weigh for yourself what matters most among those things, and create a list off of that. Perhaps it's true that doing so misses the point of the project, but does not doing so miss the point of being a wrestler?

It seems like the main thing we know about AJPW is that the Babas did NOT handle it well when people left, whether that was Choshu, Tenryu, Misawa and company, or even Terry Funk. I am guessing Onita left on bad terms too, considering the things Ms. Baba said about him in 2000 when there were rumors of him returning post-Misawa, but I don't know that story.

I wonder if the issue is that NJPW spent most of its first three decades in a state of chaos, which makes the history more interesting, while All Japan Pro Wrestling was generally pretty stable, so there's not as much of a story.

Absolutely. 100% that. Let them show me the way. If they're so great, they should be able to do the work and I should remain the passenger.

Yes, and it also takes into consideration things like post-match brawls and the ability do angles that click, which is something that is relevant across styles and countries. You're also not penalizing Shawn Michaels for not being a very good mat wrestler, because he's not in an environment where anyone expects him to work the mat or one where it would help him get over more if he could. For RINGS wrestlers, they need to be exceptionally technically proficient, but it doesn't really matter if they can do promos. Yet you've still found a somewhat universal standard you can apply that accounts for these differences.

Just posting to say that I'm on an anti-compartmentalization kick at the moment and will probably refuse to limit myself to in-ring. Instead, I'll ask a more vague question like, "In each environment that this wrestler was in, did they do everything they needed to do to be as great and effective as the environment allowed?"