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The shitting on the NSAC was more to do with Dana disliking Keith Kizer I imagine.

Does Taue get the big show retirement boost next year? By Dave's logic, enough voters may have forgotten or never knew that Taue was difficult to work with and just see his snowflake list of doom and vote him in. Think of him as the anti-Maeda. I agree that he hasn't got the Dome shows, but he was in the semi-final/main event of close to 50 Budokan Hall shows, which could be spun positively if you wanted to. The problem with Japan is that all the good candidates are already in and we're left with a lot of weak/borderline cases, and the only wrestler on the horizon who could develop into a strong HOF level wrestler is Kazuchika Okada who won't be eligible until 2023. If the rate of Japanese inductees stay the same (one a year on average over the last decade), then Taue actually has a pretty good shot at making it.

Saito also gets credit for being an important figure in Choshu's revolutionary Ishingundan group, including his famous matches in 1987 with Antonio Inoki.

How common was the use of freesat at that time? It's not like today when everyone has a freeview box to get extra channels.

I guess Dave still believes what he said in the old WrestlingClassics.com thread over 9 years ago to still be true: "Maeda wouldn't have a prayer if he was on the ballot today. His legend hasn't grown and he's pretty much forgotten since the style his popularized became obsolete. You can argue that's a good reason to extend the age limit, but I think it's a good argument not to, because I feel based on influence while he was active, he should be a lock. Even in Japan, Maeda's influence is forgotten by many these days because the feeling is Funaki and Sakuraba are the modern legends were more influential to business, and Takada is considered the bigger star because his being the face of Pride has kept him a celebrity in the public eye." Of course, his influence was so forgotten in Japan that Maeda was hired as a consultant by K-1 for their MMA promotion in 2005.

I think Suzuki is an interesting candidate in the sense that he turned a rather mediocre shoot career with Pancrase and by perfecting the shooter gimmick, he's had a very good freelance run past the age of 35. If you're a new fan today I can see you thinking he was a much bigger deal in his prime than he actually was.

The "Akira Maeda wouldn't get into the Hall Of Fame at age 45" talking point that Meltzer brought up again seems ridiculous today when Masakatsu Funaki got voted in and the dearth of superior candidates that are left on the Japanese ballot.

I don't think it will get heated as your response was politely worded. Even with Dave's argument it's hard to justify the 35/15 boundary, as the vast majority of wrestlers are still active until they're 40 nowadays.

Maybe he's talking about this match from the 80s DVDVR Texas set: 22. Abdullah the Butcher vs. Bruiser Brody (8/4/86) 4,953.

Really good piece. Hey, maybe that's why they showed Brie "without makeup" in the morning in that Total Divas video, because I guess that way she appears "ugly"… (well, she looks much better natural to me than with tons of makeup). I thought Nikki was the fat twin? Maybe the Brie & Daniel Bryan partnership works on the level, "see if she fucks such a short, ugly troll of a man, maybe you the common, creepy WWE stalker fan might even have a shot one day too"?

The things I've said in this thread are along the lines of what I've posted for a decade, and I still get a ballot. Dave really doesn't care about people having differences of opinion with him when they submit a ballot. More than that, he's listened when I've suggested someone being put on the ballot, and pinged me a couple of times on wrestlers other people have suggested. John I think he's talking about the 11 people who voted for AJ Styles Bingo! (thought that was obvious, sorry if it wasn't clear) Styles does well on the metric been in a lot of ****+ Meltzer rated matched though.

I'd even go back as far as 2001. That year, he won KOTR, gets a high profile win on the Invasion PPV, wins the IC title, gets a high profile split feud with Christian where he goes over in the end, and beats Test in an IC/US title unification match at Survivor Series, which was the blowoff PPV for the Invasion. To say he wasn't chosen is ridiculous. If WWE got behind somebody now the way they got behind Edge in 2001, they wouldn't have problems creating stars. I think Edge was someone who obviously had his big backers dating from his debut to the company (Jim Cornette, Jim Ross, Michael Hayes who was head booker on Smackdown for his run on top of that brand), but also had his key detractors too (Triple H, which might explain why he was on Smackdown so much). He also had the benefit of being a home grown guy and didn't have the taint of being a former WCW/ECW star. Regarding New Japan's iPPV business, we really don't know how it's doing *today* after Meltzer stopped publishing the numbers, which is a problem for analysing wrestlers for the future.

To be fair though, isn't kinda how this sort of thing happens? Isn't that essentially how every wrestling star was created. It's all about being talented but also being in the right promotion at the right time with the right opponents. Yes, but the introduction of fairly cheap IPPVs in a culture where it was unprecedented (no PPVs for the vast majority of fans plus regular PPV being considerably more expensive to people who have satellite dishes) is something that theoretically could have done that at any time if the technology was ready. It's completely theoretical and thus unfair to use it as a solid argument against Tanahashi, but I think it's part of the equation. I think it was a solid argument to "wait and see", as there was no baseline to compare his iPPV business to and no perspective as to what it meant for the future.

Good thing Cien Caras didn't go in.

To be fair, Dave is certainly willing to give ballots to people who have butted heads or disagreed with him in the past. Me, jdw, evilclown, Bix, etc having ballots is proof of that. I think the problem is that you have to be on his radar or fall within one of his buckets of active wrestler, former wrestler, reporter (which seems to include bloggers and podcast talkers) or historian.

I think the logjam isn't just caused by Daddy being such a polarising figure, but also the more modern workrate candidates like Rocco, Saint and Breaks, whose performances have been widely tape traded.

Tanahashi is 7 years into being pushed as a World Champion. When he was first pushed as Champ, we were a day less than NOAH packing the Dome for the second straight year. Two years from Jun being able to hold up his end of the bargin as an opponent for Kobashi to pack the Dome on that 2004 card. Tanahashi was on the second Dome show and it was embarrassing the dearth of reaction he got for his match. It wasn't home territory, but other outsiders certainly popped the crowd at that event. I'm sure you could chalk that up to "how far he's come since then", but it was only eight years ago and sort of telling at the time about the future of the Japanese wrestling business when he was New Japan's top youngster being pushed.

Considering how eager the new age Japanese media is to uncover sports scandals (fighting, kickboxing, and more recently sumo, judo and baseball) we'll know that NJPW has really hit the mainstream when shit hits the fan. If such a thing were to happen, Tanahashi has got all the numbers to be their Hulk Hogan for a number of reasons. Or maybe not! Does this mean Jun Izumida should be on the ballot for writing a tell all book revealing NOAH Director Haruka Eigen's and Ryu Nakata's formal ties to the Yakuza?

I wasn't arguing in favour of Tanahashi myself, but I can see how from a native Japanese voter perspective they'd see him as the slam dunk candidate Meltzer is pushing him as from a credentials standpoint.

Wasn't the big increase across all buckets of voters?

I might be wrong, but "glorified workrate candidate" may be seeing Tanahashi through Western eyes. It's inevitable that Tanahashi will break the record for both no. of reigns and no of days with the IWGP title. He's been the biggest new star in the industry of the last decade. He's headlined six January 4th Tokyo Domes and about 20 Sumo Hall shows. Who with those list of credentials wouldn't get plenty of votes for the WON HOF by insiders?

That's what they're predicting. It will only happen if WWE gets multiple big suitors for cable exclusivity for all their programming. Given that hasn't happened since 2005 and they played their cards very badly then, I'm also sceptical that they see a huge rights fees hike in 2014.

This is a really cool idea and I'd set it up if I had more experience with that sort of thing.

Also, this statement is false, because there are people who have gotten in on work alone, and on their first ballot. If these guys were deemed good enough in the ring by the voters, they would have also. Really, very few people get in for work alone. Kobashi was either the number two or three draw in AJPW during their mid 90s heyday. Benoit, Eddie, Rey and Jericho were all unlikely to have gotten in without proving themselves as WWE main eventers first. Kurt Angle had it easier due to his Olympic gold medal, etc.

I don't think anyone should get in on two years of work unless it's revolutionary in nature a la Satoru Sayama. I'm highly confident that Tanahashi will eventually get in and will eventually deserve to be in. But why the rush for coronation when there's plenty of deserving candidates who aren't still in the prime of their careers.