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I'm guessing Barry Windham will be on the ballot next year for the first time since 1998, and probably make a decent showing. John

That said... lots of "hip" elements of American are attentive to Twitter. Dave isn't. I suspect Bryan will be, if he isn't already, since he tends to be far advanced of Dave in terms of Tech. BTW: does WO-4 use facebook feeds at all to pimp their new articles and newsletters when they get published? I get stuff on my feed all the time from Grantland... Kos... MediaMatters... Rachel... KO... Deadspin... Snowden's pieces... Bix's pieces... and on and on and on. I know Bryan on occasion would pimp that strange show he'd do, but can't recall a lot else. Pat McNeil does some of his stuff, though I don't think Wade has been as hip about new "key" articles as most. Not saying he should use his personal fb for it, since he's tried to keep that separate from Torch stuff. But the Torch fb page would be a good vehicle for at least key stuff (rather than every one of 20 pieces that goes up in a day). Bryan or Dave hip to that at all? John

And if you wanted to make that argument about a band you could probably pick a better example than this year's Coachella headliners. Friday: Kings of Leon Saturday: Arcade Fire Sunday: Kanye West / The Strokes Duran Duran weren't the headliners on Sunday. John

That would be a Gordy List. And Dylan will probably eventually get around to something like that. He probably wants to start the ball rolling on talking about Buddy (and Patera), get info and thoughts from other folks, look over the data and what not before pulling the information together into something like a Gordy List. It's pretty much the same process he did with Blackwell: talk, has out, then organize. That's the general purpose of a Gordy List. It's not a "yes/no he's in/out!" thing where you add up columns and come up with the number 42. It's more to collect, organize and focus thoughts on a candidate. It's hard for them not to be advocacy on some level, but the form is really more designed to be objective, and then do advocacy after it. I think one of the ironies looking back is that if one did a Gordy List on Terry now and one on Doc now, it would be pretty obvious that Gordy was always the better individual candidate than Doc. Kind of why Doc fell off the ballot, whereas Terry never did. John

Dave was really high on Jimmy in Memphis, and has always said massively positive things about him in Memphis. He wasn't high on him in the WWF, nor WCW. I've never paid a great deal of attention to managers in the HOF, other than the hindsight point about Corny should have gone in as a "group" with the MX rather than solo as a manager. Don't even recall a discussion about Hart... nor frankly about Heenan, other than everyone in the 80s and early 90s was high on Bobby being up at the top of all-time managers. Yeah... I'd say Jimmy Hart needs to be on the ballot. If Albano is, Jimmy needs to be. I don't think it would be a tough sell to Dave to get him on, and I suspect Dave would say positive things. Not really one to hammer him too hard over the head about, as you don't really need him to be defensive. I suspect he'd see it as just an oversight that he's never been on the ballot. Might even see him as an oversight of not being in the HOF. It's kind of hard for Gary Hart to be on there and Jimmy not to be. John

Agree with both of these. And Tenryu's last match with Jumbo, the April TC match. John

All three title matches from 11/01/90 should make it: Liger-Pegasus, Hase & Sasaki vs Chono & Mutoh, and Choshu vs Hash. Suspect full version aired on NJPW Classics or on commercial sets. John

Wow... someone needs to look back at the original 1996 issue to check that. I could swear that he was in. That's... pretty odd.

It's rather sad that they didn't take this approach in their sole TC match against each other. It's possible they were, as I still have a feeling that Taue started heading towards the finish early, and that Kawada had more match left in the tank mentally. John

This is about what you'd expect 1995 Kawada and 1995 Taue to do, so the expectations are different... higher. There's no doubt some freshness to their earlier ones: they're younger workers, they're different from what they'd become and how we see them, and the feuding/rivalry/hate is on display. Expectations, especially for Taue of that era, are lower. It's easier for a 1991 match between them to exceed expectations than a 1995 match, because expectations are so high. To me, this is far and away their best worked match. John

More big time singles matches? It's pretty even. The fans liked Kobashi more. They didn't "rank" him above Taue. He'd never taken a singles match of Taue, while Taue had put him down. He'd never taken a singles match off Kawada, while Taue had put Kawada down. It's a bit akin to them liking Kobashi more than Kawada in early 1997. Kobashi wasn't "ranked" above Kawada. They liked him more, and he was getting a similar push. On the match... I've never seen this as Kobashi making Taue earn it. Instead, Kobashi is Kobashi by the point: he's going to do his own shit, a chunk of it is over-the-top and at times pulling away from whatever it was they just did, but it tends to add up to an "entertaining match". He's pretty much in his Ric Flair phase: he's got shit to do, and TONS of it. Except that he also plays the face in the Flair matches: boy does he like coming out on top whenever doing a toe-to-toe spot with someone. Not *every* time, mind you... but boy did he love winning those, and you get the sense often that his opponents (even Doc and Kawada who might reel him in) tend to go, "Aw fuck it... let the little bastard have these if he wants them." With someone like Misawa, it seems like they'll just let Kobashi do whatever he wants for large stretches, having confidence he'll carry his share... and a part of their's. With others, especially Kawada at times, it seems more the working equiv of tapping out: you're not going to change how he works, he's just going to do it anyway, might as well turn off the brain a bit. Lord knows there's that exact same vibe in Mutoh-Kawada. I think the point is: Kobashi probably doesn't even grasp the concept of "make him earn it". He's just doing his shit. It's probably projecting when we toss it around at Kawada in some of his matches such as the one with Taue in this Carny. But he does have a bit more of a track record of putting together some matches where it appears to be a theme... rather than just Kawada doing shit kind of randomly. John

It's sitting on an external drive waiting to be watched with some other stuff. I'm loathed to watch it stand alone rather than in the context of other matches around it in that stretch that were all a part of my POV that Taue was falling off strongly at the tail end of 1994 and into early 1995 before quite surprisingly and pleasantly picking it up to and entirely new level. John

In terms of All Japan the last time I watched all of them and gave it serious thought it was 12/96, 6/94, 6/95, 1/97 and 12/93 in that order as the Top 5. That was 2000... a helluva long time ago. I've watched them all at different times since then, and not really thought about them as comps. Whenever I get around to watching all of AJPW 90's again in a "straight order" project, I'm not sure they'll finish in the same order... or even all in the Top 5. The last time I watched 12/96, it still strikes me the way it did when I watched if for the first time. In a sense, something will have to top it. The last time I watched 6/95, it didn't strike me quite as much as it did (i) when I first watched the TV edit, or (ii) the first time I was the full thing the following year in Japan. Still technically great. The rub of Kawada beating Misawa for the first time... that loses some impact over the years. Oddly enough, the second win the next year *doesn't* since it comes after such a bad year and a half for Kawada where "almost there" is dashed completely into the ground over and over again... redemption played more to me last time that a peak in the Chase that never really gets re-peaked in a fully satisfying way. Don't know if that makes sense. On the other hand, in a straight order viewing, that original vibe might comeback. I could hazard a guess on the others, and probably some others down the list from there. But at some point need to get to that project. John

We've talked about that in the past. Tom has gone around in circle on the Big 3 / Albano The Anchor concept. John

His opinions about nominees are in the WON every year: I'd have to pull over even more for Torres, but it's easy to see what he thinks. Batista drawing more money than anyone on the ballot... There's a lot of shit there which is clearly Dave's opinion on candidates. That's even before we get to historical pieces like the recent one on drawing. John

We had a chance to watch a couple of matches before the PWG show on Saturday. This was one. It went over rather huge with Yohe and Hoback and me. I was a little worried that Yohe was going off on HOF tangents during it, but it appeared in the end that he was paying enough attention that various words like "great", "awesome" and the like came out when it was over. John

It was attempted at WC. It failed, largely because Dave ran away from discussions that had critical thinking about his views. But also because the HOF is so flooded with voters that the only common link is: "They read the WON" On some level. You're never going to have a central discussion place with those voters since they aren't going to read blogs/boards/massive discussion threads. Ain't happening. John

Oh for fuck's sake. Who gives a shit. Brock is drawing fans to MMA. Not to pro wrestling. Re-open an MMA HOF if you give a rats ass about what's drawing in MMA. No. Horse shit. You're pimping him with what you wrote here. That pimping is the #1 driver of HOF candidates, and always has been. John

The first three are more Main + Semi Finals while the other two plus this one are Double Main Events. It fails here because Hansen-Kawada wasn't well thought out. They really should have gone just 15 minutes and kicked the shit out of each other. It became a massive flaw around this time that TC's had to go loooooooonnnnnnnggggggg. After Misawa-Kawada, they had a long stretch of TC's going about 15+ minutes too long, really for no good reason. The first to break out of that was the Misawa-Kawada in July, which was only short in the context of what the two could otherwise have done. But it's not like anyone learned from that as they went back to going longish. Then when Budokan became little more than one match cards, there probably was an increased mentality of it having to be a long epic. Sad. One does wish Hansen and Kawada had the vision and stones to go a different route. John

I think Torres is wothy as well, and voted for him. Just think Hans was a bigger star, and frankly think in the context of his time is a terrific worker in what I've seen. It's not just one match. On DeGlane... we know next to nothing of his European career. His US career doesn't strike me as remotely close to warranting inclusion. Had a long conversation with Steve about it on the car ride out to PWG tonight, and tossed McMillan and Browning at his as bigger stars in the US, and he pretty much agreed that he didn't have a good comeback to that... nor that either of those two were slam dunk candidates. Heck Steve was more high on Danno than he is on DeGlane. I tend to think that 1925-40 is pretty well represented. I'm not saying pefectly represented and that there isn't a major star in there who doesn't warrant consideration. But it's not poorly represented. If we look to add someone from that period, I'm not at all sold that DeGlane is the #1 candidate based on what he did in the US. I just think that several voters got enamoured with DeGlane for some reason. I wasn't involved in those discussions where folks got enamoured with him, so have a hard time even attempting to get across what they were thinking. I think... he's just not a strong candidate. I have difficulty getting across to Steve and through Steve to others that they really need to focus on a candidate at a time. Figure out who is #1, and build the case for him. Then when he's in, move onto the next. Then the next. Etc. Instead, the bounce all over the place. They think the job is as well done as it will even be for Hans, so they're looking around at others. DeGlane got tagged for reasons that beat me. Steve's now distracted on Snyder, which I think is an utter waste: Steve doesn't think Snyder deserves to be in based on what we know, and seems intent to walk through the data to show it. Well... look at the votes Snyder had this year. He's not freaking going in anytime soon. So why waste the time on someone you don't think should go in... when they're not going in. It just distracts him away from stenghtening the case for Hans. I generally try to avoid getting dragged into those discussions because the lack of focus and organization makes me feel like it's banging your head on the fucking wall. I suspect that's how I missed the DeGlane stuff in the past. John

I watch MMA. Have from the start. Pro Wrestling isn't MMA. MMA isn't Pro Wrestling. John

The most glaring omission is Schmidt. John