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My only issue is I guess I haven't seen a match where he's the man so to speak. If anyone can point me to a match where he's carrying a lesser opponent to a great match I may revise my view on him. His match with Yuji Nagata is as blatant a carry job of a badly inferior worker as you'll ever find in the history of pro wrestling. Yeah... that match always made me Kawada was lucky to work with someone as great as Albright.

Stuff available from Japan, two of which are actually US matches that aires on Classics: All Japan (Classics) 12/05/78 Nick Bockwinkel & Blackjack Lanza vs The Funk Brothers 12/09/78 Nick Bockwinkel & Blackjack Lanza vs Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta 12/13/78 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Jumbo Tsuruta 12/15/78 Nick Bockwinkel & Blackjack Lanza vs. Abdullah the Butcher & Tor Kamata 02/10/79 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Verne Gagne (Chicago) 02/14/79 Nick Bockwinkel vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (Honolulu) IWE 11/04/74 Nick Bockwinkel vs Rusher Kimura (JIP/Digest) 11/20/74 Nick Bockwinkel vs Mighty Inoue (JIP/Digest) 11/21/74 Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens vs Rusher Kimura & The Great Kusatsu (JIP) 10/03/79 Nick Bockwinkel vs Ashura Hara 10/05/79 Nick Bockwinkle vs Rusher Kimura 10/06/79 Nick Bockwinkle & Lou Thesz vs Rusher Kimura & The Great Kusatsu KHawk likely knows all of the US stuff that's available via the AWA (as well as what's popped up on WWE releases). It's not unreasonable to expand that to 1980, since it's not like there's a great difference in Nick from 1979 to 1980. You get another trip to the Tag League, including singles matches (yes... in the middle of the Tag League) with Baba, Billy and Dory. The Billy and Dory ones were 30:00. Everyone loves the Billy one. The Dory one was a new find, and I'm not too sure how many people saw it before it got pulled down. I *think* some of our friends here grabbed it for preservation. Would be tragic if it was lost: 32:34 of youtube video time, which indicates that if it was JIP, it wasn't got much of it. Pretty sure that was new... don't ever recall seeing that on a Classics list, and if it the original TV version was in the US somewhere, it would be buried deep on an old collector's tape list. Kevin is the expert on AWA/Bock, so he'd also know if that had been in circulation somewhere before.

As people pointed out, he was 26th last time around. Taue revisionism wasn't even new at that time. It simply was fully flowered in 2006 rather than a seedling.

We'll have to wait for 2026 for Bret to take a similar drop. The mainstream conservative voters have helped prop him up. Anyway, it is nice to see Bret still > Shawn.

I liked his October 11, 1997 house show match at the Pond against Shamrock a good deal. Not going to say it was at the level of the August 21, 1993 Yoko-Bret cage match in the same building, but it was the type of house show match in the era that you were happy to see relative to so many folks going through the motions. Not that I haven't seen Bret go through the motions on a house show over the years...

It's perhaps more than Arn is moving up at least a dozen places while Hash moves up one, and Arn passes him in the process. It's a bit odd, as Hash is one of the few puroresu guys who seemed bulletproof from criticism in the current round. Tenryu might be the other, but folks do like to take shots at his sloppiness. Hash is also pretty much the non-AJPW standard bearer in his era for this round of GWE, similar to Fujinami in the prior era. We're seeing Fujinami move up 36-and-counting spots. Would have thought Hash would easily gain those four spots to get in the Top 20, especially after Takada & Kid ahead of him fell early, and then Hokuto, Kong, Race & Benoit followed. Hash standing still is one of the more surprising things so far.

Does Goldust work in a mainstream company? Yes. Goldust is highly regarded among mainstream fans? No. Claiming this is a ballot where mainstream fans highly influenced it seems silly to me. Good lord, has anyone in this thread used the term "mainstream" in this thread to mean the people who would rank #1 among mainstream fans? That would be Hogan, Austin, Rock or maybe Shawn with an outside chance. Clearly not a single poster in the thread means that. Are people just being intentionally obtuse about the point?

We all have things that don't look good in hindsight.

Exactly.

Oh goody... Flair isn't in the Top 10!

Billy hasn't dropped yet.

I love when Negro pulls stuff like that out of thin air. Been in the building when he's played a spot like that too perfection.

I love the dynamic that you talk about, which made for a fun TV match. The finish... yeah... they did have goofy ones like that, and one wishes they were smart enough to extend the match a few minutes and come up with something new rather than make it so poor.

There are $1 and $3 disk sellers out there. Given we paid $20 a tape to get each Tamura card back in the 90s, he's rather wildly accessible today. As far as his style of wrestling, it's more accessible (in the sense of "easy to get) today than in the 90s given UFC's vastly more mainstream. It's a fairly easy style for people to get. We really shouldn't excuse folks for it. Hell, given Fujiwara is still in play, and likely going to be dozens of spots ahead of Tamura, it's more a matter of choice (they liked other folks better) or being lazy (didn't watch his stuff). Either is a perfectly fine reason: most lists have elements of that. Pawning it off to "accessibility" is a waste.

The Thesz-Schmidt matches are really awesome. I wouldn't take a ton away from Schmidt-Gagne not being at the same level. It's a bit like Lou-Verne vs Lou-Buddy. Lou-Verne worked really well as they were in their natural roles, while Lou-Buddy was pretty wildly disappointing as Buddy was kind of forced to work off-norm. There's not a ton of Hans, but he's consistent enough in them against a variety of opponents in the 50s where you get the sense he's a terrific monster heel. Either Frank or Yohe called him the Hansen of the 50s, and that doesn't feel to far off. Fun guy to watch.

Turns out the YouTube version only showed the first fall. The full version had more of a climax than I gave them credit for. Powers went into total heel mode after the first fall and Inoki had to fight through injury to take the title. Didn't change my opinion of the match much but at least it rounded out that rough edge. I recall that the first Powers-Inoki match that I saw had me thinking, "I want to see more of this Powers guy with folks who can go." Not going to say I thought Inoki sucked: he held up his end of the bargain, and was perfectly fine. But Powers was the fun and interesting one making it a good / watchable match.

Cool. Glad to see you liked this.

If there's one thing making the day even harder is how brutal it is to find his music and videos online to share with other folks who are freaking gripping over it today.

Totally agree. It's really hard to find Tamura... https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kiyoshi+tamura&tbm=vid&start=0 I think I'd put it this way: I had a far easier time finding Tamura stuff today that classic Prince videos, thanks to his IP people taking a machete to stuff online over the past 3-4 years. Tamura, matches, in contrast, are accessible. They are also accessible in the sense of understanding and enjoying: really simply stuff, even if the holds and exchanges are intricate.

This is more than 20 matches: http://mmamania.futoka.jp/jackbrisco.html There are oddball things that are out there, but really haven't been complied, like Brisco's entire 1981 Carny footage from TV: 03/27/81 Abdullah The Butcher vs. Jack Brisco (2:44) 04/10/81 Jack Brisco vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (30:00 tl) 04/17/81 Giant Baba vs Jack Brisco (11:25) 04/23/81 Bruiser Brody vs Jack Brisco (3:50) 04/26/81 Dory Funk Jr. & Terry Funk vs Jack Brisco & Killer Brooks (23:32) 04/27/81 Jumbo Tsuruta & Terry Funk vs Jack Brisco & The Avenger (17:34) Dan has all of that in his Raijin tapes/dvds. Those are match times, so what aired on TV is going to be JIP. The two tag matches were put up by SKK before he got the ban hammer from Youtube. There are roughly 10 JWA/AJPW/NJPW matches from 1971-79. If the 04/27/79 Jack Brisco vs Tatsumi Fujinami and 05/04/79 Jack Brisco & Stan Hansen vs Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi were JIP, it would have been very little as they don't stand out in my mind as being butchered massively. The others are all complete if I recall correctly. There are singles with Muraco, Piper, Flair and Lawler. There's a little WWF stuff.

The thread got fun over these pages.

No. it's been well established that Hogan kayfabe character was an asshole mistreating his friends and a whiny egomaniac bitch. There's a whole thread about this. Plus he was cheating his ass off and using shitty heel tactics (like scratching his opponent's back) despite being a colossus. It was so easy to agree with Jesse Ventura on color when he was pointing out how awful Hogan really was. That was a fucking great thread.

This isn't the 'Most Influential Wrestler Ever' list though. Elvis Presley redefined what a rock star could be but his albums don't stand up next to Revolver or Blue or Blood On The Tracks or Dark Side Of The Moon. Hogan is a better wrestler than Elvis was a musician though. Elvis' instrument was his voice and his showmanship. One could argue that Hogan was wrestling equiv of Elvis in showmanship. But I'd be hard pressed to see anything in Hogan's "work" that matches Elvis' voice. To go to the "that's coming from" well again, I'm the one who has pimped Hogan as a very effective worker since the last GWE and the WWF/WWE Matches poll, much to people's annoyance. Hogan is Hogan, Elvis is Elvis. Taking a piss on each is a bit of a waste.

This isn't the 'Most Influential Wrestler Ever' list though. Elvis Presley redefined what a rock star could be but his albums don't stand up next to Revolver or Blue or Blood On The Tracks or Dark Side Of The Moon. Elvis was a singles guy, not an album guy. His best singles hold up better *as singles* than the singles off of Revolver, Blue, Blood on the Tracks and Dark Side of the Moon. That's coming from someone who is a Beatlemaniac and will listen to Blue and Blood on the Tracks more in a year than I will listen to all of Elvis' albums combined over the past 30 years.