Dylan Waco

I'll have to listen to that show. In a sense it's hard for me to blame these guys for voting for guys they are close to or worked with with lots of success. It bothers me more when they shit all over guys and/or refuse to vote for them for personal or political reasons.

They have a match tomorrow night actually, but last I heard the theory was that hair v. hair didn't seem likely for this year.

I'm trying to temper my thoughts on this, but if this is as good as it looks on paper and from Tim's initial report, Cesaro is almost assuredly going to be my number one worker of the year

On paper that sounds like it would be at worst great and at best a MOTY candidate.

Kurt Brown always talks about how they ran Buddy v. Youngblood into the ground on the house show circuit (or it felt that way to him), but every time they brought it back the match was better and all the shows sold out. Then they came back with a show without Buddy on it and the bottom fell out of the town.

I would like for you to elaborate on this point.

Doc held the major singles title of the promotion he was in and certainly felt more in the mix at the top of cards than Murdoch did. I don't know how many times he main evented for the promotion, or main evented the big shows at Budakon, but I would be shocked if he didn't have a stronger record in that regard than Murdoch. That's not to say Murdoch didn't get his time up top in Japan, but I don't think he was ever as important a player in New Japan (let alone All Japan) as Doc was to All Japan at his peak.

There is no way in hell I"m going to spend the next few weeks rewatching Tanahashi matches I thought were boring-to-okay on first watch, but what I liked about the second Ishii match was that it felt like an ace working like a true ace. I'm not sure that makes sense, but it was a case where i thought he gave his opponent just enough, without completely falling of the cliff into Angleism and/or without going full blown ridiculous in trying to sell how "equal" the obviously lesser opponent was. I think the pacing of the match was strong and his selling and timing felt like an essential part of what they were going for. I didn't really like the abandoning of the legwork, but I forgave it because the match had much less bad and/or annoying Tanahashi offense than his average match. I also sort of disagree with you on the strikes, because I thought the most disengaging moment of the entire year in a "big match" that I actually liked was in their first match where Tanahashi was throwing forearms in the corner that wouldn't crack an egg.

My own thought is that Doc is the better candidate if you are looking solely at Japan, Murdoch is the better candidate if you are looking solely at the States and Murdoch is the better candidate if you add both together, but it's not something I've put a lot of thought or research into.

Alvarez interview with Steve Sims from today is interesting not only for his discussion of Wagner Jr and LA Park as candidates, but also because Sims talks about an interesting and seemingly complicated system for getting Lucha wrestlers and figures to vote for the HoF which apparently involves Sims acting as a courier for their votes??

I love how this thread has developed, with OJ disliking the one Tanahashi match and performance that I actually thought was great.

Meltzer said most of press row agreed with him, but it's notable that no other members of the press went on record as believing GSP won the fight when Dana asked the question and the post-fight poll of MMA media had Hendricks winning universally. The cynic in me wants to think the whole GSP thing is a phony quasi-retirement to build for a future fight and/or help him milk more money out of UFC. I also think Dana's antics - including shitting on the NSAC - were all bout building a rematch.

Natalya is weird because I've seen her have really good matches on house shows, where she was clearly the best person in the match, if not one of the best two or three people on the show. But she is generally AWFUL on tv, especially the last few years.

I already talked about this at great length in the other thread, but to me it's Dibiase, Patera and....?

That match is shit and this is coming from a guy who loves Terry Funk

This might seem kind of odd, and might not even be entirely what you are going for, but the first match I thought of was the Hennig v. Hansen sprint/war from the Showboat

I am extremely skeptical that Meltzer counts those X's as No votes.

I tend to think Taue is a vastly better worker than Koshinaka or Hase, but I get your point. Having said that, if you think that's chum consider that KENTA is on the horizon. There are candidates in the Japan category I think are interesting to one degree or another (Han, Hamada, the Sharpes, admittedly Taue), but it also makes me wish there was a None of The Above option. As it is voters have to select someone they don't think should be in to vote against candidates they fear will get in.

My point on Akiyama is less "if he gets in Taue has to get in" and more "if Akiyama gets in and not Taue it will stick out like a sore thumb."

I'm not asking you outright if you would vote for him John, but do you consider Taue a strong, middling or weak candidate? I ask because even though I see the flaws in his candidacy, it would be hard for me not to vote for him. Call it bias, but I've always thought he was a hugely underrated worker, was one half of possibly the best tag team of all time and I look at him as a sort of Foley candidate in the sense that he was never the biggest star in his company, or even really the second biggest, but it's very hard for me to envision that red hot period without him. I will say if Akiyama gets in (and I think he has a decent shot), I think it is almost impossible to construct an argument against Taue, not that that would help him. Also I know Boricua may be busy, but I see him reading this thread, so I want to ask him again about Chicky/Hugo?

I watched part of the post match Definitely wasn't Naito's crowd

I really like a lot of the mid-card acts, but some of them probably would be better off leaving and attempting a comeback down the road after working indies or Japan for a while. Barrett seems like the most obvious example of this, though I think Swagger has been badly damaged by booking and without Cesaro and/or Zeb would be DOA. Kofi is not any good and I don't want to see him wrestle, but at least he's over.

Insane viewing day today, as I watched a bunch of Lucha and a lot of 1980's Puerto Rico and the best match I saw all day was a Tanahashi match. First time for everything.

I'll be honest, no one has ever really been able to explain how or why Saito got in. I say that as a pretty huge fan of the guy and someone open to the idea that he is a good candidate. He was someone who Dave said was voted on in huge numbers by actual Japanese voters - a group that also voted in huge numbers for Sakuraba, Funaki and Steve Williams all of whom are sort of controversial inductions to one degree or another. The feeling from many is that he benefited a ton from being in the Japan category, when you could easily argue that he should have been in the U.S. category. I sort of see him as a guy who could go in either. My own thought is that the Japanese voters may have seen him as a guy who was a true international star in that he was a rare Japanese star who was someone of note in Japan and actually was also well pushed (to varying degrees to be fair) in the States. Sort of like how I think Ultimo benefited from the theoretical idea of him being a big international star, even when he wasn't all that much of a star.

And with that Cesaro will almost assuredly end up my number one in WKO voting this year.