Dylan Waco

Saito was one of my last 10 cuts. He was on my ballot as recently as 4 hours before I sent it in.

I'm glad Tiger Mask finished where he did. Same with Adonis. Almost perfect spots for very flawed guys who were really good and/or significant in their own ways. Hayes finishing above Tiger Mask feels like a massive victory for the influence of the footage boom and those who have taken advantage of it. Rudge becomes the 2nd guy from my top half to fall, though it's hard to be angry about him because I didn't expect he'd do that well. It almost seems miraculous that he's as high as he is. Fiera and Yatsu were on my ballot but in the bottom 20. I have no real problem with where they wound up as footage issues and legit issues with Yatsu's post peak among other things limited my ability to go high on either. I actually may defend the Steiner at number 1 vote later when I get home. I mean it's not something I'd do it and it is a legit "what the hell?" but I do think Scott had a very interesting career that is easy to sell short.

Parv slandered me in the other thread and said I was a Jeff Hardy guy. I'm a Matt Hardy guy. Very different worker.

Edge is better than HHH who is still alive

It's pretty much posts like this that make people anti-lucha, just sayin'.Or anti-Flair if you change some words around Well at least after 2 years you've finally admitted it. It was a joke, and most things you claim others don't admit are based on your own willful ignorance and/or refusal to acknowledge what is right in front of you.

It's pretty much posts like this that make people anti-lucha, just sayin'. Or anti-Flair if you change some words around

Ogawa was technically the last guy on my ballot though he wasn't my 100.

I had Emilo on my list for a long time and regret not including him. Great worker who I think was better than a lot of the people touted as his superior.

Not possible

I doubt you'd agree with me El-P, but Orton might be the ultimate "guy with lots of great matches who I don't think is great."

Would really enjoy that Childs

I like how well Cima did and would have been fine with both him and Masaaki Mochizuki making the top 100 even though I didn't really consider either. Jay Briscoe did better than I would have expected him to to be honest. Underrated guy in a lot of ways. Same with Mark. They are HIGH on my tag team list and honestly if I could do it again I'd have them even higher. If I'm not mistaken the high voter for Stevens is a guy who saw him live.

Damn, Nish falls too.

Rogers is one of those guys who was hurt for me by the tag ballot going on at the same time. I didn't treat him as seriously as I should because I knew I'd have The Fantastics high as a team. So he went from 36 on my SC list to not on this one at all. Invader I is the first person to come up where I felt that he was way too low, but really it's Invader I. It's pretty amazing he finished as high as he did.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential. What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I? I generally try to get rid of the "what ifs" but I do think there is a fundamental aspect of analysis that inevitably leads people down that road at times even when they don't realize they are doing it. At the risk of provoking eye rolling I'm going to invoke a Flair example again because it's useful and one of the first ones that comes to mind. For years one of the defenses of Flair's stock defensive spots/Flair Formula and giving a ton to his opponents was "well he was a traveling NWA champion in an era where people didn't know what was going on from town to town, so you can't knock him for working to that reality." Now on the one hand that is an acknowledgement of a truth that is important. But on the other hand the obvious counter argument is "so what, this isn't a "what if" exercise, Flair did wrestle that way and it was stale, boring, et., et., et." n Now regardless of where you fall on the Flair debate, or even if you disagree wholesale with the idea of that critique of Flair I think you can see my point - sometimes rationalizations that seem/are logical are effectively the same as "what ifs."

I guess I'd like to see this mythical long list of guys with long peaks and volumes upon volumes of great output. I'm sure I could be just as casually dismissive on their careers as well. I don't think I'm being casually dismissive at all. Not in the least. I'm assessing Bret's career precisely as I see it and not pretending I see something that I don't see. If people think Bret's peak is otherworldly, or that the Hart Foundation were a very good and/or great team, or used some entirely different method of thinking about their list than I did I'm sure they could arrive at different conclusion. But there is no criteria or rough criteria I've seen put forward where I really understand the idea of Bret as a top ten guy. I suppose Matt or someone could put forward the idea of Bret as a top tier "logic" candidate and I could maybe see that, so there is that. I'm not trying to demean anyone's process or criteria or ballot. But I also don't have much use for the anti-discussion tendency of people who can't handle the idea of any challenge, criticism, or even desire to get to the root of why they rated someone somewhere. To me that's half the fun of the project, and I expect people to do the same with my picks if they don't get them. As for your more specific question, I think there are quite a lot of people with more volume than Bret, and the number of people with five year peaks or longer is pretty large I would argue. In fact I would say absent Nick Bockwinkel, I'm not certain I can think of a guy who has been tossed around as a top tier contender by a bunch of people with a peak that is shorter in length than Bret's. There are people like Ohtani , Dandy and Hokuto who's peak was arguably a little shorter, but I would argue that their peaks were higher too for whatever that is worth, and I don't have either of them in my top tier either. I may be forgetting someone of course. In any event I did rate Bret, and I've thought from the very beginning of this process that he would do quite well. I just don't see him as an elite worker.

Didn't vote for Patera. Not enough meat to comfortably justify the case to me. DDP and Sheamus being so close feels absolutely right for a multitude of reasons.

My post was a direct response to Danish Dynamite's contention that Bret is viewed differently because of where he worked. I agree but think he is viewed better for it. Bret's career no doubt would have been very different had he worked different places. But guy with middling tag team, who had a five year peak light on volume but high on memorable "big" matches, and then had good matches here and there for a couple of years in a place where he was irrelevant...I mean it's really not that impressive a resume from my perspective. Even if I was higher on Bret's peak years than I am (and I wouldn't say I'm low on them) and higher on the Hart Foundation than I am (and I am pretty low on them), I struggle to see how Bret approaches top ten level. I've just not heard a compelling argument for him. I'd pretty much have to view his peak as one of the best in wrestling history to get him into my top twenty given how I feel about his pre and post primes.

I voted for Buddy last time but not this time. Way too many guys emerged over the last ten years to justify it. Didn't vote for Sheamus but considered it. Hate the idea that a guy who isn't half as good as him like HHH will finish above him but what can you do.

That's fair. My point is more or less that I personally know well over a hundred people through here, Twitter and elsewhere who subscribe to at least one streaming service a month. I could probably name fifty people off the top of my head who subscribe to at least two streaming services or regularly purchase ippv's on top of a single streaming service. There are a lot of people who can, do, and will pay for wrestling but what they genuinely want is immediate access to a large volume of content for what would be historically be considered a very low price. Or they want it free.

I actually think there are probably more people than ever willing to pay for footage. The difference is most of the people buying now are buying from streaming services, most of which charge about as much for an entire libraries worth of footage as BTJr charges for two or three matches. I understand that he is providing a service that only he can provide, so I don't really mind him charging a premium. That said it's a barrier to entry for a variety of people, and not necessarily because of the idea of spending money on footage.

I actually think if Bret had the exact same career anywhere other than the WWF most people would find the idea of him as a top ten guy to be pretty laughable. I honestly believe that a part of the reason he rates so well for people is because Bret stood out as something different in the WWE environment and because WWE storyline, build, and presentation was generally speaking better put together than what has been seen in other "national" U.S. promotions over the last thirty years.

My counter to that is that I don't think HHH is particularly skillful, and I don't think he's an influential worker.

Well to an extent they kind of were, and when it comes to workers people really care about -- Ted or Bret say -- it's brought up as a knock on their GWE cases that they were having **1/2 house show matches as opposed to better ones. Why wouldn't it be a knock? It's one thing to say "it's unfair to take someone who was great dozens and dozens of times off of a 100 person ballot all together because they were bad on house shows," but quite another to say that it should play no factor at all in ranking wrestlers. As someone who has gone to a ton of house shows, and watched a ton of house show and small show footage, I find it a bit absurd to suggest that we should just pretend all of the stuff that happens on those shows - the vast majority of shows in wrestling history in other words - didn't exist. Perhaps I'm reading your wrong Parv, but I think there is a ton that can be learned and enjoyed from house show/small show matches. I don't think it's an unreasonable standard to expect allegedly great workers to put in solid performances on these shows. Everyone has bad nights, or takes nights off for injury to be sure. I'm not expecting perfection. But it is possible to put in GREAT house show performances that are more in tune with the logic and spirit of that setting, and I appreciate them when I see them.

Yeah that's fair. I've seen some other reviewers who were down on it, not so much in that they thought it was bad but that they didn't love it. I liked Daniels v. Fish a lot, but don't think I'd go four stars on it. Glad you were high on the show though. Definitely one of the better top to bottom shows this year.