Dylan Waco

I love Eddie Kingston. But 13.....

You should have voted. Lucha needed you

We disagree. Considered Yamada. Better worker than many of her overrated peers.

There is one person who was in my bottom ten who I am legitimately shocked hasn't come up as most of the others I would consider "like" him in some ways have all appeared already. I voted for Hoshino. Not super high but he was there. I'll talk about him at length and maybe write about him at length soon, but to me he had to be included because he's the ultimate symbol of the value of the Best of the 80s projects.

I would honestly vote for Quak and Matsunaga over Brody without a second thought.

I highly value charisma and think it drives wrestling in a way that the traditional view doesn't always appreciate. I voted Hogan, Dusty, and Bruno in the top half of my list, so Warrior in the back half doesn't feel out of place to me. I started watching WWF and NWA at about the same time, so I also don't have the anti-WWF bias that some have. I see WWF's character approach to wrestling as a valid way to wrestle. Warrior obviously has technique flaws, but I still enjoy going back and watching the matches and character. I was extremely pleased that there were other voters for the Warrior. I'm not sure what you mean by the process, but I watched hours and hours each day for this project and totaled 3888 matches. I tried really hard to shore up my knowledge of Japanese, Mexican, and British wrestling, so I would be a competent voter. My point was more or less that Warrior strikes me as a guy where the more you watch the less he's got. I've made the point before that operating purely under Great Match Theory calculus Warrior has a case of sorts for the bottom rungs of a list, and in fact that's one of the reasons I reject GMT as the primary (let alone sole) method of ranking individual performers. Warrior was charismatic in his own way, but he never appealed to me as a kid. In fact I was terrified of him. I'm also a bit weird on things like charisma, because while I can't say I completely excluded it from my calculus, generally speaking charisma is something that I think has limited utility if it doesn't translate to box office success. When I think of the guys where I would consider charisma a major plus - Onita, Colon, Savage, Choshu, et. - all of them were guys who were big time, money making stars, who's charisma got people into the building and added to a matches atmosphere. I don't really know that you can say the same thing about Warrior. In any event my point wasn't to say "fuck the people who listed Warrior," but more to say that my view of the project wouldn't have even allowed me to entertain the idea of considering Warrior.

Very enjoyable pair of shows.

Two other things. Ray was better than Jacques and this becomes really evident if you watch the Montreal stuff. Murakami and Matsunaga being tied warms my DVDVR-influenced heart.

I'll defend Heenan. I didn't vote for him but there is more than enough of him on tape to make a judgment. There are WOS and Lucha candidates who have been touted on barely more than a handful of matches, and Heenan has stuff like the Gagne and Zumhofe match, the Lord Al Hayes match which is legit great, and his performance in the 83 Six-man from AWA that some thought was a top ten match in promotion history. He's an all time great heel when it comes to bumping and psych based on what is out there. If someone wants to argue against his inclusion outside of a bottom ten or so I'd probably say "yea, ok" but he's hardly an absurd pick. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'll also defend Quack. I'm personally in the middle of the road with Quack in that I think he's a good worker, who was at times great, but was too full of his own horseshit to become a truly brilliant wrestler. That said what he did do was create his own wrestling universe. Quack is one of the very few people who I think can legitimately claim to have influenced wrestling far behind the scope of his own success as a performer. I myself am not in love with this influence, but the cultish dedication of the Chikara fanbase, the build to international dream match, the silliness that is wedded to an internal logic based on comic book-y stuff...all of that seemed to be if not a Quack creation, something Quack popularized. And those are things that have shown up many places now. Some may argue that has nothing to do with work, but the guy created a universe in which his big matches were dream matches for those fans, he was around forever (and was a good worker for almost the entire period), and he's one of the few indie guys to emerge from the post-MNW era who worked storyline heavy matches built around long term storyline development and angles. It's not really my thing, and six seems nuts to me, but then I think "could I buy an FMW fan putting Onita six?" and the truth is I could. So I don' see Quack that high as being THAT crazy assuming the voter is a Chikara diehard. I like Delphin quite a bit, but I think his ranking at 11 is harder to defend than Quack at 6. I think the guy ages very well, but even if someone was a 90s juniors fan to the extreme, I struggle to see how Delphin gets into a top 20, let alone on the border of a top ten. Good worker, but without a justification that smells like a strategic vote to me. Warrior I won't defend, and he's the first guy to come up where my vision of the process and project are really at odds with his inclusion. I'm not angry about it, but I do think he's way too high using any metric I can think of other than the boring "I liked him as a kid." Ray Gonzalez deserved better and I am mad at myself for not voting for him. He's the only guy where "I forgot" is the reason he didn't make my list. He wouldn't have made it high, and I'm not really sure he'd have made it at all, but he was someone I was looking at for the bottom five at one point. He gets hurt because he became the face of Puerto Rican wrestling after the bottom fell out of the business. He's still worked on top forever on some really big shows, and had really good feuds with any number of top guys. I'm not sure he's ever had a match I would identify as a true classic, but he's had as many fun/good matches over the last 16 or 17 years as anyone not on WWE television regularly, and he's had a lot of matches I'd rate in the very good/great range. I'm fairly happy with the ranking of Jimmy Rave. I had him higher than I thought I would, but I made a promise to myself coming in that I wouldn't rank anyone higher than I could reasonably justify. 65 would have been higher than that, but apparently not to my brother! I'm most happy to see him turn up on so many ballots, as I figured he would have almost exclusively been a Hales family pick and I was worried about how that would look to others.

The Rush picture is outstanding

Savio/TNT was one of those cuts I made that had me angry because I really wanted to have PR well represented on my ballot. The problem was WWC and IWA were promotions filled with great wrestlers who either didn't make tape enough, worked clipped matches, or were just blow the threshold where I could t quite justify tossing them a vote. Savio and Ron Starr were the two guys with PR primes who I left off but really hated leaving off. Both would have made my top 175 at worst, probably top 150. One thing I like about Mandos list is that I know he's seen a lot of live wrestling over the years, and I think to a degree that is reflected in his ballot. Even if he didn't see B Boy live much (or at all), I think his sensibilities and Aesthetic tastes have probably been shaped by seeing lots of indie shows live and I like that voice as an addition to the project

I have become far more tolerant of this style of match over the last year to 18 months, but man do I think this is a crazy high rating. I enjoy Ricochet and Ospreay for what they are, but this felt really jokey at times, and for matches all about spot running I don't see how it could be considered in the same league as Lee v. Kamataichi. Good for what it was I suppose, but it never really grabbed me and I thought there were a couple match on that show that were pretty easily better, including Hero v. Yehi which I think is being really undersold.

Can't wait for your thoughts on Supercard of Honor night 1. I think Rush v Lethal will make your list, maybe others

Love Ron Starr. Would make a top 50 fav. list. Didn't quite make my ballot, but my brother Dustin did which tells me I've done something right with my life.

Hero being let go was not about his weight at all. That's people projecting backward and creating a narrative.

Other than my number one, I don't think I'll be the high vote on anyone at this point.

I had him at 90 and that honestly felt too low, but I couldn't justify him any higher. Great wrestler, who could go against just about anyone. I was especially impressed with the way he could build to and pay off drama with big bumps which isn't something that people immediately think of when they think of that style. Kyle Matthews is the only other guy I voted for who has popped up and he was my number 100. I considered Hamrick for that spot, and kind of regret it, but there were about ten guys I considered for that spot so what can you do. I absolutely love Colt and I'm glad he got a few votes

Look over it again. Saggs was my number 1.

I'm not sure how big these changes will actually be. This has been the general direction of the promotion for some time now, and I don't think that should surprise anyone. Also keep in mind that there is a storyline with Galloway that is built around the dark side of WWE influence. I'm not saying Johnson got worked at all, but this is an instance where letting it play out may prove prudent.

A lot of guys who would have made my top 200 have already fallen off. That's always an interesting dynamic, as I think many of these people fall into the camp of "just off the top hundred" for a large number of voters, but if the ballot had been extended (I can hear the shrieks of terror now) they would have placed higher.

I can't fairly rate that because I worked it.

Ibushi and Ospreay angrily walking through the crowd and knocking over chairs casually to get back into the ring and go one-on-one was one of the better moments all weekend.

I can't criticize anyone who prefers Zayn v. Nakamura, especially given the utter uniqueness of that match, situation, and moment. That said I wasn't there live, and I didn't even watch it live and I think a bit of it was lost for me for that reason. The surreal factor was as strong for me watching Ibushi live in that six-man, than watching Nak v. Zayn, though again I get that that is likely due to circumstances (I was front row for one, and not the other). I want to see the big WrestleCon and Evolve 59 matches before I declare what my match of the weekend is, but at this exact moment if you put a gun to my head I'd take Hero v. Sabre Jr. by a thin margin over Zayn/Nak, the Evolve 6-man tag main event, and Riddle v. Williams. The most slept on matches of the weekend were Roddy v. Moose, and Rush v. Lethal from Supercard of Honor Night One, but that is ROH's fault for not streaming their shows or having their VODs up in a timely fashion. Oh and shoe, you aren't alone on that Raw main event. Loved it live. My favorite WWE main roster match of the weekend by a pretty wide margin.

That's interesting. I seem to be higher on Mercury Rising than most. I think a lot of that hinges on the fact that I loved the FIP title match, which seems to have been polarizing.

I can't wait to see 59. I understand your point and even thought the same thing live. That says his gimmick is a lot different than Yehi's, so I don't think it's a completely fair one-to-one comparison. Maybe it's live bias, but I'd probably have both Riddle v Williams matches at 4 1/2 stars.