Dylan Waco

If it's all about pops did Loss have Hogan number one on his ballot? If not, why not?

If it's the house style, it's a misplaced style in a company that doesn't value it. It's overthought wrestling for an audience that isn't paying attention to it. If this is true, that midcarders are building off of previous efforts with subtle attempts to build on earlier matches, it seems like a vast misdirection of thought and resources -- like thought for thought's sake. It demonstrates a lack of understanding of their audience, and it's not something I'd point to as a positive. What evidence do you have that the audience isn't paying attention to it? I think that is really presumptuous to be honest. If it rests solely on "well the announcers don't point it out," my response would be that I don't speak Japanese and yet I knew All Japan Pro Wrestling was doing quite a bit of this sort of thing in ways that seemed transparently obvious. The WWE hardcore fanbase that go to Wrestlemania, buy the network and fall over themselves to praise NXT, et. are exactly the kind of people who do notice these sort of things. 8 year olds may or may not, but they are one half of the WWE hardcore base.

The reality is that the most dedicated portion of the WWE fanbase are people who are closer to us than they are 8 year old kids. Whether that should be the case is debatable but I believe it to be true. Anyway on Cesaro I get Loss point and I think he's right in the sense that Cesaro's most obvious strong point is his offense (he's an excellent base too, probably the best non-luchador base of all time honestly), but I think what's missing from the calculus is what Cesaro does with his offense. The reason I'm so high on him is that he has a deeply varied offensive attack that does change from match to match ("learned psychology) in a series, but also that changes depending on his role. How he works on offense v. Sheamus is different than how he works v. a Zayn for example. I also think he's a guy who actually went out of his way to work double team offense and develop an especially exciting hot tag routine as a babyface at a time when everything is either by the numbers routine or total stroke fest horseshit (see Bucks, Young). To my eyes Cesaro is what happens when a great offensive wrestler has good psychology and good timing. Yes the pacing of his matches is often super indieish, but that's something I've come to accept, and it doesn't bother me as long as selling is done. I don't see Cesaro as a no seller. I would also argue that it's harder to appreciate Cesaro without immersion in the WWE product. I would understand why someone would reject that out of hand given the shitty booking and storytelling, but I think what he does well is easier to appreciate if you are watching weekly. I mean if you can accept the stylist quirks of Joshi, the WWE house style issues should be a mild annoyance.

If you upload the stuff I will watch it an consider him even at this late moment, though by no means can I promise I'd include him on what would be a small sample size. That said the Rudge match is brilliant

This is all fair and probably accurate with respect to many voters, regardless of whether it is for Tim. Personally, there's no question that setting and all that goes into it -- build, booking, placement and other factors -- can help a match tremendously. That may be because of the time and leeway they're given, it may be because of the crowd reaction coming into the match that the can work with, or a host of other factors. But it definitely puts the random encounter at a disadvantage. These circumstances are by no means fatal and can certainly be overcome, even if it is a disadvantage. In some rare instances its probably a plus as the match that's delivered absolutely demolishes expectations. But such is booking and the ups and downs of the business, right? Will add more to it later as right now I'm spending my wrestling time simply watching, but I'm very much a great match guy. If you have a ton of great matches you're going to do well on my rankings. If we could evaluate everyone with the same advantages in time, booking, card placement, tricks, etc. we could get closer to a level playing field, but there are still a number of what ifs that would come into play at that point. Just not sure there's a way to overcome that. Just so it's clear I'm not advocating for people to balance against booking advantage in their ratings all. My point is more that for many people the greatness or degree to which a match is great is based at least in part on things that are external to the match itself. The guys still have to execute of course, but I do think there is a fundamentally different way of looking at things at play at times that has little to do with what certain camps like in the actual work of a match. In general I think canon has a much bigger influence on all of us then we would like to admit and I think that is related to the discussion too. For my part I think Christian had more great matches in 2009 than Brock has had in his entire comeback. I don't say this to be a contrarian either. As I mentioned in the WTBBP thread the volume of wrestling I watch has radically altered the things that I value and the way I approach wrestling for better or worse and it leads to conclusions like that.

About half way through it and it's a really fun show but I do want to say that I think what Tim keeps pointing to when talking about some of Steven's more modern picks is less about peak matches and more about big stages and stronger build. Now it may be that Tim really does think that 100-plus people have stronger high end matches than say a Cesaro or a Christian's best. But I do strongly suspect that it has less to do with the quality of the matches and more to do with how they were presented and where they were on shows. I say this not as a wild statement, but because I know Tim pretty damn well and have a really good idea of what his tastes are. My guess is that if the Cesaro v. Zayn stuff happened as a strong upper mid-card or even main event run on WWE ppvs he would see it as obvious all time stuff. The Christian peak stuff probably suffers even more because it was buried on a third tier show few paid attention to. That said, to my eyes Christian's best matches from that run are vastly better than something like Nagayo v. Masami which Tim touted earlier on the show. I'm not sure he would ever be in line with that BUT I do believe if the Feb. 2009 Christian v. Jack Swagger match had been a WWE World Title match on the Royal Rumble Tim would view it as a classic. I will grant that this is all just my thoughts and it's pure guess work. But I do think the vastly superior booking, and more conservative television format of older wrestling creates an advantage that is based as much on perception and things outside of what occurs on the ring as anything that occurs in it. I'm not even say it's wrong, I just think it's there for many people, and I'm not sure "peak" is really the way to contextualize it.

I don't think the point Grimmas was making was that Okada hasn't had enough to rate, but rather that we don't have enough perspective to reflect on it yet. This was one of the primary arguments people threw out against voting for people like Joe and Bryan back in 06 so it's hardly a new take. I have mixed feelings about it, but I do admit that I find it tougher to rate guys when I feel like they are still in the midst of their prime, and it feels really weird to consider guys who aren't even 30 years old (not saying I haven't or wouldn't, but it is tricky for me).

The day of Wrestlemania

In a way I don't know what to say about Devil because to me she is the most transparently great worker in Joshi history. I am guessing this is probably a weird claim to many because she doesn't seem to get talked about the way the other great 80s Joshi workers were. She doesn't have the aura of violence and gimmick of Dump. She's not a walking wrestling archetype like Chigusa Nagayo. She's not the innovator and trendsetter that Jaguar Yokota was. But to me is hands down the most complete package of any of the ladies from that era. To me what stands out the most about her in the 80s is that she could work the expected Joshi pace, and all the other conventions of the style, but still kept one foot in the world of traditional wrestling. To some Joshi purists this might be seen as a detriment, but to me this is a huge plus because it means she can temper the excesses of her opponents without completely altering what makes Joshi distinct. No, you can't force Nagayo to sell a limb, or Jaguar to slow down (and maybe you shouldn't), but you can control the pace enough where things have time to sink in and the impact of what is there feels more significant. Devil was the master of this, and as a result her matches v. Sato, Jaguar and Chigusa are some of my favorite Joshi matches of the decade. Her match with Kandori from 88 probably is my favorite Joshi match of the whole decade. As an older vet in the 90's I thought she was outstanding. I'm not going to sit here and try and argue that she had great match, after great match, but I thought her performances were universally strong with every outing. She has hands down the best facial expressions of any Joshi worker in history, and while people rave about the acting of Ozaki I don't think she holds a candle to Masami in terms of communicating the context and significance of a spot or a moment with body language. This seemed to be an especially important tool as she got older and her asskicker vibe was amped up. A lot of people point to the Nakano match in 93 as the best Masami of the 90s. I can't argue against the two tough gals throwing down, but I liked the Nagayo match a lot, and the Kyoko Inoue match is way better than I was expecting it to be going in. Where other tough ladies from that period were presented as a more overtly violent in look, Devil just conveyed a sense of violence at all times in her actions. I have no clue how tall she was, but to me she always feels like a monster because of her actions and the way she carried herself. She would steamroll someone with a big shot or a press slam them like they are nothing, and grin in their face afterward. She was just a gleefully vicious performer, almost Regalesque at times in her approach. It's a broken record from me by this point but Devil was also a really good tag team wrestler in both the 80s and the 90s. I enjoyed the way she worked opposite the heroines in her younger years, but grumpy vet Masami was an especially fun tag worker. She seemed to revel in picking her spots, delivering a particularly nasty cut off, and working something akin to traditional heat sections which of course I love. I'm not sure she is the absolute best Joshi tag worker ever, but in a style filled with good ones she does stand out. To her credit she was a very consistent performer, who played different roles over the years but didn't sacrifice quality to do so. I have seen a good match of her as early as 1980 and as late as 1994 which also puts her in the upper echelon in terms of duration of quality within the Joshi ranks. Her biggest negative is probably that she doesn't have a litany of super great matches, but I'm not entirely sure I could name five Joshi wrestlers who I think do, and all of the ones who I'd have above her in that regard will make my ballot. Beyond that I'm not even sure what the knock on her would be unless you think she lacked enough flash for the style but if I'm being honest I'd dismiss that criticism as absurd. With Masami I don't think immersion in the style is critical to appreciating her and understanding why she is great. And for that reason alone I will rate her.

I thought you thought I should put Jumbo on my ballot? If I elevate importance of emotional connection he goes to worst wrestler of all time status.

I think there is a ton wrong or at least exaggerated about his career narrative, but very little of that has to do with him as a worker and that's sort of my point. There is a relatively strong consensus about Akiyama as a worker even among groups of people who don't agree on almost anything else. I wouldn't say he's quite Daniel Bryan level in that regard, but he's almost certainly the Japanese wrestler of the last fifteen years who best parallels Bryan in terms of being a sort of "unity ticket" favorite, but unlike Bryan he's got years before that where he happened to be considered a great prodigy who was tearing it up with the best wrestlers on Earth in a promotion that many fans regard as the greatest in wrestling history. No one scoffs at Bryan as a top ten or even top spot candidate, but there are a few who seem really dismissive of that idea when it comes to Akiyama. I mean in this thread you talk about him as a guy who some may put in top ten, or top twenty, or top fifty. That's fine and probably half or more of the lists are already in so my lobbying probably wouldn't help much anyhow at this point. But unless you disagree with the consensus (which is fine, god knows I do on many people) it would seem really odd to me to see a guy with 24 years as a very good to great wrestler, who was one of the best handful of workers of the 00's, has probably had as many very good to great matches on tape as anyone in history or at the very least would be in the upper tier, has been involved in great matches for literally the entire run of his career, has been involved in matches many consider to be among the best if not the best in history, et., et., et. and think "yeah 48 is about right." I mean it's possible but if you agree with my view on the resume - and I really don't see many people objecting to the resume as I laid it out - I don't see how he could be seen as much less than a top 25 guy. I swear I'm not even trying to be super argumentative about this. I just think it's interesting that a guy with so much consensus around him being a great wrestler for as long as he has been isn't really seen as a top tier guy. I literally can't think of any other wrestler he would be analogous to in that regard. Can you?

Speaking for myself, but I do think Shawn from 94-97 holds up for the most part. The problem is that it is not an all time great run in my mind, nor do I really think it's an all time great run just by the standards of the WWE/F. I don't necessarily agree with Grimmas' argument about Shawn being the fourth best guy there during that cumulative period, but I would say that I think his 92 and 93 is pretty middling all things considered. It's probably not fair really, but what hurts Shawn most to me is that he peaked as a tag worker as far as what I consider high end wrestling, and I honestly don't think he was consistently at that level ever again.

To be fair you are from the third world country where Bret is the tinhorn dictator.

I'm not suggesting there is distortion or unfair criticism. But I do think when you became a fan has a lot to do with how you view Akiyama. I may be wrong but I see the trends out there and it seems to point to something. That said, when speaking of "thresholds" I'm not sure how many guys who have as many consensus great matches with as many different people and a run of being very good at minimum for as long as Akiyama does who aren't seen as number one contenders, let alone top ten contenders. What's interesting to me about Akiyama is that no one really seems to reject the particulars (for example I might disagree with Michaels particulars, some with the lucha standouts, et.). I just think there are some fans who don't instinctively see him/feel him as being at that level because of how his career narrative has unfolded.

I'm not going to name names but I've heard a couple of people scoff at the idea of Akiyama at a top ten contender in recent weeks. With the exception of the jdw stuff, this thread is largely filled with praise and people pointing out how strong they see him as a contender, but I think it's worth pointing out just how substantial Akiyama's career has been. Akiyama's career sort of kicked into full gear right as hardcore fan cultural exploded via the internet, and he's still trucking along. This is not an irrelevancy. There is a narrative around Akiyama of failure. He's the prodigy who got it right out of the gates, had great matches with all timers where he was more than up to the task, but then when it was his turn he couldn't carry the load. There is a lot about that narrative that I think is surface level true, but collapses under critical scrutiny. There is also a lot about that narrative that I just think is false. But I do think for many people the perception of Akiyama as the guy who failed as the heir to Misawa, Kobashi and Kawada has distorted how we view his actual work. Consider this. Virtually no one denies that Akiyama has been somewhere on a spectrum from very good to excellent as a worker for 24 years now. This sentiment is especially strong among those who have actually watched big chunks of his post-AJPW split work. This means in terms of things that can be documented with footage Akiyama has a longer duration of quality work than all but a small number of wrestlers in history. All of the people who might have him beat out that I can think of are number one contenders, and Akiyama's run exceeds the length of many other number one contenders (Kobashi, Bryan, dare I say, Ric Flair). As Ditch noted earlier in the vast majority of years in this period he wasn't merely a very good hand, but a guy who was having MOTYC or near MOTYC matches. And yet despite this I get the distinct feeling from conversations and podcasts I've heard that Akiyama's career is seen as clearly less impressive than absolute top tier guys. Here it might be notable that the counter narrative view of people who see him as top ten, if not top five, seems to be closely related to the argument that he was one of the best handful of wrestlers on Earth from the decade of the 00s. Many of these fans grew up during this period or found puro during his period. To them the stigma of not being Misawa 2.0 probably isn't as strong and may not exist at all. Some might dismiss the value of being a top level guy for the 00's, but I think that's wrong headed even if you are generally of the belief that the 80s, 90s or even 70s were better decades for ring work. I say this because technological changes and other factors made the 00's an incredible rich time period in terms of access to contemporary footage. The truth is that there is more good wrestling on tape from the 00's than any other period in history, and Akiyama emerged from that decade as someone who was probably no worse than top five, and a viable "best on Earth" contender for the era. For roughly 24 years now Akiyama has been a good wrestler. This isn't a guess or a possibility. This is something we can document with video evidence and many of us have watched him from the beginning or near beginning of this run. I actually think this works against him for some people because it takes him outside of the context of history and instead makes him a sort of peer to the viewer. For others I think the narrative of failure clouds their perceptions of him. I have no clue where I will rank him at this point, and I don't think he's clearly better than any of the AJPW big four. But if I'm being fully honest with myself, I don't think he's clearly worse than any of them either.

I could see that argument. As I said before it didn't kill the match for me, it was jarring to see it done so early in a bout.

And I would say that people are saying for sure that think Akiyama is and it's being casually dismissed, in many cases by people who I'm not even sure have watched that much of his 00's-present run

I would argue that Akiyama was appreciated in his time on both a critical level (i.e. by hardcore fans who were actually watching) and on a more superficial level. The big advocates for Akiyama as a top ten guy are people who followed Japanese wrestling in a major way throughout the 00's and/or people who started watching in that period. They argue - and I believe they are correct in arguing this - that Akiyama was the best worker in Japan for that decade (some argue KENTA, but Akiyama is almost universally seen as no worse than 2 or 3) and one of the best five wrestlers in the World at minimum for that cumulative period. Those who watched the post AJPW split footage in the most volume and/or in the most consistent fashion seem to have come to this conclusion. On the more superficial level, I think Akiyama's failures to connect on a drawing level have been historically overstated. Obviously he ain't drawing shit now, but if you look at the period after the AJPW split through the peak of the NOAH years there is quite a lot of evidence that Akiyama was viewed as and respected as a top guy by Japanese fans. To be perfectly frank, his drawing record from 00-06ish or so is better than any run of a comparable length of time for Tanahashi, Nakamura, Okada (a bit unfair because he doesn't have that many years as a top guy yet), et. But there is a narrative that has been created around Akiyama and a narrative that has been created around those NJPW guys and those narratives tend to shape how we view them as stars. I'm not even sure I agree with the argument you seem to be making (or at least putting forward), but even if I did I don't think Akiyama is an example of someone who really fails in that regard.

I watched Kobashi and Akiyama this morning. I did think it was a great match, but watching it a few things stuck out to me that I'd like to hear Parv, Steven, and others talk about. First would be my big criticism of the match - they went to the crazy head drop stuff REALLY early here. I didn't think it fatally hurt the match obviously as I came out of it loving it anyhow, but it really jumped off the page to me as a little ridiculous that Akiyama was eating brutal neck crunching suplexes on the floor relatively early on. They played it as well as they could have, but that's the sort of thing I'm not sure people should be recovering from at all in the context of a match, let alone taking over for an extended control segment just a few minutes later. Secondly watching this it really made Parv's comments about mugging for the camera feel like an oddball criticism because man is Kobashi as hysterical and camera conscious a performer as there was in in this era. I don't hate it (though it does irk me at times), but to me it feels like an uneven critique to hit Suzuki/Tanahashi for something like that and not this match. Or maybe I still don't know what Parv means by that. I thought the psychology, selling, offense and drama in the match were great. I wasn't enamored with the way some of the bombs were used as I mentioned earlier, but not enough to really argue that it was a substantial detriment to the match. Having said that I recently watched Akiyama v. Nagata and Akiyama v. Tenzan and I honestly didn't think this match was clearly better than either. My point isn't that Kobashi v. Akiyama wasn't great, but rather that the greatness of Akiyama as a singles worker is really drastically underrated and obscured in large part because of the massive changes to Japanese wrestling that came about right as he was ascending into the top tier. I've seen the notion of Akiyama as a top ten worker scoffed at as an absurdity several times recently, but the reality is that the guys run as a very good to great worker is longer than Kobashi and Kawada, and it's at least arguable that he has great maches with a more varied field than those guys and Misawa as well (I'd want to look more closely before I made that claim for sure, but my instinct is to say it's true). Even if you want to argue that the best Akiyama heights don't hit the heights of the best matches from those three, I think the dismissive tone of Akiyama as a potential top ten guy is really unwarranted especially when we have people advancing the argument that Bret Hart is a top ten candidate off of a five year peak with a handful of great matches before and after it (take that Steven!).

It makes me happy to see that Parv is going with this gut and bumping Misawa and Kobashi up, but it also upsets me that he is leaving Buddy Rose off his ballot even though he admits it was a clerical error.

I don't care for ties. I absolutely hate the idea of them in the top ten and a tie at one would be a disaster. There should be some process to break them.

Parv forgetting to include him means he will get the benefit of every doubt for me. I was going to have him very high anyhow, but yea

Will probably write about Masami later tonight

In principle I agree with the argument that OJ that Kandori should be held to the same standards of others. She should be explored in detail, to see what she was like before her peak and after her peak. We should look at the gaps in time between her most well known feuds and angles and see how consistent it is, if there are any hidden gems, or conversely if she is lacking as a week-to-week performer. This is the ideal approach and one that I would advocate for normally. But I didn't have the time or access to do that this go around and what my eyes tell me is that Shinobu Kandori is as good a big match performer as I've seen. And for that reason she has to make my list. Now before I get into more particulars I will say this. I watched every bit of Kandori I could find. This included some tag matches that I don't think get talked about all that much, a Jackie Sato shootstylish match that was kind of insane and awesome, and some random clip jobs of other matches I couldn't find in full. What is notable to me is that Kandori looked just as dynamic and unique in all of these settings as she did in the more high profile and well known matches. Her aura and presence were not diminished in any way when she was in the ring with talents that were below the level of all time great status or Joshi legends. She had "it" all the time, and was able to inject a sense of authenticity and real excitement into every bout I saw and that matters a lot to me, especially when the base of footage isn't as expansive as I would ideally like. I do agree with Jetlag's argument that she's not really a true shootstyle worker. That said I've seen tags where she showed flashes of brilliance in that regard, and watching her throw hands at Sato's head convinced me she could have done female FUTEN spots with the best of them had that been an available path. Instead she come across to me like a serious business version of Regal, capable on the mat, sound submission game, snug strikes, but driven as much by purpose, vibe and intensity as she is by any particularly in ring style or mechanical brilliance (though I do think she typically is on the upper end of the good execution scale when it comes to Joshi). It seems odd to call her a brawler, but I think at heart that's sort of what she was. That flare for the dramatic, ability to trade big shots, slugfest sensibility is evident in so many of her matches. People will immediately point to the first Hokuto match here - which is still one of my favorite singles matches of all time - but the Masami match from 1988 is absolute war too and has a lot of the same elements. In fact, I watched those matches back to back, and I think it's worth noting that while the story telling of Hokuto/Kandori is often couched in terms that play off Hokuto's past, the closing stretch of the match is shockingly similar to the Kandori/Masami match. I don't believe that was an accident, but I do think it's brilliant. I think you can point to a lot of particular things that Kandori does well. Good offense. Excellent selling, especially long term within the context of the match. Great timing on highspots. Better pacing of matches than virtually any Joshi performer in history. Ability to work various speeds. But where she has all that what really stands out with Kandori are the matches and how they look in context with what the the her opponents did with others. She has great matches over at least a 10 year period from 88-98 (I like the Sato match which I think is from 87, but not sure I'd call it great). This run includes the best Devil Masami match I've ever seen which would likely be my number one or two Joshi match from the 80s, an all time great feud and rivalry with Akira Hokuto that produced the best singles match in Joshi history as well as a second legit great match, two of maybe five Megumi Kudo matches I would feel comfortable calling great one of which may have been Kudo's best match, the best singles match of Kyoko Inoue's career and I actually like Inoue a good bit, maybe the best Manami Toyota singles match I've ever seen and certainly the best one I've seen after 1996 by a wide margin, the all time great tag match Tim noted above, and the great Nakano chain match which is probably a top five Nakano singles match to my eyes (though I'm lower on Nakano than many). Simply put I would put Kandori's best ten matches against the best ten matches of any Joshi worker ever. And she did it against a variety of opponents over the course of a decade. Yes I wish I had an idea of whether or not she could carry a talent less opponent. Yes I wish I could fill in the gaps. But the reality is if I were to leave Kandori off my list I'd have to wash my hands of Joshi wholesale. She's simply too good in what is available to dismiss her on grounds of absence.

Ultimately it will probably end up being a game time decision, but as of right now Jumbo is in my "final 100." I say final 100 because I forced myself to cut to 100 today, but kept open a file of the last 27 people I cut, anyone of whom I could see an argument for plugging back in. Some of the names on that list would probably shock people both because I was even considering them in the first place, and because of who is technically "cut" at the moment.