Dylan Waco

I'm not sure about the Eaton comparison. In a sense I think it's correct because I see both as being strong tag workers, with dynamic and explosive offense for their respective eras, who were also great brawlers. Also both guys were fun to watch work scaffold matches On the other hand I don't think there is enough prime footage of Invader 3 readily available to really ascertain if he's close to Eaton's level as an overall talent.

Thank you for this post! Please do more on the Puerto Rico guys. Would love to see your thoughts on Glamour Boy Shane finally

For singles my favorite two matches from Akiyama in the last five years were 6/5/14 v. Omori and 4/29/13 v. KAI. I thought both matches were brilliant Akiyama performances, but he's got very good to great matches in the last five years v. Miyahara, Funaki, Kea, Shiozaki and even Mutoh. Also his team with Omori is pretty much the best old man tag team on Earth over the last couple of years. I wasn't quite as high on their best stuff last year as other people, but it's all good at minimum, and well worth watching. Their match v. Go and Miyahara from 12/6/14 was maybe a top five MOTY that year (as was the Omori singles match above).

We may just have a massive gap in tastes on Joshi Jetlag because to my eyes Masami is very good in the 90s.

Hotta might benefit from selection bias, but I've liked her in everything I've watched over last few days which is more than I can say for many of those who are considered all time greats. I literally just watched the Mariko match and I'm not sure what you are talking about, unless you mean the shootish kicks, but she seemed to do those more often than not and I freely concede that's one of the things I really enjoy about her matches. Perhaps there is a back history and/or more specific details about the match I missed or I'm unfamiliar with.

Adding Yumiko Hotta to the bubble. Wildly underrated. I'll have more to say in her thread later, but if you haven't voted yet and are considering Joshi women don't forget her.

I'm perfectly fine with people arguing against the not all styles are created equal point, as long as its consistently reflected in what they say and write. What I have less patience for is the idea that the "master of the style" or "unique genius within the style" argument should be invoked in certain special cases by the style egalitarians, but not in others. Joshi was something that was a major part of hardcore fan consciousness and was a huge part of the Meltzer canon. For that reason I think there is a lot more latitude given to stylistic quirks that would be considered flaws in almost any other context, than there would be if we were talking about comedy wrestling or death match wrestling. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think there may be something to the idea that the starting point of "in the canon" allows people to explain away the obvious flaws of someone like Toyota, and in fact turn those flaws into positives. I have no doubt there are people who love Toyota and think she's great. She works a style that I could see many fans of modern wrestling loving. I also don't think it's wrong to ask people to judge or wrestlers withing the style on its own terms, but red flags go up for me when I see arguments for her inclusion that I think would be laughed at if they were put forward for non-Joshi workers. I've watched a lot of Joshi in the last week and was a big fan of it when I was younger as you know. As with any wrestler there are criticisms I could make of any and all of the women I've watched, including the ones who I have come away with a higher opinion of (Devil Masami and Kyoko Inoue mainly). But even as I agree that Toyota is athletically talented, and can be incredibly fun to watch for big parts of matches, I think she's easily the most transparently flawed of any of the big Joshi names.

I have watched a ton of Joshi over the last week, including some of the classic matches of the genre and some random stuff. I'm going to keep watching it pretty steady for at least the next two or three days. At that point hopefully I'll start posting in some of the individual wrestler threads but for now I'll say that Hokuto and Kong are absolute locks (as I figured they would be), with Masami and Kandori as very strong possibilities (about 90% sure on both of them). Nakano, Nagayo, and Kudo are all on the bubble. I need to watch more more Asuka, Kansai, and Ozaki and they will be the focus of my viewing over the next few days. Toyota and Dump are no's, and Jaguar Yokota feels that way too but I still have a few more key matches of hers to watch. Kyoko Inoue - who was someone I liked years ago but assumed I would dislike at this point - has kind of emerged as a darkhorse possibility for my ballot as she has put in a very good (at worst) performance in every match I've seen her in even with her obvious flaws. It's very possible I'll vote for Satomura too, but I should really rewatch some of her earlier work before I make that call.

I actually watched a dozen or more of his matches and I'm left thinking that he was a really good wrestler, but not the sort of person that does any individual thing that really makes him pop out for a project like this. Jetlag compared him to Pillman, but I kind of think of him as the best possible Ben Bassarab. I do think his matches with Liger and Benoit were great, I really liked the Finlay matches, the chain match with Shaun South was borderline great (especially for the gimmick), and I thought the Horowitz and Severn matches were as good as they possibly could have been. At times he could be sloppy, but I generally thought he put his matches together pretty well, he had some nice big spots, and he worked really snug. At best his matches have a nice feeling of escalation too. There just isn't enough volume there to build a case, especially since I don't think he was other worldly in any of these matches.

In case you don't like the Sabu comparison for one reason or another, or the death match thing, I think there is very obvious comparisons that can be made between Kurt Angle and Toyota. And I doubt the obvious athleticism, constant drive, and freakish commitment to working hard of Angle would be pointed to as the driving positive that would get him onto ballots.

It's not impossible this could be the last "looking at the past" wrestling project I'm ever involved with as my focus these days tends to be on the modern product, particularly the indies. The idea of any match ranking project is increasingly unlikely as I find ranking matches to be nightmarishly difficult and rarely fun unless it is something really select (I.e. my Southern indie MOTY list from last year, and even that was kind of annoying). It's possible a project will come around that will grab me, but it's hard to see what it would be at this point.

I agree with most of what OJ wrote about where they would be comparable, but my bigger point was that one of the arguments I've seen advanced for Toyota was that she pushed herself to her physical limits constantly in a way that was completely unique and special. Perhaps that's not the argument and I don't understand it, but I do think if that is the argument it is absolutely something that could be said for Sabu as well. I don't think the issue of whether she had better matches is terribly relevant in the context of that discussion, because the real issue is about whether or not that particular trait is something that can be the defining characteristic of an all time great wrestler, especially if she is deficient in so many areas. I've watched a ton of Toyota in the last few days and it's almost shocking how poor her selling is even by the standards of the go-go Joshi style. To my eyes she has actively hurt every single match she's been in, even if she does have very cool spots, and clearly works as hard as anyone I've seen. If you disagree with that that's fine, but I do think there is an interesting question in the subtext here about why being a great athlete matters for Toyota but not apparently for other wrestlers. If the argument is "it's just the expected way to work in the style and she's great at it," I'd argue that she's especially flawed in key areas even when compared to her peers, but also (and arguably more importantly) that not all styles are created equally. I don't see people talking about John Zandig or Jun Kasai's willingness to slice themselves up with glass and allow things to be stapled to their balls, but they pushed themselves physically, and that was just the nature of the style so shouldn't we appreciate that if accepting a style on it's terms is so important?

Really enjoyed this show. I think with any show like this there is always a tendency to focus on areas of disagreement, but one thing that I thought was really cool was that I heard a lot of guys pop up on both Chad and Parv's list who I either didn't expect to appear or where I thought "I'm really glad someone rated them because they are on my bubble and I'm not sure they are gonna make it." It's an odd thing to point to but I thought it was interesting that I seemed to disagree with Chad about Hogan's peak. I like a lot of the stuff he mentioned from the 90's, but when I went back and watched Hogan's 84-87 WWF run a few years back I was blown away by how good I thought a lot of it was. I think the really strong performances dry up by 88, but in that first period I thought he was a very strong worker, and I'd personally put his best matches from that period over something like the Flair match Chad mentioned, which I enjoyed but didn't think was nearly as good. One other thing that really struck me listening to this was the difference in tone between this show and the shows Parv and Chad did on their top matches. Where there was sort of a defeated tone to the way they talked about GWE here, I thought the tone surrounding the matches show was much more celebratory. Even accepting the difference in viewpoints about what is easier/more fun to rate (to me it's wrestlers by far, for Chad at least it's matches), I was kind of struck by this as I would have expected the same sort of feeling of incompleteness to have been at the forefront of the intro of both shows. I wonder if the difference was just that one was an "official" broader project and the other was more of a personal thing? Parv's comments on consistency of performance being something missing in his BIGLAV calculations really struck me, because as I've gone through this process I've come to see that that is one of the traits I MOST value. While I wouldn't say it is the most important characteristic for me, it's something I often come back to, and I remain unpersuaded by the "if someone could be great when they wanted to they were" argument because there are too many obviously absurd conclusions that can be drawn from that. I actually think listening to this show really brought out why consistency matters so much to me as well and that is the fact that I watch way more wrestling than even most people here. When you watch as much as I do being able to count on someone to deliver with every match you watch is something that has a lot more value than when you are watching greatest hits, or even singular runs or highlighted matches from specific years. Guys who don't let me down will be rewarded on my ballot and I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't be. This and some other comments on the show also got me thinking about how viewing habits and context can effect how you view certain wrestlers. In particular I thought Chad's comments on both the AWA 80s project and how committee members on those projects might view things differently really stuck out to me. I say this because I think there is really a massive difference between watching whole catalogs of promotions, and watching selected matches in terms of how you view certain guys. Obviously there is no way anyone could be expected to watch the whole runs of every wrestler, but I do think having that more complete knowledge will improve the standing of certain guys (and maybe in some cases hurt the standings of certain guys). There is no question it also creates a feeling of ownership which may influence how a person feels about certain talents as well. It's an interesting dynamic. I was a bit surprised to see Hase so high for some reason, and I really don't buy the idea of Tully as an all timer any more, but other than that there was nothing on this show I fiercely disagree with when it came to placement.

On the Toyota discussion, what's the difference between her and Sabu? As mentioned before I'm still deeply immersed in watching footage right now, so my posting is limited. That said I think much of the argument advanced on her behalf could be applied to Sabu, though I would argue Sabu was more influential (if that matters to you) and perhaps controversially I think he sold better.

I'm watching Joshi today and spending most of my time on watching not typing at this point. That said I would be interested to hear what people would think about adding Akiyama to this discussion from the perspective of top guys of this millennium so far.

Interested in this because it implies that Buddy's stock has dropped with Matt which I would find shocking. I'll try to answer with bigger thoughts on this late tonight when I'm pulling my hair out making the first cuts from the list.

People see me as the Terry Funk guy in these GOAT debates in part because of that podcast (and others), and in part because I've affixed that moniker to him in other settings many times in the past. For that reason I think a lot of people who view my next statement with some suspicion, but I'm going to make it anyway. I do still consider Terry Funk a strong GOATC, but I am by no means sure that he will be number one on my ballot, and he's only one of over ten people I am considering for that spot at the moment. Like all of the top candidates there are arguments against Funk. I think in his case probably the strongest two are an arguable lack of all time classics relative to some of the other contenders, and the fact that he didn't have the sort of sustained run any place outside of AJPW that people often look for. The spaghetti leg thing hurts him with some, but I actually think it's overplayed and less persuasive criticism in part because I think Funk turned up and turned down that aspect depending on setting and opponent. Addressing the other criticisms, I actually think Funk's best work is sort of lost because of the fact that he didn't have much of a sustained run anywhere. His best work in AJPW is from an era that proceeds the "Kings Road" style. But the latest dump of AJPW stuff on YouTube reveals that he had a shit load of very good to great matches there both as a singles wrestler and a tag wrestler, even if it was before AJPW sort of became smart fan nirvana. The feuds with Lawler and Flair are great, random matches on the early indies I think are really great too, et. I think there is actually a lot of great Funk out their, but because the matches were spread out both in terms of timeline and promotions he looks like he has less volume than he does. I wrote this about him a couple of years ago in the microscope and I stick to it other than the fact that I wouldn't definitively argue for him as the best ever as I do at the very beginning here. Okay, everyone knows Funk is my favorite wrestler ever. I also think he's the GOAT. I can see an argument for several others and I don't want to shit on anyone else or minimize them in an attempt to point to the things I like about Funk, so instead I'll try and talk about why I think he's so great. For starters - and this is huge to me - I think you can make a case that Terry is a top five all time working face and a top five all time working heel. In fact if we are talking peak v. peak I don't think it's really arguable. I'd go so far as to say that Terry at his peak as a babyface in Japan is the single best sympathetic babyface I've ever seen. Not only can he take a beating and sell, but he was incredible at timing hope spots and comebacks. His little strut around punch comeback was great shit particularly when it was nothing more than a flurry on the front wave of a storm. The man could bleed, but during that period especially he really knew how to make a blade job mean something. He'd give you some massive splat bumps and they would always mean something too. He could sell a body part, whether or not it was being stabbed or actually worked over in a traditional fashion. Just little looks and body movement could trigger the crowd to go fucking nuts. When he finally fired all the way back it was always after things had been milked to the absolute peak moment - timing wise there really aren't many you could even put in the discussion with Funk. He was a guy with a Hulk Hogan level entrance, who could work underneath like Ricky Morton, but when he made his comeback he was teeing off like a guy who you believed could legit kill any heel on Earth. I love Morton, Rey, Steamboat, et. as babyfaces but Funk in AJPW is the best I've ever seen at that role. I'd also go so far as to say that Terry at his peak as a heel in 89 was very possibly the best heel I've ever seen. He was certainly the most interesting. I've said this many times, but it was Flair v. Funk feud that made me a fan for life. Funk was a guy that got over jealous, craze, psychotic, who's sense of pride actually made him the most dangerous guy in the world - even though he was just an off the radar, semi-retired guy, with no credibility with that audience until WrestleWar. I love, love, love Funk in 89 in every respect, as he was a guy who was having awesome sprints with Eddie Guerrero trying to get him a job on tv, wild squashes v. bums like Cougar Jay and of course the awesome Flair matches which are among my favorites ever. Every match was a perfect representation of his character and he would switch gears mid-match to reflect that so easily. As versatility goes I think the conversation is sort of odd. You've got NintendoLogic talking about how his work as a technician has been overblown but who the fuck talks about Terry as a technician? Now I happen to believe that he was very sharp working holds, very good at building them to a climax, very surprising in the offense he could bust out (I really like the Terry/Dory v. Caras/Mascaras tag as an example of Terry being ahead of his time/versatile in ways you might not expect years before "crazy man" schtick took over), et. But I don't know that Terry is a guy talked up as great in that regard by very many people. No clue who is hyping that aspect of his work to the point where it would be "overblown." My view is that Terry was very good in that respect, at times great, but it's not the defining trait of his career. If we had more 70's footage? I suspect things might be different. One thing I really love about Terry that doesn't get talked about that much is the range of his characters even within the realm of what is commonly thought of as his "crazy old man" period. We know Terry worked different as a babyface at points - sometimes he was a top dog level technician, some times he was Ricky Morton with more credibility, late in his career he was the hardcore legend (sometimes as a enforcer threat, sometimes as a desperate old man fighting for honor and glory). But he had really incredibly range as a heel. If you look at how he worked during the WWF run it's different than how he worked in Puerto Rico which is different from how he worked in WCW in 89 which is different from how he worked as traveling lunatic working every promotion on Earth in 94 and so on. I don't think this is me imagining things either. If you watch something like the Martel match from Puerto Rico, Terry is really over the top on level that is almost entirely comedic. v. Hogan the comedic aspects were there, but he was a guy tailoring things around shortcuts to feed the inevitable Hogan comebacks. The Flair matches were obviously different and I already covered them. In 94 he was a hired hand traveling the wrestling landscape as the last outlaw called in to kill off annoying old challengers to the Southern wrestling family throne. You could keep going. Another thing about Funk is I am not sure I have ever seen him have a boring match. I'm sure someone could point to one I wouldn't disagree with, but I can't recall it offhand. I seem to recall Will once telling me that the Terry Set is one of the only set's he's ever done where he wasn't sick of watching the same guy by the time it was over. He always works hard and makes things at least entertaining. When his body broke down too much to really bump or cut a pace, he just turned on the schtick and chaos. He and Lawler had several really good matches after 2000 which is fucking amazing if you think about it. Even in horrible 2000 WCW his matches didn'tsuck and everything sucked during that period. A byproduct of never having boring matches is that we are still finding awesome Funkmatches. There are really good Funk matches/performances from SMW and ECW I find while watching for those sets that didn't even make Will's mammoth Funk Set. There are WWF matches of his I've discovered in the last six months that didn't make that set that are very good. We'll likely be finding good Terry stuff for years, including really impressive shit like his back to back matches in 97 v. Sabu and Douglas in title defenses where he actually flipped and worked heel v. Douglas because they were in Pittsburgh. As far as great matches? If someone wants to say Funk's best matches aren't as good as the best matches from some of the other GOATC's I would listen to it. If someone wanted to say he doesn't have the depth of great matches that Flair has I'd almost certainly agree. If someone said Terry only had one or two or even a handful of great matches? I'm not buying that, but then this may just end up with another debate about "good v. great" and I'm not sure I really want the thread to go down that road. What I would say is thatFunk v. Hansen, Funk v. Lawler and Funk v. Flair GAB 89 are in my absolute top tier of singles matches. I think Terry was a tremendously great tag worker at his peak and there are several tags of his I would rate very, very highly. I thought he was incredible in Wargames 94 which is a match I love. On first watch I thought his random match with Tony St. Clair in 93 was great though I haven't gone back to watch it again. I think Terry/Jumbo is a great match and it's probably not even a top 25 Funk match IMO. I don't really think Terry is hurting for great matches. Al mentioned the fact that Funk didn't stay around any place very line as a sort of theoretically weakness. To me that was a real world strength. OJ is the one who coined this, but Terry is the ultimate loser leaves town wrestler. He was in somewhere for a while, got over huge, made you believe in him 100 percent, had his big match/feud/rivalry and was gone before he got stale. He always, always, always left you wanting more. There are a lot of guys I think are absolutely great wrestlers, but who hung around somewhere too long, or were involved in something that was run in the ground, or got lazy because they were comfortable or whatever. That NEVER happened with Terry Funk. I'll admit I'm biased toward Funk. My dad loves him and grew up watching his dad's promotion. He is the guy who made me a fan for life, when I watched him up close in 89 killing himself on house shows and tying bags on Flair's head. But Terry Funk is a guy that has always made me care about his matches and believe in what he was selling. I'm not saying he's the only one who I can say that about, but the list is short. Adding to that older post I would note that I think his ability to have great matches with a wide variety of people and within a wide variety of styles is impressive. I think Funk is among the most versatile wrestlers ever when it comes to both inputs and outputs, particularly as it pertains to effectively portraying a character and delivering good matches within the logic of that character portrayal. There are AJPW tag matches with him doing dives to the floor in the late 70s, matches where he is doing luchaesque matwork, obviously massive brawls, matches built around Funk selling, matches built around Funk the crazy aggressor, et., et., et. I put a lot of value in range, versatility, variety and adaptability. That will be reflected in where I ultimately place Funk.

I still don't believe a fixed universal criteria would have been desirable or even possible. I appreciate that your system worked for you, but it would have taken all of the intrigue and analysis out of it for me. I wouldn't have participated at all had something like that been forced upon me.

It's subjective and doesn't matter because ballots aren't going to be discarded.

I will revisit this later today hopefully, but I really want Loss to weigh in.

My list isn't a list of favorites, and I don't think your statement reflects the reality of all participants in this project, or even the majority of them. If my list was a list of favorites, my top five would be relatively easy, and would include Brian Pillman. People like JT Smith, Bobby Bass, Nick Gage, and Cheeseburger would not only be on my list (none of them will be), but would be way ahead of many people who will finish in my top half, including someone like Misawa. I also object in general to the idea that other peoples motivations are innately more subjective than yours because they didn't come up with an arbitrary formula to analyze candidates. Two questions for you Parv. 1. should Jumbo be penalized for being literally the only wrestler in history who I feel this way about (i.e. can it really be divorced from a discussion of his talents that I find him tedious to the core)? 2. Why on earth would watchability (for lack of a better word) not be a criteria someone would consider?

I don't believe in rejecting any voter, but I do believe the process is important. I would hope most of the voters would be people who have either participated publicly in the process, or at the very least have followed along and have been watching new things (I know several people like this who lurk here, including my brother Dustin who is likely to submit a ballot). That said, I do worry a bit about the idea of thoughtless and/or spam ballots skewing the final results. The problem is that there is no real way to ensure against that. I would also note that the public posting of ballots when things are said and done could potentially illustrate the differences between those who participated in a more public way and those who didn't (not saying either is more legitimate). And I look forward to that.

I love the Lawler match, but many find it repetitive.

You are underselling. He's in an awful lot of good matches across all three of his big tag runs. Granted I have a different sort of way of viewing things for my tag ballot, but all three of Lane's teams will make my top 25. Two of them will make my top ten. And yet...I never really think of him when I think of great tag workers, and I still can't bring myself to think of him seriously for a top 100 here. Very weird and maybe something I should think about more.

So. I don't know what to do about Jumbo Tsuruta. Let me start by saying this - I do think he was a great wrestler. He has lots of great matches, and a long stretch of time when he was at minimum a good worker, and often times great. I can't really argue against the idea that he's one of the 100 best wrestlers of all time...kind of. I say kind of, because I have an extreme visceral hatred for the idea of watching Jumbo Tsuruta wrestle. It's a weird thing because I often come away with positive views of the matches. Still I find him to be a horribly alienating and even disengaging performer. This is not entirely new. I have watched a lot of Jumbo in the last five years but ONLY because I was committed to certain viewing projects. Probably the main reason I preferred the NJPW 80s stuff to the AJPW 80s stuff was the "ugh, Jumbo" factor...but again I thought he had many brilliant matches in the 80s. The issue here is that I simply don't ever want to watch Jumbo wrestle. Ever. For a long time I convinced myself this was largely because he's one of these guys where I'd seen it all and had all the discussions before. But I felt that way about much of the AJPW 90s guys and have gone out of my way to rewatch some of their stuff for this project, and enjoyed it. Same with Flair. And Liger. And now I'm even watching Joshi which is a style that really hasn't aged well for me. But I can't even conceive of watching a random Jumbo match by choice at this point, let alone a bunch of them. The truth is that I ONLY react this way to Jumbo. I will watch a 30 minute Paul Roma match from Europe, but not Jumbo v. Misawa. The idea of watching him feels like a chore to put it mildly. I'm not worried that I haven't been able to fairly reevaluate him, because I watched the bulk of his peak not that long ago. But I do think there is a serious question that should be asked about whether or not someone is really that great a wrestler if the viewer completely rejects the notion of...well...viewing them. That has to be seen as a negative right? The other issue I have with Jumbo is that even if I decide to rank him I have no clue where or how to rank him. At minimum I feel that he has to be penalized for being someone I react to this way, plus I'm not quite as high on him as others anyhow. That said how much do you penalize someone for something like this? Basically if I rate him low I'll probably end thinking "why did I rate him at all?" and if I rank him high it will largely feel like a "because I'm supposed to" ranking which I hate for obvious reasons. I'm not making a poll here because I really want people's thoughts on this. Keep in mind I am not asking you to lobby me on the particulars of whether or not he is a great wrestler. Instead I want to see how people would handle the situation I have described.