Dylan Waco

Matt's wife is about to give birth so he decided to skip the tour

That blows me away, because in my experience Dandy almost always stands out to me more than anyone else in every match he's in. In fact that's probably his biggest strength to me for something like this.

In.

What are the details on that show? I can get a hold of Juster and pester him about it.

If ROH Homicide had a five or six year run at that clip, with that vibe to him, he'd have a shot at the lower portion of my ballot.

This will be odd coming from me, but I actually think Lynn had one of the most bizarrely interesting careers of the post-territory era. The guy breaks in and comes to prominence working legit indie classics on Minnesota indie and GWF shows against Sean Waltman. In some respects these matches would set the template for indie dream matches, but they did it better than most who came after them and before the idea of such a thing existed. Despite having these great matches, and Waltman getting noticed at least in part due to them, Lynn is just a guy on the indie scene with significantly less buzz than guys like Sabu, Al Snow, and other darlings of the period. He eventually gets a gig in WCW in 95 with the incredibly lame J.L. gimmick where he becomes a solid, usually pretty good, utility cruiserweight but he's never really pushed or promoted at all despite the fact that he was brought in early on and pretty much all of the other early hires ended up with strong pushes and/or promotion. From there he lands in ECW where he is basically given the "underappreciated super worker" gimmick which is pretty amazing when you consider the fact that he really didn't have the public profile or reputation for that at the time (even though you could argue he deserved it based on the Waltman matches and his rep as a hard worker). He has the feud with Credible which is good, and the RVD feud which I don't love, but there are matches in the feud that are better than most anything RVD was doing at the time. In the process he gets hugely over in ECW, has some other solid and even very good matches with a variety of people (Corino, one of Douglas last really good matches, et), but in part because he is now pushed as a top level or close to it guy he doesn't have lengthy rivalries with guys like Guido, Tajiri or Crazy who arguably would have been his best opponents in the promotion (yes I know they had matches but he wasn't really wedded to them the way they were to each other). He gets signed by the WWE from there and does almost nothing at all, before ending up as a founding member of the TNA X-Division. People forget it but Lynn actually helped establish that division and was huge in getting it over mainly through the early feud with Styles (which also made Styles in the promotion). He also resurrected his rivalry with Waltman there which is hilarious given that it was a feud that very few people would have seen or known about at the time. He ends up as a TNA agent for a while, and then works some more for them before leaving. Then he goes to ROH where he wins the belt from Nigel which at the time pissed a ton of people off. I have no memory of what his output was like from this period but he always seemed like a weird fit as champ, even if Flair came in and endorsed him. Finally he ends up doing a retirement tour going to famous indies, ECW reunion shows and then finally a show back home against Waltman where Sean ripped himself a new asshole (literally). It's just a really, really weird career to me for a lot of reasons that I'm not sure I can fully articulate. At the end of the day I think he's sort of responsible for both the bad/excess of indie wrestling (v. RVD feud, to a lesser degree the Styles TNA feud) and the good Danielsonish indie main event (v. Waltman series). He is a guy who had way more influence than you might think, but never really meant shit in either major promotion, and his big legends title run at the end in ROH was widely rejected by the fanbase. I actually think when you break it down and think about it he's a better wrestler than most of those who mimicked him, and I wonder if he gets punished for the sins of his children. That said, he's not a top 100 guy. Not even close.

I think TNA hurts him overall because it killed his aura as a badass. Despite being a really small guy if you watch him in ROH he comes across a legit asskicker of the highest order, the kind of motherfucker that would kill you over a parking space. Part of this was that he had an insane finish, but a lot of it was just the way he carried himself. He had great matches during that run, and his role at the CZW/ROH Cage of Death is maybe my favorite "playing their character" performance in U.S. indie wrestling history. There is no question that LAX had some good matches, and I think they were a good team. But I don't think they were a great team, and when LAX fizzled out it pretty much killed the last vestiges of the Homicide that had been so unique on the indies.

That Santo brawl is incredible and has to be included.

To be fair to shoe, I didn't say he was a sexist, I just said he hated women.

Miz was a good tag worker. He's gotten progressively worse since they split him from Morrison. At this point I think you could argue he's the worst base in wrestling history, at least among full time performers. For that reason alone he is worse now than Charlotte is.

The thing is there are not many modern candidates (as in people who became stars post Attitude Era) I would rate as good and possibly not any (besides Cena who is in already) that I would rate as great. Kane had a good career in the sense that he has been around forever, feuded with some big names, been in the mix, et. I think he's average in the ring, with occasional runs of being serviceable, and other periods when he sucks, but he's never been dynamic. And I never want to see him. This is a Hall of Fame where Buddy Rose and Ken Patera can't stay on the ballot, JYD takes almost twenty years to get on the ballot and gets no traction, Bearcat Wright can't get on the ballot, Fujiwara can't get on the ballot, Bill Dundee would be scoffed at as a joke candidate by huge percentage of voters (let alone Observer readers), et. In a Hall of Fame like that guys with "good" careers like Kane, Jim Duggan, Tommy Dreamer, et. have no place.* *Before people freak out, no, I don't think Kane, Duggan, Dreamer are necessarily lateral as theoretical HOF candidates.

Legitimately think I could name 300 people I would rank as clearly better candidates than Kane with minimal effort.

I believe it's the 6/17/93 Hash match that is one of my favorite Japanese singles matches of all time.

Jimmy Redman with a great, great post. One of the best in board history. Now for a few quick comments. I hate to say it but I think AJ was clearly geared to pervs at times and Bayley did originally have a jailbaitish vibe to her though that was dropped pretty quickly. I don't think Matt Farmer's point is irrelevant BUT I do think it bodes well that the NXT house show matches with the women have been great. We will see how things pan out going forward. Finally I have no problem with the idea of women as main eventers but it should happen organically not as some sort of social experiment. If you think fans reacted bad to Roman Reigns and Batista, imagine trying to convince wrestling fans that Paige v. Nikki Bella is the the real main event of TLC because PROGRESS! The key should be to present the division and its performers in a more positive/serious light and actual deliver on what the fans want when and if it gets to the point where their are female stars capable of working on top.

At this point I struggle to think of a single reason to vote for anyone else for promotion of the year over ROH. They have shown real development and growth this year despite the alleged budget issues early in the year.

There was this weird period where some people treated him like he was a top tier worker which was insane. At his best he could be very good but he was RARELY at his best to the point where I couldn't even tell you what his peak was. Possibly 98 as I remember liking the Benoit matches, but who knows how much of that was Booker. I did like that he was a guy who had multiple finishers in an age where not everyone did, but he really lacked any other individual trait as a worker to set him apart. I agree with the argument that being paired up with the awful Stevie Ray made him look better than he was, but I will say that he was a guy that got over as a face and a heel on his own at times. On the other hand, even in dying days WCW - as bad as it was - he was never the best guy in the promotion. I think mediocre is too strong a term for him (though I can absolutely see that label fitting him), and I guarantee there are lots of people around the web who would include him in top 100's, but he's nowhere near a top 100 guy for me. Honestly I'd rate him below someone like Jerry Sags.

I actually liked Sandman and thought he was an underrated worker in a lot of ways. He would make my personal top five hundred. So there is that.

Honestly there are people who will probably vote for Jerry Lynn.

This is a great deal for DA. ROH is subsidized by Sinclair and will get good ratings for them. The cost for them is way lower. It's also possible that ROH may be able to bring over some ad deals via Sinclair.

At work now, but I bet I could find 25 nominees who I think are clearly worse.

I'd probably include Colon on this list, but I'd need to look at the dates on the matches. Seem to remember that being a great year for WWC though. In fact Invader 1 may have a case too. I'll check dates later.

I'll try and take these one or two at a time for the next several days Rey Mysterio or Yoshiaki Fujiwara? I think in some respects these two are similar in that they both helped create/spread a certain style to a larger audience. I also think both of these guys are among the best defensive wrestlers of all time, but with Fujiwara his defensiveness came across as a strategic fighting posture, whereas with Rey it was all about timing great bumps and selling. I still contend that when it comes to good matches Rey has likely had more make tape than any wrestler in history and he did it against a huge variety of people. Just looking at his output and diversity of opponents from 2009 alone (where he missed a year due to a wellness violation) is incredible, and that is one year. Against most people I would say that Fujiwara has the clear advantage when it comes to level of difficulty, and I still would give him that here because shootstyle is really hard to do super well, but Rey was doing crazy shit as a kid. Fujiwara's peak matches, his facial expressions, his ability to work with the non-initiated in compelling ways, all should not be discounted. Still the various reinventions of Rey, the areas where he excels that few people talk about - getting over feuds (v. Punk, Jericho, JBL, et.), his brawling, his adaptability up and down the card - make it impossible for me to rate Fujiwara over him at the moment. I really need to watch a bigger chunk of peak Fujiwara because the gap isn't very big, but I could be the high voter on Rey in GWE.

I think 90's inter-promotional rivalry era Tenryu is the most intense and exciting wrestler in the world to watch.

I would rate the Hansen v. Sarge matches pretty highly actually. Not the all time classic series you might want, but very good for matches that weren't ever designed to be the focal point of the promotion.

I haven't watched a large volume of peak AJPW in years, but I would go Kawada, Misawa, Taue, Kobashi on first impulse, and even then I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't bump Kobashi above Taue....and I love Taue to the point where if someone had him top five I wouldn't even question it. I think that he was that great at what he did and brought to the table. I just can't honestly say I think he is a better wrestler than Kawada or Misawa. Don't thing he had the range or versatility of either guy, nor do I think he was capable of being the focal point of a high level rivalry they way they were. What gets really tricky is when you throw Akiyama into the mix and there I might be the nutcase. Because as time goes on and he adds a classic or two each every couple of years to the resume, to go along with the general way he carries himself from match to match these days, I have started to see him as a guy that is lateral or superior to all of those guys.