Dylan Waco

To be fair I like Bigelow fine, but I don't see why so many automatically rate him as the number two big man to Vader. His rep took a big pounding with me when I watched all the ECW and I saw just how worthless he was on the house shows

There is at least some Maritimes stuff on Youtube, though I'm not sure how good or bad it is. I agree with Matt that he was good in 79 in Portland. From what I've seen though his peak was in PR where he was a great heel

Was a better wrestler than he ever should have been, and was a guy that was fun to watch in part because of how protected his finish was, and in part because we got to see him progress right before our eyes on the biggest stage possible. But there really isn't the meat their for him to make a list like this. If he had a half dozen more matches like the Goldberg match I could maybe see him as a bottom ten sort of guy, but he doesn't

What are the great Bigelow matches?

Another example of the sort of guy I could see rating in my bottom five or so. Every time he pops up on some old footage I watch he stands out as an entertaining, fun and scummy looking worker. He is the sort of guy that would probably benefit from a youtube playlist/comp and might not have enough to get him over the hump, but he definitely has some great moments. I thought he was legitimately awesome in Puerto Rico, and he has a match there with Invader I that is among my favorite from the island ever

What hurts Kerry more than anything to me is the footage explosion. I tend to think he's underrated as a worker in many ways, but then I think about the metric shit ton of guys we can now watch career highs and lows from relative to where we were ten years ago, and I just don't see how Kerry gets over the hump.

I think it's excessive to say KENTA is being immediately dismissed based on the comments of one or two people. If this poll is going to work it needs to have people advocating for all sorts of guys and then actually showing up to vote.

Smothers was a bubble guy for me in 2006 that I snuck on in large part because he was a favorite. But after watching all the SMW and ECW to me he becomes a relatively easy pick. The big knock on him is that he never worked near the top of a big time fed, and really only worked on the top at all in SMW. But I think his resume makes up for that. For example Smothers was in three very different, but very good tag teams, where he was expected to play a very different role in each one (FBI, Thugz, Southern Boys). Smothers was probably one of the most consistent U.S. workers of the 90's, but was also versatile in the sense that he could work with anyone, and his best matches often see him working very different styles. One might argue that he is lacking in true classics, but I thought he got several of those under his belt in SMW in both singles and tag matches. If someone is all in on the idea that pageantry and clash of the titans style matches are required to get a guy on a list like this he's doomed, but I those things are secondary to me.

Chad going heel?

What is so bad about AJ Will? I'm not a huge fan generally but he's got a WOTY case this year, and was one of the few guys who did anything of nite in TNA. What makes your boy Jericho better than him?

Hoshino is a weird case of a guy who is a lock for my ballot, but won't finish super high for the reason Ditch outlines. I suspect he's a Tommy Rich-type who is an all time great, but we don't have quite enough footage to back it up. Still what we do have is awesome and shows a lot of range. Not a lot of guys can do comedy spots with Andre, or work as a bruising rudo asskicker against Liger, without fundamentally altering the way they work but he could. I love his weirdo punches an the way he could change speeds and bring unpredictable things to matches that might otherwise be predictable. I will find a place for a guy who looks like Elvin from the Cosby Show, 100 out of 100 times

Arn is one of my five favorite wrestlers ever, but I also think he is an easy pick for this project on merit. If you want to argue that he lacks that one definitively great singles match I suppose that's possible, but hes been in some tremendously great tags and multi-man matches where he's been a stand out performer. More importantly I would argue that Arn was one of the single most consistent wrestlers I've ever seen. He broke in as a big player in 85 and was effectively done by early 96 IIRC, and I really don't think he lost much of anything at any point, as he always had good matches against anyone he was asked to work with during that stretch. Even in 95 WCW which was the absolute shits in many ways, Arn had a good year, to the point where I think he was the best guy in WCW and arguably even the entire U.S. that year. He also gets extra points for me for having two of my all time favorite offensive spots - the Arn spinebuster and the Arn DDT. That is to say nothing of his stooging and the multiple roles he could play even within the context of a single bout. He's obviously not a tip top tier guy, and I'm thinking he'll be middle of the pack on my ballot, but if someone argued him up around the 25 mark I wouldn't think it was odd

I have grown incredibly found of Nishimura over the last few years, to the point where I would now call him one of my favorite five Japanese wrestlers of all time. Top five Japanese wrestlers of all time? No way in hell. But his stripped down, NWA champ style of working is something I mark out for every fucking time out. I really loved him in WNC, I loved him in MUGA, I love him just about any time I watch a random old match of his. When I get down to my bottom five or so it is very possible that I will be dropping on favorites that I think deserve more praise than they get and Nish fits the bill.

I prefer Ron Starr to Burke and could see voting for him so maybe I need to nominate him. Having said that Burke in PR in 89/90 was fucking awesome

What makes Jericho better than Matt Hardy?

I agree that Foley is a stronger candidate than Taue. Much stronger. My point was more than he was never the top guy, never even arguably the top guy. Very possibly never even the two guy for any meaningful point in time. And there were big chunks of his peak where he was at best the fourth or fifth guy. But that has never really been marshaled as an argument against Foley, while it is often used as an argument against Taue. I don't see Taue as a lock and intellectually I can see arguments against him. I'm far from certain that I will vote for him this year. But he's a guy where my instinctual response is to say that he should be in. I'm not saying that is right, but when I consider him big picture I can certainly come up with a lot of reasons why I think that instinct is right.

I love when someone here takes a view counter to the traditional wisdom about a wrestler and then says things like "Doubtful at this point the light is going to come on for you" like I'm the one out in left field. The onus is on you to explain why everyone has been wrong for two decades, not vice versa. I like Taue. I think it's commendable that he was able to take part in some classic wrestling matches without ruining them. It's also clear that All Japan's fans, hierarchy and contemporary American fans didn't see him on the same level as the promotion's top stars. There's such a desperation in some circles to be the one to "discover" someone that people are able to talk themselves into things that are self-evidently not true. I couldn't possibly care less about "traditional wisdom" on a wrestler, and can't imagine why anyone would unless they were trying to protect their previous or still existing status as a tastemaker. I care about whether or not I can articulate why I thought a wrestler was good, bad, et. and whether or not someone arguing a counter point can offer something of substance as an alternative view. I was around at the time. There is no question Taue was thought of as the distant fourth guy of the four pillars, particularly as a worker. But there was debate even at the time about whether or not he was just a guy who was plugged into a role and was successful largely because of who he was in there with, or if he was a strong contributing factor to many of the great matches he was involved in. Going further I think it's interesting that people I know who have discovered AJPW well after the fact, and who had little access/exposure to Meltzerian Gospel or other taste making reviewers (and little to no interaction with each other) seem to rate Taue higher than a lot of the AJPW hardcore fans from the era did. It would be one thing if the handful of people represented a similar aesthetic niche or community of fans, but there is really only mild overlap in two cases. The other couple of guys I know have spent little to no time on message boards, and one of them likes many things that I absolutely hate. Also worth noting that the SmarksChoice poll was nearly a decade ago. While it was removed from Taue's peak in All Japan by almost a decade, 50 voters, representing a broad cross section of fandom thought enough of Taue to have him just barely outside of the top twenty-five. The idea that Taue could being seen as an HoFer in large part due to his work because of some revisionist impulse to "discover" someone or something "new" doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Kengo Kimura is an 80s set guy worth a thread

I want someone to do a big dump of great Murdoch. If we are going to talk about him as a top 30 guy, I want a massive laundry list.

Shawn Michaels was pushed because Vince has a psychosexual crush on him. Not a Hall of Famer?

Not saying id vote for him, but it's worth looking at what is there of his back catalogue

Totally disagree with Schneider here which is really rare. I thought Pillman's babyface run from 89-92 was a tremendous run, that was hurt by WCW booking incompetence. Still there are few underdog babyfaces I can think of in modern times who I would rate clearly above Pillman from that stretch. Good in both tags and singles, good against big name stars like Flair/Luger or undercard acts like Norman/Rip Rogers, really great/underrated feud v. Windham, tons of fun matches against randoms like Buddy Landell, Scotty Flamingo, et., the Liger matches which I think hold up well, et, et, et. I don't think he was ever the same after he went heel, though he had good matches at that point too, and even as late as 95 could occasionally blow you away with something massive. He's not going to rate super high for me, but I can't imagine not rating him at all

Gonzalez is probably the best example I can think of of a guy who needs a match list/links for people to dig into.

Some might call him a poor man's Lawler, but I don't think that's fair. I prefer to think of him as a better Onita than Onita. To me Colon is possibly the best gimmick match worker of all time in the sense that he can get over the gravity of a stipulation, bleed his ass off, make his comeback, et, and do it all with spots that are largely theatrical in nature and MUCH less physically dangerous than you would think. That's not to say he wasn't having wild brawls, but just that he could get a hell of a lot of mileage out of strategic positioning and grimacing on the barbed wire, than most guys could doing suicidal shit in the same setting. The Hansen feud is one of the top five feuds of the 80's (at worst, I could easy argue it at number one), but you also have to give him a ton of credit for having compelling feuds with multiple great matches against guys like Abby and Hercules Ayala. Hell he had a good series with Steve Strong of all people. I'm not sure where he will fall on my list because there are so many guys I really like, but he was able to do a ton v. a wide variety of guys over the course of three decades (arguably four depending on how you feel about his best stuff from this decade).

Of course we all know why this is the case, but I really think Invader is one of the most unheralded workers ever. It's not so much that he is a lock for this list - I can see not including him, and he's not a sure thing for me - but it's that he's a guy who is not known as a good worker at all even though he obviously was one. In fact he's an all time great brawler, with memorable wars against Chicky Starr, Ron Starr, Al Perez, Eric Embry, Kamala, Hercules Ayala, The Sheepherders, Brody, Jason the Terrible, and others. And that's just from the 80's. I have seen only smatterings of his work from 90's forward, and he still has a really impressive resume you can build a case on. I'd put his best bouts v. Ron Starr, Embry, and Ayala against anything in Puerto Rico aside from Hansen v. Colon. The Kamala match is maybe the best five minute match I've ever seen, and the Ayala studio match rates among the best studio matches I've ever seen. The way he sold and built to his big comebacks was really incredible. Truthfully he's an all timer in that regard but suffers because Colon is right there in PR as a direct comparison (though I think Invader's build on the comebacks was actually better than Colon's to be honest). Still want to watch his best 90's work, but he deserves strong consideration from everyone