Dylan Waco

Embry was completely awesome in Puerto Rico. Really one of the best guys we have from the 80s PR footage, though a few of his absolute best performances are JIP with a huge chunk of each match missing. Still he is incredible on the entire tag tourney show from 86, and has a complete brawl v. Invader I that is a hidden classic

If this is considered cheating I will list the matches, though I am working in tiny spurts of time to contribute so hopefully this suffices La Fiera: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Osamu Nishimura: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Tracy Smothers: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Kantaro Hoshino: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Ricky Fuyuki: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Michael Hayes: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1 Jerry Blackwell: more than three reviews in this thread http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19193-crusher-blackwell/

Honma is the kind of guy I could see someone putting at 100 as a personal favorite they want to see represented and I'd have no problem with that. People forget the first poll was at the very beginning of the footage explosion. AT the time hitting 100 was semi-challenging for some. Now restricting it to 100 will be brutal because there are probably close to five hundred names I would consider at least somewhat viable candidates

Why is that? Taue was always someone I loved from the jump when I started watching AJPW.

This is weird to say, but I'm trying to start this with no framework in mind for what my list will look like. Of course I have a bias toward Funk and others, but I don't like to go into a project like this with a "working" spot for anyone

I have made this point before, but it does interest me that several people I know who came to AJPW after it was the hot thing, rate Taue above at least one of the three guys that he supposedly lags behind.

I have more to say when I'm not on my phone, but it is important to note that one can appreciate someone's ability to perform a certain "style" well, while also believing that style is inferior. That seems like it's a separate debate from this one, but it's really not

Not in a position to C/P links, but Invader I has more than 3 reviews on the board and is someone I may have on my ballot

There are other workers from Europe worth considering for the top half of the list, but Breaks is a guy I could see in my top twenty. I will grant that a part of this is that his style is schitcky and something that I could easily see working in multiple U.S. territories, but even still the reason Breaks is so great to me is that he so neatly integrates his act into the Brit setting. He is a great grappler, but he's also a great character. In fact his character - the cocky technician who is not as quite as good as he thinks he is and pouts/plays loose with the rules when he's one upped or annoyed - is one that allows him to be entertaining even in shaky matches. I will be interested to see what others think of Breaks as this project moves along.

Akiyama is my personal favorite Japanese wrestler of all time. He's not the best BUT Alan and others calling him the clear best Japanese worker of the 00's makes me want to go back and watch a lot of that stuff. Even now he's capable of knocking on my ass once or twice a year, as he did with last years Carny final v. Kai, or the big Omori TC win this year.

I haven't had the time to get into this so far, but I actually think Fujinami is a legitimate number one contender. Probably the strongest argument against him is that he was merely okay-to-good for most of the 90's rather than great. But you could say the exact same thing about Flair and no one would discount him as a top pick. Childs made many of the points I would make in the Choshu thread, but they the following things are worth repeating/mentioning here: 1. Fujinami was very likely the best junior heavyweight in the world in the last 70s/early 80s, and then quickly transitioning into being one of the top heavyweights in the world as soon as he "moved up." 2. He was an excellent tag team worker, both in straight tags and elimination tags which required a different sort of psychology. 3. Really a great mat worker, but also underrated highspots, great bleeder, good selling, snug worker, et. Mechanically few were better, and it's notable that he could work really fluid exchanges, or more rugged, grisly segments at very high levels. 4. Good-to-great matches against a wide variety of opponents spanning five different decades. I guess you could criticize him for not having the volume of great singles matches you'd hope for, but it's not like his best singles matches weren't tremendous. At bare minimum he's my pick for the best Japanese worker of the 80's, which will almost certainly get him into my top ten

There is something to that point OJ, but the question becomes - how much research is enough?

My first piece at Voices of Wrestling covering the HOF: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2014/09/09/five-candidates-worth-a-closer-look-observer-hall-of-fame/

Jose has agreed to do Wrestling Culture it's just a matter of finding the right time for it

Since I know it will be well thought out and backed up with evidence, I'm curious about your opinion of Punk. I'm not averse to the notion of Punk as a Hall of Famer, but to me there is absolutely no good reason to vote for him now, especially with the new rule threatening a litany of candidates with resumes at least as good as - and in many cases clearly better than - his. But even setting that aside there are two problems I have with Punk relative to this years ballot. A. I think he's a borderline candidate at best at this point. This sounds more dismissive than I mean it to sound because I think it is possible that in five-ten years time Punk's argument on influence is going to have the sort of perspective it needs to be a really serious one. But it's too early to tell. As a star, he was not someone I saw as a top tier guy for very long at all, and in some ways I NEVER saw him as a top tier guy. He was a merch mover of note, but he's a guy who came out of his run as ace - which was really long - looking worse than he did coming in. That's not his fault, but it bothers me when thinking about him as a candidate. He is also a weird case of guy who's peak matches and angles are all time greats, but doesn't stand out as someone I could seriously consider an all time great worker. B. He's not one of the ten best guys on the ballot. He just isn't. I could run down the list of guys who I think he's a better candidate than, but not sure that's what you are asking for.

Punk isn't one of the ten best guys on the ballot

Actually non-wrestler is the easiest category for me by far.

I want to say I will only vote for my legitimate top ten, but this new rule might force my hand in a couple of ways. For example I was on the fence about voting in the lucha category, but I'm not willing to risk Caras falling off a ballot that includes Ultimo Guerrero, Hector Garza and Vampiro. So now I will definitely vote for Caras, BUT the problem is if I vote for him do I ignore the rest of the category? It seems insane to do that, when it is by far the deepest category on the ballot. So now I have to decide do I dump four or five votes into lucha (I could easily justify nine votes in that category), or just stick with the one guy in obvious danger? At this point the only people I am positive I will vote for are Colon, the RnR's, Caras, and Patera. Even guys who I had assumed would be virtual locks for me (Torres, Shibuya, Koloff) are harder to give a definite yes to, when you know they are taking away votes from a bunch of borderline/interesting guys who''s absence from the ballot will clear a path for your Edge's and Brock Lesnar's.

The most underrated Japanese wrestler...ever? More later in the relevant section

The important thing here is that we can redo this and I can vote for people like Colon, Buddy Rose, Blackwell, Hoshino and Tajiri. Although 100 seems like an unbelievably small number now.

I got a ballot this year which is cool, but the various changes to the ballot are going to make it WAY harder for me than it would have been last year. I understand the concept of capping the time someone can appear on the ballot, but the 50% threshold seems really high, and I am very concerned that the end result will be a lot of reasonable "borderline" candidates who are worth thinking about and doing more research on will be trimmed off, in lieu of a bunch of modern candidates that are clearly weaker but will have an easier go of it without the logjam. I do think some of the additions to the ballot that we weren't expecting are great, but it really does make it harder to pick where to vote, especially because the Lucha ballot is so deep.

There should be a thread dedicated to this in the forum

The reason I like that idea is that it forces people to participate. You can't submit a list with Ed Lewis on it because it's "wrong" to exclude him, nor do you have more modern guys worth consideration falling through the cracks. I could see an argument that the criteria should simply be "guy with a thread" as the match review standard might turn some people off. But I do believe an "open field" is a bad idea because it discourages the debate and discussion that makes projects like this fun

Within the last five years I've watched every ECW match that exists on tape (including every handheld), seen a good friend of mine complete a documentary on the company that was ten-plus years in the making, and studied the details of 1990's U.S. wrestling in intimate detail. So you would think I would have a ton to say on this topic. But the truth is I'm not sure that I do anymore, in part because the projects I was involved with that dealt with ECW have been completed, but also because I think the degree to which ECW has been covered, discussed, given credit to, given blame for, et. is totally out of proportion to what the company actually did historically. There are many reasons for why I believe this to be true, some of which have been covered in this thread, others of which are perhaps beyond the scope of it (for example I think Paul Heyman's ability to self promote, and the way he has been covered by wrestling media, have greatly contributed to the fact that ECW is still seen as super relevant in the eyes of many), but the point is that I think I've finally reached the point where I am just sick of talking about it, at least in these sort of "how good/how bad was it?" terms. As recently as a year ago I would have been the guy jumping to the defense of ECW and how it has "aged" as I believed then, and still believe now, that even in the rear view it was more often than not an exciting, interesting and fun product to watch, that produced far more good matches than it is often given credit for. But now? Well if people don't want to see those things, or simply don't see those things through their own observations that's fine. I'd rather talk about Puerto Rico, or Montreal, or Portland, or the Maritimes, or any number of other promotions and territories that haven't gotten a modicum of the coverage that ECW has received over the years. In the end ECW is both underrated and overrated in my eyes. Underrated because it's fiercest critics want to believe it was all one thing (crazy violence, horribly sexist portrayals of women, bad comedy et.) and it's biggest advocates want to believe it was another ("ECW was the most revolutionary brand in modern wrestling history, and genius booker/promoter who never made any money Paul Heyman set the wheels in motion that changed wrestling forever!").

I think Dave is scrambling for a fresh metric in the "brand is the draw" era and this is the best he's got. I also think it is indicative of something but not what he thinks necessarily