Childs

I voted for Bock and suspect the gap might widen if we had more tape of him. I love Buddy. He was maybe the most imaginative wrestler I've ever seen and also a great athlete. But one of my absolute favorite things in wrestling is a tough heel champion -- a guy who might stooge a little and has no regard for rules but when the chips are down, will beat your ass to keep his gold. Bock was as good as anybody I've ever seen at that and with slight tweaks, made the same character into an effective babyface. He just really fit what I want out of my wrestling.

This is nonsense. Zach Lowe puts the lie to what you're saying, writing to the same audience on the same web site. I know from my own journalism experience that experts in many fields appreciate it when their work is explained well to a general audience. Shoemaker's work on Grantland just isn't very good.

I guess Tanahashi isn't the worst candidate. He seems to be the biggest Japanese star of his generation, even if that's a bit of a booby prize. And regardless of what I think, many in the Observer sphere regard him as an all-time great worker. But it highlights the absurdity of putting guys on the ballot when they're still in their prime. Regardless of what any of us think about Tanahashi, this isn't the time to put a period on his career. It just defies common sense. I mean, we could stick LeBron James or Miguel Cabrera or Adrian Peterson in their respective HOFs, but why would it occur to anyone to do so? I get that wrestling is a little different given the never-ending careers. But it ain't that different, and it's unbelievable that this problem was allowed to persist after the Angle vote demonstrated the silliness of the time standards.

Well, it's no secret that there's a pretty big disconnect between the lovers of recent New Japan and a lot of the more frequent posters here. I've yet to see even one Tanahashi-Okada match I'd call a classic, much less a series of them.

Dylan, you've rightly built your Patera case around drawing/star power. But I'm curious about the overall view of his in-ring ability. I really like his Backlund matches, and I'm no great fan of Backlund. But was he regarded as a capable worker from early in his career? Is his in-ring something that could hold him back with any of the wrestlers who vote?

Excellent, fiercely contested match. I liked the way Sasuke and Nakajima set the tone with a tight opening mat sequence. Shaved-head Togo looked great, though really, everyone got moments to shine. I'm not sure I loved Kaientai pitching a shutout in the elimination format. But that was my only complaint.

The '97 RINGS has been great in part because the excellence wasn't confined to one or two match-ups. We keep getting hot matches from brand-new pairings. This was probably a touch more awkward than the promotion's very best stuff, but it never felt less than hotly contested. Nifty KO finish with both guys almost out of points.

I don't think I'd ever seen this, but it was a borderline great match, probably Shawn's best of the year to date. They did multiple spots that you normally wouldn't see outside a PPV. Somehow, Shawn always dialed up his offense against Foley. And Mick really put some oomph behind his shots as well. The proto-DX stuff was fine, but honestly, I wanted the match to keep going.

I don't have a lot of use for Tenzan, but Hash beat him into a pretty good performance. Hash just brought so much fire to these short, brutal matches that the opponent didn't have to be great.

This just wasn't my thing. I can't fault their commitment to the gimmick. And I liked the early part of the match, before the barbed wire spots became too elaborate. But when they started cutting the wire and wrapping themselves in it, the match just ground to a halt for me. And I think that was reflected in the lack of crowd heat for the title switch. It was definitely a spectacle, but it ceased feeling like a fight.

I don't know that it was smart in the big picture, but this was a hugely memorable moment from the initial NWO run. The release of emotion when Luger fended off Hogan's cronies was incredible. I remember being legitimately bummed when I heard that Hogan won the belt back at Road Wild. And it's not like I was a big Luger fan. They just had me sucked into the WCW-NWO rivalry, and I hated Hogan. It still comes off as a great moment in the yearbook context though it feels like more of a tangent given that we know the whole picture. It's noteworthy that when Luger and Sting have had parallel big moments on the yearbooks, Luger's have generally clicked better.

I always got the impression that Shawn's chairshot wasn't thought out; he simply snapped because the guy he hated spat on him. And yeah, I do think he was a sympathetic figure in the story, though he rapidly wiped that away by being an asshole on RAW.

It's really a shame that this match ended the way it did, because they had great chemistry and I would love to have seen some rematches with both guys healthy. Owen looked so good on offense that the botch felt like particularly sad irony. I wonder if the coming Austin storm would have been any different if he'd been fully healthy? Obviously, it couldn't have gone much better business-wise, but I assume we would've gotten more excellent matches in '98 and '99.

This was a great payoff to those Foley profile segments, and it felt like the first time Mick Foley was a fully realized character to the WWF fanbase. On the other hand, no one seemed to give a shit about HHH.

I'm not a fan of either guy at this stage, but they did belt the shit out of each other and the crowd was really into it. I'd like to see the whole match at some point.

Not sure I'd call it "pretend" wrestling. But OMEGA has always struck me as a "had to be there" thing. Whatever made people fall in love has never come across to me on tape. I'll be interested to see if the more pimped matches from later years strike me any better.

He was hostile because you made a snide comment to him. A lot of folks like to give Johnny friendly pokes about his WWE love, but I don't think many would say that his natural setting is hostile.

Frye looked and worked like such a nasty fucker. That punch-suplex-choke finishing combo was fantastic. I agree with Loss; I love this as a change of pace on a New Japan card, and it's a shame they ultimately lost their way in balancing Inoki's shoot fantasies.

We're not calling Yamazaki an MMA guy are we? He started his career in New Japan. Anyway, this was another intense match between these two. I loved Yamazaki's focus on Hash's midsection in the early going, and they produced some hellacious strike exchanges. Hash was an all-time master at these short, violent matches.

I drifted quite a bit during the 15 minutes of highlights, so nay to 60 minutes.

I don't quite get the gripes about this match. You basically had Taue trying to throw bombs at Misawa from the drop, knowing he couldn't outwrestle him in the long haul. And you had Misawa, fighting to survive long enough that his superior talent could find its level. Taue had long since established the apron spots as go-to moves in big matches. So they seemed a logical part of his nuclear strategy. The Tiger Drivers looked weird, but Misawa's comeback offense still came off as plenty nasty. A 20-minute sprint full of big moves is pretty much what I want from Misawa-Taue. This can't touch the 4/15/95 classic but fits comfortably with the rest of their series. So I don't see it as part of the "All Japan in decline" theme.

I was actually surprised how much I liked the SUWA-Dragon Kid match. The restart was an effective bit of drama, and then I liked the SUWA control section a lot more than you did, NL. SUWA's stuff looked nasty, and Dragon Kid came off as gutsy to survive it and then pull out a win with that nifty dragonrana. The match carried a genuine sense of rivalry and didn't overstay its welcome. I went in thinking it couldn't make my top 100 but came away thinking it'll probably contend for the mid-ballot.

I'm a little ashamed that I actually went to Google to figure out if this was the same Brakus who was the big bad in Best of the Best II. Nope, different German body builder.

I kind of wanted these guys to get their own blowoff instead of having this serve as the appetizer for Santo-Casas. But the match was still really good. I loved Santo hitting his dive before Felino could make it to the ring. They got a little nasty with each other but never full-on violent and crazy. Both guys hit some beautiful stuff. It's just a shame that the mask ripping signaled the end of the match rather than the dialing up of a wild third fall.

Really good TV match. I have to say that Hall and Nash have been pretty good when we've seen them work actual matches as a team. They understood the basics of cutting off the ring and working hope spots. Benoit showed great fight going one on two at the end. I loved the way he punched out of the powerbomb only to be decapitated by Nash's big boot after Hall distracted him.