Childs

I dislike a lot of pimped joshi for reasons I've stated without condescension. If I'm pleasantly surprised by a match, that's not a backhanded compliment; it's just me saying I like something in a style that's not my favorite. Could just as easily be about 2013 New Japan or Chikara or a Davey Richards match.

Larry Z's condescension was a sour note, but otherwise, this was a nifty addition to Nitro. They did a good job using Tenay to set up the excitement ahead, and the wrestlers paid it off by hitting a succession of spectacular spots. And yes, the crowd ate it up. The exciting undercard stuff was part of the reason I watched Nitro more than RAW during this period. I still appreciate that they tried this stuff, even if they didn't quite know what to do with it.

I've never quite gotten why people love this match. Michaels did look good in his return to the ring, and you had a huge amount of star power for a RAW main event. But the work wasn't anything special. Now the angle, fleshing out another permutation of the Hart Foundation storyline, was pretty great. The WWF absolutely had it rolling by this point, outshining WCW for the first time since the NWO debuted.

I was half paying attention to this the first time I watched it, so when I saw the dragon suplex, I assumed Otani won. But then I saw Tajiri celebrating. So yeah, it felt like a bit of a cheap finish, though I guess it was in the same spirit as 1-2-3 Kid beating Scott Hall. It was interesting to watch Otani play the Liger role, with Tajiri as the upstart. He did the cocky thing well.

World-class performance by the FBI, especially Smothers. The Eliminators were a truly awful team, but with Smothers and Guido providing every bit of structure and character, they really only had to look tough and hit their spots. Rich was great at ringside as well.

I had never seen this match or heard anything about it, but it was a total blast. As Loss and Tim noted, the NWO guys did a great job making the bayfaces look like superheroes in front of the hot N.C. crowd. Hard to imagine how they could have done better fitting Greene into the match. There wasn't a dull moment to be found here and this is a WCW MOTYC.

I got a huge kick out of watching Morton do all the classic Morton stuff in this setting. And he totally got himself over! Really good match overall, with exciting momentum shifts and a sense of genuine rivalry centered on Hayabusa and Gannosuke.

Really good showcase for both guys, with Regal showing his usual attention to detail and Ultimo working pretty stiff in addition to hitting his flashy stuff. If you're building a case for Regal as an all-time great, his work with guys like Psicosis and Ultimo has to be a big feather in his cap. Hard to imagine many U.S. heavyweights doing better.

Yeah, April '94 was really something, with one of the best Carnivals ever, the Super J Cup, a top-notch WCW ppv and the great Lawler-Dream Machine brawl. If Wrestlemania XX had been two weeks later, we might have a runaway winner there. Current NJ isn't really for me, so I can't imagine thinking this was the best G-1 ever, though they obviously dished up a lot of what their fan base digs. The '91 G-1 was the best from the era I like.

What about Dynamite Kansai? She's come across really well on the yearbooks. Not saying she'd be No. 1; I'm just curious if she's near the top group for the more joshi-inclined. It's telling that for harder core joshi fans, Toyota is a no-doubt contender for the top tier. She would never sniff my list of best wrestlers, but I guess that's more about my problems with the style than anything else. I'll happily acknowledge that she worked with remarkable stamina, and she could be a great face-in-peril when she wasn't racing ahead to the next missile dropkick. But the bottom line is I dread her matches.

My tier one is probably more guys who are solid in my top 10 than guys who would all have a shot at my No. 1. For example, Dandy probably wouldn't have a shot at being my No. 1 because we have relatively little footage from his peak years. But at his best, he's the best luchador I've seen, so I felt wrong leaving him out of the top tier. Lawler was probably the toughest guy for me to leave out of my top tier, but I guess I naturally weigh him against Funk and Flair in my mind. And I know I have him below them. It's tough because the very best Lawler is some of my favorite stuff in wrestling history. I just feel the guys in my top tier hit the very highest level a little more often. My opinion might change if we had a more complete record of Memphis arena main events. It definitely helps the Japanese guys that most of their biggest matches were filmed. Anyway, I viewed tier one as top 10, tier two as top 25, tier three as roughly top 50 and tier four as anyone who'd have a shot at top 100.

Savage-Flair would struggle to come across as a main event after all that stuff.

Curious what you mean by strangest, Jerry?

I started to sketch this out ... Tier 1 - Hansen, Misawa, Kawada, Tenryu, Flair, Funk, Dandy, Fujiwara, Jumbo Tier 2 - Lawler, Kobashi, Choshu, Fujinami, Hashimoto, Rey, Vader, Liger, Buddy Rose, Han, Casas, Santito, Danielson, Bockwinkel, Morton, Eddy, Bret Hart Tier 3 - Savage, Steamboat, Eaton, Windham, Satanico (probably higher with more footage), Taue, Dundee, Regal, Finlay, Billy Robinson, Tully, Arn, Tamura, Cena, Austin, Steve Grey, Marty Jones, Blue Panther, Baba, Hase, Naoki Sano, Ishikawa, Martel, Pirata Morgan, Dick Togo, Negro Navarro, Dick Murdoch Tier 4 - Tajiri, Maeda, Ron Garvin, Henning, Valentine, Santana, Kikuchi, Otani, Pillman, Yatsu, Owen Hart, Steve Williams, Luger, CM Punk, Jun Akiyama, Mick Foley, Daisuke Ikeda, Gran Hamada, Masa Saito, Masa Fuchi, Butch Reed, Ted Dibiase, Terry Gordy, Andre (higher with more footage), Scorpio, Bill Eadie, MS-1, Minoru Suzuki ...

I watched Punk-Lesnar again last night and liked it even better on repeat viewing. Punk actually did a really good job selling; he never moved in an unpained way after Lesnar went after his ribs/back. He also did an excellent job layering his comebacks, with the crowd seeming a little more hooked every time he took it to another level in trying to put Brock away. Lesnar was Lesnar. His athleticism never ceases to impress, and even the simple stuff he does looks more brutal than it would coming from almost anyone else. But what always gets me is how well he sells and works with emotion given that he mostly doesn't give a shit about pro wrestling. Finally, they made great use of Heyman, who really needed to be part of the finish given the impetus for the feud. This didn't have the "holy shit" factor of Lesnar-Cena, where I had no idea what would happen. But WWE main events don't get a lot better.

I don't agree with that at all. His singles series with Hashimoto is one of my favorite things ever in wrestling. He was also damn good working singles matches against the UWFI guys, lesser NJ guys such as Koshinaka and Sasaki, a greenish Kojima, etc.

I agree that the style was about to do downhill, but you guys are drawing an awfully stark line in the sand. The Misawa-Kobashi in October and the Kawada-Kobashi from 6/98 are truly great matches, or at least I thought so the last time I watched a few years ago.

Was the 1996 Carny poorly represented on tape? I know the only stuff on the yearbook came from the 3/31 and 4/20 shows. And I don't think I've even seen a clip of the Misawa-Kawada draw.

I knew Tenryu wouldn't be on the set a ton, and I thought people would enjoy seeing him work in a cage against a sort of freak show team. My intentions were not deep. Tenryu was a significant enough performer that it's worth tracking him in different settings across the yearbooks. And the match delivered on its promise, with Tenryu taking a big beating from Abby and Goto, then staging a fiery rally highlighted by a cross body off the top of the cage. Kitahara and Kikuchi didn't bring a ton to the table, but the energy of the match never flagged. I'm glad I advocated for it.

I'm not sure how this could've been much better given the talent involved. Ogawa looked a little more comfortable here than in their first match, and the whole thing carried the ragged intensity of a real fight. I particularly liked the ending, with Hash surviving the combo that put him down in April and finding enough space for a brutal knockout kick. This felt like neither a typical New Japan main event nor high-end shootstyle. But it clicked as a pro wrestling spectacle.

I've always enjoyed this, particularly the way Otani and Kanemoto fit so perfectly with Kaientai. These are the two Japanese promotions that rocked at big, multi-man tags, so it is a bummer that we never got a full feud with Liger heavily involved.

What was up with Piper just standing there while they triple teamed Flair? It was clearly intentional because Ric was moaning Piper's name. But they never revisited any tension did they?

I enjoyed Gannosuke playing a traditional scumbag heel and dishonoring the stip. But I probably liked the post-match better than the match itself. Hayabusa certainly had some physical tools and plenty of courage. I just never felt the emotion he displayed afterward in the performance. He just seemed like a guy attempting highspot after highspot.

Ditch, after running the yearly polls for 2000-2009, did you come to any overall view of the decade? Better than we thought at the lowest points? Incredibly depressing? Just curious.

I first saw this when Will was visiting D.C. and we were at Phil's apartment looking for the perfect match to end a fun evening of wrestling watching. We all marked out for how sharp Malenko looked and for the awesome punches delivered by 1997 Bobby Eaton. The match felt a little shorter to me this time around, but I still loved the same stuff about it. I prefer Malenko in tighter matches. As for Eaton, it's hard to watch him in the early '90s and then here without regretting all the matches we didn't get in the middle of the decade. Regardless, it's nice to have these glimpses of WCW's absurd late-decade depth on the yearbooks.