Childs

Don't think that's fair, NintendoLogic. Jerry was open, for example, to embracing Jumbo as an all-time great when he participated in the DVDVR All-Japan voting. We all have our favorites, guys we see in the best light no matter what. Jerry at least makes a real effort to explain what he loves about a Dibiase or a Flair.

I don't necessarily agree, Will. I thought the passage on Goldberg read oddly and that the other facts presented didn't line up with the idea of him having a pill problem. At my newspaper, editors are taught to apply extra scrutiny to any information that could be libelous. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if a good editor was stopped short by that passage and double checked it with the writer. That said, mistakes slip through the cracks and sometimes, you just have to apologize and eat the discomfort.

John, you might be able to answer this better than the rest of us: Is Dave self-aware about the sloppiness of the weekly product? It would just drive me crazy to put my name to copy that raw, even if the volume of information is astonishing.

As someone who has made stupid mistakes in print and felt that sinking feeling, I can sympathize. But I agree with Loss; in an ideal world, this would spur Dave to address the systematic sloppiness of his product. He often fails to convey what he means because no one has edited his copy.

Matches that I can't recall seeing elsewhere in the thread - Sakuraba vs. Kanehara from Kingdom 12/2/97 and 12/8/97

I like that Flair worked his ass off night after night because he took his responsibility seriously. I like that he worked holds competently in an old-school kind of way. I like that he hit hard and conveyed a really vicious side when challenged. I like that his matches don't feel like someone reading off a blueprint but instead like a master performer riffing off some basic structures and character traits. I've just never found Bret as viscerally exciting as Flair. I think of Flair trying to up the intensity of his offense after losing an amazing first fall to Jumbo Tsuruta, of him trying to grind Ricky Morton's face off in a steel cage, of him scrambling desperately to run out the clock against Barry Windham, of him going shot-for-shot with Ronnie Garvin, of him trying to tear a piece out of Terry Funk's ass at the '89 Bash. I like Bret Hart, and I was a huge fan of his circa 1996-1997. But he never sucked me in the way Flair did in the aforementioned moments. And I find it amusing that Bret fans cite believability as a mark in his favor. Do I think Bret spent time dreaming up ways to make his matches more believable? Sure. But he thought about it in such a pro wrestling way that if anything, his "realistic" spots come off as more self-conscious than Flair's carny shit. His face-first run into the turnbuckle looked great, for example. But is that remotely what it would look like if someone tried to sling you around in a fight? Hell no. So it really just comes off as Bret saying, "Hey, I rethought a basic tenet of pro wrestling to make it cooler." Which is fine but takes me back to what I said in the Bret thread: He never stopped feeling like a calculated performer. If you enjoy his highly logical approach, that's great. No skin off my butt. But it's that level of obvious calculation that keeps me from getting into his matches the way I do with my very favorite wrestling.

It's hard to nominate Japanese shows from the '80s because we don't have a great idea what it was like to watch them top to bottom. You could say the same for a lot of the '90s shows as well. I guess I'm not surprised to see Big Egg mentioned. But to me, the idea of sitting through 10 hours of Joshi seems like a truly vile form of torture. I'll tell you anything if you just make it stop!

Anybody watched the NJ Dome Show? The praise on the WON is beyond effusive, and I could imagine really liking Sakuraba vs. Nakamura. Not trying to hijack your thread, Dylan. I'd just be interested to see a review of the full show by someone trustworthy.

Candido's a guy I don't "get." He was good, not suggesting otherwise. But I don't see why he has retained such popularity among the hardcores.

Hase would drop to the lower reaches of the top 100. Koshinaka would fall out entirely. Hash might jump up a few spots but probably not into the top 15. Hash is one of my very favorite wrestlers -- love everything from his entrance music to his incredible ability to up the intensity of a match when he took a hot tag or started a comeback. Dylan described it well; he just had that rare ability to change the tone of a match without doing anything overly showy. I do associate him with Tenryu in that respect, and not surprisingly, they were great against each other. I'd still rate him below Misawa and Kawada, because their best stuff was the best wrestling there ever was. I'd rate him above Kobashi, because I prefer the short, hot matches at which he excelled to Kobashi's more epic stuff. But if we're talking longer singles matches, Kobashi blew him away. Hash matches started to drag if he went too much past 20 minutes. Him vs. Choshu is interesting, because Choshu is his spiritual godfather. I'd probably take Hash by a nose because he worked a little harder.

It was striking how immediately this established the difference between a Tenryu-centric promotion and All-Japan. It wasn't built around escalating offense so much as escalating nastiness. Certainly worked for me.

I hadn't seen this in a long time, but watching it in context put over how spectacular a spotfest it really was. I always think of the Fantastics as a lesser Rock n' Roll Express on some level. But the R n' R s could not have pulled off this match.

I liked the same stuff about this as you -- the start with the guitar, Rayo's headbutts, Caras' reluctance to give up his mask. But it struck me as a letdown overall for a big mascara contra mascara. Not enough blood or desperation.

He's the best overall WWF worker from the yearbooks that have been released so far, though he wasn't necessarily the best in any given six-month stretch you might spotlight. It's certainly to his credit that he could have a very good match with 1-2-3 Kid as easily as he could with Diesel, with Bob Backlund as easily as he could with Steve Austin. And those matches weren't all the same, despite Bret always feeling fairly similar as a performer. I guess my biggest complaint about Bret, the one that would keep him out of the upper ranks of my GOAT list, is that his performances rarely got past feeling calculated. He just didn't cross over to that place where he seemed like a guy fighting for his life and his honor (which is funny, because he took his character seriously enough that he actually was kind of fighting for his honor). Maybe he reached that place in the Austin match from Mania? I haven't watched it in a long time, so I'm not sure.

Tim, this ended up bumming me out, because several of the matches you praised aren't on the set, and now I feel like I have to get the Ginnetty set.

It's much better than the June match, more coherent and as Ditch said, better at establishing Misawa as a guy who could go toe-to-toe with a heavyweight instead of having to wrestle as an opportunistic cruiserweight. The June match had the "holy shit" ending, but this one featured better performances from both guys.

I liked the obit but god, that retelling of the history of Strikeforce was the WON at its most agonizing.

Watching Dibiase in AJPW does him no favors. He's solid but looks very much like a B+ guy when he's in the same match as Hansen.

I look at it both ways at different times. Matches are very important to me, and when I go through a yearbook, for example, I'm always comparing them in my mind. I identify more with the way you think about wrestling than with someone like MattD, who writes intelligent, enjoyable posts but doesn't seem to prize transcendent matches. I would never advocate someone as GOAT if he didn't have a long list of matches that really excited me. That said, I'm very attached to certain wrestlers -- Hansen, Choshu, Tenryu, etc. -- and prone to give them the benefit of the doubt in matches that might bug me if other workers were involved.

I think of a technician as someone with an above-average assortment of moves that he executes very well. That isn't Shawn Michaels, who was all about bumping and charisma. If Shawn Michaels is a technical wrestler, that illustrates the absurdity of the term. And no, I don't think of Dibiase as a technician either, though his offense was better executed and more painful looking than Shawn's.

This is an aside, but how the fuck are we talking about Shawn Michaels as a technical wrestler? Even the best version of Shawn had a notably limited repertoire.

LeBron James gave Flair a shoutout as a godfather of "swag" after Flair attended the Heat-Bobcats game Wednesday.

Now those are two guys I don't link in my mind, even though I like them both.

1. El Dandy - I have loved him ever since Will's set came out however many years ago. But I've been going through the 1990 yearbook, which features an absolute prime Dandy. And I look forward to every match that pops up, singles, tag or trios. I don't know that I've ever seen a guy move more fluidly between all types of wrestling -- from matwork to brawling to flying to comedy. 2. Bobby Eaton - Another 1990 yearbook choice. He started the year with a rare but awesome singles performance against Flair. And he's been the best performer on the best tag team in the world as the MX close out their run with a superb string of matches. 3. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi - As I watch the '90s generation of All-Japan take center stage, no one puts a bigger grin on my face. Kikuchi vs. Jumbo is one of my favorite six-man pairings of all-time, and he was also sensational in his 7/12/90 singles challenge against Fuchi. 4. Ikeda vs. Ishikawa - A bit of a cheat here, but a couple months back, I decided to watch every match-up between them that I have on tape (singles, tag and multi-man). And boy did that make for a fun couple of weeks of late-night viewing. I've had this conversation with Phil before, but I wish these guys lived in the U.S. and spoke English, because I'd love to write a profile about them as two guys wedded throughout their adult lives by low-rent violence. Are they like the kind of brothers who only see each other a few times a year but share a connection that can't be understood by anyone else? I want to know. 5. Riki Choshu - Because as a rule, I'm always going to enjoy a match with Choshu more than I would've enjoyed it without him.

Abby was better because there was no double cross to his act. He presented himself as a lunatic fat guy who was turned on by violence and would cut your ass up with a fork. And that's exactly what he delivered night after night for decades. Brody's act, by contrast, was a total gyp, as others have described in the thread.