Childs

I'm not clear how he broke down doors. Did he do anything that Bret or Shawn or Benoit or Eddie or Angle didn't do? I don't think Jericho was awful by any means, and Loss' arguments for him ring true to me intellectually. But I have never felt swept away by a Jericho match. Well, maybe the Rey matches, but almost never. I'm always very aware with him that I'm watching a guy giving a wrestling performance. His obsession with counters is part of that as is the disconnect between his ambition and his athleticism. I'd make some of the same criticisms about Punk, but Punk had more great matches.

Hogan represents the wholesome, moralistic, respectable facade of the 80s. Flair represents the sleazy, money hungry, decadent truth. The beauty (well, horror) of Hogan is that he represented the truth and the lies of the Reagan era in one outsized package.

The one key difference between him and Undertaker is that he got himself massively over in both AWA and Japan, before the Vince production machine really kicked in.

Don't let your sons grow up to start Ric Flair threads.

Wish Tajiri had held on past a few others, but that's a hell of a placement for him all in all.

Did we lose anything from having it be long? Voter turnout was high, interest never seemed to lag and people are having a blast with the rollout.

This was a good time for Doc to drop. He was my 100 but the criticisms for him are pretty similar to those for Rude.

And Mutoh

I'm having good luck with my vendettas today so Rude and Mutoh, I'm looking at you. Time to go. Love the Ravishing One but he's gone far enough on one great year and creating a miracle with Warrior. Mutoh's best is certainly GWE worthy but if you care about consistency at all, it's hard to think he should go any higher.

I've read Matt on Eadie many times but he pulled it all together for an impressive testimonial to his guy at the end of this show. Also thought Stacey delivered a smart defense of Jeff Hardy.

I haven't jumped into the Piper renaissance with two feet, despite having watched his Portland stuff. He was remarkably over, but I'm still not sure I've seen a ton of great wrestling performances from him, even in the land of Don Owen. The Valentine match endures as an incredible showing, and perhaps if I saw more of his Mid-Atlantic stuff, I'd turn the corner more decisively? I don't know. He was also pretty bad in his last WCW run--not just in the ring but as a guy who became tone deaf about how the crowd saw him. That doesn't matter too much, but it didn't leave a good taste.

Happy to be a minority voice with you here. You're not really a minority voice if he makes less than half of the ballots. I don't know too many people who had him in thier lists. I know of a couple. An interesting comparison would be Undertaker vs. Inoki. A shitload of matches.... a shitload of main event protection.... a handful of classics and a ton of crap. That's actually a great comparison, and Inoki was clearly better.

Is the battle to reorder AJPW consensus or to destroy the consensus that AJPW was the best wrestling ever?

This has been an awesome day in terms of eliminating wrestlers I didn't want to see go any higher.

I'm now picturing Garvin beating the holy hell out of Zayn in the GWE Invitational.

Colon hasn't been accused of killing anyone.

Garvin's rise from 237 to 90 seems to suggest all the advocacy has been effective. His placement is one of the happier results so far.

Scorp had a great '08 in general. At the time, I liked his matches with Callihan and Necro more than his Claudio match. Meanwhile, Generico needs to bite the dust. The idea that he could finish 20-25 spots higher than Ki and Hero irks me.

Well, you're not a math teacher.

I'm actually fine with Tanahashi making the top 100, though I didn't vote for him. He found himself as a worker before Nakamura did, and he's sort of the Japanese Cena in the sense that he's made it work as his country's No. 1 main eventer despite an uninspiring skill set.

Interesting that Nakamura finished below Tanahashi. I figured he'd do better given that he's beloved by modern New Japan fanboys and well regarded by a lot of the more frequent posters here. Fine spot for him though.

Those five hours felt like a breeze compared to Charles and I going Broadway. Seriously though, I enjoyed the show greatly. Your bottom 50s were both chock full of wrestlers I wished I could've voted for, and a lot of the discussions of individual guys echoed our conversations about the same workers. Hoping part 2 drops this week.

I'm glad you posted this, because it's something I was just looking at. Very interesting to see Triple H on this list as it puts to rest the notion that a lot of people held their noses and stuck him at the bottom. The people who voted for Hunter seem genuinely to like him, which is as it should be. I'm still a little surprised Hero didn't make more ballots--highly visible U.S. worker over a long period of time now. But I guess he also turns a lot of people off.

He's one where I'm just happy he got into the top 100. I think it's now clear that a lot of voters just never got to BattlArts, shootstyle, WOS, etc. So for those guys to make the list while only appearing on 1/3 or so of ballots feels like at least a modest victory.

Battlarts and Futen are very much hybrid shoot style promotions. Shoot style is their base but they incorporate pro style moves in more realistic ways. Ikeda specifically is known for being probably the stiffest worker ever. Battlearts reoccurred a lot on the lists of Childs, Chad and Charles, and clearly with him ranking #100 a lot of people are high on him, so I might watch some of this stuff when I start watching wrestling again. Your description and what I've heard sounds vaguely promising, and I'm wondering if it's more accessible than the dryer-than-paint-1990-UWF type stuff I tried to watch whenever it was or than Volk Han etc. It's more strike-based, more violent and yet goofier at times than a lot of the shootstyle you've sampled. So yes, I think you'd like it more.