Childs

Poor Yamazaki plummeted. I blame Loss!

Is jackwebb setting us up for a Scott Hall No. 1 vote? GWE you are a wacky mistress.

I don't think you can ask people to unsee whatever live shows they've attended. It's not as if we all have equal access to recorded footage either. You just can't let go of your utopian dreams

There's no way in hell anyone would make my top 10 off three matches. The Jerry West quote was about Kobe as a prospect worth drafting. He wasn't saying he'd put him in the HOF off those 15 minutes. Jack Brisco was the guy I rated highest off the least and even there, we have complete versions of classic matches from his prime. Alan Sarjeant was probably the guy I came closest to ranking off fewer than 10 matches, and I ultimately couldn't do it and really didn't come close. Not bagging on those who look at the issue differently. But I tried to be careful with the limited footage guys, I guess in part because I know of so many workers who could be judged as spectacular based on the right selection of matches.

God I forgot about Brody. That's dispiriting.

Because it's fun to overreact.

I don't know whether to be happy Rollins fell here or angry that he beat any of my guys.

Would you guys be interested in reading a feature story on Rush? Thinking about pitching one, given that he's local.

Hmm, I could see that being really great or kind of boring. But probably great given Bock's willingness to go hard on the mat.

And Steven, you made me sad by reminding me Scott Hall is standing with all these favorites falling. A day of bloody injustice on the fields of GWE.

Shit, Nishimura is the first one that stings a bit. The chunk of time I spent exploring him was one of my favorite mini-quests of this project. I'm not sure I can make a great body-of-work argument for him to go much higher. He's more of a uniqueness candidate. But I'll always carry the torch for that dude.

My sense is that even without the Brody stuff, not many people have seen enough Puerto Rico for him to do much better than he did. As you know, I only sneaked him on at the end, and I love the guy. I'm intrigued to find out where you had him.

Nigel has a decent case to make a ballot based on peak. Chad is right about his 2007. He's just faded from the collective consciousness compared to his peers, I suppose largely because most of them have continued working at a high level. I didn't rank Aries but would also have put him above Nigel.

Lost Anjoh and Invader I in the lunchtime wave and was the low vote on each. I should've done more for you, men. Chris Adams is an interesting case because he hit some great highs against workers I never had much use for such as Terry Taylor. But then he'd pop up in the British stuff or in Portland and make less of an impression. I'm not down on him so much as I don't really have a coherent view of him

The one moment of despair for me came when our phone connection went dead halfway through me talking about Hashimoto at No. 10. I remember looking at the clock and the early rays of sunlight creeping through my basement windows and thinking "Why have we done this to ourselves?" But then I think we rallied reasonably well for the rest of the top 10.

I think people always viewed Scott as the worker in the team, Poppa Pump or no. edit: beaten to the punch

That's an interesting point and I hadn't thought about it exactly that way, but you're probably right.

And, I'm sure, once the results have come out, there'll be some kind of King James Version of the list; which takes account only of ballots submitted by the more trusted board members. I actually doubt that such a thing will exist, but a million-billion points to you for calling it the King James version. Still the best version of the Bible, even if it's wildly inaccurate.

One thing I want to do coming out of this project is watch more Kana and recent Satomura. I popped in their 2010 match a few weeks ago and found it exceptional. Mando's Booker T pick shows he can overrate a mainstream guy as readily as an indie guy. So give the man credit; he can't be pigeonholed.

So are we back to thinking he was carried by Rick Rude etc? http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21083-certifiable-carry-jobs/?p=5565510 One of jdw's more famous beatdowns of jvk. When did Goldberg have any performances along the lines of Warrior vs. Rude or vs. Savage? Didn't he just work squashes to hide his limiations? Like, do you think the average Goldberg squash is better than something like Warrior vs. HTM IC title win? He was good in the Rude match but that was a giant anomaly, which is why we talk about it so much. And yes, Goldberg worked squashes to hide his limitations. But to answer your question, I'd much rather watch a two-hour disc of Goldberg squashes than Warrior-HTM or almost any random Warrior match. I think Warrior was pretty terrible--neither intuitive in the ring nor a good enough athlete to compensate (a la Scott Steiner). When I watched the Hogan match on the yearbook, for example, it felt like a total Hogan carry job. It affirmed Hulk's view that Warrior wouldn't hold up as champion. And lord knows I hate agreeing with Hogan.

My favorite Ernie Ladd thing was when he showed up for a street fight in Mid-South looking like he was dressed for a night on the town. Cool MF indeed. As for Goldberg, I'd take him over Warrior any day. He looked like a high-impact athlete (which he was, of course). Warrior was a stiff.

I don't care about guys working safe. To me, that's an issue between workers and has little to do with my experience as a viewer. I completely understand why it's relevant to wrestlers when they talk about who's good, and I find that kind of analysis interesting in its own way. It's just not something I thought about for one second in the context of this project.

The latest run has included a bunch of guys I don't even think are good. Happy that they're falling here, I guess.

Generally, I agree with Steven that sports make for a bad comparison, because output really is more important than input when comparing athletes. That's less true when you're talking about an aesthetic medium, though I still think great input only goes so far without leading to great output. We don't talk about people who write great sentences. We talk about people who write great stories and books that are, ideally, full of great sentences.

It isn't and yet most people come back to Gretzky because of that crushing output. It's why he's the standard, even though Bobby Orr or Mario Lemieux might have been more beautiful to watch.