Childs

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.

The yards and the touchdowns are the matches and they're the main reasons he's regarded as great. The way he threw the ball is the skill but if it didn't lead to the yards and touchdowns, he'd be Jeff George. So actually, Dan Marino is the ultimate great match quarterback.

Clive is my first man down.

Yeah, my army is still 100 strong. Though I'm sure I just jinxed some poor bastard.

Five favorite guys who've gone down so far: Carl Greco, Katsumi Usuda, Espanto Jr., Kantaro Hoshino, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka.

Poor Killer Kahn should have had 40 great matches instead of four if he wanted to make the top 100.

That helps me see your angle on it. Bret had the perfect array of offense--not too wide, not too narrow and all well-executed. Whereas Kobashi could be accused of doing too much. I don't agree with it, but I get it.

That's probably the best assessment. Number of great matches being weighted so heavily bugged me a lot, especially if it was more important than how someone performs. Some people were just in positions to have a TON of great matches and to have those seen by a lot of people. Others did not. The folks who didn't get those chances aren't necessarily worse than those who did. Being in position means they still have to take advantage of that opportunity. And doing so may very well be why they're so often put in such a position. True. However looking at someone like Bret who constantly had to face pirates, dentists, clowns and everybody else and compare that to Kobashi who got to face Misawa, Kawada, Taue, etc.. There is no way Bret would ever be able to equal that many great matches in that situation. Does that mean Kobashi is automatically better? He may be better, but there is more to it than that. Bret had a ton of disadvantages with respect to his opposition. The house style is also not to be discounted. If you dropped Fujinami or Hashimoto Baba's world rather than Inoki's its possible we may view their careers very differently. I also have no idea how one would begin to argue Bret over Kobashi unless you're adamant that the end product really doesn't matter and are only evaluating the ingredients someone brings to the table. If the performances are consistently that excellent then at some point the output should reflect it. May, if, coulda, woulda, shoulda We don't use GWE to re-write history. Skill vs Output. Some value one more than the other. I happen to think that Kobashi laps Bret in both fields, but can understand someone arguing for Bret's skills. There are undoubtedly merits to discussing both, but arguing Bret over Kobashi on the basis of skill reads like like judging a chef based upon on the grocery list rather than the meal. If a given wrestler is that much more highly skilled than another, shouldn't be be able to utilize those skills to put together a pretty impressive resume of big matches? Parv made the points about the various skills, roles and finishes on Kobashi's resume that lap Bret's. I don't see a compelling argument for Bret in any of those departments, but let's say someone does. I'm struggling to see where checking those boxes in isolation overcomes the actual matches that result from those tools. Its not like we're working with a small sample of footage from either and being forced to extrapolate from there as though there's a great unknown about what they could do on a given day, which understandably lends itself to a much more open question. Its all on tape and we've seen it. It has to be more than just applying a handicap for their respective opposition. I've watched a ton of Bret Hart and a ton of Kenta Kobashi. Bret Hart is a better pro wrestler. I'd take Bret almost all single metric, except fire, charisma and excitement. Does Kobashi have more great matches? Yes. You really think Bret had better offense? I can't even fathom that as a position, and I think Bret had very good offense. But I'm firmly with Parv on this one--Kobashi eats Bret's lunch in every aspect of pro wrestling that I care about.

If you want to experience it as we did, start at 10 pm tonight and listen right on through 'til Tuesday morning. Maybe the last part will sound coherent if you do it that way

I don't think he voted.

I actually liked the middle of Ricochet-Ospreay, when Ricochet was being a dick and roughing him up a bit, more than the finishing stretch, which felt like straight cotton candy. Good athletic showcase overall, but I also preferred ZSJ-Ospreay.