Childs

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.

I watched the Hayes match after listening to Matt's podcast with Jimmy and what tremendous fun it was. Veidor delivered a world-class portrayal of rising frustration, and the finish, executed just when a disqualification seemed imminent, was thrilling. Veidor, Roach and Roberts are in a whole different class than most of the wrestlers falling around them in the poll. Makes me wish that I had voted for more of them, not that it would have made much difference.

I cannot watch that match without falling asleep. I don't know if it's great or not, because I've never seen more than 15 minutes of it.

Some poster should join the board as "Insane Anon."

I thought Ian would do a little better than that, though I never really considered him.

If you're suggesting Kobashi had no personality and wasn't clearly a babyface, that's just crazy. It's hard to imagine a wrestler who worked in bigger, brighter strokes.

I do find that I watch Lucha with essentially a different brain. I choose not to get hung up on structural shit that would drive me nuts in a U.S. match. But I adjust my mindset for lots of different styles. I don't judge a shootstyle match in the same way I would a Crockett match from 1986 or either in the same way I would a British match from 1975. I can't imagine watching wrestling with a universal set of expectations. I think I'd enjoy a lot of stuff a lot less. But there are styles that I just can't vibe with--Dragon Gate, a lot of main event Joshi from the '90s. It happens.

I don't think people are scared to speak up about not vibing with lucha. It's been a constant discussion point throughout this process. Have people really called you an idiot for not getting into it? Maybe a few, but that hasn't struck me as the dominant tone. OJ has certainly been a constructive conversation partner for you on the subject. As far as substantive debate, at some point you either accept the rhythm and peculiarities of Lucha or you don't. If you watch classic examples of the style and they don't hit your wrestling sweet spot, no amount of arguing is going to change that. Just like I'm not going to talk you into loving Choshu-Fujinami. You saw what I see in that series--the intensity and struggle over basic moves. But it didn't speak to you the way it does to me. So be it.

I think there will be more. I have 2 British guys in my top 13 and they're not any of the above names. It's not Rocco either who I'm guessing is going to make the list as well. I agree that we'll see some high average votes. I just wonder if, as OJ suggested, they'll be diluted by the sheer volume.

I worry about the placements of the British workers, because they just don't seem likely to appear on the majority of ballots. I expect Breaks to make the top 100, but I'm not confident about any of the others (not talking Regal, Finlay or Robinson). I thought hard about Roberts. He would have made my 150 easily.

Not a fan of that news.

Hero delivered a masterful performance in the ZSJ match. I loved the way he controlled the pace, and the moves he hit in the finishing sequence were just sick. The crowd didn't seem ready for the match to end when it did but goddamn that was emphatic. I might like this chunky indie boss phase more than any other period of his career. Sabre was also good in the match. At this point, I like him better working as an underdog than as an even-steven technical master.

I don't think the booking is bad, but I don't get the sense they have a consistent audience, which hurts the heat when they try to run angles. At the height of Gabe's ROH, you always got the sense fans were locked into the product, whether through live attendance or buying DVDs. So if they started an angle in Philly, they could pick it up two weeks later in Chicago without a massive disconnect. Evolve doesn't run as often, and the fans in Florida don't necessarily seem to pick up where the fans in New York left off. There's a band of hardcores like us, watching a bunch of the shows VOD, but that audience isn't necessarily represented at the live events. I'm thinking about something like the Caleb Konley challenge to Thatcher, which they built to for months but which seemed to go over like a wet fart in the building. There wasn't anything wrong with the storyline. Something like that probably would have generated real heat in Gabe's ROH. But with Evolve, if fans aren't into the match in front of them, the storyline doesn't seem to matter much.

Go back to setting up your work camps.

Why would you conflate the issue of awful out of ring actions with people talking about what a shitty wrestler Joey Ryan is? No one is upset on a world travesty scale. So why cast it as if it's any more than a wrestling argument?

Silver King and Cruz beat Andre the Giant, Greg Valentine, Tito Santana, Yuki Ishikawa, Ron Garvin and Buddy Rose among others in 2006.