Childs

Evolve might be my favorite promotion in the world, but the presentation of 58 was total amateur hour. Not just the technical difficulties; the card was poorly designed with two confusing finishes to kick it off. I'm still looking forward to catching up on the rest of the WWN weekend, but it was a bummer to turn to that after watching NXT.

The more the rest of you reveal, the more convinced I am that my list is the best list 😎

As others have stated elsewhere, the demise of the DVDVR board as we knew it was a huge factor in the '80s project losing momentum. I don't know if we can recapture that. Hope so.

On my ballot, it's the former Soviet Union.

And without the entire country of Japan getting in the way, he had plenty of room to soar.

I think I might be high voter on Naoki Sano and maybe Steve Grey, depending on where Tim Cooke put him.

I don't think it's exactly master vs. a student, though. It's more the most skilled guy in the promotion dealing with the new stud coming in from another league. I see what you're saying, because Han definitely felt like the older, more established worker in the pairing. But teacher vs. student, to me, implies a more personal relationship than those two had.

I tried to strike a balance between understanding every wrestler's objective case and paying tribute to what excites me as a fan. If you follow your bliss too purely, you end up with an amorphous ball of gloop. If you try too hard to squeeze out personal taste, you're not acting as a good critic. When I see lists, I want to know what excites the lister. BTW, I don't see Parv leaning nearly as far to one side as some might perceive. His BIGLAV ratings are built on mounds of personal opinions, as I'm sure he'd be the first to say. But I respect his attempts to follow consistent criteria and to give objective credit for length of peak, numbers of great rivalries, etc. Personally, I wouldn't rate someone I loathe as he did with Inoki. But I don't think his fundamental approach was that different from mine or lots of others.

BTW, Bryan finished No. 117 in 2006. Top vote was 15 from Ditch.

How does it cut that out?

The problem with post-comeback Shawn was that he was presented as an all-time great and carried himself as such, but his actual wrestling looked like shit. I realize that's not a problem for a lot of people, and more power to y'all. But it bothers me every time I watch one of his later-period epics.

I wonder if, with so many people voting who did not participate heavily in the discussion threads, we're in for some big surprises with the results?

I'm in.

I'm watching him and Ron Starr right now. Also great. I guess the difference between Invader and Dundee is just that I've seen more shades of Dundee--studio and arena, face and heel, brawling and a little more technical. That's not to say Invader lacks those shades. I'll watch some tag matches next.

Invader is one of the last guys I'm watching as I finalize my ballot and man, what a brawler he was. He had this incredible way of staggering around under the other guy's attack and then lunging forward with a punch or headbutt (or kick to the nuts) at exactly the right moment. He just had the crowd on a hook. I want to vote for him, but I'm not sure I have a good enough grip on his case to justify it. The Embry and Al Perez matches sure have me on a high at the moment.

I was surprised how much trouble I had coming up with 25 tag teams I wanted to vote for.

Death matches stopped being his bread and butter around 2005. So yeah, he has a significant body of work outside that realm.

He also had a terrific match with Sami Callihan in IWA-MS in 2008.

Also worth noting that as we were watching footage and voting for the DVDVR set, the response to Hamada's New Japan work was widely positive. At the time, I thought he looked sensational in that Tiger Mask match.

I popped when I heard where Tim has Nishimura. I also appreciate his broad-based optimism that virtually everyone you guys talk about will appear in the upper reaches of someone's list. I don't know that he's right, but it speaks to a good nature.

Came across this quote from Ditch's interview with Ishikawa a few years back. Not a reason to vote for him exactly but it doesn't hurt: Q: Why do you and Ikeda hit each other harder than any other wrestlers hit each other? A: Because we are not hitting each other, we are hitting the fucking stupid people in the world who think that pro-wrestling is fake like a trained monkey show. They say that pro wrestling kicks are fake so it is not painful. etc. Once they see our fight, they have nothing to say. They watch our fight like a fool with their mouth open with surprise. So our violent fight is not only for our opponents but for the fucking people that make light of BATTLARTS. Our fight is anger towards people who make light of us.

I don't know that any of these lists will inspire me to change my rankings, but they sure have inspired me to pull out my Bat-Bat/PWFG/Futen discs, and that in and of itself is a lovely thing.

There can't be more than 10 people on the planet who'd list Caro as a favorite author and Devil Wears Prada as a favorite film. Big ups on that juxtaposition.

This is a good breakdown of the issue from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-stakes-in-hulk-hogans-gawker-lawsuit As someone who is a reporter but doesn't have much sympathy for either party involved, I'm torn on this one. I do think celebrities try to have it both ways--capitalizing on gossip and then screaming privacy when it suits them.

I found trashier Liz attractive. Not sure what that says about me.