Childs

I mean, no one thought of Fujiwara as an all-time great worker before the film review for the DVDVR set. These reappraisals just happen sometimes. You get a few influential voices touting the body of work. You get a spark like Kingston's move to AEW, which exposed him to a wider audience. Boom, there you go. With Styles, it was pretty simple. He went to New Japan and then WWE.

The Segunda Caida love for Kingston is not new. The discussion on him hadn't kicked up in 2016, but Phil and Eric have been beating that drum for at least three years. I do think there are great Kingston performances going back a long way, to that cage match against Ian Rotten in IWA-MS and his long feud with Hero. I understand why he doesn't come across to some folks, but he's put together an impressive, unusual career. As for Homicide, he has no shot to make my list, but he was on the short list of 2000s indy stars who carried a special aura. I remember the air in the room changing when his music hit. That's something.

This is the least surprising news ever, but what a depressingly shitty company.

I was watching Dynamite with my 11-year-old (a casual fan) last night, and his reaction to the ad was: "Why the hell did anybody think that was a good idea?"

Got you. I voted for Tamura as well, even though Han was such a unique, fully formed worker from his first match on. Tamura hit higher peaks and hit them more often in RINGS, and I like the fact that he had to make his way in UWFI before he ever got there. Han just doesn't have anything like the Vader match in his career. I have Tabe's excellent career comps for both, and I'm more apt to throw on the Tamura discs. I see him in the 15-30 range with Han more like 40-50. I guess I hold it against them slightly that they were specialists; otherwise, Tamura would be a No. 1 contender. But I love the style, so it's not much of a knock.

What makes you say Han is regarded as the face of RINGS? Not saying you're wrong; I've just never thought of anyone other than Maeda as the man for that designation.

With the caveat that I have not watched this stuff for several years, I thought Pillman was better in the pre-Blondes period. Dangerous Alliance Austin struck me as a guy with a lot of tools who was still figuring out how to put everything together, whereas I thought babyface Pillman might have been the best worker in the U.S. for a brief period. I'd have to dig back in to defend that position in any detail, but when I watched all the '91 and '92 stuff on the yearbooks, that was my impression.

This feels overly negative based on what we saw last night. That match was designed to be a reintroduction, not a classic. Punk grounding Darby made psychological sense, and when it was time for them to pick it up in the stretch, he looked fine. He needs to knock off a little ring rust, but it would be a surprise if that wasn't the case, no? The guy was never a freak athlete. AEW needs some change of pace, and we know Punk can build a feud and think his way through a big match. He seems genuinely enthusiastic about doing just that with all these guys he's never wrestled. I don't know; I just didn't see anything that would cause me to write him off.

They basically had to hit a home run to meet expectations, and they hit a home run. Tip of the cap.

Man, they're keeping their foot on the accelerator with Moxley-Suzuki and Dustin-Black teed up for Wednesday.

They worked that just about perfectly.

Dave said they could go to midnight.

Yeah, I watched that. Thought it was clearly better than the title change but still more a fine performance than a standout one from Onita.

Just watched two of their matches from 1982, including Onita's title win from Crockett, and thought they were pretty good but mostly as showcases for Chavo. Onita came off as a guy who was stealing wins from a superior wrestler and not doing it in particularly charismatic fashion. He wasn't terrible or anything; I just didn't see any real hints of the wrestler he would become.

The bottom line is that they never, never bought into him as their top guy. An elite hand who could be thrown into a main event whenever? Sure. But never a made guy, not even after the all-time Wrestlemania moment.

I don't remember there being a lot. I know we put the match in which he blew out his knee on as an extra. I looked back and there was a tag match with him and Steamboat nominated, but not with a lot of enthusiasm. Actually, I went back and looked, and there were some Onita singles on the G+ Classics discs we reviewed. I didn't like them much at the time and particularly didn't like his work. Not sure if I'd feel differently now.

He still knows what to do, but the body has no snap left.

I mean good lord, I'm not looking to agree with Vince, but who could blame him for taking one look at this guy and thinking geek squad?

I haven't watched NXT much this year, but calling Kross "monstrous" when we just watched WALTER two matches ago is laughable.

I happened to watch Onita and Aoyagi from 1989 FMW today and it was a great reminder of how quickly Onita mastered being a dirtbag superstar. Just nuclear heat. He did not need the death match trappings, even though he would go on to make very good use of them.

Great post. If we could generate similar breakdowns for a lot of the candidates, that would be a terrific legacy for this run of GWE.

The Santana series from 1984 and 1985 is some of the best WWF stuff ever. His matches against Flair from Mid-Atlantic were quite good as were some of his battles with Wahoo McDaniel and Dick Slater. He's got the Garvin slugfests from late in his WWF run. There's a cage match against Carlos Colon from Puerto Rico. For anyone interested in more detailed Valentine talk, this thread is for you:

I would not say that about Hansen. The 1991-1994 run might have been the best of his career, so it seems ridiculous to say it wasn't his prime, even if it wasn't his physical peak. Would we say 1989 wasn't in Flair's prime because he was a better athlete in 1984? It seems like a useless semantical rabbit hole to go down.

I have a difficult time evaluating Cesaro, because I haven't been a week-to-week WWE watcher in a long time. I have a broad sense that he's elevated a lot of crap material, but I don't have a good idea how much or what that means. He's a great physical talent and never bad, but I remember people calling him the best in the world around 2014/2015, and I don't know why. I'm not even saying he wasn't; I just don't have a distinct image of him or the company from that time. Hero has meant more to me at all points of their respective careers, even as a guy pulling interesting matches out of a dead-end run in NXT UK. His 2016 was an indy monument and will carry more weight with me than anything Cesaro has done. I wouldn't describe Hero as consistent, exactly, but he's always found his way back to relevance. I find his spotty journey more interesting than the rock-solid resume Cesaro has built in a company I don't care about. That doesn't seem like the fairest way to compare gifted contemporaries, but I'm not sure how to get away from it.

Santana was certainly better in the WWF.