Childs

Remember the talk about them wanting Fastlane to feel like a really big show?

Not sure why the Wyatts lost the match, but it was pretty damn good.

I still need to watch the Tanahashi match. I thought his match with Speedball from PWG was a lot of fun. I'm guessing it could be picked apart some on a second watch, but they worked the right match for that setting.

Naylor seems to think he's the best wrestler in the world. I've always thought of him as a goof. A talented goof, but a goof nonetheless. I could see him finding the right formula and having a very good career. But for a list like this now? I don't see any real qualifications.

I think the idea is that if you like them both enough to list them, Phil would like to know which you like better. I'm going Necro. Dragon can't quite match his resume of indy dream matches that actually lived up to the hype. And Necro was also a compelling death match worker, of which there aren't many. Right now, Super Dragon is in my first 10 or 15 out,

No, it's not a big gap, and if Kobashi's qualities speak to you more powerfully, that should absolutely be reflected in your system. I have Kobashi No. 4 and Misawa No. 7 on my working list.

I agree, and I guess the problem I'm having with this question is that none of the guys discussed in the thread strike me as one-dimensional. I don't think of the Eaton-Morton comparison in these terms at all. I do think it's a valid point to say we sometimes overrate performers with one exceptional skill. This has been a big issue in valuing baseball players over the years. But for the purposes of this poll, I'm not sure I see that happening a lot. I don't think we'll see a lot of people rating Volk Han above Terry Funk. If the question is: Will I rate a Volk Han over a Chris Jericho? Then the answer is absolutely.

You're ignoring the six years Misawa spent under the mask and the fact if took him more than two years after he beat Jumbo to win the Triple Crown. He had to climb the mountain too. Once he became the ace, he owned the role. It's lame to write that off as a mere product of booking, because when you watch the matches, you can see how brilliant he was at portraying the peerless leader. None of that takes away from the many remarkable gifts Kobashi brought to the table. But, getting back to the original issue, I find it odd that anyone would place Kobashi well ahead of Misawa on intangibles. Kobashi strikes me as one of the most "tangible" great wrestlers in history.

If I can't have my full collection of wrestling, let the sea take me!

Top five for me.

​But can't you say the exact same thing with the roles reversed for 03-05 NOAH Sure, I would just say that Misawa's run on top was longer. Kobashi brought incredible charisma, no doubt. But I'd argue Misawa brought as much, just of a different and subtler sort. In fact, he'd be the definition of a great intangible wrestler for me, because he was so effective at projecting himself as ace without a lot of obvious emoting.

I have no problem with anyone ranking Kobashi above Misawa. I might do so myself. But how did he have better intangibles when Misawa was the unquestioned ace and top draw of the same hot promotion in which Kobashi was a star?

I'm sure Mookie can include stuff like that in a deeper dive stats report, if he's willing. But there needs to be one overall list. We all understand style biases are baked into it--comes with the territory.

Do you have Necro in the same neighborhood or well above?

I like the idea of hearing podcasts from different little clusters of voters. I'm not sure there needs to be one "command central" show.

Blasphemy.

That's interesting. I don't necessarily see a huge gap between my No. 1 and my No. 13 or whatever, and I'm not sure I'd want my top couple of votes to carry exponential weight. But if that's out of step with the way most people see it, that's fine. I guess a weighted system makes it harder for wrestlers to dominate just by appearing on every ballot.

I'm no expert on this, but why does it need to be weighted? When I think about my own ballot, I don't think of the top three or ten as some roped off area.

I've watched a bunch of British stuff over the past week and I've decided to rank Myers. His best work pops off the screen to a greater extent than a lot of guys I'll have above him on the list. Just a sensational athlete, and when he was paired with another sensational athlete such as Grey or Sarjeant, magic happened. He also seemed to take a real delight in wrestling, and I find that infectious. I agree with OJ that his Iron Fist stuff generally wasn't as good as his earlier work, but even that I find more endearing than not.

The little stretch between Summerslam and Survivor Series was strong, and obviously, Survivor Series was a huge moment (though that ended up being more about Vince than about Shawn). But they didn't put an effective focus on Bret vs. Shawn from Dec. 96-Aug. 97, even though it was simmering in the background. Shawn hardly wrestled in that stretch, and his role was in transition. Bret-Austin was more compelling both week to week and in terms of the payoff matches. Honestly, what I liked best about WWE in that run was the way all the main event storylines overlapped.

Is Styles not on the show?

Whatever you want to call it, it's a bit overblown in the WWE version of history. Bret vs. Austin was a longer, more sustained, hotter feud/rivalry.

But there's always been a place for that kind of flashy babyface. I'm pretty mixed on Ospreay; he really needs to be in there with the right guy. But he's very young, and I do think he could become a star.

GOTNW inspired me to do a little run through my stack of Zero-One shows (which was a gloriously weird promotion for a few years while Hash was still alive) and I basically have to agree with him that heavyweight Ohtani was pretty damn good. He still had cool offense, still projected a ton of personality into his matches and adjusted well to a wide variety of opponents. He's hurt by the fact Z-1 was an underwatched promotion and by the fact his good matches weren't epics like his classics against Liger and Sammy. But he sure didn't fall off a cliff.

The first name I thought of was your guy Hashimoto. Think if you were some kind of scout and watched Hash and Mutoh work out side by side in 1985. Would you have fathomed that Hash would evolve into the far greater worker? Now, in hindsight, you can break Hash down and say his charisma and ability to construct a match were as much tools as Mutoh's fast-twitch athleticism. But they're less obvious tools.