Childs

Couldn't agree more with Loss--Punk's career was a massive success relative to his tools and background. He overcame all sorts of deep WWE biases relating to look, indy origins, etc. to become one of the top few guys in the company. And he paved the way for others from the indy boom to take over much of the roster. Was he a star on the level of Austin, Rock or Cena? No. But for a physically awkward dude who got off on playing iconoclast, he did a hell of a lot in Vinceland. I can't imagine any sane person thinking in 2005 that he'd do better than he ended up doing.

The thing is, they're not entirely wrong. More than any company in the history of the business, they have created an economic model that works even when the product is cold. So I get why it's a seductive lie.

Vince and Co. are idiots to make an issue of it.

Well, Akiyama was arguably the best worker in Japan in the aughts so yeah, relevant to his case.

Does Hero's work in the ROH-CZW feud count? Necro probably did some stuff to add to his case. Maybe Super Dragon?

Not disagreeing with your point about WWE, but the NFL is not the right counterexample. Of the major American sports, it's the least star-dependent. If anything, I think Vince could look to the NFL as a shining example of how to create financial security by emphasizing the product over the people who make it. Because fans eat up football no matter who's playing. (Don't get me wrong, stars help. They always help. But the NFL sees them as largely expendable.) The NBA is the ultimate star league.

The workers have learned to do it that way, whether the fans would demand it or not. WWE is now relying heavily on stars from the aughts indy boom, many of whom had beaten their bodies to hell before they ever signed. On top of that, they all learned to push the physical limits of their performances, which they continue to do even when they're hurting. It's not a culture that originated in WWE, but it's one WWE is now firmly a part of. Obviously, there were guys who fit a similar description in previous generations, like Eddy and Benoit, and they also got hurt.

Finally caught Ospreay-Scurll and liked it a good bit. Ospreay did a bunch of spectacular stuff but the match was also well-paced with a genuine face-heel dynamic. The finishing stretch went a beat or two longer than I would've liked. But on the scale of big indy showcases, it wasn't wildly excessive.

I don't think PWG has to be an all-or-nothing thing, as some have suggested. I get plenty annoyed with the overdone matches that last 10 minutes too long and the hyper self-conscious crowd, but I find myself drawn back to the promotion regardless. Bottom line is they book a lot of wrestlers I like, and those guys obviously get up to work in such a charged environment. So there's plenty to enjoy even if it's hard to sit through a whole show. I also like Excalibur on commentary for reasons I can't logically explain.

It doesn't feel like a mystery though. They work a more physically demanding style than previous generations, and in the case of the indy stars, they've been doing it for a decade or more. Sure, the lifting programs might be part of it, but I don't buy that as a magic bullet. The problem is it wouldn't be easy to turn the boat around. Fans expect a certain level of work now, and several generations of wrestlers have come up with that as the ideal. Not suggesting they should just throw up their hands, but it's a deep-seeded issue.

Can't speak for others but I'm not down on Jumbo at all. Have him No. 6 right now. And my comment wasn't particular to Kawada. I consider the difference between him, Misawa and Kobashi to be almost purely a matter of taste. I just think it's worth keeping in mind that you have ground yet to cover with the '90s crew as opposed to Jumbo. I actually think Kobashi is the wrestler whose standing might change the most, for better or worse, based on stuff you haven't yet watched. You mentioned no one outstripping Misawa on great matches. But Kobashi might have him beat.

Parv, I don't mean this in an insulting way because you're still working your way through. But you have a more complete understanding of Jumbo's career than you do for the '90s guys. So I'm not sure the comparisons you're making are really one for one.

I was thinking about who's been best in this role (talking WWF/E). Benoit?

Yeah, he annoys me, but I can't deny that he contributed significantly to a large number of matches I love. Like Shawn Michaels, he was not on my knee-jerk, first-draft list. But when I really thought about it, I decided I was being unfair to him.

Which Japanese wrestler will you rank highest? Kawada Which Japanese wrestlers do you expect to make your list? Kawada, Tenryu, Kobashi, Jumbo, Misawa, Fujinami, Hashimoto, Fujiwara, Liger, Choshu, Taue, Akiyama, Tamura, Sano, Ishikawa, Kansai, Baba, Maeda, Takayama, Ohtani, Kong, Togo, Fuchi, Ikeda, Otsuka, Hase, Nishimura, Suzuki, Kikuchi, Yamazaki, Saito, Nakano, Nakamura, Tajiri, Takada, Masami, Hokuto, Anjoh, Onita. Who was the best of the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s to come out of Japan? 70s - I like Baba's best matches the best. Fujinami would be the answer for the end of the decade. Jumbo probably has the most good matches on tape. Tight race. Can I answer Billy Robinson? 80s - Fujinami 90s - Kawada 00s - Akiyama though Kobashi and Takayama hit higher peaks 10s - Nakamura Who was your favorite Ace? Favorite? Hash. Best? Misawa. Who was your favorite top challenger? Kawada by a hair over late '80s Tenryu. Who was your favorite under the radar guy? Sano if he fits the category. Who was the best at their peak? Misawa Who has disappointed you the most? In the course of this project, no one. In the course of my overall exploration of Japanese wrestling, probably Inoki or Mutoh.

Because he's not very good?

Why spout the tired WWE mentality that everything needs to be fixed upon arrival? AJ is a great wrestler who has gotten himself over in many contexts. If they give him a decent push, he'll get over again.

Nah, I still say she's full of shit. She's acting like anyone who has prior knowledge of the subject should be penalized or handicapped for knowing that stuff. If you're well aware that William Wallace died long years before Isabella Of France ever stepped foot on English soil (as many people would be perfectly aware), then it seriously harms their ability to take Braveheart seriously. And that's directly the fault of the filmmakers who decided to tell a story which they knew was simply not true. Like, if someone happens to make a movie which is set in your hometown and then they proceed to completely fuck up the geography and have characters teleporting from one side of town to the other, that's not your fault for knowing that Alpha Street is nowhere near Omega Avenue when the protagonist steps from one to the other in the blink of an edit. That's on the filmmakers for assuming everyone in their audience is completely ignorant, especially since everyone who was on the set knows that those two streets don't touch. Or if a character whips out a revolver with a silencer on it and the gunshots proceed to make that cat-sneeze "thewp" sound effect, it's on the filmmakers for assuming that the audience knows so little about guns that they aren't aware that this is impossible (especially since on set they would've heard the loud BANG that the gun still makes). No film exists in a vacuum. Every viewer brings their own baggage. And if something in the film is so factually inaccurate that it sets off a viewer's bullshit alarm, that's the film's fault, not the audience's. Choosing to ignore the real facts of any situation is a voluntary creative choice on the part of the artists, and EVERY creative choice should be fair game for criticism. So every movie based in and around Washington D.C. should have an extended traffic scene? Or is it OK for an FBI agent to go from Quantico to Langley like it's right around the corner? I know that isn't real, but I also know it doesn't make any real difference in the movie. So if a movie is perfect in every way except that the characters aren't true to their real life counterparts, you think you should judge the movie negatively because of it? For clarity my paper was based on this exact notion, and I fully understand why I had to rewrite it. In Invincible the main character went to Eagles camp and his coach Dick Vermeil was a hard ass. Dick Vermeil is essentially the least hard ass football coach of all time, and it took me out of the movie. Here's the thing, if Vermeil would have been the loving, blubbering, sensitive coach that he was in real life, that movie wouldn't have been any better than what it was. It was something I noticed, but wouldn't have really improved the movie in any meaningful way. It still would have been an overwhelmingly average movie. It is 100% irrelevant to the quality of the movie. The fact that it they wrote the coach as a hard ass when I know he wasn't has more to do with me than the movie. I wasn't supposed to be writing about me, I was supposed to be writing about the movie. Bringing up something that really doesn't matter to anyone but me is not what I was assigned to do. So, what? You're supposed to pretend you're some kind of weird objectivity alien everytime you watch anything? I've increasingly come to think that's nonsense. Sure, it's valuable to understand what art is going for and what it achieves on its own terms. But why deny your own point of view as part of the critical process? As long as you understand and acknowledge what you're bringing to it, why not embrace your honest reaction to what the artist has presented?

Evolve is really rolling along--one of the few promotions where I generally enjoy most of what's on the card. Watched 53 last night and it would have been a fun show even without the MOTYC btwn Hero/End and Sabre/Sami. I loved that match. They didn't quite nail a few of the more complicated timing spots, but everyone was good, and Hero delivered a boss performance that would've made Misawa proud.

I have him as #8. Me too. Great minds As for the Steamboat comparison, Fujinami didn't milk sympathy like Ricky as that wasn't really something a top Japanese guy would build his style on. But in spirit, I can see it.

I have Kansai, Kong, Nakano, Masami and Hokuto. No Jaguar Yokota for you, Loss?

Do you have a sense of how many Joshi workers you'll rank? I have five in my 100 right now. But I think you're right that Joshi will be boom or bust on a lot of ballots.

I would have no problem with Kimura getting on to some lists, but he did benefit from a bit of selection bias with the DVDVR set. I agree his best performances were some of the best on the set, but I also waded through an awful lot of bland Kimura. Part of the reason his '87 matches against Fujinami felt like such a revelation is that he'd spent a long time as the vanilla junior partner. That's not entirely fair; he delivered some top-notch performances before that. But as much as I came away thinking Kimura was a pleasant surprise from the project, he wasn't solid gold for the whole decade.

There's been talk about how Breaks might be the only British wrestler a lot of people rank. And I get that; he was both a terrific hold-for-hold worker and a memorable character. But I wanted to bump this in hopes that some folks give Grey a late look. His career was so well-documented on television compared to a lot of the other British greats, and he was consistently excellent, really one of the top pure babyfaces I've seen. He's in my top 30 at the moment.

I'm not sure he needed a lot of overt character work. His character was that he was a great, classy wrestler who'd give a hell of an effort in any situation. And the fans loved him for it.