Childs

The problem is it wasn't just 2000s Mutoh. Even for a lot of what should have been his peak, he mixed a lot of lazy garbage with the cookies.

I assume a lot of people also won't rank British guys aside from Regal, Finlay and Robinson.

Flair earned his opportunities and then he made the most of them. Simple.

Honestly, there's less in-depth discussion of lucha in general than there is of American or Japanese wrestling. This board and others have helped combat that but it's still reality. I don't think blanket positivity is the problem. Sure, you're going to get some lucha boosterism because those who love it feel they have to overcome those who say they can't get into it. But that's pretty understandable. Guys like Matt, OJ, etc certainly aren't writing about it uncritically.

Exactly. Yatsu actually never felt as important in New Japan as he would in All Japan, though his talent was apparent. There are some nifty Choshu tags to look forward to late in the decade. I bet you'll enjoy '87-'89 Masa Saito.

Your criticisms of Choshu are the ones I'd make if I was picking him apart and yet, when I'm watching him, I just don't care. Part of it is that he excelled at the struggle over simple moves, which as you said, isn't your thing. Part of it is that he rarely overplayed his hand by going long (the Jumbo match was an obvious and tedious exception). I don't know; he's maybe the ultimate greater than the sum of his parts guy. But don't expect a big change in the way he works. He really set his template with the Fujinami series, though I suppose he went more lariat-heavy later. I currently have him No. 21.

Eclipsing the entire country of Japan.

Anything and everything with Ikeda on the other side is a good place to start. He's all over Loss' top 100 rankings from '96 to '99 so they're great resources for dates. After that, look for the Murakami match from 11/26/00, the Ikeda singles from '05 and the 7/26/08 6-man. Edit: also the '08 match with Greco Tim mentioned above for a pure mat showcase.

I have him at 47 though I don't think he was ever best in the world. Maybe briefly during his last run when the worlwide quality was suspect. Anyhow, if he had a 10-year run the quality of his best years, he'd be top 20.

Any day with Chris Colt is better than a day without Chris Colt. He singlehandedly kept alive my interest in the late '80s Portland undercard. Just a glorious grandma-insulting sleazebag.

I watched the main event and will watch the Ospreay match. Anything else I should catch from the show? I generally can't bring myself to sit through three hours of RevPro.

I'm 39 and I know Phil is about the same.

How will we live in a world where fresh-faced aliens have replaced the Godfather with One Punch Man and are awarding a cosmos worth of stars to "inauthentic" wrestlers? Sure signs that the long dirt nap awaits us soon.

You could convince me Undertale is almost anything.

Good piece Bix. Also, just a plain odd story.

That's an equation most of us could probably support, but there's so much damn gray area in the particulars

Not my argument. However saying that Vader is working harder is silly. OK, I get that.

I care about the wrestler's individual performance and the quality of the resulting match. How they got there before walking to the ring matters little to me. I know it matters a lot to the wrestlers themselves, and it's interesting to hear them talk about it. But it's basically a fool's errand to try and figure out who deserves what portion of credit for the layout of a match.If a guy consistently wrestled well-constructed matches throughout his career, that's important. I just don't care if he did it because he was a planner or because he was an improvisational wizard.

I've found this thread consistently baffling, but it seems that some of the problem is people falling back on the term workrate when it would be better just to describe, specifically, why one worker is better than another. Vader was better than John Tenta because his power moves appeared more impactful, because he used movement to generate more excitement in his matches, because he hit harder, because all of that added up to give him an aura or presence Tenta never carried, because he used his tools to have many, many more great matches. Do we really need a catch-all term for that? Also, forgive me if I'm misreading, but I get the sense some people are suggesting Tenta could be on the same level as Vader because he maximized his innate tools as much as Vader maximized his innate tools. If that is the argument, I'm sorry, it strikes me as bonkers. Talent obviously isn't the be-all and end-all, but it does matter. If you give me a choice between a 95-percent performance from Tenta and a 95-percent performance from Vader, I'm going to take Vader every time because he was better at almost every aspect of pro wrestling. His input was better and his output was better. If that means I'm penalizing Tenta for not being able to do what Vader did, well, yeah, I am.

This is not said with any malice at all, but that's by far the weirdest fucking list I've seen for this project. Kudos.

Honestly I just haven't seen enough of them. The yearbooks offered a taste but I'm not sure I came away with a clear grip on each guy's case. Maybe if I went back and watched the Espectrito matches in a focused fasion?

I'd probably appreciate Atlantis more if I made a concerted effort to look at his work in trios over the years. He's been a tecnico glue guy in so many and that might be his best calling card, even if he's more famous for his run of recent apuestas matches. But I haven't really done that, so to me, he's a technically skilled worker with tremendous longevity who has rarely blown my hair back in singles matches. I don't blame Atlantis for my qualms with the recent mask matches; I just have trouble getting into them because of the lack of blood and grit. The Ultimo Guerrero and Sombra matches would probably be significant feathers in his cap for some voters. For me, they mostly just help his longevity case. Did you see the Silver Fox match that dropped last week? Was that out there previously? I haven't seen anyone talk about it. It's not a blow-away match by any means, but if you haven't seen it, you should. I haven't, but I'll check it out.

On the Navarro/Solar point, I've always responded more strongly to Navarro because I like him better as a brawler. He threw some of the best punches in wrestling and came off as a tough son of a bitch on top of being a mat maestro. OJ's point about his earlier work being more questionable than Terry's is probably a fair one. I perhaps give Navarro an instinctive pass, because he was part of a famous trio. But the reality is he has never looked like an all-timer in the Misioneros footage that has surfaced. I'm probably ranking others based on less impressive peaks than Terry's IWRG run, so my gut tells me I need to find a place for him.

I'd probably appreciate Atlantis more if I made a concerted effort to look at his work in trios over the years. He's been a tecnico glue guy in so many and that might be his best calling card, even if he's more famous for his run of recent apuestas matches. But I haven't really done that, so to me, he's a technically skilled worker with tremendous longevity who has rarely blown my hair back in singles matches. I don't blame Atlantis for my qualms with the recent mask matches; I just have trouble getting into them because of the lack of blood and grit. The Ultimo Guerrero and Sombra matches would probably be significant feathers in his cap for some voters. For me, they mostly just help his longevity case.

Yeah, on Maron, he talked about getting tight with Nash. Maron seemed surprised he didn't run into any homophobia, but Mould said Nash and Co. were always cool on that front.