Childs

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.

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?