Childs

I ended up looking at it as two different questions as well. I'll vote Fujiwara highest in GWE because his pro-style work was terrific. He was, at worst, the third best guy in '80s New Japan, with classic performances against Choshu, Inoki and in several multi-man matches. He had his pro-style moments in the '90s as well. Given that his best shootstyle performances were on the same level as those of Han and Tamura, the extra shadings in his resume put him over the top. But the question of best shootstylist is more difficult. Fujiwara was a founding father and maybe the founding father in terms of developing the best elements of the style. Han really pushed the form forward with his stylistic flair. Tamura synthesized some of the best elements of the other masters, pushed them to turbo with his unmatched motor and produced the highest sustained peak. Fujiwara was the best seller/defender. Han produced the most exquisite moments. Tamura was the most impressive athlete. Right now, I'd rank them Tamura, Fujiwara, Han. But my order might be different if you asked me in a month.

I've been thinking more about Loss' question of whether we should reward Toyota for her boldness in forging a style that distinguished her. It really is a fascinating question in any realm of artistic judgment. My wife and I have watched Project Runway and Top Chef at various points, and on those shows, you'll often see the judges reward sheer creative audacity instead of the chef whose food tastes the best or the designer whose clothes a non-model might actually want to wear. I believe it's important to reward creative audacity. It's part of how we move forward as a species. But when I pull that question back to one of personal choice, I would still struggle to call something the greatest if the food doesn't taste good.

OJ (and anyone else), if you were doing a mini-ranking of Fujiwara, Tamura and Han, how would you have them?

I hear you. Do you feel like the Suzuki invasion has worked? Based on the handful of shows I've seen and stuff I've heard from modern puro mavens like Alan, my impression is that it's been kind of meh. But it's not like I want that to be the case. I hoped this would be a great run that would add to Suzuki's stature.

Maybe I'm wrong about the heat. I'd have to rewatch. I also preferred the Takayama match; haven't watched the Taniguchi. You make an interesting point about him playing to the audience, though really, is the taste of the NOAH crowd that different from the NJ crowd? I honestly don't know the answer at this point. Buf I'm sorry, if that involves a talent like Suzuki giving in to a meathead like Sugiura, it isn't going to help on my GOAT ballot.

To each his own but I thought it was straight up boring. Guys who are having a "fight" don't eat shots with no attempt to defend for 20 minutes. That's faux macho horseshit that has become a plague on modern Japanese wrestling. If it was so stirring, why was there zero heat? As I said, I often love Suzuki. But that struck me as a lowest-common-denominator performance by him.

Suzuki is one of my favorites on the current Japanese scene, but he has done himself no favors with his NOAH run this year. Despite the invasion angle, his big matches have felt curiously heatless. And I actively disliked his recent GHC defense against Sugiura, which was built around endless, mindless strike exchanges.

They didn't exactly cut his legs out, but they did a poor job of following up his Dome win. The guy was their hottest star and he had exactly one significant match, against DDP, between his title win and his title loss. And even that wasn't treated as the main event. So yes, they tried to make him look like a big star in the summer, but then he just dangled. This was a fairly striking thing as I rewatched all of it on the '98 yearbook.

I agree about Night 1 but thought Night 2 was a big improvement and a legit excellent show.

I don't think that's what it means to most people here, but it's admittedly become a muddled term.

I found the Sombra mask match really flat for most of its duration. Sure you're going to have emotion when a big star loses his mask. And the last few minutes at least mostly lived up to the moment. But I didn't feel much intensity from the work in the first 2 1/2 falls. I guess I just struggle with the lack of grit in the modern mask matches.

For Buddy Rose, try: vs. Lonnie Mayne 10/1/77 vs. Adrian Adonis 9/8/79 vs. Rick Martel, any of their 1980 matches w. Wiskowski vs. Piper/Martel 8/2/80 vs. Matt Borne 6/12/82 vs. Backlund 8/30/82 vs. Curt Henning 5/28/83 w. Henning vs. Assassin/Dynamite Kid 9/3/83 I assume you've seen the tags vs. the Rockers. As Matt said, the real joy with Buddy is watching him come up with clever shit week after week as he carries Portland TV.

You mean Oct.? God, if you hated him in that one, don't watch the Feb. match.

Andre working comedy spots with Hoshino in a tag match was one of my (many) favorite things from the NJ set. I came away from that project believing Andre was a legitimately great, versatile wrestler. Nothing I've seen since has dissuaded that view.

Has anyone anywhere said this is what we're going on?

Which match are we talking about? The earlier 1990 one or the later? I thought Takada was a lot better in the second one.

It was an excellent post, and Toyota is one of the ultimate tests of that tension you've described between personal preference and some kind of objective greatness. I could not imagine holding greater admiration for a wrestler I loathe watching most of the time. Her passion was off the charts as was her pure athletic engine. She was key to matches many people rate among the greatest of all time. It's a hell of a resume. I think OJ has said there's essentially very little difference between Toyota and Kobashi. And I can see that; I really can. But for me, Kobashi walks right up to the line of doing too much and doesn't cross it in most of his big matches (well, he did more in NOAH). I respond to the greater impact of his offense and to his greater emphasis on selling. Toyota just loses me by pushing, pushing, pushing, to the point where she, more than anyone, turned me off to some of the most acclaimed matches in history. She inspires a unique combination of awe and dread. Given that, I can't bring myself to vote for her. But I'm not entirely sure I'm right about that. Along those lines, I'd be interested to hear what Dylan plans to do with Jumbo, whom he respects as a great wrestler but does not enjoy. What do you do do with that kind of candidate? it's one of the more interesting questions of the project.

Also, I think it's possible Parv's Flair idolatry has finally pushed him to seek the No. 1 heel spot. Next thing we know, he's going to try to buy the belt from El-P😄 (And I lose points for mixing my "it's all an angle" metaphors.)

To answer Parv's question to me: no, I don't think that if we convened a council of elders there would be vast disagreement on criteria. And yes, your criteria would be in the mix. But, and this is the key for me, there would be vast disagreement about how those criteria apply to the cases for individual wrestlers. Edit: I should add that there would also be a fair bit of disagreement about how to weight various criteria.

What you don't seem to grasp is that your definition of greatness as it applies to this project is as defined by personal taste as anyone else's. You're still essentially sniping rather than articulating a better approach.

I actually just finished an Akiyama-Omori match from 6/15/14 that was excellent. Jun in particular looked like he's still right up there with the best in the world.

Part of the problem is no one seems to cover it, so it's hard to get a handle on what to seek out. If someone could do an Akiyama list from the last four years, that'd be grand for GWE purposes. I recently watched a Carnival match between him and Suzuki that was good but no better than the sum of the parts.

I think that was my statement, Matt, and I meant it in the fairly narrow sense that those who launched the project don't want people to feel self-conscious about voting. Obviously, there is a greater, unsettled debate about methodology and meaning.

This feels like an all -emcompassing statement that doesn't quite sit right with me. On the confines of we all know what we are doing do you mean, each person has a criteria they have formulated as to how they are voting, or do you mean collectively, we all know what the purpose of the process is. If it is the latter, I would strongly disagree. If it is the former, that is one of the other fundamental issues I have had increasingly over the length of the project. Will's criteria has been publicly stated that his 100 guys has been mapped out more or less and it will take a LOT for someone to enter that. Granted, Will has watched a lot of wrestling but I disagree with this notion and the fact that he is fine just hand waving eras like joshi that he doesn't find entertaining on a personal level. Furthermore, someone can lambast myself for relying on great match theory as a metric I will use when compiling my list. The crux comes in what can be criticized and what can't. The Everyone should turn in a ballot notion is a good one and does create an all inclusive atmosphere. Yet, the next reply after this from El-P talks about people watching matches. I haven't seen anyone do an analysis of Rude's 1992 to see where it holds up. The only evidence we have in this thread is Dylan talking about the WCW he participated in. How much are we relying on fuzzy memories. This is a prickly path though because you get into the area of what will then be the arbitrary cut off of when I feel confident rating someone based on footage I have seen 5-10 years ago. This does create anguish for me that I can't get past. Chad, you just did a podcast in which you listed your top 100 matches of all time. It wasn't meant to be your definitive list until the end of days, and you made that clear upfront. But you obviously put real thought into it, and a lot of people on here enjoyed it. How's this any different? Why the anguish?

Not looking for a long debate because you've ably articulated your stance here and elsewhere. But this thing is, by necessity, both a serious effort that many people will have devoted 18 months to and a snapshot. In that sense, it's not much different than the AFI films list or the Pitchfork songs of the '80s list or whichever example you want to pull. I admire your standards, but I believe they're impossible to meet, because the target will always keep moving and growing. So I choose not to let perfect be the enemy of good.