Childs

It's true that presentation is important for everybody and they generally suck at building characters these days. That said, they've hung stupid losses and feuds on Lesnar as well and it's to his credit that he's retained his aura. Part of that is them letting him work a style no one else is allowed to work. But again, you could argue he made his own destiny on that front. I do think he's special in a way Ryback could not be, just as Austin was special in a way Kevin Nash could not be (not that Lesnar's level of stardom is more than a pimple on the ass of peak Austin).

Isn't this a settled issue? The overwhelming sentiment, on this thread and elsewhere, has been that everyone who's interested should vote. No one has even hinted at wanting some kind of wrestling literacy test to suppress participation. I don't see anyone pushing against the idea of the broadest snapshot possible (at least within the community of people who are insane enough to find this board in the first place). I still would like to see Loss, OJ and others swayed to vote, though I understand their reasons for abstaining.

I arbitrarily re-watched some Windham matches last night and this morning. Started with Battle of the Belts, which is one of Flair's greatest title defenses, and Barry's performance was every bit as good as Ric's. It was a showcase for how deep his bag of offense went, and how good his shit looked. Their 1/24/87 match holds a special place because it hooked me so profoundly when I was a kid. But this was pretty clearly a better match, with even the countout finish not coming off that shitty. Then I watched the sequence of matches that led to his heel turn in '88, and that was such a simple, perfect run of storytelling. Everyone played his part effectively, but Barry carried the thing by fitting so naturally on either side of the fence. I finished with the 6/6/92 match against Arn, which demonstrated how good Windham was with little touches on offense (like punching the arm he'd worked over even while Arn had him prone in a hold) and how effective he was selling selling limb work. Anyway, no deep thoughts here. Sometimes it's just fun to remind yourself how good a favorite wrestler was.

For Nishimura recs Parv, check out his MUGA matches with Fujinami and Hiro Saito from '06, his '04 G-1 match with Kanemoto and his '02 G-1 match with Takayama. I had all those in my top 35 for the Ditch project and they should leave you with a sense of whether you want to go further with him. He's a stock rising guy for me as well. I bought some All-Japan footage from the lost years of '08-'11, just to check out him and Minoru Suzuki. He's an interesting worker and an exciting counterpoint to a lot of the trends that swept Japanese wrestling over the last 15 years. .

Yeah, we had that conversation at the time, and in retrospect, I think we might have picked one or two too many (the Black Tiger one probably didn't need to make it, for example). But at the same time, I actually did end up enjoying a lot of the tags he was in, even if I didn't like his work in them. Anyway, I'd recommend you keep plugging away on New Japan. Business is about to pick up with the Fujinami-Choshu feud, which is essential viewing for GWE purposes. That probably remains my favorite '80s set for all its messy grandeur.

I don't think he believes he did little compared to those guys. He believes he did different things that they couldn't have done and made his own destiny. Now, I don't entirely agree with that. But I don't think his POV is insane either. His mentality just exists entirely outside the wrestling bubble.

I had a slightly different reaction. I don't find Brock particularly interesting or likable, but I do appreciate his bluntness in refusing to bow before the altar of wrestling. We talk about WWE choking itself with all this self-conscious shit fetishizing the Wrestlemania dream, and he's an antidote to that. I don't blame him for feeling he deserves what he's gotten, and I don't agree that he's worked less hard than his peers. By all accounts, he worked his ass off to become an elite athlete. He took the risk of walking away from big money and then earned himself an invitation to an NFL camp and a career in UFC. Those are things the other guys in the locker room simply could not do. He then leveraged his UFC achievement into his current status as a special attraction. Again, I say more power to him as a businessman. And he's a terrific performer to boot. I agree with Loss about the weird inconsistency/sloppiness in WWE's presentation of reality. But to me, it's great that Brock has gone at his career from a unique angle and made it work. Would it be better if he was another guy with huge potential who got ground up by the WWE machine?

I straight up disliked this, and I've watched it twice now. Felt like a training session more than a match. They're athletic guys no doubt but all their big spots seemed too cutesy by half. And there was nary a control section in sight. I'm just too cranky for this kind of wrestling these days. At least they didn't fall into the PWG trap of overstaying their welcome.

Isn't that basically what he did, only with a lot more excellent singles matches? I'd rate 2000s Rey as the great babyface of his generation. I mean, if you need your top-ranked guys to kick ass, so be it. But I'm not sure why you'd love Ricky Morton and have no use for Rey. He made the most of his tools.

I think the career argument is that being a great worker for a year does not carry the same weight as being a great worker for 10 years. That doesn't strike me as particularly connected to whatever El-P is saying about career narratives. I agree with you about Sakuraba's shoot career informing his recent NJPW run (in a good way) though he lacks either the peak greatness or the career weight to come anywhere near my 100. He's a rare case though. Tamura was a great pro wrestler before his shoots, and I don't see them shaping my view of him. I don't see Suzuki's Pancrase work having a huge impact on his latter-day style either, though I guess it adds to his aura as a dangerous guy. I'm a bit less clear on how he's viewed by the fans.

One of my favorite Loss theories is that Shamrock was meant to be "The Man" in one of the U.S. big two in some alternate reality. Anyhow, he wasn't far from a path that might have led to greatness as a wrestler. He possessed a lot of the elements. He just went a different way.

Have you watched his BOLA match with Hero yet? Probably not their best but very good, and Thatcher does make an effective counterpoint to some of the goofier PWG stuff.

I just rewatched the 1/19/95 Kawada-Kobashi, and I have to disagree strongly that they struggled to fill the hour or ran out of ideas. If you break the match into segments, each one had a distinct idea and purpose behind it, and the intensity built from one to the next. The first 15 minutes were slower, sure, but the test of strength was a classic All Japan opening gambit. And they used it to establish that Kobashi was more powerful straight up but Kawada would fight dirtier. The last 15 minutes, when they were allegedly out of ideas, featured both guys digging deep in their arsenals and hitting bombs they hadn't hit in the first 45 minutes. All while selling the hell out of their exhaustion. The crowd bit on every nearfall and gasped in appreciation whenever the match time was called. The fans loved the drama of Kobashi realizing he could no longer win and crawling along the ropes in a desperate attempt to survive. Then the bell rang as Kobashi struggled bitterly to block Kawada's elusive third power bomb. I'm not a big fan of hour draws in general and I'm not trying to argue this was the greatest All Japan match of the decade. But fuck, I'm not sure what else they could have done. I would list the performance as a solid mark in each man's favor, especially given that neither had worked this type of match before.

Yuck.

Misawa would be Yoda--green, supremely powerful, inscrutable.

The demise of DVDVR really took a lot of starch out of the '80s project in general and this set was a victim for sure.

Do you really need to star out Benoit's name? We're all adults here.

He had a G1 match with Nishimura from '01 that was on a Schneider Comp. It's interesting if you want to watch him work a fairly different style.

Versatility to me means the ability to work effectively in different roles and styles. For example, I would not call Vader a versatile wrestler. But I would say his style was incredibly durable in that he could jump between vastly different promotions and remain effective. I value both qualities for the purposes of GWE.

Casas is probably the one top-10 contender whom I "get" least. I want to see/hear a detailed case from one of his chief advocates so I can consider him from that POV. He'll be on my ballot because of the versatility, the charisma and the durability, but right now, he'd probably be in the lower half. So yeah, I voted for Satanico because his best stuff hits me as just blow-away great. I like him better than Casas as a brawler, a title-match worker and a character.

I don't know that I think of Jumbo-Baba or Jumbo-Tenryu as great tag teams, even though they were in a lot of great matches. I'm not sure either pairing featured chemistry that elevated the team beyond the sum of its parts. I'd say the same about Misawa and Kawada. Which is not to say Jumbo wasn't a great tag wrestler. He was, especially as he got older (and double especially if you consider his trios work). But I'd probably take Kawada in that comparison because he formed a great, lasting team with Taue and because he had a completely different run in a really good cruiserweight team. I'd also rate his very best tag performances--12/16/88, 12/3/93, 6/9/95--as better than Jumbo's very best. Choshu was a great tag wrestler. Eaton is probably my favorite of the Americans, though I can't believe no one has mentioned Ricky Morton.

I would be stunned if he finished below Guerrero, Benoit or Liger this time, and I don't see their cases as particularly linked to the same trends in thought that might or might not hurt Flair. From that list, only Hansen and Funk seem like solid bets to pass him, and I don't think that's a given in either case. My gut sense is he'll finish higher this time, not lower.