Childs

The Destroyer might be the great wrestler I missed the train on more than any other. He was good. I understand, intellectually, what others are pointing to when they praise him lavishly. But he has never moved me in the least.

To me, he's only more input than output if you define output by classics. I can spend a week watching nothing but Barry Windham matches from 1986 to 1993 and have myself a damn good time.

Tenryu did not become a great wrestler until he was almost 40 and still had a long peak as a great wrestler. I will never not think that's wild.

Yeah, my big takeaway in considering Ohtani five years ago was that he consistently looked good as a heavyweight, which made him more than just a high-peak candidate. He's added more good matches in the time since, so I'm confident he'll find his way to the middle of my ballot. I'm not sure he's a guy I need to spend a lot of time revisiting, unless some particularly interesting strain of debate arises.

I also ranked Henning in 2016, and I think I made the mistake of crediting him for what he could have been more than what he was. I loved him as a young babyface in Portland and as a budding top guy in AWA, but when you try to identify his peak, there's not a lot of meat on the bone compared to so many of the other wrestlers we're talking about.

Cool, thanks.

I think you're right about both of them falling. It doesn't feel like the winds are blowing toward lots of in-depth discussion on Mid-South and Crockett, but we'll see. Five years is a long time. Dibiase received a lot of focus last go-round, because Parv was a loud advocate.

If you read back in this thread, you'll find two whole pages on Dibiase vs. Windham.

Have you done one of your (most helpful, excellent) lists on Wrestle Yume Factory? That's a promotion I know nothing about.

I'm with you. In retrospect, he's one of the few candidates I feel like I put on because I was supposed to. There are at least 30-40 wrestlers I didn't rank whom I find far more interesting than Ted.

I formed my opinion of Inoki watching him week to week as we went through all the '80s New Japan footage. With another five years of perspective, I can say that was not the best way to judge a guy who excelled in big matches and peaked in the '70s. So one of my little sub-projects this time around is to look at Inoki with fresh eyes, and there is a very good chance he'll make my list. The inconsistency will probably keep him out of the top half, but he did a lot of things that I value highly. I just watched the aforementioned Oki match for the first time in awhile; there's this incredible visual moment when Inoki is staring defiantly at Oki after taking a string of headbutts, and the blood starts slowly trickling down from his hairline. From there, the crowd is ravenous for his comeback, which arrives swiftly and violently. You have to respect a guy who can create that kind of drama in a wrestling match.

As someone who jumps in to watch the big shows and acclaimed matches but doesn't hang on the booking week to week, I've been surprised at the level of distress I've heard from NJPW superfans in recent months. I don't have a horse in it really, and from my limited perspective, they've still hit a few peaks this year. So I didn't recognize the bloom coming off to the degree it has.

I think we're overstating the degree to which his ROH run was comprised of lengthy epics. Outside of his 15 months with the title, when Gabe was booking him to wrestle that way, he rarely went longer than 30 minutes. Even during 2006, which was the peak of it, he wrestled nine singles matches that went 30+ (per Cagematch), which is a lot but not crazy. I haven't revisited those matches in awhile, so I'm not sure how they hold up, but I suspect based on memory that at least half of them are excellent. Then you look at 2007 after he came back from the injury and he was clearly working a more streamlined style. I don't know; I just don't view it as any kind of smudge on his career.

Did you feel that way about the Choshu matches? Those always struck me as the epitome of struggle.

I don't think I had ever watched that tag before, and it was great fun. It was more of a showcase for pissed off young Jumbo and even for Kim Duk than it was for Oki, but you sure get the sense that he understood how to be at the the heart of some mayhem.

She made my list the last time and I can't see her falling off. She's a worker I've always latched onto easily, even when I don't love the match or the promotion around her. I think that speaks to a lot of the qualities others listed above. I always feel like I know who Masami is supposed to be in a given match. She also has some classics to her name, though I'm not the most qualified to list them.

I've bided my time, reading the Kingston reviews by my Segunda Caida buddies and waiting to dive deep. Well, no moment like the present. Watched his cage match with Ian Rotten from IAW-MS last night and what a grimy bit of madness that was. The commitment to close-quarters brawling and deranged verbal selling - aided by the tightest single-shot filming imaginable - was impressive. This was Ian's playground, obviously, but a young Kingston had no problem thriving in it. Also watched a 2006 CZW tag in which he ate a king-sized ass kicking from Necro and Super Dragon with aplomb. So we're off to a good start.

Ki is another guy who does well by the random match theory approach. He has not had long, consistent runs, but he's wrestled all over and rarely been boring. Sure, he's a self-defeating nut job, but he made my list in 2016 and he'll make it again in 2026.

He would be a great one for the random match generator. It's abhorrent that he's rotting as a spare part in Gedo's current booking hell.

Spice in some juniors Fujinami and I think you've got it.

What you won't get from watching Hash is a good grip on the '80s NJPW or on the juniors scene, which was more essential to the overall mix than it was in AJPW.

To bounce off this point, you can't go wrong with a deep dive on the NJ/WAR feud, and the '91 G1 ruled.

I don't think I buy that as a particular criticism of Flair. You could find thousands of good and great matches in which the first 5-10 minutes are loosely connected, at best, to the ultimate narrative. Time killing was a big part of the main-event formula in so many territories; at least Flair generally kept it moving. We, as an inherently nerdy community, fetishize wrestlers who put a lot of obvious thought into their work. Some people - the Nature Boy is a perfect nickname, isn't it - don't need to do that to be great.

His hit rate was lower in his second run, no question. I'm not a fan of the "straight to finishers" formula he leaned on in the last few years or Vince's booking of him as a brand-choking champion. That said, I've never agreed with Matt's blanket assessment of his later period. He wrestled actual matches - with peril and selling and character beats - against Punk, Bryan, Styles, Reigns, Cena, Balor, Taker and perhaps a few others I'm forgetting. They were splendid in the moment and have held up for me on rewatch. I'm still going to give him credit as a great special attraction (imagine what a roving monster he would have made in the territory days) when I consider his case.

I like 100 because it allows you to cover a lot of bases but still forces you to make hard choices. I think lists of 20 or 30 would, in practice, lead to a boring project.