Exposer

I will say that I've seen a couple of good Fuji performances. The guy was a great heel. I'm not too terribly interested in watching late 70s-early 80s undercard matches, but I can't bury Fuji too much. I do like the guy he's just never jumped out at me as someone who's elite.

Bryan is someone who would make me feel ashamed if I left him off my ballot but I have no clue where to place him at this point. I've only seen a small snapshot of his Indie glory years and I thought he had down years in 2010-2011. He was excellent in 2012 and amazing in 2013 which of course helps his case. I liked the little bit he worked in both 2014-2015 as well. I've seen the Morishima match which is awesome, the London match from 03, a Styles match, a Claudio match, and a Nigel match. I've seen basically nothing else from his run prior to WWE. The main issue is tracking those matches down isn't as simple as it should be so I'm kind of not interested in doing searches outside of Google, YouTube, and Dailymotion. He needs to make my list because I think he's great. I just need to find the meat in order to figure out where.

I remember a guy who worked in the dying days of WCW working Ambulance matches then jobbing on Velocity two years later only to show up one other time in an awesome nostalgia match with Masato Tanaka at ECW One Night Stand. To be fair, I've seen a couple of his FMW matches which were entertaining to good, but he's not going to make my list. I suppose I could track down the Tanaka classics from 99 for shits and giggles, but otherwise I can't find a place for him. He was a pretty one dimensional worker who wasn't even the best at his style.

I hate this guy. Once upon a time I loved him then the last two years happened. He's turned into a Shawn Michaels tribute worker with goofy selling and over the top bumps that are even worse than Shawn's. I use to love his bumping style, but then it became his only strength and I realized he has no offense that resonates with me. He sucks. I enjoyed him working matches around sleepers against Kane and Khali in 09 and that great Del Rio match from Payback 2013. Otherwise, he's just a poor man's Shawn Michaels and to me that's no good. Fucking superkicks.

I love 90s Backlund A LOT. I don't know how well it helps him yet because there's some 70s and 80s stuff that I haven't even touched yet. I watched the entire Adonis feud once which was pretty good and I liked the Orton matches too. None of them blew me away though. I do agree that Bob takes a lot of his matches during that period and never looks back though. There are some mid-80s tags where he annoys me with that shtick especially with guys like Murdoch with their own frustrating shtick. Those Bret matches are incredible though. Crazy Backlund is tremendous. I just don't know if the 70s-80s stuff can put him on my ballot. He has a lot irritations that I struggle to look past.

Inoki won't make my ballot. I think he's had a few top 100 level performances in his career, but they're muddled in average or poor performances. I thought I was going to die watching his matches with Brody. He also went a half hour or something with Andre which annoyed the hell out of me. He's definitely one of my least favorite top stars of a promotion. I will give him credit for great performances in the UWF feud including some stellar matches with Fujiwara, but his negatives feel like they consume his positives for me.

When I was a kid I always had the impression Muta was this great legend. Watching old 89 NWA footage where "the Japanese attacked Ric Flair" at GAB made me believe that. With that aura that I believed, I also assumed he was a great worker. I hadn't seen anything though. After seeing some of his work over the years it just doesn't seem likely at all that he'll make my ballot. He's still fun in 89, but not really close to great. I like him alright on the 80s NJ set when he shows up, but he's so unpolished and lesser than everyone else that it doesn't mean much. I've barely scraped his 90s stuff aside from the 90 Hase match. That IS a GREAT match to be fair. Although, I remember liking Hase in it just as much if not more. I might take a surface glance at some of his 90s-00s work, but he never has fit the bill of a great wrestler to me. Fun at times, inadequate at others. I can appreciate someone who sells a kid's punch (that's Muta right), but not enough that jumps out as much as top 100 level output.

It's probably consistency more than anything else. Anytime he was on TV, he was still pretty great. The Tyson Kidd tag team had a great six month run with several really good tags with New Day, the Usos, and others. He has a match with Sin Cara from Feb 2015 that is incredible. It's on Main Event. He also had the two really great Cena US Title matches. Otherwise, he just had solid outings in pretty much everything else he was in. He'd probably make the back half of my top 10 from 2015.

Ambrose is a good tag worker. Like Sleeze said, he's good working in peril and selling. His offense is pretty bad though. He also is typically a boring singles worker. And the rebound lariat is awful. He does have a couple of great TV matches with Rollins, but otherwise he's left a lot to be desired as a singles worker. I can't say he's even a top 15 worker in WWE today. Cesaro, Cena, Harper, Sasha, Bayley, Brock, Reigns, Sheamus, Big E, Rusev, Owens, Asuka, Becky, Emma, Joe, Zayn, Goldust, and Titus are better in my opinion.

I couldn't find him in the index so I assume he hasn't been nominated, but Chavo Guerrero Jr. should be. I won't vote for him, but he's not an awful candidate to land on the bottom of some ballots here. I'm inclined to believe there are a few here who might vote for him. Of course, I have no clue if there's any reviews on him here.

Nah, Trips is too much of a coward to do anything that blatant.

Great show guys! When's the next Wrestling Culture? Hoping for some interesting episodes in 2016.

I've finally categorized my priorities after 17 months of thinking instead of watching. I say that of course after watching a ton of 80s NJ, 90s AJ, Lucha, and random stuff spread out over 17 months. I weeded out the nominees who are guarantees, undecided, and out of contention. To sum it up, I have about 300 nominees either guaranteed, worth looking at, or who I've never seen before. The other 200 I've essentially eliminated with the exception of a select few who I might give one last chance. This helps in that now I don't have to worry about figuring out who I should or shouldn't watch. I've narrowed it down for simplicity. Has anyone else done something along these lines? How far along is everyone? How many of the 500 are left standing as guarantees, still worth watching, or in contention?

Just keep Chekhov's gun in mind so I don't have to pan it. That's a lot of posts to wade through in order to meet that standard.

The war of subjectivity vs objectivity in wrestling viewing continues. I might write a play compiled of all the posts on this argument here over the years.

I think HHH will win. Brock will be eliminated by his WM opponent late. Roman-HHH for the title at Mania. Fastlane won't have a title match this year.

If Jericho returns I'm guessing he goes into a program with Ambrose. That would be my guess based off the Night of Champions tag post-match.

I agree with this statement but my question is, how does a guy like Jake that doesn't have the high-end stuff fall below guys that only have like twelve matches total that anyone has seen? Guys like Pat O'Connor are going to be on lists and how much of his stuff is even on film? Someone watches five matches on YouTube and suddenly he's top 100 all-time but then guys like Jake & Barbarian get totally disregarded. Definitely some different criteria among all of us for what constitutes inclusion in the list. Which isn't even a negative as I like that the lists will be so different from one another. A part of it has to do with time and trying to watch just enough for everybody. Five matches might be enough for one person, maybe not for others. There's also the added factor of the best of some people with limited footage only being available while the routine matches of Jake and the Barbarian are available everywhere under the sun. I understand the frustration with that, but that's how it goes I guess.

Thanks Matt. I forgot about that feed. I'll check it out tonight.

I'm lost a little bit. In August I put together a rough draft. I looked at it the other day and decided it no longer exists as far as I'm concerned. I've enjoyed the 10 minutes or less compilation cheapshot put up. It's helped some. I'm almost done with it. I have no clue where I'm going from this point forward though. Is there any way for someone to put together a list of 25-50 random matches in a YouTube comp once a month until the deadline? Maybe add a few more introducing whomever like cheapshot has done? I love watching my wrestling in that fashion and prefer not to know what the next match is instead of trying to pick what I want to watch in a project like this which is nearly impossible.

Best Realistic Scenario going forward: Brock wins the Rumble and we get Brock-Roman II at Mania. Worst Realistic Scenario going forward: HHH wins the Rumble and we get HHH-Roman at Mania.

Reigns vs Sheamus (TLC WWE Title) - Great match. Both guys brought their A game. I didn't think the interference hurt it at all. The closing angle was great, brilliant, and terrible all in one. It worked, but will now result in Reigns-HHH. Fuck that.

Charlotte vs Paige (Divas Title) - This wasn't good either. The Charlotte-Ric combo is terrible.

Owens vs Ambrose (IC Title) - This wasn't good. Ambrose winning was the wrong choice. Too much your turn, my turn in the match itself.

Team ECW vs Wyatts (Tables Elimination) - Not a very good match. The right team won in the right way. Thought the finish was a great tease and clever.