Exposer

What's funny is that I could actually see that happening.

When I think of J-Rock I think of that ridiculous character from the Canadian television series Trailer Park Boys.

I will say that Cena's best selling is when he's up against monsters. The Umaga matches, the Show matches, the Lesnar matches, the Khali matches, etc. He's been guilty of spotty selling several times including the Punk match from RAW last year.

Dory's absence of charisma is so distracting to me in his matches that it really hurts him for me. There's very few times where he shows any urgency, any character, or any body language that shows that he remotely cares. He just sort of does things without any extra personality to what he does. And yes, I've seen the Sheik-Abby matches. Dory tried to show some personality but it didn't feel organic to me. It just felt like Dory trying to act mad. It wasn't really believable. I won't say Dory is bad on offense, because I've seen him work stiff, execute really well, and do okay on the mat. It's the question of why the fuck should I care about a robot? EDIT: I should also say that I haven't seen some of the stuff Parv is referencing so I should be fair to Dory and check that stuff out. Still, the Dory I've seen, which is mostly All-Japan, is pretty boring to me.

Obviously, I'm going to have to watch at least a handful of Tanahashi matches for this project, but I'm not looking forward to it. I don't think he was awful last year, but I'm pretty sure he didn't make my top 100. I would have a hard time putting him on a list like this, but I'll at least give him a chance.

I've seen several early ROH matches with Daniels but it hasn't been in years. His best matches are against Joe where he bleeds and sells violent beatings. Otherwise, he's too cute in his execution for my tastes. I don't have the patience for over half of his stuff that I've seen because of it. He will not be making my list.

I have documents upon documents in multiple PCs of match reviews. Unfortunately, two of those PCs are barely functioning if not at all. I try and keep my thoughts in one place so that when I do projects like this I can use them as a reference.

I hate strategic voting. I'm unable to do it, because I can't find good reason to put someone too far ahead of someone else based on the fact that I don't think they'll get a respectable amount of votes. If they're not better than someone else, why put them ahead? Because so and so refuses to do the research? It's not my fault someone doesn't put in the effort or disagrees with me. Unfortunately, strategic voting will happen. It won't happen from me though.

Outstanding list Jimmy. I think this will help a lot of us look back on or catch up with Cena. Great work and thanks for putting in the effort.

I suppose this is what I mean when referencing Cena as a "big match" worker, but I don't believe every one of his "big" matches falls into the WWE main event style. I probably should have prefaced this earlier, but the context of a match is what really makes it "big" for me. The build to it. Cena-Umaga and Cena-Khali aren't worked in the traditional WWE main event style. The first is an LMS match, the other has Khali in it who can't work a match with ten near falls. Both had excellent builds making them "big" matches and title defenses in my opinion. Another example of a Cena "big" match not being worked in the WWE Main Event style is the Lesnar match from 2012. That's far from it. Really, both the Lesnar matches from this year are too. The Punk matches are worked that way, but I think they're probably the greatest matches worked in the modern style. Ultimately, it's the context of a match that makes it "big" for me. Also, I hate Cena-Rock II, the Miz feud, half of the Orton matches, and most of the Nexus feud so I'm not without my criticisms of the WWE main event style or Cena.

Well, it depends on one's definition of a "big match." For example, John Cena has been WWE champion a ridiculous amount of times and with that he's defended the title a ridiculous amount of times. I wouldn't call all of those matches "big." The same goes for Ric Flair, who's his biggest challenger for that moniker in my opinion. Yeah, he traveled all over the place, so each match may have been different, but personally I wouldn't call them all "big." I watched Flair-Wahoo Battle of the Belts yesterday and I didn't get the vibe of "big" match at all. It was just a regular touring NWA champ title bout. I did like the match though. I like Randy Savage, but he's also a victim of wrestling Hulk Hogan twenty times on the house show circuit and only one of the Hogan matches ever felt "big" that being the Mania match. To be fair, I think the Warrior match at Mania VII might be the greatest match in company history. It's certainly the best "sports entertainment" match I've ever seen. Even with that, I'm not sure Savage has as many "big" matches as Cena. He's got the Hogan match, Dibiase match (sort of arguable because there's a whole tournament before it), Steamboat match, Warrior match, Flair match, and maybe one of the DDP matches from 97. I like all of those matches, but I would only call the Warrior and Steamboat matches truly great. If we want to make a Flair comparison, there's all of those touring matches against Taylor, Reed, Wahoo, Barry, Jumbo, Jake, etc., from 85. I've admittedly seen only a few of them. If I get to them, which I plan too eventually, I can see which ones feel "big" to me. In other periods of his career we have Harley at Starrcade, the Dusty series, the Garvin series, the Morton series, the Barry series, the War Games matches, the Steamboat series in 89, the Funk series in 89, the Luger series, the Sting series, maybe one of those Tenryu matches, the Savage Mania match, Vader at Starrcade, Hogan series, Starrcade 95, 6 man at Bash 97, and the Michaels match from WWE. Now that's a pretty big list of matches I'd call "big." How many of those do I actually like? A fair number of them, but not all of them. Again, I think he's the other guy in the conversation. However, he has so many title matches, even though from a different time period, that there's many I can eliminate pretty easily from being "big" matches. When we look at Cena, there's the Punk series, the Brock series, the Michaels series, the Edge series, the Umaga series, the Khali series, the Big Show series, the Bray series, the Jericho series, the Del Rio series, the Sheamus series, the JBL series, the RVD match at One Night Stand, the Rock series, the Bryan match at Summerslam, the Orton series, the HHH match at Mania, the Angle series, the Barrett series, the Rey match from Raw, the Miz series, the Lashley match from Bash 07, and the Ziggler series. How many of those do I actually like? Less than those of Flair's, but I also think Flair is a number 1 contender and Cena isn't. How many of those would I call "big" matches? Probably less than the amount Flair has as well. Yet, here's the catch. I probably enjoy Cena's best performances and aura in his "big" matches more than Flair. I think he has this undefinable ability to make a match seem "big" in the built up and during it. Flair had it too, but sometimes the guy across the ring from him did too like Savage, Sting, Vader, Funk, Tenryu, Dusty, etc. Cena got "big" matches out of Khali, RVD, and Jericho. That's more impressive to me. Cena made a lot of his "big" matches "big" on his own. Flair didn't always do that. Is Ric Flair a better wrestler than John Cena? Yes. Does Ric Flair have more "big" matches than John Cena? Yes. Does Ric Flair have better "big" matches than John Cena's? Some of better, some I don't think are. Flair likely has the edge here in the end. Is Ric Flair individually a better "big" match worker than John Cena? Right now, I don't think so. I believe it's close. When this project is over, maybe my opinion will change. It tends to do that if you read my post on opinions changing in wrestling. Currently though, I believe John Cena has the edge here. I believe he has the edge on Savage as well, because Savage doesn't have the volume of "big" matches as he does. Although, I'd say Savage is a top five US "big" match worker even from the small samples he has. There's also the age thing. I hate bringing this up, but I feel like it's a factor in our differences here Parv. I grew up watching John Cena. If you want to question his popularity and his matches being "big" I can offer some defense for that as well. In middle school and high school when Cena was on the rise and eventually took the throne there were a lot of kids and teenagers into wrestling because of him. The hype for the HHH Mania match was huge. People talked about it all the time. The hype for the Khali matches were huge. The Punk hype was huge. I ran into several people who were hyped up for the Brock stuff this year. He's a "big" match type wrestler and has been for several years. I also believe he's one of the best ever at working that style. I will admit I haven't seen all that I can see from a "big match" standpoint. I have a good deal of NWA 70s and 80s to watch.

I love him in Portland and AWA. The Rose and Bock feuds are two of the best feuds of the 80s. He also has great matches with Wahoo, Lawler, Greg Gagne, and Stan Hansen. Hell, the Hansen match is one of the best matches of the 80s. There's a lot of fun work from him in the WWF, particularly from the Hogan feud, but other than that he dropped off drastically. I do like the Bret matches and his 93 run is pretty solid, but the Curt Hennig of 1982-1988 was gone forever. He'll likely make my list, but I'm not at all sure where.

For what it's worth, I love old man Bruno throwing Piper and Savage around in cages. I've basically seen no Bruno prior to 1985.

I think he's more great, than not. Yeah, he's had his matches where the "Super Cena" moniker has overreached leaving selling behind, but I don't think it's as bad as some think. I'd say the Sandow match a year ago is a great example of that. However, I've seen plenty of great Cena selling performances against Show, Henry, Khali, Umaga, and the Elimination Chamber match in 06. He's ignored selling before, but more often than not I think he's pretty great at it.

I think "incredible" is really stretching it, and it's not altogether his fault. When he was put in a position to have good matches (e.g. vs. Luger, Flair, Liger), he has good matches, and short of coming out with a sign on his forehead saying "push me", I don't know what else he could have done. But arguably no one was a bigger victim of WCW clusterfuck changes of management and booking teams than Pillman. And for me that hurts his babyface run during the period you're talking about -- and I do agree that he was very good in that role, just completely wasted by the company. It puts him a notch below someone with a comparable great "short peak run" like Rick Rude from roughly the same time frame. That said, I'm a little higher on his heel stuff than your brother and would give him a shot at finishing in the 90-100 range, but Pillman is likely going to be a victim of having to make way for some of the WoS or Lucha guys ... blame Dusty Rhodes, Ole Anderson or Jim Herd. Take your pick! I agree that he wasn't booked well at all. I really do believe he is overlooked by some because of that. He was a great babyface at his best. I'll also concede that Rude's 92 was probably better than Pillman from any year in 89-92. What hurts Rude is the before and after for me, but I'll save that talk for the Rude thread. I also like his heel run too. I enjoyed his character work at least. As far as using the word incredible, I would use that term more for maybe a few performances from Pillman during that period. I do think he put on a few of those performances during that period such as in War Games 91.

I'm more surprised there's someone on this board that's my age, let alone the same birthday month.

I will definitely do that. Thanks for the recommendation.

I've been watching 1980 Fujinami in the past few days. I've been most impressed with his range. He worked a lucharesuish tag match with Hoshino against Dynamite and Keirn, a gritty mat contest with Keirn in singles, and worked underneath selling and bleeding in a singles against Dynamite all in the same year. He had a pretty fantastic 1980. He can sell, bump, paces a match very well, can work fast or slow, builds great sympathy from the audience, great on the mat, good offense, and can be hard hitting if he wants to be. Great wrestler.

It's funny, because as much an influence as Dylan was and still is to a degree on my wrestling viewing and opinions, we've slowly separated when it comes to wrestling in recent years. Dylan will praise a match and I won't agree at all. I'll say something was great and Dylan will say it's innately bad or something. The day we get in a fist fight over structural issues in a match will be something to behold. Then, we'll both be in a jail cell.

I turn 22 in December. I've certainly changed my opinion on wrestling over the years. I've been watching for almost fifteen years now. As a seven year old in 2000 I cried when HHH beat Rikishi. I was more concerned with who was good or bad then. When I moved to Tennessee, Dylan gave my brother Dustin and I an old tape that I assume he got from tape trading. We'd pop it in and there'd be Liger-Sano, Funk-Foley King of the Death Match, and Misawa. I watched that tape several times. It was completely different from anything else I'd ever seen. It's amazing that at seven I was watching shit like that. Of course, I didn't watch it critically at the time. When Austin turned heel at Mania 17, my brother Dustin and I were like "What the fuck?" This started a trend of routing for the bad guys. We loved Jericho, Benoit, Rock, and the other faces, but we loved goofy Kurt Angle and heel Austin making funny facial expressions and harassing Tazz. We remained Jericho fans when he turned heel and thought Booker T was hilarious. Ultimately, we started to pick and choose who we liked no matter what side they were on. During the same period, my uncle started taking Dustin and I to a local indie fed called UEW. This was a huge influence for me as a wrestling fan. It was a totally unique experience going to a warehouse every Saturday where take out pizza was sold in the concession stand, a mix of classic and modern rock music glared in the background, the smell of cigarette smoke sticking to your clothes, and the fans sitting next to you either being an "old timer" wearing a cowboy hat, four "ring rats," a family of eight, the guy who claims he's Scott Hall's cousin, or the referee's kid who talked about old Tommy Rich footage. These experiences allowed me to see Terry Gordy in one of his last matches ever, one of the Moondogs in a feud based around stalling and foreign object hiding (the dog bone), Tank Norton crushing people with back fists, Iceberg Slim bleeding everywhere all the time, Raven, Johnny Swinger, David Young, Sonny Siaki, Jake Roberts, the Naturals, Lex Luger, and others live, and a vampire wedding angle. By the closing of UEW in 2004 and many more trips to local indie federations over the years I've fallen in love with southern wrestling. It's a shame I've seen so little of Memphis, because I saw shit like that every week for over three years. By middle school, I was both a WWE and TNA fan. I'll admit, I loved me some TNA. I thought the X-Division was awesome. I loved guys doing flips, trading blows, doing crazy dives, people going through flaming tables, barbed wire, and thumbtacks. I loved blood too. I thought John Cena sucked. I thought Shelton Benjamin was being "buried" by WWE. I was completely different back then. Dylan gave Dustin and I an early ROH tape. I think it was from the first shows. We watched it and loved it. It was similar to some of the stuff we had seen in TNA, but better. YouTube and Dailymotion weren't on the scene quite yet, I didn't have a personal computer, and I still kind of had a bedtime. Therefore, exploration outside of the modern product on television was difficult for me. Then high school came and my opinions on wrestling really began to shift the other way. In the summer of 2008, Dylan called me up and told me about the WWF Smarkschoice poll. I had made my own personal lists like that before, so I was thrilled. I didn't watch all that much, but I dived into some old WWF wrestling, mostly 90s, and started to expand my knowledge outside of the modern product. However, my true opinion shift didn't happen until the following summer. In the summer of 2009, I stayed in South Carolina with Dylan for a quarter of my summer. While there we watched the ThunderQueen Joshi match, the famous Fujinami match where his eye orbital exploded (I think he faced Maeda?), among other things. More importantly, he brought up the WCW Smarkschoice poll. When I got home to Tennessee I jumped on that bandwagon right away. I probably watched 150 WCW matches from 1988-2001. I was totally blown away from the stuff I was watching. The MX-RNRS Wrestle War 90 with Jim Cornette fighting Nick Patrick (I believe I'm right there), The MX-Southern Boys in a fucking karate off, Vader-Sting series, Foley's numerous brawls with the likes of Sting, Orndorff, Vader, and the Nasties, Regal-Larry Z, Rhodes-Studd Stable feud, old man Terry Funk, awesome cruiserweight matches, some of the best tag wrestling I've ever seen, and Ric Flair still kicking ass well past 40. I ended up compiling my own list and contributed to one of my favorite projects ever. I'll never forget staying up until past 4 AM on the first school night before my Junior year of high school watching Brian Pillman and Barry Windham beat the hell out of each other at Superbrawl I. At the end of 2009, I had almost completely changed my views on wrestling. Heel Don West was the only reason to ever watch TNA anymore and he got booted for Tazz. I stopped watching TNA, pretty much never to return again except for a brief period in 2012. I was making WWE MOTY lists every year, discussing them with Dylan, and comparing. Rey Mysterio was blowing my mind every week on television, so was Christian. I became more impressed with selling, timing, structure, and the ability to put a match together. My WCW watching helped me appreciate character work within a match, which I take seriously as well. Punk, Eddie, and even Cena are all guys I've enjoyed watching accomplish that. Head drops, big moves for the sake of it, and violence for the sake of it was becoming less and less engaging for me. I was beginning to think none of it was really all that good. To be fair, I have to give credit to WWE home video and all the DVDs I bought over the years from Rey, to Savage, to Michaels, to Bret, to Austin, to Rock, to Jericho, to Starrcade, to SNME, and so on and so forth. Those wrestler compilations introduced me to a lot as well and I learned a ton about each wrestler and their strengths and weaknesses. The summer after high school (2011) I joined PWO and Dylan bought me the Buddy Rose set as a graduation present. Holy shit was that the best graduation present ever. I flew through that shit in a month. I became totally appreciative of 70s and 80s wrestling which I was still a little cold to. Buddy Rose's ability was remarkable. I realized how much better he was than a lot of wrestler's during his time and after him. He completely blew me away. He mastered in character work, selling, timing, putting a match together, an all-time great bumper, etc. Around this time I really started to investigate older wrestling online. I fell in love with wrestlers who had an unquestionable aura to them like Tenryu, Fujiwara, Onita, Hash, and Choshu. Visiting Dylan on holidays allowed me to see the classics from the 80s from New Japan, All Japan, Memphis, Texas, and so on. The next summer I bought the AWA set and loved the hell out of it. In the last few years I've gotten the privilege to watch some WWF and Puerto Rico for the 80s sets and have joined WKO where I try and watch all that I can from the modern wrestling product all over the world. No longer do I care about big moves, egregious violence, head drops, and spot fests. I love me some lucha mat work, heel stalling, the Buddy bump, and Jerry Blackwell launching himself into cages. I will continue to change of course. In another fifteen years who knows where I'll be when it comes to wrestling opinions.

I love Panther on the mat. He will be on my list. Don't quite know where yet. Still have things to see.

The best big match worker in US history. Has to make my list based on that. Great at selling, timing, working a crowd, great characterization, etc.

#1 contender. I don't know if there's a single wrestler who worked primarily in the states that is better. Funk and Hansen are contenders against him but they both were in Japan for long periods of time. Flair will be on my list.

I've loved some of his performances from the last few years. He's still pretty sharp in the ring. I need to take a good look at his career. He'll probably make my ballot.

Arguably the greatest tag wrestler in US history. Awesome at every facet of the game. Absolutely will make my list.