Badlittlekitten

Im not sure its that straight forward deciding who the hottest act is. Rollins seems to have got the biggest reactions at least the last couple of weeks. Im not Seths biggest fan, hus last run was indeed awful (though not entirely his fault). I agree hes a bad promo but then I dont think Bryan was particularly good when he got hot. These things can be overlooked if the demands there. I also want to see Braun get the run more than anybody else on the roster. I just think youre being unfair on Rollins. Im starting to think nobody is getting this ace push though. Theyve put Reigns in this weird position where hes the guy but not really and thats that.

This is just what you are doing with Rollins.

I've only seen her here and on the backlash preshow but I'm already a fan. Her look is unique for the WWE and she does some interesting stuff in ring. The commentators seem to be puting her over huge too. The three way was good but the crowd couldn't give a shit. They've generally been doing a good job with the women's division but the workers are not over at all which is a shame. I like Cory Graves but I wish he'd stop with the post-JBL shades of grey shit. The show would be so much stronger with an actual heel commentator.

Hold on, Stro is banned? I get that he could be antagonistic but a perma ban? Did a particular incident lead to that? He was one of the best posters on here.

Yeah WWE's been tripe for a little while now. Shame, they had a good run there. Hopefully things pick up again once the silly season is over,

Yeah, Raw was fantastic this week, best in show ages and that's saying a lot cos there's been some gudduns lately. The Festival of Friendship was BEAUTIFUL.

Genuinely sad for this lost. The most fun regular wrestling podcast there was. Thanks for the laughs and for being great company in the sleepy hours.

The constant slapping noise is one of several reasons I can't stand Hero. Austin Aries and Lufisto are two of the worst at giving away the game visually. Slapping stinks but I've never had a problem with Bret's stomping. Maybe I've just learned to justify it as him putting some 'oomph' behind his blows.

Was surprised by the complete lack of reaction to Mickie James but, cripes, she's still hot. Didn't watch the cage match, any good? Smackdown was good but i hope they don't hold out too long for the Orton turn. Him and AJ are the biggest full time babyfaces on the roster, it's not doing the show too good them playing heels. After being fairly positive about Raw it's has let me down the last couple of weeks. The lack of Steph/Foley didn't improve things at all. Agree that the Charlotte/Bayley segment was fuck awful. Charlotte's good but she's not at the level where she can make shite shine. Gosh I hate Seth Rollins.

In fairness the company overall has been putting out decent stuff since survivor series. Smackdown's the better show but Raw is no slog and some weeks it's been pretty great.

Happy holidays guys!

Well said stro. There's some proper dummies in these WWE threads.

Not to mention the stuff between Zanyne and Foley. Strowman looks decent theses days too.

The best Raw I've seen in a couple of years. Every segment was entertaining and served a purpose. Heyman interview was tremendous and the Cesaro/Sheamus skit was goofball fun. There's been some good stuff from WWE recently.

Where's Luke Harper? Didn't think WWE could get any more boring. Unless there's a dramatic change in philosophy things are looking grim.

Somewhere they appreciate good sports, presumably.

You know who I wanna see get a mini main event heel push? Bubba Ray Duddly. The guy's still solid, can bring the hate and works a good promo. The Rock is always there. Hope they don't hold off the Cena feud too long, Cena's health worries me. Love to see a heel Ambrose again. God that guy needs to turn badly.

I like Eddie but it was always for the parts rather than the whole. His stuff looks great yet to me it feels like he's going through the motions, from spot to spot. Didn't think he was particularly good in Mexico though, admittedly, I despise Art Barr which doesn't help matters. He started to get it in 97. Had him at 59.

So...social skills are not your thing, huh? Oi, no need to get personal. Watch his match with Kawada at CC 1995 and see if you think Khali could have done that. Yeah, that. Or the Misawa match. Or any of the tags he was in. Or like, the fucking Marufuji match. Taue was awesome and there's no way you could plug a random stiff like the Great fucking Khali into that scene and get the same result. That is utter, utter nonsense. Taue was fucking great and actively contributing to those matches as much as any of them. But because he's awkward and looks like Giant Baba, he gets no credit for it. Total bullshit. I wouldn't say Taue gets no credit, but I would say that it takes time to appreciate how good he is. With fans like ragemaster, maybe he doesn't appreciate all the differences between the Mainstream American and King's Road Style, or more likely - perhaps he has not seen all of Taue's body of work. If you don't care for a guy's performance in a Tag Match, you're not likely to seek out his work in a singles match, and in Taue's case, you probably should. When I first saw a match featuring "The Four Pillars of Heaven" at first look I thought Kobashi was the biggest star, simply because I was used to watching North American wrestling and Kobashi's style was more what I was used to, with the dramatic behavior. Secondly I was impressed with Kawada, who to me exuded bad-assery. Then Misawa, I saw that he had the skills (and then some) but at first I was taken aback by his stoicism at times. And originally yes, I didn't "get" Taue at all, I thought he was the weak link and wasn't ass good as the other three guys. Now, I rate the four totally different. In my opinion the problem is that a lot of fans read the names Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi and Taue and just look up one of their Tag Matches on YouTube, watch it, and then make snap judgements. That was the mistake I made - although I didn't use YouTube, I did just kind of jump into the King's Road stuff. It wasn't until later I understood that going straight to watching the Tag Final on 12/06/96 was kind of like watching only the scene in the Italian Restaurant where Michael shoots everybody, but then claiming you watched The Godfather and don't see the big deal. Yeah, you saw a vital part, but not the whole picture. I honestly think new fans need to start with the match where Misawa unmasked and moved forward using this list as a guideline, get into the awesome Jumbo and Company vs. Misawa and Company Tag Team matches and Six Man matches (during many of which, Taue was rocking his super-cool fro.) If they then work their way up into the eventual split of Misawa and Kawada and formation of The Holy Demon Army, by the time they get to some of Taue's "peak" performances in 1995, they can see a fuller picture of the important role he played in 90's AJPW. And that's not even getting into some of the underrated stuff he ended up doing in NOAH. Now having said all that, if you look at all the work Taue did through the 90's in AJPW and you still end up comparing him to The Great Khali? Then I submit you have the brain damage brought on by taking the marijuana pills. I've been watching wrestling since about 1990, I started importing Ajpw tapes in about 94/95. I'm not a new fan who just caught some random Japanese wrestling on YouTube. I will start by saying that comparing him to Khail was just a little flippant. This is what happens when your up at almost one in the morning trying to make a point. Roman Reigns is probably a little bit better comparison, as he's someone who's been in lots of great 3 man tags and also has have really good single matches with the right opponent. He probably will have a great match with AJ Styles on Sunday, but does that make him a great worker, or just someone who can be carried to a great match with the right person in the ring with him. I think instead of telling me about all the great matches he had with Kawada or Misawa or even Marufuji. Maybe point me to classic single matches he had with with someone like a Bart Gunn or Johnny Ace. That's the true mark of a great wrestler, someone who can carry a lesser wrestler up to your level. As I compared him to Khail, could he have a watchable match with him? Shawn Michaels did on raw, (I know Shawn probably the worse wrestler I could use on this board to make a point) I think its a little bit of the Mark Henry syndrome going on here with Taue. People on this board like to pick a person who for years has a reputation and then make a case that they greater than people remembered or much worse and then everyone else jumps on and agrees. Taue by no means is a bad wrestler but he's not a great wrestler, by any standard. You come to PWO, diss Taue, Reigns, and Henry then put over HBK to rub it in? Talk about social skills! Jeez.

Not going to happen. Yea number of posts is a silly metric but a list of people who were only active in the discussions threads would be an interesting list. I've been a member at this board since the get-go, pretty much. I visit this board every single day, some times multiple times a day...and I'm pretty sure I read practically every nomination thread, or at least most of them. But I work a 4 day week of 12 hour shifts in my job, and it's not a job where I can get online much, if at all. I just don't have the time to get into prolonged discussions online on a regular basis. Sure I get days off, but I always have so much crammed in that I have to do when I'm not at work. But there were people for this project who made my ballot, or who got ranked higher (or in rare cases lower) based solely on discussions I read here. I did not actively "participate" in these threads aside from listening to the discussion and checking out recommendations. Are we back to the idea that my ballot might not have counted for as much because I didn't have time to discuss each nominee at length? Because after that it will be straight into the idea that my ballot shouldn't count because I don't like Joshi, or Lucha is not my favorite style...and next thing you know, you've got four guys left voting. There are a couple of guys on my ballot that I was upset to see place so low, in a couple of cases they didn't even break the Top 100. I wasn't happy, but I got it. I knew being a fan of FMW/ECW and not Joshi or Memphis was going to put my ballot at odds with other ballots. I'd like to think if challenged, I could defend my ballot. And now I really want to learn more about some of these guys, like the World of Sport guys, or Casas for example. But the way some people taking this so seriously that they are bitching about so many results, or that some people don't deserve to be on the list, or saying they aren't going to continue to follow the list, or they want to see the ballots broken down into different categories based on different criteria...kind of sucks all the fun out of this project. Christ, nobody asked for your life story mate. Um...what? GWE equivalent of Vince taking wrestling from smoke-filled venues to what it is today. My thought process was: "How could anybody have ever seen even a handful of Japanese Main Events and not seen a match with Kobashi?" Unless Kobashi is still too stoic with not enough intensity and facial expressions. That is one of the main knocks against him. I did my homework, pal. Kobashi's always been an outlier. Good luck getting any range beyond Tenryu's 'mildly disgruntled' face, Inoki's 'I've a big chin' face and Choshu's 'half a grin away from down syndrome' face.

Oh please. I love Hash but to suggest he was the only Japanese main eventer (or one of two?) who demonstrated those qualities is absurd. Yet, even Inoki and Choshu aren't exactly full of colour. Guessing Regal made a shit load of ballots, he looks out of his depth up there. Surprised Arn's still alive.

Hashimoto (along with Satanico) is my favourite discovery coming out of this project. It was such a relief to come across a Japanese main eventer that made use of facial expressions, had genuine intensity, didn't stick rigidly to 'stoic'. At #15 he's my second highest Jap male.

My gut tells me Regal is too high but he's somebody I didn't get round to rewatching. Still I had him at 48. I ask this question genuinely - how often did his ring work get over with US crowds on the big stage? I seem to remember quite a few heatless matches. I had Akiyama down at 72 as I grew sick of AJ/Noah by the time I got to year 2000 in my viewing so I've missed some of he's most famed work. The other native AJ workers of the period were in a cluster together with Kawada being the highest at 27. Was hoping Santo would make it higher. At #4 he's my highest ranked luchadore. Despite the flaws it was he's tremendous rudo work that edged him one spot over Satanico. .

That's seven casualties from my top twenty; 3 Akira Hokuto 5 El Satanico 10 Buddy Rose 12 El Dandy 13 Jim Breaks 17 Chigusa Nagayo 19 Jaguar Yokota In terms of peak, 92-94 Hokuto is the greatest wrestler that's ever lived for me. Fujinami, Buddy Rose and Dandy are the other blow away peak workers. She had the epic matches, the moments, the drama, blood and guts and the emotion in that period which edges her above Rose, as much as I love him. And, frankly, she's the most charismatic non-US worker there's ever been, which is why she resonates with me more than Dandy/Fujinami. The two remaining luchadores (Santo,Casas) are my numbers 4 and 9. Dandy stood out to me straight away in the 80s lucha footage with his Japanese style kick pads. He really can do it all. By the mid nineties his look and presence reminded me of - of all people - Bret Hart.

This just edges out Bock/Robison as the match of 1980 for me. Awesome rollercoaster romp.