Jimmy Redman

I now wholeheartedly regret ranking Clash VI over Shelton vs Viscera and Victoria vs Cherry.

Nothing else could endorse my list better than this.

NXT pretty much kills that theory Parv. Feminism is one of the most over babyfaces on that show. Not to mention that there were "WOMENS WRESTLING" chants at Mania and any time they push the Divas Revolution stuff on the main roster it gets cheered. I don't see this.

I have many thoughts. Forgive me as I try to lay them out as coherently as I possibly can. 1. The first thing that has to be stressed is Ship Canal's point that feminism is not a monolith, there are many different types of feminism and I'm sure you could view wrestling through the lens of feminism and come up with wildly different answers to this question. So I'm wary of statements that begin with "the only truly feminist way to promote wrestling is..." and you all should be too. 2. The second thing that has to be stressed is another point already made above me by Eduardo, that this is a discussion about feminism and the role of women in wrestling being carried out by mostly men. Now, that's just a reality of the makeup of this board (and all wrestling boards) and if there's any place where I trust a bunch of dreaded Straight White Males to have an earnest conversation about this it is definitely PWO. But I suppose one must always keep in mind that there's a limit to how much a lot of us can understand the experience of feminism and being a woman in wrestling. 3. My third caveat is a personal one, in that the way that I interact with feminism most of the time is through sport, specifically women's sport and the gender gap in sports coverage, money, support, etc. I created a Facebook page called Women's Sport in Sydney because I was frustrated with the lack of coverage of women's sport in my area. The struggle of women in sport is quite similar to the struggle of women in wrestling, actually, so a lot of what I touch on might have a basis in sports. It also might not, I have no idea what I'm going to say yet. Luchaundead poses a lot of different questions, and they need different answers so I will address them separately. Is inter-gender wrestling inherently sexist? I don't think so, no. I agree with you in that a perfect inter-gender match would be completely devoid of sexual connotation and be worked as a contest between two wrestlers. Of course, this is pro wrestling and often that is where they fall down, making the match about sexuality. I mean even if you try to subvert the idea of male sexual dominance and have the female on top, you're still making it about sex, when it should be a wrestling match. But wrestling as a medium is often geared towards the lowest common denominator, for the cheap pop, for instant gratification, and when you put women and men together in front of a largely male audience, it is inevitably thought that going for something sexualised is the best (and easiest) route to take. But no, I don't think the format itself is always doomed. People have already pointed to examples where it can work, such as Kana's run of inter-gender matches. All it takes is for everyone to treat it seriously and respectfully (as with all manner of things in wrestling). I haven't seen any of the inter-gender stuff involving Ivelisse or whoever in Lucha Underground (for the love of God someone tell me how to hook myself up with LU) but I'd be interested to see how they are portrayed there. The funny thing about all this is that WWE, of all places, has a decent track record of relatively respectful inter-gender matches. Of course that goes along with all of the disrespectful stuff they've done too, but I mean I can think back to things like Lita getting to rana and moonsault all of the guys, Chyna competing in male divisions and winning belts, Beth Phoenix eliminating Khali from the Rumble that one time...there are actually times when they treat women as having physical talent that allows them to compete with men without irony. That match that Trish & Lita had on PPV vs Jericho & Christian during their angle...I mean I can't remember how much, if any, sexualised stuff there was in the match, but I remember it being an astonishingly great example of allowing the women to hang physically with the men to a certain extent without it coming off as hokey or un-believable. It was worked as a straight up match, and it worked. So no, inter-gender wrestling isn't inherently sexist. But it would need to be treated as an athletic contest without sexual connotation, just the same way a match between two males is. Otherwise it can descend into something that sexualises and demeans women, and at worst gets a little too close to portraying sexual assault and violence against women than any reasonable person should be comfortable with. Is it sexist to portray women in over-sexualised roles, or is it sexist to exclude them altogether? The fairly obvious answer is that both are sexist. Is one more sexist than the other? I don't know, but I think it's pretty irrelevant to try to grade the different levels of sexism present, instead of saying that they're both sexist, and that the solution is to do something that isn't sexist. You see this in ALL areas of life where a feminist argument is present, it always goes along the lines of: A: This female in this male dominated area is treated horribly/treated unfairly/sexually objectified/not taken seriously/subject to harrassment or abuse B: Well would you prefer if there were NO women there?? Just be grateful that she's present in this area at all! Apparently it hasn't occurred to any of those Bs that it is also possible for a woman to inhabit a space without being abused or exploited, and that that would be infinitely preferable to either being abused or exploited, or to not being there at all. This false dichotomy comes up, where women either get a marginalised presence, or no presence at all. Those are the choices, pick one. And if you choose to be present, you have to accept that you will be subject to any kind of suffering that males seem fit, because that's the price you pay for being allowed to be included. And then in turn if you choose to not be present in a toxic space, you have to accept that it was your own choice and there's nothing stopping you from including yourself. How about we all choose Option C. On the question of what is more preferable, or more feminist - women competing with men or women portrayed as separate but equal to men? I can't answer this, because like I said there's no one right answer that will cover all of feminism. Feminists can decide that for themselves. I guess my answer to the question is both, but neither. Again, to me it really goes beyond a question of "Which is better, A or B?" You can theoretically have feminist wrestling without having women ever compete against men. You can also theoretically have feminist wrestling that integrates them wholly with men. And you can have feminist wrestling with both. The key to feminism in wrestling isn't in what specific form presentation of females wrestling takes. It's about simply treating female wrestlers the same way you treat male wrestlers. Treating them with respect. Treating them as people. The idea that there's no fundamental difference between male wrestling and female wrestling. The idea that female wrestlers are not there to be exploited, or marginalised, or there simply to titillate a male audience. The idea that they deserve as much promotion, as much presence on a wrestling card, as much time to wrestle matches as male wrestlers get. The idea that women could headline a WWE card, in the same way that a female fight can headline a UFC card. The idea that they can go out and have a wrestling match without being subject to sexual harassment by either the audience, the announcers, other wrestlers, or the company. When you get to the point where two women wrestling a match is as normal and as non-sexualised and as accepted as two men wrestling a match. That will be feminism at work in wrestling. As much as the tide is turning on this issue in the world in general, in sports in general, and in wrestling in general in recent times, there is still a LONG way to go for this to become a reality. Sexism is so completely entrenched in wrestling, particularly WWE. There is the emphasis on good looks and perfect bodies that was once paramount in hiring practices and probably still is to a large extent (and how the company reacts when women fall outside their vision of "beauty", from the treatment of Vickie to the portrayal of women like Molly or Mickie as fat or homely). In entertainment looks will always play a factor and I don't argue that, nor do I argue that male wrestlers' looks play a part for them as well, but it is so much harder for women to overcome this than men, and use of their looks is so much more exploitative. With women looks are prioritized so much more than actual wrestling, to the point where Mickie James had an elevated DDT finisher that so many of her opponents couldn't lift her up for because they were too skinny, which resulted in some dangerous bumps. WWE has made some baby steps in the last year or so, and a lot of the largely ceremonial stuff has been taken care of. We've lost the purple butterfly belt and the term "Divas". The truly hideous aspects of creepy announcing and things like Bra and Panties matches are a thing of the past. We have the Divas revolution and Steph is their corporate feminist sponsor. Women get headline spots in NXT. There are more women's matches on WWE TV than there used to be, and they often get a bit longer to work or go through a commercial break. All of this is "progress" but it's also still largely window dressing. Women are still in their own little "token" spot on the card. It's just now there's a lot less sexual exploitation than there used to be. The next step is to move past tokenism and into truly equal portrayal. That is the part that will take time, and more than anything takes a willingness to do so. But we've seen it pretty much become a reality in NXT at this point, so it's certainly not impossible for this company to accomplish if they set out to do it. I want to speak to the idea of being a female online wrestling fan as well, but I gotta go kick a football around so it will have to wait. A few extra things to ponder: This thread that I think came about after Sasha vs Becky, with Grimmas asking why women can't headline in WWE. More than anything else I think it's a fascinating look at how much opinions about women's wrestling and feminism in wrestling have changed JUST on this board and JUST in the last 12 months. And I'm not calling anyone out, I mean even I said things in that thread that I now strongly disagree with (such as that women will never headline a WWE PPV, nor should they bother trying). This article "Can you be a feminist & a WWE wrestling fan?" and the others about WWE posted on SBS Zela, which is a site that covers women's sport and women in sport run by a major Australian TV network. The fact that a serious sports website in this country, particularly a feminist one, would cover wrestling at all (and totally independent of me) is amazing on so many levels. I know in America mainstream sports sites like Grantland and Deadspin and what not cover pro wrestling, but there is really NONE of that in Australian sports coverage.

Not to me haha. Just sort of backs up what I've always said about Bret, that he's fine but doesn't really resonate with me on a higher level. For what it's worth, the Bret matches I like most are Austin at WM, and the Owen cage match. The latter was always one of my favourite "old" matches back when 90% of the "old" stuff I'd seen was whatever happened to get on WWE released DVDs. But there's nothing that would come too close to my personal list. No lucha matches is far more interesting to me, now that I've noticed that. For how much more I "get" and enjoy lucha these days, I still don't have even one standout match that I can point to for a list like this. My favourite lucha match is probably still When Worlds Collide. With lucha all the matches blend together for me, I just let them wash over me and see what takeaways I got from them in terms of individual workers. But that was looking at it through a GWE lens.

Yeah, that is kind of the forgotten cage match between AMW and XXX, because of the much more famous one from December 2004 with the cage walk, but this one is just as good a match, and like you said it might be the first truly great match in company history.

Yeah this was a super fun read. It actually made me start thinking about my own list in terms of your last few categories like who are my new favourites and surprises and best all round talents, etc. Which is another fun way to sum up the project and what I got out of it.

I don't think it was, actually. It was Greatest Wrestler Ever. Who you happen to think are the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time may not necessarily come from all possible styles of wrestling. To quote the man himself, "not all styles are created equal". How many North American female wrestlers did you have on your list? Ultraviolent workers? Wrestlers from mainland Europe? South America? Puerto Rico? What you'd call "the entire world of wrestling" is really just what you deem important and accessible enough to include. Different people have different cutoffs as to where that line is. I had World of Sport, Puerto Rico, & Death Match wrestlers on my list which I went into detail talking about on the podcasts I did about it. I understand where people don't like what I posted and everyone has their own beliefs in what they like and what they don't like. I'm just upset that people dismiss stuff they didn't "understand" or just didn't care. I did listen to your podcast, I just couldn't remember specifically. My point remains the same. How much French or German wrestling did you consider for the project? Are they not just as much a valid area of the wrestling world than the others? If it was so important to include joshi, why not include North American women just as equally? Why not give quotas to all the different areas to make sure they're all adequately represented? I'm being snippy here but you get my point. You drew a line about representation just like everyone else did. Everyone just had their own personal line. Not to mention I am so not on board on the idea of being forced to represent any style or wrestler because you're "supposed to" when you don't care for it or understand it. If you can't see the greatness, how are you supposed to rank their greatness as some of the greatest ever?

And I appreciate that this is kind of Dylan's point about imperialism, but I'd say the answer to that is, what else do you expect? How can you possibly avoid that? Like El-P said, like 95% of us are North American or from Western, English speaking countries, who have grown up with American wrestling from the 80s-present and who view wrestling in general through that starting prism. We can't magically forget that we've seen all this mainstream US wrestling just because it means we can't be theoretically fair to all wrestling cultures equally. To me it's another one of those impossible pipe dreams that we latch onto in the name of objectivity or fairness that just put a downer on the whole process, because it's a standard that can NEVER be lived up to. EDIT: To be clear, I think Dylan's idea is an extremely interesting one and something that definitely should be explored. I had never stopped to think about things in those terms, but I do agree that the cultural imperialism exists, and it should be talked about as a branch of wrestling historiography that hasn't been fully explored yet. But I don't think its existence should suggest that the project was a failure or anything. The list was always going to be a reflection of us as the voter base, and for better or worse we are American (so to speak) wrestling fans, and we can't help but see the world through our own eyes. That's not a failure of this list or any list, really. Just a reality.

I don't think it was, actually. It was Greatest Wrestler Ever. Who you happen to think are the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time may not necessarily come from all possible styles of wrestling. To quote the man himself, "not all styles are created equal". How many North American female wrestlers did you have on your list? Ultraviolent workers? Wrestlers from mainland Europe? South America? Puerto Rico? What you'd call "the entire world of wrestling" is really just what you deem important and accessible enough to include. Different people have different cutoffs as to where that line is.

I definitely have. Love that match, it's one of the matches that just missed out. It would make my top 200 for sure. There are tonnes of great matches I couldn't fit on.

1. Shawn Michaels 2. Stan Hansen 3. Rey Mysterio 4. Eddie Guerrero 5. John Cena 6. Toshiaki Kawada 7. Ric Flair 8. Stone Cold Steve Austin 9. Jerry The King Lawler 10. Jim Breaks 11. Chris Benoit 12. Arn Anderson 13. Mitsuharu Misawa 14. Kenta Kobashi 15. Brock Lesnar 16. Nick Bockwinkel 17. Jushin Thunder Liger 18. Terry Funk 19. Daniel Bryan 20. Andre the Giant 21. Akira Taue 22. Negro Casas 23. El Hijo del Santo 24. Undertaker 25. CM Punk 26. Akira Hokuto 27. Genichiro Tenryu 28. Volk Han 29. Jumbo Tsuruta 30. Chris Jericho 31. AJ Styles 32. Matt Hardy 33. Fuerza Guerrera 34. Mick Foley 35. Kiyoshi Tamura 36. Sgt Slaughter 37. Shinya Hashimoto 38. Ricky Steamboat 39. Atlantis 40. Shinjiro Ohtani 41. Vader 42. Mark Rollerball Rocco 43. Tully Blanchard 44. Jeff Hardy 45. Buddy Rose 46. Mark Henry 47. Samoa Joe 48. Owen Hart 49. Dynamite Kansai 50. Ricky Morton 51. Marty Jones 52. Sami Zayn / El Generico 53. Aja Kong 54. Randy Orton 55. Sheamus 56. Steve Grey 57. Big Show 58. Christian 59. Blue Panther 60. Greg Valentine 61. Hulk Hogan 62. Carlos Colon 63. Giant Baba 64. Manami Toyota 65. Bret Hart 66. Cesaro 67. Pat Roach 68. Yoshinari Ogawa 69. Tatsumi Fujinami 70. Trish Stratus 71. William Regal 72. El Satanico 73. Jun Akiyama 74. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 75. KENTA 76. Triple H 77. Kurt Angle 78. Psicosis 79. Mayumi Ozaki 80. The Destroyer 81. Dustin Rhodes 82. Finlay 83. Hiroshi Hase 84. Great Sasuke 85. Jerry Blackwell 86. Edge 87. El Samurai 88. Pete Roberts 89. Pirata Morgan 90. Masa Fuchi 91. LA Park 92. The Rock 93. Kazuo Yamazaki 94. Bill Eadie 95. Kota Ibushi 96. Shinobu Kandori 97. Shinsuke Nakamura 98. Sasha Banks 99. Ronnie Garvin 100. Kofi Kingston

I can't remember my tag team ballot exactly since I just threw it together, but I have a distinct feeling that I did, in fact, put the Demos at #5.

Now that we're done and I'm done talking about GWE on the podcast, one thing that is abundantly clear to me is that for so many guys I can't properly articulate what I think their "case" is. In the sense that I feel like I listen to other people and they can lay out a scholarly, sober argument, based on lists of matches, longevity and consistency, and a list of tools and attributes. Whereas when it came to most guys on my list, what came to mind was something along the lines of "Remember that one thing he did in that random match? That was awesome! So you know...things like that." How much of that is issues with speaking aloud, and how much of that is issues with how much I've watched of certain wrestlers I don't know. But even with Shawn Michaels, no matter how much I rambled on the board and on the pod, a coherent, "case" based case never came. All I can do is point to all the matches, point to all of the things I see, point to all of the things I think and feel when I watch him. But in the end, I am totally fine with this. For all of the attempts to make this an intellectual exercise, to subject wrestlers to rigorous scrutiny and to rank them objectively, and believe me I love this board for it's high level of debate, and I love a good list as much as anyone...but at the end of the day that's not what wrestling is to me at all. Wrestling is fun. It's entertainment, pure and unfettered. Sometimes it's enjoyable, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's interesting. but it always makes me feel something. Make me think something. It is personal, and it is visceral, and it is instinctual. And sometimes it can't be explained. Sometimes it just has to be experienced. To be enjoyed, to be felt. Matt and I had trouble recording the second episode of Parejas Increibles. On the first attempt that never saw the light of day we spoke a little about our paths to online fandom. What I didn't mention to him, but thought a lot about afterwards when trying to improve my answer, was the kind of fan I was. I was a big contributor to a UK-based board called Talk Wrestling Online (name has since changed to Talk Whatever Online), and I had a reputation there of being quite a ridiculously happy WWE fan. And I was. Not in the sense of agreeing with the company or the booking per se, but just in sheer enjoyment of the shows. I'd watch the TV every week and write pages and pages on why every segment was awesome and every match was awesome and I loved everything so much. If you read my reviews you'd think Smackdown was the greatest show in the history of the earth. I wasn't kidding when I said I couldn't find anything I'd written on a Kofi Kingston match that wasn't me screaming incoherently about how awesome he was. I was like the Johnny Sorrow of my world, except where Johnny makes a one-line run in on every show thread to say it was a fucking blast and leaves, I take about 3,000 words to explain why every single minute was a fucking blast. It was the most long-winded marking out in history. I don't often post like that anymore. Sometimes it peeks through when I start using caps and swearing about how awesome NXT or whatever is, but this board is a lot more serious and I speak a lot more soberly here. And after I lost interest in wrestling itself, I am now a lot more dispassionate about wrestling than I used to be when I marked out every week. But at heart, that's who I am as a fan. That's who I always was as a fan, and even now when something really gets me, I still react in the same way. To bring this around to GWE, it explains why a lot of "my" guys kept crawling further up my list. And this includes a lot of obvious WWE guys like Kofi, Trish, Sheamus, Taker, Cena, etc. but also a lot of different guys and newer discoveries like Rollerball Rocco, Breaks, Pat Roach, Stan, Kawada, Ogawa, Fuerza...it's not just about WWE because those kinds of guys give me that feeling just the same. But it's that feeling that gets me, that personal, inexplicable feeling of joy, of excitement, of fascination. And when I was making my list, trying to place guys in order, it was those moments that got stuck in my mind. Any time Taker looked too high I'd think about how I felt watching the Wrestlemania matches. When I looked at the Harts, I'd think about how excited I was to get into Owen recently, and how I have literally never felt that from Bret, and Bret ended up 20 odd spots lower than him. When I thought about Big Show or Sheamus, I thought about the fact that I've never had as much fun as I did when I was reviewing their HIAC match. When I thought about my #100 spot, I thought about all of the times I'd lost my shit marking out for Kofi Kingston, how he always made me feel, how I coined the term "Greatest Man in the Entire World" as a regular catchphrase for my reviews because of him. That kind of thing goes so much further with me than someone who might have a longer list of good matches if I wrote them out, or a better list of attributes on paper. I get why people look at things that way, why they want to be objective or fair or dispassionate. I admire the ambition, but to me the idea is bullshit, I accept that objectivity is a myth and embrace the passion, embrace the feeling. I can't un-feel the things I feel, and I can't un-think the things I think, and conversely I can't pretend to see things I simply don't. And it's not about feelings winning out over the evidence or matches or a body of work. To me it's all the same thing, the feeling is IN the body of work. Ted has a lot of good matches, but so does Kofi Kingston, and one loses out to the other because only Kofi's list of matches makes my dick twitch. So I guess my point is that I'm happy with my ballot, my "journey", my podcast cases, and how it all reflects me as a wrestling fan. It reflects what I think wrestling is and how I interact with it. Which is all one can hope for really.

Well get ready to listen to people effusively putting you over at least once per episode.

I don't remember this ever coming up in any of the 37 hours we talked - Matt did you do a tag team ballot?

This is some epic, Larry Z level stalling Grim. Love it.

So this is my little present to myself now that GWE and all that it entails is (almost) over. I have turned away from the weight of ranking wrestlers for all eternity, and sought solace in the comforting arms of my favourite ever matches. I've been thinking about the idea of doing this for a while, but I've just spent an hour or so writing it out off the top of my head, without doing any preparation or rewatching or anything. Once you get past the first 25 or so the order is a TOTAL crapshoot, just me sliding matches in somewhere that looked good as I thought of them. I will hate this thing in a week, not to mention all the matches I've forgotten, but whatever. Just listing them out and thinking about all these awesome matches with no pressure to put them in any wider context was wonderful. Like I said, this was my reward for getting through GWE. I said above my previous Top 100 list was like 90% modern WWE. I've clearly grown a lot in those couple years because now my list is only about two-thirds modern WWE. Progress. My Top 100 Greatest / Best / Favourite / So So Good Matches of All Time (they all mean the same fucking thing)

I really can't add anything to that review, you nailed it. This was just a great, physical struggle for wrestling supremacy. One thing I want to say, in terms of the escalation and progression of the action, if you like that you should really watch all the World of Sport you can. Guys like Marty Jones, Pat Roach, Pete Roberts, Terry Rudge. Even Jimmy Breaks and Steve Grey. But the best WoS matches have that same kind of feeling, where you can see why one guy is reacting to a move in this way, that way, and you can see how the match unfolds as it does from the physical contest. Plus there's the awesome sense of progression, where it begins as a gentlemanly sporting contest, but then shit happens, someone goes too far or throws a punch or cheats or whatever, they retaliate and things escalate and eventually they find themselves in this nasty war throwing forearms and grinding and drawing blood and shit. I guess my point in saying all this is that Funk vs Bob reminded me so much of a gritty British match, and that's high praise.

Having just taken your advice, I 100% endorse this.

Oh yeah I did my Dusty too didn't I? I keep forgetting which episode is which. That was on this show too! Not to mention my Johnny Sorrow.

Come for the Top 10 chat. Stay for my Stan Hansen impressions.

How great were they together but! Fucking love that Bash match, from the build to the match to the aftermath, and the postmatch is probably my favourite part. Two guys madly running around killing each other while Jim Ross tries to make sense of the chaos in the foreground...that is some awesome shit.

Who will win? Flair. Who I think is better? ...still Flair.

I guess that Funk is still technically active, while the others definitely aren't.