Jimmy Redman

It might be worth it just for the moment when you realise how high I have Brock.

I will say that canon is infinitely useful for a noob like me, just to know where on earth to start when it comes to unfamiliar stuff. I have no problem with canon as an institution. I just don't feel beholden to it when forming my opinions.

The greatest thing about the go-home (apart from the brutal Virgil line from Corbin...fuck me I'm finally on board with Baron Corbin) was the girls match promo vid. The Horsewomen type girls - all the lucky ones got the fuck outta dodge before Asuka came along - are all "Oh sure Bayley will win! Isn't she lovely?" And then Emma and Dana, who have been the ones out there in the trenches against Asuka this whole time, they're sitting there like "LOL...Bayley is going to die. Have you seen Asuka? She's a fucking psychopath. She kicked my head clean off. I'm awesome and I tried every trick I could possibly think of and she still fucking murdered and ate me. Bayley? That kid will be dinner. She has no fucking clue what's about to happen to her." It was a great contrast, and a great way to put Asuka over because the people who have actually faced her talk about her like war veterans who still wake up screaming about her in the middle of the night.

Co-signed. I think now my biggest regret of this whole project is not watching or writing failures, but my failure in not having the foresight to have my own wrestling podcast, just so I could talk for 10 hours about the guys on my list. I'm spewing.

I think with that you officially take the title of Wackiest Ballot.

This almost makes me want to review this match out of spite. Bunch of godless heathens, all of you.

Austin I am way up there on.

Dylan summed up This sums it up for me so well. Especially for me, coming at so much of this stuff from a position of ignorance, or a blank slate to put it more nicely, and seeing really exalted guys for literally the first time. I can appreciate Loss' point that I'm not the only arbitrator of what is greatness in wrestling, BUT I am the only arbitrator of what I think is greatness in wrestling. We're all submitting individual ballots, we're all answering the question of who is the greatest for ourselves. And speaking for myself, I can only judge greatness if it's there, if I can see it. I can't not see it and then just assume it's there because other people think it is, or because someone was doing things that got them over with the crowd, or because they worked in a way that ticked theoretical boxes. All of that means nothing to me. We all view the text in our own way. Parv tends to characterise the "feel" ish kind of process as un-academic or haphazard or just a personal favourites list, but speaking for myself it's much more considered than that. I'm including people who aren't personal favourites, I'm including people whom I wouldn't really want to watch today, and I'm including people who I think are great without resonating too much with me personally. I think the key difference with me is that I don't have those kinds of people too high. Parv can not be a fan of Lawler at all and have him #11. If I felt a similar way about Lawler I'd probably have him WAY down my list. I'm trying to think of someone comparable for me. Akiyama maybe? I don't see an elite level worker there like others do because his work just doesn't resonate with me, and his big matches cap out at a certain level. I have Akiyama in the 70s. I can appreciate what he does to a certain extent and like a lot of his matches, but if I don't see what makes someone supposed to be truly great, I don't think they're truly great. I have to believe my lying eyes.

Has Matt put his ballot in yet? If not it might be someone like Misawa? But I would be surprised if it was someone who wasn't U.S. wrestler.

I was just going to remark wondering how high you had Christian, because he's very close to where I have him there. I can tell you I do not have him that high. Haha wow that's awesome El Dragon. I thought I had him pretty high but you're higher!

I have Jeff Hardy.

I have Trish on my ballot guys. We're all weird in our own way.

I just submitted my singles ballot (I just go back and edit right?). Feel like I've been through a war and come out the other side. I wasn't planning on adding any comments, but when I was submitting I found a sentence for anyone that was "my guy" or whom I felt I might be the high or only voter for. So after all of this struggle, I finish it a little brighter by writing effusive words of praise for my favourite wrestlers. So that was a weight lifted.

Oh fuck. I forgot Umaga!

As much as I want to just ditch the fucker every time I turn on Raw and see his stupid face, I can't in all good conscience. I went into it earlier in this thread, but there's all those matches I just fucking love so much. Can't do it. I just feel ridiculous about the very real possibility of me being his high voter, because I hate the stupid asshole so much of the time. I never imagined I'd end up as the board's token fucking Hunter shill, but here we are. Clive Myers I find OK, I like his early happy go lucky babyface stuff. There's that great match vs...Steve Grey isn't it? Ambivalent on later kung fu stuff. I can't come up with a picture of Zoltan Boscik so I might not have seen a match of his. If I have it was years ago and I don't remember it. You're not going to get anywhere with me with old lucha maestro style guys. Can't get into it.

I've been thinking about the final ballot and what not, and it just occurred to me...if I end up being the high voter on Triple Fucking Haitch, I'm going to jump into a lake.

I'm just starting on this ("just starting" meaning I'm over an hour in and still in the 90s...) but I wanted to jump in here straight away to say that Tim's opening spiel about subjectivity and the nature of his list is like EVERYTHING I think and feel about the subject. Just bang on. So thank you for expressing it so well for me. Hearing that, and just your general enthusiasm about so many guys and "this was just one of the greatest things ever" of it all...I think we come to wrestling from really similar places and share that sort of...unbridled joy. So it's nice to listen to.

Listening as we speak!

Just now finally getting to the end of this, and I have to reiterate that it's been an absolutely fantastic listen, well worth the time spent. I want to echo whoever said it in the other thread, I could listen to people talk about their lists all day.

That sounds like utter bullshit, since they booked the whole segment based on her being unwanted by everyone, from her being an oblivious idiot to all of the other girls turning their noses up at her. Surely Dave can't be that gullible.

I'm not a Yearbook person and I'll be voting for Hase, for what it's worth. I come out somewhere in between Parv and OJ on him.

On the last part, that doesn't bother me at all because I'm not setting out to try to convince anyone. I know arguing for Shawn is largely doomed on this board, and I'm not trying to persuade anyone else to vote for him at all. I'm just putting forth my own thoughts as to why I rate him so highly. We all have our own personal GWE failures - mine is not finding the words to talk about Shawn in any depth during this whole project, because I did threaten to, and plan to. But alas. I'm trying to at least get some thoughts down now even though it's too late, they just aren't coming in the form of a coherent argument. But at no point did I think I could set out to convince anyone to rate Shawn #1 through sheer force of argument. I'm good, I'm not that good. I just wish I could have presented my own case for him with more clarity. On the Flair thing, this is inevitably going to descend into "agree to disagree" territory, because I do think Shawn has a metric fuckton of 4 star+ matches, and I do think Shawn has range and depth of output comparable to Flair. They're both tippy top, Top 10 guys for me, and the only key difference is that Shawn resonates with me more and I like his best matches better. A part of that is growing up with one and not the other, and I have zero problem admitting that. Sometimes in this project you discover new guys and rank them that highly without that attachment, like we both have with, say, the AJPW guys. And sometimes your guy is still your guy. Flair is your guy, he was going to end up on top for you no matter what. Shawn is my guy. I'm going to do a stomper list for post-comeback Shawn now. I was never planning on doing a big match list, because everyone knows what the matches are, some people just think they're rubbish. Well I don't think they're rubbish at all, and I'm going to list them out just to demonstrate the kind of depth I think he has, why I can compare him to Flair in terms of output. I'm not a star ratings person, but for simplicity I guess these are the ****+ matches, or matches just below that but with great Shawn performances. The ones in bold are the high-end, ****1/2+, "would I consider this match for my All Time Top 100?" type matches. Every year he has a slew of great matches. Every year (except 2006) has has at least one super dooper, classic match. And every year he has a bunch of good to really good matches that I haven't even gone into here. He has a ridiculous amount of quality, and for a guy who wasn't always wrestling every week on TV, a significant quantity as well. I think the only guy who'd have as many or more matches above that "would I consider them for my All Time Top 100?" cutoff would be John Cena. And again, this is all just from 2002-10. You add in all of the 90s highlights, all of his 80s tag work...it's a ripper of a career spanning three decades and containing a fuckload of quality.

This is the go home?? Oh fuck it is too. Wow.

I've been putting furniture together for what feels like the past three months, and in between I've been watching Shawn matches to keep sane. I'm still kind of delirious so I'm probably just going to ramble for a while. I apologise in advance. You know, considering how exhausted I am and how little patience I have for watching, the fact that he's kept me entertained this whole time is not an insignificant feat. The man's still got it. So basically, you're all still fucking crazy. I've moved onto Post-Comeback Shawn. My kind of Shawn. I'm pretty sure I thought he was the greatest ever before I ever saw a match of his pre-2002, and even after discovering all of the non-WWE I've discovered in the last six years or so, all of the different eras and styles and countries and workers and matches...I still feel the same, and I still feel the same mainly based on this run, from his comeback to his permanent retirement. His 80s work is great to show just how great a tag worker he is, and his 90s work is great to show how he works as a midcarder, how he works as a heel, works in different situations, and also adds a bucketload of good, great, all-time company matches to his resume. I think he has some insane longevity, because apart from a couple of patches (ordinary work in 91-93, inactivity from 98-02) the dude rocked from 1986 to 2010, which is almost 25 years. But for me, he'd be just another pimped 90s guy I'd be trying to give a fair shake to if not for his Post-Comeback run. In terms of his comeback era, like...people say things like oh, he wasn't that good when he first came back, or oh, he wasn't that good in DX, or oh, he wasn't that good week to week on TV...let me tell you, I have watched a shitload of Shawn all at once this weekend, particularly from supposed down periods like 2002-03 or 2006, and I find all of those complaints to be nonsense. Every time I see Summerslam 2002 I marvel at just how good he is the minute he returns. As if he'd not missed a day. The man was born to wrestle. Anywho that was a fucking awesome match that blew me away and had my dad of all people marking the fuck out at the insanity. I know it's polarising but I have no earthly idea why. Someone will have to spell that one out for me because seriously what the hell bro. That match rules. Shawn comes back like it was yesterday and just fucking Shawns all over the place, hitting all of his spots like he's working a testimonial to himself, Hunter kills the fuck out of his back, they go all out with the violence and the garbage spots, and then the feel good finish followed by the asshole sledgehammer from hell, which as a single moment is truly one of the best things Hunter has ever done. It's one of my all time favourite matches from before I became a fan. It's certainly the one I'm most attached to. Shawn in 2002-03 is so interesting to watch for me. He's still in the process of coming back, and if he works later on like Living Legend Shawn, in this period he works for a long time as Returning Legend Shawn, and a lot of the things he does are based around sort of the idea, in itself, of Shawn coming back and doing them. Like, Shawn is always a "look at me!" worker, but there are distinct strains of it depending on when you catch him; at times like 2004 or 2007, it's "look at me - I'm the best fucking wrestler alive!" During DX runs it's "look at me - I'm having so much fun!" And from about 2008 to retirement it's "look at me - I'm going for the Oscar!") During that early 2002-03 period, it's "look at me - I can still do all this cool stuff!" For a guy still easing back into the schedule and what not, he sure as hell does a shitload of dives, planchas, moonsaults to the floor, springboard crossbodys, and so on. There's just that sense that he's proving something - whether to himself or to the crowd, or both - about his ability to physically hang, and still do the kind of things he prided himself on during his physical prime. And then on the other hand, apart from all of the dives and flying he was doing, he was otherwise super stripped down offensively. Even by Shawn standards. I think partly it was because he was doing all the things he was used to doing the last time he worked full-time, but it was now 2003 and standards of offense had noticeably changed in the company in the interim. But even allowing for that, he was super minimalist in the ring. He'd be basic as fuck and work matches around headlocks, and pepper in all those dives to keep things interesting. In a weird way it reminds me of when John Fruciante rejoined RHCP in 1999 and had to learn how to play again from scratch, so on Californication he just played very simple stuff really, really well. This was Shawn playing very simple stuff really, really well while he found his feet as a guitar player again. People talk about things like Jericho at WMXIX "not holding up", and I can see how they wouldn't hold up to scrutiny today because if you look at that match, as one example, there's like...nothing to it. You can't break it down and say this was cool, that was cool, etc. It's not a micro match. But at the time, experiencing it in real time as a whole match, you finish it feeling like you've watched a cool match. A lot of Shawn's stuff is like that, especially in this period. He's like the opposite of a Regal or a Cesaro or someone else who has great offense and is interesting on a really micro level for the moves they make. Shawn often has matches where you can't point to a lot of individually interesting moments or moves in the match, but after watching the entire match you get sucked in and when it's over you think damn, that was a great match. His matches are always greater than the sum of their parts. (I like the contrast to Regal, who is a great micro guy but who's matches are often less than the sum of their parts.) And as much as I value re-watch value as a quality (especially right now), I also think it's a testament to Shawn's ability to get more out of less, to get the absolute maximum out of the most basic stuff. That sounds like a weird comment on the surface because people tend to associate Shawn with excess, but like I said, dives aside, he really doesn't do a hell of a lot, but he still manages to craft all of these matches that come off as not only great, but epic and well built as well. In one match he manages to get a punch over as a legit nearfall. In another match he got people to bite on a chop. A Shawn Michaels chop. He can build and pace a match, and nail the basics, and create drama through his selling so that even the smallest things resonate as much as they possibly can. People talk about Shawn and Hunter as a low point. I agree that at their worst they bring out the worst in each other. They also feuded pretty much nonstop from 2002-04 and created a lot of audience fatigue that diminished what they were trying to do, in the same way that Cena vs Orton was burned through as a match up after 2009, and any attempt to do it since then has been met with this weird anti-heat. It's not that the work they were doing was bad, it's just that literally nobody wanted to see it. So fatigue I understand, but it also doesn't faze me because I was new at the time and enjoyed the hell out of their overblown epic of a feud. Anyway, my point is that if you look past that fatigue, while they had some bad matches (Armageddon 2002, the interminable HIAC in 2004) they actually hit a lot more than they missed, and really looking at the good stuff it's one of the better match ups in modern WWE. Summerslam 2002 I've covered. December 2003 is an amazing title match, one of the best Raw matches ever. Last Man Standing at Rumble 2004 is one of those matches that gets slaughtered, but I watched it and let me tell you, I thought it was really fucking good. Again it's a match where they don't do a lot of stuff, but they get the most out of what they do, and it's a great kind of minimalist brawl, almost like an 80s brawl where there's nothing but punches, selling, blood and a couple of big spots. They have great three-ways with Benoit. Then there's Taboo Tuesday, which is just a fascinating watch knowing how injured Shawn was, and for how well they both work around it and incorporate it into the match, and manage to construct something so compelling with a guy who can't walk...it's certainly something. Add in all of the great tags vs Evolution, the first Elimination Chambers...they actually produced a lot of quality when matched up vs one another, even if the last thing you'd ever want to watch today is another Shawn vs Hunter match. I talked about him working like he was on a comeback for the first 12 months or so, and then after that he moves into working like he's the GOAT. People make a big deal about WWE pushing him as the GOAT and people swallowing it or whatever, and I'm not dismissing that as a thing, but also want to explore the flipside to that, which is that Shawn, for his part, was really fucking great at working like the GOAT. He owned that label and made it work, and that's not just as easy as WWE saying it and people believing it. In order for something like that to stick people have to be willing to believe it as true. Just look at how crowds react when WWE tries to claim Cena is "one of the best of all time". They reject it, not because they hate the man anymore but because they disagree with the very idea. Crowds aren't always the mindless sheep that they're sometimes painted as, especially when it comes to legacy stuff like this. Shawn had to convince people he was the best of all time or else the idea would have been rejected. And convince them he did. It's not easy to wrestle like you're the greatest wrestler ever all the time, especially when you're in the midcard or losing or not in a position to be featured as much as you'd need to come off as special. But whatever he's doing, he always comes off like he really is the greatest. One important way in which he does so is by wrestling a lot bigger than he is. That might be another strange comment given that Shawn's thing is being a smaller guy and bumping his ass off. But he really doesn't wrestle like a small guy, even when he's facing someone he's giving up 100lbs to. When he faces bigger guys he's throwing jabs, trading holds with them, taking them down, shooting them into the ropes...even guys who would usually work as monsters vs a guy the same size as Shawn (Mark Henry, for instance, or Kane, Batista, Goldberg, etc.). He never appears to be outmatched. When a match opens up he's competitive at worst, and The Greatest of All Time Bitches at best, either way showing off just how good he is, until the inevitable turning point where the heat begins, whether that come from cheating, or a big guy finally catching him, or him injuring his back, or whatever else it may be. Shawn has always understood the importance of a babyface to have shine, and he certainly never skimps on it. I've mentioned before about a couple of heels like Vader and Brock that they are so good on offense and have such a presence that they can afford to bump and sell big for the faces as much as they do, because they can get all that heat back immediately. Shawn is kind of like the inverse of that, where he's so good bumping and selling during the heat stretch that he can afford to get an extended shine and out-wrestle his opponents so much, because he can give all that heat back immediately. One of the things that surprised me during this binge is that like, Shawn is one of those guys who gets criticised for his comeback, whether the predictability of the routine or the no-selling aspect of the kip up, but I watched a fucking boatload of matches, as I've said, like close to 20 matches all up, and I literally did not see the same comeback sequence twice. Every single match it was different. Sometimes he'd hit the flying elbow into the big kip up but sometimes it comes from something else, sometimes he'd kip up and then get cut off, he'd ALWAYS mix up what moves he'd use after the kip up (atomic drops, punches, clotheslines, chops, back drops, flying elbows, dives, scoop slams, in basically any combination), he might go straight from kip up to the elbow drop or kip up to superkick, he might go through a whole sequence uninterrupted, or extend it out where he'd get cut off and have to do it piece-by-piece. It was honestly the most impressive thing to me watching, because even being his #1 fan I'd always pegged him as a Five Moves of Doom guy, and I was pleasantly surprised at how incredibly varied his comebacks and the final thirds of his matches are. One common denominator throughout all of it though, is that whenever Shawn does The Kip Up, not a flash one but the real thing, the lying spread eagle, body shaking, KIP THE FUCK UP and dancing around the ring kip up...that shit ALWAYS works. There is never a time when people don't go apeshit for him. He has that innate sense of timing to know when to hit it, and the ability to build a match so that that time comes when he wants it to. I mentioned it last time but he has a level of crowd control like few others. One other thing that strikes me when watching Shawn is the ever present sense of his overwhelming...hubris. That's really the only word that comes close to describing it. He is an egotistical, bull headed, stubborn narcissist. Everything he does is done to show off, not only show off but to prove to the entire world that he really is better than everyone else. You can go into what this means about the man in real life, but I'm only concerned with what I see on screen. He's endlessly self aggrandizing. It's curious that in WWE, the land of cutesy, pandering babyfaces, Shawn was never really portrayed as a nice guy. He was always an asshole, but when he was a face he was just our asshole. Like, you look at the promos he'd cut as a face, even in the 00s, and they're full of cocky shit about him being better than everyone and could have come straight out of the mouth of any heel. His whole world, his whole character, his whole raison d'etre is to be the best wrestler, to prove himself as the best wrestler. He's wholly self-centred, and this comes through absolutely in the ring, when everything he does is him working as the presumed GOAT and trying his damndest to prove it. WWE wrestlers tend to all have a certain amount of bone-headedness just due to the house style including things like "I must hit my finisher at all costs!" and "I've found a winning formula so I'm going to repeat it in every match!" and "If I'm in a gimmick match I need to do a big spot even if it kills me!" as dogma. With Shawn it comes through to the nth degree, but in a way that completely fits what he's going for. There's a great line during Shawn/Taker I where they've gone through all of the shit they've gone through, and then Shawn does a kip up and J.R. says something like "Shawn can't help himself, he HAS TO do the kip up", and that really is just him in a nutshell. He HAS TO do things his way. No matter how much his back gets worked over during a match he HAS TO kip up. No matter how much damage he's taken he HAS TO crawl his ass to the top rope and hit the elbow drop. No matter how big a risk it is, he HAS TO do a big dive off that ladder. No matter how much his annoying ass chops are going to enrage the Undertaker, Shawn is a guy who does chops damn it, so he's going to chop the fucking Undertaker. He just has so much fucking hubris that you know he's going to do these things no matter what, and it hasn't even occurred to him not to. It gives meaning and even logic to times when you think "You're fucking dead on the ground right now, why are you climbing the ropes?" or "Your back has been destroyed, why do you bother kipping up?" He's Shawn Michaels, he has to. He can't help himself. As a wrestler he shows more hubris than anyone else I've seen. Early in this thread (I think) someone says something about the difference between performing and wrestling, and how Shawn is more of a performer. I agree with all of that, and I think it shows what kind of fan I am and how I maybe differ as a fan from a lot of you. I think the implication is that being a performer is a negative, or at least not as preferable as being a wrestler. Shawn isn't a tough guy, he doesn't have interesting or devastating offense, he doesn't project danger or legitimacy or grit. He's an entertainer, using his considerable physical and mental talents to put on the best show for the audience. That bothers some people. It doesn't bother me, in fact that's what I love about him. Wrestling is entertainment, and he's the entertainiest entertainer there is. Fuck it's 3am. I'm going to pass out now.

Martel is just a guy of whom I've seen a couple pimped matches, and liked them well enough, but at no point did he make me think "Wow I need to dive into this guy immediately." And the reality is that when it comes to unfamiliar guys and this project, I needed that kind of immediate impression to compel me to keep watching them.