Jimmy Redman

As a newcomer to most of those guys mentioned, between Youtube, Dailymotion and Ditch I've largely not had a problem watching them.

Not looking at either guy for my list, but I prefer Necro over Super Dragon. Necro I can appreciate as a thing even though I don't really care for his style, and I do enjoy things like the Joe match and his role in the ROH/CZW feud. Super Dragon I've seen less of, but generally he's just a guy I don't really get. Somehow he's the exception to my "dude in ninja outfit throwing his body around" fetish.

I absolutely disagree that Rey carried Jericho in their feud, if that was the implication. Jericho was pretty clearly the driving force for that feud creatively, and contributed just as much, if not more, to the matches. I can understand criticising it as derivative (in the sense that he aped the finishes from the Casas/Mistico feud) but the last thing he was in that feud was a passenger. Jericho is rarely a passenger, actually. I just did a long bit about Foley being creative, and Jericho is another one, a guy who has a naturally fertile creative mind and wants to really sink his teeth into his work and develop stories. I like that in a guy. Like, take the current AJ feud, for example. I think if AJ was having this feud with most other people, it would just be the same "trade wins with a guy on TV" thing that literally everyone is doing all the time. But with Jericho the creative touches are there - winning the first match with a rollup, doing the one-upping partners thing, using Miz to do the heeling while Jericho is still a face, but having Jericho cut delusional rock star promos, the roundabout way they set up the PPV match with Jericho initially refusing...all of it is classic Jericho, touches that create not just a storyline but storyline progression, and progression that is borne out in the matches as well. The Jericho/Shawn feud is the best example of this, and honestly probably the biggest feather in his cap. That thing is so intricate in a way that feuds rarely touch, it ran from March to November and every single week there was something going on, some progression, and they kept it going for that long, had four PPV matches that were all unique and all developed the story, incorporated peripheral characters and titles.... They went from babyface rivalry to soap opera drama to a heel turn and a blood feud, to a fake retirement and revenge quest, to a world title match to cap it off, and it all made sense and never lost the audience. (As an aside, complaining about the Jericho/Shawn ladder match is fashionable around here, but this is one of those times when I have no fucking idea what you're all watching. I think it's a great match, it builds off the feud up to that point and the themes they'd built, and it's a great capper to the entire story, especially with using the eye for the finish. I have no idea what the problem is with that match.) I think Jericho was really great in 2008-09 and that run goes a long way with me. The degree to which he changed his entire character and performance to get over as a top heel is kind of lost these days, I think, and the effectiveness of his heel character has been diluted by the thousand imitators since, but it was apparent at the time. That run from the Shawn feud to the Legends feud to the New Smackdown Six stuff to the Jerishow team is a brilliant run. As Loss has been saying recently he was also great in that 2002-05 Raw midcard run. Being an upper-midcard heel (and then face) was kind of the perfect position for that character at that time, and it gave him the freedom to do some work. I like Christian team from 2003, I absolutely love the Trish storyline and everything that involved (and again, is another example of a super involved and creative Jericho feud). Jericho vs Christian at WMXX is such a forgotten great match, nobody ever talks about it but it ruled and they did a great job of having a grudge match with no gimmicks or overt violence, just showing the animosity through how snugly they wrestled with each other, if that makes sense. Basically any Christian match is good, as is any Evolution match from 2004. The Cena matches from 2005 were a great swansong for his first WWE run. He has largely annoyed me in the 2010s as Midlife Crisis Jericho but I'm trying not to let that override the bulk of his career, and what he was capable of.

I don't think that was the point, it was just an opportunistic counter. Brie had the Yes Lock on but Ric was looking to put Charlotte's leg on the rope, so Brie grabbed the leg to transition to the crab to keep her away from the ropes, and Ric.

JBL calling Hunter possibly the greatest of all time makes me want to leave him off my GWE ballot altogether in lieu of actually vomiting. Gross. Brock is from another planet.

Without wanting to step on Dylan's toes, here's what I would say off-hand were Cesaro's best WWE matches: vs Sami Zayn - NXT 23/5/13, 12/6/13, 21/8/13 (2/3 Falls), 27/2/14 These guys play off so much and build the rivalry match-to-match that it's a good idea to watch the whole series in order. The first one is the shortest and least necessary of the bunch, but it's Sami's NXT debut and the finish sets the stage for what follows. vs Sheamus - Main Event 5/6/13, SD 14/6/13 Their ME match is their best one, but I also like the SD rematch a lot, and they've had many matches since then, including a PPV match in 2014, and they're pretty much all really good. They match up well together. vs Bryan - Raw 22/7/13 (as part of Bryan's Gauntlet Match) vs Cena - Raw 17/2/14 (I think you already watched this), Raw 29/6/15, Raw 6/7/15 vs Kofi Kingston - Raw 14/4/13, Main Event 1/5/13, Main Event 11/9/13 Again, the first ME match is probably the pick of the bunch, but they're another pair that always matched up well. For people who hate Kofi they're probably a big feather in the cap for Cesaro. vs Owens vs Rusev - Raw 13/7/15 Tag matches: w/ Swagger, Sandow vs Cena, Cody, Goldust, SD 1/11/13 w/ Swagger vs Big E/Henry, Raw 16/12/13 w/ Tyson vs New Day - Extreme Rules 2015, Payback 2015 If you want to see what he can do with scrubs: vs Miz, Elimination Chamber 2013 vs Bo Dallas, NXT 3/7/13 vs Santino Marella, SD 9/9/13 Most of this is concentrated in 2013, half because it was his best year and half because I stopped watching closely and writing stuff down after 2013. I'm sure Dylan and others could point to more recent matches as well. Ones I bolded are the wham bam essentials.

https://www.facebook.com/WWENXT/videos/956874217695476/ Balor and Bayley need to form a team called the Faces That Launched A Thousand Ships.

Jeff Hardy is the first guy who comes to mind.

It's not that I don't think he has great matches - he has plenty - it's that he doesn't have all-time level matches. His best match is probably that Sheamus match, and it's fucking awesome, but it's not something I'd call a high end MOTDC or put on my Top 100 Of All Time list or anything. Same thing with what I'd consider his other best matches - Cena, Sami, Bryan. Like I said it's hardly a knock because he does have a bunch of great matches, and he shows his strength in other ways and I'm ranking him on that basis. I guess my point is that if he had some incredible, all-time matches to point to, on top of everything else he has going for him, I could really rank him quite high.

I personally don't hold it against guys who only worked heel or face if they were really fucking good at it. Some guys should never be heels, and having that kind of transcendent babyface appeal that makes someone say "This guy should never, ever be a bad guy" is something special in itself. Same goes for lifelong heels, I think it is a little easier to be a career heel but the point remains the same: being really fucking good at something. I think I've made this point before, but when you look at a career face like a Steamboat, or a Rey, you can still point to tremendous variety in their performances, within the parameters of being a babyface - technical exhibitions, matches based on babyface selling, body parts, wild brawls, revenge matches, sprints, small vs big, world title matches, gimmick matches, tag teams, and so on. So I think the idea that someone was a specialist or could only do one thing well really needs to be held up to scrunity, rather than just assuming they always worked the same or lacked variety because they never worked heel. In terms of someone who actually IS a specialist, like a Ricky Morton who defined a specific role - babyface selling in a tag match, I think there's a ceiling for that in the same way that there's a ceiling for being a generalist who isn't really the best at anything in particular - for me that is a pretty high ceiling, depending on just how fucking good you are at it. A key point for me is that some wrestlers aren't supposed to be world class at every role in wrestling. Stan Hansen makes no sense as an underdog face. Rey Mysterio makes no sense working heel. I'm not going to penalise them for being who they are, when being who they are is that exceptionally good, just for the idea that wrestlers are supposed to be able to be a jack of all trades. Honestly, I don't think they are.

From this thread I feel like we're all agreed that we shouldn't use minus points.

The conversation they're having is about the Laprade System Dylan originally described, he's explaining why #100 being 0 isn't a punishment in that system, since under 100 gets minus and thus a score of zero is less like a bad thing and more like breaking even. He's not saying that the minus points aren't a punishment. You're having two different conversations, is what I'm saying.

Hogan is a big yes for me. It's impossible to separate his work from Being Hulk Hogan, but there are a lot of guys who were massively over or big stars and didn't produce the kind of work that he did. I have little time for him early, as a heel, but as soon as he turns face, woah baby. Love the Bock matches in AWA. I am a big fan of the Hulkamania run, I think there's a lot of juice there. A lot of memorable feuds resulting in lots of good matches. There's the Andre feud from WMIII to Survivor Series to the title switch. The Savage team and then angle and WM5 match. Warrior. There's matches with Orndorff, King Harley, Bundy, Bossman, etc. Even early on in 1984 there's more grittier stuff with Schultz, Valentine. He has this in-built level of heat that makes his matches exciting, but crucially he also knows exactly what to do with that heat and how to time things just right to take the crowd along for the whole ride. So many guys have heat for their entrance but lose it during the match. Hogan never does. His WCW career is kind of a different beast, but I give him credit for transforming into the complete antithesis of what he was and being such a convincing piece of shit heel. Not everyone can be that good at both AND draw so well as both. I don't enjoy what I've seen from WCW but he at least knew how to work to his character by turning up the back rakes and eye pokes and bullshit, even if he wasn't capable of putting on compelling matches anymore. His WWE comeback lead to really good dream matches with guys like Rock and Shawn. The Rock match in particular is such a testament to the strength of Hogan as a kind of wrestling force - no matter what he'd done or how shitty he'd been for so long, there is something about him that is eternal, that can't help but touch people. I remember when he did the run in for Eugene at WM21, I was a kid and had NEVER seen Hogan as a wrestler before, although of course I had heard of him. I had no previous attachment to him at all, and by the end of it I was jumping up and down going nuts. That's the power of Hogan, and that says a lot to me. The Shawn match I think is great, I'll defend it to the death because if you knew absolutely nothing about the backstage bullshit surrounding it, and just watch the match, aside from the ridiculous Big Boot bump at the end it is pretty much the perfect, archetypal Hogan vs small bumping heel match. You could transplant that match straight into 1985 and it would have been amazing. Whatever Shawn was trying to prove, all he ended up doing was basically being perfect Hogan fodder and it made for the best possible match.

They were talking about #100 being a punishment, not being left off.

Foley is probably a guy who has the highest highs and lowest lows in terms of guys that I'm looking at, short of assholes like Hunter or Angle. Foley's biggest strength, and biggest weakness, is that he cared so damn much. It's his biggest strength because here's some kid with just about no athletic talent in his body, the furthest thing from a superstar look, nothing that screamed anything on paper, and through his smarts, creativity, willingness to destroy his body and sheer force of will, made himself into one of the most unlikely wrestling superstars. Just about everything that got Foley where he was is inside his head, more so than almost any other big star in wrestling, and that's a testament to how brilliant a wrestling mind he was. He's really a remarkable wrestling achievement. It is also his biggest strength because the level to which he cared and wanted to do good work constantly pushed him creatively. As a result you have his effective and well thought out promos, you have his intricate character development (particularly in WWF with the three faces), you have storylines that go way outside the box, and you have those stories played out to maximum effect in the ring. Things like the simple idea of being one guy with three distinct alter egos that all walk, talk and work differently, and making that work and be credible. Or like the sit down interviews with JR that went "behind the curtain" and used his real life story in such a compelling and appropriate way. Or like the Vader match on Saturday Night where the hook is that he was genuinely getting beat up for real and feeling real pain, in a way that you didn't really see in the Big Two, and then re-creating that sense of legitimate danger almost a decade later with the big HIAC bumps. Or like the feud with Orton, where the story was him backing out of a match and being called a coward for months on end - in his book Foley says that he's the only big face who could get away with acting cowardly like that, and I think he's right. Foley has so many layers to him with all of his characters, so many different characters to draw upon for varying emotions and situations, and thus has more depth to him than almost anyone else. Which allows him to go places that other guys simply can't. When it all comes together he can create something truly memorable. Hell in a Cell. The Austin matches, particularly Over the Edge. Hunter at the Rumble. The Orton match is incredible. The Edge match. The Shawn match, which stands out so much in so many ways - Foley working 'straight', Shawn working 'snug', the lack of nearfalls, the length, etc. Sting at Beach Blast is probably the peak of his younger, uber-bumping Cactus days. I might have to revisit the Rock matches. Plus random Raw matches where they go balls out like vs Funk or vs Hunter. His desire is also his biggest weakness because he puts so much effort and thought and so much of himself into his work, that when it doesn't all come together he can go really far off the rails, coming off as missing the mark at best, and bloated, self-indulgent or dangerously suicidal at worst. That Vader match, for instance, is something I don't care much for. It's interesting, knowing how much he was eating it, but at the same time...the fact that you're eating it for real doesn't necessarily make for a good wrestling match. The early forearms are exciting and gruesome, but it's sort of a mess of a match after that. It just makes me think that you're kind of stupid to willingly let a guy break your nose just to have a slightly more impressive match. Same thing with the Rock I Quit, he's trying to create this emotional, heartfelt, real-life hook but really, he's just sacrificing his real-life health and his brain so the camera can get good shots of his family legitimately freaking out at him killing himself for a wrestling match. In later years he turned more towards creative self-indulgence. The Flair match being a great example, where he had this blood feud with Ric full of "you said mean things in your book" insider crap, and then they have this bloody I Quit match and the finish is based on Foley's real life but incredibly irrelevant friendship with Melina. It wasn't a logical conclusion to a blood feud between two old stars, it was just Foley sitting in his car thinking "How can I get my friendship with Melina on TV?" And he does that a lot - having the thought of "how can I get that funny thing my kid just said on TV?" and working backwards from there, which I'm sure amuses him to no end but makes for a lot of head scratching for a viewer who isn't in on the joke. At his worst he's one of the most painfully self-indulgent performers (forget wrestlers) I've ever seen. He's sort of the ultimate 'behind the curtain" wrestler, he's written so much about his career and thought process, and he's such a good writer that you read his books and want to watch his matches to see what he describes in his books play out. But the fact that there's a real life story behind a match doesn't always make it good pro wrestling. Having said all that, his highs are really high and I do admire that level of commitment to creativity and the balls required to think outside the box so much as a wrestler. He's a truly unique worker, and he'll be somewhere in the middle of my ballot I think.

Ibushi is a guy I have a lot of time for, he's cute and I'm always happy to watch him and that translates really well into being a great, effective pretty boy face. The key is that he can maintain that during the match and really deliver in the ring as well. He has tremendous babyface fire and knows how to maximise it for effect, he is amazing at getting the absolute shit beat out of him, and also has a vast array of awesome, exciting spots that you want a guy like Ibushi to have. That CHIKARA four-way might be my favourite ever indy match. Just the most insane, heart-stopping spotfest ever, I love it, and Ibushi was the key guy in that. The Nakamura matches are great, particularly the WK one. And this is out of left field, but I cannot explain how much I love his singles match with YOSHIHIKO. I don't think he has enough meat, as they say, to get a place on my list, which is a shame.

I am finding a place for Cesaro. It's a shame that he's been so neglected for so long, but the nature of WWE programming means that even if you aren't being pushed, you still usually have opportunities to have long TV matches on a regular basis. My point being, even when he's not being featured he's still usually doing really good work regardless. He's a weird case for me because he doesn't really have a strong list of really, really high end matches that I'd like for a guy that I'm ranking on only a few years' work. Like, a guy like Sheamus has the Show and Bryan matches which I think are legitimately two of the best matches of the decade, whereas there's no single match of Cesaro's that I'd put on that level. But the fact that I'm ranking him anyway speaks to his other strengths: his good-great output, his ability to bring guys up, his talent and crazy spots, and just his ability to be interesting in basically any match. He might be the most versatile worker in the company. He can job to Sin Cara on Superstars one week, and then look completely at home against Cena in the Raw main event the next. It speaks to both his credibility and his versatility as a worker, being able to work up and down the card and be anyone to anyone at any given moment. He can be a base for flyers, a bully heel for small guys, a big bruiser in a hoss match, a workratey guy in a workrate match, he can do comedy, tag matches, clusterfucks, anything. And crucially, he's usually the most interesting part of the match, or bringing something unique or vital to it. Love the Cena matches on Raw. Love the Sami feud, they had four matches and they were all great and the in-ring story they wove through them all was outstanding. That spot in 2/3 Falls where he counters the tilt-a-whirl into an uppercut was amazing and possibly the most GIF-worthy spot of all time. Any time he has a big match he's always pulling out something that makes you go "Holy Shit!" In the monotony and overexposure of WWE TV, that's not always the easiest thing in the world. And it could be anything - an awesome counter, a ridiculous feat of strength, some brutal striking, an insane high spot, a dickish heel move, anything. He brings the best out of so many guys, particularly ones you wouldn't expect. He had Santino Marella's best non-comedy matches in WWE, and it's not even close. Like, there is so much daylight after that that I cannot do it justice. And we're talking "hey, this was a pretty good match", not anything spectacular, but he brought more out of that guy in the ring than he ever showed with anyone else. Back in NXT, before Bo Dallas figured out his character and was still in that "atrocious wrestler with go away heat" stage, Cesaro had an absolute fucking miracle match with him. Thinking about it, it's still probably Bo's best singles match, and he was about as big a broomstick as a guy could be in this match, it was all Cesaro. He's one of Miz's best singles opponents, and their matches are notable for being quite well worked in a way that you don't expect from Miz, and again that's down to Cesaro's influence. Nobody else likes Kofi like I do, so it's probably another feather in his cap to others that his matches with Kofi were so great. He's had really good matches with both Sin Caras. He's on the list of good Khali opponents. He's also a good tag worker and has been part of three good working teams I can think of - Kings, Real Americans and with Tyson. He's just a guy who, like I said, will do good work no matter what position he's placed in, or what is asked of him. He's one of the most interesting "on paper" guys currently in wrestling.

Looking at who hasn't had any discussion in the last 12 months or so, this guy stood out. He'll definitely be on my ballot somewhere, but I'm having trouble placing him (like a lot of luchadors). He's one of the few lucha guys that I enjoy watching run through their mat routine, and he's also good at rudoing it up, stooging and brawling. Am I out on a ledge in saying that he's far better as a rudo? Where are we on Panther?

I'm a rare exception to Flair fatigue, in that it's not that I'm tired of watching or discussing him, but it's more that I don't have much to say about him in the first place. He's great, and everyone else has explained why so thoroughly by this point that I just have nothing to add to the conversation. He'll be in my Top 10, no idea where though yet.

Could you just jig the same system Dylan mentioned up one so that #100 gets 1 point and go from there? And just tweak something when you get to the weighted scores at the other end. EDIT: Yeah, that.

I'm glad it's not just me. One of the last things I'll do is write out an actual list. It's hard enough sorting guys into tiers.

I'm not the person to answer this because I haven't kept up with weekly TV enough, but from what I've seen, it seems to be a combination of fatigue/wheel spinning making him impossible to care about, and like I said, that he's not good at working as a babyface.

I hate to pile on, but if you're taking requests I recommend Bryan vs Sheamus, 2/3 Falls at Extreme Rules 2012.

Plus I remember you saying at some point that you'd be going pretty high with Hase. So I guess I just assumed you'd rank him over Taue. EDIT: No here it is: From the Hase thread.

Bryan vs Dolph stood out way more in the context of 2010 than it would now. 2010 was a relative low-point for the quality of week-to-week WWE wrestling, and was bookended by strong years in 2009 and 2011. So when Bryan and Dolph had that kind of strong, drawn out kind of wrestling match on PPV in that context (and then repeated it twice more that week, when multiple great TV matches in a week wasn't commonplace) it was quite noteworthy. It was also noteworthy for being Bryan's first chance to have a long workratey singles match on PPV, which is something people would have been waiting for at the time. I've always found myself rating it lower than most, I never saw it as the MOTYC some saw it as, even a WWE MOTYC. They're (that plus the two TV matches) just really good, well worked matches that, like you say, aren't really memorable beyond that. I actually think Bryan vs Miz from 2010 is better.