Jetlag

This went only 7 minutes, but damn what a world class match. Yoshida was just dominating Hamada on the ground here. Absolutely nothing Hamada tried looked easy to get in on Yoshida. Her moments of catching Yoshida looked like something else. Some of the wrestling they did here looked on another level. Also, because Hamada had won the previous tournament match with a flash rollup, all of her rollups here were great nearfalls. Great intro to the tricky Arsion style mix, with Yoshida utilizing shoot submissions and Hamada using her lucha.

Almost half of my ballot is gone now. Starting to wonder who the fuck is gonna be in the Top 100.

What are the best Tommy Rich matches? He's the one guy I didn't check out. All the talk about his great matches not being on tape threw me off.

19 guys have dropped from my list. Feels like it's going to be eviscerated in the next couple days with guys like Navarro and Fuerza that I had very high falling.

There is something very puzzling about a guy like Scott Hall, who people seemed extremely lukewarm on in his thread doing so well and finishing above a lot of guys who had people raving.

It's just that the list right now doesn't make a lick of sense. Osamu Nishimura beats Tomohiro Ishii and Ibushi beats Nishimura and then Pat O'Connor beats them all. And then Sekimoto and... the Big Show? WTF? Right now it's like you tossed a bunch of names into a bag and drew them at random, with some names being twice in the bag. Which is pretty much what happened. I can't imagine a wrestling fan who would agree with all the placements. Maybe I'm just bummed cause Nishimura shoulda made the Top 200. Nish rules. I think I had him higher than the Destroyer.

I love Lizmark. His stuff strikes just the right balance between graceful and forceful. Many wrestlers with graceful stuff come across a little pretty at times, while Lizmark looks like he is really graceful at throwing people very very hard. I guess a wrestler who's main selling points are great neck bridges + great throws + being great in his role is hard to sell, but he's just what I want from a wrestler. I do remember him botching stuff in some matches, so I can see your point. Still, match with La Parka blew my mind when I first saw it, and at that point I had already been exposed to a lot of high end lucha.

BattlARTS has some great southern style tags and junior wrestling aswell as plain shootstyle.

Right now there are about 180 wrestlers listed where I'd gladly sacrifice every single bit of footage they have on tape if it means I could watch more Takeshi Ono matches. By any metric the guy kicks the shit out of anyone else listed. Except maybe Lizmark. Lizmark rules. The challenge I posted in his thread still stands: name a wrestler with a better Top 10 matches. Average vote of 70 for Rick Steiner is nuts. I mean, placing him at 99 when you really need to fill out your ballot, that's fine, but the time spent on this project could have been used to find better talent.

Katsumi Usuda - 35th best wrestler ever. I want to hug the person who did that. I think I'd have him in my Top 5 japanese juniors. Yamada is depressing. Really talented girl, but deserved a better career. Great picture though. Lizmark not cracking the Top 300 is annoying too, altough I've conditioned myself to see the rankings so far as a random assembly of names and not as a legitimate ranking. I know I cut out one really popular name from my list cause Lizmark was better. Great masked technico.

That moment when you were the biggest advocate for a guy, even compiling a big match list, and then you are the low vote on him. Should have been a little more confident placing Greco so he could have atleast beaten Sabre. It makes me really happy that 6 other people voted for him. Great worker. Re Quack, I really think him as #6 isn't outlandish if you are really into him. Considering he has been around extremely long aswell. And, his fake lucha/WoS/M-Pro style is better and more original than the fake fighting spirit style other indy guys do.

I don't mind Quack. Better than a lot of spotty guys, and he has carved out a niche for himself. Much of these low placings have been a mess, so I'm not taking them very seriously.

Man, Matsunaga tied with Murakami over Shelley is a beautiful thing.

3 people voting for FvB is cool. I had him at 97 and that's the highest I could justify it personally, but it's cool regardless. I wonder how many guys would've gotten a significant boost if someone had done a big post + matchlist for them too.

Really? What are those great T1 mat performances? I always thought he was a disappointing matworker,while T2 always looks super talented when it comes to grappling. T1 gets stuck doing the "catch and release" stuff too much, altough his selling is good enough to keep it interesting. Also, Hashi should be higher. Watching some NOAH had me really tempted to vote for him because damn this guy got really exciting, violent exchanges out of guys like Marufuji, even very early in his career. And his 2010 is a truely great year. I'd also replace the recommended match with the Ikeda tag from 2010.

Are all 500 guys who received votes gonna be revealed, or just the Top 100?

You forgot his time in BattlARTS and indies. It was a little underwhelming considering he was such a genius in PWFG but he was pretty fun there crossing his junior style with the quasi shootstyle. He also did a damn good job carrying Minoru Tanaka at one point and had a really fun match with Ishikawa at a Rikidozan Memorial show.

Daisuke Ikeda is the next guy who deserves a big post. The guy's longevity is quite incredible. We're not talking about a guy here who has a long career where he is looking really solid till the end. But rather a guy who has really great matches and MOTYCs in almost every year where he makes tape, up until the very end. The guys versatility is underrated. Sure he is a beast and that's his selling point, but especially during the early BattlARTS months where other guys were still adjusting he was clearly leading and holding things together, along with Ishikawa. He has the epic big matches, the blood feud with Ishikawa aswell as very good sub 10 minute matches to pad out his resume. Daisuke Ikeda of the Year 1993 - I don't think his debut was taped 1994 - Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (M-Pro 15.12.1994) 1995 - Daisuke Ikeda & Katsumi Usuda v. Yuki Ishikawa & Shoichi Funaki (PWFG 5/19/95) 1996 - Ikeda/Ono vs. Ishikawa/Otsuka (BattlARTS 30.10.1996) 1997 - Alexander Otsuka vs. Daisuke Ikeda (BattlARTS 5.11.1997) 1998 - Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (BattlARTS 29.8.1998) 1999 - Yuki Ishikawa v. Daisuke Ikeda (7.29.1999) 2000 - Daisuke Ikeda vs. Mitsuya Nagai (BattlARTS 30.1.2000) 2001 - Daisuke Ikeda vs. Tamon Honda (NOAH 1.9.2001) 2002 - Morishima/Ikeda vs. Takayama/Smith (NOAH 26.7.2002) 2003 - Ikeda/Morishima/Rikio vs. Akiyama/Izumida/Saito (NOAH 16.3.2003) 2004 - Morishima vs. Ikeda (NOAH 1.6.2004) 2005 - Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (Futen 24.4.2005) 2006 - Ikeda/Nagai vs. Ishikari/Miyamoto (Kings Road 9.4.2006) 2007 - Yuki Ishikawa/Alexander Otsuka vs. Hara/Ikeda (BattlARTS 21.7.2007) 2008 - Ishikawa/Otsuka/Sawa vs. Ikeda/Usuda/Super Tiger 2 (BattlARTS 26.7.2008) 2009 - Ikeda/Ono vs. Suruga/Oba (Futen 26.4.2009) 2010 - Ikeda/Oba vs. Hashi/Mashimo (Futen 24.10.2010) 2011 - Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (BattlARTS 5.11.2011) 2012 - Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono vs. Kengo Mashimo/Hikaru Sato (Futen 22.1.2012) In a 20 year career, there are about 15 real hits there that would tremendously boost any very well respected wrestlers resume, and in many of these years there's lots of extra awesome matches even when they are 2nd best. And that is with the disadvantage of much of his Futen work not being available and BattlARTS stuff often being clipped.

Hase placed #33 in the Smarkschoice list, so the idea that he is some kind of undiscovered great or unfairly dismissed worker is funny. It's just that people have had their share of japanese style heavyweight epics and gotten busy with fresher stuff. That's okay. The idea that this is some kind of "battle" is also funny. You should stop taking every different opinion as a personal attack at you. NWA style matwork vs. lucha/shootstyle/etc is interesting. I don't think there is such a clear difference between them. Some of it is good, some of it not so much. IIRC the NWA matwork is more about building to a transition. When the transition is a letdown you feel cheated because you just sat through a bunch of hammerlocks and headlocks for nothing. When a lucha or shootstyle match ends in a letdown, atleast there is a chance you saw some sweet wrestling before that. For what it's worth, all kind of matwork can be dull and listless.

Bull has been one of the more frustrating wrestlers to watch for this project. Clearly a very good wrestler: Really great offense, very good seller, to the point where her selling keeps me interested in otherwise messy matches, and better than most in the early time killing sections that so many of these matches have. All that and I just can't seem to find the matches to piece a case for her together. It's surprisingly rare for her to really work like a monster, and more often than not she's playing second fiddle in a tag. OJ's comment above that she didn't want to be a heel seems strangely fitting, as she has a lot of matches where she sells sympathetic. The stuff where she actually works like a beast is very fun, but it's not the type of truely great stuff that I could point to in order to justify her as an all-timer. The short career is obviously a bummer. The comments above that she's better than Aja seem ridiculous. Clearly she has a few things that Aja lacks, and you could argue that she was the better worker from 1990-95, but Aja's resume stomps hers and Aja also has the standout performances that I've been sorely missing with Bull. I don't know, if somebody wants to do a big match dump of really great Bull performances now is the time, because currently she doesn't cut it for me in a list of all-time greats.

Finally! A Bull Nakano match where she works like Bull Nakano. This was her working as a monster. Yamada can't lift her etc. Nakano is great at putting over Yamada's kicks and offensive flurries. When she's on offense, she's just beating the shit out of Yamada. I wish these matches had transitions that felt a little less random, but what do ya want. Not all of Yamada's stuff landed clean, but it didn't really matter as she was just throwing the kitchen sink at Bull.

I was disappointed to see this not holding up quite well. I remember feeling there was something fishy about this when I first watched it years ago and now I remember why. This had the lamest crowd brawl in the middle. I enjoyed them punishing eachother with the chain and there were some great visuals here, but this could have been so much more. Outside distraction was crap, so was Kandori's armbar. I liked Nakano avoiding Kandori's feeble punches and just kicking her in the face. Finish makes up for the dragging parts. Good match.

This was the most annoying match ever. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have this go 20+ minutes? Edit this to about 10-12 and you get a perfect match. The match felt like a DDT weapons battle royal at times. Match would've been better if they had thrown in Super Uchu Power too. Jesus, why was it impossible for Nakano and Aja to have a great match together? Their 1992 match sucked too. Bull vs. Toyota was better than this. In what bizarro world am I where Toyota has a better match than Aja?

What exactly is it that you find disappointing about him? I think Chavo is really outstanding as a junior worker. vs. Kengo Kimura (NJPW 9/30/80) I like Kengo and his 1980 match vs. Fujinami a lot, but this is the Chavo show. Top notch contest. Really great snug work on the ground, which I like a lot more than the boring shit you'd see in AJPW. Chavo is really sinking into holds. When they stand up, Chavo is just beating the shit out of Kengo, elbows and knees to his face, punches him in the nose etc. vs. Atsushi Onita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS2avPQAtHc This was really great, why wasn't this on the 80s set? Lots of beautiful wrestling and I loved the tricked out, dramatic finishing run. Onita looked fantastic aswell, this is way better than the Fuchi match (which is good). vs. Mighty Inoue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSvfc7txR2k Chavo once again looks like a world class pro wrestler. I loved him viciously elbowing Inoue's face while on the ground and him showing off some lucha craziness on the ground aswell as flying. Going to work on Inoue with chairs etc. was sweet aswel. The structure wasn't as good as in the previous matches but I liked that Chavo seemed to try everything he knew until Inoue just caught him. Should also mention that Chavo is really great at selling defeat which is a major plus for me. Add in the Fujinami match, and you get a really impressive resume. It seems like Chavo got a little slept on in the 80s polls as he was buried under workers with more exciting feuds. Should also mention that he looked better than Bockwinkel in their singles match on classics. Along with his impressive tag resume this makes a really good case. The only thing I don't like about Chavo is his hip attack move.

That tag was very good. I really liked how Martel sunk into that hammerlock, but Piper's performance blew him away. Yes I did, in fact I watched near every match I could find. Bock matches were very good but I thought Martel was merely a foil in them. I remember nothing at all about most of the Jumbo matches. They had one match where they just traded moves and I didn't like it at all. I also watched the Saito match. It was good, but again nothing blew me away. I should probably mention that I've known Martel for a few years since I first discovered Portland, and I was careful not watch too much footage in a row of the same guy while watching things for this project I think I like Martel in Portland the best, probably because Portland in general is so awesome. But as far as Portland guys go, Rose and Piper would probably be my #1 and #2 and there's a big gap after that. The competition for the #3 spot is pretty tough. And I don't know if I will rank Piper. I also watched a few of Martel's matches in Europe and while he was a good heel there, he didn't as look as good as, say, Barry Horowitz. The big problem with Martel is that he's clearly excellent in his role and has a bunch of very good-great matches. But I would like something a little more than that. I probably don't value "good in his role" as much as everyone else around here.