W2BTD

I'm sure some of you remember Landel's random, 3 day WWE run in December 1995. SMW had just folded, and Landel made his debut replacing the injured Shane Douglas vs Ahmed Johnson at IYH 5. He lost a :30 squash. Landel worked the next two nights, which were TV tapings, and they actually gave him a mini push to set up a WWF Title match vs Bret Hart. First he beat Bob Holly on a live RAW. Later that night, he lost the title match to Bret, but that wouldn't air until January. The next night he beat a pre-push jobber Matt Hardy at the Superstars taping. The Holly match was live, then the Hardy match aired about a week later. Then they aired the Bret match on WWF Mania of all places a few weeks after that in January. So they basically gave Landel two TV wins to set him up for Hart. Four matches in three days, that aired over a months time. Then he was gone. Here's the Hart match: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqf6_bret-vs-buddy_sport Landel worked a random shot at a Knoxville house show in 1997, third from the top vs TJ Hopper. They used a few other ex-SMW guys on that show. Then he popped back up again in 1999, working three Shotgun Saturday Night tapings. I didn't know about that mini run until I researched the forgotten Hart match. He also had one WCW match during this era, a WCW Saturday Night loss to Goldberg in 1997. All of those post-95 shots were in SMW country, so when WWF or WCW would come around, people thought well enough of him that they would give him chances.

This guy has the highest of high end stuff... ...then disappears into booking black holes.

If you can find it, Austin Aries & Roderick Strong vs Styles & Matt Sydal from 2/25/06 in Edison NJ for ROH was the best tag team match I've ever seen live.

Oh, and the Windham match from Starrcade '88 was one hell of a match, too.

Here are some of the ones I like off the top of my head: vs Bret Hart, KotR '93 vs Taz, Heatwave '98 w/Vader vs Hase & Muto, can't verify the date because they had more than one match and this is on some grimy VHS comp I own, but i'm pretty sure it's 5/1/92 (i'm sure Ditch or somebody else will instantly know the one i'm talking about) As Jimmy Redman mentioned, the '87 Survivor Series match was basically a Bigelow showcase before they gave up on him. And the LT match was essentially a minor miracle.

When it comes to the big men, for me there is Vader, then Bigelow. After that, steep decline.

Rey's base. I probably like him more than most people. LOVED his tag team with Joe Lider circa 2008 or so.

Just ignore everything he did when they were booking him as a half wit southern bumpkin.

Age of the Fall tags, I guess. Jacobs & Black vs Briscoes in NYC comes to mind if i'm trying to come up with stuff I liked.

Had him 25th in a list I did in 2009/2010. Obviously if I did it again he'd be in the Top 20 somewhere by now, after putting together two of the greatest years ever, and taking part in the best series of matches since Misawa/Kobashi,

AJ Styles is a tremendous pro wrestler. Tons of great stuff in ROH, TNA, and now New Japan. A great athlete with amazing body control, and because he's flashy (which is sort of a death knoll around here as that does not appeal to some), he doesn't get enough credit for his excellent match structures & psychology. Maybe the most interesting to watch U.S. based wrestler of his era, even if he isn't the best. Top 25/50 material.

I think this particular thread is the best example of how far across the wrong side of the tracks I am when it comes to this site lol. I've probably gone to, I don't know, 30+? ROH shows over the years, mostly during the peak years (05-09). I can say with almost zero hesitation that my least favorite performer overall on those shows was Jimmy Jacobs. He's one of the few pro wrestlers who will prompt me to walk out of the room and find something else to do until the next match hits the ring. I'm not sure if he'd make my ROH Top 100. Jacobs would fit right in with some grimy southern territory in the 80's. So I totally get why you guys like him and can see where you're coming from. But for me, he was just never my bag. I hated his brawls breaking up the workrate stuff on ROH shows.

I doubt he'd make a top 100 for me, but i'll say this about Jarrett. I've been watching a bunch of Attitude Era shows on the Network that I never saw before, and after watching those shows that were filled with so much trash, Jarrett matches always save the day, and he almost always stands out as one of the best workers on the show. This sort of surprised me. Another thing. There aren't many things I dislike in wrestling more than crowd/arena brawls. That was the Jarrett formula in TNA. But if you turn down the sound on Jarrett's TNA brawls, and do the same with your standard Austin/Triple H/Rock Attitude Era brawl (which levels the playing field due to the red hot AE crowds that made all of those mundane main events seem much better than they really were), Jarrett's stuff, which he was always criticized for, stacks up just fine. I think Jarrett is underrated because people were sick of him on top all of the time (and rightfully so).

(Feed & Bump) Top 100 of All Time - absolutely. Overall Top 100 of All Time? Nah. Too much below average (and flat out boring) material.

KENTA was my pick Wrestler of the Decade for the '00-'09 decade. He spent the first half of that decade as part of the best tag team on the planet, and the second half as the most exciting & intriguing singles worker in the world. His '06 & '09 are two of the greatest singular bell to bell years in wrestling history. And that's with spending half of '09 injured. His feud & series of matches (tag & single) vs Nakajima from late '08-early '09 contains some of the best multi layer match to match psychology I've ever seen. Obviously i'm very, very high on him. He's also my personal favorite wrestler of all time. My one & only knock is that his GHC run was very disappointing. It's easy to blame shitty opponents like Morishima & such, and a dead, boring promotion, but it is what it is. When KENTA is clicking on all cylinders, I find it hard to come up with anybody who I think is better. If I were participating in this (which I probably won't be because narrowing down 100 wrestlers would be impossible for me, and then ranking them would be a complete nightmare...I did a Top 100 on another site once and was disgusted at my list because i'm waaay too indecisive and I change my mind daily), he'd be considered for #1, but would likely fall somewhere in the middle/bottom of the top ten.

I don't think this would have been considered racist in that time frame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro Of course, drawing attention to his race probably isn't necessary, but it seems churlish to me to use this as a knock on Davis. I wasn't knocking him for it. It definitely threw me though. Calling him "boy" over & over was more of a shock to my 2014 system than the "negro" part.

Somebody with more time on their hands than me should seek out other match ratings aside from dave's. Keller, Scott Keith, Loss, Alan4L, Ryan Clingman, the devilishly handsome Joe Lanza, whoever. I know mookie was looking for a comprehensive Keller listing, not sure if he ever found it. If seven people rate a PPV or a big show, and five of them go 4 or higher on a given match, you can reasonably surmise that it was a pretty damn great match. A compilation of matches that were rated by more than just one person, with a high/low plus average rating, would be more interesting to analyze than just dave's opinion. There are probably thousands of puro matches alone that plenty of smart people have rated that dave will never watch. Even in North America dave doesn't watch a ton of lucha, and when it comes to places like ROH he only watched what gabe or others sent him in the pre TV/iPPV days. People were/are rating all of this stuff.

The problem with the raw number of 4-star+ matches, is what dave watches. He's seen just about every taped WWF/E match since 1984, and rated every single PPV match, so WWE wrestlers have a built in advantage. Same for WCW & TNA PPV's. And like anybody else, when he's hot on a certain promotion he tends to consume as much as he can get his hands on. He runs hot & cold on New Japan, lucha, etc. Obviously we all know he was way into the AJPW golden era and loved joshi during that time, too. He is watching all of the New Japan big shows right now, which he probably wasn't doing a few years ago (just like he isn't watching a ton of All Japan, NOAH, Zero-1, etc at the moment aside from hyped stuff that people rec to him, which he often doesn't bother to rate or talk about in the newsletter). This is stuff we have to keep in mind when looking at "this guy has 23 matches compared to this other guy with 8". For example, CIMA has 9 matches listed, 3 of which are from DGUSA, and 3 of which are from Dragon Gate proper. I mean, c'mon. That's just dave not watching a ton of Dragon Gate, because CIMA has had literally thousands of Dragon Gate/Toryumon matches, and what, maybe 40 DGUSA bouts? And dave likes the style enough to where CIMA would probably have 40 or 50 matches from Dragon Gate alone listed at minimum if he was consuming the product at WWE levels. Comparing CIMA to Dragon Kid is fair, but comparing CIMA to Edge with something like this is essentially worthless. Edge to Randy Orton? Absolutely. Even someone like Jun Akiyama gets screwed, because dave wasn't watching a ton of declining days NOAH or modern All Japan, and if he is, he isn't writing about it, talking about it, or rating it.

Word for word what I posted on the Observer board RE: Chad's work here: This contains a tremendous amount of great research. After reading that, I really really hate to boil down Taue to the same tired argument, but his candidacy really does boil down to what you think his contributions were to all of those tag matches, both from a match quality and drawing perspective. He has a few strong singles matches on that Budokan resume from a drawing perspective, but are they enough on their own? It really does come down to the tags and how much of a supplement you believe them to be. And there really is no way around it, Taue was involved in a lot of filler at various points. To be fair, both AJPW & NOAH were never afraid to go back to him on top, and he usually delivered (although there are a few cases where his stuff on top dropped off some from the previous show). Yes, he was very clearly the fourth guy. You could argue he was riding a wave. I think the wave happens without him. I don't know if it happens without any of the other three. I don't think it happens with just Taue. I liken him to Tony Perez. He wasn't Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, or Pete Rose. Playing with those guys probably got Perez into the HOF. Maybe playing in AJPW (& NOAH) gets Taue in. And maybe there is nothing wrong with that. Does that make Akiyama Dave Concepcion?

Davis casually refers to Bearcat Wright as a "young negro boy".

The Gagne vs Bastien match is one of my favorite matches of all time, and if Dylan or Rich watch it they'll instantly understand why. My favorite type of match is probably Japanese young lions, either vs each other or against tough veterans, and this match is clearly a template for the latter. I would have to think this is one of the earliest (if not THE earliest) Bastien matches to make tape. It's funny, because he had a match vs Buddy Rose in Portland that was probably one of his last matches to make tape, and I loved that one, too.

I have no idea how much of this has already been floating around, but Chicago Film Archives just started uploading this stuff on YouTube. Most of the matches are full length, and it features tons of all time greats & HOF'ers. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXxP_rvXryBPpjIw7Dl9Tg/videos

Yes, and I believe there are other examples of inconsistencies like this. Kojima left the ballot in '07. He's back on in a tag team. When does his clock start? If it's retro, how is that fair to Tenzan, who it appears has never been a candidate?

He mentioned this year's G1 as a factor in raising his stock. I have no idea if that's why he voted him.

Define lunatic? Please don't engage him.