Shining Wiz

Generally, the ropes are really springy. Unless Rey throws you onto them. But even then, only when he's setting up one move. Otherwise, still springy.

The horrible way WWE booked him leaves a bad default memory for me. Also, I never enjoyed roided up Rey as much as I did smaller athletic Rey. He's someone I'll have to go back and review, but at first glance I'd have him way down my list.

If you're naming Bobby Bass, you must be a Maritimer. "No Class" was always a fun bad guy to watch. My dark horses would be Leo Burke, Ron Starr, Tomohiro Ishii and, if they're to be considered dark horses as mentioned above, Jake Roberts and Terry Taylor.

Thought this might be fun and a bit more focused than the "Who's in your 100". I went through the list of nominees and did a preliminary sorting for the first time tonight, setting out top ten contenders, top 25, 26-50, and 50-100 roughly. I ended up with 52 in the top ten, top 25 and 26-50 groups, with another 36 in the 50-100 range. Gives me a decent base of general impressions to start building a list out of. So, here are my first glance top ten contenders: Toshiaki Kawada Stan Hansen Sami Zayn Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat Nick Bockwinkel Mitsuharu Misawa Kenta Kobashi 'The Great Muta' Keiji Mutoh Jumbo Tsuruta Hiroshi Tanahashi Genichiro Tenryu Daniel Bryan Chris Benoit Cesaro

I see the problems mostly falling on Mascaras there.

I just watched him take a local worker who looks and wrestles like a local worker to a 3 star match on local tv. The promotion is called WrestleCentre and I think the shows are online somewhere. My point being, AJ is much better either than I had thought he was or than he could be in TNA. Between this Indy run and his NJPW run, he's jumping into contention for me.

Watched a Bockwinkle/Choshu match from 84 or 85......I knew Bock was good, but he may have just become a #1 contender for me. I think I need to do an intensive Bock review.

Malenko is the wrestler that I need to re-evaluate the most. I have not watched any Malenko since he retired and I have no idea how I feel about him anymore. What should I watch? I'm not one for having a list of matches right off the top of my head, particularly not with dates, etc. I do recall some very good matches with Benoit and Rey earlier in his WCW run. As someone else mentioned, he was a very good ground base for a lot the luchadors to work with in the cruiserweight division. I like he ECW persona, but I'm not sure there's much in the way of good/great matches there. I haven't watched the full Guerrero matches in quite some time, but I don't recall liking them as much as some other folks at the time (and since).

MVP is the best option for those listed here. If Ross is going to call this in a more sporting/informative way as I hope he does, he'll need a serious sidekick. Someone like Cornette is too obnoxious to do it, and someone like Vader too unproven. MVP is far from experienced as a colour man, but he seems like he'd be a natural fit. Tenay could be pretty good too. Or he could be TNAy and be more annoying than Cornette.

Looks like I might be the high vote for Malenko. I always enjoyed his matches as they often stod out as crisply performed sport-like contests when compared to some of his contemporaries. The no frills, icy persona dovetailed nicely with the way he executed his moves in match. I'm looking froward to revisiting some f his WCW matches on the Network.

Rey Nr won't do as well with me as with others.

If they were so worried about the fence links breaking in that section that they wouldn't walk on it, then they had to know what the result of a chokeslam would be.

They've always said it was accidental, but I remember watching it back and it's clear they're avoiding that portion of the cell when they are on top.

I agree....was just wondering how my environment argument might hold up with Hart as focus.

Not in my book, less than Davey and way less than Owen. While that's down to taste, that'll be a hard one to substantiate.

How would you say the depth of Bret's output compares to the others you listed originally?

I'm not the one to go in depth regarding this question, but I think you have to, at least to some degree, factor in the environment they were working in. Shawn simply wasn't in the position to have the depth of great performances the other did because if the structure if the WWF.

Personal?

This came up particularly in the thread for Invader 1, and has been mentioned with less vitriol in the Benoit thread, but how are people planning on dealing with the, shall we say, more personally reprehensible people who were otherwise great wrestlers? Follow up to this point - where does the line get drawn? I would imagine a large number of candidates have some questionable behaviour in their pasts (Austin's spousal abuse allegations, Murdoch's racism, Lawler's penchant for (too?) young girls, the mess that is Flair, etc....). Personally, I can separate it all. I don't watch the first season of Sons of Anarchy and think about Half Sack killing an old lady, and I don't think about Benoit killing his family when I watch his matches. So, no effect on my voting really.

I had no idea there was a moral component to the project. I'm on boat with whoever said Invader 1 is in line for consideration for the brawling. His selling is pretty fantastic. The crowd is certainly into him, and that adds a lot to his matches, particularly the brawls.

The term "exposing the business", when used on an internet form by (I presume) a non-wrestler is kind of hilarious. As for Richards, I was underwhelmed when he showed up in ROH, started to enjoy him in his No Remorse Corps role, and fell off the Richards wagon when he turned into the badly tattooed guy with the Napoleon complex. That being said, really athletic guy who has a ton of moves, who very often fails to put it together in a good package.

First you said worked grappling wasn't realistic enough then you said real grappling is boring as shit. I take that to mean that you don't like worked grappling regardless of how realistic it is. But doesn't that mean you should dislike everything from Verne Gagne vs Thesz through to this Thatcher stuff? Any time anybody works a hold in wrestling they're misapplying it. They may misapply it, but they knew/know how to make it look good. And INTERESTING. The reason pro wrestling is worked is to add drama to what is not the most interesting spectator sport. Bryan's omaplata may not be tearing a shoulder, but I'll be damned if he isn't making it look like he's got it in tight. Anyhow, this conversation has reached its end point I think. Keep enjoying what you enjoy.

My point being when you start making references outside that carefully constructed world, you run into problems. I find Daniel Bryan or any number of others to produce more realistic looking pro wrestling matches than they do. I find a punch from Goldust more realistic looking than Thatcher's grappling.I literally just spent two hours on the mats watching far more realistic grappling. The most realistic looking pro-wrestling bouts historically have been catch-as-catch bouts. No matter what sport you train in that remains true. The problem with taking real submissions and actual grappling and applying them to a pro wrestling match is that you can't really put on the move with any sort of conviction......because if you did, that would be the end the match. So while you might find those more realistic, I find them more obviously not. It's why I hate moves like arm bars in pro wrestling. If you lock in an armbar properly, the other guy taps. In pro wrestling though, a guy can survive an armbar for two minutes and make a comeback. It makes a match look silly and (more) noticeably a work. When I watch Thatcher or the others in these 'realistic' matches, I see bad positioning and misapplied subs. And this is because they have to do that in order to let the other counter and survive. And beyond that, those matches are the grappling version of a match filled with pointless flippitydoos. Move, move, reverse, reverse, strike, strike, move, move, random finish that wasn't built up to at all. Finally, as Joe alluded to above, real grappling is boring as shit. Seriously. YouTube "most exciting jiu jitsu match" and see for yourself. That's why pro wrestling is worked in the first place....make it more exciting, not more realistic. You're asking for MMA, but pro wrestling isn't MMA. Real in pro wrestling isn't the same as real in a fight. We rave about the punches of Jerry Lawler, but if one wanted to they could easily say, "the problem with Jerry Lawler's punches is that they should knock a guy out, but they are thrown the wrong way and they don't." Looking at pro wrestling through real fight/MMA eyes is a lose lose situation, because pro wrestling is about looking and feeling realistic, not being realistic. As for the random finishes, that's a simple lack of understanding of the catch-as-catch style. The finish isn't random, it's a wrestling move, and thus from the beginning of the match until the end the finish can be any move because the style makes it where any move at any time could finish the match. Truth be told I enjoy that more than the "here's a bunch of moves, but don't worry none of them matter or should be taken seriously until I hit my signature finisher." Lastly, grappling most certainly isn't boring as shit. I watch the nationals, world cup, NCAA championships, go to local NAGA competitions and I enjoy myself. Grappling is a wonderful and exciting thing, both in real combat sports and in pro wrestling. There can most certainly be bad grappling, and there can be grappling that isn't exciting within the context of that specific match. But, grappling as a general concept is exciting as all get out and I'd much rather watch tremendous grappling than tremendous flippy-floppy every day of the week. I'm asking for the opposite of mma. I'm asking for pro wrestling. Lawler's punches LOOK real, outcome be damned. Thatcher, Busick and the rest look like they're having a warm up roll except for the grimaces on their faces. And I completely understand catch as catch can, but when your match is move, move, move, move, finish unrelated to previous moves, how is that conceptually different to flip, flip, dive, flip, finish unrelated to previous flips? I like my matches to have an internal story leading to a finish which is a satisfying conclusion to that story. I couldn't care less about someone using a 'finisher' or not, so long as the ending relates to what I watched before it. We'll have to agree to disagree regarding grappling as a spectator sport. I'm a grappler, but I find it generally boring as all hell to watch.

I find Daniel Bryan or any number of others to produce more realistic looking pro wrestling matches than they do. I find a punch from Goldust more realistic looking than Thatcher's grappling. I literally just spent two hours on the mats watching far more realistic grappling. The most realistic looking pro-wrestling bouts historically have been catch-as-catch bouts. No matter what sport you train in that remains true. The problem with taking real submissions and actual grappling and applying them to a pro wrestling match is that you can't really put on the move with any sort of conviction......because if you did, that would be the end the match. So while you might find those more realistic, I find them more obviously not. It's why I hate moves like arm bars in pro wrestling. If you lock in an armbar properly, the other guy taps. In pro wrestling though, a guy can survive an armbar for two minutes and make a comeback. It makes a match look silly and (more) noticeably a work. When I watch Thatcher or the others in these 'realistic' matches, I see bad positioning and misapplied subs. And this is because they have to do that in order to let the other counter and survive. And beyond that, those matches are the grappling version of a match filled with pointless flippitydoos. Move, move, reverse, reverse, strike, strike, move, move, random finish that wasn't built up to at all. Finally, as Joe alluded to above, real grappling is boring as shit. Seriously. YouTube "most exciting jiu jitsu match" and see for yourself. That's why pro wrestling is worked in the first place....make it more exciting, not more realistic.

I find Daniel Bryan or any number of others to produce more realistic looking pro wrestling matches than they do. I find a punch from Goldust more realistic looking than Thatcher's grappling. I literally just spent two hours on the mats watching far more realistic grappling.