TRMD

That’s exactly what I thought. What a throwback.

Sorry to bother, but what’s the context here?

Funker really is professional wrestling. He’d be my 2, but he’s the real number 1.

Exactly me. The single biggest reason I didn’t vote in 2016.

Do you guys I think I wanted the entire match to be a Hansen style brawl? Can you read, bub? I’m talking about the start of the match. Literally the first minute. And I’d rather be curb stomped by Doug Furnas than watch one Ospreay match, let alone 2 in the same night. That’s one of the most absurd correlations I’ve ever seen. The person who wanted BRYAN DANIELSON to brawl a little at Mania is also the same guy that wants to watch two Ospreay avengers style epics? What in the absolute hell is the through line there? Itd be like saying “there are really idiots that want Wemby to get in the post and bang? I bet those same idiots love when the Celtics shoot 60 3’s in a game.”

Hunter has a lot of terrible qualities as a wrestler, but refusing to get his ass whooped to start a match would not be one of them. I’m sorry. Bryan Danielson is multiple times the wrestler HHH is, but since none of us know exactly what happened behind the scenes, I’m going to go with my gut here. It’s on Danielson. What a scumbag I am. Turning what should be a celebration of wrestling and Bryan Danielson into a HHH hate fest. That’s actually kind of beautiful. The PWO I remember.

That’s always been the common argument, but that’s just people projecting their own story to the match. I don’t think Danielson has ever come out and said that’s why he started that way or that was the intention. It’s just what people HOPED his intention was because it was so jarring. At least, to a certain type of fan who thinks wrestling should be a certain type of way. Most fans didn’t give a damn. They love that match.

I think Funk is either the best or 2nd best wrestler there’s ever been. I don’t feel that way about Danielson, but he’s a guy that I fully understand why he is thought of so highly. Not that I don’t think of him highly, I do. He’s certainly the best wrestler to debut post 2000, in my opinion. I have some issues with his work, but not much. If this was a list of the full compass of what being a pro wrestler was, he’d be substantially further down the list. But if we’re talking the match, and everything contained in that time frame of the match, he’s incredible. I still think the most pissed off I’ve ever been watching a wrestling match is HHH/Bryan at 30, and Bryan has a chance to fight a guy who has made his life beyond a living hell for a year, and Bryan decides to come out and..wrestle him. It’s rare that I lose that much respect for a worker in one match, but that really cooled me on him for a while. But he’s pretty undeniable as a worker. He gets it. 99% of the time, he gets it.

This site changed my life so much that I literally stopped watching modern wrestling regularly because it sickened me so much. It showed me what wrestling could (and should) be.

There is certainly a sect of wrestling fans, perhaps the majority, that see Funk as Chainsaw Charlie and the guy who could barely move in ECW. Heartbreaking stuff. But if you’re coming to PWO and voting in a big boy top 100 wrestlers ever list, that can be the case when you come here for the first time, but it better not be by the time you vote.

I agree. If you’re factoring every single thing you possibly can in, this is pretty close to a perfect top 3.

Let’s be real here, I get the everyone has different tastes argument, but everyone in the top 15 should have been in 100% of the ballots. Where you put them, whatever. But there aren’t 100 wrestlers to grace this earth who are better than this top 15. i think Danielson is probably number one, because I can’t imagine he’s not on 95%+ of the ballots.

You already know people are gonna be pissy about the blurbs from the 1 voters because they bring up promos and drawing ability and how over he was. That’s all irrelevant. If you’re able to turn on the tape and watch Steve Austin wrestle and not come away thinking you’re watching one of the best wrestlers to ever walk planet earth, I simply don’t trust your tastes. He was a wrestling supernova. An atomic bomb. A fastball the speed of light. From the time he came out of the curtain to the time he walked back into it, Steve Austin believed with 100% of his being that Stone Cold Steve Austin was just as real as you or I. He, to me, and I know you can say this about Funk and Flair and Danielson and a handful of others, is the embodiment of pro wrestling. He is a pro wrestler to the very core of his soul. Every movement. Every decision. Every breath Steve Austin took for 13 years was pro wrestling encapsulated. No, he doesn’t have a breadth of incredible, take your breath away matches that everyone in the top 5 or top 10 has. But performances? He laps the field. And I say that with all due respect to Gods like Funk and Flair. I think he’s the best professional wrestler we’ve ever seen and probably will ever see.

That’s if you’re only able to judge someone’s peak simply on match quality. I would considered Austin’s peak the 5 years where he’s the single most over wrestler the business has ever seen and not skip 3 years in the middle of that because his promotion turned every match into an angle. the match can be overbooked or short or only serve the purpose of progressing a storyline. That doesn’t change the fact that the dude the match was built around was incredible.

Fired me right the fuck up, brother.

I’m talking about charisma from the time the wrestler walks out of the curtain until the moment he walks back into it. as far as how you quantify charisma, it’s just intrinsic. The word was invented and humans know what it is and who has it and who doesn’t. Take the glass of charisma out of my analogy. Replace it with a swimming pool or a pond. Bret and Misawa are very charismatic. They’re pro wrestlers at the absolute highest level and both extraordinarily good at it. Misawa and Bret’s stoicism are both forms of charisma. Austin just has a lot more.

I think the reason he didn’t do as well in 2016 is multifaceted. I think a lot of the people on here in 2016 actually stopped watching wrestling during the attitude era, either because of the match quality or because it just coincided with the natural progressions of growing out of something for a time. And also, I mean, this place, as it should be, was and is kind of a place for wrestling hipsters. That’s the exact kind of person that’s gonna stop watching once they hear their coworkers or classmates talking about wrestling who they knew weren’t into it 3 months before. And in 2016, there was a fare bit of backlash against the era because of over saturation and WWE shoving it down your throat for 15 years after it ended. So I think when they go back and watch Austin, instead of merely watching Austin, the wrestling supernova that he is, they get distracted by the format of the match. the run ins, Hunter, the crowd brawls, etc - and they aren’t able to focus on just how god damn insanely good he was. Just like when I watch Gunther now. I can see that he’s awesome. But I hate everything else that’s going on around him. So I get it. I do. As for the longevity issue, I get it. I‘m a massive longevity guy in sports. But I just think of wrestling differently. If you’re really good for 6 years and then absurdly good for 6 more years, and you have to retire because you broke your neck and your life was crumbling, that’s fine for me in wrestling. But I get why longevity matters more to some people. It takes some wrestlers 12 years to even get good.

Spot on. Spot the fuck on.

PWO changed my life when I found this place. And the first guy to start that was discovering Hansen. I talked about how Foley realized that actually getting hurt, if it looked good, was just as impactful as working. Hansen realized that actually beating the living dogshit out of guys was actually just as entertaining as a worked punch or chop. He didn’t just work good matches, he pulled emotion out of every crowd he wrestled in front of. He forced every wrestler to survive. And when you feel like you’re fighting for your life, the best is gonna be brought out of you. A top 5 guy for me. (I did not vote.)

When I first came to PWO in 2014, Rey was the biggest “why does everyone love this guy so much?” wrestler for me. Not that I didn’t think Rey was good, because it’s probably borderline impossible to think he’s not. But I couldn’t understand why he was seen as a top 10 of all time level guy. but I understand now. I do. Longevity, admittedly, doesn’t mean as much to me in wrestling as it does to others. But I think it’s pretty hard to deny someone like Rey who has been really good, against every style of wrestler, every skill level, every match length, etc, for pretty much 30 years straight. He’s the Willie Nelson of wrestling. Just consistently very good since the very moment he started. Everything changed around Rey, but Rey stayed Rey.

Misawa was an incredible pro wrestler. Bret Hart was an incredible pro wrestler. if you wrung every ounce of charisma out of Misawa, and then wrung every ounce of charisma out of Bret, and you poured all that charisma into a glass, you could sit that glass on the beach next to Austin’s ocean of charisma. And that would probably explain why he’s ranked higher.

Personally, I thank all of the gods that we did not get your exciting top 10, but it certainly would have made for more discussion.

What is this imaginary top 10 that you guys had in mind that wouldn’t be “boring”? the top 10 should be boring. If the top 10 isn’t boring, you’re doing a list wrong. It should be pretty obvious who the 15 or so best of anything are. Can you guys believe that this best musical artists of all times list is gonna have Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, and Stevie Wonder in the top 10? Borrrring. and the irony is, it’s only boring to people who have been PWO’d. The average wrestling fan would be mortified at this top 15. You’re telling me Vader is better than Shawn Michaels? Some short, fat Japanese lady is better than Kurt Angle? Eddie Guerrero is better than Kenny Omega? Steve Austin is better than Will Ospreay? ALL HE DID WAS KICK AND PUNCH! This top 15 has been fantastic. There’s not a single wrestler in this top 15 who isn’t top 15 caliber. And that’s how it should be.

You’re correct, he belongs nowhere near 15. He should be top 5 at the bare minimum. (I’m sorry, i shouldn’t be here. I didn’t vote. This thread belongs to the voters. I’ll see my way out.)

Was that what he was going by before King?