GOTNW

I feel like we should at least discuss these guys because of their rep: Mike Awesome http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/29960-mike-awesome-vs-masato-tanaka-ecw-on-tnn-123199/?hl=%2Bmike+%2Bawesome http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/27281-mike-awesome-vs-masato-tanaka-ecw-heat-wave-080298/?hl=%2Bmike+%2Bawesome http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/29924-mike-awesome-vs-masato-tanaka-ecw-121799/?hl=%2Bmike+%2Bawesome Dolph Ziggler http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/30405-dolph-ziggler/?hl=ziggler

Guess you've forgotten Tanahashi's matches vs. Devitt and Yano.

Watching Reigns-Owens got me thinking about a couple of things: 1)they need new new agents because whoever laid the main event out is an idiot 2)how many guys on the roster can actually work an interesting control segment? 3)Cole is saying Reigns "will never give up" and they're having having him "fight the odds" and look like a wimp, honestly I'm amazed Reigns is as over as he is now

Was Angle even wrestling in 1998. He didn't do anything of note in 1999 and was a super rookie in 2000.

This would be unheard of here, maybe you teach a peculiar group of students or British youth is just different. Sorry but this is complete bullshit. This is stuff that is determined by someone's personality, not by how old they are. A bunch of people from your generation have no interest in producing "best of lists" or whatever, they just consumed pop culture in the same braindead manner people do know. You just may think it's superior pop culture. AJ Styles doesn't do "Misawa elbows" and "Kawada kicks". He does elbows and kicks. There are guys who do use "Misawa elbows". Kotaro Suzuki, Misawa's trainee, uses the exact same elbow variations Misawa did and guys sell them in a similar manner like they would Misawa's. A lot of guys do elbows and kicks. I really can't remember AJ doing elbow and kick variations that would make me think of Misawa and Kawada like I could with Joe.

I like Oz but just haven't gotten the impression she's that good based on what I've seen so far. Owen is there mostly for his consistency and great TV work and I also loved him as a junior in New Japan. Like I said there's not much order once you get to that part of the list but Ki above Lawler seems just fine to me. And thanks.

There are plenty of workers I like who I just don't feel strongly about to rank. I like Tully Blanchard a lot, and I can see why someone would think the Magnum TA match is an all time classic, and it's a great match to me but it's not something that connects to me on the level of the great puro and lucha, and I could replace Tully with a lot of other guys in that formulation.

My instinctive reaction was that Williams has to make it due to his incredible peak. He's not someone I'd place very highly but even in his not-great All Japan stuff I always found him very enjoyable. I have no idea how he was in the states and my list would look completely different if I had the time to be a completist for every wrestler but I don't. It's possible his US work is disappointing or just mediocre. I doubt I'll make time to properly assess that before the deadline as I have other priorities in mind. And you could make "the Ric Flair argument" for about 70% of my list but as it stands I do not like Flair nearly as much as you or any other wrestling fan really. There's a decent chance he'd fallen off as some other wrestlers whose case is based mostly on peak did. He still might because he is in the lower part of my list and I intend to go through the list of nominees and compare the guys I have on it to those I had on it previously or I'd considered. But it could just be a matter of not being familiar with the "bad" Williams. I saw him break someone's nose with a shoot kick in a short match I thought was pretty amazing in american UWF and that's about the extent of my Dr.Death US knowledge. Oh and his WWF run too. There's a squash where he's in a handicap match vs. The Hardys and just dumps them on their head a lot which I adored.

This is what I have right now. I attached numbers but there really isn't that much order to it. The top ten is in order. I think. I changed it like three times today already. Top twenty and thirty are more guys I intend to rank that highly than "number 26 is better than number 27". Anything beyond that is pretty much who I thought of first. Beware your favourite all time great american wrestlers probably aren't on here. Still I welcome anyone asking "why isn't x on here?" because it's possible I just legitimately forgot about someone. Like I was going through my list one day and realised Eddie Guerrero wasn't on it which was weird. So yeah. Just throwing it out there:

I mean you can't truly finish this project until you've seen all taped wrestling ever to occur, and let's face it no matter how obsessive you are that is just not going to ever happen. I change my list a lot because I change my mind a lot but right now it's mostly just figuring out where to rank certain folks.

The one I was specifically referring to was vs. Jeff Hardy. I think it went to a 30 minute time limit draw and was then re-started twice.

Considering how much has been written on why some don't think he's that good that one's on you. Angle is a guy that has suffered due to how much of his work I've seen, don't think he has a lot of great matches and I have no problem thinking of hundreds of others wrestlers whose work and presence I enjoy that have also had a lot of good matches and don't have nearly as many flaws as Angle does. I also think he's pretty terrible at his worst (think 40 minute TNA 2010-11 main event with a 20 minute finishing stretch.)

My favourite bit is how supposedly taping TV in a literal studio is supposed to be the peak of wrestling's authenticity.

The last time something in New Japan's presentation changed was when fans stopped throwing streamers in the ring.

You could've at least provided a correct date. And modern New Japan is definitely not video game wrestling because no wrestling video game ever made could come even close to capturing the ridiculous amount of counters and counter sequences they pull off, no to even mention how complex it wouls be to translate its selling style into such a medium. But hey you've watched like three random matches I'm sure you know better than me.

He is a terrible wrestler currently so you're not missing anything really. I liked him as a wacky heel in FCW but that's really the last time he was any good.

What's really confusing is they insist on using restholds no one cares about because it's Vince's favourite transition yet refuse to use holds in any way that would carry meaning and urgency. No wonder people change the channel when someone puts on a five minute chinlock, why wouldn't they?

This is still how they book the women so yeah I'd say it's plausible.

I don't think they will. Their mindset is probably "we have fuck money and this is a big part of what made us that money and we can just hire whomever". And a lot of the guys didn't even get hurt working and how do you control someone's training regiment?

Would be amusing if the show flopped with them relying on part time guys and the Authority as draws.

If anything with how much New Japan he watched Joe should realize how there was zero chance that move was going to finish Okada. Who gives a shit if he beat some goof with it on the Road To tour when he hasn't won a meaningful singles match with it since 2011?

Shibata vs Ishii would have been totally different than those two matches even if they didn't do fifty 1 counts. Only way you can argue they needed to include that to differentiate themselves from the other matches is if you haven't watched enough of their work.

This wasn't guys blowing off two minutes of legwork, it was them working a Dragon Gate version of Battlarts without the matwork. In something like Shibata's match with Naito from the G1 I argued Shibata gradually blowing off the legwork was something that made sense for what they were trying to (and did) accomplish. The legwork discussion is somehing that would be more fitting for the Okada-Tanahashi match. In general I would agree with you.

No need for this pretentious bullshit please and thank you. There are plenty of things in which I have no interest which I won't judge. I like pro wrestling. I like japanese pro wrestling. I've watched and enjoyed a lot of it. You're making an argument that doesn't apply to me. I'm not going to say e.g. a whole genre of music sucks just because I haven't liked the bits I've heard of it. This is a match where I'm perfectly aware of the context of the match and what they're trying to accomplish, maybe even better than you. You're not going to convince me by saying "this isn't for you and you can't say this isn't good" because I've watched every singles match Ishii and Shibata have had since they've a)in Ishii's case been even remotely pushed or even featured or in Shibata's case, since he returned to pro wrestling and this is the only one I've criticized so much. The second worst match I could think of for either of them would probably be maybe slightly under average of average and I wouldn't blame it on their performance in either case.

Except they do. Art is subjective. Unless you want to talk about commercial success which I don't care for. I wanted them to brutalize each other and not do something incredibly stupid. Traditional japanese wrestling is almost dead anyway. If they'd structured the match at least half-decently I would've probably loved it. They could've had a similar match and gotten the same reaction without all the bullshit they used. Or even if they just used less of it. It worked just fine for their predecessors who worked in front of bigger crowd and got better reactions.