El McKell

Okay but he hasn't been on a single thing uploaded to the WCW or WWE vault channels yet. Hours and hours of footage and he hasn't appeared. Don't you think that the best evidence he won't be on the vault youtube channels is that he's never on the vault youtube channels.

Okay so I think the input vs output thing that highflyflow is hinting at is something I want to write a post about. I think both ways of approaching it have pretty clear weaknesses and also that we don't have a clearly better way of looking at these things. I think first and foremost wrestling is entertainment and therefore the best at entertaining is the best wrestler. The best at entertaining me should be number one on my list & the best on a collective list should be the best at entertaining wrestling fans in general. If we're gauging who is the best at this task and we have to choose between inputs and outputs to measure that, the outputs have the very obvious weakness that some wrestlers have had more opportunities than others. To take John Cena as an example he has had loads of big matches against great wrestlers & this helps his output, if you're inclined to penalise someone for bad content he has been put in high profile scenarios where anyone would have a shitty match (just a few weeks apart in 2012 he had matches with Michael Cole & John Laurentius where what the company needed made it impossible to have matches people like us wouldn't hate). When comparing him with someone with far less footage like Lou Thesz it feels like we aren't measuring the same thing. If we try to measure him on this metric against Misawa, Misawa might look better because he doesn't have the lows, but he would if AJPW were booked by Vince McMahon. This might make you think inputs are the thing to measure, but I don't think that's any better. I think trying to look at inputs creates a different but equally serious issue. How do we know what inputs actually add to how entertaining a wrestler is? And how much weight they carry? When we decide on criteria like how they structure matches, what they do as a babyface, what they do as a heel, how they imbody their character, how believable is their work, how stiff are they, how athletic are they whatever. How do we determine that being "good" at these criteria is actually adding to the finished product? I see an example of this being a problem for me is William Regal. William Regal, executes everything perfectly, has incredible attention to detail, structures a match to communicate a clear narrative, always makes sure what he's doing makes sense for his character and works in the logic of trying to win the match. So he appears to have every input needed to be great. But the output is missing for me. I don't really enjoy his matches all that much. I cannot point to what he's missing, so if I grade on inputs he has everything I'd expect makes a great wrestler. But a great wrestler must be entertaining, Regal hasn't had an abundance of opportunities to succeed at this, but it's not like he has a dearth of them either. In the end I think I have to look more at output than input. But also be cognisant of the how much opportunity someone has had to give me good output. Did they work with high level performers, did they get pushed, did they get the right amount of time, how much footage is available etc.

Of course the booking of Cena's final run was a shitshow. But I don't think the final match and it's trappings were overall. I think Cena losing by submission was a really good idea in theory, but Cena kinda killed it by smiling and tapping out in such a casual manner, kinda felt like no selling the struggle we were just having. I think Cena starting the match with his signature comeback spots left him with very little he could do on offense from their, but he did the best I could expect after handicapping himself. The best stuff in the match was the long sleeper segment.

Firstly, I will say I think you are absolutely correct that James Mason and Dean Allmark wrestle in a style that is a clear continuation of the British wrestling that came before them (no comment on the other wrestlers you've mentioned because I haven't seen them). And I think you're correct that Will Ospreay is a guy who epitomises what is now the pervasive (almost homogenous) international wrestling style shaped by an amalgamation of Dragon Gate and 90s AJPW 00s ROH and 10s PWG. But Zack Sabre Jr does not fit that bill, Zack Sabre Jr works a style that nobody else works, he is not a continuation of the British wrestling style that came before him (although he takes some influence from it) but he also definitely does not fit the bill of anything that has ever been trendy on US indies. And because this it the Ospreay thread, I do wanna say it may look like in the paragraph above that I think ZSJ is better than Ospreay. Or maybe just that I am saying Zack is better than Will in one specific way. But I am not saying that. I do not think it is any better to be the only one who does a particular thing, than to be the absolute best at something too many people do. And I don't doubt for a second that when it comes to that internationally pervasive wrestling style of the 2020s nobody does it better than Will Ospreay.

The people who are more likely than not going to be on my 2026 list who didn't make the cut for me in 2016 are (in order of likely ranking): Will Ospreay Walter Kenny Omega Nick Jackson Dump Matsumoto (someone who I really failed to appreciate last time, I just wanted the workrate matches from 80s Joshi at the time) Shingo Takagi Katsuyori Shibata Dax Harwood Tetsuya Naito Koji Kanemoto (As far as I recall he was a close call last time, one of the best wrestlers of the worst era of wrestling, the late 90s) Verne Gagne (Someone who stands out to me more than anyone in the 50s footage, I was wrong to think of him as less than Thesz in 2016) Jon Moxley Antonio Inoki (Carried by unbelievable charisma & great vibes) Matt Jackson Sgt Slaughter (I'm still not sure about this one, it might be too short of a peak?) The people who made my 2016 ballot who probably won't make it in 2026: Jeff Hardy Minoru Suzuki Owen Hart Davey Boy Smith Davey Richards Sting Bob Backlund Great Sasuke Yoshiaki Yatsu Cesaro Paul London Mistico Masato Tanaka Curt Hennig Kensuke Sasaki I really can't see any clear trend to either of these lists tbh, other than the obvious case for people who peaked since 2016. So I feel like I can't construct a narrative around it.

There's also one with Paco Ramirez, I've just uploaded it to YouTube for you here

That match with Steve Grey is here:

The UWF match MattD is referring to is this:

Is there a single good Ray Rougeau match that didn't involve Jacques? And if not is there any matches where he gives a clearly better performance than Jacques?

Two comments from the discord that are not related.