El McKell

It’s not 2017 anymore. Ospreay is above average at structuring a match to communicate a story to the audience and has been for years. Treating it like the lyrics to a Daft Punk song and ignoring it is doing yourself and Ospreay a disservice. Nobody who thinks Ospreay was the best wrestler in the world in 2022 or 2023 thinks that because he was the flippiest, because he actually wasnt. He has way more to offer. Gonna stop the criticism to say I had never seen anyone call flips “woke” before and I think that’s pretty funny. Like woke just means anything old people don’t like

Can we please not do Benoit conspiracy theory stuff in this thread

I don’t care about the person in the panda costume but I just saw it and can’t help but think that Andreza is definitely a transcription error from katakana and it was intended to be Andre The

I think you're just missing one of his available matches:

I'm probably ranking both of The Bucks, but I think Nick is going to be quite a bit higher. I think he's a really special high flyer capable of incredible feats of athleticism that so seemlessly and fluidly fit in place in totally chaotic multi man situations. He's not a lucharesu guy in reality, but he does that type of thing better than any of the Toryumon/Dragon Gate guys ever did.

I really don't get late 80s Andre. If he does a singles match over 5 minutes he has to spend large swathes of the match with dull stalling or being annoyed at the crowd booing him or whatever because he can't do five minutes worth of wrestling (see the Bret match in '89 and the JYD match in '88). In the '89 Rumble example busted quad gave, I do think the first 15 minutes built around him is entertaining, so I'll give him some credit but I don't think he actually does anything particularly good. It works more because he's huge and over and the rumble formula works than because of anything Andre is doing. If you enjoy the first 15 minutes of that match it's easy to credit Andre, because he's the focus of everything that happens. But I really believe you could put any of the other performer's brains into Andre's body and they would have done just as well. He is a fairly smart worker but I think it gets overblown by some people here. He knows what to do to make sure things don't fall apart in matches when he is very physically limited. But I think 1. most of those matches aren't actually very good and 2. His mental understanding of wrestling might be the 3rd most important factor in the trio of factors that manage to prevent a man who can't move from having consistently awful matches (that trio of factors being: He's enormous, He's over as fuck already, He understands how to work with his limitations)

I don't think Moxley is a Terry Funk clone. But I also would not agree that nothing about him feels copy paste. He kind of is a pastiche at times, not taking from any one wrestler, but like a Tarantino movie knocking off several things at once to end up being something different. He has lifted from Terry Funk, Roddy Piper, Steve Austin, Atsushi Onita and more. And in more than just the applying classic pro-wrestling techniques to his own work way. Not a dig at Mox, he's great, just an observation.

On WCW editing down their PPVs to under 2 hours, I think Bill Watts has said something online the lines of the Turner Home Video people thought it'd help them in the rental market because short movies did better rental numbers than long movies. This annoyed him because WWF's longer VHSs were doing much better business than WCWs.

Don’t tempt me to make that list 😅

I didn't realise top 40 in the world was the same as in contention for best. It seems too broad, top 40 best in the world in a particular year has to been seen as fairly meaningless for a project for this. From 1980-2025 there are more than 1,800 spots.

Okay, while I agree that Adam Priest is not even close to a top 100 wrestler of all time. Nobody in the organising of this project ever intended for the list to be a list of most significant or most influential pro wrestlers. You are free to apply whatever criteria you believe constitutes greatness (as long as it's based on footage) but you shouldn't think for most people those things matter at all for their lists. "Indieriffic" or only wrestling in front of small crowds are not criticisms or negative points for most voters. But I do think that Adam Priest as a contender for best in the world in 2022 and 2025 is weird as hell. I don't know who's been saying this.

I'm probably gonna have AJ Styles in the 30s of my list. Probably my number two wrestler in the world both 2005 and 2015, with a very different appeal in both of those years. Plenty of other great stuff outside those years obviously, a huge highlight of early TNA shows in '02, absolutely jumps off the page there with both match quality and physical charisma (shame about the promos). I don't think he's retired for real though.

I don't think any Hart Foundation tags or Stampede matches or early NJPW or anything like this will change your view on Bret Hart, there aren't a bunch of classics. The best of Bret is singles matches in the 1990s, if you think the output isn't there from just that you need to accept that he's not a tippy-top wrestler for you or you need to watch more. There's a good chance you have seen all of the great matches I've listed below but if you've overlooked one or two check them out, they'll be better than any deep cuts from the 80s. If you have seen all of them, and you aren't willing to just accept where you are with Bret; pulling out random PPV or long TV matches from 1992-1997 you haven't seen is gonna probably be a use of your time than 80s stuff.

Here's that match, hope you enjoy it

The mortal locks for my top 10 are: · Bryan Danielson · Hiroshi Tanahashi · Kenta Kobashi · Ric Flair · Shawn Michaels And the people most seriously vying for the other 5 spots in my top 10 are · Akira Hokuto · Bret Hart · Kazuchika Okada · Jerry Lawler · Jumbo Tsuruta · Manami Toyota · Mitsuharu Misawa · Rey Mysterio Jr. · Toshiaki Kawada · Will Ospreay