Danish Dynamite

Very good point about Ishikawa and the style. I have not seen anywhere near enough of him to fairly rank him, and the style is not really my cup of mocca. But I think I could get into it in time, and I totally see that he should rank very high, if you get the style and have seen a lot of him. Spot on about his average ranking.

Hey :-) Right up my alley. Does great match theory then equate great movie theory? I love T2, but Arnold sure ain't the greatest actor ever. But he might be The Ultimate Warrior :-) ... Orson Welles might be Randy Savage. Planned everything to the smallest detail, possibly a genius and way ahead of his time, his best stuff still seems fresh today, he got bloated by the end, does have misfires and clashed with the guy's who paid his salary more than once. And The Rock is Dwayne Johnson... Huge star, big box office attraction, charismatic, but not really very good at the craft itself...

This right here is why I wanted to set fire to my ballot and run screaming into the night. I couldn't for the life of me separate those two elements when trying to determine what I thought "greatness" meant and it killed any hope I had of my rankings making sense. Agree. Peak, career, ability, matches, longevity, impact, consistency, storytelling and other factors. Whenever I decided one mattered more or less it changed my rankings...

By 2026 there's gonna be a lot of voters who grew up on post 2000(even post 2010) wwe and feel a great nostalgia for that stuff. Don't be influenced by that nostalgia! Ignore it! ... Go back and watch the stuff we, the majority og the 2016 voters, feel nostalgia for, because we are way more objective and our childhood had better wrestling than yours. Plus we're older and know what's good for you.

Don't make the vote (or the board in general) about politics, ethics or religion. This brother- and sisterhood has one common, uniting interest and passion. The joy of wrestling. Focus on that :-)

Ha! Right on! Need to make a good talk better? Need to derail a stupid debate? Bored? There's always cause to randomly talk about the Ugandan giant!

Sorry, man, you must have missed him. Christian was 102. 39 down for me, 61 left for the last 70. Haven't got a clear picture of who the nine I don't have are, but Benoit and Angle are two. Rick Rude is still my highest drop at #42, and I freely admit that I have him a bit high (think we've done the subjective vs. objective debate, but that's why ).

Kamala was definitely better! Wrestling is supposed to be fun. You had me at "Wrestling is supposed to be fun" Kamala IS better than...

Pillman seems really well placed. Skills and peaks should place him quite a bit higher. The sadly incomplete career (due to many different reasons) makes a case for those not ranking him at all. This place seems right. Didn't like him as a kid, but have really come around on him. Did not have Togo. Have seen some and found him quite good, but not top 100. Very much looking forward to seeing the match recommendations and more on him. He'll get a second chance from me. PS: Kamala more fun than Nash? Agree! Kamala better than Nash? Don't know if I'd go there. To me you would have to set some pretty specific criteria to make that case. Gotta love the guy though.

I'm not at all serious about Hogan vs. Zeus being better than ... anything really... But I'm very serious about agreeing completely with this post by Pete...

My two cents: - Keep the definition of "greatest wrestler" as open as this year. - Keep the nomination process - Either keep the three match thing or at least come up with something else that makes sure you can't just nominate someone by naming them. If it's that "easy" someone's just gonna list of a thousand random wrestler names, so they can sabotage that process. Maybe the "make a case" idea Dylan and El-P are advocating. Something at least. - Keep a two year period for the project. It takes time to really generate the heat for it, and I'm pro the high voter turnout we got this time. - Try not to disqualify someone just because you're a little bored of them at the moment of voting. Try to remember how you felt a month ago, six months ago, a year ago. Because you might feel that way again soon. So try to avoid making it only a snapshot of the date you're filling in the ballot. Use the full time, make a list early and then keep adjusting it. - See as many different styles, eras and regions as possible. - Trust the people who've seen a ton more than you, and follow their match reccomendations. Not so you vote the same as them, but because they have a pretty good idea about what you should see as a minimum to make a reasonably educated vote. - Be active in the debates leading up to the actual vote. - Stay curious throughout the whole thing. When someone talks someone up that you either don't know well or don't immediately like, be open and try to understand why others dig that wrestler. The whole proces is not necessarily about you winning over others to your point of view, but broadening your own horisons. If the project makes you appreciate someone you didn't earlier or makes you discover a new style or territory, then you've won.

Atlantis and Jericho down. Atlantis was my 95, so pretty much all my lowest ranked guys are gone. Jericho I did not have... I really didn't... I have 62 guys left I think. Angle is possibly the one I don't have, that's still around, that stick out the most to me. I'm not as down on him as most of the board, but still... What the hell is he doing this high on the list?

Shawn vs. Diesel isn't better than Hogan vs. Zeus...

This seems really smart and insightful but I feel like because I wasn't alive in the 80s I can't be sure that it's true. Rambo changed from a Vietnam vet with a critical look at the whole war and turned into a pro-war cartoon that was only critical of not finishing the job. Rocky turned from a down on his luck bum, whose goal was to go the distance into a guy who wrapped himself in the flag and singlehandedly ended the cold war. Loss is absolutely right in his post.

Ok... I was away for a day, and stupidly checked out this thread before THE LIST thread... And when you guys were debating Hansen and Flair I got seriously freaked out that something insane had happened ... Nothing that fucked though, thankfully... 82: Dr. Death. Didn't have him. Do like a lot os his stuff though. 81: Tajiri. Likewise. 80: Tito. My 76. Pretty close, I'm totally ok with that ranking. 79: Gordy. My 84. Also super ok. 78: Dynamite Kid. My 86. Looks like a good and fair day. 77: Rick Rude. My 42. I get the "short peak" argument, and I know I'm pretty high on the guy. But sure, his 91-92 stuff was as high as it gets in many ways. But I love his WWF run, 88-89 especially, but am also good with 90. So in my biased world that makes for 5 top flight years. Then I sneak in 93 as well, which I think is fair. And I close my eyes and say that his entrance in WWF began on strong note already in 87, and that his stuff with Manny before as well as a lot of his Texas stuff and the like was really fun, more up and down, but still really strong to me. That leaves me with 85-93, 9 to me really, really good years. Yup, I can justify that taking him to 42 for me 76: Hase. My number 60. I'm good with that. I think I might have gone a little overboard on him, because I saw a lot of his stuff leading up the ranking. I'm good with him at 76. 75: Hulk Hogan. My 96. Somewhere in between that seems fair to me. Good (to great) at his best, and that was a long enough stretch for me to rank him. And I do take working the crowd, charisma and personality in the ring into account. I totally see the case for not ranking him.

I can sort of accept Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho because for almost two decades they have been considered incredible in ring wrestlers by the majority of the internet wrestling community. I don't agree personally, and nor do many people here, but they either speak to people or people have been conditioned to accept them as wonderful workers. Whereas someone like Hogan has been pretty much accepted as a poor toaverage worker from all sides - even the praise tends to focus on his charisma and character and the way his big matches are structured. So it seems far more strange to see him so high. Just, you know, two of the most important aspects of being a great pro wrestler. Nothing big or anything. Possibly, but if you take that train of thought you end up taking drawing power and merchandise sales into consideration. He was mediocre in ring, and for all his charisma there are very few of his feuds, interviews and/or segments that are worth revisiting. His charisma often raised his big matches into something greater than the sum of their parts, true. Wait what? No I'm not. Charisma can be an in ring trait, just like athleticism. You can qualitatively judge both of them. Character work is far more important to me than hitting impressive spots cleanly or working really hard or whatever. Totally agree! "Workrate" is important, yes, but we all define that differently, I think. A big, big part of wrestling (if not the actual main part, and then everything else is cherries on top) to me is the storytelling and character work. So I'm with Matt D here! And the story surrounding a match and the character work has more than once made me rate a match higher. Lawler vs. Dundee gains several points for me from knowing the whole story and taking everything into account. So with the whole package I end up probably at the 5* level with some of their stuff. Ditto with Hansen vs. Colon. The whole package improves the individual match. Bruno vs. Larry. Greg vs. Tito. The Final Conflict. And so on and so on. Ditto with character and story within the individual match. Gun to the head, I'd say it's more important to me than impressive spots or the more traditional view of workrate. And if the story and character is not there or doesn't communicate to me, if the charisma is gone, then the matches suffer incredibly for me.

Love this! Thanks to grimmas and everyone for the whole project and grimmas for the reveal. But also thank to cheapshot for this playlist and to woof for the thread with everyone ranked lower than the top 100!

Yes!!!! Matt D for president!!!! Forever!!!!!

It doesn't really live up to the level of logic I think you're looking for, but part of the storyline reasoning was that Andre the Giant was still considered (again, in storyline) a force to be reckoned with, and as long as he was on the team, they would be the favorites to win it and Heenan wouldn't have to do much. So to avoid more "dissention within the family" by asking guys to pull double duty, he thought he could sneak by in the shadow of the giant. But lo and behold, Andre was eliminated in the early stages, and the weasel caught in the headlights of the oncoming Warrior freight train. This is a really, really fun match. Good mix of story, great workers and pure fun.

Yes! Piper at #6. I love that! I had him at 83, but I'm such a fan and not just as a post mortem tribute crappy thing. Always loved the guy. I'm a wrestling fan and film buff, so the bubble-gum chewing kick-asser from They Live will always be close to my heart

Hell yeah :-)

I hear your intent, but don't think that's what you're putting across. And I disagree that any arguments made by Steven or me excuse murder, unwittingly or otherwise. You feel we unintentionally excuse his actions, I feel you lack nuance in how you read our comments. But I have an idea. What do you say we follow the suggestions of the helmets and the eagles of this world and leave it at that, wrap this up and head on back to the wrestling threads? I'm sure we can find common ground on a lot of stuff there, and unite our eagerness to debate against a "common enemy" who needs to learn from our collective pool of wisdom

When? I'd love to see that :-) I'm not a basher of either. At all. But the body bag matches between them were... awful You might not like it... It was a bodybag match from an MSG show in July of 1991. For what it is and whose in it, its way better than I expected it to be. I've seen that one :-) ... Nope, didn't like it. But I actually agree with you partly. 'Cause it's bad, but still better than I would expect :-)

I am completely at a loss as to how you can say that we (if you're still referring to either me or Steve) have said it's incorrect to call him a murderer. I think I've even called him a "fucking murderer" to stress the point. To me cold-blooded implies conscious thought and a lack of emapthy and clear frame of mind. I thought it was pretty well established that there were other factors also at play with Benoit. If there wasn't then I'm just not well enough informed on the matter. But if there is, then it's factually wrong to just call him cold-blooded. It's totally understandable, but probably not quite correct. And I strongly believe that we need to take that seriously in order to understand and prevent. I totally get the need to just push it aside and only say "murderer" when thinking of Benoit. I think it's natural, but I think it's a bad idea. "What's wrong with leaving it at Chris Benoit killed his fucking family. Brain trauma is serious. We should treat it seriously. The end." Nothing wrong with that on a wrestling thread. At all. People opened this thread up to being about more than wrestling, and if that's the case, I'd have to remove the full stops in your comment to directly connect the brain trauma with his actions. I hear and respect you not wanting to do that. I'd have preffered it if you could also respect my point of view that it's important not to disconnect the two if we're ever to prevent it. But I honestly think nothing less of you for not wanting to. That's fine. We just can't get any further debating with each other about it then. I really think we should leave it at that, as you say. I truly look forward to engaging with you on much more enjoyable subjects, wrestling related or otherwise.

That is not at all a reasonable inference given what we actually know, not as much as that he was at the intersection of abusive and brain-damaged. "He did a worse thing, so he had a worse brain" is the sort of excuse-seeming, misrepresenting mental illness thing that makes me queasy. How the hell can you imply me excusing his actions? Thatseriously implies that you do not want to at a minimum try to understand the people you are debating. And is that's so, then obviously the debate is pointless. For the record: I am not debating you or anyone to "win" or to make you change your views. I don't really care. I'm trying to understand you. But it does get a little boring if you're not even remotely trying to understand the other way around. And I am sure you can read my implication that there is something different between Benoit's and actions and the unspecific concussed football player that someone brought up as an example for comparrison. Yes, that difference may be, if one does not want to try to understand what happened, that he was just a one-off fucked up sick killer. And believe me, my most base response is that killing your wife and child is not only inexcusable (which I strongly believe it is) but also inexpliccable (which it just might not be). But if this debate was only to go by my gut instinct and my moral compass, then anyone comitting murder is inexcusable. Anyone hurting a child is. Anyone killing an animal out of cruelty is. Anyone stealing is. And then we erase the lines between the different criminals we've all agreed have floated in and out of the wrestling business. So from that I probably shouldn't rank anyone. I try very consciously not to go down that rabbit hole, because there is a big fucking difference between all those other actions and Benoit's. So I am not, for hopefully the fucking last time, excusing Benoit. I do however have a very different moralistic view than you it seems, when it comes to crime, mental health and probably a good many other things. And I really don't think we should go into that, because that has absolutely nothing to do with our common passion for wrestling. Lots of clever people say, that when you come together for a common interest, if that interest is not religion or politics, then you would do well to leave religion and politics out of it completely. And I get a feeling that you and I better do that. But hey, I could be wrong. I still feel that you really try not to make an effort to understand the other side of the argument.