Parties

2006 Smarkschoice rankings for today’s dudes: 130) Javier Cruz – 307 Points 149) Silver King – 234 Points 181) Kuniaki Kobayashi – 159 Points 229) Pimpinela Escarlata – 84 Points 246) Hisakatsu Oya – 69 Points 257) Mad Dog Vachon - 59 Points 277) Yumi Fukawa – 44 Points 285) Doug Furnas – 33 Points 293) El Felino – 27 Points 355) Milano Collection AT – 23 Points 361) Hector Garza – 20 Points 372) Tatsuhito Taikawa – 17 Points 417) Yoshinobu Kanemaru – 6 Points Fair to say that Cruz and King are the guys who've fallen the furthest so far in the decade b/w the two lists. The four workers who’ve taken the biggest plunges so far have all been luchadors (Cruz, King, Faroan, and Gran Apache). Worth nothing that the SC list only had 443 workers while PWO ’16 has 567 (or 124 more), so you can't really make a one-for-one comparison. If you're a low-level guy who's a hundred spots below where you were in '06 (a la Kanemaru), that could still be considered breaking even. Some of the lucha changes may just be that there was way less old Mexican footage online ten years ago and people clung tighter to those luchadors they had seen, even if it was someone like Silver King in WCW. I’m sort of surprised Garza didn’t do better overall. Cruz feels like a guy who would narrowly miss a lot of lucha fans lists. I just hadn’t seen enough of his work by the deadline to justify voting for him. Marc Mero feels like a surprise vote recipient to me. Which isn’t to say he’s terrible (he had good matches by the end of his WCW run), but because he would just never even cross my mind in the context of making a list. But I’ll be saying that about tons of people on here. Shine on, DMJ. Would have thought Furnas would be higher on the SC list. Maybe not so much on ours. Dave Taylor at #499 is cool even if it’s too low. Surprised he got no votes in SC ’06. Even more surprised that no one voted for Kanemura back then. Violent Japanese indies were en vogue in '06, and that was still two years before his sexual harassment suit. The photo of Red and Don West is just delightful.

Who's halfway between Necro Butcher and Tiger Mask? The Great Sasuke, of course.

In the interest of surprise and letting Grimmas do his thang I'm not revealing any of my rankings until they hit their names hit the countdown, but I will say that I have Fuchi considerably higher than #67. Probably too high, to be honest, but he's a guy who surprised me by how much of a personal favorite he is, and how steadily he climbed whenever I rewatched his stuff. His AJ 90s work also ages better into what a lot of us still like today: he still knew how to turn on the Memphis heat when he was selling and brawling on the warpath. I'm not a man of faith, but I choose to believe in a world where somewhere on an old 16mm reel that will never see the light of day sits grainy CWA footage of Eddie Marlin vs. Fuchi in a Cowboy Boot Match that now lives only in the faint memories of select geezers.

When Dylan said on Twitter that Bret was hovering around his top 75, I figured the Hitman had won the key swing states. (But Flair/Funk/Danielson makes sense too given that Bryan was said to be unanimous on ballots for quite a while.)

There are at least five workers on that list that I’ve never seen wrestle before, to be honest. Caswell, Gorgeous Gary, and Szacacs were all on my list early on, but in the end I couldn’t justify putting them above other guys from whom I’d seen more. Great picks all. I missed a lot of the Nomination Thread: were all of the bad Vince Sr.-era WWF guys just Parv trying to prove a point about something?

People were saying as much on Twitter, but for "Shane's booking" this felt like a very Hunter-directed show. Or at least learning from history and taking a "This'll quell the smarks" approach to the post-Mania RAW.

Flair/Bret/Danielson? Or Flair/Bret/Funk? A big question for me is who will drop further from their lofty 2006 Smarkschoice perch: Dynamite Kid (#14) or Takada (#19). I could see Takada going down as many as 150 spots - don't know if DK will fall that far.

It's too early to say if AJ-Reigns is a going to be a real feud. Fans online are already speculating how AJ'll get robbed or jobbed. If it is legit, then I'm happy to be wrong on this, but wow: what a weird way to set up Styles as your #1 contender. But weird in a very typical WWE way of the Attitude era guy establishing superiority and then having it gently erased. And while I really don't want to see Jericho-Reigns, Sunday and Monday's matches do offer a multifaceted story of who should be next in line/who beat who/etc.

2006 Smarkschoice placements for the guys listed thus far: 218) El Faraon – 96 Points 281) Gran Apache – 36 Points 302) Mikey Whipwreck – 12 Points 329) Phil Hickerson – 42 Points 381) Johnny Ace – 14 Points 383) Les Kellet – 13 Points 387) Genki Horiguchi – 12 Points Substantial drops ten years later for Faroan and Apache. In the case of Faroan, I think a number of people were exposed to the bloody Pirata Morgan match and some of his other stuff around that time. Interesting that Gran Apache's '06 ranking came before the great Apache family feud that only should have helped his case, but being in the AAA midcard isn't good for anyone these days. No one voting for Ricky Fuyuki or Bobby Fulton in '06 is kind of surprising given the SC crowd and market share of voter conscience that 80s Crockett/All Japan and 90s FMW had on that board.

#14 My shot in the dark guess is Tatsumi Fujinami.

I did not vote for Chicky, but he's an awesome guy to placed on a list at #100, which should be henceforth be known as "the Chicky Starr treatment".

Grimmas: you do it your way and I don't mean to push it if it's a hassle or mess, but in the cases where multiple people voted for someone, is there any chance of writing out who the other voters were beyond the High Vote? Or are the votes you're not showing all anonymous? Even in the cases where only two people voted for someone, I'd think those two people would be into knowing they had the same taste. "I thought I was the only one who loved Chicky Starr this much!", etc. But maybe people will just reveal their picks in this thread? Either way, this is awesome. Also: Freelance is one of the great What Ifs in wrestling and I really wish he was still making tape as much as he was in '08. Easily could have made my list with more matches filmed / more recent stuff fresh on my mind.

I know we're way past WWE working this way (if it ever did), but the #1 contender's match is three guys who just lost (including one guy who went 0-2 on the weekend) plus Jericho. Shouldn't the #1 contenders be like, Sheamus, Brock, Corbin, and Taker? Seems like a means to do a quick Jericho-Reigns feud until Brock's back, but the setup of the match was unbridled butt.

Significant story coming out of this show that isn't getting enough play (as it happened early on): the successful burial of AJ Styles in under three months.

What's the biggest change coming out of the largest and most profitable Mania of all time? Zack Ryder: Intercontinental Champion.

Let this be remembered as that time where Banks, Charlotte, and Lynch stole the show and had MOTN on a Wrestlemania.

We're one Hogan cameo away from putting this over the top. This close. This. Close.

It isn't just that I don't know what this is. It's that I don't know who I am anymore upon seeing it.

If nothing else, this show has given me newfound understanding and respect for our Vietnam veterans. "This is the End... my only friend, the End... weird scenes inside the goldmine..."

That segment was also this evening's nadir of Vince-talking-through-puppet-Cole on commentary. "Ya gotta give 'em the five knuckle shuffle!" Remember three and a half hours ago when I said that I didn't get people who still complain about the commentary?

And the weird thing is: no one hated that segment more than Cena.

RIP Husky "Bray Wyatt" Harris 2010 - 2016

Goddamn I can't stop laughing. Between a flamethrower, "Thunderstruck" cheerleaders, and the Freebirds speech I've gotten so many great LOLs this weekend. Rock is either the lamest cool guy who ever lived or the coolest lame guy who ever lived.

Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (Heath Slater/Curtis Axel/Adam Rose/Bo Dallas/The Big Show/Kane/Mark Henry/DDP/Tatanka/Tyler Breeze/Jack Swagger/Fandango/Damien Sandow/Darren Young/Konnor/Viktor/Darren Young/Goldust/R-Truth/Shaquille O’Neal) Remember two hours ago when I said this show was exceeding low expectations?

The pre-show panel laughing and dancing to the Flo Rida song of death immediately after that match was like something out of Benny Hill.