Parties

In order of significance: A sad one - I have a bad feeling about Hogan this year. Don’t want to be morbid about it, but I’d say dude ends up in the hospital, jail, or worse sometime in 2016. A happy one - wrestling at large is (marginally) hotter a year from now than it is today. WWE in particular has a great year in-ring with several MOTY contenders. Biggest WWE shift of the year: Brock is out of the company by year’s end. Daniel Bryan does not wrestle in 2016. The Authority as a named entity are finished by year’s end, with Steph/Hunter/Vince making fewer appearances and a new GM in place. PWG’s presence in Los Angeles pays off in some kind of unexpected filmed capacity. Maybe a pilot for TV or cameo appearance on a TV series of note, but I’ll guess it’s more something like the filming of a moderately successful documentary. Despite the exodus of Nakamura/Styles/Gallows/Anderson, NJPW still resists pushing new stars. Goto, Shibata, and Ibushi spin their wheels. Naito finally gets his Dome show main event against Okada on 1/4/17. Kyle O’Reilly becomes the next Devitt/Styles-level regular, entering the heavyweight picture. New Day wear out their act and are broken up before year’s end. By year’s end, Biff Busick is the hottest act in NXT, if only because Bailey is finally called up to the main roster, after dropping her title to Emma at NXT: Brooklyn #2 over Summerslam weekend. Emma emerges as something of the Comeback Story of the Year after Dana Brooke’s injury woes continue. TNA hangs on to their POP TV deal for the full year, but are even further below the radar by year’s end than they are now, doing their worst ratings yet and losing a number of key acts to NXT, including but not limited to Bobby Roode and Drew Galloway. Flair has another PR disaster sometime around Wrestlemania weekend and is taken off WWE TV. Charlotte drops the title to Sasha soon after. One of the three Gonzalez brothers - Rush, Mistico, or Dragon Lee - suffers a serious injury that puts them on the shelf for an extended period. WWE Firings: D-Von Dudley, Damien Sandow, Hornswoggle, Sin Cara, Sawyer Fulton, and Viktor. Voluntarily Quits/Leaves: Zack Ryder and the aforementioned Lesnar. Atlantis successfully defends his mask again in another apuestas match. ROH lose their Destination America deal, but remain on Sinclair. Chris Hero wins the GHC title. Enzo and Cass take New Day’s spot and win the main roster tag titles by year’s end. One of the winners of the 2016 Dusty Classic is foreign-born.

Someone on Twitter made an interesting note: WWE has turned into Dragon Gate with all the factions. The League of Nations, Social Outcasts, The New Day, The Wyatts, Team Extreme (or whatever they're called), Team Bella, and B.A.D. Plus the Usos, Prime Time Players, Matadores, Ascension, and Reigns/Ambrose.

What's the last time there's been a raid of that size, especially from one top company to another? Four main eventers, and recent champs at that? The Radicalz are what come to mind, as the collapse of WCW/ECW wouldn't count.

This was the first thing I thought of upon reading the OP. Fritz in general really seems like a delight.

Taker winning would not hurt Cena. It didn’t hurt Hunter, probably didn’t hurt Wyatt, wouldn’t have hurt Sting, and Cena is more bulletproof than all of them combined. The weird Summerslam match didn’t seem to mess with Brock much. Taker should beat whoever he faces at Mania. Which is why Cena - one of the last remaining guys who wouldn't be hurt by it - is the right choice. The only other option that interests me - and they really, really shouldn't do this - would be Ambrose, as I think they could have a very fun match. But it would be the wrong booking for all parties involved. Ambrose vs. Taker could be quite a Summerslam or Survivor Series match this year or next though, and one Ambrose could win. Taker-Owens feels like a snooze for the same reasons that Taker-Wyatt turned out to be one. Taker vs. anyone in the League of Nations feels too small for his Cowboys Stadium homecoming/potential last hurrah. But the state of affairs - in which every heel in the company is currently too weak to lose to Taker - speaks volumes about their booking. In some ways Rollins post-title loss actually would have been awesome, as he could pinball around for Taker and still be a credible main eventer in defeat.

Have not had a chance to watch the show, but did rewatch the top 2 matches from last year's show. With fresh eyes, I remembered my reaction to most big present-day NJ matches: the first 75% feels like mismanaged filler, while the last 25% is very entertaining. I did stay up to see the Rumble. The entrances are always fun, but the match was tedious. Weird seeing Koshinaka, Saito, and Fujiwara out there as the whole Wrestle Kingdom vibe feels apart from what I love so much about 80s/early 90s NJ. I liked the final showdown, but Jado's involvement and the way it went down felt like booking that you'd have to be a native or big fan of Japanese pop culture to appreciate. It was kind of lost on me in the way that certain Wrestlemania moments wouldn't work if you didn't know who Trump or Mr. T or Jennie Garth were.

Jake is a guy who I will defend to the death. I hadn't even considered him for my list until I was just watching the Chris Adams/Gino/Jake vs. Von Erichs tag in World Class. Ranked #15 in the Texas balloting and Jake's the best thing about the match. Don't know if I'll vote for him, and I don't expect he'll do well in the voting as the negative impressions of him as a worker are too well entrenched, but the notion that he was only useful as a talker is crazy. I would also add that as a heel he expertly portrayed a real range of comedy stooge to genuinely dangerous psycho and points in between. The Flair title defense in Mid-South was really good last time I watched it. Jake in Mid-South in general was tremendously charismatic, to the point that it enhanced his matches. I really like watching him even against mediocre opponents. Jake-Honky from Mania 3 is a lot of fun. "Great Matches aren't as important as Great Performances" crowd, take note. The aforementioned Steamboat and Savage matches are excellent. Even something like the Blindfold Match with Martel, which is a bad idea and cheesy as hell, exemplifies how great Roberts was at working crowds. He's got lots of good performances in matches where he either wasn't the focal point or it didn't matter. He works the '92 Rumble the way a sensible, logical heel would work a Rumble, which I think only Punk has really ripped off since. Post-AAA Jake obviously tarnished his legacy, and I think there are people who may not like watching him in retrospect because of what he became, but there's so much to like in his 80s run. Even his Stampede stuff feels like an example of a guy who was kind of a prodigy and had an awesome grasp of the business early.

Definitive example of awesome/fun worker who stands no chance of making my list. Top 200 perhaps, but not here. However, this thread now has me thinking about Haku as a potentially interesting and worthy #90-100 guy.

The lower-ranked slots (say 90-100) are interesting for me in that there's the temptation to put in: 1) fun/sentimental/esoteric "I love this character" workers 2) workers who are a little less fun/flashy than those esoterics and not quite stone-cold locks, but who are genuinely awesome from a match/technical excellence perspective Category one would be guys like Sabu (who I can't justify as a fantastic wrestler and is very much a sentimental/nostalgia/"what got you into wrestling" choice). Piper would be another example, but the more early Piper I watch, the more I like him. Ashura Hara, Tatsuo Nakako, Scorpio, Tajiri, Psicosis, Steve Keirn, Cesaro, Foley, Dr. Cerebro. Guys who I totally love but are right there on the borderline and could easily move up or down depending on how much more of them I watch. Category two would be folks who are maybe less anomalous, and who make sense on a list. Cena is a #90-100 guy for me who might not even make my list, but typing that out makes it seem crazy to me given his role and resume over the last 10 years. Butch Reed is a guy who a few years ago could have been top 50 for me, but now he's barely at the cusp of my list as I just haven't watched his peak stuff in a while. Lots of awesome Japanese workers apply here: Katsumi Usuda, Nishimura, Sakaguchi, Jackie Sato, Anjoh, Dick Togo, Mighty Inoue, Takashi Ishikawa. Then there are folks who've been on my mind recently, but I haven't seen enough to know if/where they'd rank. Eric Embry, Tom Pritchard, Fuerza Guerrera, Dynamite Kansai, Devil Masami, Koko Ware. Gary Young doesn't even have a thread and I'm considering nominating him. As of now I suspect my lower ranks will be less about sentimentality and more about the ones who I really think are phenomenal, but even my "soft spot" choices have the matches and performances that justify their consideration and placement. The lower ranks are the down-to-the-wire choices that come down to footage.

Can anyone spot me your five best/favorite Smothers performances? I've seen scattershot SMW from him and enjoyed it, but nothing that would get him on my list. The FBI stuff I've seen is very fun, but again not transcendent in that way that gets someone in a top 100. (I find the double-team stuff like the cooperative elbow drop to be a double-edged sword, no pun intended.) Otherwise I've seen the MX-Southern Boys tag, a handful of WCW singles (namely the '92 one with Pillman), and a couple 2000s indie outings. He's pretty awesome in the three-way with Sabu and Punk in '01 IWA-MS: really wild cool looking approach to flying and bumping where he almost looks like a European-Regal style worker, or a more frenzied Brisco brother. I always liked his kicking dropkick-enziguri looking thing where he clocks the opponent in the head with one foot. He's an interesting candidate, but to the people who are saying he deserves consideration: what is his must-see work?

Vince viewed the Streak as a nuisance rather than a marketable asset, which tells you what you need to know. He seems to be currently in a mindset that winning streaks are problematic and offer too much "control" (for lack of a better term) to the worker and audience.

I don't think they did expect the crowd to turn on it. It was the same building as Takeover: Brooklyn. Whoever booked it thought, "Hey, it'll be like Sasha-Bailey." I've never bought the idea that Banks and Lynch are a product of Del Ray choreographing their matches. Sasha's had really good stuff with the Bellas and Paige, albeit in shorter matches. And both her and Lynch were very good in that RAW four way that determined who got the last Nikki title match. Lynch has looked good against Charlotte, who's as bad a draw of an opponent as anyone on the current main roster. I only saw the last few mins of the match, which were fine, but it came off as a very RAW-ified version of an NXT match, with Naomi jumping onto the apron to sneak in a blatant high kick and all that. Maybe that is the fault of Banks and Lynch not knowing how to put a match together for themselves, or a case of too many cooks, or some fluke causing mistiming/miscommunication in the ring, or some combo of it all. I thought in comparison the LoN/Dean-Usos trios had less going for it than the finish of the women's match. I also think suspect there are a lot of trolls online who just don't like any of the Divas in any fashion and are going to sarcastically yawn at everything they do. Watching a chat room of people talk about them last night, there was a creepy vibe of "Women can't work, this has always been terrible and always will be terrible, Lynch isn't hot enough, etc."

WM30 is memorable for the wrong reasons. Terrible match. Really bad opponent for Taker in hindsight, selected because it appealed to his MMA fantasies. Crowning example of Vince freaking out and making a rash decision way too late. Taker wearing out his welcome. Continuing on post-streak in impotent fashion. Brock gaining less from it than he did from suplexing Cena a dozen times, or yelling "Suplex City" at Reigns. It today seems remembered not as "Wow, what a moment!" but rather "Yeah, that was mismanaged and awkward." Aside from being something Heyman brought up a lot in promos in the months thereafter, it seems like something Vince would like a re-do on, and which they downplay in their presentation of Taker/Brock/Mania. I truly don't even think it helped Lesnar much. How many fans today think, "Wow, that's the guy who ended the Streak!"? To the extent that it is remembered, it leaves a bad taste in their mouths as something that fans and the company alike wish hadn't happened.

If HHH wants to work Mania (and I presume he does), he may well approach it in similar fashion to last year, where the match was booked in its final build and execution to make him the babyface against Sting. If he tries the same with Rock, it'll fail, but I'd guess he'll try it anyway. That's one reason why I'd thought (before Rock announced his appearance) that we might see HHH-Sheamus. Easily booked situation where Sheamus fails to beat Reigns at the Rumble, causing dissent b/w McMahons and the League of Nations, leading to a situation in which the League are a chaotic heel wrecking crew who are trying to take over the show, only for tweener Hunter to come save the day and again protect WWE from insurgents.

Can't see them doing Reigns-HHH on 20 days build, which means Reigns-Sheamus again at the Rumble? I think Meltzer has said he's been told it'll be them in a cage match at RR. I've liked the crash TV hotshotting in the main event angles of recent weeks, but if that's how it plays out, a fourth high-profile Reigns-Sheamus title match in the span of two months seems like overkill. Though to be fair, Survivor Series was more of an angle than a match, and I expect next week will be the same in order to set up their blow-off.

If HHH has to have his self-indulgent match, Rock is a great candidate. i don't see Hunter losing to someone who'd benefit from it (upper midcard type like Ambrose who could transcend to the next level). It'd be a step backward for Reigns and pointlessly redundant for Cena/Taker/Lesnar/Orton/etc. With Rock he can have a gimmicked out match that'll probably go too long but will keep them away from other guys who should be developing their own feuds and arch rivals. It's also the kind of Legend vs. Legend match that can go on third-from-the-top and feel like a really huge third-from-the-top match, rather than wedging two mediocre part-timers into main events. Rock vs. Lesnar would be a nightmare compared to Rock vs. HHH doing their shtick for twenty minutes.

Predictable is great if it is somebody you want to see. This should not be an issue if they have a babyface people want to win the title. Many fans would be very happy with Taker winning and even beating Reigns for the title. Don't think that makes it a good idea right now. In ideal situations, you have a few big matches at Mania. Having a big legend vs. legend match that looks good on the poster is fine. Appease that audience, make them feel like their ticket price went toward something "epic". That's why I like Cena vs. Taker as an option this year. That's a match that looks like the main event to some people, but doesn't need to go on last and certainly doesn't need to be for a title. In at least one of your top 2-3 matches, you should really be elevating someone new. Establishing a new main eventer on the year's biggest stage. That can be a new guy vs. a mega-star opponent (a la Bret vs. Austin, or the unrealistic Owens vs. Lesnar match people have been proposing), or it can be a Rumble win and title match. Or something entirely different. I actually don't even think the Rumble winner needs to go on to win the title if you play it right. Someone like Ambrose or Owens wins the Rumble. They face Reigns. Reigns wins a good match. Maybe someone turns, but if the match is good enough, you can just send people home happy on a face win. That combined with Cena-Taker, Brock vs. whoever's left over among Ambrose/Owens/Reigns, and a good undercard? That's a show, Jerry. I'll clarify that I'm not assuming Alvarez is correct about Taker winning. I really hope he's wrong and just can't see why they'd be going with Taker this year unless it's a surprise retirement. The greater question of what the Rumble should be remain. People have said that crowds have crapped on the match the last few years because of Bryan and "the wrong guys winning." I would add that the formula of the match is really stale and that it would benefit from having more "stock going up" guys in the match to create genuine suspense. You could easily get 4-6 serious contenders looking like capable winners during Sept-Dec.

During his drunken Christmas show, Alvarez let it slip that he has reason to believe Taker is winning the Rumble. That should be taken with several grains of salt, but from his tone it had the vibe of: Dave and/or WWE sources prob. wouldn't want me spilling this, but these two shots of raspberry Grey Goose have worked their magic. Serious question that I think we discussed in a different thread within the last six months here: is the Rumble winner predictable/boring/bad like, at least 80% of the time? They've worked themselves into a corner by having it be for the Mania title shot, esp. with only one world champ. No idea why Taker would be winning, unless he really is retiring and a match with Reigns is the sendoff. But wow, that is an odd way of booking your 1st timer precarious babyface champ. If it's purely for the sake of giving Taker a big match, that seems like a pretty bad message to your young roster.

Where does this idea that Bonnie Hammer is micromanaging RAW booking come from? That seems like a real stretch/weird inference coming from the typical vague fact-free speculation that wrestling sites indulge around the executive levels of WWE/USA. There are plenty of corporate big-wigs who are inappropriately involved in the creative wings of their companies. Everything from retail to civic services to media empires in books, film, TV suffer embarrassments from C-Suite folks fulfilling their wannabe Hollywood fantasies. But Hammer by most counts is pretty sensible and a good delegator. Watching her on Charlie Rose and the like, you'd get the impression that this is not someone who's pulling rank and demanding more Stephanie, especially Stephanie knocking around their eighth best announcer. It's hard to say who is responsible for the glut of bad HHH/Steph segments, but Vince and the endless "yes" men/women surrounding him are a good guess. Meltzer himself has claimed that their segments are the highest-rated. Obv. that's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that they book themselves in good time slots, main event programs, as invincible heels, etc. But the Attitude recognition counts for a ton. Subtly tell your audience that the last 10 years of TV doesn't really matter and this is what you get. And as I've said elsewhere: the McMahons are very paranoid about having talent leave the company or make higher demands. Hunter openly views people like the Rock and Punk with contempt, and as internal failures of a sort. When you believe that the worst-case scenario is that one of your stars will leave you, it's understandable (by their convoluted logic) that you would push yourselves - the family in the family business, they who will never abandon ship - as the top of the food chain.

That series w/ Go is a great find. Just watched three singles back to back from 78'/'79 and could watch ten more. Feels like this could have been some of the highest rated stuff on the 80s NJ/UWF sets. Go was a beast here and it was interesting to see Fujinami at times getting mauled by an opponent this early into his golden boy era, esp. by a fellow native. The finish of their 2/10/79 match is as good a hybrid of high spots, mat work, and stiff strikes as I can recall. The legend of Go's career is that of kind of a wild, off-the-reservation character who should have had a better career. Wondering if he's a Kengo Kimura guy where if you see the right matches he seems like a revelation.

The criteria was that some grad student wanted to make $30.

Strikes me as odd when we try to silo the impact of promos/influence and intangibles like “presence” and “star power” away from in-ring performance. While we can all understand that those are different abilities, it seems a denial to say that Arn Anderson’s promos don’t make us more appreciative of his ring work, and vice versa. (Note: I wrote that sentence before reading Dylan using Arn as a prime example of the same idea, which tells you how vital Arn’s promos were to his legacy as a top 100 worker.) Subconsciously, the two are inseparable and part of the total package. I can understand why people say “I’m only considering in-ring”, and we know what they mean by it (I myself still consider it far and away the most important factor), but it seems wrong to say that promos and matches live in separate parts of our brains. Frankly it seems silly to even think that all voters would ever have the same “goalposts”, regardless of posted criteria. It certainly didn’t seem that way with the ’06 SC voters, a truly broad range of some of the smartest people who’ve ever written about wrestling alongside some of the dumbest. Even workers using languages that you don’t speak still benefit from “aura”, “character”, “role” and the perception of who they are before and after the bell. We still interpret them through presumption and conclusion akin to what one takes away from a English language promo. If you love someone’s character, or their promos, you’ll find excuses to like their work. There are plenty of PTBN-approved workers who I think are good, but who I don’t consider great. In some of those cases, a love of the character/angles/style is clearly influencing the notion that So-and-So is an elite worker. Look at some of the workers who’ve been nominated so far: there’s a lot of character work getting people their own threads here. TomK once rightly said that subjectivity is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. Nor do I think most of us are going to view accounting for promos as suddenly turning this into “Who was the biggest star ever?” No one here’s voting for Rock, Hogan, Austin, etc. very high on their list, and even if there are outlier voters who think that way, the majority are smarter than that. If someone says “Vader was so effective in his character” in a GWE thread, is that less egregious than saying “Vader was a great worker who also cut really apt promos for a monster heavyweight”? TL;DR: Even in an “in-ring only” poll, it seems to me impossible for people to really vote that way.

Re: Box Office Draw - as people bring up every year, this is an only semi-subjective category. Ronda should be #1, but who have the best cases after that? Did Conor make enough money in his one qualifying fight this year? Can Cena be credited as a draw compared to any of the three best UFC options?

I thought this was really critical to what the online response has been. A lot of other fans will like it because he punched dudes hard in the face and elbow dropped HHH through a table, but that line really stood out as something that message board people - hell, myself included - want acknowledged.

Dave says this whole deal happened because Mauro did some joke play-by-play for a fake fight between Mayweather and Warren Buffett on a Berkshire Hathaway conference call. Vince heard it and loved it, which led to them contacting Ranallo. Kind of a comical backwards way for New Japan/Showtime/Glory's announcer to get the gig, but there you go.