van_Fair

I have to second that, out of all the American accents it is easily my favorite. It is probably a case where the accent outside of the country is much more popular than within the country.

wXw has put up the Sasa Keel vs Axel Dieter Jr match, that I raved about on the last page, for free on this weeks Shotgun. Unfortunately they cut out a few minutes early where Sasa Keel gets his nose busted open. Still a really good match.

Neville is another example of this. It just sounds incredibly mundane. Not helped by the fact that it can be both a first and a last name in Britain.

He can be a good guy, he can be a bad guy, but he can not be The Guy. Not sure for how much longer Dillinger is going to stay in NXT though. He might go the Adam Rose route of being brought up eventually to be put on job duty and then being quietly released a couple of years later.

wXw's Superstars of Wrestling Night 1 has been uploaded on Vimeo now. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wxwmtw2016/165403735 I attended the show live and watched it again yesterday to make sure the matches I liked hold up on rewatch. wXw World Tag Team Title Match Cerberus (Ilja Dragunov & Julian Nero) (w/Adam Polak & Dirty Dragan) © vs. Sumerian Death Squad (Michael Dante & Tommy End) I was quite excited when this match was announced late for this card, as I am quite a big fan of Ilja Dragunov and the SDS. But I ended up being disappointed by this. There was some nice crowd brawling to start off, but it slowed down afterwards and then just never went into another gear. I liked it a bit more on rewatch but it was still just a match. GFW NEXGEN Title Match Sonjay Dutt © vs. Black Fire This was quite fun although it took them a while to hook the crowd. The NEXGEN title is supposed to be GFWs version of the cruiserweight/x-division title and for that it looks ridiculously huge. Then again who cares about GFW. Sonjay Dutt is still very good and I think he is a bit wasted being attached to the hip with Jarett. Black Fire was not someone I was a huge fan of based off previous work, but he is one of those workers that comes across a lot better and more charismatic live. This probably should have been the opener as it was the style of match that is more suited to that. Singles Match Bobby Gunns vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Bobby Gunns is one of the most talented guys on the wXw roster and he has come a long way in the past 6 months. He actually beat ZSJ at the wXws shoot style tournament Ambition and so this the rematch from that. This really is more of an exhibition with both guys showing off their technical skill and unfortunately I have to say they lost the crowd a bit here. Nevertheless this is worth a watch just to watch Bobby Gunns as he is definitely a guy people should keep their eye on. Singles Match Axel Dieter Jr. vs. Sasa Keel Until the next match this was my match of the night. This was just a great Speed vs Power fight and it devolved into just a drag out brawl towards the end. Keel has an amazing presence live and the dude is just incredibly strong. I did not like the finish at first but thinking about it afterwards and watching it again it makes sense with the storyline they are telling with ADJ. Early on Keel got his nose busted open and in a great visual that was unfortunately missed by the cameras he had the blood running down his teeth while Axel had him in a hammerlock. This might become my favorite match from this card again if I rewatch it a couple of times. I love how they are fighting for every hold and it just becomes incredibly nasty very quickly. Singles Match Marty Scurll vs. Will Ospreay After it ended this was easily my match of the night and it still is the best match I ever watched live. I went into it with tamed expectations as this did not have the stakes of their Progress match so I suspected them to not go all out. But going all out is exactly what they did. They worked an incredibly fun spot fest and kept up a frenetic pace throughout the entire match. Not a huge amount of psychology to be found here, but it is still well worth a watch. These guys are just so good at what they do and the crowd went just absolutely mental at the end of this match. Singles Match Big Daddy Walter vs. Gangrel Better than expected honestly. Walter is awesome, but I have never had a high opinion of Gangrel's wrestling skills. He held up his end of the bargain better than I thought, especially considering his age and the fact that he is not really an active wrestler anymore. It was fine for what it was. wXw Shotgun Title Match (Special Enforcer: Nigel McGuinness) Da Mack © vs. Kim Ray (w/Ivanov) Kim Ray is an amazing heel, it is just so much fun to boo this guy. He has an all time great shit eating grin and he is incredibly over with the crowd as a heel, which with the smarky crowd in Hamburg is quite an achievement. His arsenal is flashy enough to keep the crowd invested but not too flashy that it gets him cheered. Da Mack is decent enough as a wrestler, but he is charismatic enough to make him a very like able baby face. The Nigel and Ivanov was kept to a minimum so overall a enjoyable match. Tag Team Match Emil Sitoci & Jurn Simmons vs. Jeff Jarrett & John Klinger This was all shtick and it was great live. Jarrett basically worked this like an 80s tag match in Memphis and he might be the ultimate carny coming out in full Bullet Club gear. The heels who are both Dutch took a lot of abuse from the crowd based on the fact that the Netherlands failed to qualify for the European Championship and Jarrett encouraged the crowd with every chant. Unusually he was a baby face here and him as a baby face at this stage of his career is much more enjoyable than his heel work. The match itself was fine. Overall: I definitely recommend this show as no match was bad and two outright great matches with Axel Dieter Jr vs Sasa Keel and Will Ospreay vs Marty Scurll.

Tequila on a pole for all those Mexicans and woman abuse for all. Yep. Trump/Russo 2016

Fuji was a Japanese American. He had some Japanese hertiage even though he was born in Hawaii.You mentioned Adnan playing a Native American and that's similar to playing blackface cause that's not his heritage and it would be insulting for actual Native Americans to see. Let's be modern here for a second: Thea Trinidad and Sara Stock played Mexicans named Rosita and Sarita in TNA. Trinidad is Puerto Rican and Stock is Canadian. Was it radically progressive when they were in the ring Hernadez and I forget the other guy having Cinco De Mayo in the ring as heels? The other guy was Anarquia who also wrestled as Low-rider but not the good one Who as far as I know is also Canadian. No one in Mexican America was actually Mexican since Hernandez is from Texas, but then again that faction was a complete shitshow anyway.

How many actual French guys have there been though in US wrestling besides Andre? Most of the guys portraying French guys are from Quebec

I actually liked Berlyn. Well, of course the name was stupid, but the whole Rammsteinish image was kinda cool. Although Alex Wright the euro-trash dance gimmick was much much better. Loved his music theme. Do I have to go into how xenophobic and completely idiotic La Resistance was ? Two CANADIAN playing French. Using the monicker from the Second World War from the people who were fighting against Nazis in an occupied country ? People who were on the same camp as the USA ? Stupidest gimmick ever this side of Iron Sheik as an Iraki sympathiser. Not to mention the xenophobic pettiness of it, just because France didn't go into that disastrous Iraki war, which was the only good thing Jacques Chirac did during his second presidential stint. And then, in NXT : Sylvester Lefort. A name straight out of the 50's Halles strongmen. Well, if that's your gimmick, kinda like the Vaudevillains, ok. But for fuck's sakes. Sylvester Lefort ? Do anyone has any idea what French people are in the WWE ? I mean, HHH's real name if Paul Levesque, he should know *something* about it, he's from french origin. (reminds me that hilarious FOX News reporting about the No-go zone in Paris two years ago. It had us living in Paris rolling with tears of laughers.) The whole Berlyn thing always leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth because of the Neo-nazi undertones they gave the whole thing. Because obviously the only thing the German guy in the 1990s could be is a nazi. But yes French representation in wrestling except for Andre has been horribly stereotypic as well. Even British guys suffered from this for a long time and its only recently with guys like Neville that they moved away from it. Also just a reminder this was Becky Lynch just two years ago.

At least according to the announcer this is the first integrated tag match, though of course that has to be taken with a grain of salt. It also features old school drunken racist commentary, for the standards of the time it probably passes as progressive.

You would have to additionally frame all the questions around objectivity vs subjectivity.

Very likely as Flair and Funk are the other two besides Vader that made it onto the most ballots with 148. So it probably came down to who got more Nr. 1 votes.

Bought two shirts last week at a wXw show.

That Jumbo picture looks like it belongs on a shitty dating website profile.

151 ballots. That is even crazier. That means the 3 guys that did not rank him either really do not like him, have not seen enough of his stuff, which is hard to imagine or simply forgot to rank him.

And it's Vader. Wow him being on 148 ballots is crazy. If I remember correctly there were 158 ballots so only 10 people did not rank him.

It's not Steamboat. So now it's down to Eddie and Vader. Writing that makes me realize that the fact that Eddie Guerrero and Vader never teamed up to give us the tag team of Eddie Vadder is one the big missed opportunities in wrestling.

I was just about to edit my post to point him out as well. If you make it this high without a Nr. 1 vote you will have to make almost every ballot.

Since it is not going be either Arn or Regal I am now quite curious who is going to be revealed as Nr. 14 should come up today. A good number of the candidates that were thrown out here have been eliminated since. Steamboat appears to have a decent chance, but I would have expected him to get at least one Nr. 1 vote. Another candidate of those that are left is Eddie.

1. Flair 2. Misawa 3. Hansen 4. Bryan 5. Liger 6. Funk 7. Kobashi 8. Rey 9. Tenryu 10. Eddie

Very disappointed that Casas did not even make the top 20. I had him Nr. 3 and seriously considered to put him in my Nr 1 slot. When it comes to consistency over an extended period of time Casas blows everyone else out of the water easily. The fact that he is still one of the top 10 wrestler in the world this year is mindblowing. At this point I am convinced that La Pesta Negra is a shoot and they performed some dark magic ritual that has stopped him from aging.

While I am not happy that Shawn ended up this high on the list the fact that Cena ranks ahead of him makes me incredibly happy. Also Bobby Eaton ranking higher than Ricky Morton fills the Midnight Express mark in me with joy.

As we are progressing more and more on the list I have started to wonder. Who is the highest ranking wrestler that no one considers the greatest ever? My personal guess is one William/Steven Regal. I have him ranked in my top 20 and he has an amazing body of work, as most of you are well aware of, which is also why I think he will do very well. But his career also always has been a case of what could have been to me. His personal demons kept him from reaching even higher levels. As far as I know he only has one match for a major championship in his entire career, which is match with Hashimoto from 95 for the IWGP title. For a wrestler of his caliber to never get big opportunities seems ridiculous unless you know about his drug problems and the fact promotores just didn't trust him enough to give him a big push. Case in point the one time WWE gave him something resembling a major push when he won King of the Ring, he promptly got himself suspended. He seems to be in a good place now, but if he never had the problems in the first place I wonder if he could have become a slam dunk candidate for Nr 1 overall.

This one goes for me as well. I draw almost perverse enjoyment out of watching that episode of Thunder with Nash on commentary just before he gets replaced as the booker. You can really pinpoint the moment where Mike Tenay dies a little inside when Nash starts talking about booking himself into angles.Also the entire Hogan/Bischoff period in TNA is hilarious culminating in the Immortal fiasco, which is a candidate for worst NWO ripoff ever. And then Steiner returns and for the following six months everything that comes out of his mouth is absolute comedy gold. Sounds like the TNA Hogan era is something... As far as WCW goes, since you weren't around the board it seems : http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19237-wcws-highway-to-hell/ If you have never seen it and you really want to torture yourself I recommend you give TNA 2010/2011 the same treatment you gave to WCW (awesome thread working my way through it) and currently early TNA. I would argue that it is actully worse than either.

This one goes for me as well. I draw almost perverse enjoyment out of watching that episode of Thunder with Nash on commentary just before he gets replaced as the booker. You can really pinpoint the moment where Mike Tenay dies a little inside when Nash starts talking about booking himself into angles. Also the entire Hogan/Bischoff period in TNA is hilarious culminating in the Immortal fiasco, which is a candidate for worst NWO ripoff ever. And then Steiner returns and for the following six months everything that comes out of his mouth is absolute comedy gold.