InYourCase

Tanahashi is a Top 20 guy for me. Having a plethora of great matches, probably more so than any other modern candidate besides Mochizuki really helps his case, but I think he's great at everything he does. His punches are a far cry from Matt Hardy's, but I can live with that. Love his bumps, love the way he sells, and I am all about subtle heel Tanahashi.

BxB Hulk, Human Tornado, and Jack Evans were guys that I thought about nominating but never got around to because I didn't think they were quite deserving enough. Seeing Evans' resurgence makes me think that next time something like this is done, I'll have to vote for him.

Loved the show. I have the ROH discussion to listen to tomorrow but I really enjoyed listening to this show.

Just for clarification, Kobashi wrestled Akiyama at the Dome in July 2004. I think it's better than their December 2000 match. The Akiyama match is a step below the Takayama defense, which you guys discussed, and the Misawa title win from 3/1/03, but those would be the best three matches from his title reign imo

I preach this regularly. Context matters. Selling and psychology are different for every promotion. Dragon Gate is different from 80's New Japan. Most wrestling is great, it's just different.

Will check that out for sure. Thanks for the recommendation.

I've been binging on Eddie lately and Jesus Christ, he'll be finishing very well for me. Not on the same level as Rey, but someone that doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to great TV workers. His Smackdown Six-era run has been a blast to go through and I really loved his performance against The Rock here. I really need to make time to watch his Black Tiger run because if that impresses me the way his ECW, WCW, and WWE runs have, he's someone that could crack my Top 30. Great brawler, great at sprints, I love his selling, his offense is explosive, and he's a solid tag worker. Can't believe I've neglected Eddie all of these years.

Kobashi Kawada Hansen Jumbo Misawa That's the way I'd rank it. I've seen Misawa have too many lame singles matches. I don't know how we all zoned in on his tag performances. I've seen him have a ton of lackluster singles matches while analyzing him in this project.

I've seen very few Hansen performances, if anyone, where he's looked actively bad or less than good. Even if he spent a night hanging around the apron, I still feel like he made his presence felt in a way that someone like Misawa didn't. You could say that's what Baba wanted from his ace and that's cool, but Hansen's tag performances blow away someone like Misawa's on a night-to-night basis.

I appreciate consistency more than anything. The Dragon Gate crew, Fujinami, Hansen, and Vader are all going to benefit greatly from that. Guys like Misawa, Cena, and Jumbo are all ranking highly for me, but they are hurt by their lackluster performances more than anything.

Any other feedback? The ranking of Masaaki Mochizuki over Ric Flair by someone on the panel somewhat undermined later claims that it isn't a favourites list. This is what I figured you were going to bring up. Honest question, not trying to provoke you or anything, how much Mochizuki have you seen? Because I've spent time in Mochi's thread and I plan to spend even more time over the next few days building his case. I can fully back up my claims as to why I think he's better than Flair and why I think he's a Top 10 wrestler of all-time. I get that I'm in the minority, but I firmly believe that. Glad you listened. I appreciate your feedback.

Any other feedback?

I'll be doing T2P reviews on my Dragon Gate blog soon after the deadline. That's been in my back pocket for awhile and I'm excited to get to that because I haven't formally reviewed any of those shows. After that, I really want to dive into WAR some more. Don't know exactly when or how, but everything about the promotion intrigues me.

Check out the EVOLVE 53 main event and all of EVOLVE 55. That should get you caught up on things.

I haven't watched it in awhile but I've seen it before. I don't think I meant to say that he's *never* been the best guy in a match, but he's certainly played second fiddle in a lot of matches that I've seen recently.

Bubble Guys: Milano Collection A.T., Great Sasuke, Kevin Steen, Matt Sydal, Yoshihito Sasaki, Homicide, James Gibson, and Bobby Fish That's 8 guys fighting for four spots. Leaning towards Milano, Sasaki, Homicide, and Gibson as the four guys to get those spots.

My thoughts on the project summarized nicely.

Misawa has fallen more than just about anyone with me. He's still ranked incredibly high, more than likely in my Top 15, but I projected him to be a #1 contender and he has not delivered in that regard. It's a weird thing to complain about, I know, but I've been really disappointed with a lot of Misawa I've watched recently. The 9/6/97 match with Akiyama is when I began to sour on him. That's Misawa at his worst. His charisma was gone, his offense was bland, and he was a far cry from peak, say, 6/3/94 Misawa. I watched a lot of Kawada/Misawa tags recently and I came away liking Kawada more in nearly every one of their tag matches. For some reason I don't have the date in my notes but there's a MVC vs. Kawada/Misawa tag from the 1990 Tag League that Kawada blew me away in. Misawa was so often playing second fiddle and while he was great occasionally, I can comfortably rank him behind Kawada and Kobashi. NOAH Misawa is fun when he's on. I love his two GHC matches with Takayama. Anything he did with Ogawa, Kobashi, or Akiyama was a blast, also. And the 2004 tag w/ Ogawa vs. KENTA and Marufuji is not only one of my favorite matches ever, but it's probably the last incredible Misawa performance other than his 2008 match with Morishima, which is remarkably great. I love Misawa. He's an all-time great, but not someone that I can put in my Top 10 after going through this stuff. He'll fall behind Vader, Akiyama, Mochizuki, and a few others but I don't see anyway he ranks worse than #20.

Landell is someone that I really want to give a fair shake to before ballots are due. If anyone has recs that Lanza didn't mention above, I'd love to hear them.

I think Parv would find a lot of enjoyment in early NOAH. I would like to hear his thoughts on 2000-2005 NOAH. Of course, he could always do a Toryumon retrocast with me. That's what the people really want.

I would find that ballot to be extremely interesting. Please submit one.

I mentioned both the WWWF and AWA runs. Only thing I saw from Memphis was the Bunkhouse match with Austin Idol, which I thought was fine. Is there anything I should check out from Memphis?

Given that you are voting for The Barbarian and have people like Sean Waltman as locks, I find this really pretty baffling. Ted's AJ stuff is pretty tangental to his case, which is built on his Mid-South run primarily where he was the main guy, not Hansen's little buddy. Wait, what? Barbarian wouldn't finish in my Top 500. Waltman is a lock but I also love his style and I think he was excellent at what he did. You don't like junior heavyweights as much as I do.

Hansen will be my #1 when I submit my ballot. I had seen very little of him going into this project. The famed '93 Kobashi match for sure and only a handful of others. Everything from Japan, Puerto Rico, and America that I watched of Hansen was all new to me and it blew my mind. I put value into non-Japanese workers succeeding in Japan. There's something there that I just can't ignore. Hansen, more so in All Japan, was treated as royalty and feared like the monster that he was. It was a thing of beauty. Outside of the 4/3/1980 match with Inoki, the infamous Andre match, and a fun, six minute sprint with Fujinami, Hansen's run in New Japan doesn't wow me. It's good, with the Andre match being out-of-this-world great, but that run is just a minor blip of what made him so great. From the beginning of his All Japan run, though, he turns it up to a level that I didn't know existed. DiBiase was a bubble guy for me, but he fell off after underperforming in nearly all of the tags I've seen with Hansen. He looked awkward and uncomfortable while Hansen fit like a glove. Brody, Spivey, DiBiase, Vader, and Gordy were all, at times, very good when teaming with Hansen, but not once did I ever feel like Hansen was the weak link. In a lot of my notes for 80s tags, I remark about how well Hansen controlled the ring. Everything seemed to revolve around him in one way or another. If he was in the ring, he was dominant. He may have gone down, but it wasn't without a fight. In matches like 12/12/85 (Hansen & Ted vs. Choshu & Yatsu) everything is so much more calm when Hansen is not in the ring. It was his aura that made the match exciting. One thing I really appreciated about Hansen's singles matches, especially in Japan, was the violence he portrayed while brawling on the outside of the ring .I hate walk-n-brawls. Jeff Jarrett has never done anything for me. Same with Dreamer. But when Hansen is on the outside, the match feels so much more dangerous. You don't know what he's going to do or what body part he is going to target, but it's going to hurt. The 10/21/86 match with Jumbo is probably the best example of this. 1990's Hansen is another animal. I don't know if there's ever been a greater contrast than 1991 Kobashi and 1991 Hansen. LOVE their 9/4/91 encounter. The Kawada match from February 1993 is one of my favorite matches of the decade. It's perfect. It's exactly what it needed to be and it's both guys and their very best. The 9/3//1994 Akiyama singles match is another fun one. Akiyama is so plucky, so full of life, and so ready to thrive, but Hansen is simply not in the mood for that shit. I can't really call it a squash match, but it's one of my favorite one-sided matches ever. The amazing thing is that even when he slowed down towards the end of his All Japan run, he still looked great. I love the Vader/Hansen duo. The 12/5/98 match with those two vs. Kobashi & Akiyama is a blast. Even going into post-Baba era, I think Hansen is incredible in the 7/23/00 tag. There he is noticeably slow and actually looks really bad on the outside with Tenryu at one point, but in between the ropes, he was awesome. The one major knock I have against Hansen is that he never had a match with Misawa that I liked. I couldn't get into any of them. I respected what they were trying to go for, more so in the 7/27/90 match than any of their other encounters, but I could never get fully invested in them. Even with that, he pulled watchable stuff out of Baba and Inoki, which I value a lot. Inoki rarely is involved in stuff I like and I think Baba's best work was against Hansen. Moving away from Japan, I direct everyone to JvK's comments about the Colon vs. Hansen feud. I echo his thoughts. The Colon feud sets Hansen apart from the rest of the pack. From an in-ring standpoint, Kobashi, who is currently my #2, has a higher peak and while he offers a different set of assets in-ring compared to Hansen, is probably even in terms of skill, but Kobashi wasn't involved in anything like the Colon feud. I love it. I don't think I'll have time to go back and rewatch the feud before ballots are due, but I'm going to soon. I loved it. The Bruno cage match, Backlund singles match from 1981, and his pimped stuff from AWA is all really good. I wish he had a chance to shine in WCW against Sting and/or Flair, because then I think he'd be a runaway #1 with a lot of people, but his AWA run shows that he could thrive in the US. The Leon White match is a blast. I hate the finish, but I'm a huge fan of the Bock match from 4/20/86. All of that is just padding to his greatest wrestler ever case. I've enjoyed very few people's selling more than Hansen. It's like a don't poke the bear thing. He's always angry, but little things can happen throughout the course of a match, whether it be one too many kicks from Kawada or a chop that was just a little too stiff from Tenryu that will set him off. Still, I've never seen him blowoff limb work. Even when his arm is worked over, there is a sense of pain there that not many people can portray. Hansen is going to be my #1. His offense is too good, his peak is too high, he was great for too long, and his selling was too outstanding for anyone to touch him.

re: Kikuchi - have you seen any of his NOAH run? He's the polar opposite of what he was in All Japan. Crabby, old, and stiff. I like his 2002-2003 run more than anything he did in All Japan and I'm really high on his AJ run.