JRGoldman

Has never been a top 5 worker for any year in WWE, and that includes some years in which the WWE was lean on talent. Incapable of cutting a promo that isn't business exposing garbage. Might have the worst hair in wrestling history. Once wore a ring jacket with a patch that said "Mega-Death".

In the Jimmy Redman Boot Camp thread, soup23 posted a cross section of Negro Casas matches. For reference: Vs. Santo 1987 Vs. El Dandy 7/3/92 Vs. Ultimo Dragon 3/19/93 vs. Santo 9/1997 vs. Blue Panther 3/1/12 To which Matt D. replied "That's a Negro Casas that would make my top 30 but not my top 3" which I thought was interesting, and perhaps the inherent issue with Casas (who, I should say, is still my number one). Almost every other realistic number one contender has a "sizzle reel", so to speak, of 3 to five matches that stand out as truly transcendent, while Casas' strength is that he has maintained a level close to that for essentially 30 years at this point, but doesn't necessarily have a specific match that I would point to and say "This is his best performance. This is the Casas experience. Watch this to 'get' Casas". He has such unbelievable variety that it's hard to encapsulate him, I have found. I could go on, but I think everyone can grasp the point I'm trying to make. I think the list that soup23 put down is a pretty representative one, but is there anything he is leaving out for people that might still be on the fence or uneducated about Negro Casas? Or is the best approach to simply say "Watch this match from 1987, now watch this match from 2014, now watch anything in between and marvel that the quality is essentially the same"? Also, somewhat controversially, I would put the Mocho Cota match up as a top Casas performance, even if it is a bit awkward in spots.

I think Casas will end up being number one on more than one ballot. He's tremendously accessible and has had great matches for almost thirty straight years now. Right now Hokuto is just outside my top ten. Does anyone have her in that same general vicinity? I also have Onita top 20 right now. He keeps climbing the more I see from him.

Hey guys! I know it's a blind spot for many, so we are doing a chronological World of Sport night! Come hang out! taima.tv/r/WOS

Perhaps I was being a bit too general, because I think my point was missed a little bit. I am interested in what El-P has to say because style guilt wasn't something that occurred to me as a reason for someone being lowered on a ballot. I know we have talked the out of ring morality stuff to death with Benoit and some other notables, and that I understand that things like murder make objectivity an impossibility (or I should probably say more of an impossibility). I certainly wasn't trying to imply that I think Misawa "killing himself for us", as you so eloquently put it, was honorable or smart in any way, I just don't see how that aspect impacts the work in any way. I'm not trying to question anyone's voting criteria. Everyone can vote however they like. I also won't deny that personal taste influencing our final tally is an inevitability. As an aside, jdw, I think you're being a bit dismissive if you don't think that our cultural knowledge about things like CTE and head trauma now compared to 1995 is tremendously different. Of course we knew concussions were bad, and we knew that things like pugilistic dementia existed. That doesn't mean they were regarded and treated in the same way they are now. Not trying to get in to an argument, please don't take it as such, just trying to get my point across a little better.

You've made this point here and in the Tenryu thread, and I'm not sure if you're being flippant or serious when you mention that you are lowering Misawa because he "died for the sport". Is that seriously something you're judging him on? I think Tenryu is great and there are many reasons I could see someone ranking him ahead of Misawa, but I'm not sure that would be one of them. Our guilt at watching a style of wrestling that was tremendously popular prior to our understanding of head trauma and its long term impact shouldn't influence the vote, I don't feel. The vast, vast majority of people nominated for this have destroyed their body and brain to some degree. Is that really something we want to judge people on? It seems foolhardy, and a slippery slope to boot.

So I read Dylan's comments about from the Jimmy Rave thread in which he said he thinks Rave was the only ROH worker who was actually a heel as opposed to someone just playing a heel. While I am a huge fan of Rave and his ROH run, I wanted to bump this thread because I think Homicide stands head and shoulders above basically anyone else in terms of being a defined heel character and using that aura to create and manipulate an atmosphere with the live crowd at ROH shows. I actually think the run he had and the dichotomy between his reactions in NY and his reactions everywhere else are almost the 2000s Indy equivalent of Bret in Canada. I referenced a bunch of matches above that I think paint a pretty solid picture of Homicide as a worker during this period. In fact, I think the matches from 03-06 are so good that you could make a case that he has a better ROH resume than Joe. I think the highs are more even than you would think (Cage of Death and the Danielson Title Change vs. the Kobashi Match and a few others are in Joe's favor but it's not a blowout) and I think that Homicide was more interesting week to week. I don't want to punish Joe for having a title, but I felt like when he didn't have the World Title (or even the Pure title) he had a tendency to flounder, while Cide was thoroughly interesting and over no matter what the program. I know Dylan in his post about Rave said that being a top 10 ROH guy is not enough to get on the ballot, and he has already written here that he feels the work in TNA is a detraction to his resume (which I don't agree with necessarily, but I can see why he would say that). I just wanted to bump the thread of a worker that probably deserves to be looked at a little harder, as his US Indy resume is pretty stellar, and he continued to be a good week to week worker in LAX. I would say that in a way Homicide being able to have a good run after his "aura had been destroyed" is a point in his favor, because there are many other wrestlers that are unable to function if they aren't booked in a very specific way. Homicide is on a short list of modern Indy guys who can convincingly be a top face (avenging hero in the ROH/CZW feud) or a top heel and stable leader (Rottweilers) a mid card tag act that is consistently more over than their push (LAX) or just filler in random midcard four ways and whatnot. That's a credit to him understanding wrestling as a whole and not just his character.

I think he has the most fun offense on the planet and has been in some really good stuff this year, but he's not someone that I'm seriously considering for my list.

I have no complaints against anyone mentioned thus far, but I wanted to give a shout out to Muta. He has well documented problems as a wrestler, but everything he did on offense had this snap and speed to it that made it look really vicious, different and special. The elbow drop he does off the ropes is a good example. A lot of dudes drop an elbow, but Muta looked like he was trying to throw every ounce of momentum in to making his elbow drop kill a man.

Si is fine and still running stuff on there. He has just decided to not post here anymore, so Elliott and I will be making mention of whatever the channel is doing now, I suppose.

Well, I guess Elliott and I will be the liaisons here from now on, hah.

Hey guys! We are doing a marathon of the whole Jumbo and Tenryu deal in chronological order! Come hang out! Taima.tv/r/jumbovstenryu

I will be submitting a ballot. I think it's easier to wrap your head around your ballot once you go through the threads and posts and realize that 1) everyone has different voting criteria, so it's not like your list will be invalid, 2) basically everyone, even posters who are about as knowledgeable as you can be about wrestling, have admitted blind spots and 3) many, many people have explicitly stated that some people on the back end of their ballot will be there for personal and subjective reasons. I think the great thing about this project has been the overall effort people have put in to covering their blind spots. It's been a blast for me to watch things I had never seen before.

This is going to come across as more insulting than I want it to, but I think voting for ZSJ would be like putting a Grateful Dead cover band on a Greatest Band Ever ballot. Sure, he brings his own flair to what he does, but he is seemingly so indebted to a style and a few workers in particular that I always feel like his matches are too referential to stand on their own.

I think Gordy is sometimes a victim of our expectations, in that many people feel he didn't live up to his potential/physical gifts. Because of that, his career feels lacking because it seems like he should have a bunch more matches that are classics, or a run like Doc, Hansen or Vader. Ignoring what we think Gordy was capable of and judging his work in a vacuum, I think he holds up reasonably well. Has anyone bothered to rewatch the Raven match? It was such a big deal at the time, but I have no idea how it holds up.

I figured I'd bump this because Rave has been receiving a ton of praise for his performances recently, from Dylan and others. I'm not sure three awesome matches in the SCI and a new match against AJ are enough to change peoples minds, but I think it's probably good to strike while the iron is hot and revisit some of his work, especially for those of us who are going to rank a bunch of 2000s indy guys on the lower half of the ballot.

I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I've sort of decided that the reason we often look past Punk's sloppiness in the ring is because he was always very good about not just doing moves in a vacuum, which a lot of his contemporaries have been guilty of. I think Punk has always been a great listener; his matches always came across as pretty organic, and he had a great sense of timing (maybe not physically, but emotionally). I think it's why so many of his matches are remembered fondly by people who experienced them in the moment but fall short for people who watch them later on. I remember being about as vocal as I've ever been during the summer of Punk stuff, and I still like it because it resonates in that same way for me, but I'll bet if you showed people those matches for the first time, they would fall very flat. I guess this is all saying that the things that have made Punk a great promo and character over the years, this innate sense he has to probe and react along with the crowd as if it's a scene partner, are the same reasons that his sloppy execution doesn't ding him in the way it would for another performer who is less dynamic character wise. Like, even though Punk tries the same shit as AJ Styles and it looks horrible, it matters less in the grand scheme of things for Punk than it would for AJ, who isn't as good a promo and isn't as good at portraying his character, because execution is a bigger part of what we have to go on for him.

This is an interesting comment, because I can't think of a wrestler who tried things that he wasn't good at in ring as consistently as Punk did. I do think that ties in to what made him successful, in that he had ego/hubris enough to say "I'm gonna do this springboard every match. I'm gonna do this elbow drop every match" and not really care or be aware that it didn't look particularly effective or compelling. That being said, I have a hard time thinking of another wrestler I'd consider on the same level as Punk (I generally think he's pretty good) that forces the audience to witness his limitations as often.

Jim Breaks is amazing, and is going be to quite high on my final list, and people have said much of what I wanted to say about him in ring. Aside from all of his much deserved technical praise, Jim Breaks was basically incapable of letting the audience's attention wander, and it's fantastic. There are so many times now when I'm watching a comp, or going down a youtube rabbit hole, and my interest will fade a little. I'll check my phone, or open another window, just something to do. Breaks is constantly making noise, jawing with the crowd, stomping around, and every single time he does it it pulls me right back in and forces me to pay attention. He has a great sense of when to do this and how to time it, and it makes all of his matches seem organic and unique, which I think a lot of the other WoS workers struggled with at times. I think I'm in the minority here in that I still really like Saint and think he does a bunch of things well, but the more I watch (especially in their matches together) the more I find myself struggling to find reasons to rate Saint higher. Breaks would've been at home in any region in any era, which is something you could only say for a handful of guys. A clear top 30 candidate.

I think Owens has benefited from working in the WWE much the same way that Evan Bourne did. It's not that he dramatically improved the moment he got there it's that what he excels at tended to blend in a little on the indies, while it really stands out in WWE. I think he has a really strong resume, but ultimately, he has too many periods where I didn't think he was particularly motivated or compelling prior to WWE to be anything but a fringe candidate.

So after Chad posted an early version of his big board today, I think it started some fun discussion about who was up high, who was left off, and those tricky last few spots. I thought it might be fun to have a thread to talk about people we think we are higher on than anyone else. I think it's important that even though we have the individual threads for pimping, people can have a sounding board as we start to get our lists in shape. Just a couple weeks ago, I asked Dylan "How high can I put Super Porky before I'm embarrassing myself?", so right now he's someone that will probably rate higher for me than most others. Who else has personal favorites that are slowly but surely creeping up the list?

I've been a Filsinger player and friend for probably about 20 years now. I've demoed for Tom at cons, I really love the product. I guess I should mention that WWE just debuted a board game at gencon which wasn't half bad. I think it was called superstar showdown? Each wrestler has a unique deck of cards and a mini. You play cards that allow you to take control on offense and move around and try to wear your opponent down. It was a fun demo, and had more skill than you would initially think. I think the included starter decks were Cena, Big Show, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, and Big E. There is also a game out there called Lucha Dice, which I think is a weird push your luck/dice builder hybrid. I've heard okay things about the game play but the product itself looks cheap. The art is bad and everything feels light and not high quality. I work in the board game industry and I get super picky about components because the stuff is so expensive, so I have been judgy and haven't played it.

I think I may have a weird recency bias with Rick Rude, because he was someone that I really re-evaluated when the network first started, kind of like a lot of us are doing with Gino and the NWA Classics thing right now. I had always had it in my head that Rude had a great look and was a good promo, but wasn't anything special in the ring, but going back and watching his peak stuff, it's really amazing how athletic he is, how well he moves and bumps, and how clear an idea of who he is in the ring. I think as I've started to put rough drafts of my ballot together, I tend to value peak more when it comes to fringe guys; if you have two wrestlers who are questionable candidates, I seemingly gravitate more towards the one who was a clear top flight worker for a short period of time than I do the guy who was merely great for a decade. Because of that, I think Rude has a pretty good chance to make my ballot. He may even sneak in front of some people.

I generally just rabbit hole it. I'll see someone write a review of a match that I haven't seen or I want to revisit. When that match is over, I'll look at the related videos that youube suggests. Generally it leads me down some pretty weird paths, but I feel like I cover ground I wouldn't normally that way.

I think Onita wins if you include his political career and it's untimely end.