cad

That's Atlantis slapping the dog shit out of Shocker in Blue Panther's gif. I'll go ahead and count that as a top 100 finish for him. Hey, feel free to take credit for any of my late night rants, but I'm warning you right now that it's a losing strategy in the long run. Let me know if you'd also like to assume responsibility for my 3 AM credit card purchases.

Ah, my bete noire. I suppose I could be happy about a lucha candidate ranking this highly, but truth be told I always saw Satanico as more of an anti-lucha candidate. Satanico matches rarely leave anyone praising his opponent or looking forward to exploring more from that person, or just more lucha in general. When a Satanico match isn't good enough, then it could only be because his opponent wasn't good enough. When a Satanico match is too good, then a masterpiece like that could only be a Satanico carryjob. I've read Satanico praise that presents him on a level above the rest of his countrymen. I've read criticism of great luchadores for not wrestling enough like Satanico. So much of the discussion around him reduces all of Mexican wrestling to a temple in his honor, and talented wrestlers like Lizmark and Gran Cochisse become sacrifices that must be made at the altar of the great being. That bothers me as a fan of the style as a whole, and it bothers me as an analyst as well. What other great wrestler's case so involves tearing down other workers? It should be able to stand tall without resting atop a pile of bones. I ended up ranking him thirty-first. I think I was fair. It was better than his overall rank, at least. He could easily have fared worse on my list if I'd done a better job opening myself up to different types of wrestling, but that's on me for failing to do that.

My biggest issue with Rocky is that for a guy who trades on spectacle and drama, I can't really remember that many individual moments from his matches. Like, all I can recall from the HHH iron man are some of the finishes, and that was a genuinely great match. Mechanically, he was much better than Hogan, but Hogan was a lot better at creating lasting images. That's actually the most enduring Rock match, Rock vs Hogan. Rock no doubt carried the action. Hogan's the one who made it iconic.

I'm not sure if anyone taught me more about Mexican wrestling than Dandy. He shaped my ideas about title matches, heated 3v3s and eventually even those purely technical 3v3s, although that last one did take a while. The man was fantastic not just at working different types of match but at putting his own stamp on them. Discussion of him died down so much since his top fifty finish last time, when a lot of people had just started watching old CMLL and his 1990 run in particular, that he didn't seem to have a shot at even making the top one hundred. That awesome Monterrey brawl with Santo was probably one of the best vintage lucha matches to surface in the past ten years. It didn't seem to affect his standing any. It's funny. Dandy didn't really play much of a role in forming my image of an apuestas match, and if you gave me the choice between two never before seen Dandy matches, one with his hair on the line and the other with a belt on the line, I'd take the title match every day of the week. I say that, but the man certainly doesn't lack for apuestas classics, and maybe those are what got him here this time.

My list has largely gotten its ass kicked, but I'm pleased to see that I got at least one pick exactly correct: 96. Pat Roach 97. Barry Windham 98. Chris Masters

I never really got how someone like Andy Kaufman gained momentum as a clever and insightful pick but Muhammad Ali shouldn't have been allowed as a nominee. Ali was no less a pro wrestler than Kaufman.

I certainly didn't expect to come home from work today and find out that Atlantis was gone. I don't know why I was surprised, but I was. In his prime, there was nothing he couldn't do. Great technician, underrated brawler, fantastic off the ropes and the best flyer in the world in the late '80s. Yet somehow he leaves a lot of people unimpressed. Even a lot of Mexican fans think he was just a guy that his promotion pushed for a long time. But anyway, that was the first time in this thing that I've gone, "Wow, him?" Jericho fell too. I was a little surprised by that, but I also know that he's one of PWO's posterchildren for being overrated, and that for the broader voterbase he's been uncool for over ten years and a drag on his promotion for a long while. Hard to believe there was a period when he was one of the hippest guys in all of wrestling. My favorite Jericho story is the time that he called "Somebody" by Bryan Adams a stupid song and El Dandy told him to get the fuck out of the car, like Iron Sheik talking to Moolah. Anyway, Jericho was my first favorite WCW guy and he made my list somewhere in the seventies or eighties. How much of that was the memories talking I'd rather not try to figure out.

No, I'm gonna do an after action report when my last guy has fallen. I'll spoil it now and tell you that it won't be very interesting. It's a list born of ignorance and sloth. But they say this is about the journey, and I've been closed minded and lazy for well over ten years now.

I really just want to get down to the final hundred names so I don't have to sit here sweating about whether anyone I'm rooting for made the final list. If you're in the top 100 then it's all gravy. This is the most brutal part of the reveal, not even close. I'm sure it would be different if I were heavily invested in anyone who had a shot at number one.

Like who? I'm not even sure when Fiera's prime is supposed to have been.

La Fiera died today. I used to have Fiera as my avatar, two Fieras actually, before switching to Ciclon Ramirez pointing to his sound system. Glad I could honor all three of them with a high vote. Luchadores who have leapfrogged him from 2016 seem to be Hechicero, Ultimo Guerrero, Mistico, MS-1, Rush, Wagner, Brazo de Plata and Perro Junior. Only fourteen Mexican workers finished ahead of him last time, and all fourteen are still on the board as best as I can tell. Wouldn't call this a successful round of voting for him by any means. I guess his high vote was higher this time.

You're not wrong, but you can see something like Lizmark vs Enfermero Jr. and get that the Estrada match from '93 was a template Lizmark had formed long before. The Estrada match is better, largely because Estrada is a more dramatic worker who set out to have the most exciting match possible while still putting Lizmark over, whereas Enfermero seemed to approach his task as putting Lizmark over as strongly as possible while having the most dramatic match he could within those confines. The AAA run is the best representation of him on video, yeah. I can combine that with the flashes of his early '80s work and extrapolate that he was likely working like that in his physical prime as well, when he was also the most explosive athlete in the promotion. You have to do SOME guesswork with the older guys. It's his work after he returns from Pavillon Azteca through about '91 that's fairly disappointing. He didn't seem all that motivated in that period, when he was primarily wrestling heavies. After the Parka feud ends in '94 he starts to show his age but still turns the clock back for a highlight or two.

I see Lizmark took a dive today. Lizmark and Santo were probably the two best Mexican workers at wrestling like an ace. Sorry if no one uses that term anymore. A guy like Atlantis could be great in title matches, but he was more like a sympathy babyface to me.

Ciclon Ramirez fell today. A couple of months ago I watched a match from 1994, Kung Fu, Felino and someone vs Trueno, Ciclon Ramirez and someone. The focus of the match was a rivalry between Trueno and Kung Fu, 1994 Kung Fu. It was as exciting as it sounds. Somewhere in there Ciclon Ramirez took the greatest post shot I have ever seen, and now I'll remember that match for as long as my memory functions. This is the appeal of Ciclon Ramirez. Here's that post shot.

That was my big branchout for this project.