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So it looks like you passed on the Lizmark vs Satanico match from September, one of the best filmed demonstrations of your numero uno's technical skill, for a 1993 WMOTYC. I realize you were trying to be tactful, especially by not mentioning the appearance of one Konnan, but that's an all time bad match. If this were a Choose Your Own Adventure book, you would have turned the page to see yourself fall off a ledge, break your leg, and get picked apart by a bunch of ravenous rats or something. Or since you're from NZ I guess it would be those horrifying parrots over there that eat sheep.

This is a nice example of the phenomenon, unique to Satanico, wherein his greatness serves to bring down all of his countrymen. I'm not talking crazy when I bring that up. Sometimes a rising tide lifts all boats, and sometimes it just drowns a bunch of people. But that's okay. Microstatistics takes their wrestling seriously, and I'm sure has come to that position earnestly. Can't ask for any more that that. Even if someone were to reject Mexico's offerings frivolously, that'd be fine too. Lucha spent years excluded from serious discussions about great wrestling. I'm sure a bunch of people became hardcore fans without ever imagining that would involve having opinions on stuff from Mexico. It bummed me out to see posters saying that their disconnect with lucha dissuaded them from submitting a ballot this year. There was a bunch of stuff I couldn't get into either, and that sure as shit didn't stop me. I wouldn't want people watching old CMLL as some kind of homework assignment. You should watch it because there's nothing you'd rather be doing at that moment, except perhaps falling in love.

Lost my last soldier today, so here's my list. I remember in February or March thinking that there was no way I'd be able to make one. Top 100 workers: 29 Unique votes: 4 High votes, excluding unique votes: 14 Same placement on my list as on the overall list: 2 Lowest finish: Johnny Kincaid Highest finish: Ric Flair Nice spelling, asshole: Bran Pillman (great worker, even better source of fiber), Alan Sarjeant Tallest: Barry Windham (6'6") Shortest: Pierrothito (5'1") Birthplaces: Mexico 39, USA 35, England 8, Japan 6, Canada 4, Croatia 1, Hungary 1, Puerto Rico 1, Antigua 1, Scotland 1, Russia 1, Northern Ireland 1, Malta 1

6. Fuerza Guerrera 7. Bret Hart 8. Virus I had Bret way up there, way, way up there. It's better to be great for longer, and it's better to have more great matches than to have fewer. But in 2026 I think that it's clear that hidden gems and weekly disposable classics are a road to nowhere, and that the hardest thing to do in wrestling is craft a match that people remember years later, that people talk about years later, and that people care about years later. Bret's great matches changed the landscape of his promotion. I'm not talking about improving the overall workrate or anything but in the way he made guys like Austin and Bulldog. You could probably point to some great Bret matches that didn't really matter or that were forgotten shortly after they happened and needed to be rediscovered. Those are more the exception than the rule with him. He wasn't out there just trying to impress people. He wanted to hit the audience in the gut and accomplish something on a larger scale. Of course I'm an American dude in the second half of my thirties. I'm basically the perfect age for Bret Hart's greatness and importance to have been backbones of the formation of my pro wrestling knowledge.

I do think it's true that there isn't a lot of biting criticism of Mexican workers. It never really did develop an accepted set of understandings like '90s AJPW or WWE. A lot of fans don't have it on their radar, so people who do like it are gonna focus their efforts on building guys up. There's no widespread overpimping that would necessitate tearing anybody down, like with the backlash against Angle or Flair. That naturally leads to luchadores and lucha matches being treated like found money. Like, hey, Blue Panther's been having classics for almost half a century now, why would anyone care about some shitty match he had with Octagon, or some random 3v3 from over thirty years ago? I know that, to the extent anyone knew who I was, I got labeled as a pain in the ass for some of the stuff I said about Satanico. And goodness knows that reading Parvini on lucha used to drive me up a wall in my early days posting here. At the same time I don't know if people really talk that way anymore about anything. Back and forth debates and nitty bitty dissections were staples of message board interaction, but boards themselves are now relics. Today we mostly just surround ourselves with people and sources of information that aren't going to challenge our worldview. An argument is a bad thing to happen. For wrestling, is that really so bad? I mean, does anyone really want someone else taking apart a match they like jdw-style and having to defend why they like it? The other side of the coin, though, is that if all that matters to me is that I like something, and that's enough to make it great in my eyes, then there isn't really a discussion to be had. I'm using a standard that obviates anyone else's opinion, or any sort of objective measurement. I thought that the Mexican guys who made the top hundred were more or less predictable. No problems there. I don't know that much about Mistico, but he's hot right now and riding that momentum, and maybe he really is that good. Santo was a fine number one luchador. Of course I say that as someone who placed him in the top spot on my list. To me he's someone who could walk into any arena in the country and have a classic on any given night. That's not to say that he always did, but he has a remarkable number of great matches, and I don't think you'd ever call El Hijo del Santo a passenger. Chicana actually did have a badass match discovered in the past couple of years, but it just doesn't seem like one newly found match creates shockwaves anymore. I dunno.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I hope you do get into lucha and find plenty here to disagree with.

Okay, so here's how the Mexico based candidates shook out. Sorry for the lousy formatting and for any errors I made. Entering the top 100: Mistico Exiting the top 100: Atlantis, Sangre Chicana, Virus Holdovers who got their first votes: Hechicero, El Brazo, Javier Llanes, Chico Che, Arkangel New nominees who made the list: Pentagon Jr., Mascara Dorada, Dragon Lee, Hijo de Fishman, Volador Jr., Mr. Niebla, Texano, Pantera Surena, Villano V, Rambo, Herodes, Titan, Mr. Condor, Wotan, Signo, Marcela Made the list without being nominated: Blue Demon (not listed on the nominees page, and I don't know if this refers to Junior or Senior) Falling off the list: Cicloncito Ramirez (I don't believe he was actually nominated last time), Konnan Big New nominees who got no votes: Comando Negro, Dark Angel Zero votes both times: Kung Fu Biggest improvement: Mistico went from outside of the top 400 to a top 100 finish, but I think you gotta go with Hechicero, who got no votes last time and finished just outside of the top 200 this time Biggest improvement without adding to their case: Perro Aguayo Jr. Biggest decline: Emilio Charles made the top 200 last time, and this time he did not finish in the top half of the list

Jimmy Redman never browbeat anybody for not liking Cena enough or tore other wrestlers down to build Cena up. Her enthusiasm for him was pure and genuine, and I hope she still feels the same way wherever she may be. I'll try to do a Mexico postmortem some time tonight.

Whoa whoa whoa, all I said was that his audience didn't accept him. I'm not signing on for any more than that.

I never said that all he got was boos. My standard for a crowd connection for a babyface that the promotion is building itself around is a lot higher than "half the fans like him, I guess." This is a man playing the same role as Bruno, Hogan, Austin and Rock, for crying out loud. When those guys did spots in their matches that called for a pop, they got their pop. And it wasn't counteracted by half of the audience booing.

Then why are so many of them booing him in every match?

The elephant in the room with Cena, and I don't quite understand why it more or less goes ignored, is that he worked a style and played a role that demanded a genuine connection with the audience, and he just never had it. In a workrate driven style, you can still sit back and enjoy the action even if the crowd doesn't back the right wrestler. WWE main events are designed to build to huge pops based on how much the fans care about this guy. Take that away and the match loses a lot of its effect. Does anyone call Slaughter-Sheik a MOTDC with a dead crowd? Does anyone call it a MOTDC if the sound were missing? I suppose you could say that from a nuts and bolts standpoint Cena does the things that you want from an ace babyface, but without the intended reaction he might as well be, as they say, wrestling in a vacuum. It's not entirely his fault that they gave him the gimmicks of wannabe rapper and wannabe marine. I have no idea why anyone would cheer for either of those things, or why WWE thought that they would. On the other hand, wrestlers have gotten some pretty loony stuff over, just by having an authenticity that Cena always seemed to lack. Mick Foley as the crippled pianist, Matt Borne as the sadistic clown. I mean, going back to Slaughter, no one had any trouble buying him as a soldier. Okay, you know, once you reach the point where you're praising Sgt. Slaughter for stolen valor, it's probably time to pack it in.

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.