El Dragon

I put it into perspective with a friend that the people that the Best Friends in AEW are a former Big Japan Death Match wrestler, the good half of the Havana Pitbulls, Fire Ant, Chuck Taylor, Wheeler Yuta, and a Space Alien.

That was basically perfect performance going both ways there. Uno was outstanding as the underdog, but Danielson as an ass kicking dick is outstanding.

I kind of love Danielson as basically a tweener, it's like they took his RoH playbook and said "just do this and go wild"

These are going to feel somewhat weird, but watching through the late 83/early 84 Portland set has been... illuminating. Stock Up: Nobody that really has a case to make this list. Brett Sawyer is good all over that set, and so is Fidel Sierra, but both are "wrestlers who probably end up in my top 200" then players for my top 100 as of this moment. Amusingly, Billy Jack Haynes was a real eye opener in that section, to the point were I think if he wasn't a headcase, he'd probably be remembered as the second best of the "meathead babyfaces" next to Hogan. Stock Down: Buddy Rose. It feels weird typing that, but there it is. That isn't to say I'm not high on Buddy, he still has a really good chance at my top 10. But his babyface work in 83/84 actively took him from someone I thought was a legitimate threat for my No.1, to a guy I have a hard time imaging stays in the top 5. I flat out think he wasn't a very compelling babyface, and what felt like it should have been an amazing time in Portland (Rip Oliver's Clan with The Assassin and Dynamite Kid against Buddy, Hennig, and Haynes) left me cold so much I literally am putting down the set and moving on to watch other stuff. It felt like the entire territory is melting down in what should be it's best run since Martel and Piper were around. I always thought the debate for me is who is higher, Bockwinkel or Rose. After watching a large portion of both guys work on tape, I think the answer is clear as day for Bock.

Amusingly I’m at the Dynamite Kid portions of the Portland set recently, and being honest, he’s been a pretty massive dud for me there. The Buddy/Dynamite stuff has generally left me cold, with there first singles match firmly in my bottom 10 on the set due to it being a directionless mess of a match that good execution doesn’t save. I’m not sure if he’s had a multi man match in which I didn’t think The Assassin wasn’t clearly better then him either, though Fidel Sierra rules so that shouldn’t be a surprise.

That entire match felt kind of like a miss that shouldn't have been a miss at all. I find Omega when working with the Bucks and Cole to be the worst version of himself, and that match kind of illustrated that point.

I think with Kingston it’s quite simply a case of a guy who you will absolutely adore if you are a fan of great limb selling and smarter versions of common wrestling tropes that tend to be watered down by other guys. He’s kind of another guy like a Christian we’re you either just clearly see the greatness in him or you don’t, because it’s all in the detail work that jumps. He will 100% make my list though. He also is a rare case we’re persona actually does impact my view of him due to it being impossible to disconnect him from his promos in my head, and connect to some of his better matches in such vital ways. Homicide is an interesting case in he ha some legit amazing performances but he’s also kind of an aura pick. He’s kind of RoH’s Sabu in a lot of ways in how much the mood just changes when he’s around sometimes. He’s also got a uniqueness factor of being able to blend styles really damned well. I’m not sure how many wrestlers “feel” like Homicide. He has a chance to sneak into my bottom 20, but I’m not committed to the idea yet.

Brett Wayne "Hack" Sawyer I have a longer rant to go on him at some point, but a total diamond in the rough of the Portland footage, who shines on a near constant basis in his available performances. Outstanding Babyface in singes with his matches with Flair and Rose (none of which feels like carry jobs in the slightest), and up with Piper as Buddy's best opponent in tag matches in Portland. Honestly, I'm stunned he has so little rep for someone who was clearly very good in basically all the footage we have of him between Portland and Georgia. Hack Sawyer vs. Buddy Rose (1/16/82) Hack Sawyer, Rocky Johnson, and Steve Regal vs. Buddy Rose, Rip Oliver, and Matt Borne (2/20/82) Hack Sawyer vs. Ric Flair (4/10/82) Hack Sawyer & Steve Pardee vs. Rip Oliver & The Assassin (9/11/82) Hack Sawyer vs. Ric Flair (10/2/82)

Him mentioning his last night in Ring of Honor, a show I was there for, was beyond perfect. Such a great explanation for why he's back. Awesome promo, and now I just hope the work follows.

I honestly think it’s a fair one. I watched King of the Indies 2001 earlier this year and he had 3 matches in the 4 star range in 2 nights. He was, I believe, 20 years old at time of those matches. He’s clearly already an elite worker there. He had really good matches with Reigns and Cesaro this year, imo. At no point in the middle, when he was active, was he not at least a contender for one of the best guys going. Even in the dead periods in the WWE mid card he was still actively really good. Outside of maybe his first year in the business he’s been great since basically his entire career. I don’t know how you start his peak or finish his peak at any real point when he’s still one of the best guys going now.

It’s waaaay too early for that for me to properly articulate this but my early baseline seems to be “to even get to the point I’m considering you for top 100 I have to think your better then Curt Hennig” That might be a high baseline to some, but Curt Hennig is a guy I’m pretty low on by comparison to others.

It’s incredibly early, but my gut feeling is it’s going to come down to two guys who were absolutely incredible for 1 year year stretches that due to opportunity or otherwise just didn’t peak that high the rest of there career. Case 1 is Paul London. Absolutely incredible run in RoH from mid 02 to mid 03. In a company with AJ, Punk, Joe, Low-Ki, and Danielson, I thought he was noticeably the best worker of the bunch for 12 months. Putting on legit classics with Danielson, AJ, and Xavier. He gets signed to WWE and becomes the poster child of guys WWE just kills dead. His WWE run is still full of fun stuff on Velocity and his team with Kendrick is legit very good, but they killed his passion for the business and was just never the same again. Case 2 is Doug Somers, the best guy to not receive a vote in 2016. Only one year of being anything but a jobber, but that year is spent in arguably the best tag team feud ever on US soil. And he more then holds his own teaming with an all timer in Buddy, some times even out performing Buddy and a young Shawn who was arguably in his perfect role. The feud in one image to me is Somers holding a crimson masked Shawn by his hair to prevent the tag as he just fucking laughs at Marty. He’s just so fucking amazing in that feud he feels unarguable These two might finish 99 and 100 for me, or it might be a fight between the 2 for the spot. Still up in the air

Feels like the biggest differential here is consistency of high end TV work. Both have there high ends, and I could even argue Bret’s best stuff is better and it not feel wrong, but Rey was consistently able to get entertaining stuff with guys I never really think about, and Bret was too hit and miss for me to rank there. So yeah, it’s Rey for me. He was my 1 last time, and while he will surely not be my 1 this time, he’s still a top 20 lock and Bret isn’t.

My take is while I’m excited for everyone else’s thoughts on the discussion and would love some good back and forth, at the end of the day, the master list means nothing to me past “this reveal is going to be super fun”. It will mean next to nothing outside our circle, just like how the last one was torn to pieces for not having Undertaker higher by the r/squaredcircle community. The list that matters to me is my own. This is a collective project to expand our views and have us watch new and interesting workers and form our own opinion on things on the matter. It’s a journey we are taking together, and, honestly, the end doesn’t even have to be the end. Make your list for you, not to try to impact the end standings.

I've been trying to figure out why Hero doesn't click with me for a very long time, and during the watch party it finally hit for me: For the early part of his career he always felt like a guy more interested in doing Lucha sequences that looked cool then really trying to be an amazing pro wrestler overall. As time went on he added other influences (the notable Buddy Rose stage of his mid 2000's work), and eventually put it all together in the 2010s as a legitimately incredible performer that still left me cold. I used to think I just had anti-Hero bias still and that was the block. During the party I finally figured it out. Chris Hero breaks wrestling. He is a legitimate 6 foot 4, bulky, incredible athletic worker who can pull off amazing looking strikes and throws at the drop of a hat. He is smart, clever, knows how to work a match like nobody's business, and he also destroys my sense of believability in a lot of his matches because he is all of those things and there is no way a tiny little guy like Fenix, a toothpick like Sabre Jr., and many other indy guys that he is working 50/50 with shouldn't get destroyed by him. He should be indy Brock Lesnar because his skillset basically demands it. But I also don't know how much to blame Hero on that because 50/50 stuff is exactly what his crowd wants to see. I always thought Hero would be a very hard guy to rank. Then I finally figured out why and I find it even harder to know how I'm going to rank him. But I know I am going to rank him.

My description of Orton is he has the good performances over a long time period that he basically is a lock for a top 200 if you are giving him a chance. Put putting him in your top 100 just... looks wrong. I still have him Ultimo personally.

I would just like to point out autocorrect on your phone is a bitch. that is all.

Two all timers, who are really good in there youth before exploding into all timers who could do literally anything in the ring. I’ve been doing preliminary checking through my list and it alarmed me how easy they are to imagine each other as wrestling twins in terms of how there careers progressed. Who do ya like.

If anything, I’d argue that match working so overwhelmingly well and being held up as a classic with the interference makes it more impressive. Brock is a fantastic bully, Eddie is an amazing underdog, and the note that the Spear wasn’t the finish, and that Eddie still had to use his wits, skill, and craftiness to win really adds to it. If the Spear was the finish, it doesn’t work. But Brock powering back up, and Eddie countering the perfect way using his surroundings and skill to find a way to pull it off is perfection. And, also, if it was any other character, it would hurt, but Eddie being Eddie was the perfect guy to win the title via interference and using a weapon.

I like Drew a lot, but Sheamus has 10 years of really strong work, and also was probably the best crowd less worker the WWE had in the dark days.

Cesaro is one of the better wrestlers of this century, an athletic freak who has found fun ways to utilize that to his advantage his entire career. While his offense is something he has a lot of notoriety for, his ability to bring out the best of his opponents is notable. He’s an other worldly base for high fliers, like best in non Lucha history. Plug him in with a random high flier, you will get something really fun. He also works very well in a more “hoss fight” setting, and has real good stuff with the likes of Sheamus and others in his career. He’s a shoo in for my list, no question. Brad Armstrong is… pretty good. I’d give deeper thoughts, but in my watches of Brad he’s never got past that level to me. This is a cakewalk imo.

Oh I know, but the Ambrose match was the most damning.

This is interesting because I’m not super involved in this one. I’m too young to be on the nostalgia train with Barry, but what I have seen makes me think he was significantly over placed in 2016. Not that he wasn’t good, but he finished 25th and I always thought that seemed way too high. As I’m diving deeper maybe I’ll disagree, but he is at present very much not one of my guys. Jericho, on the other hand, has coincided with my fandom almost perfectly. He was a prominent performer having his best years of his career at the apex of my “nostalgia years” But I still like Barry better because Jericho as a performer has so many things that actively leave me cold. Jericho to me can be defined by the phrase “Jericho thinks he’s _____ then he really is”. And there are so many words I can fit into that blank? Smarter is probably the biggest one for me, but all of better, more athletic, and more clever all fit like a glove. He constantly over reaches in a variety of ways, and, for me, it tends to lead me to roll my eyes more often then to think he’s actively great. He’s had some great performances, but as someone who tries to evaluate the wrestler on how well they adjust to things, it’s hard for me to like Jericho much.

Another mid 2000’s Indy peak guy that I think deserves another look. Homicide still works, but it feels like he’s really in the downslope at this time. But he still feels like a really intriguing guy for due to his RoH run, and had strong performances with multiple guys. I doubt he gets any headway, just wanted to push his name forward a bit to see if there is anything worth going out of my way to see recently.

Seth Rollins once, in a match were the focal point was that he had a bad leg going in, then got his leg worked over, would hit a running release powerbomb and deadlift his opponent into a Falcon Arrow. Chris Adams is someone I enjoy but have no real advanced thoughts on him. My advanced thoughts on Seth are very very negative.