Cap

I have been swamped for a few weeks and haven’t had time to get on here so I have been kind of catching up with this new subforum and am really happy it exists, especially this conversation. I just wanted to hit a few of the things from the thread quickly Going back a few pages to what may or may not set pro wrestling apart from other sports or forms of entertainment, the way violence has become a key way of negotiating gender beyond biology has always struck me as particularly important for wrestling since wrestling uses violence as a key to meaning making and story telling. More than any form of entertainment I can think of, violence is carefully manipulated in wrestling as a way of drawing out emotion in the audience and create apiece of art and/or entertainment to be consumed. The relationship between violence and meaning is at the heart of wrestling more than any other form of entertainment (including violent sports because there – at least theoretically – violence isn’t strategically manipulated). There is a strong argument to be made that violence has become a way of articulating “masculine” and “feminine” subjects, particularly in the west, and giving those subjects an implicit value. This isn’t to say it is a simple equation that people necessarily see the person being beat up as female and the person doing the beating as male, but rather that violence has become a key to the subtext gender negotiation insofar as gender is implicitly hierarchal in a given context. And that hierarchy is articulated at least in part through the real or fictionalized physical “advantages” of the male body. The easiest lay example of this is the prevalence of sexist and homophobic insults to degrade people, insults that are often used and enforced from a young age, but there is more to it when thinking about the tensions between violence, gender, meaning, and value. Take the MMA fighter Fallon Fox for example. When she was outed as transgender the discourse around her demonstrated perfectly that people associated her perceived physical advantages in hand to hand combat as not just a reason she shouldn’t fight women, but as reason that she was a MAN, objectively – biologically a man. Aside from the bottomless pit of transphobic jokes that the story inspired, pundits used her potential for violence as a way of assigning her a “real” gender despite the science of what reassignment was doing to her body. The argument for male and female divisions in MMA became in some ways based on the imperative to define Fallon Fox’s “real” gender. Obviously MMA is very different than wrestling and intergender matches don’t inspire the same sorts of concerns, but they are subject – at least subconsciously I think – to the same concerns and the same trepidations about the relationship between gender and violence. Popular American sports particularly celebrate the physical characteristics that males tend to have and wrestling turns that celebration into a goddmned carnival. This isn’t just because a large percentage of the story being told on a wrestling program is through violence. Everything revolves around these characteristics. The clothing, the lighting, and the poses: wrestling doesn’t just show off physical traits and characteristics that have been used over time to negotiate a gender hierarchy, it fundamentally relies on them. Violence is even a way of pushing the boundaries, of challenging expectations and making something special and I think that manifests itself differently for men and women. I always think back to the first Dump vs Chigusa hair match – a well known and controversial piece of violence. That is something that makes some people very uneasy and one regular PWOer (I think Dylan, but I have only heard people reference his take, not his take itself) even apparently contended it has a subtext of rape. While I think the match is absolutely brutal and really does jump as far over “the line” as it possibly can, I don’t necessarily think it is any more brutal and violent than many acclaimed men’s matches. Of course, there are also qualitative and contextual differences between the matches, but I don’t see the same sort of discussion about the aftermath of Hansen/Funk (4/14/83) or Lesnar/Cena squash (where they also focused on the emotional reactions of kids as Cena was manhandled). I am not saying that Dump vs Chigusa shouldn’t make people uncomfortable or that any thoughtful reading is necessarily wrong. The varied ways of reading and understanding wrestling (especially post footage boom) is one of the coolest things about this type of engagement with wrestling. I also acknowledge that I am relatively new to Joshi so I know the story of what is happening before and after the match, but I don’t have a ton of the deeper context. However, I can’t help but thank that part of the discussion of that match and part of the trepidations about it have to do with it being a piece of excessive violence that elicits strong emotion performed and carried out by women – again a nod to the tensions between gender, violence, meaning, and (more explicitly in this example perhaps) sex/sexuality. I have always thought this gives wrestling some unique challenges and some unique opportunities. In some ways, wrestling can challenge the hierarchies and the masculine monopoly over violence and the notion that women cannot or should not use violence or have the corollary attributes associated with violence because everything is staged. People know the violence isn’t “real” and the intention is fictional. On the other hand, wrestling is still presented to an audience with varying degrees of (more often than not subconscious) comfort with any challenge to those hierarchies. This inspires different, and sometimes troubling responses to the violence itself. Additionally there is unique dynamics of face/heel that orchestrate the crowd to contribute to the story in some ways and that is especially tricky today. Even if the story is written in a way that brings a woman and a man to the ring as equals there is no guarantee that the audience will accept it and/or respond to it in a way that helps forward that. There is no guarantee that the audience wont hijack that. Then again, there is also no way of predicting 100% when the audience will accept or demand women be placed in new situations. There is just so much of the equation that seems out of the hands of those orchestrating the violence itself. Ultimately, to me this means that it is not only possible to create interesting intergender situations, but it might be one of the most challenging and compelling frontiers in wrestling today. It couldn’t be done in the same way when those in the business attempted to maintain its legitimacy. There are a lot of hurdles and putting something like that together isn’t just a matter of throwing two people in a ring or a program and taking it seriously. Everything from the writing to the performances to the commentary has to be committed to making that work well for it to get much traction and it will probably need a little bit of timing and luck to work at a mainstream level. To echo some people earlier, I think Lucha Underground does a pretty good job. I am only just over half way through season one, but I find it funny how even LU can’t help but draw attention to the dynamics I am talking about and their choice to buck them in some ways. They started by just trying to say “hey, everyone competes as equals here” but as the season moved it was almost as if they felt they needed to talk about it more. Stryker goes on and on about how he doesn’t want to go on and on about feminism and just wants the action to speak for itself. Maybe that changes later in season one and into season two. Again, I like how they approach it, but even they sort of flag some of the inherent relationships between violence and gender and work some of the sexuality stuff into the storyline by pointing out how certain moves that are perfectly normal between two men or two women seem noteworthy between a man and a woman. In all I am taking the long-winded approach to saying that gender as a construct, a subject is party articulated with regard to violence and has been for a really long time. Wrestling’s dependence on violence as central to the form itself presents it with some unique challenges and opportunities in this regard.

Sure, long shows can be a challenge, but that is the great thing about podcasts. I can come back to them as I want. Sometimes I like the longer podcasts cause it lets thoughts develop and mature more too.

I have been looking at this thread and the "is voting political" thread for a bit now and thinking over this stuff, running over it in my brain. They resonate with me because I think they touch on a lot of reasons why i really like the project but chose not to vote. Not voting for me - and I think I have said this elsewhere, so sorry to repeat - was the product of a lot of things, most of which was poor time management in the two weeks leading up and some expected stuff that took my attention away right around voting, but part of it was I just didn't get enough knowledge to like my own list. That is why I think the course planning/syllabus analogy is actually pretty good. All of this for me is still somewhat underdeveloped in my own mind, but I like that analogy for a few reasons. First, I came at this about 6-8 months ago and really started to think about the project itself about 5 months ago. So I didn't have 2 years. I had about a semester and I actually planned my watching out accordingly. I was fortunate enough to finish and defend my dissertation in Feb. so I have had massive amounts of free time to catch up, so I wasn't working 3 hours a week, but I was still working on a time budget and just didn't get where I wanted to be. The result of me not getting there isn't important, but the idea that people are working toward a knowledge based goal in a given amount of time and must make choices about what they are looking at seems spot on. I also teach at a university (which actually might be the main reason this analogy works for me) and no matter how I design a course on a given topic the students are only exposed to a sampling of what they could be. Everyone comes in with a different background and body of knowledge to build upon, they more material over a specific amount of time, and at the end you hope they can speak with some confidence and competence to a slightly larger chunk of whatever field you are teaching in, but it is still only part. Here, all the watching was self guided (which I liked), but the premiss of time vs subject is the same. This is another reason why I think it is somewhat apt here. The hierarchy of knowledge and of time to spend has been playing in the whole process. It was topic of conversation 100 times over in different form. I had 5 months and at the end of the 5 months I still felt like an undergrad who just completed a course. I think I did well the course, but I wasn't ready to write my dissertation. To echo JR's point earlier, I would say my takes on a lot of things that I have been watching lately (Lucha and Joshi particularly) should probably be taken with a grain of salt. I was like I always describe my undergrads, particularly the ambitious and motivated ones: they are like kids with new toys - they are really excited to play with them but they don't know how really so they are mostly clumsily smashing them into stuff. This, to my mind, is actually a fairly productive way to think about some of the frustrations of the list. On one hand, yes, a lot of people here have multiple doctorates in wrestling. They have a level of knowledge about it that would equal the work put into getting one's PhD. Some of us are working on an M.A. Some of us are undergrads. Some of us are just enrolling in colege On the other hand, it is wrestling and unlike schooling, the primary function is import. We watch and enjoy wrestling; that is its function. The primary purpose of watching wresting should be to enjoy it. The secondary purpose should be to turn around and contribute to a body of knowledge on it. That is where the analogy falls a little flat of course. Most schooling and coursework (particularly once you get into graduate studies) is done with the primary goal of taking the info in and turning it around to contribute. That is all an aside though. The real point here is that people are on different educational levels. Once you have a PHD you can start thinking about the book deconstructing the Americanism of pro wrestling. Some of us are just trying to understand why lucha is so fucking awesome right now. We are all working toward the same goal and should be on the same team, but in some ways its hard to find some of those common grounds and we are going to frustrate one another. This is why I think both the idea of American Hegemony and the idea of good intentioned people trying to pick away at an impossible task are right. I completely buy that there are cultural influences that make American and Japanese wrestling more easily legible for a primarily mainstream western audience (which I imagine made up MOST of the voting population). It is easier for me to put on an All Japan match for the 80s than it is an EMLL match from the 80s and follow the logic of what is happening. I love lucha, but I can't articulate why I love lucha just yet. While I think the historical elements of this (mostly being discussed in the other thread) are awesome and I am interested in catching up on that sometime, I just don't know that stuff so I can only speak to the contemporary manifestations. Watching wrestling is communicative. Different kinds of wrestling are like different languages or dialects in some ways. We read wrestling. We look at it and can decipher lots of meaning from what is happening in front of us. Anyone on this board probably deciphers more meaning than the "average" fan. What people gravitate towards will be different for myriad reasons, but most people will start with a base knowledge from what they were raised on, the language (verbal, nonverbal, visual) they learned from the start and are comfortable with. This goes to the point Will has been making for a while on the podcasts that what you watched and loved in your formative years is going to shape how you make sense of wrestling and in turn shape your list. For most of that is broadly American (with lots of little dialects and regional things within that). Japan is probably second. There are communicative similarities between the two in match flow, psychology, offense, expectations, length layout that are easier to understand and feel almost intuitive and make them easier to read. Turning on lucha or battlearts or I think even Joshi to an extent rocks you out of that a bit and can be harder to get into (maybe one never does). It can be a turn off because it isn't enjoyable to some people and honestly that is the point where it is on each person to decide if they care enough about being a scholar on wrestling to push through that and learn more. So not only are we faced with the impossible task of watching so much wrestling (more than most people could ever fathom), but in some ways you are being asked to learn a new language that may or may not be fun for you if you want to push past that hegemony that exists. I would love to be able to learn as many wrestling languages as possible, to expand the field of legibility for myself as much as I can, but who knows. Will I feel that way in a year? Will I feel that way if/when my wife and I have kids? Will I feel that way when I am at my new job trying to get tenure? Will I feel that way if I lose my job? Can I imagine a world where I try to get into WOS or shoot and enjoy it and just don't at first and I am not in a time or place where i want to put in work? Yep. The point being, that hegemony exists (at least in my mind) and that is manifest and discerned primarily communicative (how and what we can read in wrestling) but there are lots perfectly good reasons why someone may not have or may not be able to get to a point of critically challenging it and that is not necessarily a knock on the individual person. This isn't just a defense of an analogy. To me, unless this was going to be an exclusive voting list, the idea that this could be any more than it was is wishful thinking at best. Many people had 2 years. My guess is that at least half the voters (maybe more) had a lot less. People came at this with varying degrees of knowledge. It sounds like the logistics, the structure, and the hype of it set unreasonable expectations that people sort of faced and came to terms with at different times. The list was always going to be a survey and a snapshot (to use that trendy term that I quite like). I don't put too much stock in what this represents about the potential for the board or where the conversations here will go. The project provided more questions than answers and in hindsight that shouldn't surprise anyone, should it? I just hope it motivates people to keep watching, keep exploring, and keep engaging some of these tough questions.

Is anyone else on cageside seats? It could be posted there as a fanpost. Someone should read and post them on youtube just so we can see the devolution of humanity chime in on youtube comments.

Thanks to everyone who has been taking part in this and making it an interesting project, especially the folks who brought this to audio form. I came very late to the game and didn't vote, but I have so thoroughly enjoyed watching the reveals this month. I also discovered such an enormous amount of new wrestling in the last 5-6 months and most of it was because of the conversations around this project. This was just awesome.

I think I have to watch the bash match today at some point.

Can someone please put on a Pentagon Jr vs Necro Butcher match? It could be at least as good as and probably much better than the Vampiro match (which was so much better than it had any business being).

I recently downloaded season one on iTunes and it has made moving through it at my convenience really easy. It was worth it.

I want to echo the praise of the Taker defense. I have been sort of slowly but surely working my way through these lists in podcast form over the week and that is (so far) the most impressive defense of a single candidate I have heard - at least insofar as it made me reevaluate the way I have thought about someone that I am very familiar with and could make a holistic evaluation of right now. That was top tier stuff, and that comes from a guy who thinks pretty highly of taker already. I would add (more accent your point) that I think he is sort of a WWE rock, an anchor of sorts that has grounded a lot performers and pulled their best "WWE wrestling"matches out of them. I think he reigned in HBK better than anyone and did so with different versions of HBK. He did the same for Brock. Brock has always brought something unique and special to the ring (for better or worse) and Taker always meshed that with what I expect out of a wrestling match better than just about anyone (sans maybe Punk in that one match, but Taker did it three times). He might not get the "best" matches out of Brock in terms of star rating (though their first HIAC match is probably my favorite Brock match), but he gets I think the best wrestling matches out of him. Taker - maybe better than anyone - seems to understand what the WWE is vs what wrestling is or can be more broadly and has sort of embodied that for quite some time now.

I was going to predict a Broadway where Grimmas reveals the result at 12:00 Midnight tomorrow while we all get overly anxious as anticipation and drama mounts over the course of the day.... but if one of them won easily, I think it probably has to be Flair.

I would say that Misawa didn't as clearly bookend his career because he was still active with no sign of retiring, within I'd say conservatively the next 5 years liberally 10, before his untimely passing so it could be contended that he would have done more to add to or detract from his case which leaves that little bit of open-endedness to his career that the other do not have even-weirdly, Funk who is still wrestling feels like his career is very much concluded because over the past few years it has become very obvious exactly what he can produce with his body completely broken down and it has in no way really effected his over all case. A very odd nit to pick I know but reading your break down made me feel inspired this fine Friday morning Its a good point. I think looking at it that way you are right. I meant it more in the fact that they aren't still building their cases really. Their careers are what they are and we know more or less where they start and where they end. Moreover, they have had some time to sink in and and digest. Hypothetically, yes, there are some "what ifs" left on the table with Misawa, absolutely, and that is an interesting talking point. On a complete side note. One night about 5 years ago in a bar in Syracuse, NY I was chatting with a buddy of mine who is a huge wrestling fan but really only knows mainstream American wrestling is bar tending. He knows I am into more. He was having some argument with a regular about wrestling being dangerous and he remembered me kind of waxing poetic about Misawa after his death (and having to back out of his ROH show in NY at the last minute-one of my few regrets in life). So he comes over and he asks me what happened to "that guy" and invited me into the conversation. I don't normally like to talk about wrestling with non wrestling fans, but sometimes when I am drunk someone draws me out into a conversation and when they do I don't really hold back. I spent the next hour explaining how the All Japan Style and years of sacrificing to be one of the absolute best killed him (one way or another). The poor bastard had to sit there and listen to me carry on about the greatness of the pillars and All Japan 90s wrestling for probably 45 minutes and all he was saying was a version of "wrestling is fake".

That

In a selfish fan way I wanted Bryan to win too. I think this is a pretty appropriate top 4. Given the talk on the boards and hearing some of the lists on podcasts, it is tough to argue with or be surprised by this top four. You have a guy who made his case in Japan, a guy who made his case in America and two guys who made their case in both to varying degrees. All score pretty high on all of the major metrics and all (sans Funk, kinda) have bookended their careers and their case has been made for a while (no recency). Everyone has their detractors and their flaws and this could probably be said about all the top 10, but these are four of the harder guys to argue against as GREAT.

I shouldn't have said "way" better. I love his heel work in both. I just like the overall heel character he played in ROH better. He didn't have the same types of opponents so he was put in a completely different position. I am not sure the ROH run is a better case maker for him, but I enjoy it more myself.

I agree about Styles/Danielson. Styles best match - for my money - in ROH was his Main Event Spectacle match against Danielson in 2003. Danielson got Styles out of his comfort zone early and got him out of some of the formula Styles would often go to in ROH around that time. I didn't love the final quarter of the match, but it is one of the key pieces to Danielson's case in ROH. I also agree his heel work in ROH was way better. I really thought that letting him be that shit-eating heel champion was the ultimate way to go with him as WWE champion. I am not sure they would have ever let him work heel on top, but it would have been the perfect way to keep him fresh and let maximize his skill set.

I love Unified. That main event is absolutely awesome, really special for my money, and it caps off a pretty well rounded show.

It shouldn't be, he's had a long and awesome career. Recency bias + US mainstream bias (and before people get worked up, I of all people am guilty of it with Bryan, so I speak for *myself* first). I absolutely don't believe all the people voting for Bryan had scrutinized his ROH career. I for one sure didn't do it, as ROH is a black hole that I'm not I ever want to get into. Too afraid I might just blast the whole company (for the record, I *hated* everything about Samoa Joe vs Kobashi, to give you an idea). Maybe one day. When I'l done with TNA. I think people started going back and looking at high points for sure. I have kind of seen references to some of his early matches pop up her and there. I followed his career pretty closely since about 2004, so i was following the ROH stuff as it happened. I recently went back and watch quite a bit it and admittedly some of it didn't hold up so well and I found some flaws with him that I didn't see before. However, I still think his ROH stuff is an overall positive for his case. He played lots of rolls, he put on lots of interesting and unique matches, showed versatility, excelled with the belt and without it, worked with so many different types of wrestlers, and very rarely had a bad match. His work holds up A LOT better than most during that time. I think you are right though. He is the beneficiary of some potential biases you mentioned, probably benefits a little from the sentimentality around him lately, and also gets a bump for the reasons I discussed above (easily accessible career, appealing to multiple types of fans). I think he MIGHT lower a bit should this ever be done again, but I a can also see him gaining some positive evaluations elsewhere. I think his high end indy stuff will be thought of more fondly down the road. How unique his run to WMXXX was will stand out as time goes by. His relentless consistancy will stand the test of time. I can also imagine more gems of his popping up or gaining some recognition from other indy companies too.

I don't think Bryan in the top 5 is a surprise at all. He is a transcendent talent that appeals across fan bases (at least ones that would vote here) like few others, his career is readily available and many people followed it as it unfolded (nothing to really go back for to make a strong case), and has been highly regarded and praised in all the right places (well deserved I might add).

I won't be surprised. Kobashi and Kawada made fewer ballots than Rey. Based on the voting so far I would imagine Liger made more ballots than Misawa. He has a sort of mythos that even folks who might have voted more strictly American wrestlers would probably find a place for them on his list. Misawa like got more top 5 votes so it is tough to tell.

Rey finally dropping at 7 has got to be the biggest surprise for me. I really like Rey. I get that he was a truly special babyface, but I would have never guessed him at 7.

I think by this point we aren't learning much more about the "bias" of the list. At some point someone will finish number 1. If that is an American it doesn't necessarily mean there is an American bias. If that is a Japanese wrestler it doesn't mean there is a Japanese bias. Bias isn't going to be in the micro level (which is where we are now), it will be seen in the larger patterns that we have already seen or will maybe flesh out more from the data we already know about.

Top 10 is indeed litterally an elite showing for anyone. Lawler and Kawada being the first two to drop in the top 10 surprised me a little, Kawada less so than Lawler, but still. I thought Kawada would land above Kobashi.

I like this idea of "Americanized" wrestlers being the more telling way of parsing out the list and how it has played out so far. I was thinking about this yesterday in a way, but was thinking of it in terms of how wrestlers for areas/eras/styles that have had a fair amount of capital in American wrestling (internet) subculture for a while. I have always kind of thought that the indy boom of the early/mid 2000s had a good bit to do with this. It brought a lot of styles together in a sort of laboratory for wrestling in some ways. People were trying different things, pulling from different points of influence, and in some ways it was a relatively safe place to make mistakes. When I look back at this I see a lot of the "Americanized lucha" , ALL Japan heavy, and new japan juniors style being some of the most animating forces. I have always thought that the boom kept the conversation about and interest in some of that stuff going, grounded some of it for mainstream fans. My first intro to the All japan stuff was hearing about it after I got into the indy scene in 2002. Of course a lot of it became canonical before that for a variety of reasons, but the the potential indy influence is compelling because I think the of wave of talent getting momentum right now is starting to pull primarily from different sources as a way of setting themselves apart. There were WOS inspired wrestlers during the big boom, but I see it a lot more now. I see more shoot style influence. Especially if those guys get some momentum in more mainstream outlets I hope that can spark some organic interest in other styles for those who might not be motivated. Even still it might not resonate as well because those other styles are very Americanized in the action itself. All this being said, it might not resonate with people who have been part of this community and its predecessors. I am not sure. I wasn't around.

I would probably prefer to watch whole shows, but I honestly don't have time and very little interest in watching uninteresting things. Then again, I don't get to discover random stuff if I don't dive into the unknown. Ultimately it depends on time and what i am watching. I tend to watch more single matches right now.

Same. In beginning my dives into Lucha and Joshi and rewatching a lot of All Japan and some New Japan I realized I knew enough to know that I didn't know enough to be happy with my own list. My list would have been more or less obsolete already as I have been continuing to watch Lucha this month. I could make cases for a hand full of wrestlers in each, but just not enough. If they remained full blind spots that would have been one thing, but I was too much in process of falling in love with some wrestlers and styles and not in enough to know what to do with them. You've just described my dilemma as I went to make my ballot. And in the end, I decided to go the goodhelmet route. For me, I felt more comfortable including those I had a good handle on, while those that I still hadn't formed a solid opinion on where left off. Basically, I was more comfortable committing sins of omission on my ballot than including someone i was unsure of simply because they've been talked about or have the reputation. I mean, how do I know if my evaluation is due to them being new to me or if because of the small sample I watched just happened to be them at their best or no best. So I made that decision for my ballot. Yeah, and I don't necessarily know that that will ever go away. Even if I dedicated all the time I could reasonably dedicate to watching wrestling without sacrificing time for work or family between now and 2026 (if there is even motivation for it 10 years from now), I can imagine I would still be feeling this way about one style/era/region or another. How many indy surges will there be world wide between now and then? How many footage discoveries will there be? What if someone unlocks a ton of that French catch stuff? It will always be a problem. For me, it was a combination of just not feeling like I had enough areas covered to feel good about my own list and having some things come up the weeks leading up to the balloting that kept me from spending the time really thinking over the list that moved me from coming to terms with my list, to just opting out and enjoying the reveal (a decision I am ultimately happy with).