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This is the kind of pure joy wrestling brings me all the time. Wrestling is fun... Scott Steiner is fun.... Scott Steiner being the greatest wrestler ever is fun. I just want to go watch random Steiner rants now.

I assume he will be the only Shoney's manager to receive a #1 vote.... correct?

I just marked out in my living room for Scott Steiner getting a #1 vote. That is incredible.

There is a little part of me that thinks Necro could make the top 100 now and that makes me legitimately happy.

Conjecture: Fans of indie workers prefer high-fliers, smaller guys, better athletes. Maybe? I don't know. I ranked Aries and not Owens, but that's down to physique (which probably wasn't much of a factor for a lot of people). I don't know, maybe. I just think it is sort of a general tip of the hat to Aries who has been good to great for years now. It has been sad to see him wallow in TNA and it was sort of under the radar because people seemed generally more interested in Styles and Joe and their talents being wasted. I like both guys a lot, actually. I am not sure who would have wound up higher on my list, or if either would have made it, but I think pretty highly of both. It just surprised me a bit that Owens visible successes recently didn't skew toward him a little more and I am equally surprised that Aries existing in the black hole of entertainment that is TNA didn't skew votes away from him.

Aries over Owens is a little surprising given they are both active and Owens is riding some hot feuds while Aries just got out of TNA. I mean as close as they are it is more or less a wash, but I am little surprised Owens didn't finish comfortably ahead of Aries right now.

God, I hope HHH got a #1 vote.

While I remain interested in who rates higher between HHH and Brody (but in the way I am interested in circus fights in MMA), I am now genuinely concerned that HHH will land higher than Luger. The overrated fabio looking mother fucker vs the underrated fabio looking mother fucker. I am curiously invested in the result.

I never thought about how much Mocho Cota looked like Peter Dinklage until i saw that picture just now.

The havoc match? oh boy

Brody can be "fun" in the right brawling setting, but even in that setting he is - to me - mediocre at best. I can imagine if you came in hearing he sucked that he would seem just better.

Who will land higher... Brody or HHH? The answer might say a good deal about the soul of this whole thing.

Assuming I can't use Bryan Nakamura vs Brock Nakamura vs Joe Joe vs Brock Brock vs Styles Cesaro vs Brock Cesaro vs Nakamura Joe vs Cesaro Zayne vs Reings (Main even of WM33) Zayne vs Brock Zayne vs Styles Aska vs Sasha Sasha vs Becky (ladder or cage) Super Dragon vs Sabre Sabre vs Regal Super Dragon vs End Super Dragon vs Pentagon Jr Pentagon/LA Park vs Briscoes (completely copying this) Roderick vs Super Dragon (Guerrilla Warfare) Tommy End vs Pentagon Jr.

Jay Briscoe making the top 200 makes me happy. He is such an underappreciated guy. He is good in tags and singles. He can wrestle, brawl, fly, whatever you need. He has always been a personal favorite. To echo Dylan, the Briscoes are both incredibly underrated (in my mind at least) and they are a top tier tag team. Very few teams in the modern era have their longevity and have produced quality matches virtually year in and year out with such a variety of teams in a number of countries and contexts. There are a few tag teams I would list above them, but I am not sure there is one I personally like more.

not nominated, although someone tried to vote for him anyway. Oh thank god...

Wait... has Kane dropped?

Nigel at #4?! I love it.

So you take a guy you like and you say "well, what if he had a career like this guy over here who did have a #1 GWE type career, what then?". I think it's honestly a nonsense. I don't see much use for it at all. You have to rank on based on what happened, not what might have happened or on potential. What if Bret vs. Mr. Perfect had happened at an MSG house show and Greg vs. Tito had happened at Wrestlemania I? Yeah, that is what I said. As you can see from my post I clearly said it should be used to the extreme and provides a useful and reasonable way to get around other types of arguments. That is a spot on example of what I am talking about. No... that is not at all what I mean. I simply think it can provide a reasonable way providing a relatively minor check against an emphasis on matches or the implicit bias that something like visibility and opportunity might provide. I even think it is almost natural to make those comparisons (though not as detailed as the examples you provide) when trying to make sense of such a gigantic pool of wrestlers who exist in practically different worlds. It is one among hundreds of ways of thinking about this, not THE way to discern who is better.

The utility of what if is certainly limited, but it is completely pointless. We are dealing with wrestlers from a 50-60+ year span from across the world. The contexts and careers are so different that there have to be some imaginative tools for creating comparisons. I agree its not something to harp on or get too caught up in. It certainly could be used as a shortcut justification to get around arguments based on output, but I also have a hard to believing that it is a fruitless mental exercise for people taking part in a project like this.

This last few stretches of the list have been cool. I was a little (and presently) surprised that Super Dragon was this high. I love me some super dragon, but I just didn't think he would make 22 ballots.

I think for a significant number of people, he is not on that shortlist, which was at the heart of the infamous and (now terrifying to look back on) Flair vs. Bret thread. Ohhh I know. He is definitely not, but I think even in the grand scheme of things the arguments behind this comparison are generally issues of nuances and details. If you really think about it, if you have both of them in your top 50, that isn't THAT far apart in the grand scheme. It is magnified and more important because we are talking about the very top, where people have their investments, but of all the wrestlers that you have ever seen and all you could have seen and probably will see once you get time, 50 isn't THAT much. Its a point about scale and how I find the position of Hart over Kobashi defensible, even if I don't personally buy the defense myself.

The point about appearance vs pain is an apt one. I tend to sort of mark out for big shots and treat them on face value sometimes (which I guess is good), but all I care about is how good it looks, obviously. Plenty of still shots are thrown that look terrible and plenty of shots look like hot death that presumably didn't destroy the person taking them. Either way, I am a sucker for that appearance of stiff violence in a match. I do imagine that it is hard to fake sometimes. I imagine going through a match with Brock or Vader or even Hansen is just a physical challenge no matter how you cut it.

Jerry Lynn looks like he is about to be an extra in Trailer Park Boys in that photo.

Yeah, I personally like Kobashi more and would have him higher, but I think there is a strong case for Hart. He is in a relatively short list of guys who I can see a solid argument for as a #1 choice and certainly wouldn't bat an eye at being in the top 10. I actually think the comparison between the two is a really interesting one because they both have such different careers, both are almost universally acknowledged as good to great wrestlers and they have very divergent skill-sets.

That JJ quote... beautiful.