Cap

To be clear, I am also not hand wringing over lucha and its representation on the list.

Fortunately I defended mine in Feb. Honestly, the idea that I might be able to binge enough to feel good about making my own list motivated me to finish. It has made for a fantastic couple months for me watching wrestling.

I completely agree. I would be shocked if Dandy, Santo, Casas, and Atlantis don't land higher. Satanico PROBABLY will, but I could really see that going a lot of different directions. Personally, I think he should end up higher than in SC. I really want to see where Sangre Chicana ends up. He is a personal favorite but his case is kind of an odd one to me. LA Park is another one I am just interested to see. I might also be overly interested because I am kind of on a lucha kick. Lucha should do really well on this poll. The broader patterns - far beyond this question - remain interesting since we are seeing a list of 500.

This. Absolutely all over the place. To put it in perspective, we had a total of 151 singles ballots. So far, I think the person revealed that has been on the most ballots has been on 12. That's not even 10% of the total ballots cast, so this is still very much in the small sample size section of the honorary mentions. Once we hit the range where the revealed wrestlers consistently are on 30-40 ballots we start heading into the more solid base size section of the rankings. But for now, I wouldn't take the ranking order of those revealed as nothing more than a quirk of small sample size. Oh for sure, this is the vast majority of what we are seeing. There is no doubt of that. We will probably hit a few layers of consistency before it is all told and that will likely be seen in how the order within groupings plays out. But, if you consider not being on a ballot as a sort of vote in and of itself, this swath of wrestlers can be grouped together as in some way meaningful. I remain somewhat interested in how Lucha plays out on this list. It is just the most interesting style to watch for on this list to me. From listening to podcasts and reading message boards its seemed to be one of the genres (among many) a lot of people were really trying to get into and watch so they could have a more well rounded and informed list. That could play out in a variety of ways or it could be imperceptible. Not actually saying that is what we are seeing here really.

Yeah, his selling is what stood out to me on rewatch. It was terrible. I still really like a couple of those matches with Dragon, but there are parts where he just clearly doesn't know how to sell what Dragon is doing to him. I think it was the first one where Dragon is going after the leg and Mori does nothing, but it isn't the undersell sell like Misawa. It is a strait up no sell. Still, I liked his ROH run pretty well. If nothing else he was a really unique wrestler (at least in that context), who brought good work out of a lot of guys. I kind found his look to play into his mannerisms too. To see a strait up scary dude act like a crazy monster is one thing but to see a giant female baby look mother fucker do it is sort of unsettling. His offense was the kind of simple I generally like, but he never really put it together and learned to maximize it. Still looked brutal to me most of the time. I haven't gotten a chance to revisit his matches with Nigel, but I still generally like his series with Dragon. I thought it was all good to great, except one. Only 1/5 of their singles matches in ROH fell flat to me (12/29/07). All that said, he wouldn't have sniffed my top 100.

The lucha rankings have been interesting so far. A few names I kind of expected to see higher have already dropped. Seems like a lot of people were watching lucha just for this project, so I wonder if there will be a wider gap between the sort of top stars of lucha and the rest. Or maybe this part of the list is just all over the place.

It warms my heart to see Mori. I always really liked him. When I rewatched some of the ROH stuff a few months ago it really didn't hold up as well as I had hoped, but he was still tons of fun. His monster-work between moves was awesome.

I like Quack', but I was stunned by the 6 ranking. I too am interested in the tastes and rationals behind that vote, but without context it seems like the product of a really narrow (and I don't mean that in a disparaging way, just don't have another good word) and niche taste in wrestling.

Didn't vote, but this picture of Cornette is one of my favorite things ever so I changed it a few days ago anyway.

I love seeing Jimmy Jacobs on the list. He is such an enjoyable wrestler to me.

Diaz's promo was white hot. I also think Rory McDonald vs Robbie Lawler was an absolute five star match.

That's excactly the one I meant! Spitting image that one :-) Ahhh... shit. I skimmed for the joke first and just missed it. Beat me to it... ohhh well, that joke has legs for a bit.

Koki Kitahara's ability to transcend wrestling should count for something. I guess only one person watches Walking Dead.

Someone told me a while back that Vince did try to get Kobashi several times. This just made my brain overload and stop working all together.

So much Bad Company.... So so much

I feel like the Jerry Saggs Fiasco would be really into puns and would do lots of faux punk covers, thereby trying to appeal to and in turn generally disappointing (almost) everyone all at once. I think "Don't Stop BaallleeEEdin'" would be one the JSF would be PRETTY proud of. Also, forget a beer or two. If I saw a flyer (lets face it, they aren't playing anywhere with a marquee) for this I would go in and immediately start power drinking until they were done.

Not a single vote? This is the internet for Christ sake. I expected better, more nuanced trolling.

Not terribly surprising, but interesting. I am not sure it strikes me as a huge change. If this just means they shift around the roster a bit to feature different guys from the fairly large talent pool they tap into, it could be fairly harmless. Others will still show up, they will just be featured differently. It isn't like evolves primary selling point is their lengthy and interwoven feuds. However, this sort of changes the general ethos of Evolve and it starts to feel, as it was aptly put above, like a developmental for a developmental, it could be a turn off. It remains to be seen if this is a relatively harmless shift in the talent pool or something that changes the general tone of Evolve.

I am a big Hector fan. I have really only seen the midsouth stuff and a few things here and there, but I am always drawn to him in those match.

This makes me regret not voting kind of. The reveals are fun. Then again, it would probably be somewhat like fantasy football in that if I had the investment of my own list, seeing where my people pop up, I would probably be way too invested and wish I didn't have a dog in the fight.

I was a little surprised Gibson was that far down the line. Not that he is a world beater or anything, but I just assumed he would show up on more ballots.

aww, kinda glad to see Bob Sapp's mug somewhere on this. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for him since I enjoyed my 3AM mean at a Bob Sapp Pancake house in Korea. Also, I might be making that Cornette picture my new profile picture for EVERYTHING.

That is the same rating I have on Nak vs Zayn. I rewatched it and loved it just as much as the first time. I thought it was special, so much I loved about it.

Crews coming up didn't surprise me at all. I think I mentioned in the NXT Dallas thread that I bet they just bring him up without having him "graduate" NXT. he fits the main roster way better, like others said. I cannot say enough how much I love Sasha doing the Eddie tribute stuff. The wrestling gods are kind sometimes... they are kind and they want you to be happy........ sometimes. No one says "we are happy they are here" as much as JBL said it about the post-mania crowd and DOESN'T really mean "we hate you so so so so much.

He was acting kind of heelish in his response to the crowd. Their hand will eventually get forced with turning him heel. If nothing else booing Reigns has caught on as a trendy thing to do live and may continue.