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I know I am late to the discussion here. Generally speaking I really enjoyed the show. I thought it was a ton of fun for the most part and delivered in some really cool ways. Before digging into a few specific things, I just love the overall aesthetic and pacing they are bringing. Matches are getting time, wrestlers up and down the card are getting a spotlight put on them during their matches, and they are doing lots of little things to set themselves apart. Does it all work perfectly? no. However, I'm really enjoying that this feels fresh. It builds off of what they did at Double or Nothing, but also was tweaked to fit the event. And I say that as someone who did not come to this particularly as a Bullet Club/Elite devotee. I will say that if there was one thing that still bugs me about the overall production it is the entrances. I think you really see it with a guy like Jimmy Havoc, who has such a presence when he walks out in most places. All the entrances (even the Elite') felt a little flat. Part of it is the room, but the problem existed on Double or Nothing too. I'd love for them to crank the music a bit, get some closer shots, build and ambiance. I feel like Christopher Daniels has found some new life here. Maybe that isn't the right way to say it, but it feels like he has an extra gear lately. I have really enjoyed him on both shows and thought he and CIMA really kicked the show of well. The women's three way getting time to develop and build dynamics between all three was really crucial. I felt like I had a better feel for all three of them after. MJF is so clearly one of the standouts for this brand right now and every time he comes out and gets on the mic he shows. Just a star. Jungle Boy also has a strange charisma to him and I think he has been on the rise since Spring Break 3. He and Luchasauras really could do some cool stuff. I love Jimmy Havoc but he felt sort of lost in the shuffle here. I'm looking forward to him breaking out of this upper mid card grouping and getting some time to shine in a more deliberate feud. Adam Page might be the one void in this roster for me. He just doesn't connect with me. He is a great athlete and a great wrestler, but he, himself seems somewhat contrived to me. I've always felt like this. Even in some of his best matches in NJPW, I just never could get excited about him. I don't know what it is. I want to like him and I am sure I am going to get plenty of chance to If you told me a year ago that Cody Rhodes would be one of the stand-out wrestlers in 2019 I would have laughed. Honestly, if you told me that before Double or Nothing I would have laughed. He went out and had an absolute banger with his brother and then comes and is really the glue that holds a phenomenal match with Darby Allin together. Take nothing away from Darby here. He was awesome. he did Darby things, got his ass beat, had some great comebacks and hope spots, and was phenomenal bell to bell, but Cody was the star and he really elevated Darby. Which is crazy because I genuinely liked Darby Allin more than Cody before the match. The chair stuff has been beat to death around the interwebs. I'll leave it at this. I thought it was memorable, got people talking, and strapped a rocket to a feud we didn't know we wanted to see before hand. I don't want to see these kinds of chair shots all the time, but Cody is a grown ass man and professional and I can't be bothered to spend too much time contemplating his choices. If you have seen Josh Barenett's tweets on the matter, that is more or less how I feel about it. This six man was what you would expect. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the Street Fighter references to kick things off. The match itself delivered on the action. This isn't my absolute favorite type of wrestling, but it serves a lot of fans right now and I can definitely enjoy it. I for one liked them turning the lights off and washing their hands of the main event. People who were picking apart the non-sanctioned thing seemed to have missed three guys dressed as fucking video game characters coming out right before this. The match was good. I think this is where Moxley thrives. His brand of brawling and chaos looks more seemless here, where I think he sort of sticks out in a weird (not bad, but weird) way in NJPW. It had its high spots and was memorable. I think Janela made some new fans (in the same way Darby did earlier). Mission accomplished all around. Omega beating on Moxley after was great. I love love love them giving Omega a heated, personal rivalry right out the gate and Moxley is the guy that take his sort of goofiness and sharpening for a program without losing the personality. I am really excited to see where this goes and I hope we get a series of matches between the two. Its the closest thing to a "dream match" they have available to them (former IWGP Champ vs former WWE champ) and there is no great reason to not lean into that out of the gate while establish champions elsewhere on the card.

Weird combination of really good and sort of disappointing. I generally like good, technical leg lock work and we get A LOT of that here. It sort of swings from some really authentically brutal stuff to sort of contrived positioning to create the duels. They just go to the "we have the same thing locked on each other" well one too many times for my liking. Additionally as Kopylov gasses some of the grappling later really loses steam. I don't want to take anything away from Kopylov, bc that guy is clearly legit, but it feels like in this setting Han is working a little overtime to get them where they want to be. That all said, I still really like this match. Those criticisms are just what keeps it from being an all time shoot match. When the match and the pace hit it hits hard. I loved the early leg work where they are battling for the truck position. I thought Kopylov's selling was really good, some of the heel hooks as they went through were really nicely done and made me cringe, and the way they mixed in kamuras and americanas and straight arm bars worked well with the leg based match they were having. The spinning back fist and the straight kick response near the end were beautifully timed. The upset ending felt satisfying as they built from the gut kick Han suffered to him never really recovering and finally losing his position to the point where he had to tap. Really strong stuff from both men. **** - ****1/4

I actually liked this significantly less than the 2/3 falls match. The 2/3 falls match somehow willed its way to fun and really sucked me in near the end. I think the format and the sort of expectations of a longer match with that stip might have helped, breaking things into three clearer and easy to discern frames was nice. Here - while i really liked how they told the story moving from the 2/3 falls to a traditional match (elevating the stakes and logically progressing while actually taking away a stipulation) - this never really captured me. It was so over-done in my mind. I think both men's worst tendencies (or at least why i personally don't care for) came out much moreso here. I think this is ultimately a case where its two guys that I am relatively low on having a match featuring all the reasons I am relatively low on them. Sometimes when this happens and they lean hard enough into and the crowd is just right I can get into things. That happened with the first match. It didn't happen here. I totally get why this is some people's cup of tea and I am glad it serves a pretty serious section of fans.

In 2016 Roddy and Riddle had what at the time I thought was Riddle's best match. That might not sound like high praise, but when you think of the quality of people Riddle was getting to work with at the time, its a pretty big deal. They at least matched that and maybe exceeded it here. Pretty easily the match of the night for me. This felt like 2015/16 Roddy when I counted him among the best 2-3 wrestlers on earth, a match influenced by his input and with all the reigns taken off of him. Two freak athletes going out and doing freak athlete stuff, but also holding everything together and really pacing things out nicely. Its well executed but still gritty and hard hitting. This is a low end MOTY candidate for me, but one that I definitely think is worthy of consideration. ****1/2 (for now)

I agree that Marvez could thrive there, especially if he is sort of the stat guy once they start implementing that more. If he has everything he needs in front of him and throws in the stats for Excalibur and JR to riff off of and implement into the narrative they are working on I think he could be a great addition.

I don't want this to come off as an "all hail AEW" post, but hearing Moxley speak candidly about his own character, creative process, and a lot of the finer details of where he thinks the E went wrong only raise my optimism about AEW, assuming they are indeed giving people more creative freedom. As a lot of people have sort of hinted here it is tough to tell what was his idea when he was there, what did he like, what was he just trying to pull off and so on because he kept his head down in the public and he did his work. The interview was not surprising really, but it made pretty clear to me that Moxley - even more so than when he entered the WWE - has a very sharp wrestling mind. When it comes to wrestling people with wrestling minds no one has more firepower than the WWE (look at that roster), but AEW is stockpiling and their willingness to use those minds is the really exciting thing to me. Again, this is only because I was cautiously optimistic (with an emphasis on the cautiously) before last weekend and I have really seen nothing but good signs coming from this company so far and getting him signed for multiple years is looking like an even better move to me.

I'll say this for Renee on commentary, she can often shut down and clown on Graves when he is doing his best attitude era Lawler impressions. I wish she would do it more, but still.

I would maybe agree with that. Marvez certainly wasn't cringy or distracting. I just think his position on the team wasn't well defined yet. They have three guys that clearly have roles, but they just sort of bump up against one another and the chemistry is still in process. Marvez - because of his relative lack of experience in wrestling most likely - just doesn't seem to have his footing.

Just started this a few minutes ago. Moxley comes in hot. He WANTS to dish hard from the get go. Its pretty entertaining stuff.

Updated based on GME project (re)watches and some directly following the project.

Finally got time to finish this yesterday. I was interested in AEW before DOE, as everyone was, but I wasn't really tripping over myself for the product and I definitely had measured expectations. I was honestly blown away by the show. It exceeded every expectation I had. Of course the whole thing was far from "perfect", but in terms of hitting on the things I want in my wrestling, creating a buzz, and providing variety, they knocked it out of the park. The thing that impressed me most here was that AEW provided a show that - I think, at least - could appeal to a mass audience without being so dumbed down and contrived. That is obviously one of the major complaints waged against the WWE, so it is good to see them hit that balance, even if for one show. The second thing I liked about this is how much it gave us to look forward to without really skimming from this show. If they can keep doing that they will be just fine. It is nice to see them really establishing tag team wrestling up and down the card. Given that is one of their missions I think they established the ethos of that division really well at this point. You have 5-7 teams already on the map and of course options waiting in the wings. Womens wrestling - and as El-P pointed out, womens refffing got some well deserved respect here. I preferred the 6 woman tag to the fatal 4 way by some margin, but once again more to look forward to in terms of match ups and dynamics. You can already see tiers forming with certain wrestlers who feel like they could be moved into that next tier up pretty easily. I think they pretty clearly have 5 guys in the title picture (Jericho, Page, Rhodes, Omega, Moxley) and at a few guys who could be there in pretty short order or in a pinch. It wouldn't be terribly surprising or jarring to see Penta, Fenix, or MJF slip into that picture based on DOE. Dustin and Cody absolutely stole the show for me, tremendous match. I really wanna go back and revisit it, because that was an absolute banger. The announce team was the only thing that I was sort of eh on, not bad, but rarely added much to the match for me. I love Excalibur. He was pretty clearly nervous though and I think his best work for AEW is in front of him. JR had his working boots on, but he was still somewhat hit or miss to me. Marvez seems to still be finding his role. All of this is completely fine because no one should expect them to be a well oiled machine first night out, but if there was one thing I would really like to see improve moving forward it is the commentary.

This is a fucking banger, isn't it? I didn't know this thing even existed until I was organizing the boards and ran across this nomination. I would concur that this is a dream match I didn't know I wanted in my life until I got it. Takada is my favorite shoot style worker and part of the reason is that he is really good at adapting to other style. This is a shining example of that. This is clearly a shoot match, but at the same time you get some tinges of WWF title match at times. On the other hand I love and hate Backlund. He is so entertaining and I really love his style of athleticism, but at the same time he has some terrible tendencies (mostly with regard to his selling) that can take me out of his matches. All of that is out the door here. This match brings out the best in Backlund without really allowing space for his worst instincts. Great mix of striking and grappling. Backlund's style of wrestling brings something sort of fresh here and his walloping strikes play big when he reverts to them. He is also so physically gifted that he can hold his own and add some unique flavor to this. When Takada went for that third knee off the rope break part way through the match only to have Backlund side step it and pick him up for the back body drop I popped my tits off. The exchange of rope breaks knock downs was great. I actually liked the finish. I thought Backlund sort of flailing to grab takada's leg was strange at the end during head kicks till I saw takada had busted his nose good. Upon reflection this is pretty close to full marks for me. Just fantastic stuff.

I agree on Europe completely. I did a not quite deep dive, but a very medium dive into the classic British style early in the project. I took a lot of recommendations for high end stuff and did a little exploring to get a feel for the psychology, tropes, etc. I really enjoy it. I wound up with 3 Joint Promotions matches on my list and probably 2 more on the bubble, but there is still a lot to explore for me. I can imagine getting really into that at some point down the road. I only have one French catch match because its the only one I have seen. I actually have like 5-6 others DLed and one of my goals for the next submission is to dig into what we have on that, get a better feel for the style, and see what else is out there.

I can get behind that. I wound up with two on my list, but admittedly both were pretty low. One of them is likely going to move up the list a bit for next time, but the other might fall off. Something from Vader/Sting or Vader/Takada really should make it though.

Yeah, the project can't help but improve with more imput, but I can't imagine shoot or joshi (esp Kandori) doing too much better as we expand and I love both (esp Kandori). I could be wrong. I am a little surprised Toyota didn't have more matches, but I am not surprised big match John had more. I had the same amount of Toyota and Cena matches on my list and I know I am low on at least 2-3 relatively beloved Cena matches.

I can't argue with that at all. I would say deathmatch wrestling is probably the last broad (genre level) blindspot I have in my watching and its completely on me. I don't dislike deathmatches really, but they don't resonate with me. At the same time, I have never really made a concentrated effort to dig in and see what is out there that I may like. I would love some people to get it in and advocate for some good deathmatch wrestling to help people like me navigate those waters.

Yes, many thanks to all who participated and all who helped with the logistics. This was a ton of fun. Looking forward to keeping it going. Wrestling is awesome.

I there are a few major reasons. 1) Looking at wrestling on the match level doesn't appeal to a lot of people and didn't even at the beginning of the project (which is why many people here didn't really go over there). 2) It can be a wearing project. Differentiating and parsing out the distinction between two great matches can be exhausting and I think some people lost interest as we went (as discussed above). 3) A lot of the folks (myself included) wound up taking massive chunks of time away from the project for various reasons. This made it hard to keep everything organized and to get a lot of momentum on the project. 4) Lots of people got busy around mania and forgot. There were quite a few people who have said they meant to or wanted to submit and didn't because they got busy or it slipped their mind or whatever. Regardless, I hope we can increase participation in the future. I like this as an ongoing thing, though I will likely take breaks here and there.

While I admit I am feeling a little burn out the project (specifically the closing two months or so) and logistics of calculating ballots, this rollout is really getting me pumped to watch and rewatch more wrestling. I am sure one day I will tire of rewatching great matches or my interests and fandom will shift, but not right now.

I just posted 81-100: http://gweproject.freeforums.net/thread/1167/100-greatest-matches-2019-results There is also an honorable mentions list of every match receiving votes in a separate thread.

I am so glad I re-watched #100 in the last 2 months of the project. It jumped up my list in a big way and snuck into the top 100 as a result.

Rollout begins tomorrow. I think we had a great first go at this. We wound up with 14 ballots and 498 total matches voted for. All matches will be part of the rollout. Thanks to everyone who participated, to grimmas for helping us get things going, Elliot for working hard to keep things moving along, and a HUGE thanks to bossrock and microstatistics for putting in a ton of work sorting the results. Hopefully we can get the board a little more organized this summer and keep this project going.

I wasn't a huge fan of their chemistry in WXW, but I thought this was really good, far exceeding my expectations actually. I liked the way Walter established himself way more here than even in some of his squashes, but still without just gobbling up Dunne. I really liked Dunne going to joint manipulation, but when a limb was isolated or to isolate a limb. It was like he was using it because he couldn't out power Walter. It was also his downfall as he couldn't wear the big man down by bending his fingers and when push came to shove Walter still had all the muscles he needed to finish Dunne off. The story was good and the kickouts felt appropriate for this being the end to Dunne's epic run. Its a changing of the guard moment and I don't think it got quite the fanfare it deserved, but it still felt pretty important to me. The story was wondefully told and I thought was nuanced. Maybe I was reading into it, but who cares; its what I got out of it. I thought the pace was excellent and they somehow maintained this balance of never really feeling like Walter didn't have a leg up, while also making it competitive and providing hope that Dunne might somehow - once again - pull it off. ****1/4

I thought this was really solid, but nothing lights out. NXT always seems to start with the tag titles. I get it. Its high energy and starts the show off right, but sometimes it feels redundant. This was really well exicuted, did its job, and really played to everyone's strengths well. ***1/2

Absolutely wonderful match. If this had been the best or my favorite match on the card it could have been a lights out show. As it turned out it was my third favorite. It was still a banger. Really solid, old school build. The animosity and agresion builds as they go. The counters and submissions were slick. everything is put it with some fucking malice. This is just great wrestling. ****1/4 (high end 4.25 at that)