The Russian Daydream

You are right, it is striking, and probably not quite right. I personally didn't help by not voting for any women. I decided early in the process that I couldn't because I'm just not familiar enough with the style. I have tried watching Joshi several times, and although I've been impressed by the work, I've always found watching women beating each other in that manner a bit unsettling. For that reason I've just never stuck with it. I wonder how many people feel the same way as me, that they recognised that some women 'should' be on their list just didn't feel they had enough knowledge of the genre to rate them fairly.

I wish I had time to follow this thread more closely! I log on in the evening and there's just so much to read! It's kind of cool seeing Angle and Jack Brisco coming up next to each other as both built their careers off the back of being notability successful amateurs. I'm sure Angle himself sees himself as a modern day Brisco and he certainly could have been if he'd slowed down and been a bit smarter. I had both on my list. I think Angle deserves to be there, despite what many vocal posters here say. His 'great' matches don't really hold up to much scrutiny these days but he had a lot of memorable performances that greatly stood out at the time. I have to say, from 2000-2006 I found him tremendous fun. I guess he's a bit like a band that came on the radio when you were young and you thought they were so cool, but now look back and just don't really get it any more. What I would also say is that he deserves some credit for being one of the guys who helped bring 'wrestling' as opposed to 'walk about brawling' back to the main event WWF scene. I've maybe soured on him over the years but I can't ignore his influence or forget how much he was appreciated at the time. Brisco I have on my list despite only having seen a relatively small sample of his work. I've just found him to be so good in that sample that he simply must belong here.

Well, since I last checked in, I've dropped Onita, Tanahashi, Undertaker and Piper. I'm surprised that Piper isn't higher. Although he doesn't have a huge catalogue of great matches, he has a career full of great moments. He's easily one of the most memorable wrestlers ever who rarely failed to be entertaining. I'm glad Onita made the top 100. Most of his case seems to be based on the FMW stuff, and undoubtably he was great there. Few wrestlers had such a huge flare for the dramatic as Onita. He was so good at building anticipation and tension. What a mesmerising worker he was during this period. I think, however, he does not get enough credit for his earlier career. Although people talk about the Memphis concession stand brawl, I don't hear much about his All Japan junior heavyweight work. Although he wasn't as smart a worker as he would become, his work felt so frantic and dynamic which mad him really good fun to watch. I had him at 62 and feel I could justify having him higher. As for the Undertaker, it's my view that he deserves credit for his character work in the first section of his run and for how he has reinvented himself repeatedly to remain over for such a long time. Yes, he has had a lot of terrible matches, but he's had a lot of surprisingly good ones too. He deserves a spot here.

I remember reading years ago someone (I think it might have been Fin Martin in Powerslam) writing that Dusty could make you think you were watching a good match when actually you weren't. At the time I accepted it but over time, I've thought about it and came to the realise it's not a way of looking at wrestling that I subscribe to. Surely if you watch a match and think it's a good match then it is one. Technically, Dusty may not have been a great 'wrestler' but he was a tremendous 'worker' as I would define the terms. He definitely deserves a position on the list. Kerry Von Erich and The Destroyer both dropped from my list today too. I'm glad they both scraped into the top 100.

I did vote for Benoit. I looked at the evidence based purely on his wrestling and took none of what happened at the end into account. I am still a little unsure if that was the right thing to do, but here is how I justified it. I tried to imagine he was an architect. He built some impressive buildings using very innovative techniques that were critically acclaimed at the time they were built. Then he murdered his wife and son and killed himself. But the buildings still stand. Did what he did affect how worthy of acclaim his work was? I felt not. Of course this argument fails to address the theory that it was his career that ultimately caused the damage to his brain which may have contributed to his state of mind. I don't have an answer to that.

I think a huge match like that in a huge venue like Tokyo Dome needed something huge like that exchange for it to fit the occasion.

I didn't vote for him, but I had him on my own list at 106. Oddly then, I am a bit surprised he didn't make the final hundred. I only got into watching Puerto Rico quite recently but the more I have watched, the more I have grown to appreciate it. I think, if I was to re-do my list in a years time, I could easily see me having Colon (and a couple of others) a good way up my list.

When the reveals were happening, it felt like my guys were dropping like flies, so now, counting them I'm surprised to find I've 'only' lost 31 and that 69 made it to the final 100.

Larry was my 99, so I can't argue much with him placing 109. It's probably a pretty fair placement.

Did he? I remember being surprised listening to the podcast but maybe it was Chad that lef him off in that case.

I mainly took the ones that I could see myself calling "The greatest wrestlers ever" and organizing them as such. I mean there might have been 20 more that would have been possible on my list at most, and I attribute that to not seeing as much as some of you others. So in other words, a lot of my favorites are on that list and my way of organizing them was through the simple question....How much do I enjoy them and how much do I enjoy Wrester X in comparison? I think the favourites vs perceived greatness question is difficult to answer. I wasn't going to submit a list originally because I could not see me be able to rank wrestlers from different eras with different styles in any sort of objective way. Then I read about Parv's BIGLAV scheme and saw it as a way I could rank wrestlers in a way I felt was fair, honest and objective. I modified it a bit, adding an extra I (influence in business and other wrestlers) and an S (sustained consistency) to give BIIGLAVS. I also added a weighting to the G and A columns because I felt great matches are the most important criteria and the A column covered so much I felt it needed more influence on the final result. When I plugged it all in, I ended up with a list that I liked parts of and disliked other parts. I think I was objective to some degree as some of my favourites just didn't make it because I couldn't justify scoring them any higher. I wish I'd been able to rank Luger, Pillman, Brody, Magnum, Butch Reed and a good few others for example. In the other side of things, every score, for every category is somewhat subjective and does throw up anomalies based on what I like. A prime example of this is The Great Muta. I ended up ranking him really quite highly, he came out with big scores for base ability, intangibles, influence and ability to work different styles and places. He also got good scores in all other columns except for sustained consistency for which I gave him 2/10. Now, he ended up high on my list, but Parv, who used similar criteria didn't rank him at all. I also gather from the discussion that Muta just isn't rated highly in these parts. I've always loved Muta since I first saw him aged 7, so have I been blind to his failings and ranked him highly through favouritism? Possibly. I did (and still do) believe in the scores that I gave him though. So, to answer the question, I thought I'd submitted a ballot of my opinion of the 100 greatest wrestlers. Actually, there might have been a bit of favouritism involved.

Aw Dory! Of all my guys that have gone, I feel much sadder about Dory than the rest. I really didn't know I cared! I'll admit having only seen a couple of matches from his NWA title run and finding it all a bit dull. He does get some credit in my matrix for actually getting to be a long-term NWA champion. I have seen a fair bit of his AJPW run tagging with Terry however and have grown to really appreciate him in that role. To me, he feels like the Ernie Wise straight man to Terry's Eric Morcambe. He was a necessary and, at times, undervalued part of the equation. I also give him a ton of credit for having perhaps RVD's most coherent match ever, when almost everyone expected a messy clash of styles at Terry's retirement show in 97. I guess, also, there's just a certain charm about Dory that I like, and I do think he's one of the hundred greatest wrestlers ever. At least he nearly made it.

There was a programme on a few years back called James May's 21st Century or something and in one of the films, he looked at artificial intelligence. One example featured was how a computer had been programmed with Beethoven's style of composition and then commanded to write a piece of music. When the computer's composition was played back, it did sound like a piece of classical piano music. When played back-to-back with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, though, it became apparent that although the computerised piece had all the hallmarks of Beethoven's work, it definitely lacked the 'feel' of the true classic. JVonK's original question here reminded me of that film because, for me, many of the 'self-conscious epics' of the last decade, partularly the Undertaker vs HHH and Michaels matches, have felt like someone has programmed the key features of what a huge, wrestling classic should contain into a computer and asked it to design a match. The big AJPW epic encounters of the 90s however have a much deeper, more human 'feeling' about them. It's something that is impossible to exactly put your finger on, or put into words what the real difference is, because it's beyond words. It is just something that is just there.

Good grief! I have a day away with family and tons of my ballot falls! Since I last logged in I've lost Ivan Kolloff, Scott Hall, Scott Steiner, Davey Boy, Tracy Smothers, Sabu, Kikuchi, Brody, Tommy Rich, Perro Aguayo, Marty Jones, Takada, Takayama and Pat Patterson. As Grimmas said, sad times indeed. I also had Luger, Saito, Johnny Saint, Inoki, Butch Reed and Necro Butcher in between 100 and 125. With so many great names haven gone already, im beginning to wonder who's left to make up the top 100!

That pretty much covers it.

You are no Dean, Scarlet-Left or Mando>Eddie for sure! I'm not too far off them, already at 25 names down. The way this has gone I'm expecting either only a couple more to drop between 200 and 100 or more than twenty before hitting the top 100.Just checked my list and I've lost ten going into the top 200 (Abdullah, Duggan, Stan Lane, Jeff Jarrett, The Sheik, Rick Steiner, Jimmy Snuka, Dave Taylor, Mark Rocco and Masa Chono). Of them, looking back I wish I'd given Chono's spot to Lex Luger. The others I can stand by.

I had Rogers at 123. He feels like one of those guys that might have just missed a lot of ballots.

Luger compared to HHH will be interesting. I just checked my master list and I'm disappointed in myself realise I had Luger at 103. I regret not fixing things so he could make it.

Every one of these guys made my list.

And this was my primary reason for dropping out of the project, that some of us 'weren't deemed worth enough' to contribute in this process. Nice to see Cortez do well(ish); he would've been third on my WOS guys. That was a concern of mine too. I only joined here last September and did worry that I hadn't 'proven' myself worthy of submitting a ballot which was taken seriously. In the end, after reading Stephen's thread and Parv's BIGLAV system provided me with a basis to form my rankings, I did submit a list. Now that the results are coming out, I'm really glad I did. I've really enjoyed seeing the list unfold and reading people's justifications of their picks. Largely, the diversity of people's opinions have been celebrated too. We can see also, that one or two eccentric high rankings do not affect the big picture unduely. By having so many ballots returned, I think, will make the top 100 a really robust list.

I think he is, within the confines of the type of wrestling that he represents. For me, enough to earn him a spot in the top 100. I'm not trying to argue he should be anywhere near number 1 by the way!

Abdullah my number 100 gone now. I quite wanted him to rank higher, but just couldn't do it.

I felt there was a distinction to be made between greatest wrestler and favourite wrestler. If we were doing a poll of 'Greatest Painter Ever', I would have to rank Turner on my list, even though I would never hang one of his pictures in my house - they seem so dreary to me. He was obviously a skilful and very influential artist though. To me, feeling that HHH should rank on our list is a bit like that.

Good grief! I wish I'd had the time to take part in this debate. I had Kobashi at 5 and Hart at 10 on my ballot so I obviously rate them both extremely highly. I think there are areas in which both could be termed greater but in the end Kobashi has it for me. In terms of great matches, Kobashi obviously takes it, but he spent his career in an environment where there was an emphasis on having a particular type of great match, whereas Bret spent his prime in the WWF, where the emphasis is not so much on having 'great' matches. Kobashi was also more over and a bigger draw for longer than Hart, but then Hart's prime came at a time and place when very little was over and drew. As for their work in ring, I thought they were both tremendous at selling, in different ways. Offence-wise, Kobashi had a wider range of interesting offence, but Hart's execution of the things he did do was pretty much perfect every single time. For me both are great but Kobashi is just a touch greater. I could easily accept the opposite opinion.

I feel I should come clean and admit to having HHH on my ballot. I don't think he's the greatest ever, nor do I even particularly enjoy him must of the time, but I do think if I am to objective, he should be represented here. He represents a form of wrestling I'm not very high on, but he has been very successful and influential within that arena for nearly two decades. Matches such as his Wrestlemania encounters with The Undertaker for example may not be my cup of tea but were accepted as great by a great many WWE fans. In that sense he was playing to please his audience in the same way Misawa and Kobashi were playing to please their audience in All Japan. Just because we are not he audience he is playing to please does not necessarily mean he's not good (or rather hasn't been good, because he's been truly rotten of late) at what he does. In that sense I felt it would not be right for me to write him off entirely, so his ranking on my list was grudging but what I felt was fair.