andrew79

Pretty much the same as yours, except no Dump, no Kudo, and Kyoko's a definite.

I put Casas, Dandy, Santo, and Satanico in my top 100 on the basis that I was going to invest the time into watching lucha and finally get it. After downloading and watching the DVDVR top 20 lucha matches for the 80s and 90s, I've decided to remove them. I can appreciate their skills but I can't get into the matches at all.

For PWG and Evolve: Watchwrestling.to

Yeah, go for it. Looking forward to seeing your list.

There are recommendations in this thread. And a match that's not in that thread, but you might appreciate, is Hash vs Tenryu from 8/1/98 - they just beat the hell out of each other. You can watch it here.

Based on your list, you should watch some Hashimoto. Try the 95 G1 Climax final with him versus Mutoh. I think it's a better match than the 91 final which made your list.

Maybe for that reason New Japan didn't want them to.

No. He won it from Honaga on 2/8/92 and dropped it to El Samurai on 6/26/92.

Mayumi Ozaki?

Keep in mind, when I did this I was aiming more for variety than absolute best, but you'll get a good sense of the man:

Fantastic reviews and summary, thanks for putting the time and effort in, Elliot. Looking forward to your take on his RINGS career.

Try Shooters by Jonathan Snowden. As the title says, it focuses on the shooters in wrestling, but it's a good read on the early US wrestling scene and does cover the likes of Gotch and Hackenschmidt.

This is from memory so the details might not be perfect: Someone (Ron? Roger?) Taylor ran a boxing and wrestling booth at the Goose Fair in Nottingham until the early 2000s. The wrestling was an obvious, theatrical work. It wasn't designed to fool anyone into thinking they were watching the real thing. Allegedly some of the workers were shooters and would take on challenge matches, though when I tried to challenge I was told they didn't do it anymore. But the boxing was a shoot. It was either locals paying to fight each other or someone taking on a carny fighter for a cash prize. Their fighters were experienced, hard men, not skilled boxers, but they hit fast and hard, could take a lot of punishment and weren't above ignoring any agreed rules. I was accepted to box - it turned out that a gypsy brawler is no match for a professionally trained fighter. I suppose that might have been why they didn't want me to face the wrestler.

I think this is 12/21/96 (and if so, Ditch is hosting it).

There's discussion of him here. I only know him by his, largely negative, reputation so was never interested in seeking his work out. I might watch some of your recommendations, thanks for the list.

It's at 1:56.

Negro Casas vs. Jushin Liger (NJPW, 5/3/10) A disappointment given this was on PPV and for Casas’s CMLL World Middleweight Title. It’s by the numbers stuff, though we do get two dives from Casas. And just when it starts to get exciting it’s over. Liger takes Casas’s title with a Thesz press after about ten minutes. You could do worse, but you could do a lot, lot better. ***

I've got my list of 100 wrestlers. Then to make it easy to order them, I put them in groups of ten to start with. So far I'm happy with my top 20, but I'm going to need to do some tape watching to nail down the rest. I'm using the bottom 10 for guilty pleasures such as Sabu and Masato Tanaka.

I'm using where they mainly worked rather than where they were from. And I've got 31 from USA, 65 from Japan, and 4 from Mexico.

Thanks for the explanation.

Not following you...

Thanks for the catch. I've replaced one with Jericho.

This is the first draft of my top 100 in alphabetical order (by first name): AJ Styles Aja Kong Akira Hokuto Akira Maeda Akira Taue Alexander Otsuka Andre The Giant Arn Anderson Barry Windham Big Van Vader Billy Robinson Bret Hart Bryan Danielson Bull Nakano Chigusa Nagayo Chris Benoit Chris Hero Chris Jericho CIMA Curt Hennig Daisuke Ikeda Daisuke Sekimoto Devil Masami Dick Togo Dragon Kid Dynamite Kansai Dynamite Kid Eddie Guerrero El Dandy El Generico El Hijo del Santo El Samurai El Satanico Genichiro Tenryu Giant Baba Gran Hamada Harley Race Hiroshi Hase Hiroshi Tanahashi Jaguar Yokota Jerry Blackwell Jerry Lawler Jumbo Tsuruta Jun Akiyama Jushin Liger Kazuo Yamazaki Kent Kobashi KENTA Kerry Von Erich Kiyoshi Tamura Koji Kanemoto Kota Ibushi Kuniaki Kobayashi Manami Toyota Masa Fuchi Masaaki Mochizuki Masato Tanaka Mayumi Ozaki Meiko Satomura Men’s Teioh Mick Foley Minoru Suzuki Mitsuharu Misawa Mr. Gannosuke Naoki Sano Naomichi Marufuji Negro Casas Nick Bockwinkel Nobuhiko Takada Rey Mysterio Jr. Ric Flair Rick Martel Ricky Steamboat Riki Choshu Sabu Sean Waltman Shawn Michaels Shingo Takagi Shinjiro Ohtani Shinsuke Nakamura Shinya Hashimoto Stan Hansen Steve Williams Susumu Yokosuka Tatsumi Fujinami Ted Dibiase Terry Funk The Destroyer The Great Sasuke The Undertaker Tiger Mask Tomoaki Honma Toshiaki Kawada Tsuyoshi Kikuchi Volk Han Yoshiaki Fujiwara Yoshiaki Yatsu Yoshihiro Tajiri Yoshihiro Takayama Yuki Ishikawa

From the rules thread: Greatest Wrestler Ever's criteria is left vague for a reason. What does GWE mean to you? The only thing we note is that you are voting based on footage, not on stories and rep. And: