Kadaveri

Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H at WM30 was structured like any other epic Triple H match at Wrestlemania. We all know who is calling the shots for the match layout here. If you want to judge Bryan's performance here, it shouldn't be "did they have the correct type of match?", something he almost certainly had no say in, but rather "did he have a good version of the Triple H at Wrestlemania match?"

So Tenryu has 19 #1 votes, Austin has 12, Flair has 25 and Kobashi 22. I kept count and noticed we've only got 2 wrestlers left to reveal but there are still 180 #1 votes hanging around. Is that right? Well I asked Grimmas, and he revealed that my count was correct, the final 2 wrestlers have got 89 and 91 #1 votes respectively. Whichever order they come in, I think the real result is Danielson and Funk collectively won this in a landslide.

Liger might have done better if sharing 2 seconds of New Japan footage on social media didn't get your account nuked.

Harley Saito matches worth checking out: 1. Harley Saito vs. Shinobu Kandori - JWP 7/19/90 2. Dynamite Kansai & Harley Saito vs. Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori - JWP 10/10/90 3. Devil Masami vs. Harley Saito - JWP 1/8/91 4. Harley Saito & Shinobu Kandori vs. Mayumi Ozaki & Rumi Kazama - JWP 1/13/91 5. Dynamite Kansai vs. Harley Saito - JWP 11/2/91 6. Eagle Sawai & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Harley Saito & Shinobu Kandori - JWP 4/26/91 7. Harley Saito vs. Rumi Kazama - JWP 5/12/91 8. Dynamite Kansai & Harley Saito vs. Itsuki Yamazaki & Rumi Kazama - JWP 6/30/91 9. Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Harley Saito & Shinobu Kandori - JWP 8/4/91 10. Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Harley Saito & Itsuki Yamazaki - JWP 8/8/91 11. Akira Hokuto, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs. Eagle Sawai, Harley Saito & Miki Handa - AJW 1/24/93 12. Etsuko Mita & Minami Suzuka vs. Harley Saito & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 2/13/93 13. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano vs. Eagle Sawai & Harley Saito - AJW 4/2/93 14. Etsuko Mita vs. Harley Saito - AJW 5/3/93 15. Harley Saito vs. Takako Inoue - AJW 5/8/93 16. Akira Hokuto vs. Harley Saito - AJW 8/5/93 17. Carol Midori & Harley Saito vs. Eagle Sawai & Miki Handa - LLPW 9/9/93 18. Harley Saito & Miki Handa vs. Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada - AJW 9/29/93 19. Harley Saito & Miki Handa vs. Mizuki Endo & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 10/25/93 20. Harley Saito & Rumi Kazama vs. Michiko Nagashima & Yasha Kurenai - LLPW 6/9/94 21. Harley Saito vs. Rumi Kazama - LLPW 10/9/94 22. Eagle Sawai vs. Harley Saito - LLPW 1/15/95 23. Harley Saito & Noriyo Tateno vs. Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 2/10/95 24. Carol Midori, Mikiko Futagami & Yasha Kurenai vs. Harley Saito, Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 1/21/96 25. Eagle Sawai, Lioness Asuka, Michiko Nagashima & Sayuri Okino vs. Harley Saito, Noriyo Tateno, Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 2/11/97 26. Cutie Suzuki, Dynamite Kansai & Harley Saito vs. Mayumi Ozaki, Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 12/5/97 27. Harley Saito, Noriyo Tateno, Rumi Kazama & Yasha Kurenai vs. Kumiko Maekawa, Manami Toyota, Momoe Nakanishi & Takako Inoue - AJW 3/10/99

I also think that because his best matches with the usual suspects are so tip-top great, Misawa gets a bit of pass for having quite a lot of disappointing matches with really great wrestlers. 3 of the guys who've made the Top 10 have had very dull matches with Misawa when you would have expected much better, to say the least.

Well there is the obvious point that Aja mastered a style that enabled her to still be putting out good matches in 2026.

Refusing to stop booting his opponent's tag partner off the apron is deplorable behaviour.

Candy matches I thought were really good: 1. Candy Okutsu, Cutie Suzuki & Dynamite Kansai vs. Devil Masami, Mayumi Ozaki & Plum Mariko - JWP 5/30/93 2. Candy Okutsu & Devil Masami vs. Kaoru Ito & Suzuka Minami - JWP 7/31/93 3. Candy Okutsu & Hikari Fukuoka vs. Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda - AJW 6/3/94 4. Candy Okutsu & Devil Masami vs. Cutie Suzuki & Takako Inoue - AJW 8/24/94 5. Candy Okutsu & Devil Masami vs. Cutie Suzuki & Hikari Fukuoka - JWP 3/17/95 6. Candy Okutsu, Cutie Suzuki, Mayumi Ozaki & Sumio Toyama vs. Devil Masami, Dynamite Kansai, Hikari Fukuoka & Hiromi Yagi (1 count rules) - JWP 3/21/95 7. Candy Okutsu, Devil Masami & Hikari Fukuoka vs. Cutie Suzuki, Hiromi Yagi & Mayumi Ozaki - JWP 10/31/95 8. Candy Okutsu, Devil Masami, Hikari Fukuoka & Ran Yu-Yu vs. Cutie Suzuki, Dynamite Kansai, Kana Mizaki & Plum Mariko - JWP 3/9/97 9. Candy Okutsu & Dynamite Kansai vs. Devil Masami & Jaguar Yokota - JWP 6/15/97 10. Candy Okutsu vs. Yumi Fukawa - Arsion 2/18/98 11. Candy Okutsu vs. Mariko Yoshida - Arsion 12/8/98 - Best Candy performance 12. Ai Fujita & Candy Okutsu vs. Ayako Hamada & Mika Akino - Arsion 4/14/99

I was reading an old Observer looking for something else, and noticed this paragraph where Dave Meltzer says that the 1998 WCW Georgia Dome show was set to sell out before the Goldberg vs. Hogan match was announced, so it wasn't really that which was the draw. He doesn't go into any more detail though. Has this been explored in more detail anywhere else? Was WCW just so hot then it didn't really matter who was in the main event? Excerpt below.

If you're up for killing two birds with one stone, here you go: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x92c02c

Ozaki does have some high end brawls post-prime, as recently as the Mio Momono matches in 2023-24 anyway. But yes those rare high points are surrounded by a lot of crap.

If folks in 2036 collectively decide that the previous generations were wrong to leave an 80s/90s wrestler off the Top 100 then they absolutely should be able to do that. In fact, I'd be a little disappointed if that didn't happen with at least 1 wrestler. Re-evaluations and challenging pre-existing narratives are a big part of GWE. Also it's not just about previous generations getting it wrong, what if a load of new footage surfaces that changes perceptions of a wrestler? For example, Carlos Colon has missed the Top 100 every time, but we're missing most of the most of the first 15 years of his career. It's not beyond the realms of possibilty that between now and 2036 a bunch of 70s Carlos Colon matches get found, he looks amazing, and people go "we need to vote for him this time".

So on the nominations process: I think part of the disagreement over this stems from a difference in opinion over what the main purpose of GWE should be, and how important the final list actually is. The two extreme ends of the spectrum are: 1. The purpose of GWE is to poll harcore wrestling fans on who they think the greatest wrestlers ever are. It's basically a survey done every 10 years. So the emphasis should be attaining as large and broad a base of voters as possible voting for whoever they want, so long as they are serious wrestling fans in order to create a list which represents the views of wrestling fandom at that moment. 2. The purpose of GWE is to facilitate a process where serious fans can explore, discuss and debate the merits of pro-wrestlers, and in the process improve our collective understanding of this medium. The final list isn't really that important. It's really about the engagement and elevated discourse that it generates, so having barriers to participation is a positive because it imposes a minimum level of engagement on everyone. I'm not saying those two philosophies necessarily represent anyone's opinion, more that we all fit somewhere in the spectrum in between. Wherever you decide to balance things, there are going to be upsides and downsides to it. Now for me, I do think there should be a nominations process. That's not to say that I think we should keep things the same next time, there were certainly some flaws that we should talk about now so whoever's running the 2036 itteration (inshallah!) can hopefully make wiser decisions (though who knows what the internet will look like by then). I think the biggest mistakes this time round were more down to the lack of clear communication of how to participate, what the rules are etc... It wasn't really until the last few months that we actually got a team (or 'committee' as it was later called) to actually organise things, till then everything was just being done by Grimmas by himself, which in practice resulted in a lot of stuff just not being done because he's just one guy with a job and family and it was never feasible that he'd effectively run a project like this by himself. Not meant as a personal criticism of anyone, just an analysis of what happened imo. I think the next generation should strongly consider having a committee sorted out a year in advance, make decisions on how it's going to be run and delegate tasks to each other and make sure they don't end up in a situation where everything just grinds to a halt if one person becomes inactive. There is also the problem of the rules we made being inconsistently enforced, but to me that's far more a problem stemming from organisational failures than the system itself. The rules really were not complex or difficult to enforce. We just did a sloppy job. The Greatest Match Ever Project has similar rules and has managed fine. The positives of having a nominations process are: 1. It's an effective way of facilitating people writing about the wrestlers. Sure, it didn't happen in every thread, but we still have hundreds of wrestlers on this forum with threads with multiple pages of posts. They're a great resource for anyone wanting to find out more about a wrestler's GWE case and wants something a bit more thoughtful than just looking at their CageMatch entry. If someone looking at the lists in 2030 or something is perplexed as to why a wrestler was voted the 83rd greatest ever, they have a very easy place to go read to find out why. I just don't think that resource would have been produced if we didn't enforce nominations. 2. Kinda related to point 1, it also just creates a list of wrestlers for people to check out. I've heard so many people talk about going through the List of Nominees for people to watch, see if they've forgotten anyone etc... 3. It also changes the ethos of the process into something that encourages long-term participation from individual fans beyond just turning up at the end of the 10 years and submitting a ballot. When you write up a nomination, or comment on someone else's nomination, you're honing your skills in thinking about and writing about wrestling. This might sound a bit pretentious but I think that also means you're becoming a better wrestling fan. I think helping to facilitate people doing this is a much more virtuous goal than making it as easy as possible for everyone to submit a ballot voting for whoever they want. 4. It puts up a modest barrier of entry. People who insist on voting for wrestlers who have not been nominated and wanting it counted just won't be able to participate. I think that's puerile behaviour. Either you haven't bothered to engage with the project in a meaningful way, or you've found out about it at the last minute yet are demanding that people who've been working on something for years change how it works just because you, a Johnny Come Lately, think you're so important. I'd rather such people just go away than try and cater to them. I think those 4 points outweigh the negatives that we have at the moment, basically that some votes ended up not being counted. But even that negative can be spun into an opportunity by telling people hey, here's a list of wrestlers who got votes but haven't been nominated. If you think they should be nominated, well, why don't you do it yourself! Then they will be nominated for next time. And if nobody cares enough to write a nomination for them then, well, to me that just sounds like their votes not being counted is an extremely minor detail indeed.

I just want to reply to this point specifically. I'm very frustrated at how neglected this forum has become lately, but I'm not an admin so there's not a whole lot I can do about it. It really shouldn't be so onerous to just sign up to an internet forum and start posting. I don't know the admins personally but it just feels like they've moved on from this place, and that's fair enough, but if the site isn't going to just slowly die there should be some kind of handover. This issue however is totally separate to the nomination process question, so I'll talk about that in my next post.

I think the highest ranked first timer will be Gunther. If not, possibly MJF.