Reel

Sure. Really what I was saying is that a guy moving from not really being a factor to a top 100 guy because he had good matches with Templario is not the same as having good matches with, I dunno, Niebla Roja.

I've probably seen less than 100 current-day matches, total, over the last 3 years, but it strikes me that this list of Mistico's best matches is exclusively against a list of guys who were the best guys in the promotion when I quit watching.

Shinya Aoki’s first year, before he got too DDT and too ‘just another guy’ stands out to me. He was sort of purpose-built, especially his personality as a fighter, to be a pro wrestler in a way, and in the beginning when he was still mostly an MMA guy, he was like my idealized version of a wrestler.

I think my ballot should be good, but there are people, who I could see getting votes, like Brad Armstrong or Ray Gonzalez, who haven’t had a comment since 2016, and was curious if those votes would count. We’ve already seen proposed ballots with people who aren’t nominated and may not meet the footage requirement.

Are we still doing the 'You can't vote for them if no one has commented on their thread since 2020' or have we handwaved that rule?

A lot depends on the demographics of the voters come 2026, but I'd imagine a lot of the post-2016 NJPW guys are gonna take a big jump, and probably at the cost of a lot of the 80s and less mainstream 90s candidates.

I don't entirely blame him for it, but his influence on modern wrestling has made it so so so much worse.

When he's not running for 60-foot clotheslines, I think he's generally inoffensive, but I can't say great is a word that ever comes to mind when talking about Kuroda.

I'd say he has been easily the best guy in NOAH since the pandemic based on my watching and can't really think of anyone particularly close, although I've been watching less and less NOAH since 2019. He's one of the few guys around anymore that has any sense of hierarchy in his matches and that goes a long way for me. If he's wrestling Quiet Storm or whoever, he's just gonna beat the shit out of him or knock him out, he's not going to set out to have a good match, and that goes a very long way for me.

I think I've seen enough to say Buddy will make my ballot. I'm willing to dock the limited footage guys to a certain extent because I'm partial to the argument that with limited tape and a higher chance of the footage getting lost to time, the stuff we have isn't representative of the whole, but Rogers is in two of the three best matches we have from 1950s and 1960s (Thesz in 50 and O'Connor in 61) and is pretty much always good.

I think, to some degree, it's fine to see gaps in footage and draw some conclusions based on previous work, or do the opposite and say it's wrong to give credit for footage we don't have. I think those are both acceptable viewpoints. I don't think it's in the spirit of the project to rank wrestlers based on 'what could have been' and in Fujii's case, it's not like we are missing footage. I'm pretty sure we have her entire career on tape.

I made the nomination, and I stand by what I wrote then, but closer we get to 2026, the less I see her on my ballot. I just don't see how 3 matches that are good, and strong showings, but not mind-blowing, is enough. I'm willing to project a little for guys like Valentine or Buddy Rogers, where we have limited footage, but we know they had many matches. I'm not willing to say 'well she could have been a great wrestler if she wanted to' is enough to make her one of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever.

So is Grimmas done? We haven't got a new thread for a nominee since March.

I think that all of those bolded matches are on the same level as everything outside the very tip-top of Roman's matches. Outisde of the WM31 match, and one of the Shield/Wyatt matches, I would say the Drew, Sami, and Cody stuff is on the same level of the AJ stuff or the Bryan stuff. I'm not really interested in relitigating the Sami/Roman mudfight, but I agree that if everything in that match was exactly the same, but Sami won, it would have been incredible, but that has nothing to do with Roman the wrestler, outside of the usually top guy politics to remain on top. So, maybe the match could have been better, but I think the one thing you can point to that would improve that match, isn't ultimately on the shoulders of Roman or Sami. As for the length of matches, I love a short match, and I do think you could criticize the Roman main events of being bloated and overbooked, but I personally don't think any of the matches have overstayed their welcome or gone too long.

I don't know if I necessarily agree that his matches have dipped, and I think the Cesaro match was actually one of his weaker singles matches of this run. I thought the Drew match was really good, the Sami match was very good, I liked the Cody match and I'm a low voter on Cody, the stuff with KO and Lesnar was strong. Really, I thought the Cesaro match, and the fact that nothing really came out of it for Cesaro, really hurt him in my eyes. He's one of the only guys who has worked with Roman in this run and came out on the other side in a worse spot. I think that Roman has certainly leaned more into being a character, and relies less on 'having a good match', but I don't think that has hurt his matches. To some degree, that old adage of 'we've already got their money' is true, and when you are over at that level some of that certainly takes over, but I think that it's more of a case where you can get away with doing less when people are invested than it is Roman being worse in-ring.