Reel

Has there been some sort of grand re-evaluation of Mistico, or is it really just the last 4 years at the top of CMLL?

Ikeda and Ishikawa in Battlarts, outside of Ishikawa being positioned higher, are pretty equal in my mind. The differentiator for me between Ikeda and Ishikawa is what they did when they branched out. Ikeda went to NOAH and was OK. Ishikawa went to Canada and trained Santino's students and had better matches with trainees than pretty much Ikeda did in NOAH.

I mean, this is not exactly the case. Does Sakuraba mean more to the sport? Yes. Was there a point where Sakuraba was the best fighter in the world? Probably, I’d be interested in really looking at that argument. Is being UFC Heavyweight Champion a bigger accolade than anything Sakuraba actually accomplished in a sense? Almost undoubtedly yes.

Suzuki’s run at the top of NOAH, when Bushiroad was running it, was one of the more disastrous runs in recent memory.

There is nothing more deleterious to my enjoyment of modern wrestling than the stand in the middle of the ring, elbow each other in the traps, and makes faces stuff. It is beyond parody at this point. If we give points to Sabu for influence then we should take them away for this that spot. And Ishii still hasn’t dropped yet

Nobody watched the Roddy stuff in Evolve then? Reading a lot about him in terms of his stuff in the major tv promotions, good hand, solid worked, charisma vacuum. But his run at the top of Evolve, or even his run as PWG champ is exceptional stuff. Check out the match with ZSJ from Evolve 25, I think or any of the stuff with Drew, he can be much more when he isn’t playing 3rd or 4th banana to his lesser friends.

2 things on the topics of the day: 1) So a friend of mine has watched all the Pancrase footage, he does video recaps on YouTube, Gentleman’s Combatives. His estimation, and he admits this number may be low, is that there are 9 works in the first 3 years of Pancrase. Now there are fights where one guy wasn’t planning on winning, but just 9 matches where both guys went out there not trying to win. 2) Nominations are gate keeping, yes. You are keeping people who don’t fit the criteria out. Frankly if you’ve only known about GWE for a few months, I’m not sure not being able to vote for literally whoever you want is a bad thing in the slightest. If you’re a part of the process and invested, you can get your people on the ballot, otherwise your beholden to someone else, that’s a feature not a bug.

He doesn’t do the Les Kellet Lariat anymore, and he does some shitty looking MMA inspired stuff, but I don’t think he’s fundamentally all that different outside of his place in the pecking order for the promotion and his propensity to bleed.

I would say that Moxley and Mone are pretty much exactly the same as they were in WWE, just 40 plus years of varying degrees of FED BAD have made it impossible for some people to admit that anything good could happen there. Obviously I’m in the minority on that belief given the results.

Ok, so where’s the line? Is Semmy Schillt a pro wrestler? Is Jose Aldo a pro wrestler? They have matches in Pancrase. The answer is no, obviously. Is Matt Hume a pro wrestler? Is Jason DeLuchia a pro wrestler? I don’t know, it’s not clear enough to say Pancrase is pro wrestling.

I think the Frank Shamrock being nominated for Pancrase matches is generally not great, and I don’t have a great answer for how to avoid it, and you just have to be comfortable with having no good answers I suppose. So we all seem to agree that, like, Volk Han is a pro wrestler, I think we can all agree that, Georges St.Pierre isn’t. But is Shannon Roth, a guy who has a rep of essentially being willing to lose an MMA fight on purpose, and essentially ‘worked’ with Dan Severn more than once under the premise of it being an MMA fighter? Is Tony Bonello, or Heath Pedigo, or any guy who has a bunch of dubious wins on his MMA record? Are those guys pro wrestlers? I don’t think so, but Pancrase, especially early on, is that the same thing? I don’t know and so don’t know how you make that distinction.

If there was a greatest wrestler poll and you couldn’t vote for Carlos Colon, then that poll is 100% pure garbage.

Just when I was losing all hope, Jericho missed the Top 100. There is still hope for the young people after all.

I’ll say it, that #1 vote is bad, like it just is and the fact that we don’t just say that and move on and instead act like it’s as valid as voting for Tenryu has, in my mind hurt this discussion, but we CAN and SHOULD just say that the vote is bad and move on and leave it there.

The name that sticks out to me as people wishing was nominated, and I'm sure there are many more, but this is the one that stands out, having seen it a few times, is Sherri Martel. I can see the case for her, I can see people voting for her, but what would she have finished, given what we've seen so far? 328? I don't think nominations did any real harm, and as many have said, having a, hopefully permanent or at the very least stable, home for the discussion of wrestlers and a way to enforce the footage requirement is much more of a plus than any minus that comes out of the nomination process.