Reel

It’s pretty much all there on YouTube, people just have to watch it, it’s not that it isn’t available. I do think as OJ has mentioned it doesn’t really have a discourse, but it’s not a matter of being hard to find.

There's a full Johnny Valentine match that I was totally unaware of on this best of St. Louis Tape: Maybe by 2056 we'll have enough full matches for a substantial top 10 case.

Complaining about people complaining about people complaining

So, I was born in 1990, started watching wrestling as a little kid in 1993, Bret Hart is sort of the platonically great wrestler in my mind, in the way that Flair I assume is for a lot of people, and Cena for younger people. But yeah, he just really doesn’t have a resume to beat out the very tippy-top guys. If we are being very liberal, it’s what 91 to 99, which is being as kind as possible to him, and then the tag stuff and whatever we have from Stampede. I mean, shit, I could see an argument for Moxley, who I’ve said my piece on, having an argument as ranking higher.

So, is anyone brave enough to talk about Bret being way too high?

He and Dom had a good match with the Usos at Money in the Bank 21, there was a good 4 way with Owens, Rollins and Balor on Raw that year. There was a good one with Buddy Murphy on Raw in 2020, and an Andrade match from that year too.

I didn’t have Foley very high, but I do think he’s among a handful of wrestlers who have sort of invented a style that made themselves great wrestlers, and I think that’s a sort of admirable and impressive feat. Onita and Maeda in the same sort of boat.

Not my post, but I can say it because I've watched a lot of wrestling, and based on that wrestling, I ranked the 100 greatest wrestlers. I formed an opinion on a lot of wrestlers. This idea that 'well, I could see why you would vote for that person' only goes so far. I really can't see why you'd vote for a lot of wrestlers; there are only 100 slots. When 65% of people vote for a person I wouldn't put in my top 500, I don't think it's anything other than perfectly normal to say that person got too many votes.

Was he though? I didn’t think that at the time, and I don’t see that now.

I think his Bloodsport match with DBS Jr is proof that he doesn’t really have a clue about MMA or shootstyle, and you can tell about him entering a BJJ tournament all you want, but him trying to do a Shogun Rua spot in that match is one of the more embarrassing things I’ve ever seen.

Boy did I think that Moxley/Barnett match was an abomination

Absolutely gobsmacked Moxley still hasn’t dropped. I know people like him, but him outperforming both Shield guys by this margin is not something I saw coming.

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.