Reel

The 2016 version of this discussion pretty much sums up my thoughts on Sakuraba. He's one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, before, and after, that he was a pro wrestler. But outside of being a compelling wrestling character because of his MMA bonafides, his in-ring output isn't anything of note. Like he's what the 7th best guy in UWFi, the 5th best guy in Kngdom, and then he's MMA superstar Kazushi Sakuraba in New Japan after that. I know people have liked his NOAH run, but I don't really see it. He's old, broken down, and way too often does dumb stuff like turning hs back to Kenoh and letting him kick him a bunch for no reason, not to mention some truly awful strike exchanges.

I think he's one of the least self-aware wrestlers ever. Portrays himself as this Robinson/Gotch shootstyle purist guy, and then in his recent stuff he goes out and has a match with ref bumps and weapons against Minoru Suzuki, or stands in the ring and allows himself to be elbowed in the neck by Moxley. His stuff before that is mostly just kind of boring. I don't think his grappling is all that compelling, and sure the Tamura match is good, but there are no bad Tamura matches.

not that i know of, the world cast thread has the dates of the shows and episode numbers, so episode 24 should be june 4, 1982.

nothing could possibly be worse than this

I think there's room for something like a recurring version of the Yohe list, but I think it should be its own thing and not a GWE appendix.

I don't think muddling GWE26 with other side lists is a good idea. I get the idea here, and I'm partially to blame, because of my Johnny Valentine boosterism, but I think that the list of people who are actually considering voting for Valentine/Londos/Buddy Rogers/etc for GWE proper is rather small and creating a whole other list to placate that small group at the expense of a cohesive and unified GWE isn't worth it.

He had good TV matches with Ali in 2018 that I liked a lot. I don't know if I'd vote for him, but he's gonna have a ton of good to great matches by the time he retires.

3, I think. Bull Curry, the tag against Baba/Inoki, and the tag with Kroffat. I don't think any of the Florida stuff is full matches.

I think there's a similar thing with Ray Stevens, who has a reputation amongst people who saw him in his prime as one of the best to ever do it, but little to no real footage to support that particular thesis. I don't really have a clue what to do with guys like that, like imagine if you had only heard about Randy Orton from his contemporaries, would that depiction match with how you feel having watched his entire career.

I'm really just using these two guys as examples for something I've been thinking about lately, so you can entirely disregard any particulars about either wrestler. The question is how much extrapolation and projecting are you willing to do for GWE? How much footage is enough to get an idea of a wrestler? How do we compare wrestlers from the current era, where almost every match they've ever had is on tape against wrestlers whose footage is limited?

I've seen his stuff in HUSTLE, he's perfectly fine, and he's probably one of the best in-ring guys there during that time, but it's a promotion that had, in its entire run, less than a handful of what I'd call good matches. If you're making a GWE case for Kushida, I don't even think it really warrants mention.

Sasuke for sure, Gran Hamada if you want to consider him under the M. Pro banner, and Dick Togo seem likely to make my list. Outside of that, I'd think about Ultimo Dragon, CIMA, Shingo, maybe Doi or Yamato, but I'm sure any of them are real contenders, as of yet. Throw Don Fuji in there too, I guess.

Rusher Kimura I'm mostly nominating Rusher Kimura because he seems like the sort of person who should be nominated and I'm interested in what the general feeling around him is. Obviously, he has a rep as a talker, and that really isn't in GWE purview, per se, but he was the ace of a major promotion and had a big run in New Japan after IWE closed, plus the run as Baba's partner, including the all-time great Old Man tag from 89. vs Jumbo Tsuruta - IWE 3/28/1976 with Giant Baba vs Genichiro Tenryu/Jumbo Tsuruta - AJPW 12/8/1984 with Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu - AJPW 11/29/1989

Pandemic-era Sheamus matches from my sheet: vs Jeff Hardy - Backlash '20 vs Miz/Morrison - Raw 1/25/21 vs Drew - Raw 3/1/21 vs Drew - Raw 3/8/21 vs Drew - Fastlane '21 vs Riddle - 'Mania vs Drew vs Damien Preist - Raw 8/30/21

Those Japan deals basically paid for the entire national expansion, when New Japan comes back in 1985, the money they paid, mostly to have guys be able to work the Garden, bankrolled WrestleMania.

I believe that is actually the correct term for point karate, because they're not 'fighting.' Same goes for Judo player.

That Karate dude, who lost for knocking out his opponent, coming out to KO Ali ruled.

The best example for Seth is the Dominick match because as of yet, Dom hasn't shown all that much to my eye, and the match with Seth at SummerSlam was good. Roman also had a good match with Bray on an episode of Raw in 2018, one of the handful of decent Bray singles matches. As for this whole topic, I'd say Roman in a walk. He's a better TV worker than the other 2, a better main event worker, probably the best in trios of all 3, although that's more up for debate in my mind. I think I'd have Seth at 2, mostly because I think Mox is just kind of bad. He's one of my least favorite wrestlers currently, just a parody of all my least favorite things: consensual elbows to the trap mixed in with funny faces and some of the worst MMA rip off spots I've ever seen.

I watched a ton of ECW last year and was generally left unenthused, but I think Bigelow was good there. My 3 match recs would be: vs Sabu vs Taz - Hardcore TV 8/15/98 vs Taz - Living Dangerously 98 vs RVD - Hardcore TV 4/11/1998 Also the Spike Dudley matches are worth checking out, but you've probably seen the big spots from them at some point.

I voted for Shawn, because at no point has he pretended his arm was a chainsaw like he was in a bad improv class.

I think people re-evaluating the Tiger Mask stuff really hurt his perception. Those matches went from "incredible, 20 years ahead of their time" to "actually just kind of bad" and I think that the truth is somewhere in the middle, the matches are good, but I don't really consider them all-timers. I also think he may, somewhat unfairly, have some Benoit stink on him that doesn't help. Generally, though, I'd say he was good everywhere until he totally fell apart. Good stuff with Marty Jones in the UK, good stuff with Fujinami in New Japan, good stuff with Tiger Mask, good stuff with Buddy in Portland, good stuff in the team with Davey. I don't think he's a top 100 guy for me, but I wouldn't rule him out either.

It seems at least a handful of people are watching the 80s DVDVR sets as part of their viewing for this project. It's a great place to start but in the time since those sets got put together a lot of footage has come out and tastes are always changing. So, is there anything that got skipped over? Anybody who got short shrift? Any new matches that absolutely would have belonged, but hadn't been unearthed yet?

The Waldo match rules, just a wild spectacle and pure Bruno.

I'm not a lucha guy, but I find the whole "I can't get into it" to just be a sort of laziness and an excuse to handwave a ton of stuff. Like, just watch the matches, they are usually pretty basic; like at one point the rudo will take things too far and the technico will try and get them back. It's pretty basic pro wrestling. Santo is for sure a #1 contender for me, he's not a favorite for that spot, but he's in consideration. Guys not in that tier, but I expect to have high, like top half, on my ballot: Perro Aguayo Sr., Fuerza Guerrera, El Dandy, Blue Panther, Negro Casas, and Atlantis. Super Porky and Virus are close to locks for me too. Probably gonna vote for Black Terry and Solar too, LA Park is in that same bucket, same with Sangre Chicana. Might vote for Pirata Morgan, gotta watch more Villanos to figure out where those guys fall, but I can see myself voting for III or V. I've watched some of the Lola Gonzalez and Pantera Suerena stuff, which is good, and I'd like to watch more, but I don't know if there's enough out there for a GWE vote, but I'll plead ignorance on that point. As for current guys, Hechicero and La Sombra have a good shot at making it for me. I won't totally rule out Ultimo Guerrero, Volador Jr or Barbaro Cavernario, but they aren't really on top of mind when it comes to the 100 greatest wrestlers. I talked about these guys a little in the Not Yet thread, but guys who have an outside shot if things break in the right way for them by 2026: Arez, Aramis, Demonio Infernal, Villano III Jr, Templario and Soberano Jr. I think the same goes for Vikingo and Taurus.

There's more and more people talking about Bret, but I think it's hard to look at the landscape of modern wrestling and not think that Shawn is far and away more influential on the style. Its sort of like how 5 years ago every indie wrestler and promotion labeled itself a Strong Style, but the style resembled Kings Road much more than it did Inoki's New Japan.