Reel

It’s like concrete said here, we’re in the GWE section, a project entirely based on the ‘footage’ and through that lens, Punk is going to be heavily favored, but if this was in a thread for WONHOF I would expect entirely different results.

I think a lot of Jericho's 'greatness' is a) part of a very calculated effort on Jericho's part to curate that image by talking about his career all the time, to everyone who will listen and b) much more based on longevity, presentation, and impact than it is based on the 'footage.' I'm probably going to end up with Punk somewhere on my ballot, and am not even really considering Jericho at this point.

Been working my way through one of the old Wes Hatch comps lately. Came here to try and get a read on Red, because he is for sure the stand out guy for me when watching that era. In a lot of ways, he seems like Sabu for the next generation. Not everything looks good, but everything has this extra level of drama added to it because it is so complex/complicated/innovative/convoluted. I don't know if he'd make a top 100, and I can't see him anywhere near the top half, but he does have the feeling of a bottom 10 guy based almost entirely on how much of a sea change his offense was circa 2001.

Are all these podcasts just going through the motions at this point? I never hear anything about any of them anymore, outside of when Bischoff takes a shot at AEW.

I was thinking about the best female wrestlers ever the other day, and started drafting a list. I was struck by how US/Japan-centric my list would be, which has lead me here with two questions: 1) Where are the luchadoras? I'm willing to admit that all wrestling isn't created equally, but when you look at GWE nominees, ballots and discussions, I'd say there are probably two dozen guys, minimum, from the lucha scene who get heavy consideration, but outside of Lola Gonzalez and La Galactica, is there anybody who has any buzz? Should we be deep diving Dalys and the Apache sisters? Are there women who people really like that I've missed? 2) If it isn't the luchadoras, then who is the most underrepresented group in the GWE circle? Obviously there are scenes where we don't have the footage to really discuss in-depth, but outside of that, who are we missing? Are we not talking about them because they're just kinda bad, or for some other reason?

I haven't paid a ton of attention of Funaki for the last decade, but I thought he ruled in NOAH last year. I don't know if he'd make my list but after this year I want to go back and look at some more post-prime Funaki.

Has he ever been presented this way? Anywhere? Lucha Underground maybe? He' a legend and one of the greatest wrestlers ever, so I really do get where you're coming from, but what about 2023 Rey screams 'protected top star'?

There was some chatter after the Mutoh match earlier this year that WWE had totally blown it with Nakamura. I don't think anyone who has watched any substantial part of his run there could come away thinking that. They've pushed him, given him big spots to show out, and he just hasn't brought it. Outside of maybe the first 6 month of his NXT run, he's just been mailing it in. I don't know if he's been one of the 50 best wrestlers in the company in any single year since 2016. As for before, He's got an incredible greatest hits resume, and that goes a long way for me, but in that time there was a lot of lackadaisical 6 man tags and other stuff that was just 'there.'

You can quibble with the guys in there, and Kross and Moss aren't exactly Blue Chippers, but this, and getting Dom set up, seems like exactly what he should be doing.

I love Rey, he can still go in spots, but he's 48 and his knees are 97% stem cells, what exactly should he be doing?

Schrodinger's Nomura

Is the Capture stuff available anywhere? The link where it streamed initially doesn't even have it for sale anymore.

Waltman going in would make him the only 3 time Hall of Famer, which I think means they probably won't put him in solo.

Yes, I believe it got a fair amount of hype when Titans covered it..

I would say, in my viewing, 2022 was the worst year in the last 5 or so, and that even includes 2020 empty arena stuff. Nothing really grabbed me. That said, I thought Gunther, Templario, Roman, Soberano Jr all had strong years. Also Hiroyo Matsumoto ended up being in a ton of matches I liked. I never tracked it down, but from what I've read Naoya Nomura had a strong series of matches in CAPTURE, which combined with the strong stuff he had in AJPW, might put him in contention.

Larry Z had a really strong 1980 outside of the Bruno stuff too, including that 'never in a million years would you think this would be great on paper' match with Ivan Putski. But I agree, its probably Buddy. Fujinami is great in 80 too though.

Post and then when 2026 comes around, Vote. Or don't post, just vote. No hurdles to clear.

I do not think 2022 was a great year for wrestling, and I'm pretty much the low vote on all of the hyped matches from this year, but here's a list of the stuff I really liked this year. 1. Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre - 9/3 2. Templario vs Soberano Jr - 7/29 3. Brock Lesnar vs Big E vs Seth Rollins vs Kevin Owens vs Bobby Lashley - 1/1 4. Fujita Hayato vs MUSHASHI - 7/1 5. Kazuyuki Fujita vs Katsuhiko Nakajima - 2/23 6. Bianca Belair vs Becky Lynch - 4/2 7. Kento Miyahara vs Naoya Nomura - 9/19

Seems like the idea is to sell before the next TV deal. Fox, Comcast, Disney, and the streamers want to own the show, not be beholden to some rights deal with some other carrier, and even if the idea is to sell to the Saudi PIF, you want the networks in there driving up the bidding.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, and there will be guys on my list who don't have 'the matches' but are very good at the, to steal a phrase, 'input' side of wrestling. But in my mind, there are two points I keep coming back to when it comes to this sort of thing. 1)This is mentioned in the podcast that is clipped above, but I think its a salient point; what happened is what happened. So maybe if Bret's era's average wrester was as good as Cena's, Bret would have a better case, but it wasn't and he doesn't. 2) I'm not really interested in handicapping for quality of competition. Is there anybody out there knocking the four pillars because they got to wrestle each other all the time? I don't think so, if they are I haven't seen it. So maybe Bret would have this great resume if he got to wrestle Steve Austin, Vader, and Shawn in massive main events twice a year for a decade, but he didn't. If you want to say Bret was an 'input' All-Star and rank him over Cena, that's fine, but at some point you have to recon with the output disparity there.

I recently finished my GWWE ballot for PTBN. I had Cena ten spots higher than Bret. I love Bret, I grew up in the middle of his WWF Champion run, in a lot of ways Bret is the idealized version of a great wrestler that I grew up on, but Cena just has so much more good stuff over a longer period of time. I love Bret's two year run from Survivor Series 95 to 97, but everything before and after that is not this stellar all-time run, most of it is just kind of good. Stack that up against Cena's decade on top working good matches with literally everybody, and there are clunkers in there and times where the booking did him no favors, but there is just so much more.

I got the first issue of the Namor book and liked it, and have the new Dr. Strange and haven't gotten to it yet, but it seems great. Also, Ram V's run on Carnage has been very good.

Faces having the advantage does build the entire match around Roman coming in last, and it should build on the 'whose side is Sami on' stuff, but they're over thinking it by not going with the traditional order.

I recently finished Dick Foreman's Black Orchid run, I think the Gaiman/McKean run of Black Orchid might be my favorite Gaiman comic series, so I took the dive, and I think the Foreman run was really underrated. Foreman never got another series, which means it was probably a dud, but I think the Black Orchid comics are really interesting and creatively done. It intersects with Swamp Thing at some point, and you can tell there's a lot of influence there, and obviously there was some idea to build out that world, and I think that maybe in an effort to be like Swamp Thing it ended up being too similar. That being said, It starts well, ends well, meanders a bit in the middle, but was otherwise very enjoyable.

I think the ship has sailed on post-induction conduct being a strike against people in the HOF.