Reel

I don't see myself ever being a Felino voter, but: a) I think his post-prime has been much better than one would expect. I thought he had a pretty good last year in the absolute vacuum of interest that was CMLL and b) if you're a 'on their best night' person, which I think is a bad way to make a list but to each their own, the cibernetico is a very high peak.

Dandy is a stock up for me. If you're watching Lucha on youtube and just let the autoplay go, you'll end up on some grainy-ass trios match, and somebody will do something awesome, and 90% of the time, its El Dandy.

I don't know if WWE wants to bring back Jericho, but I'm absolutely positive Chris Jericho wants everyone to think WWE wants him back.

A thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere, and who knows how much this affects things with this situation, but BT Sport, WWE's rights holder in the UK, sold 50% equity to Warner/Discovery and is going to be a part of the bigger Eurosport package. It could mean a lot of things, or nothing, but it seems like it could be a real complicating factor going forward.

Any plans for what's going to happen to the shows after the feed dies next year? I'd hate to see them disappear. Upload them to YouTube maybe?

So Invader 1 made a comeback this year, and I just watched him hit a tope suicida at the spry young age of 76.

I love this match. It was absurdly high on my PTBN Top 100 WWE matches ballot, but I'm a sucker for great finishing stretches. They have a very good rematch a couple of weeks later on Smackdown.

I know that everyone hates his current New Japan run, but it seems to be mostly how he is booked and what his arrival has meant to how the promotion looks. That's my read on it anyway. I don't really follow the discourse and I've only watched the tournament matches this year. Is he actually bad now? Is there anything I should check out? Is what he's doing now actively hurting his case?

He has a match with Oney Lorcan early in his NXT run that might fit this description. For me, it might be Eddie Kingston. I know everybody loves him now, but I still don't think he's ever had a truly great match that was him firing on all cylinders.

Obviously, you can rank guys however you want, but I think if you're only considering wrestlers at their very best you're gonna come up with something other than a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever. Rusher Kimura is a big part of one of my favorite matches of all time, I nominated him almost entirely because of it, but he mostly kinda stinks. So is he better than say, Tajiri, who has a ton of really good matches but nothing as good as the '89 old man tag? I say, no. You can think whatever you want, but I just don't see it the same way.

looking forward to your ultimate warrior vote

I'm probably not going to go back and watch any of it, but having watched it contemporaneously, I can honestly say outside of the stuff with Seth against Drew/Dolph and The Bar, and the triple threat with Brock and Roman, literally none of the stuff you mentioned stands out to me in the least. Obviously, it's all subjective and your mileage may vary, but I think him leaving WWE has made a lot of people look back on his time there more fondly than they would otherwise.

I don't think it matters if he was lazy, battling addiction, or sad because his dog ran away, he has a litany of boring to bad matches and comparatively few bright spots.

I've been slowly working my way through the Cornette Garbage Tapes, and '78-80 high-flying babyface Paul Orndorff rules, I don't think there's enough to make my top 100, but if we had more of that stuff, combined with his peak 80s stuff and his late WCW run, I think he'd have a solid case.

I'll cop to minimalizing it, but only because everyone else seems to be maximalizing it. I'm sure a ton of people have 'seen' Sasha Banks, and I'm sure a ton of people will 'see' all sorts of people in very popular things, and this doesn't have anything to do with the popularity or lack thereof, of the WWE, it has to do with simply appearing on a popular show does not make you a successful working actor.

Wait!!!! There are actors who aren't huge movie stars?????? NO. I'm sure she could parlay her success into some sort of acting gig, but you've watched Sasha Banks, you've heard her cut a promo? You watched the build to the Belair match at Mania last year, do you think that she's a good actress? Do you think that she really could make a ton of money acting? She might, I don't know, all I'm saying is let's pump the brakes on this idea that she can make a great living in Hollywood tomorrow, it's not exactly the easiest business. Ok, this is just silly. There are no background extras more famous or relevant than people who are on national network TV every week. Name one.

She had like 2 lines on the Mandalorian, this idea that she has a burgeoning Hollywood career is a bit of an exaggeration.

Wait, Naomi was booked to win and walked out? That's gotta be a first.

In your somewhat regular reminder that NXT:UK is still a thing that exists, they had their 200th episode this week. Smith & Carter/Gallus and Devlin/Dragunov were both worth checking out.

There are people better equipped to answer this, but not a ton as far as I know. There are about a half-dozen clips, ranging somewhere between 2 to 5 minutes floating around from American TV and then some stuff with Giant Baba, including a match from 67 that I like quite a bit. I will say that young Bruno is pretty similar to any other Bruno, more athletic, and not quite the finished product, but he's always Bruno.

There was some discussion in the Orange Cassidy thread, back when that was a thing, about buy-in, and Bruno seems like the same sort of deal. Suppose you helicopter in and watch some random match with a 7-minute bearhug. In that case, you get a specific impression of a boring wrestler who was only a star because there were a lot of Italians in New York but, if you watch the Larry feud, or the stuff with Waldo, or really just enough Bruno over time where you can buy into Bruno, you start to see the bearhug and punch/kick is all part of this package and the package rules.

I've never been a big ReDRagon guy. I think they're fine, but not anything that I'd go out of my way to watch. His singles stuff has been fine, but like the above post, when New Japan had him going 50/50 with Sakuraba, a guy who I'm down on anyway, I don't think he really held up his end of the bargain there. That being said, the KOR/Ballor series from 2020/2021 was pretty good stuff, and I think KOR could have a good single run, but he seems intent on playing second banana to Adam Cole for some reason.

I think, in the same vein as Sasha, she has knocked all of her big opportunities out of the park. Two huge 'mania matches, two MOTYCs. Plus, she's been really solid on TV, her stuff with Doudrop especially was very good. That being said, I can't say I was all that impressed with her NXT run, it wasn't bad, but I didn't love any of it either. I don't think she'll make my 2026 ballot, because even then she won't have a ton on her resume, but I'm not ruling her out either.

The Screw it...Comics with Jeff Smith is also a great tribute Adams.

Patently untrue, on both counts. Funaki was a good fighter, I can see your point there to an extent, but guys who are head and shoulders above their competition don't lose to Jason DeLucia. Suzuki, not sold he was ever a great fighter, let alone good enough to go in there and fuck around in a real fight to further the booking. Go watch Ken Shamrock hit a Minoru Special against Matt Hume, it's just not a promotion that was on the up and up in any way shape, or form, pretty much until the 2000s, and even then it's spotty. As for work/fixed fight, I've thought about Pancrase stuff for GWE, and came to the conclusion that I'm just gonna handwave it because while there are plenty of works there, I don't think it's worth the time to go through everything to suss out what's what. On top of that, is there anyone for whom a top 100 case could be made based predominately on Pancrase stuff? I don't think so.