Reel

Honest and sincere question here. Do you think they look good? Or is it a spot you think is cool and don't care how it looks?

I think he's still a top 10 guy for me, but I will say that the stuff I've seen him do in AEW has really lessened my esteem for him. Like that abysmal 'hammer and the anvil' elbow spot, it always looks awful, a lot of times it ruins the flow of the match, and he does it all of the time. Part of it is that people today eat it up, they love the strike exchanges interspersed with middle fingers and the rest of the workrate slop that's come to dominate wrestling as of late, so in some ways, he's right to lean into that, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or think it's good.

I said this somewhere else, but when you put a poll up in the GWE section, you're going to get a GWE answer. So, Brock's UFC career, star quality, drawing power etc. isn't a consideration. It's based on the footage. I voted Cena, but this is tough. This really comes down to a peak vs quantity sort of deal, where I think Brock at his best is probably better than Cena, although Brock's absolute best match is probably against Cena, but Cena just has so much more stuff, and I wouldn't say its random Raw matches, but matches on PPV, main events, and featured matches that have a very high floor, many of which have a very high ceiling, but he never really hits that sort of pantheon-level HOLY SHIT level Brock can hit.

She's certainly hurt by lack of footage. I don't know how much we have, and I haven't seen any of it if it exists, but her 80s AJW foreign heel stuff seems to be the place to look. Is she on the Houston footage? I don't remember. Anyway, vs Desiree Peterson - Boston Garden 6/22/85 rules.

Not crazy about my guy Dar losing tonight, but Corbin/Carmelo might be good.

I thought his recent run in NOAH was embarrassing, just sloppy and uninteresting outside of the 'Murakami is in current NOAH and wearing a suit' initial reactions.

Greg Valentine, aside from strong stuff with Backlund, pulls out not one but two good matches against Jay Strongbow.

I don't know if it has "consequences" but I am interested to see who wins and what Cody/Brock looks like.

I don't know if I'm gonna end up with Funk at 1 when I submit, but if I do, I'm gonna put Slater at 100 for symmetry.

We are?

I would say vs Patera 4/21/80 is pretty great and the best of the non Slaughter/Backlund stuff we have. He has a good match with DiBiase in 79 I like too, and a TV match with Johnny Rodz that I think is worth checking out. I like Patterson, but I don't see him in the same light as a guy like Johnny Valentine, where we have a small amount of footage but the guy just seems transcendent. He's very good in the footage we have of his late career, and based on his reputation his prime stuff was probably incredible, but I don't get the same NO DOUBT feeling I do when I watch other limited footage guys.

Noam Dar has turned into a really great wrestler. I doubt that in 3 years he'll be one of the 100 greatest of all-time, and having gone back and watched some of his early stuff I don't think he's a hidden gem really, but I'd say given his current output he's one of my guys to keep an eye on in the future.

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone make it look good, some are worse than others, but everyone is bad. Well, other than Gary Goodridge.

I voted for Bryan when this first got posted, but if he keeps doing that terrible looking 'Hammer and Anvil" elbow spot he might fall out of my top 1000 wrestlers

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