Reel

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.

Depends on how you want to define work, but there were a lot more than 3 fights in Pancrase where at least one guy went into the ring with no intention of winning.

My only experience with Iroha was when I watched the whole 5* Grand Prix last year. I liked a total of 2 matches in that entire tournament, and I'm willing to pin that on me not liking the style because people seemed to love it, but at no point did Iroha stand out to me at all. I brought Chihiro up in some other thread, and the only reason I didn't nominate her is I was waiting for someone else who is a bigger Joshi fan to do it, but she for sure needs a thread.

I feel like if I had to make a list tomorrow, I could and it would be fine, but I wouldn't feel great about it. I'll probably feel the same way in 2026, but at least I'd have watched 4 more years of wrestling to inform my list.

I'd be interested to see how many of the good to great New Day matches have Kofi in them because if you asked me to rank the New Day members off the top of my head, without doing any research, I'd easily slot Kofi at 3. Obviously, he's in some of them, but it seems to me like when people say 'Kofi is in the New Day, one of the best tag teams of the decade' it is in some ways a bit unearned. Not that this is an exact 1-to-1 comparison, but it is kinda like giving Crush credit for Demolition matches. Kofi is a bigger part of the group than Crush was and the dynamics of how Crush got into the group are different, but I think giving equal credit to all 3 isn't an accurate assessment either.

I think the angle is bad, but I'm excited for that match. Gacy was a low-key MVP of 205 Live before it got rebranded, he had a match with Desmond Troy that ruled.

Pretty Deadly showed up on NXT. Good for those guys, they did everything they were going to do in NXT: UK.

Pretty Deadly are coming off a pretty good run as NXT: UK Tag champs, and I'm guessing they may be the ones who attacked the Creeds in the NXT parking lot. If you want to check them out, they had a good match with Smith & Carter in 2020, and good stuff with Mustache Mountain and Subculture in 2021.

I think everyone who would see it in that light, as WWE poaching an EVP from AEW, already knows he's signed and showing up at some point. So theycan play it coy as to when exactly he's going to show up, instead of playing up overtly.

At the end of GWE16, Dylan said on his podcast that he came away from the project disillusioned because the top 10 were all American-style wrestlers, and wanted to sort of distance himself from the project. So, what does a successful GWE 26 look like in your eyes? Is there something you'd like to see in the top 100 wrestlers that wasn't there last time?

I think a lot of 'Jericho is an all-time great' is, and props to him for this, is that he has spent a lot of time talking about how great his career was on his podcast, and he's been saying it long enough that people started to believe it. I'm not sure there's ever been a year where he was one of the top 5, maybe 10 wrestlers in the promotion he was in. I'm not entirely ruling him out, but I just don't really see him sniffing even my top 200 wrestlers.

Roderick Strong showed up on NXT:UK this week if that's your kinda thing. Had a good match with Wolfgang and challenged Ilja. The Bate match in the open of the show was good too.

I think Sable making exactly one public appearance, going into the octagon after one of Brock's wins, in the last decade means she probably isn't interested in doing it, and not Vince or whoever going through his HOF rubric and deciding to put in Sharmell and not Sable.

I'd be interested to hear from somebody who actually knows how much of that bump is on the guy taking it vs the guy giving it because I have no clue how much the guy doing the throwing can actually do get the other guy over.

I think he'll fall because the sort of person who thought El Generico was a top 10 candidate in 2016 seems to be the sort of person who thinks that it is impossible to have good matches in WWE.

There's something goofy going on with the Onita/Colon thread in the GWE Vs section.

I got some new stuff in the mail recently that I've really liked. The new Swamp Thing: Green Hell was really good. It's only one issue, but I think I already like it more than the new Ram V run, and I really like that run. I've been reading He Who Fight with Monsters, a comic about the Nazi occupation of Prague, its good, a bit heavy, but good. I also got the trade for Sandman: Waking Hours, its the first non-Gaiman Sandman thing I've ever read, and I thought it was great. It did a great job of existing and paying tribute to the Sandman while having its own spin. It made me, even though I still haven't, want to check out the rest of the stuff they've been doing with that new imprint. Also got the first issue of the new run on Arrowsmith, which I thought was just ok, but I like Busiek so I think I'll see it through.

No it's on 2008 ECW TV, but basically the same idea.

He has a match on ECW TV where Punk gets him to do some of his PWFG stuff that I watched recently, and I don't know if it was good, but I was pumped to see Kane bust out some grappling out of nowhere.

I think Bruce Prichard in defending all those mid-90s gimmicks, like TL Hopper, said they were based on things those guys did in real life, like The Goon played rec hockey.

Seems a lot more likely that we get something like Pat McAfee vs Austin Theory w/ Vince, pretty much what the Shane deal might have been. Even if they bill it Vince vs Pat, like Vince comes out at Mania and says I'm injured and can't wrestle so I'm sending my one true son, and Theory's music plays or something.