Reel

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.

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