Reel

I had Go Shiozaki as my number 1 at the time, and think its a fine pick. He was consistently great everywhere: NOAH, DDT, a weird match with Nanae in Seadlinnng. But, that was a cowardly pick, I should have had Shinya Aoki at #1. The best MMA fighter in pro wrestling run ever. Tapping guys in seconds, slick transitions, guys selling his submissions like death. Now, he's completely lost all of that, but in 2018 he was awesome.

Was just thinking about this. The indies were really great in 2016 and especially the Evolve guys were on fire. Hero, ZSJ, Matt Riddle, Tim Thatcher. Hero especially was everywhere and killed it everywhere, except for his tag matches which are always at least 5 minutes too long, but his run as elder statesman of the indies ruled.

His run in Evolve around 2015-2016 is maybe his best run. Great stuff with Drew that leads to a feud in maybe the most indie looking cage of all time, an all-time with Zack Sabre at Evolve 45, and some strong stuff with Thatcher. I remember thinking he was the maybe the best wrestler in the world around that time.

Since I've been enjoying Ram V's run on Swamp Thing, I checked out Paradiso, a comic he did for Image. It only goes 8 issues, and Ram seemed to indicate that he didn't feel like it was successful on a financial or creative level, but I really dug it, and it has me interested to check out some of his other stuff, including a run on Carnage, a character I don't recall care about, starting soon.

i dont know, the crowd in the building seemed to be fine with it

I thought that ruled, totally surprised Brock won.

I'm not sure that shootstyle Sakuraba is better than Billy Scott, and I love Billy Scott, but I'm not voting for him GWE, and excluding Sakuraba's post-prime run in NJPW and NOAH, which I think is mostly meh, their output is similar.

thats kind of his deal, its grown on me. I'm a fan.

during the match? Pat McAfee, the Smackdown commentator.

Ridge Holland is cursed

They don't test asymptomatic vaccinated people, it's what all the other sports leagues are doing. Their protocol is almost exactly what the NFL is doing.

The 2016 version of this discussion pretty much sums up my thoughts on Sakuraba. He's one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, before, and after, that he was a pro wrestler. But outside of being a compelling wrestling character because of his MMA bonafides, his in-ring output isn't anything of note. Like he's what the 7th best guy in UWFi, the 5th best guy in Kngdom, and then he's MMA superstar Kazushi Sakuraba in New Japan after that. I know people have liked his NOAH run, but I don't really see it. He's old, broken down, and way too often does dumb stuff like turning hs back to Kenoh and letting him kick him a bunch for no reason, not to mention some truly awful strike exchanges.

I think he's one of the least self-aware wrestlers ever. Portrays himself as this Robinson/Gotch shootstyle purist guy, and then in his recent stuff he goes out and has a match with ref bumps and weapons against Minoru Suzuki, or stands in the ring and allows himself to be elbowed in the neck by Moxley. His stuff before that is mostly just kind of boring. I don't think his grappling is all that compelling, and sure the Tamura match is good, but there are no bad Tamura matches.

not that i know of, the world cast thread has the dates of the shows and episode numbers, so episode 24 should be june 4, 1982.

nothing could possibly be worse than this

I think there's room for something like a recurring version of the Yohe list, but I think it should be its own thing and not a GWE appendix.

I don't think muddling GWE26 with other side lists is a good idea. I get the idea here, and I'm partially to blame, because of my Johnny Valentine boosterism, but I think that the list of people who are actually considering voting for Valentine/Londos/Buddy Rogers/etc for GWE proper is rather small and creating a whole other list to placate that small group at the expense of a cohesive and unified GWE isn't worth it.

He had good TV matches with Ali in 2018 that I liked a lot. I don't know if I'd vote for him, but he's gonna have a ton of good to great matches by the time he retires.

3, I think. Bull Curry, the tag against Baba/Inoki, and the tag with Kroffat. I don't think any of the Florida stuff is full matches.

I think there's a similar thing with Ray Stevens, who has a reputation amongst people who saw him in his prime as one of the best to ever do it, but little to no real footage to support that particular thesis. I don't really have a clue what to do with guys like that, like imagine if you had only heard about Randy Orton from his contemporaries, would that depiction match with how you feel having watched his entire career.

I'm really just using these two guys as examples for something I've been thinking about lately, so you can entirely disregard any particulars about either wrestler. The question is how much extrapolation and projecting are you willing to do for GWE? How much footage is enough to get an idea of a wrestler? How do we compare wrestlers from the current era, where almost every match they've ever had is on tape against wrestlers whose footage is limited?

I've seen his stuff in HUSTLE, he's perfectly fine, and he's probably one of the best in-ring guys there during that time, but it's a promotion that had, in its entire run, less than a handful of what I'd call good matches. If you're making a GWE case for Kushida, I don't even think it really warrants mention.

Sasuke for sure, Gran Hamada if you want to consider him under the M. Pro banner, and Dick Togo seem likely to make my list. Outside of that, I'd think about Ultimo Dragon, CIMA, Shingo, maybe Doi or Yamato, but I'm sure any of them are real contenders, as of yet. Throw Don Fuji in there too, I guess.

Rusher Kimura I'm mostly nominating Rusher Kimura because he seems like the sort of person who should be nominated and I'm interested in what the general feeling around him is. Obviously, he has a rep as a talker, and that really isn't in GWE purview, per se, but he was the ace of a major promotion and had a big run in New Japan after IWE closed, plus the run as Baba's partner, including the all-time great Old Man tag from 89. vs Jumbo Tsuruta - IWE 3/28/1976 with Giant Baba vs Genichiro Tenryu/Jumbo Tsuruta - AJPW 12/8/1984 with Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu - AJPW 11/29/1989

Pandemic-era Sheamus matches from my sheet: vs Jeff Hardy - Backlash '20 vs Miz/Morrison - Raw 1/25/21 vs Drew - Raw 3/1/21 vs Drew - Raw 3/8/21 vs Drew - Fastlane '21 vs Riddle - 'Mania vs Drew vs Damien Preist - Raw 8/30/21