Control21

Not sure about the logical part, but I would agree on the rest.

I never really "got" Darby Allin. Most of his matches felt like they were glorified stuntman tapes. Maybe that has changed in the last year and a half or so, but I remember watching the Sting retirement match in particular and thinking that way too many spots in that match were deliberately designed so he could take a sick bump (like the glass table). I don't have a problem with risk-taking wrestlers or anything like that, but it feels especially egregious and cinematic with Darby.

Akira Maeda ended up #4 on my ballot. The more I watch his matches, the more I think he was severely underrated last time. Maeda was a unique individual and wrestler. Compared to some of the other shoot-style greats, he wasn't an unbelievable mat wrestler like Han or Tamura, he wasn't a master craftsman like Fujiwara, and he didn't have specialties like fighting out of corners. Maeda made up for these weaknesses by being a prophet and a revolutionary, qualities that shaped his in-ring work as much as they shaped his legacy outside the ring. He was a movement leader in the truest sense, because he made fans feel like part of something rather than merely spectators. Shoot-style is often seen as cold and dry, a style that doesn't elicit the same level of engagement as Memphis or CMLL's brand of Lucha Libre. Fans were often silent due to the style demanding close attention, but Maeda's matches were different at key moments. He drew the crowd into his approach, making them active participants rather than observers. His epic comebacks and sudden bursts of energy were critical centerpieces precisely because they triggered something visceral in the audience. This, I think, is why Maeda built such a devoted following. People believed they were part of something important and extraordinary. The best example of this I can come up with is the match against Don Nakaya Nielsen in 1986. When Maeda started gaining momentum in the match, it was like a revolutionary leader rousing his base to achieve something with him. A common thread throughout Maeda's career is his identity as an outsider. A punk who went against the grain, seemingly as much for both pleasure and strategic in-ring reasons. His retirement video, set to Sid Vicious' cover of "My Way," was fitting in this sense. That same spirit bled into the ring. In most of his major matches, outside of his later RINGS work, there was a gritty underdog quality to how he positioned himself against his opponents, a sense that he was always fighting uphill, always the agitator. This gave fans something to latch onto beyond the action itself. People resonated with the punk outsider archetype, and younger male viewers in particular seemed to find something of themselves in his rebellious undertones. It only deepened their devotion. All of this, for me, made it easy to deeply engage with his work. I never lose the sense that I am watching a wrestling rebel trying to lead his people to the promised land, even if it means getting his hands dirty, as in the case of kicking Choshu in the face or beating up on a drunk Andre. This dynamic became especially pronounced in RINGS, where Maeda appeared to push realism even further, striving to give his followers a renewed sense of purpose and belief in him after the collapse of the UWF and the subsequent exodus.

I'm so glad you guys managed to get him to come back to the ring. He looks great. I'm really excited to see what else is planned.

I think Flair and Lawler take a bit of a hit due to the younger voting base this time around. I'm worried that some of my shoot-style favorites like Han and Tamura will drop as well. Hopefully not too much. I think Ospreay will end up landing pretty high.

My ballot:

As I mentioned earlier, Bret ended up grabbing the #1 spot on my ballot after a close race with Volk. Here's the write-up I did when I submitted my ballot:

I mean, the top guy in the company wrestling the best members on the roster isn't unheard of for any style or promotion, I think?

Kiyoshi Tamura is going to end up #5 on my ballot. He was absolutely one of the best wrestlers I've ever seen. We talk about Volk Han's batting average (rightfully so), but Tamura's is right up there as well. I've struggled to find a good way to describe the differences between Volk Han and Tamura. While Volk had the explosiveness and the ability to manipulate "space," I think Tamura differentiated himself by being one of the best athletic specimens we've ever seen in the ring. It's not that Tamura couldn't manipulate space as well, but I think he relied on it less than Volk did, and instead combined his natural talents with a raw intensity that very few have. I remember seeing someone describe Tamura as the shoot-style version of Kenta Kobashi (could have been in this thread). In other words, he could convey emotion, urgency, and will through his actions and movements in the ring. The differences here are probably one of the major reasons why the Volk/Tamura trilogy was so damn good; they played off each other's differences and abilities extraordinarily well. I think people sometimes forget how good he was during his U-Style run. His matches with Ito, Mishima, Barnett, etc., all come to mind initially. He was probably one of the best in the world during that period. He was doing all of this while facing people like Yoshida and Bob Sapp in PRIDE as well. He really never let up once in his career. Maybe that's why he decided to step away from the ring after his PRIDE run. Perhaps he understood he couldn't deliver the same level of quality after the beating his body took in PRIDE. That's a very admirable quality to have, I believe, despite us not having more matches to enjoy. Tamura is also one of those wrestlers who made the shoot/work spectrum nebulous at times. He had a whole host of pro wrestling matches in his career that looked like shoots. He also had a handful of shoots where I wouldn't blame someone if they thought they were worked. I've written to some degree in some of the other threads here about how it is hard to ignore how certain workers spent a lot of time in places like Pancrase, or had matches in RINGS, PRIDE, or other JMMA groups that were straddling the line between shoot and work very delicately. Tamura falls under this category. His match against Frank Shamrock in RINGS stands out as one of the best displays of scientific wrestling I've ever seen, and it was basically conducted under RINGS' pro wrestling rules. He also had a match against Renzo Gracie under RINGS' KOK rules, which were more explicitly MMA. I would argue, though, that Tamura was a pro wrestler that night, and getting a win over Renzo while carrying the UWF banner is one of the greatest "pro wrestling" moments I've ever seen.

Doing a little experimentation...

The AWA Title tournament has been a success so far, with a lot of interesting matches. Shawn Michaels seems poised for a breakout year, although he would need to beat a lot of legends and big names to reach the mountain top.

I'm loving how you are running WWF so far. Everything feels fresh and exciting. Ric Flair vs Dynamite Kid sounds like a dream match. That probably would have been great in real life if both wrestlers were healthy.

Very well said, @GOTNW. Inoki moved up a few places on my ballot over the past few months. He's right outside of the top 10 now. He had a very remarkable in-ring career for the reasons you just laid out. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Wrestler Eligibility: Wrestlers must wrestle a minimum of 10 matches in a year in either the United States or Canada according to wrestlingdata.com. or cagematch.com. Wrestlers who do not meet that requirement in the year we are currently in or any future year will be considered retired. Rookies will be eligible in the year they debut. It depends on how people want to interpret this. Rey did wrestle in a US show in 1992 according to Cagematch, so technically, he meets the criteria set by the last sentence. But he didn't wrestle 10 shows in the US until 1993/1994, as he was largely doing AAA shows in Mexico in 1992, and they didn't start expanding to the US until 1993/1994.

I think as long as they have a thread and are listed in the nominees list, they should count

I think Sid and Paul E. have started the year strong for WCW. Looking forward to Superbrawl. Sid vs Sting should be a blockbuster match

Looks good to me at first glance. The only thing I would add is that 1994 would probably be more appropriate for Matt Hardy, since that was when he was actually wrestling for other promotions besides his own backyard thing he was doing with his brother.

Nice to have SMW in our game world. I think you will get a very consistent and quality product going with Steve Austin being one of your major players, along with the usual characters we would come to expect for this territory. Can't wait to read more.

I know people scoff at the idea that NJPW is an AEW development territory, basically, but when NJPW makes decisions like this, it's hard to ignore it. Putting the rocket on Newman's back and then immediately having him do a big program for AEW at Wembley is just too blatant. Another possibility is that they are doing all this as a favor for Ospreay, which is just even more stupid.

NJPW hasn't learned its lesson, I guess. What a shitshow.

My revised current top 10: 1. Bret Hart 2. Volk Han 3. Blue Panther 4. Akira Maeda 5. Kiyoshi Tamura 6. Billy Robinson 7. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 8. Mitsuharu Misawa 9. Kenta Kobashi 10. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka

I had intended to do a "Complete and Accurate" series for Volk Han, but real life got in the way, unfortunately. So I'll try to summarize my case for Volk Han here. He'll be my #2 vote in all likelihood, but he has a small chance to take the #1 spot when I submit my ballot. There are very few wrestlers who have the same awareness and "command" of the space in the ring that Volk Han did, especially right out of the gate. Anytime I watch a Volk Han match, I immediately notice two things. The first is how he never loses track of the flow of the match, and never gets "lost." He knows how to keep the crowd engaged and interested in the context of shoot style, and always seems to weave the match in ways that you don't expect immediately. Even if his career was limited to the RINGS style, this is a huge accomplishment for anyone in pro wrestling. It's a very rare gift. The second is how Han seems to manipulate space and create moments where you just have to wonder what you just witnessed. I can think of several moments here, including his debut with Maeda, where he pulls a flying armbar almost out of nowhere. Another example I can think of is his match against Andrei Ruminezei, where he does this incredibly sick combo that seems to defy the movement of time. There's also his matches with the likes of Tamura, Kohsaka, Nagai, and Yamamoto, where he does similar stuff. I know this sounds a bit hyperbolic, but I think there is something to how he can center the ring around him. He does not let the ring center him. The fact that he could maintain such a high consistency of quality matches throughout his career is remarkable. People will note that he only wrestled one match a month for most of his career, and only worked like ~65-70 matches or so. I don't think this critique makes much sense, and it seems to be centered in the American perspective where the real mettle that is valued comes from being able to work a similar number of matches in a month, or even a week, due to the old territory structure or the demands of television wrestling. This is very short-sighted, because regardless of the number of matches you work in a given timeframe, being able to put on a good match for almost every match of your career is a very high demand, especially in the context of the physical toll of shoot-style. Even when Han lost his explosiveness after 1997 or so, he was still able to work very good Pancrase-esque matches with the likes of Kanehara and Grom Zaza. He wasn't good just because of his athleticism and his ability to do certain spots; he was good because he could work a match that wasn't centered around those things. In a way, he's similar to a baseball player who had a short career but an extremely high WAR or batting average. Think Sandy Koufax or Shoeless Joe Jackson. Looking at my Cagematch ratings for Han (not entirely complete, but still a good pool of ratings), he only had two matches ranked below a 6.0 (both against Hans Nijman). Of course, that is a subjective measure (most of this is admittedly, but I like to believe insane talent is hard to deny), but Han is also ranked in the top 15 of Cagematch's rankings at the moment if you factor in rating regardless of the total amount of the votes. The "it factor" with wrestlers gets talked about a lot, and Han had it from the very beginning. When he made his debut against Maeda, the crowd seemingly knew he would be a huge star right out of the gate. "Aura" gets overused a lot these days, but he had it. The way RINGS promoted him, as a somewhat mysterious Soviet Commando badass, was genius. SAMBO was almost unheard of in a pro wrestling context at the time, and I think Han immediately changed how shoot-style would evolve from the moment he debuted. People were not doing the things he did. If the GWE is a vote based purely on in-ring work, I think Han deserves serious consideration for a spot on any ballot, especially in the top 20-30 range. Again, subjectivity comes into play here, because people have to adjust to shoot-style and the RINGS style in particular, but I can't imagine not seeing Han's magisterial work in the ring once you adjust to it. (This post might be edited as I add more thoughts, but this is my opening argument for now)

FWIW, I 100% agree with you

News & Notes (3/30-4/3/1991) Lou Thesz has reportedly returned to Japan following his scouting trip during the NCAA Wrestling Championships, which were held from 3/14 to 3/16. Thesz also made visits to several US wrestling events afterward, which were being held to help determine qualifiers for the 1991 World Championships to be held later this year. Thesz met with UWF officials to discuss his findings. Reportedly, Thesz was very excited about some of the leads he gathered. Sources close to UWF are keeping very mum about details, apparently out of fear that US promotions could hamper their recruitment efforts. (Wrestling Observer, 4/2/1991) Some sources have speculated that UWF could be targeting several names from an increasingly dynamic generation of American amateur wrestlers. Lou Thesz is still a widely respected name in amateur circles, and with the success of Duane and Dennis Koslowski in the UWF, UWF officials apparently hoped they could find receptive ears. However, one source seemed skeptical that the UWF would see much success in recruiting anyone with the Olympics coming up. Despite the success of the Koslowskis, which hasn't gone unnoticed in American wrestling circles, most young American amateur wrestlers want to chase their dreams in the Olympics, and a transition to pro wrestling straight out of college is very rare. (Wrestling Observer, 4/2/1991) With the help of Akira Maeda's connections in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, UWF has reportedly signed Zaza Tkeshelashvili. Zaza apparently impressed during a trial held for potential prospects. Zaza has a background in both amateur wrestling and SAMBO, and some have compared him to a more raw version of Volk Han. (Tokyo Sports, 4/1/1991) Oleg Taktarov, despite controversy during his match in the Netherlands in February, will be making an appearance this month for the next UWF event in Hiroshima. Taktarov reportedly apologized to UWF officials, and members of the UWF Soviet camp pushed for the avoidance of any sanctions. Despite the controversy, Taktarov is seen as a great talent for the future. (Baseball Magazine, 4/2/1991) Akira Maeda has accepted a challenge from Maurice Smith for a match this month in Hiroshima. Maurice Smith scored a big win over Peter Smit in a kickboxing event held in Tokyo, and fans have been clamoring for a match between the two striking specialists since. It will reportedly be a title match. (Weekly Pro Wrestling, 4/3/1991)

Dan Severn Oh wait....