goodhelmet

I think one of the biggest problems people have with HBK is his blatant unprofessionalism in many of his high profile matches. You have the over-selling and promo after the Hogan match. There were the tantrums thrown mid-match in Bulldog and Vader PPV matches. The unwillingness to drop a belt almost at anytime in his career. Personally, I think the one area where the in-ring work may have been in HBK's favor over Bret was in the tag team dept. as I have enjoyed more Rockers matches than Hart Foundation matches. As for Eddie, I am currently working on a 30+ disc comp of his career that will highlight his stuff from Mexico, Japan, the CW's up until the end of his life. From what I have seen, I think it will be sufficient proof that Eddie was pretty great for well over a decade and was far more consistent than many other great wrestlers.

But number 6 in the greatest wrestler of all time, i must have been watching a different Eddie than you. Yes he was awesome. Top 50 To top 30 easy, top 20 maybe, top 10 no way. Mr rage Just for shits and giggles, who is in your Top 10?

Eddie was awesome for well over a decade.... in different environments and fighting different styles. Eddie rules.

I have no idea. It might even be 8 wrestlers added since Butch Reed was not in the Top 100 but was in my Top 50 at the time. I would have to go through my list, compare it to the Top 100 and find out who was not included and I don't really care that much to go through the trouble.

That wasn't my point. My point was that it is easy to eliminate over a dozen wrestlers or more with just one person's ballot. Not really... this poll wasn't about the best... for as many people who thought about the best or the greatest, for a ton of people, it was about their favorites. From the Top 100 here are 43 wrestlers I would not vote for for a variety of reasons. 31. Mayumi Ozaki - Haven't seen enough 33. Hiroshi Hase - Haven't seen enough great matches or great moments 35. Devil Masami - Haven't seen enough 39. Chigusa Nagayo - Haven't seen enough 42. Volk Han - Haven't seen enough 59. Mariko Yoshida - Haven't seen enough 60. Dynamite Kansai - Haven't seen enough 63. Kiyoshi Tamura - Haven't seen enough 66. Kazuo Yamazaki - Haven't seen enough 73. Lioness Asuka - Haven't seen enough 79. Dump Matsumoto - Haven't seen enough 81. Mark Rocco - Haven't seen enough 82. Lou Thesz - Haven't seen enough 89. Satanico - Haven't seen enough 91. Toshiyo Yamada - Haven't seen enough 97. Naoki Sano - Haven't seen enough 69. Dory Funk Jr. - The more I see, the less I am impressed despite reputation What I define as greatness, obviously a different definition and list of criteria from your definition, I would not include these guys on my list. 45. Curt Hennig 46. Shawn Michaels 50. Jun Akiyama 53. Keiji Muto 54. Steven Regal 61. Akira Maeda 62. Ultimo Dragon 65. Kyoko Inoue 68. Tiger Mask 70. Mick Foley 72. Masahiro Chono 74. El Samurai 77. Shiro Koshinaka 80. Kurt Angle 83. The Great Sasuke 84. Chris Jericho 85. Rick Rude 86. Hulk Hogan 87. Taka Michinoku 88. Brian Pillman 90. Dean Malenko 92. Psicosis 95. Dan Kroffat 96. Rick Martel 98. Dick Togo 99. Stg. Slaughter 100. Riki Choshu So, since last year (or whenever we did the list) I have added 7 wrestlers that I would put in the great column. They may have already been there but I chose to do 50 wrestlers and may have left them off. They may be guys I have rediscovered over the last year and have risen in my eyes.

Actually, I am reacting to the fact that the Top 100 crowd is harping on the Top 50 crowd.

"Great" is kind of a vague term. I imagine I could have the same opinion of The Big Boss Man as another guy, and I would call him "great" and he wouldn't, just because of different standards we have for using the term. And realistically, this is going to be more apparent when judging something like pro wrestlers, where the art is much lower and the scope (that we have available on tape, anyway) is much smaller than in film or music or something like that. True, but my feeling was that people were focusing at times too much on the word "great" and turning it into a semantics argument during the time of the poll. My definition of great is a wrestler who has had a sustained period in their career (at least a year, and the longer the better) where the majority of their stuff was worth watching for the right reasons. The longer that time frame, the more stuff worth watching, the more they made better those around them, and the more favorable they look compared to their peers, the better. If you raise the bar further than that, there aren't really more than a dozen or so great wrestlers -- Flair, Jumbo, Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, Santo, Casas, Liger, Benoit, Guerrero, Funk, Brisco, Lawler and then the list starts to peter out. I think the fact that only two wrestlers appeared on every ballot only strengthens my point. It is a semantics argument. The very definition of the word great for an individual determines how thier ballot is shaped. Your definition that you just gave was at least one year of great in-ring work. I think that is criminally short in determining if a guy was great. It just means he had a great year. Lex Luger is the perfect example. Also, I don't understand how only two wrestlers appearing on every ballot strengthens your argument. If 100 people submit a ballot, 5 contrarian voices can wipe out a ton of wrestlers.

I had Backlund-Adonis in my Top 3. I haven't watched it in about a year but I think I would probably vote for it just as high. The other WWF match (that will be included on the errata set) is the Backlund-Patera May 1980 match. Again, I have not watched it in over a year but I think that would rate high also if given the chance.

I was one of those people, and it wasn't the entire history of pro wrestling, it was televised wrestling if you want to be specific even though alot of people included wrestlers from the pre-taped era. Also, it came down to a point of wrestlers you have seen, not just ones you heard were great. It is also a definition of great. THere are tons of wrestlers I wouldn't call great even if they had great matches. I stand by everything I said then.

Does anyone else appreciate the irony that if TNA had this very same match on the next Impact, people would be absolutely screaming at what an overbooked mess it was? Granted, if TNA did it the quality of the people involved would be vastly different, but still. Yeah, what Tom said. TNA doesn't have the patience or the booking capable of pulling something like this off. For those who picked up my Mid South set or Ted Dibiase set, you see how this plays out over a 6 month period (and the feud was actually going on for a year and a half at this point). I wrote a recap of this match how going in, I thought it was the most absurd match ever but it came out as my favorite match of the 80s and will be #1 on my Mid South ballot. Something in TNA would go like this... Week 1- Kurt Angle comes out in a tuxedo with his wife. Smaoa Joe insults him. Backstage, Kurt Angle brings out a Coal Miners Glove and lays him out. Later on in the show, Joe challenges Angle to a match. Match happens at the end of the show. Midway through the match, Tenay mentions offhand that this is a pink slip on a pole, cage match. Joe wins the match, Tenay screams how we will never see Angle in a TNA ring again. Week 2- Joe does an interview and never mentions Angle. Announcer's never reference last week's match. Week 3- Kurt Angle comes out and attacks some random jobber. Tenay and West scream at how Angle is BACK... after a week off.

Any wrestler from any era can compared to each other. I think there is enough Jumbo captured on film and enough people who have seen him live to make a fair comparison between him and Flair. The same goes for comparing Santo to Kurt Angle or DK to Benoit or Bryan Danielson to Fit Finlay or whatever you want to use. I really feel uncomfortable comparing guys like Lou Thesz to modern wrestlers because of the lack of footage but not someone like Jumbo.

As a history/govt. teacher, that was the craziest, coolest post I have ever read.

Fuck, watching hundreds of Mid South and NWA matches from the 80s for the DVDVR project have really opened my eyes to how great Flair was at his mid-80s peak.

1. How big of a WCW fan were you during the company's actual run? - Pretty huge during the NWO run. It single handedly revived my interest in wrestling. 2. Are you a bigger fan of WCW now or then? - Both actually... I was a huge fan from 96-98. I am now a huge fan of the earlier years as well now even though I did not see it when it happened. 3. Best Year/Period for WCW - Kip Frye era/ Dangerous Alliance era 4. Best World Heavyweight Title run - Shit, maybe Vader's run? 5. Best United States Championship run Um... 6. Best Tag Team Championship run - The most memorable was probably the Outsiders but I think the DA had the best teams. 7. Best Television Championship run - Austin had some kickass runs. Booker T-Benoit-Finlay-Martel-Saturn was fun. Regal was awesome. 8. Best Cruiserweight Championship run - Jericho in 1998 9. Best feud - Jericho-Malenko off the top of my head. 10. Most Underrated Feud - Um.. .see above? 11. Best Angle or Storyline - early stages of nWo 12. Most Underrated Angle or Storyline - I have no idea 13. Best Booker - Who knows? 14. Wrestler who had the most surprising run - Bret Hart... in that I was surprised athow mediocre it ended up being. 15. A worker they could have done more with - Eddie of course. 16. The worker who's most synonymous with WCW for you - Rey Mysterio 17. The point where Flair got old - 1994 18. Best Face - Goldberg 19. Best Heel - Chris Jericho 20. Most Underrated Face 21. Most Underrated Heel- No idea 22. The worker who was most effective whether they were heel or face - Randy Savage 23. A worker who turned (heel or face) too many times - Randy Savage 24. Favourite Commentating Pairing - Dusty Rhodes and anyone. 25. Lasting Memory of WCW - Good: Jericho introducing cruiser battle royal - Bad: Fall Brawl 1998

I don't think so. I think he probably legitimately believes that it is the greatest wrestling he has ever seen. The same way people insist that HBK-Angle from Wrestlemania was a ****+ classic.

I think the problem is (and I get along with jdw) that sometimes you are known for only pointing out the flaws of a wrestler ad nauseum but you have to look long and hard to find praise.

Right now, we are in the early stages of hunting for and collecting as much Memphis footage as humanly possible for the DVDVR 80s project. I imagine that if Lawler-Dundee have a match that is near complete on tape then we will find it. Give us a few months.

Yeah, after Benoit, I agree with everything here.

Dude, that reminds me of when the bell hammer found its way into the Manny Fernandez-Abdullah the Butcher Anything Goes-Sombrero on a Pole Match from Starrcade. I am waiting for Couture to pull that out of his hat.

Yeah, after Benoit, I agree with everything here.

That was fucking awesome.