elliott

I actually do intend on watching that one. I've only seen her first WM tag match but that was enough to tell me I need to watch all the Ronda matches

I watched the Trish match and it sort of convinced me I don't need to spend much time on Charlotte compared to some of the other modern female candidates. I don't follow the modern product or the discussion around it well enough to know the rhetoric surrounding Charlotte, but my impression based on her NXT & first couple of main roster years was that she was a great natural athlete who didn't have the instincts or charisma of Sasha. She could easily become a great wrestler & star but it would be because of her natural athleticism and not necessarily her charisma. But in this match Charlotte (likely at the direction of WWE) was really leaning into the acting & character work aspect of wrestling and it falls super flat for me. This match has a lot of her standing chin up arms raised and it doesn't really feel earned to me. It feels really manufactured and thought out. "I'll look like a star if I do this." When she's in against someone like Trish who is naturally super charismatic, it really doesn't work for me. I want to see Charlotte more as a wrestling machine who overwhelms people as a superior athlete rather than someone leaning into her character work and acting because her shit talking and posing routine has yet to connect with me.

I watched the Charlotte match and thought it was really good and pretty interesting. It sort of convinced me of two things, one is that I need to run through some old 3 minute Trish matches again at some point because she's really good. The other is that I don't think Charlotte will be a candidate for my list. I'll save my CHarlotte thoughts for her thread. Trish is really good here. One thing that has always stood out about Trish, is that she feels like a star. She has a natural charisma that only a handful of other wrestlers from her era can match. And that comes across here effortlessly. But they don't lean into that as much as you'd think. Charlotte gets all of the manufactured "Star moments" in the match. Trish is just over because people naturally like her. They make this a showcase for Trish the worker. She gets to do a lot of flashy armdrags and ranas. Classic babyface stuff. If you go back through her career as I recall you'll see a lot of this stuff in her older matches, but she usually would only get to do one spot per match. Nothing would get to really breathe because she would only get a couple of minutes so it would be easy to forget about that HUGE bump she took or the nifty spot. Here she gets to basically show all of her stuff and have a real match. Its awesome and I'm glad she got this opportunity.

She really stands out in tags because she's such a great athlete and bumps like a complete lunatic. Singles matches is more hit or miss but if she's in with a veteran like Kaoru Ito or Mariko Yoshida, she can have a really excellent match because she has some really great tools they can work with. Just repetitive offensively which is easier to hide in tags. That moonsault off the cage during the 11/23/00 match is one of the holy shit spots of the era though. Would have been better if her longest singles matches were 20 minutes instead of 30-60 minutes

I was pretty happy when I looked at my 2016 list and saw I voted for Heenan. 96th overall. The more I think about it and rewatch footage, the more I think of him as like a top 26 candidate. He's the greatest "non wrestler" wrestler ever. The greatest "cowardly" wrestler ever. The greatest comedy wrestler ever. One of the all time bumpers and bleeders. When he goes on offense he can be pathetic and ineffectual or he can be vicious enough to show he probably would have been awesome if he was just a normal heel wrestler. Understood how to control a crowd as well as anyone you'll ever see. His presence in a match makes it feel bigger and more important than it might otherwise. Another one of those people I really want to focus on because for what he brought to the table (which was a ton) he was about as good as it gets.

@Makai Club #1 said elsewhere I was really surprised by this because if you asked me to name people who had a lot of all time great matches, Hansen is someone I think of almost immediately. The Andre match, multiple matches against Colon, multiple against Kobashi, multiple matches against Terry Funk, numerous tag matches. He also has a ton of "great" matches that aren't necessarily all time great matches but are still awesome. Anyway. Working #2 is awesome no matter how he got there He's definitely challenging for my #2 as well.

I think Satomura is probably closer to the #1 candidate as discussed on the launch pod than not making the list. She was really good right away, kept getting better and from what I can tell seems to have stayed that way the whole time. Definitely someone who deserves a serious look.

The Bloody Forgotten worker from the lost era of Joshi. I remembered being a big fan back in 00-02 when I was keeping up with the Joshi scene and watched a few matches recently and was happy to find that my memory of an awesome worker looks to be true. She's a crazy good athlete and a wicked bumper with a real charisma. Was great in garbagy brawls but could work the mat and throw out bombs with the best of them. Someone pretty high on my list of people to dive into for this project. On the short list for coolest name in wrestling history, but makes it impossible to search for her matches hahahaha! The BLoody vs SUmie Sakai (Jd' - 4/29/01) The Bloody & Fang Suzuki vs Sumi Sakai & Hiroyo Muto (Jd' - 7/6/01) The Bloody vs Yoshiko Tamura (NEO - 9/20/04)

I watched a ton of Trish matches at Stacey's recommendation a few years ago and honestly the case is there to be made as I recall its just about taking the time to watch the matches. Queen of the 2 minute match.

Thanks yall! Great starting point! I never watch modern stuff anymore but I actually did watch WRestleMania 36 with my non-fan roommate and we both loved the Rhea Ripley match

In the CHarlotte Flair thread I asked for recommendations and 2 people immediately mentioned a match against Trish. What's the Trish comeback like now that women are treated seriously? How do people view Trish's candidacy now?

The Hell in a Cell vs Sasha and the Falls COunt Anywhere vs Sasha are two of my all time favorite matches. Would love some more recent recommendations.

I was going to nominate her but JML beat me to it. I've watched a few of her early career matches recently and I was really impressed. I forgot how polished she was right out of the gate. I look forward to revisiting more of her early work and checking out her later work as well. Would love some recommendations of her later work.

Honestly I've thought more about this a lot since nominating him and watched the Jimmy Hart match again, the boxer vs wrestler match again and a few interviews and I could see myself putting him way higher than 100. He was too good.

I'd be really surprised if Baba didnt make my top 20. One of the smartest wrestlers ever. You want classic title matches? You want bloody brawls? You want short sprints? You want tag matches? You want spectacles? You want genius psychology? You want it spread across decades against an enormous variety of opponents? Giant Baba is your wrestler.

I absolutely loved The Assassin on the Portland set. Awesome as just kind of the standard masked heel mixing super solid work with all the fun hidden object in the mask stuff you'd expect from a masked territory worker. Its funny to see Dylan's original post 6 years ago calling him out a @Matt D possibility because I was wondering what Matt thought of that Portland run. I actually kinda want to look around at his other stuff. I don't think he's really a viable candidate, but he's the sort of fun forgotten worker this project encourages us to take a look at. And you never know. That Portland run is great.

GWE 2036: This TIme Its Not Personal

Growing up we'd always hear about Piper as this awesome heel against Hogan in WWF. But I've always found him to be a tremendous babyface worker. The Valentine matches are transcendent. His babyface run in Portland stands out as one of Buddy Rose' best rivalries (and ROse had like 100 great rivalries). I love the mid 80s WWF heel run. Then I love the WWF babyface run in late 80s early 90s. There's a good like 10-12 year stretch where Piper is consistently awesome. Would've loved to see him in PR going against Invader or Memphis against Lawler.

Who are the people on your 2016 Top 100 you don't anticipate voting for this time around. Who are some folks you're now considering?

Do you think you'd still have him in your top 10?

What do folks think about Andre this time around?

My recs would be to watch and think about other wrestlers because Piper isn't for you.

Tenryu is the first that comes to mind for me. He gets you to basically everyone in Japan except for Maeda and Rikidozan.

Other than the Nagurski match, what should I prioritize for Londos?

Looking forward to this series, Loss. How do you see these years impacting the GWE cases for the wrestlers you've mentioned? For example, I watched a ton of Roddy Piper from 84-86 over the last few years and I was really impressed with his consistent ability to churn out really good entertaining matches. He doesn't have anything on the level of the Valentine feud from Crockett, but there's just a ton of enjoyable, good, very good matches with great character work. I never thought of Rock n Wrestling era Piper as a down period for him for obvious reasons, but I didn't expect the in-ring work to be as consistently good as it was but after watching a bunch of it, I actually think it really helps his case even if there's no all time great matches the way we usually think about them. YOu could really say the same thing about all of these guys you've mentioned from what I've seen. When I first came online in the late 90s, you'd always hear people make fun of the Rock and Wrestling era for how bad it was, but there's a bunch of really good wrestling from that era from those names you mentioned.