elliott

Well that gets us to the core question that we have got to address: Should this Hall of Fame be a place for revisionism to happen? Yes or No? Quite simply, I'm hoping more for "reality" than "revisionism." So sure its a place where revisionism can happen if revisionism is necessary.

I actually really like this as a broad general criteria for everything. This is pretty much how I view "importance/historical value" section and hope that will be the way the matches are discussed. Also in regards to this: I would just say that looking at the ballot, there's one "hidden gem" match like that in the Critically Acclaimed section, one match that isn't really important, and all the rest are main events or major matches that happen to be amazing in ring matches. Not to come across overly defensive and keep coming back to these few points, but I do think its important to keep in mind these facts: We're starting from scratch. Meaning no matches are already in. We're covering the entire history of wrestling in the world. We wanted to keep a "small ballot" so as not to overwhelm voters with nominees. This sort of context is important. Yes we want the Critically Acclaimed Section to be a place where matches of little to no-historic value but are simply "great" would get a shot at the ballot. But the reality of starting from nothing and having so many matches means that section will also be full of main events. However (speaking for Grimmas & Truth), we wanted to allow for the possibility of a Big Japan Death Match to be compared to Bock/Hennig at some point in the future. That isn't the current reality for many reasons. However, if people begin championing a Big Japan Death Match, we wanted to make sure it wasn't automatically disqualified for not being a "big enough match." This is again speaking for Grimmas & Truth, but I think we'd all agree that this first year is very much an experimental year. We have no idea how people will vote & how many matches will get in. This will really set the groundwork for how we move forward in future years. Again with a "smaller" ballot the reality is every single match is a slam dunk pick. With a number (hopefully like 5 or more) of no-brainers going in the first year, results to look at, continued discussions like these and discussions on the nominees themselves will give us a better sense not only of voter patterns but of voter hopes for the overall project. We're not only open to format changes going forward, we're expecting it. Maybe the "non-taped" matches section gets little to no attention and we have to shift that to a Veterans Committee (FIat by Experts essentially for folks not familiar with the Baseball HOF) (Sidenote, my real hope is that section will drive discussion of stuff we don't normally talk about at PWO). Maybe we decide after a few years of voting that regional or by decade is the way to re-format. Who knows. But I think the more information/discussion there is, the better chance we'll have at figuring out the right format as time moves forward. I hope that makes sense. Its late/early.

I get what you're saying. I do. But a Pro Wrestling Matches Hall of Fame that doesn't include Hogan vs Andre on the first ballot is just wrong.

Part of the WON HOF discussion isn't about whether Steve Williams is Japanese. If it is this colors that process in an entirely new way. In the WON people are grouped with others that are similar in order to get fair comparisons. What the person decides make a HOFer is up to the voter. This system is the same, just instead of area it's just category A and B. If we removed the titles to the regions and just said this is region A and this is region B would that work? I think I can offer a little bit more clarity on this. It goes back to something I referenced above and something Loss agreed with when he wrote "in many cases, the two ideas just cannot be separated." I think Muto/Chono from the G-1 Climax is one of the best examples to use. It was unquestionably a historically significant match. It was the finals of the first G-1 which was wildly successful at the time and still happening 26 years later. Its the tournament/match that firmly solidified the 3 Musketeers Generation in the eyes of the fans. Shit, it was over a year before the first Misawa/Kawada Triple Crown match. Etc etc etc. Its a major match no matter which way you slice it. A major part of why that overall tournament and especially that specific match were so successful at the time was because of how incredibly great it was as a match. What happens if they go out and lay an egg in that match? What happens if they have a merely average match? Its impossible to say for sure, because they went out and had one of the best matches in the history of the company (wrestling). The historical significance/importance of that match is directly tied to it being a "Critically Acclaimed/Artistically Brilliant/5 Star Match. You can separate the ring work from the historical significance and discuss Muto vs Chono. You can't discuss the historical significance of it while ignoring/separating out the ring work. Does that make sense? The whole point of the Critically Acclaimed/Artistically Brilliant/Workrate/In Ring Quality category (in my mind) is to strip away all the extra stuff from Muto/Chono and compare it directly to Satanico/Cochise from an in-ring only perspective. I think that's a more interesting conversation than "Well, both matches were great, but Muto vs Chono has all of this other stuff going for it, so I vote for that" and more in the spirit of the footage based foundation of PWO.

Its interesting that you feel that way about Kobashi/Kikuchi vs Can Ams. I actually think you would be an outlier in this sense. I think back to last year's WON HOF thread where I tried to get people to talk about Daniel Bryan's case outside of his in ring work. People kinda refused to engage because "HE's THIS GOOD AND THEREFORE SHOULD MAKE IT! IN RING IS ENOUGH! ITS ONE OF THE CRITERIA!!!" In terms of the WON HOF, I'm more on your side. I said in that same discussion that I wouldn't vote for Tamura for the WON HOF even though I think he's the best in ring Japanese wrestler ever. So I do get where your coming from, even while admitting your super high ranking of that match absolutely played a role in the existence of the Critically Acclaimed section. I just think its a tougher reality for a Pro Wrestling Matches HOF because there are so many matches, we're starting from scratch and we're not putting anything in by fiat. Each WON HOF has 1000s of matches to their name so its not an apples to apples comparison. Assuming we have a broad criteria, similar to the WON HOF, based on drawing, in ring quality, influence, etc, where all criteria are given equal weight, what does the first ballot look like? Could un-taped matches be nominated? If so, we would also have to nominate matches that have literally no importance but only "in ring work" as their defining HOF criteria. So what does that do to a "small ballot." Presumably we would want the ballot to reflect this sort of equality in the criteria. If the ballot doesn't reflect that, then (in a way) we're saying either one or the other (importance or in ring quality) is more important than the other. If we lumped all of the criteria into one bucket and tried to weigh things equally and honestly, then I think the ballot would most likely be almost entirely Ric Flair & All Japan matches. And that's no fun. In regards to viewing matches in a vacuum, and I suspect people won't like this, but that's kind of the point of the Critically Acclaimed/Artistic Quality/Workrate Category. I mean, take Gilbert Cesca vs Billy Cantanzaro. That has been universally praised by basically everyone since it appeared in our circles. Do we know much of anything about that specific match, those workers, or French Catch at all? It exists not completely in a vacuum, but pretty damn close. Should it be disqualified from nomination? What about something like El Santo vs Black Shadow? We know its a major match and important and "HOF worthy." But nobody could speak to the quality of the match. How do you compare those matches? I think a Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame would be silly without stuff like Santo/Black Shadow or Gotch/Hack. But at the same time, I think in a community like ours that is so footage & match quality based, a "Pro Wrestling Matches" Hall of Fame would seem totally bizarre if an El Dandy or Fujiwara or Buddy Rose match was never even nominated for the ballot. When the ballot gets released, there will be Critically Acclaimed Matches in the "Historical Significance" section and historically significant matches in the "Critically Acclaimed" section.

The Mooch is Ultimate Warrior in WCW. When Donald Hogan looks in the mirror he sees The Warrior/The Mooch. Because his brain broke. And its been such a disaster so quickly, even for this administration/that company, the plug will end up getting pulled quickly. Its just a matter of how many people get taken out by Mooch's trap door.

CapitalTTruth is way smarter than me and did a beautiful job summing things up here. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28549-pro-wrestling-matches-hall-of-fame/?p=5808485 But I figured I'd share a few of the posts I made while arguing in favor of having a separate section for match quality. I knew that was going to be the biggest point of contention with the ballot at the same time I was taking the devil's advocate position in favor of them. A few things to keep in mind for context before getting into the posts which I'll spoiler as usual because its typical long-winded Elliott: It may not look like it, but in many ways we used the WON HOF as a guideline. We tried to learn from some of the bigger mistakes on the WON ballot, while acknowledging there will be mistakes with our ballot & process both foreseen & unforeseen. That is why we want to model the WON HOF in that we are totally open to reformatting and making rule changes as the years progress. A few other things we learned from the WON HOF, is we wanted a longer period of time in-between matches taking place and matches becoming eligible for the ballot. I feel like this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it is the WON HOF anyway, but we decided to play it safe & go with 25 years. We also didn't want to put every single feasible candidate in by fiat in year. Perhaps that was a mistake because there are SO many matches. But we wanted to start this from scratch which led us to having a "small ballot." That was important to us. Since we're starting from zero, if we put out a 100 match ballot then the chances of anything actually getting voted in would be small with votes spread so thin with 100 "no brainer" candidates. So that's just a little context in terms of the things we were thinking about when putting a ballot together. Anyway, as I said before, I wanted to share some of the posts I made arguing in favor of an artistic quality section. Note, this first one was written very early in the process before we decided on the 25 year Rule. We first talked about 20 years And the thread I reference in it is this one http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/36653-most-important-matches-in-history/ : Grimmas didn't really like this idea and so we tabled it. When Truth joined the process he said something that made me share it with him. Truth liked the idea and Grimmas still wasn't in favor of it. Grimmas voiced concerns that Artistic Quality was as important as Drawing Influence Whatever. He was afraid that separating them out would downgrade the importance of match quality. So he MADE me write this Grimmas wondered if what I was arguing for was to completely remove quality from the importance/drawing section and my answer was "no, not really." I used Keiji Muto vs Masa Chono from the 1991 G-1 Climax as an example: I'll just share one more thing. Grimmas, rightfully, took issue with my example of Waltman vs Lynn Global matches. My response to that expands on my rationale a little further: We proceeded to go back and forth arguing some smaller points here and there before agreeing to run with it. So, I actually think that the way we set things up is actually going to make Loss' desire to compare a Big Japan Death Match to Bock vs Hennig a potential reality. If we lumped everything into one bucket, a Big Japan death match would never even make the ballot until we were all long dead. I also anticipate the ballot evolving as we go forward. This first year is really laying the ground work with everything nominated being a total no-brainer if you look at it using the WON HOF standard.

Trish's bumps remind me of that bizarre Meltzer talking point about Bruiser Brody. How he'd spend the whole match throwing worked strikes and then in the middle out of nowhere he'd kick somebody in the chest legit to "bring the fans back into the match." Presumably because Brody matches were terrible and couldn't keep the fans interest? I dunno. It was always a weird talking point Meltzer first brought up like 20 years after Brody had died. And. You know. We can't point to a single example of that happening. Nor does it really make sense as a positive trait. Anyway, it does kinda remind me of Trish's death bumps that she would do in 3 minute long match designed for the crowd to not take seriously. That was something she could do to draw people's attention in a way that went beyond "TITS! YEAAAAAAHHHH!" Also in regards to this... You're just not going to get anything that compares to the best stuff of this era of Women's Wrestling. It just didn't happen. But that's all about opportunity. Ric Flair or El Hijo del Santo couldn't have a "great match" in 1:25 against Torrie Wilson. That's just not something that's feasible. So Trish's case isn't going to be about "look at these hidden gem MOTYC's that we found! Holy Crap!" Her case is more like Buddy Rose's than Mitsuharu Misawa's. You gotta watch everything. However, I have no doubt if she came back on RAW tomorrow and was getting thrown into 15 minute matches with Sasha or Becky or Charlotte, that Trish would be more than capable of holding up her end.

I agree. Get it going again! http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/forum/357-microscope-match-of-the-week/

If he wasn't such an obvious heel, I'd use today to compare Trump to Sting as a stupid babyface. Two years ago his new press secretary, Anthony Scaramucci, who once complained about Obama picking on poor widdle ol hedge fund managers, called Trump "anti American" and a "hack politician" who "would probably make Elizabeth Warren his VP nomination" and would be "president of the bully association." Today he called Trump a "genuinely wonderful human being" with "good karma." Which made me have to look up the words "genuinely, wonderful, human being, good and karma" to make sure I haven't been using them incorrectly my entire life. I know when I was first learning to talk my older sister would do things like point at a table and say "kitty." But I thought I was past the point of not knowing the simple words. I smell burning toast.

First I wanted to say I loved the podcast yall did with Glenn running down the WWE women. I really need to give Asuka a fair look from the sound of things. Thus far, I've got Sasha, Becky, Trish, Charlotte, Bayley locked in. Depending on what my list looks like as we get closer to the due date, I could see putting the Jumping Bomb Angels at 99 & 100. I promised MattD I would give Judy Martin an honest look as well so I still need to do that. I have Moolah ranked right below Kane and Kevin Owens as the worst wrestlers in company history. I'm currently watching every Trish Stratus match in preparation for a Mega Trish show Stacey and I are gonna do. Stacey's talking point about Trish being an all time great bumper is a real thing. Its kind of hard to compare her to someone like Kobashi or Misawa who would take a million neck breaking bumps in a match. Trish would only get her 2-5 minutes and couldn't cram in the quantity of bumps in like those guys. But the big bumps she took were completely fucking insane. Tons of bumps off powerbombs and moves like that where she's taking a Misawa level bump. Stuff where she bumps from the top rope to the floor and lands on her face. Etc etc. Its really kinda ridiculous. If I knew how to edit and make videos I'd absolutely make a "Trish kills herself" montage on youtube. But here are some examples Stacey shared that really made me go back and start watching these matches to see if Trish really belonged on the list: 6min in: http://www.dailymoti...m/video/x3datng (I'm pretty sure this is actually her last match because surely she died after that bump) 6min 30sec in: http://www.dailymoti...m/video/x550nfh 4min 20sec in: 3min 15 sec in: http://www.dailymoti...m/video/x473sln

That's the knee jerk...but its too simple. I'm rooting for the real world equivalent of the Cersei Lannister Walk of Shame, personally. Whatever that is. It gets my vote.

Kerry also introduced Gorky Park that one time so there's the Russia connection

I don't like it because the Von Erich's had great matches. But I kinda like it because that makes the next logical step that the Dems are the Freebirds. Michael Hayes is Bernie Sanders?

I'm loving these shows. Great to hear Will again. Will and Sorrow are a delight together and Steve has been great as well. Can't wait for the next show! Now. Moving on. I was wondering if Will (or anyone who will rank him highly) could address something I've been kind of struggling with in regards to Steamboat. When I first heard about the project and was thinking about nominees, Steamboat was absolutely someone I thought about as a top 10 sort of pick. But when I added in all the years the nominees were in the WWE it got me thinking about him a little more. Then I looked a little deeper at his run looking at cagematch... Ricky Steamboat first appeared on an MSG card in 1980 teaming with Jay Youngblood against Bulldog Bower & Tor Kamata. He doesn't come back until March of 85, worked regularly until he had a month off in Nov-Dec 86 for the Savage feud. Then worked regularly up until Mania III. After Mania he took a month off during March & April. He was back working regularly from late April until mid June. Then he was gone for another 6 weeks. Then he came back for an MSG show and house show and then was gone from late July to late August. He came back for another MSG show and then left again until late September. Cagematch shows 7 matches from late September to late October and then nothing again until mid November. He then worked regularly from mid November through the end of the year. He appears to be gone most of January coming back towards the end of the month. He then worked regularly until WrestleMania IV on March 27th 1988. Cagematch shows he had 32 total matches in 1988, only 6 were televised. He then came back in early-mid March of 1991 and worked regularly until mid-late October. This period is often pointed to as his worst period by his biggest fans because he was in full-on Dragon Karate WWE Kids Era Mode. There just isn't a lot of meat there. Obviously the Savage feud is one of the best the company ever had. There's at least one really good Jake match and another one with Bret. But I'm not sure outside of the Savage feud if Steamboat has any WWF matches that would rank in his top 50 personal matches? Is this enough to make someone a lock for the top 15? Does his WWE career realistically compare favorably to someone like Matt Hardy's or Christian's? All of this said, I love Steamboat and he's a lock to make my list. I did a few extremely rough draft lists to get an idea where I was at, and getting to 100 WWE wrestlers was more difficult than I expected. So its not like I think its ridiculous that he's on the list. I just think top 15 is remarkably high for a guy who didn't spend much time there. Edit, I did forget about the tag match with Tito against the Dream Team. That's a great match, would likely be in Steamboat's top 50 matches on tape, and deserved a mention.

The moment it suits him. Or when he pardons him? "I pardon you from Treason and divorce you from my daughter. Happy and sad!" Although, I maintain Trump is Russo. Ivanka is Jeff Jarrett Don & Eric are the Harris Twins Jared is Lance Storm (Jared will trash him from a prison cell and Trump will be like "I gave him the biggest push of his career, no charisma, can't talk, SAD.")

They're all Sgt Slaughter from 1990-1991.

That was a really great show. All of the matches I was intrigued by either delivered or over delivered.

My feed crashed after the tag match so I'm a bit behind. Just finished up the Sasha/Bliss post match brawl. Another awesome match. Not as great as the tag but really really good. Can't wait for the rematch. They are a really fun matchup

I'm actually watching this show. First show I'll have watched live since Mania 2016. That tag match was awesome. Really enjoying the show so far.

Dick Togo came to mind as someone who might fit

Not at all Brad! Go for it

Matt encouraged me to post my ridiculous Bret Hart vs Sasha Banks breakdown I sent Jimmy Redman for both laughs and to Jedi Mind Trick her into voting Sasha above Bret. Then, I later realized it would probably irritate my buddy Matt D, so I sent it to him as well. He oversold it. It isn't 5000 words, but it is really long and really fun. This site has way too many Bret Hart threads, but I have a sort of renewed interest in thinking about him within the context of PTBN's GWWE because he's a knee jerk #1 or at worst top 5 candidate and he was my favorite guy growing up. But the more I thought about him, the more I didn't really view him as a #1 candidate. I expect I'll still rank him highly. I haven't formulated a list yet, but I'd be shocked if he wasn't in my top 20. He's got really strong case, but I also see it as flawed in some respects so he's an interesting guy to compare other people too. So, in our PM's discussing our podcast stuff, our conversations oftentimes get derailed and recently I asked Jimmy Redman who she would rank higher for the PTBN GWWE, Sasha or Bret. She noted that Sasha finished 98th on her GWE Ballot and Bret was in the 60s. But that ranking was based on Sasha's NXT work only and with her WWE work, Sasha obviously moves up the list so they'll probably end up close to each other. She finished with "my heart wants to rank her higher, obviously, but I doubt I'll go that far." That's kind of the answer I was hoping for to have some fun and run wild with a heavily biased Sasha vs Bret comparison and see if I could make a case to rank Sasha higher. I'll just post the unedited version (sorry Izzy, Pittsburgh, Canada, and Bret Hart). Re-reading it, there are some things I'd either re-word or elaborate on, but I was running out of steam at the end of this. I could probably stretch it out to 5000 words.

They aren't great matches, but the Sakuraba/Tamura matches are really fun. Those two would have had great matches if they were given more than 6 minutes.

He hasn't been mentioned, unless I missed it, but Buddy Rose 79-83 deserves a mention. This covers his feuds with Piper, Adonis, Rick Martel, Sheepherders, Jay Youngblood, Matt Borne, Curt Hennig, Bob Backlund, and Dynamite Kid. All of which are awesome with multiple great singles and tag matches. There are a ton of highpoints during this time period and very few lowpoints. Incredible week to week consistency. Another no-brainer pick is Jerry Lawler 1981-1985. You get: Jimmy Hart feud, Terry Funk Feud, Dutch Mantell Feud, Andy Kaufman Feud, Bockwinkel Feud, Savage Feud, Rude & Bundy Feud, multiple runs against Dundee that are the peak of the Lawler/Dundee matches. Add in one off matches like vs Blackwell, the Flair studio apperance/match, some of the greatest promos, angles, and moments in wrestling history. If I could add a 6th year, his 1986 just piles onto the magic with even more stuff with Dundee, Tommy Rich, the Bigelow match, the team with Dutch against Dundee & Landell. That run is completely absurd. Some oldies but goodies that I still love are: Akira Hokuto 92-94 Shinjiro Ohtani 95-97