elliott

But the best thing about Volk Han is that there's only ever been one Volk Han and only ever will be. I just wanted to separate that last line out because I fucking love it.

It would probably be better if they did more head drops.

I can already see the posts complaining about Savage being too high. I ranked him 41 myself, but fuck it, I love Randy Savage and he will always have a place in my top 5 "favorites." I still like the list and I've been pleasantly surprised way way way more than disappointed with any of these rankings.

And he's better than Lance Storm. Only because he worked 3/4th legit.

I thought about picking Bret's 97 instead of 94. Its definitely his best all around year counting promos/angles and what not. I kind of figured most people would look at 94 as his best in ring year. Can we challenge Dylan to do 94 based on in-ring and 97 based on "all around?"

I'd like to respectfully request the "100 In-Ring Years Greater than Bret Hart's 1994" thread

Wouldn't change anything for me. I've tried to avoid "What If's" throughout the course of this, but now that it is winding down, and Bret is going to rank at least 50 spots higher than where I had him ranked, for me the big "WHat If" with Bret is simply "What if he just fucking stayed in WWE?" He probably is the guy to pass the torch to Austin in another high profile classic. He probably has some fun shit with Foley, Pre-Mega Star & Eventual Mega Star Rock. Shamrock gets a dude to work with when he isn't hurt. I can picture fun RAW matches with randoms like Val Venis, Bob Holly, D'Lo, Mark Henry After Shawn leaves we probably get a HHH feud before hunter turned into the worst thing ever He was always a good Undertaker opponent. And you know they would have more matches. Assuming he doesn't get hurt, then you've got Bret against Rey Jr, Angle, Guerrero, Voldemort, Jericho. Guys like Cena, Orton, Batista etc have a veteran to work with that isn't actually terrible like post comeback HBK, or "prime" HHH. If Bret stays maybe guys like Orton, Edge, and Angle end up better wrestlers. Shit, Owen probably doesn't have to do that stupid stunt but we won't get into that. If he'd have just stayed he might have made my top 75.

Where might one find this match?

Agree with those. I'd also like to see a list where just the average rank is used.

I had Satanico at 2 and Dandy at 17. I would understand if people wanted to rank Dandy over Satanico, but I couldn't do it. Dandy at his peak was absolutely insane and I could be swayed his peak was the best ever. He was a vastly superior athlete compared to Satanico which allowed him to do more in the ring in terms of flying. Dandy was certainly a more spectacular offensive wrestler utilizing more dives and suplexes over the course of a few matches than Satanico did over the course of 2 decades. His superior athleticism also made him a smoother mat wrestler than Satanico was. Dandy at his peak reminds me of Tatsumi Fujinami where he can do literally anything in the ring and look like an absolute natural. Both Fujinami and Dandy were able to combine incredible athleticism with an incredible knowledge of how wrestling works. HOWEVER. Satanico's run from 89-90 is also absolutely tremendous and I think Satanico's 9/83-84 run compares really well to Dandy's run in 89-90 even with less footage. Satanico can compete with anyone in terms of versatility and peak matches/performance/runs. Because Satanico was never about athleticism, he aged really well. He was able to have career runs at age 40 & 50. Dandy had some excellent post prime work, and he was a very good pre-prime worker. But to steal Dylan's awesome line replacing longevity, Satanico just swamps Dandy in terms of duration of quality. edit: Also wanted to add that I think it is cool that they ended up so close to each other since they are each other's best opponent/career rival.

GASP! Oh MY GAWD

Damn what a brutal day of losing guys so far: Rose, Dandy, Satanico, Fujiwara, all of those are my guys. But, once again, I'm choosing to focus on the positives... Satanico placed above someone like Foley even though he appeared on 38 fewer ballots. Satanico having an average vote or 29.73, indicating that the people that like him, really like him. Satanico got three 2nd place votes! 3! So I'm not totally crazy. (for the record, I didn't vote Satanico #1 because I tried to separate favorites as much as I possibly could and it just didn't feel right ranking him above the guy I had at #1 in spite of all my work) Satanico, Buddy Rose, Fujiwara and El Dandy all got over 80 votes. EIGHTY! I'm as bummed as anyone that Buddy Rose "only" made it 36, but holy shit yall, Buddy Rose made it to 36 and there are 92 people out there watching his matches! Im just a little bummed that it has been this group of guys and then we slam into Voldemort.

Hahahahaha!

Is there a contingency plan in place in the likely event that Grimmas gets arrested after revealing a top 20 pick? Is there too much riding on one Canadian?

Will, did you figure out spoiler tags? Do you want me to post my list?

Agree with this. The wider scope (and simply having more matches) is why I ended up putting Fujiwara over Tamura. I tend to think of Tamura as the best shoot style worker and Fujiwara as the best wrestler who worked shoot style.

Liars! That's who!

These have been terrific. I figure I'm getting close to the 4 Pillars talk, but I definitely popped at Dylan's ratings for them because mine are pretty similar other than Akiyama. I had the All Japan Crew rated like this: Baba - 39 Taue - 36 Kobashi - 35 Misawa - 20 Kawada - 18 Jumbo -16 I don't have the same hatred of Jumbo, but I'm not the fan I once was. I rated 7 Japanese wrestlers ahead of him. I haven't read the All Japan Self-Conscious Epic thread yet, but I'm looking forward to it because it was an idea I had watching All Japan 90s tags. Rewatching stuff for this project, the big All Japan guys (except Baba) were the hardest to re-watch. Even as early as 1993 there were times where it felt like they were going completely overboard. edit: I had Akiyama at 50 but that is with relatively limited post 2000s viewing and I know a lot of what pushes him to that top tier level for most people is the post 2000 stuff.

Sorrow is a scholar and a gentleman. He is a 2 thumbs up blast. And I really want to listen to that Titans episode. But he probably needs a helper llama.

Edit It took me a while to find my footing here since I haven't had an in-depth conversation about wrestling literally in 15 years. But by the end I was like "FUCK we could have gone wrestler by wrestler this is awesome!" Brian's list is really unique but he justifies everything so well and is an absolute podcast natural. You'll definitely get to hear some great arguments about some dudes you haven't heard talked about much or enough in this project. And I was not stoned at all during the making of this podcast despite some wild allegations. I didn't inhale. And it depends on what the definition of the word "is" is.

Satanico making it another day is fucking awesome. I can't really believe some of the guy's he's finished above! The list rocks.

Tamura spent 2 years in UWFi not wearing kickpads and barely throwing any strikes. He would occasionally throw slaps, but it was super rare. Early Tamura was basically him stubbornly refusing to use strikes and focus completely on mat work and submission attempts. The famous Vader match stood out in the context of his career at that point because it was really the first time he primarily used a strike based attack.

The idea of Han as some kind of spotfest worker is ridiculous. He was a LOT better than Tamura at getting good matches out of shitty dutch kickboxers, aging karate guys or other untrained dudes. Stuff like Volk Han vs. Sotir Gotchev isn't praised along with the best of RINGS stuff but it exists and it's very very good. Tamura had the problem that he could look like he was eating up and squashing guys, as if he wasn't in trouble at all, which is why like half of his U-Style matches feel like squashes, while Volk was a master of looking beastly and vulnerable at the same time. Tamura is an incredible seller. Like one of the best ever at selling. He spent basically the first 5 years of his career looking vulnerable. He was constantly behind in points in his matches and fighting from behind. "Fighting from behind in points" was an extremely common Tamura match storyline throughout his career. But I haven't watched those 12 U-Style matches yet. Edit: Can you point to specific matches other than "like half of his U-Style matches"?

If I knew grimmas was gonna use so many of my quotes from the ballot for the reveals, I would have written better quotes.

Oh I totally agree that Han couldn't have had the Vader match. Han's one of the few guys in wrestling I could come up with that I think is great that I just can't imagine meshing with Vader. I don't think that makes Volk less great at what he did, but I do think that it is something that separates Tamura from Han. I'm going to start a Volk Han Complete and Accurate soon and one thing I've been thinking about lately is Volk being a high spot based wrestler or a guy who excels in spotfests. Tamura was really great at milking drama and building to big moments and pacing his matches so there is a sense of escalation. I'm not sure Han is on his level in that regard so it is something I'll be on the lookout for. I know people always point to Han/Tamura as the best "pure shootstyle" but I really think Tamura vs Kohsaka is. Volk feels like the Billy Robinson to Tamura's Jack Brisco. Like when Fujiwara and Friends were creating shoot style and developing all the workers, someone like Tamura at his absolute peak would be the best they could hope for. Volk Han is awesome, but he was doing wacky shit that the Shoot-Style Founding Fathers weren't thinking of. I haven't really worked it out quite yet, but I've been thinking about it because I want to go back and give the Han Trilogy and Kohsaka match real reviews in my C&A and I'm thinking it might be best to talk about them all together and compare/contrast and that Billy Robinson to Jack Brisco line has been floating around in my head. I don't get why being able to have a match with Vader is any sort of criteria or benchmark for a shoot-style worker. Who said it was? I rated Tamura 25 spots higher than Volk and it wasn't just because Tamura had a great match with Vader one time. But remember that this list isn't 100 greatest shoot style wrestlers of all time. I don't think it is weird at all to say Tamura was better because in the course of perfecting shoot-style, he was able to bend and adapt and find compelling ways to work with someone like Vader who was a pro-style guy. Could Volk build a match around selling and striking like Tamura does in the Vader match or did Volk have to work with a guy with at least some knowledge of submission grappling to have a compelling match? Maybe he did but I haven't seen it. I'll know soon enough I guess but I tend to doubt it.