elliott

Forgot I wanted to mention this. I do think the language barrier plays a role actually in Lucha more so than Japanese wrestling. Japanese wrestling was very much shaped by US wrestling from the very beginning whereas Lucha has been much more singular throughout it's existence. So Japanese wrestling is going to inherently be "easier to understand" than Lucha because Japanese wrestling grew out of US wrestling. Also, you are much more likely to see angles occur in Lucha than in a New Japan or All Japan match. Obviously it is going to be more difficult to fully grasp a heel turn or a double cross or something if you aren't familiar with the style of wrestling or wrestlers themselves AND don't speak the language. Japanese wrestling has usually been framed as "it is all about the ring work." So that is what people focus on. There are stories, obviously in Japanese wrestling. But they are much more broad. Also, I won't argue that I understand 100% of everything in lucha. I still don't really get something like the aftermath of the Santo Jr heel turn. I think he continued to get cheered because it is freaking Hijo del Santo and how the fuck could you boo him, but I'm not totally sure on that. So we may not want to admit it because we are able to cross the Japanese language barrier when it comes to wrestling so easily, but I do think the language barrier plays a much bigger role for some when it comes to Lucha.

I always credit Mike Tenay during the When Worlds Collide show for helping me "get it" right away. Even though the undercard matches were all single falls, Tenay explained lucha is mostly 2/3 falls, mostly trios, and explained the captain's rule also. I've always seen the trios matches pointed to as the hardest things to understand. I think if you know about the captain's rule, it helps a lot in terms of understanding the finishes. Why were all 3 wrestlers pinned to end this fall while only one wrestler was pinned to win this fall? I totally understand why that would be confusing. Completely. So, watching the WWC show and having that explained to me before I ever watched a standard lucha trios match, I knew what to expect. Or at least there weren't any surprises. Also having things like the emphasis on fouls being explained or the automatic DQ for removing your opponents masks or piledriving guys were super helpful to know. I think the singles matches are pretty straightforward and easy to understand once you familiarize yourself with the general working style. I'm not trying to argue that everyone has to like lucha libre. Different strokes. I actually absolutely get certain criticisms and why they turn people off. I adore the tumbling mat work in trios but I can see how some people think it looks too choreographed and is a turn off. I get how people don't like how many trios matches just blow through the first 2 falls. I also think the general presentation plays a part. If someone decides to start watching lucha for the first time and the video starts with 6 guys in masks they've never or barely seen before in these rings with corona advertisements all over them with a usually poorly mic'd crowd doing a lot of cooperative/choreographed mat work; I can totally see how that would be a turn off and come off as super confusing. But it really does make sense. Lucha has certain patterns like every wrestling style and has a created a universe in which the stuff people talk about being goofy and non-sensical usually tends to make sense within their universe. So yeah, I get not liking it. But it definitely makes sense.

I still genuinely don't understand the idea that lucha is this super confusing impossible to understand style. I wish I could find a clip of the old Simpsons with the Power Plant softball league where Marge is video taping the game and giving commentary. "And now the one man throws the little ball and the other man swings the stick and hit the ball. Now he's running in that direction that the other men ran in sometimes. Now he's stopped. Now the first man has the ball again and is throwing it to another man." That is all I can think of when I read about how people don't get it and it doesn't make sense. It does make sense. It just makes sense within the Lucha Libre universe. Some of it is really great, some of it is really terrible, most of it is average. Different doesn't mean "worse" and it doesn't mean "incomprehensible."

"If you’re gonna have fun, if you wanna be yourself, you want to dance, man. A lot of people out here, a lot of people going around talking about grown men don’t dance and gangsters don’t dance, man I dance all day. If you feel good, and you wanna dance, dance. That’s what I like to do." -Bobby Shmurda (aka the worst rapper ever who still happened to provide the greatest quote in history) http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/staying-young-and-getting-old-with-bobby-shmurda/

Piling on the praise with 8 hours to go! Awesome stuff!

Oh holy shit balls!!!

Focus on this: of the 67 luchadores to get nominated, all but 6 got votes. Numbers may not be totally exact. But that's something. I have 2 in my top 4.

I agree with all of this. I also think it is fair to consider managers for their work at ringside during actual matches. Folks like Cornette, Jimmy Hart, Heenan, etc added a TON to matches and I'm wondering if anyone considered them for that aspect of their work in addition to their participation in actual matches?

Reading the 9/1/92 WON covering Meltzer's trip to Japan and I found this awesome bit when he was giving a rundown of the best matches/cards he went to: "Best card (overall production) - Rings on 8/21 at Yokohama Arena. Of all the cards I saw, the two that will stick in my memory the longest are this show and the 8/17 JWP show (more on that below). Whatever one might think of things Akira Maeda has done in the past or said in the past, he has to be given credit for the fact he is one of the great self-promoters and wrestling promoters in general that this business has ever seen. He largely has taken a group of people who aren't even wrestlers and put them in something that he doesn't even want to be associated with pro wrestling, and has turned it into a high class version of something that most definitely is pro wrestling. No, this would not work in this country. At least not without the same five year education process that Japan went through in the mid-1980s largely due to Maeda's self-promotional abilities. But many of the concepts used as part of the show would give those in this country so many new ideas on things that can be done to make pro wrestling seem more of a higher class activity and more respectable. The souvenir lines were incredible. The beginning of the show with the laser light show, opening ceremony and promotional pre-show video showing everyone in dramatic form prior to the card (the pre-show video, for some reason, is done in English rather than Japanese to give it an international flavor showing men training in Bulgaria, Graziya (formerly Soviet Union), Japan, Holland, etc. as "the toughest gladiators from around the world being brought together to form RINGS" gave it an aura that probably couldn't be understood by anyone who didn't see it live. Another plus is that Yokohama Arena, which, unlike most arenas in Japan, is a state-of-the-art complex reminiscent of Madison Square Garden. Maeda didn't sell his summer spectacular out like he would have routinely during the peak of his drawing power with the UWF, but drawing 14,700 paid with ringside at $160 and elevated ringside at $120 with a troupe that consists of almost nobody who had ever wrestled professionally before (which actually works to his advantage because they are all fresh and "untainted" so to speak) except himself says more for his ability as a promoter than anything. As for the matches, well, if you're in the building and feeling the atmosphere, they're okay. Some were actually embarrassing judged by pro wrestling standards, but it really doesn't matter because it's a different product and not supposed to look in the ring like pro wrestling. And it doesn't. Are the matches shoots like they've got their audience believing they are? How many times in boxing does somebody get knocked down four times and then immediately come back to win? In Rings, that's the classic match story that gets the biggest pop for the finish. The martial arts guy knocks down the submission wrestler four times (five knockdowns is an automatic knockout and ends the match) and then the submission guy gets his big hold on in the middle and gets the submission. In many ways, Maeda's Rings is both the farthest thing and the closest thing to the WWF." I thought that last line in particular was really interesting.

This is probably one of my 10 favorite matches ever. I first saw it on Lord Helmet's Hansen comp so it was right on the heels of the Hansen/Inoki feud and holy shit it took them about 30 seconds to surpass the entire Hansen/Inoki feud. Seriously one of the most fun matches of all time. I adore all of their 80s singles matches but this one especially has always stood out.

I've had 3 guys make it: mad dog, Carl Greco and bobby Heenan. 3 totally different people. All were in my bottom 5. I'm striving for accuracy apparently. edit: I was wrong, 4 guys. Espanto Jr made it too.

I love the top 60 vote for Aoyagi. That rocks. Aoyagi is someone I thought briefly about myself and he would rank super high on a favorites list. I love a guy in a gi working insane brawls bleeding all over the place. Awesome.

Awesome! Thanks for setting that up!

It's like I didn't specifically address negative aspects of a guy's #1 case in the middle of laying out his #1 case. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28604-el-satanico/?p=5732143

Get off your butts and lets have part 2! This was terrific

Yeah Nagashima was great. Cool she got a 62 vote! That Cornette picture is a strong second to the Abdullah Kobayashi picture.

Total joke. I eventually listened to all of those pods and they were great But he was still my #9

Ciclon Ramirez's eyes remind me waaaaay too much of looking in the mirror towards the end of college parties.

Super pumped up for this!

Honestly after 2 days what bums me out the most is Shane McMahon being ahead of Greg Gagne.

I have never seen a Joey Ryan match and have no idea who he is. I guess I am winning the project so far?

There is no way you can top that Abdullah Kobayashi picture. Hahahahaha!

I was considering Flair for my top spot and a top 5ish placement. Then JVK did that podcast series and it knocked him down to 9

Stoked somebody else voted for Mad Dog Vachon!

Sayama was in the 180 or so people I was considering. He didn't make my list, but I thought about him on the strength of his UWF stuff. If he had gone back to New Japan and then UWF2.0 with everyone else, he very likely would have made my list. That first UWF run was great. I feel like my list is boring and full of heavy hitters. There are people like Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, and Keiji Muto who would be considered heavy hitters in some circles that didn't make my list, but they are obviously polarizing candidates for a lot of people participating in this project. Steve Austin, Rock, Dusty, Hulk Hogan & Inoki are "heavy hitters" in a sense and didn't make my list. I thought about Dusty, Hogan and Austin but they didn't make it in the end. They were some of my last cuts. I wanted to put Rock on the most because I am an unashamed Rock mark. But "The Rundown is the most underrated action movie of all time" and "Fuck yall, the people's elbow is awesome!" aren''t real criteria and he just didn't have enough matches for me to justify it. Inoki is one of my 5 least favorite wrestlers ever and wasn't someone I considered for this. My big blind spots are world of sport, golden era indy scene, modern japan, and modern lucha. So guys like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Briscos, Chris Hero, Necro, Tanahashi, Okada, Virus, Black Terry, Negro Navarro, Steve Grey, Jim Breaks, etc etc etc. I've seen a tiny sampling of these dudes but not nearly enough to make my list. By 2026 for sure. I guess Finlay is the biggest heavy hitter that missed my list based on his reputation over the years. I never really understood what Dylan meant when he talked about the feeling he gets watching Jumbo. Then I did a deep dive on Finlay and now I totally get it. I would be happy never watching him wrestle ever again.