ohtani's jacket

Adrian Adonis comes to the ring against Inoki in full leathers. He looks like he snorted something before leaving the dressing room and attacks some fan who touched him. Reminds me of when I was young and would bend the ear of any Japanese rock band who came through Auckland about Japanese pro-wrestling. And these rockers would always talk about how cool Adonis was. Match has a short running time and Andre comes out to eat into it even further. Hogan attacks him from behind and the pair brawl their way to the changing rooms. Adonis vs. Inoki is fast and furious but too short to matter. Inoki vs. Pedro Morales is perfectly mediocre fare, but that should be obvious before clicking on it. I watched a full length version of Ruska vs. Inoki and enjoyed it even more the second time, but hey, I dig all those Don Nielsen works too. Ruska vs. Inoki III from Seoul is also watchable. Better than watching Inoki vs. WWWF guys bar Backlund. Watching Inoki beat Parv's boy, Hiroshi Hase, in 1992 was perversely entertaining. Hase actually did a pretty good job of respectfully jobbing. Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye. I always knew I had it in me to beat Parv's boy. I can't find any of the other Inoki matches I want to watch online so I thought I'd wrap this up by watching the 2/86 Fujiwara bout. Still a bucket load of fun. Fujiwara is the greatest. Inoki may have pushed my top 100 but it would have been touch and go. I actually think he would have been vying for my #100. Maybe 100-95.

Fair enough. He's actually a different case from anyone else in the top 40 in that he can strengthen his case in real time while prompting further re-evaluation. Kind of a unique position. I suppose the flipside to that is that he could bomb as a WWE main eventer.

Choshu was one of those guys who knew how to use a cross armbreaker as a high spot, but I agree that he was a much better striker than a mat worker. I guess you could argue that he was able to use his size effectively by leaning into guys but for a former amateur he was pretty sluggish on the mat.

Skill doesn't just mean matwork. It refers to every hold. Off the top of my head: Negro Navarro Virus Solar Satanico El Dandy Negro Casas El Hijo del Santo Volk Han Kiyoshi Tamura Yoshiaki Fujiwara Tatsumi Fujinami Pete Roberts Marty Jones Jim Breaks Steve Grey Alan Sargeant Zoltan Boscik Tibor Szakacs Billy Robinson Yuki Ishikawa Carl Greco Lou Thesz Verne Gagne Nick Bockwinkel Minoru Suzuki Osamu Nishimura Fit Finlay Terry Rudge Blue Panther Akira Hokuto Toshiaki Kawada Jaguar Yokota Jon Cortez Keith Haward Mariko Yoshida Gilbert Cesca Rene Ben Chemoul Horst Hoffman Mike Marino Mike Bennett Yumi Ikeshita Tsuyoshi Kohsaka Jack Brisco Espanto Jr Pat O'Connor Cassandro Yoshihisa Yamamoto Daisuke Ikeda Bob Backlund The Destroyer That was literally off the top of my head which explains why it's so random, but those are 50 workers who I think are more skilled than Choshu or Aguayo. Whether I would rate them above Choshu and Aguayo is another story, but I'd be weighing their intangibles against other workers' superior skill and execution.

I guess you could make a case for Styles being one of the best guys of recent times, but the 39th best guy ever? Unless something dramatic happens this is going to be one of those picks were people look at the list in 10 years time and comment on how dated it is. And folks will be saying it was a snapshot, but a snapshot of what? The brief online popularity of New Japan? How come he finished higher than Tanahashi and Nakamura if that's the case? Is it because he has some kind of indie cred? I'm legitimately curious how this guy finished up 39th. Mick Foley has about half a dozen great performances to his name. Mick Foley was my favourite wrestler in 1998. Mick Foley wore out his welcome a long time ago. I jumped on the Foley bandwagon hard back in the day and that was during his WWF run without ever seeing his ECW stuff, his death match stuff, or his WCW work outside of a few appearances on Worldwide. I even shed a tear when I found out he'd won the WWF title. I guess it's an age old story -- you root for the underdog until the underdog starts believing in their hype too much then you cut them down to size. In New Zealand we call this Tall Poppy Syndrome. I dunno whether Mick became a self-parody in the end, but I sure got sick of him, especially his inability to take criticism and his thinly veiled insecurities. It's a bit like how Bret Hart wore on you with his bitterness only in Foley's case it was a nagging sense that his Everyman persona was a bit too fake and a bit too manufactured. He has those six really great performances though and was a hell of a bumper.

One of my regrets from the project is that I didn't finish taking a look at Rick Martel, so I still don't know where I stand on him. I guess you could say I'm half sold on him. Not sure how he got the bump over Tito in the Tito-Martel-Steamboat triumvirate. Perhaps that's a prerequisite for future exploration. Ted, it's hard to separate you-know-who from Ted when you watch his matches, but I legitimately enjoy his Mid South stuff. The Magnum TA bouts, for example, are great contests that feel much bigger in scope than their running time suggests. But when you take Ted out of Georgia or Mid South, he loses something. He's not the same worker in All Japan or the WWF that he was in those two territories. Not remotely the same. The Million Dollar Man was a million dollar gimmick and Ted lived and breathed it, but Boss Man had a better WWF run. We put them through the gauntlet and proved that, and you know it. 42 seems too high for his body of work unless the Eagle has landed w/ the Houston footage. Has the pendulum swung too far the other way? There's only so much Choshu I can stomach. Yeah, he's got the aura and the intensity and everything, and his short spurts of energy and sprinting style can help to break up the monotony of Japanese tag wrestling; but even with an appreciation for minimalist construction and a truckload of great matches against everyone from Killer Khan to Hashimoto, it can't disguise the fact that he's not that good. It's the same argument I'd make about Perro Aguayo not being as mechanically good as his peers. If you like Choshu or Aguayo you're not going to care because they have the charisma and they impose their will on a bout the way that great workers do, but it's a feeling I can't shake when I watch their stuff. I can dig the atmosphere of a big Choshu fight without thinking it's technically good. Outside of the GWE prism it doesn't have to be, but inside it, skill levels matter to me. Riki Choshu would not make my list of the 50 most skilled pro-wrestlers ever and that impacts his greatness in my eyes. Would have been a number one contender for me. Easily in the argument for greatest wrestler of all-time. There's nothing about Fujiwara that I don't love. The shaved head, the mustache, the deep lines on his forehead, his small build, incredible grappling skill and legendary drinking prowess. I love the fact that he's a ring general who gets called "general", that he was trained by Gotch, that he's the greatest defensive wrestler of all-time and a carny motherfucker who loved to swear during matches and pull all sorts of shenanigans. I prefer his shoot style work to his pro-style stuff, which is a bit more cartoony, but he was great at both. Awesome bleeder and a signature headbutt that French critics once called a homage to the goof in all of us. This is not very PC, but when he was doing the late night comedy show where he directed a porno, he held an audition where young Japanese girls in bathing suits walked on stage and pulled down their bathing tops. One girl was too shy or embarrassed to pull her top down and Fujiwara scolded her for not being a professional. Poor taste maybe, but there will only ever be one Yoshiaki Fujiwara. And he was great up until 1994 too. Don't let the French tell you he fell by the wayside in 1990. 1990 was one of the best years of his career.

Nothing much happens in the Umanosuke Ueda nail death match aside from Ueda being scared of Inoki's armbreaker (and why not?) but it's always fun seeing Ueda stooge about. His alliance with Tiger Jeet Singh is more awesome than anything the pair of them could produce in the ring, but it's great seeing them hug and console each other like Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko. No-one fell on the nails. I'm not sure why that surprised me. I'm not sure what it says about me that I thought someone should fall on the nails. The Inoki & Yoshimura vs. Victor Rivera & Baron Scicluna tag from '67 has to be the earliest Inoki we have on tape, right? The comic stooging from Rivera and Scicluna would have been a life changing experience for a young Fuerza Guerrera if he'd seen it. The Japanese workers didn't seem to know how to react to it, though. Rivera took some fantastic apron bumps in and out of the ring. Psicosis would have been proud. The only reason to watch Inoki vs. Red Texas from Madison Square Garden is that it's Red Bastien under the hood. Of course, he's working a generic masked wrestler gimmick so it's not really Red Bastien Red Bastien, but you take what you can get. Some PWO poster cries "boring!" at the beginning of the bout and Inoki proceeds to work a heatless bout that didn't do much to push his credentials as the world's greatest martial artist. Nice pinning combination at the end, but as slow as the wait between paydays.

The 4/95 Street fight from the first GAEA show is better than it had a right to be. It's a sprawling mess that I think you can only really appreciate if you're a Joshi fan, but they clearly wanted to make the first show special and had the battle scars to prove it. The collar and chain work may offend some. The blood may upset others. I cringed at some of the "with our powers combined" teamwork from Chigusa and Kansai, but by and large I thought it was a fine hodgepodge of Chigusa and Kansai's shoot stuff, Ozaki's street fight style, and a throwback to the days when Devil would terrorize girls with her kendo stick. Chigusa jobbed so often in her comeback years that she must have been working a gimmick about whether she fit in with the modern world any more. Ozaki is a legendary seller in my eyes, but her timing was off post-match. She tried to sell that she was out of it during the stretch run and fighting on instinct alone. That was fine, but when she recovered after the bout, she pretended to not know that she'd gotten the three count and jumped up and down like an ecstatic schoolgirl. Nice idea, but the execution was poor and the heat was really on Chigusa for losing in the main event of her first show. Ah well, can't nail 'em all Oz.

The 4/95 Street fight from the first GAEA show is better than it had a right to be. It's a sprawling mess that I think you can only really appreciate if you're a Joshi fan, but they clearly wanted to make the first show special and had the battle scars to prove it. The collar and chain work may offend some. The blood may upset others. I cringed at some of the "with our powers combined" teamwork from Chigusa and Kansai, but by and large I thought it was a fine hodgepodge of Chigusa and Kansai's shoot stuff, Ozaki's street fight style, and a throwback to the days when Devil would terrorize girls with her kendo stick. Chigusa jobbed so often in her comeback years that she must have been working a gimmick about whether she fit in with the modern world any more. Ozaki is a legendary seller in my eyes, but her timing was off post-match. She tried to sell that she was out of it during the stretch run and fighting on instinct alone. That was fine, but when she recovered after the bout, she pretended to not know that she'd gotten the three count and jumped up and down like an ecstatic schoolgirl. Nice idea, but the execution was poor and the heat was really on Chigusa for losing in the main event of her first show. Ah well, can't nail 'em all Oz.

Brock? If you say so.. I mean there's been times when I've been enamoured with Brock and wanted to see him murder folks, particularly his first run, which I never really watched in real time but got into later mostly because I liked playing RAW vs. Smackdown. But 47th? Maybe if his career had been like my season modes on RAW vs. Smackdown. Punk was never one of my guys. Never watched him on the indies, wasn't watching WWE when he made his rise. Didn't really pay attention to the pipe bomb stuff or the Summer of Punk. When I did finally get around to seeing him, I always felt like he was trying too hard. But I wasn't there for the journey and didn't have a vested interest, so I'm not gonna judge whether he belongs or not. My overall take on Harley is that he's never as good as you want him to be. The idea that he's the greatest NWA champion of them all is great until you see the matches and find that he's not. I actually think I prefer his 80s work to anything I've seen from his prime. I'd soon watch grizzled Harley beat up a Von Erich kid and Purple Reign Harley take nutty bumps for Hogan than watch Baba and Harley trade headlocks. So unless a treasure trove of awesome Harley is unearthed I'm not sold on his rep. What happened to Tully in recent times? People don't seem that high on him these days. Maybe it's the lull before the Crockett set drops. One of the best TV match workers ever. One of the best studio match workers ever. And he has the arena stuff too. Yeah, it's annoying that he never seems to get any serious offence in and his bumping and stooging all match long, and maybe that makes his act w/ Dillon a poor man's Heenan and Bockwinkel in these cultured times, but did anyone play a superbrat better? There was something incredibly sleazy about Tully. A guy like Flair (when he wasn't getting smashed and acting like a frat boy) had class, but Tully's suits were just a little bit cheaper, his shades slightly less expensive, his watch not quite top of the line, his wrestling skills a cut below the best. Flair was an asshole but he walked the walk. There was something undeserved about Tully's success and the way he flaunted it. Flair was the man they loved to hate, but Tully was the one they really hated. Look at that mug. He just knew how to piss people off.

Saved the longest tag for last. Turns out it was Schmidt's debut match on Chicago TV -- Ivan Rasputin & Hans Schmidt vs. Rudy Kay and Farmer Don Marlin from 1952. Rasputin and Farmer Don Marlin were fun characters and Marlin tagging with regular heel Rudy Kay was also neat. Marlin had some interesting offfence based around his barefoot farmer gimmick. Match was long, and the falls didn't overlap enough for my liking, but not a bad bout.

Watched an Azumi Hyuga match from 1999 that was better than I thought it would be but fairly uninspiring. Kansai was heavier and slower than in her prime but did a pretty good job working a knee injury. Then, for some reason, she dropped the injury storyline and resumed being heavy and slow and unable to bump for an all-action, go-go type in Hyuga. After that I watched a '91 tag between Kansai & Medusa vs. Rumi Kazama and Harley Saito which was pretty bad. Medusa and Kazama were fairly awful, but Kansai didn't bring much to the table and Saito did the most unnecessary bladejob I've seen in a long time. Just a pointless crimson mask. Just to make it a trifecta of bleh, I watched the Toyota title change again. I was really harsh on it in the Yearbook thread but it's a match that just doesn't work. It's one of those matches where they do a bunch of stuff then take it to the bridge, and you're suppose to miraculously care about the finishing stretch even though you haven't been entertained by a single thing so far. I prefer matches that suck you in and keep getting better and better. I honestly liked the Takako title defence more.

But there are countless more styles in music than there are wrestling. What is the wrestling equivalent of dubstep? It's hard to draw a parallel.

That's because she has a pulse. Yiou sure stopped defending the voting base in a hurry.

That's a real list, Jimmy. None of this bloody pandering from BIGBORE.

The rape porn thing seemed completely misguided to me since the direct audience were young girls, but it's worth nothing that the first hair match was considered excessively violent/extreme In Kansai and probably other regions too.

One of the greatest wrestlers to ever live. I would have had him higher but I'm glad he finished at a robust 50 instead of something forgettable like 47. What I'd give for some of his 60s British footage. It's a shame the only World of Sport stuff we have of him is a fairly lacklustre match from one of his return trips to England in the late 70s. I'm not convinced his British stuff would be better than his 70s work in Japan, but it would be fascinating to see him in his prime and working the British & European heavyweight style. One of those overrated greats. She could be brilliant at times with her selling and match layouts, but she could also be as flawed as any other girl you care to name. She wasn't a natural at all and it took her a long time to build up her aura as a dominant female worker. She's actually not that tall so it's to her credit that she was able to come across as menacing, but I always felt she got too much credit for her work on top when it was her opponent who had her nose to the grind selling it all. Too much credit in this case means Kong being treated as the one Joshi worker it"s okay to like. The token Joshi worker for people who don't like Joshi. That always irked me because Joshi is nothing if not a collaborative genre. You could say the same about any style I guess, but I always got the feeling that Joshi wore it's camaraderie on it's sleeve. She could be great, though, and indeed had many moments of greatness not the least of which was the Satomura feud in '99, which to me was her finest hour. Did somebody mention overrated great workers? By now everybody's read my thoughts on the transformation from early Finlay to Princess Paula era Finlay and the ten year wasteland up until his debut in WCW. Some people agree with me and some people like the mighty Jetlag do not, but from my very selfish point of view Finlay could have been the greatest but he chased the green. That's his prerogative and I'm reminded of Billy from Purple Rain ("This is a business, and you too far gone to see that yet!"), but it still sucks the route Finlay went down. Some good old man stuff that we were blessed to receive given the extent of his leg injuries in WCW, but a guy I have different expectations for than his typical fan.

Parv, isn't that King Crimson example exactly the same thing you did with BIGLAV where you voted for wrestlers whose work you don't enjoy because you couldn't ignore their case? Didn't you claim over and over again that doing so was the only fair way to construct a list? Are you now playing Devil's Advocate or is this an about face? To answer your question, if you were engaging in a music poll and plenty of folks were discussing prog-rock then yeah, you should probably listen to it to see where you stand on it. I don't think you have to vote for it if you don't like it, and I might not even bother sampling it because I'm pigheaded or whatever, but it makes sense to try new things instead of talking about your favourite records endlessly. One of the best things about projects like these is that it focuses your viewing/watching and gives you a reason to dive into stuff you may have always wanted to see or listen to but had put off or never gotten around to. I also see it as ongoing. One of my favourite things to do after any poll is to seek out the highest ranking things I've never seen or heard of before. To me the entire process should be about building knowledge and not reconfirming the status quo.

Perhaps I'm being willfully obtuse, but I'm really struggling with this. What is so overtly political about these influences, origins and development? Do people think professional wrestling in Japan would have developed differently in Japan if not for this Western influence, or not at all as more likely the case? Dylan was specifically referring to American cultural imperialism. From all accounts, MacArthur was a law until himself in Japan and often butted heads with the state to department. He was nicknamed the "Emperor of Japan" for good reason as he had full control over the country during the immediate post war years. So perhaps this imperialism is more accurately a type of MacArthurism. Since MacArthur didn't directly impose professional wrestling upon the people of Japan, you can perhaps argue that his reforms led to its development. One of MacArthur's reforms was to remove martial arts from Japan's physical education curriculum and dissolve the central regulatory authority for martial arts, which led to years of confusion over what was legal and what wasn't. Now I don't think MacArthur intended to eradicate traditional Japanese martial arts and replace them with good old American pro-wrestling, but you can certainly argue that the years judo spent trying to cleanse itself of its militaristic colour and the failure of professional judo to establish itself as a newly reformed sport paved the way for pro-wrestling (and boxing) as an alternative to traditional Japanese combat sports even if professional judo fell apart because of the same mismanagement and financial problems that plague most upstart wrestling promotions. It's drawing a longbow, but I'm trying to make this political. Since we know the main power brokers behind early pro-wrestling were the wrestler-promoters, the TV executives and the yakuza, and not US promoters per se then the argument becomes whether the content reflected American cultural hegemony. Here, the argument has always been that it reflected the Japanese post-war inferiority complex. Perhaps the American workers were showing ass for the Japanese from the comfort of their culturally superior position or perhaps they were just working the audience and putting on a form of (lowbrow) entertainment. Perhaps they imported the traditional US narrative of the "good" American wrestler vs. the "evil" foreigner and flipped it for the Japanese audience and thus the narratives were culturally imperialist, but in terms of entertaining the masses how is tecnico vs. rudo any different? Rudos were meant to represent the corruption Mexican fans faced every single day in Mexico City. Rikidozan defeating Americans in hand-to-hand combat obviously meant something different to a country that had lost a war to those same opponents but it's still tapping the same vein. And frankly it evolved from there as has been well documented. So does it boil down to the working style? Japanese wrestling is closer to American wrestling, they work a different style down in Mexico, from left to right, etc.? I still maintain that lucha libre didn't develop in a bubble cut off from the outside world. From what lucha historians have said, the Phantom comic strip (American) was hugely popular in Mexico City in the late 30s and had a huge influence on the look of Mexican luchadores, and El Santo is said to have been directly inspired by Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask (French), which was also extremely popular in Mexico during the 30s. An untold number of foreigners have passed through Mexico over the years. Look at how many foreigners worked the UWA during its heyday. Territories close to the US border were more heavily influenced by the US style of wrestling than in the capital, but aspects of those territories filtered their way through to every strand of lucha libre as workers moved around the country. Yes, there are elements of lucha that are distinctly Mexican just as there are aspects of Japanese wrestling that are distinctly Japanese, moreso than people realise given the language barrier and lack of access to the media, insider info and cultural understanding. Are there more distinct elements in lucha? Perhaps, but you could just as easily argue that Meltzer and the early tape traders embracing Japanese had just as much impact on the way we perceive it as US cultural imperialism. Perhaps that was because it was easier for them to understand than lucha and more readily available on tape. Perhaps it was because the major US stars worked there in the 80s so it was easy for them to identify with. Perhaps it's the flipside to cultural imperialism which was the exoticism regarding Japanese culture that occurred after the war. Perhaps the political aspect here is that people have always looked down on lucha libre while extolling the virtues of Japanese pro-wrestling. But I honestly do not see the difference between Japanese fans' interest in professional wrestling post-war and golf, or dating, or baseball as a national past time. They imported all those things from the US as well. Are those cultural evils? They were big on jazz as well, Parv Wrestling in Japan in the 50s and early 60s had its feet in the black market and all of the corruption that surrounded the post-war rebuild, but on the surface it was considered something that uplifted the spirits of the depressed and lethargic Japanese populace. It was uniformly seen as a positive at the time and still remembered that way despite its fragile underbelly where its number one star was actually a member of a race that most Japanese despised. But that's pro-wrestling for you. That's all I've got.

I'll admit that as old as I am it's difficult for me to fathom that anybody needs to fill in a gap about Randy Savage even if it personally took me years to see his pre-WWF work. But here's a legitimate question: how much Randy Savage do you need to see before you can move on to somebody else? People keep talking about deep dives, but unless you become super obsessed with Savage, you're trying to get to the bottom of some sort of argument, or you're struggling with how you feel about him, surely you can trust people to point you in the direction of his 10 best matches or something. Yeah, you're not going to be exposed to his flaws and everything, but watching too much Savage seems like a waste of time to me. Using you theoretical three hours a week, you could finish Savage in a week or maybe alternate between six different workers and clear them all in a month. IF you dedicated the time. I personally think it's wrong to deep dive on a particular promotion or style as opposed to specific workers. I also realise it's pointless to be talking about this now that the project is over. Regardless of how it seems, I don't have strong feelings about the voter base or the results one way or the other. I made my peace with the process a long time ago. I'd just prefer an ideal world where everyone was super dedicated to the project, invested all of their free time in it, watched a ton of shit and argued endlessly about it. There were plenty of people who did that, but a lot of them did so privately or in other mediums such as Twitter or podcasts. The nominee threads were kind of threadbare and most of the discussion revolved around tired old subjects. I was really thankful when Dylan came and posted a ton in the final weeks even if I didn't agree with all of his takes. I liked what you wrote about one man's discovery being another's old hat. I can't argue with that. But regardless of how new the hat is, I would still argue that the discoveries are more important than the stalwart picks. When I do a list, there's always going to be stalwart picks that I still think are the best of XYZ, but half my picks are going to be new discoveries that catapult their way up my list. That's the exciting part of taking part in the project. Especially a project that lasts TWO YEARS. If I had taken part in this project the way I usually do and come to the conclusion that the wrestlers I thought were the greatest of all-time before we started are still the greatest of all-time, I would have been sorely disappointed with myself. You could hand your ballot in on day one if that's the case. Lastly, I thought I mentioned that Breaks matches aren't samey. There's at least half a dozen variations on a Breaks match. I don't know if that comes across in TWC footage, but he had different match types he'd work.

I watched quite a neat Devil & Debbie Malenko vs. Kansai & Plum Mariko tag from 11/93. It was longish and had the same rhythm throughout, and there some gaffes that, to the layman, made it seem like Malenko wasn't familiar working with the JWP girls, or vice versa, but it was cool seeing Dynamite work someone outside the usual suspects.

It's worth debating. Why was the "God of Wrestling" and the spiritual father of the biggest promotion in Japanese history a European and not an American imperialist? Why was Inoki infatuated with Mixed Martial Arts and not promos, TV squashes and Southern style tags? Baba, I think, was more infatuated with America. I can imagine him holidaying in Hawaii and buying American-made.

Why are you talking about 10 weeks? Voters had two years. If you watched 3 hours of pro-wrestling a week for 2 years, I estimate that you could watch at least 750 matches. That's more than enough matches to sample a wide body of workers, but it requires that you do nothing but focus on the GWE project. which I assume only a few people were willing to do. People no doubt were distracted by the modern product, other hobbies or life in general. The number of people who've said they didn't manage to get to WoS or some other style is telling. And those are folks who were on board from the beginning and much more committed to the project than people who came on board later or submitted a ballot without participating in the discussions. Of course it's not possible to see everything, but they gave folks two years. What's the excuse when the stuff is so accessible? I don't really agree with the American hegemony talking point especially people are celebrating that Flair, Funk and Hansen finished 1, 2 and 3 and trying to tear down the so-called Japanese pillars, but I do agree that there's no excuse for people not checking out Puerto Rico, Europe or Mexico. If you didn't do that then all that really says to me is that you didn't participate. You voted, but you didn't truly participate. Perhaps the counter argument to that is that I needed to catch up on Randy Savage, but if I'm being honest I wouldn't vote in a poll where I had to catch up on "Randy Savage" unless I absolutely threw myself into it. Also, there was no curriculum. It was entirely up to the people participating what they watched. The onus was on the individual. This happens in every poll I participate in. There are the people who watch things and the people who don't. While I'm here let me cross reference something. You mentioned in the other thread that getting into a new worker shouldn't have any bearing on people's final list, but what was the point of the nominating period if not to pimp workers that people ought to discover, pay attention to and potentially vote for? Folks may as well have submitted a ballot based on what they'd already seen. The whole thing could have been over with in three weeks. Being excited about Breaks or Hase didn't influence your ballot? Really now?

Cyclone Mackey is enough of a footnote in lucha history that lucha historians care about him. There is some debate over whether he was the first masked wrestler or another American from Chicago, but Mackey is generally credited as being the first wrestler to popularise the mask and there's even debate over who made it for him with saddler Antonio Martínez, who made the wrestlers' footwear, usually receiving the credit. The mask was a gimmick and first and no-one had the Aztecs in mind or even rural customs. El Murcielago Enmascarado was another of the important early masked wrestlers who was in the first mask vs. hair match and was, I believe, the first luchador to unmask. That clearly started a tradition and then Santo made the mask a staple. What you're saying about cultural heritage etc. may play a part in lucha's popularity, but from what I've read the appeal of lucha wasn't much different from the appeal of professional wrestling in post-war Japan. After the Mexican revolution, impoverished villagers moved to Mexico City in the hope of a better life. Those who could afford entertainment flocked to the movie palaces and the sports arenas just as Japanese people did during their post-WW II malaise. Lucha was a new form of entertainment imported from the USA just as it was in Japan. A Mexican brought wrestling to Mexico just as Japanese brought wrestling to Japan. I've read the arguments that the US remade Japan in its image during the occupation. There is undoubtedly some truth to that, but Japanese wrestling wasn't exactly Coca Cola, i.e. as American as apple pie. You can't talk about Mexico having an independent cultural voice and not acknowledge the traditionally "Japanese" aspects of Japanese pro-wrestling. How often are these overlooked because people can't recognise them? It's easy to spot the familiar US influences in Japanese wrestling but how often do people fail to notice the Japanese aspects because they're unfamiliar with Japanese culture? Was Rikidozan was a traditional Japanese hero or a transplanted American babyface? Did Kimura or Yamaguchi behave like Americans? I could go on and on. I tried thinking of examples of what makes lucha libre unique from American wrestling but for every example I could think of a counter example from Japan. And I think over time, the idea of cultural imperialism also falls apart. When Japanese wrestling made its resurgence in the early 80s three of the leading figures (Choshu, Fujinami and Sayama) had all been heavily influenced by Mexico not the United States. Similarly, let's not pretend that Mexico was closed off the rest of the world. There was plenty of cross-cultural exchange with the California and Texas territories. Lucha by all rights comes from Texas. Like I said, we're dealing with blanket statements. People have written dissertations and books on these subjects. If online posters want to take this political stuff seriously they ought to do plenty of research otherwise it seems like grandstanding to me.

Even playing in the background I dunno if I could get through 70 hours of GWE podcasts.