ohtani's jacket

His post-exodus work isn't the best, aside from a few bright spots. I know I became actively disinterested in his work while going through stuff from the 00s. That said, I would weigh his peak more heavily. I'm curious to see who's risen above him.

What did Kawada do to piss people off?

I haven't seen that match in years and have no recollection of how it compares to other Breaks or Grey matches. If you want to start with Breaks, I think the 1977 Vaulkner match or the Young David trilogy are good starting points. My own gateway to WoS was the famous Grey/Myes bout from the 70s.

This was the best match of the evening even if it was a generic WWE brawl. What an oddly booked show. It was weird seeing Taz sell the action after his announce table was destroyed. JR gushing over Hunter was sickening after all those years of damning him to hell. How did Orton walk out of this show as the champ?

This was effective in setting up Triple H's injury, but that was about all it was effective at doing.

Shitty angle to set up this match with some terrible acting from Triple H and McMahon. Hunter was a face here? This must have upset a shitload of people at the time. More of an angle than a proper match. JR oversold the finish completely. No, JR, I was not watching some incredibly historic moment.

I like Joe and AJ, but I don't think they belong in the top 20. Clearly, they're to a lot of voters what Bret Hart was to my generation, so it's not a surprise. Perhaps in time it will balance itself out.

Cien Caras vs. MS-1 (hair vs hair, AAA 8/13/93) This was a disappointment. Not because of anything the wrestlers did inside the ring but because of the booking. The first two falls ended in DQs due to the seconds and the third fall finished with some Tirantes fast count bullshit. This is the type of thing that made me hate AAA. They couldn't trust Caras and MS-1 to work a compelling and dramatic apuestas match on their own? Caras and MS-1 ended up working a bunch of holds that were more reminiscent of a title match than an apuestas but they were the only good thing about this shit show.

My biggest takeaway from the lucha results is that people still aren't taking it seriously. We can argue back and forth about most of the top tier candidates, but for lucha there is no real discourse and not a lot of critical analysis. You'd be hard pressed to find a critique of Negro Casas or Santo. You might find the odd outspoken lucha fan who has an opinion that's different form the norm, but until we get people critiquing a lucha candidate the way they do with the top US and Japanese guys it'll never be given the respect it deserves. Even Santo at 20-something is a soft pick. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of those votes were based on a handful of Santo matches that voters watched during the viewing period. That's great in terms of people discovering Santo, but what does it tell us about how Santo measures up against other candidates? What are the promos and cons of Santo over Liger, for example? Why Santo over Casas? I would really love it if lucha was taken as seriously as some of the other topics we've been arguing about even if it meant more fighting on the internet. Regarding the results (which bar Mysterio Jr, I guess), I think Emilio is an oversight. However, I also think it's been a long time since we were talking about that '89-90 stuff. Atlantis, Sangre Chicana and Virus all have a case for the top 100, I can also see why they wouldn't make it. That reason clip from the Mexican movie with the Chicana vs Perro bloodbath suggests we're one match discovery away from folks getting excited for Chicana again. I don't think there's much more Atlantis or Virus can add to their cases.

Thank the heavens and the stars that Macho Man finished ahead of Punk. I'm thrilled that Santo is overtaking Liger too. The top 20 has some overrated mofos in it, though.

Not a bad result for Casas. Could have done with being a bit higher, but at least the people who voted for him represented.

I think we can all agree that Triple H was a better worker than Cena.

Some interesting info from reddit: "This show had an interesting backstory. Tickets went on sale in late May and sold about 14,600 the first day with no announced matches. WCW announced a Hogan/Goldberg non-title dark match to the local Atlanta media in mid-June, advertising that the only way you could see Goldberg/Hogan was live in person at the dome. By late June they had sold about 27,000 tickets. On July 2nd they announced Hogan/Goldberg would be for the title and on TV and they moved another 10,000 tickets in four days." Y'know what made a huge difference? The remaining tickets cost $10 and $15 respectively.

Rare job for Inoki but at least he took a few more names with him. I've got no bones to pick with Shawn. His resume speaks for itself. Akiyama was living off the vapors. Taue was more fun before everyone started piling on about how underrated he was. Solid finish for Bock. He's probably closer to top 25 all-time but he could have fallen a lot further on this year's edition. Who the fuck cares what John Cena got out of the Great Khali? I hate that talking point. I hate the nonsense about his 2007 as well. Dude torn his pec and did jack all after SummerSlam. Chigusa did better than last time, but fell short of making huge waves. I thought she'd crack the top 25. Little surprised about that. Bull did better given she never had the crossover appeal of Aja. cad talked about Satancio being the anti-lucha candidate. He might as well have been talking about Aja Kong.

Not sure how I feel about this Parka rating. I get why he's beloved, but I'd like to think I've watched more Parka than the average guy, and I dunno... if you're looking at it from the perspective of how many good Parka matches can I find, you won't be disappointed, but if you ever sit down and watch Parka week-to-week, he's less compelling.

His name is Volk Han, he’s a Russian mat wizard, and he does magic tricks. And his theme music is epic.

Inoki beating Fujinami is wild. Why stop here? Let’s win this thing.

God, Parv would hate this.

That's one!

I really wanna see who Inoki takes down on the list. I hope he's not next Sill conning folks from the afterlife.

It's the "Let's go Cena! Cena sucks effect!"

I wouldn't argue with anyone who voted him higher than #1.

I had a hard time getting into this as I don't buy Morishima as a monster heel, and I don't care about Danielson's quest to win back the ROH title. There were some nice strike exchanges, and I liked the finish, but MOTY? I guess if you care about Danielson's eye a whole bunch. He seemed to base the entire match off UWF-i tapes, which is another big turnoff for me. I'm not why people were so hyped for Morishima at the time. This is several steps down from what Samoa Joe brought to the table, and not even a good Vader facsimile.

Who were these 200;+ people who didn't vote for Fujiwara? Name them.

I would take Sting vs. Vader, Cactus Jack, The Dangerous Alliance and Regal over Cena's entire career. Though, to be fair, Cena had about a half a dozen great matches.