Mantaur Rodeo Clown

Why would you even bother posting this instead of adding something substantiative? The amount of people crawling out of the woodwork on this normally dead forum to support this ludicrous nomination would be comical if it wasn't so sad.

People on this forum have this weird habit of taking one off-hand line and trying to frame it as your entire argument. I notice the criticisms I made about his actual work didn't merit a response? Or is it some sort of statement that modern wrestling is so bad that a competent journeyman is the best thing going right now? But let's go with this point on crowd sizes. I'm obviously not saying that The Rock performing in front of bigger crowds makes him a better wrestler than Adam Priest. It would clearly make this a moot exercise. But crowd sizes/drawing absolutely are contributing factors in trying to determine the greatest, in two ways: 1. It is easier to pop a small crowd than a big crowd This is pretty clear to anyone who has ever been to a small indie show in their life. Expectations are lower. Tickets are cheaper. Everyone is pretty much seated front row. It is so much easier for a performer to work a crowd when everyone is a few feet away, able to study their facial reactions, hear their banter with the ref, scramble out of the way when the brawl spills near them. Everything was over in Reseda. Everything is over at my local indie that runs once a month. You say it's a credit to Preist's case that he can get over in front of 100 people. Some of the worst wrestlers I've ever seen have been over in front of 100 people. Hell, Flex Kavana was over in the USWA despite being the drizzling shits, because there were 40 people in the audience. But getting a match over in front of 10,000 people at a Smackdown taping in Corpus Christi is a completely different skillset, and given the strictures of TV you mentioned, far more difficult. Clearly The Rock is capable of getting a match over with a huge crowd. Curt Hawkins said that when he's working out his matches, he even compensates his timing for the crowd heat he knows will be there. Is Adam Priest capable on entertaining a big crowd in an arena? We simply do not have that data. What's the biggest crowd he's ever had a match in front of? One match in front of less than 2,000 people at a Collision taping? One of the greatest wrestlers of all time needs to have a wide and varied skillset, and we don't even have this basic data point that hundreds of other wrestlers do. 2. Your employability is symptomatic of your pro wrestling ability Everyone will be quick to jump to the defence of indie wrestlers. But the question is: if Adam Priest was indeed the best wrestler in the world for multiple years, or even top 40 comfortably: why hasn't he been signed anywhere? WWE vacuums up most talent in the world, AEW is run by a guy who famously hires anyone and everyone. TNA is desperate for talent, international promotions too. You're telling me this guy is the best wrestler on the planet at some stage, in the pantheon of Funk, Misawa, Tenryu, Flair et al. and he can't even get hired by a major promotion outside a couple of freelance dates? What are these companies - with decades of experience and/or virtually limitless resources - missing? Could it be that in fact he is not as highly lauded as everyone says and that he's just an average wrestler that some people have blown out of proportion? Unless this guy is snorting oxy and posting antisemitic conspiracies on X, there's probably a reason with his work as to why he hasn't been snapped up. The brief of evidence would suggest the wider pro wrestling world agrees with my take. I am still waiting for someone, anyone to actually pitch him to me as a Top 100 candidate. This discussion could have taken place in any number of threads, mind you. I reiterate, this is not to say he is a bad wrestler. It is to say there are certainly 100 wrestlers who have ever lived that are better than him in almost every facet.

At this point, he has to make the cut. And that's taking into consideration he lost 7 years of his career to an MMA dalliance that most other wrestlers simply would not survive the utter shame of. Everything he touches, he makes better. That's not to say he hasn't been a part of stinkers or boring matches. But he has made a career out of making the best of angles/matches/characters. Because he understands professional wrestling on a fundamental level that you really only see with the true greats of the sport. Honestly, half of what made his feud with Drew so compelling is the fact they were polar opposites. Drew has every physical gift in the world that Punk clearly does not have. But he doesn't get it. He doesn't have an intuitive feel for pro wrestling, and it's why he never broke through to the next level. His post-UFC run has been good enough to push him up a dozen ranks or so. He won't be nipping at Ric Flair's heels any time soon at the top of the list, but he's absolutely top 100.

I don't want it to seem like I'm singling you out or being a dick, I'm just saying this as a point of comparison since you brought up "low 90s". You yourself have said that The Rock would be a 90-100 ranking on your list, for a variety of well-considered reasons. So people putting Adam Priest even in that last decile is outrageous praise. I'm sure The Rock was fun to watch live as well. He just happened to wrestle in front of tens of thousands of people each night, instead of 100 people in a rec center in Tyrone, Georgia. I'd also say The Rock was far closer to being the best in the world at one stage than Adam Priest has ever been. Again, I'm not coming at you as you mentioned he won't make your list. But I think people have the blinders on for wrestlers they've had the chance to see live, or feel like they've caught early in their careers, and blown things way out of proportion.

The fact that someone would actually nominate Adam Priest as in contention for "the greatest or most significant or most influential" pro wrestler ever only tells you how far pro wrestling still is from becoming a serious art. I'm not saying he's bad, he performs very competently, hits his spots, doesn't fuck up. But come on. The best guys on your local indie show is still just the best guy on your local indie show. I mean this Anthony Henry match. That's what someone is suggesting is GOAT material? I mean he's taking a jumping tombstone piledriver onto a chair, kicking out, and then completely no selling it 30 seconds later so he can rapidly do his figure-4 spot they worked out in the back. Or this Slim J match. What happens? Yeah they just do a bunch of spots and trade momentum back and forth. Adam Priest does a few heat spots that last approximately 50 seconds. There's an apron bump. I am literally just describing any undercard match on any episode of AEW Collision. I'm supposed to watch this, and then watch Flair/Steamboat or Kobashi/Hansen and try compare them? I understand people have some sort of attachment to people they've seen live. Wrestlers who are "underground" that they feel they can claim some sort of respect by "discovering" first. I also understand how uncool it is to like major WWE stars in today's day and age. But Adam Priest is a good little hand in front of this crowd of roughly 100 people. But he wouldn't even scratch the top 500 wrestlers. Best in the WORLD? Get a grip. People that can honestly post on this forum that guys like HHH or HBK aren't top 100 material, and then suggest an indieriffic guy like this have rocks in their head.

Terrible look. No real sense of an engaging character in there. Matches are nothing special despite being constantly presented as a future star. Not a Top 100 wrestler.

I remember quite clearly getting the 2005 Bret Hart DVD and it opening my eyes to the world of wrestling and what it could be. One of the best documentaries they ever did. Then I turned 10 years old. I joke, but it encapsulates my experience, where Bret Hart's reputation as the best technical worker blah blah blah was very much simply clever marketing by Vince and himself. Was he better than Steve Keirn and Matt Borne and the other guys he was working? Sure. But was he really that much better than Hennig, Flair, Austin and the rest of the guys featured in his most lauded matches? I'm not so sure. He was a very good wrestler, who was put in a prominent position to have good matches by US standards. But outside of his genuinely fantastic peak in the 90s, he's all around pretty dull. He falls back on his five moves of doom an awful lot. Not to say that many other top ten candidates also do not, but it always felt particularly egregious from Bret because of his lack of emotion and single-minded persona in the ring. It is of course, a tragedy he was forced to retire so early, and would have still had a lot to offer on a return to WWE.

No. Longest sustained, failed push in wrestling history. Nearly killed the company in the process and now just subsists on Stockholm Syndrome of the young fans he didn't put off wrestling altogether. Matches, which mind you were mainly against the best workers available in the world, relied on cheap tricks and shortcuts in a pretty dull "main event" style. If I never see Roman Reigns SHOCK THE CROWD by SPEARING SOMEONE THROUGH THE BARRICADE again, it'll be too soon. Bad babyface, average heel. Really a testament to Vince's single-minded ambition, and a sign of how far he'd declined in his ability to make stars. He got there in the end, but probably an overall blemish on his record as a promoter.

The three star general himself! I always really liked him. I remember back on the forums people actually tried to tell me Ted DiBiase Jr. was the Michaels. Goes to show that people have always been [CHRIS BENOIT] when discussing wrestling online. Rhodes benefitted greatly by being the "underutilized, full of promise" for so long, that it hid he was a pretty subpar wrestler. Thankfully Dusty died and gave him the emotional crutch he needed to reform his character around, but his wrestling ability really hasn't improved. He simply has the best marketing machine in the world to use its SMOKE AND MIRRORS (WOOOOOOOAH). The Battlefield tag is an all-timer though, I'll give you that. But everything Rhodes does comes across as fake, as an act. It's what makes him such a natural heel, and if he had tapped into that and stayed with AEW, the wrestling war would be far, far closer than it is now. But he's not top 100, and he's not better than his dad or his brother yet.

One of his best performances ever is the King of Pro Wrestling 2013 match against Okada, where they seemingly both flip from face to heel and back several times throughout the course of the match. Complete control of the crowd, really tremendous stuff

Unrelated to his WWE run, but I just watched the Sakuraba match and it's still as fantastic as when it first happened. Just tremendous stuff. I've said it before, but Nakamura signed a big money contract, had possibly the greatest debut match of all time against Zayn, and then rode the momentum of that for the next 10 years. Impressive from a business standpoint if nothing else. I still think he's a top 100 wrestler, even with what some would consider a dour run in the US. Considering how few Japanese wrestlers have ever succeeded in WWE, his success there is actually fairly remarkable.

Given the re-release of the goodhelmet set, this seems apropos. Barry Windham has long been a guy I don't really "get". I think he's very good in what I've seen, but people talk about him like he's pushing top 10-20 ever, and I just don't see that. I've watched all the "great" matches, and they held up the varying degrees. I thought the Crockett Cup match with Flair was actually better than the Battle of the Belts match (although in both I felt they ran out of ideas). The Dick Murdoch match was fine but I believe overrated, with a pretty flat finish and some rough patches. The 2 Cold Scorpio match did not live up the hype at all, incredibly disappointing. His Clash of Champions match against Sting was surprisingly fun though. Don't get me wrong, he has a great presence, and he moves like absolute silk in the ring. He might take the best powders out of anyone in the history of the business. But I would love to see someone argue a bit more heavily on it. Blonde Randy Orton isn't moving me at the moment.

I mean I appreciate the argument here and think there's a lot of merit to it. But BEST WRESTLER ON THE PLANET might be a bit strong. Roddy has always been a very proficient wrestler, and I don't think even in the early ROH days his critics would argue any differently. But I do believe he lacked strongly as a character for many, many years. As such, he had a very high floor for his matches, but could also never turn his matches from "entertaining" and "good" into transcendentally great or classic. And if you're the best wrestler in the world, you should be producing classics at a fairly brisk clip. I think he was really on top of the world during his PWG heel run as champion, obviously with a very generous crowd who were up for everything. But he regressed in WWE and is just coming back around in AEW now. But I still wouldn't put him ahead of Kyle as a wrestler or as an act.

I think the main point of contention is that not everyone will be using your criteria of 20 year period. It's just a very long period of time for a wrestler to be consistently GREAT. There are also the logistics of it. It means anyone that wasn't already wrestling at a high level by 2005/6 is now invalidated from being a top 10 wrestler. And if someone started wrestling in the late 60s/early 70s, there simply won't be enough footage to confirm their case. I'm all for the longevity argument and do think it holds a lot of water. But I think you have to make carve-outs for wrestlers that had 10 or 15 years that were beyond anything we have ever seen. I'd say this is my argument with Flair. I'd probably say somewhere in the region of 1982 - 1995 is what builds his case. You might argue that's only 14 years, that other wrestlers have more years of great production. But I would argue that Ric Flair was SO ahead of everyone else in the world during some of those years, that it averages out. He was certainly wrestling more than most other people on the planet. I'm actually making myself a little bit nauseous by doing this, but I'm going to refer to Cagematch (I know, I know, forgive me). It currently has listings for 2,346 AJ Styles matches, a number which will increase. It has a listing for 5,025 Ric Flair matches. And that could be an underestimate. So what are we really talking about here when we talk about longevity? Because Flair shredded his bump card more than any human on earth. He may not have it across years, but he has it in pure volume. During his golden period, no one could really touch his act, no one could touch his promos, I would trust no one more than Flair to get a good match out of a random jabroni at a Kansas spot show. And just to your last point about giving a wrestler a "bridge" during bad segments of their career, I think that is fine. I believe a great many people would argue for giving Keiji Mutoh a bridge into his bald headed revival period, or skipping American Badass Taker, or not holding Ringmaster Steve Austin too heavily against him. Everyone can have slumps.

If you take him on his own merits in 2005 as a different wrestler rather than a guy who is 30 per cent of what he used to be in 1989, he's perfectly entertaining. There's been a bit of talk that Flair didn't adapt his style to modern sensibilities, but I think he did what he could. The little hardcore phase he had in 2006 for instance. He leaned into his "dirtiest player in the game" far more, as he couldn't trade headlocks and arm drags for 55 minutes anymore. And even at 56, with all the wear and tear on his body, he can still go out there and work at Kurt Angle's pace, which is notoriously go-go-go. Ric Flair vs Kurt Angle - WWE RAW - June 27, 2005 Is he gassed at the end of it? Of course. But the crowd is still red hot for him, and lose their minds for a VERTICAL SUPLEX IN 2005. Honestly, if you let him wrestle someone who actually worked a hold now and then to let Flair breathe, it probably would have been even better. Yes, sorry for not making myself clear. I merely picked the early 90s to show that some promoters (Jim Herd) clearly thought he was over the hill. But he still had great matches (Vader, Steamboat, Savage) in the early 90s. His de-emphasis came post-nWo, which makes perfect business sense, but makes it more difficult for his GWE case. The lack of TV time (3 hours initially to modern day WWE's approximately 186 hours of weekly content) means he was naturally going to be pushed into the background. But between a turn away from in-action (more run-ins! more!) and angles that did no one any favours (like getting committed to an insane asylum), I don't think we can lay the blame at Flair's feet and say it was because he couldn't go anymore. He says himself his confidence was shot by 2001, wrestling in a T-shirt on the final Nitro out of shame. I don't think that it's unique to Flair either. I don't think late 90s WCW is used to promote Bret Hart's case, or Curt Hennig's case, or Macho Man's case.