Mantaur Rodeo Clown

It’s all love brother. Catch you in 2036.

The fact there are apparently “people” who think that Danielson should have come out and had some massive violent rage-fuelled brawl, in the opening match of the PPV, in that situation, with the storyline well established that he would have to wrestle again later that night and overcome adversity, goes to show how little people actually understand wrestling and booking a show. It made you “lose respect” for Danielson? What are you, a mark? His character is smart enough to try conserve his energy and start a match cautiously against a dangerous opponent, knowing he has to wrestle a triple threat match later if he wins. He even has a big bandage over his shoulder to scream to ROW ZZ: “hey folx, this guy is injured and the underdog!” Apparently you aren’t smart enough to watch a product that even 10 year old children routinely say is fake and gay. These are the kinds of cretins who I’m sure loved when Ospreay kicked out of 40 false finishes against Fletcher and then came back to wrestle another match against Okada and kick out of another 40 finishes to diminishing returns while looking like a used tampon. Hang on, I have a pair of keys around here somewhere I can jingle for you.

I do not think Danielson or Funk are THAT much better than Kobashi or Flair. But not really a surprise. The top two have the advantage of being American white men who were fixtures on mainstream TV with plenty of tape while having relatively unproblematic personal lives. And they were also both extremely talented. Perfect for the voter base. Would like to see some more BIPOC and gender-diverse representation one day in the top ten, but probably a conversation for 2036/2046 and onwards.

I’m fairly comfortable saying Samoa Joe is the most overrated person in this decade’s edition of the list. The guy has been a broken down shell of himself for years coasting off reputation. Never came up with a way to work to cover for his declining explosiveness, and his AEW title reign was a horrible error that killed the company’s momentum dead. I’m not saying the guy wasn’t obviously great at points or isn’t top 100 material (getting laughed out of Japan notwithstanding). I just don’t see how a guy ranked THIS high could have stretches in his career where he was as unwatchable as Joe was at points in TNA. I could also be describing Foley here, except Foley did enough to stand as his own man and leave a legacy that was truly his own. Joe just copied his betters. Add to that a lack of versatility and growth in his work I find quite dull after two and a half decades. There’s a chasm between himself and the guys/gals he’s ranked alongside. And he’s FAT.

kayfabe brother

It's generally because Cena is very clearly an autistic man who happened to discover steroids and pro wrestling. There is nothing genuine about him. Even on Total Divas, which showcased Moxley and Danielson having their own wacky personalities, he came off like an emotionless robot. This is a man who proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of a wrestling ring and delivered it with the same cadence as when he announced Osama Bin Laden had been killed. STEPHANIE NICOLE GARCIA-COLACE, I AM COMPROMISING YOUR SINGLE LIFE TO A PERMANENT END. A blank, automaton meat puppet is exactly what Vince needed, mind you. He was still quite sore in 2004 after Brock had torn up his boipucci and, worried that another star was going to leave him, figured out the best course of action was to push Cena. A man with no creative sensibility, no internal monologue, no grand artistic vision for what wrestling could be, and who could be coached to stardom by agents like Pat Patterson mentoring him. The world's first NPC champion. He helped transformed people from fans of pro wrestlers, to fans of pro wrestling companies. It became less about his performance as a wrestler, and more of a meta-commentary on what you thought of his booking as a wrestler. He was essentially a prop. An effective one, but a prop nonetheless. You put him in there against Brock and have him get slaughtered as an example of Brock killing the face of the company. You put him in there against the PWG roster and he represents WWE adapting to the new US indie style. You put him in there against CM Punk or RVD and he is a prop representing corporate WWE culture. His performances or character (such as there is one) are unimportant in these cases. He is just a fungible representation of whatever Vince McMahon wanted him to be. Suddenly, for Vince it didn't matter if a temperamental star "took his ball and went home" on you, because you'd designed a system to plug in another gormless, blank babyface and have fans pay money to watch them regardless (SUFFERIN SUCCOTASH, BELIEVE THAT.) Do you think Vince was actually upset that fans brought a IF CENA WINS WE RIOT sign to One Night Stand? Do you think that's air you're breathing? When it comes to the crunch, his performances underdeliver. The less that can be said about him butchering his long-awaited heel turn the better. His faux-epic matches with AJ Styles were tired the moment they went to air. But it was his inability to make Wrestlemania 28 an all-time classic, with all the build, with all the hype, with the amount of work and money poured into making that match a success, speaks volumes about his deficiencies and abilities. He simply couldn't replicate what Hogan and The Rock managed to pull off 10 years earlier. For the 33rd greatest wrestler ever, that was the easiest lay-up there has ever been. And he missed.

I've been pretty harsh on this project I suppose, but I just have to express how much I appreciate it and what it's done for the wider wrestling community in terms of being inclusive and supportive. For instance, I just read a blurb that said John Cena was the number one greatest wrestler of all time because of his "great strikes". It's just nice to see we're also letting blind pro wrestling fans vote. We're talking about a guy who misses his punches by about a foot on average, and when he manages to make it look good, it's only because he's literally punching his opponent because he doesn't know how to work. Literally, technically awful in the ring. Someone else said he had "sound fundamentals". The "sound" here being him screaming the entire layout of the match across the ring so Row ZZ can hear it. "The best big match wrestler in American history"? No wrestler has been booked into more big matches, and done less with so much opportunity. He was in 180 or so PPV matches. If you gave a healthy Steve Austin or Randy Savage those numbers, we wouldn't even be having this poll. Look, I know that John Cena was probably the biggest male figure in your life after Dad went out for that pack of cigarettes. I know him cutting shitty, robotic promos and loudly standing up for Vince McMahon probably helped drown out the sounds of when Gary would come over and do loud sex to your Mom. But he's simply not the 33rd best wrestler of all time. He's barely the 233rd best wrestler of all time.

lmao most threads on this forum haven't had activity since Barack Obama was president. Eddie Guerrero's thread last had a post in 2021. Should he also not be top 100?

After about 180 straight tries, on PPV.

Tony Khan just booked a multi-million dollar four year campaign for Sting's GWE case. I kneel....money-mark-sama..... Realistically Sting has always been the recipient of career boosting pushes. Flair chose him to be a babyface star. Scott Hall practically handed him the gimmick when he told him to go Crow. Plenty of time at the top of the card in TNA. And one of the best booked retirements, where some all-time greats bump around him to make him look like a star. He has ethereal, otherworldly charisma and presence. That's obvious. But actually watching his stuff and looking him as a worker in the cold light of day, I don't think he in the elite tier.

haha, Hogan was a gimme.

If you had told me before the poll that Katsuyori Shibata would rank at 53, I would have said: 'ah yes, fair enough'. But looking at the names he placed above, I'm just not sure if he's deserving to be that high. No one is denying the heights he was capable of touching (vs. Ishii 2013 G-1 Climax, vs. Okada Sakura Genesis 2017 being the two matches where he touched the face of God). But compared to the other names, Riki Choshu, Bruno Sammartino, Keiji Mutoh, Hulk Hogan, even Akira Maeda way out past the breakers. Did Shibata really have the impact, the breadth of great matches that these guys did? He's been relegated to Collision with the rest of Tony's unloved toys this year, and watching him on there, he has none of the vigor and verve that propelled him once to those lofty heights. He hasn't gotten better with age. He hasn't grown into an imperial majesty. I feel like I'm watching a guy who used to play Katsuyori Shibata on TV eke out a living. Doing strike exchanges and five minute matches with Alex Reynolds on an Honor Club stream no one will see. And then you start wondering what is the substance, when you've stripped away all the stiff strikes and self-annihilating style? These recent performances do not detract from his earlier work, but simply put him in a lower category to the all-time greats. A good showing, but one I don't think will hold up over time.

Will Ospreay would kick out of vehicular manslaughter at 2. Absolutely no sense of pacing himself. Matches like his cage bout against Kyle Fletcher actually veer into surreal Lynchian comedy at a certain point. His body already looks shot by the way. He's in terrible shape right now.

If Ospreay can figure out how to work entertaining matches even as his body inevitably begins to break down, then yes, that would be impressive. But looking at Omega and Ibushi, I wouldn't bet on it. Choshu should have been much higher. One where the cultural and business impact really should have some weighting.

Ospreay was clearly boosted by his fans though. He had 9 people give top 3 votes, and 25 people voted him a top ten wrestler in HISTORY. He got to #75 with just 161 votes. That less than both the person before him and after him. He slaughtered them in Top 3 votes as well. It indicates diehard fans, rather than a broad consensus on him. Will Ospreay is an extremely polemic wrestler who would be much much lower without a legion of diehard fans. Whether those fans are deserved is entirely subjective, depending on how you feel about his style.