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.

Sakuraba got the better match out of Nakamura.

Yes, for sure. I’m not saying it’s a new phenomenon, just that it’s interesting to see in the context of THIS project, which is ostensibly a semi-standardized attempt at finding the Greatest Wrestler Ever. So it’s fascinating to see some people try to apply certain criteria as objectively as they can, while others just fully commit to their personal feelings and subjectivism. And yes, perfectly valid as you say. It’s not any more or less serious than analyzing who did a shooting star press the best or who had the best fake punches. I am curious to see more blurbs though. I wanna meet the guy who deeply identifies and sees himself reflected in Onita or Andre.

One interesting thing is a number of people posting in their reasons how their choices reinforced their own identities. “So-and-so influenced me as a queer man, as a fat person, as an undead funeral parlor employee etc etc” That is to say, it is not only how a wrestler is performing, but also how it affects an audience member’s sense of self. Death of the author, all that. This is probably as valid as judging on how well a person can do a dragon suplex or pretend they’ve been punched real hard. But will be interesting to see more blurbs to see how prevalent. No huge surprises otherwise. Sabu got a death bump. Owens got a WWE bump. Roddy was always going to do well. Smarks love an undersized charisma-vacuum who does 45 moves in a row. Oh nice, Benoit made it.

I've read through this thread and still have no clear conception of what the benefits to the nomination process are, outside of gatekeeping. Judging from the activity on most nomination threads as Ell McKell has mentioned, it hasn't spurred discussion. I think we need to also be realistic about how big a barrier of entry it is to the discussion and to the project, particularly with how far in the future 2036 will be. The nomination process would have to be significantly improved from now. I also don't think we should be punishing people who only found out about the project when voting got underway, as it is natural that is the exact moment it would break through to the public. Nobody is going to be going on twitter saying "Here my GWE poll for 2036, remember voting opens seven years from now guys!" Finally, the point that rankles me most is when I've read "well it's a non-issue, because [this wrestler who was not nominated] barely got any votes at all". That's a strange attitude to have, given there may well have been lots of voters who simply followed the rules and only voted for those who were nominated, even if they really liked BxB Hulk or Taz or whoever. You're essentially punishing people who can read instructions.

I can already tell you have the reading comprehension of a 14 year old child, because you do the annoying thing where you respond to a legitimate concern with a completely different tangent that has nothing to do with the price of cheese. My argument is that discourse has been reduced to such base elements that there is no room for reasonable discourse. It is precisely the reason why a push for Jerry Blackwell would mean fuck all. Because someone can just get 100k more likes saying "lmao Jerry PEDOwell? Over THE Goldberg?? This dude doesnt like Goldberg spearing Nunzio??? [clown emoji x3]" Dunk culture ENCOURAGES mediocre wrestlers getting nominated, because intelligent rebuttals are silenced. Which brings us to a ridiculous claim like "Lulu Pencil is better than Gentleman Chris Adams" I have eyes, for one. I don't consider them to be "people" at all. Yes I am very glad that the 25 or so incels that go to ChocoPro shows connected with her. But that doesn't make her anywhere close to one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Just any random match you google of hers is actually an embarrassment, and the equivalent to watching your nephew play with action figures. As in, they actively make the art of professional wrestling worse by existing. Rehearsed, high school theater-kid level antics. If people connect with this, then they aren't really fans of the sport of professional wrestling. They probably also "connect" with funny videos they see on TikTok or video essays about speedrunning Sonic games. I get it man. You have some weird hang up about this meme middle aged Japanese woman. But seriously trying to imply that Chris Adams never connected with a crowd (a crowd of thousands of actual wrestling fans by the way) is veering into straight delusion. Adams showed incredible emotion through his matches, as both a heel and a face. Adams did it for longer, in front of bigger and more varied crowds, and did it better. Lulu Pencil is physically incapable of doing anything he did. Lulu Pencil's entire career is a low.

I can definitely see this argument, not just with AEW but all modern wrestling. The amount of non-bullshit finishes alone comparatively makes someone's match quality instantly soar. There's a bit to it too with opportunity (Roman Reigns and John Cena have been given more opportunities to have "good" matches on PPV than most wrestlers will ever receive), but I think most voters do try to adjust for that.

I'm not sure why you have cherry picked a period from 1989 - 1996, which makes absolutely no sense and flies in the face of the argument of recency bias. It's like literally the opposite thing to what I'm arguing. A comparison would be to analyze how many of the 2016 Top 200 were actively wrestling in one company at the time of the poll. For WWE, I count 11 in the top 200, and that's even account for the fact that there was a much smaller pool to choose from. For NJPW I think it's something like 5. To say AEW isn't an outlier just isn't true. We don't know the final list yet, but it is very likely AEW will beat those figures handily.

Firstly, let me just say thank you for writing such a long, detailed post. Always appreciate the efforts. I think you are slightly off-base with your train of thought, but love the response anyways. To say that a company that has only existed for 7 or so years (and those years being the LAST 7 years, including a pandemic) but somehow managed to have over 12.5 per cent of the greatest 200 wrestlers to have ever lived on planet earth wrestle for them is a mathematical oddity, to say the least. I mean here's the problem here. You don't see a problem with them making it that high, so nothing to see here? Except there are undoubtedly others, myself included, who find it laughable that they ranked so highly. So where are we at now? The argument is that, taken out of time and context, they do not nearly have the bodies of work to support their positions when measured against wrestlers far below them. MJF being a prime example. I'm under the impression most people are voting based on the in-ring ability of a wrestler. Which makes his placement all the more ridiculous. His booking and lack of house show appearances means he has the equivalent of maybe a couple years work under his belt compared to an 80s worker on their schedule. I'd say his match catalogue is filled with self-indulgent, awful overbooking and overreaches. The argument is, without a significant boost from recency bias and AEW fans who have never actually watched the guys he is desperately trying to emulate and steal from, he wouldn't be considered by multiple voters (!!!) as a top 3 wrestler of all time, let alone top 100. I don't understand this. He did make the list. The whole list is what we're discussing. I mean, just because there are 100 entries doesn't mean the list ends there. Particularly how the master list has previous years going back into the 100s. He's still on the list, and hundreds of spots above wrestlers whose primes were decades before him and thus probably suffered. I understand your point, but the odds aren't in your favor. We're trying to discover who the greatest wrestler of all time is. It is natural that people whose careers have ended and that we have had years to watch and study will do better. We are judging on accomplishments. Not the potential of someone looking forward, or someone whose career is still nascent. It is the same in any field, be it films, music or literature. It is very rare that any greatest list is filled with films from the past 5 years. It isn't nostalgia, it's merely mathematical sense. What are the odds that not only are many of the greatest wrestlers of all time wrestling right at this moment, but that they are also already among the greatest while halfway through their careers? What are the odds that these modern wrestlers have already superseded those who had careers that stretched decades longer and have survived through the decades by the power of their work? And I respectfully disagree. I'm not saying people like Bianca Belair or Konosuke Takeshita aren't talented. I'm saying we have barely even seen their careers take shape yet, and their strong performances are only explained by a lot of younger voters.

They were just names pulled out of thin air. I could just have easily have said Mike Bailey or MJF or Swerve Strickland , all of whom fit in the same category of being beneficiaries of wrestling in AEW, and none of whom I believe are warranting of a top 100 vote in a conversation about the greatest of all time.

It probably helps to delineate between "AEW guy" and "guy who has wrestled in AEW". I don't think anyone considers Okada an AEW guy, despite him being there for years. Same too with say, Punk as a "WWE" guy when technically he's been all over. The overrepresentation comes from guys who I don't think have pedigree at all to be in the conversation, but have just happened to work at AEW throughout a hot period. Like Jungle Boy or Kyle Fletcher et al. This also so tied to the fact that it was much harder for people around the world to access ROH in 2006. You're putting in serious work if you're trying to watch that as someone in South Africa or Brazil etc. Whereas even people in the developing world can watch 1080p highlights of AEW Dynamite from the comfort of their toilet. So that obviously influences voting more. If those ROH DVDs were easy to access, maybe the vote would have looked different. Ah well you've just said it