Robert S

So Claudio is the guy who made the top 100 without being top 10 on any single ballot. Actually, he was on 211 ballots and only made top 25 on 9 of those.

Wait, Chris Hero is still in the running? WTF?

Regarding the list, Hase dropping that early is the first one that really hurt. The only thing speaking against Hase is his relatively short time of full activity. On the other hand, I am sure even at 65 he could still deliver a 3.5-4 star match if push came to shove, considering how great he looked in his last appearance three years ago.

Consider the number of unprotected chairshots he took and how many other of his generation who did the same ended up, it's more Tanaka being a physical freak than him wrestling smarter. I mean Jun Akiyama is still around and doing good last I checked and Kobashi didn't retire due to neck issues.

Not sure if Buddy Rose is the best name to make that point as there are a lot of long 2/3 fall TV matches of his around (mostly because Rose himself taped and preserved that stuff, of course).

Randy Orton too, right?

So another 14 years later, I finally rewatched that match and yeah, it definitely holds up. Marty taking the Fatu-bump on the clotheline made my laugh out loud.

Were they any good? When I was watching NJPW somewhat more regular when they were fresh as Roppongi 3K, I thought they completely blew. I also remember watching some Fantasticamania stuff from around that time and thinking how bad Raijin and Fujin were even before I realized who was under the masks.

In 96, Steamboat would have been fine. WWF did some real old-school booking that year and they were not that light on wrestling, though by the fall of 97 he would have felt like a relic.

He was acquitted of all charges a couple of weeks back. So WWE is on Netflix here since the beginning of April. For whatever reason I thought I might want to check out Wrestlemania, but I got fed up with it before even the first match started (and remembered why - disregarding ethical reasons - I completely dropped off that company a couple of years back). It started with Lin-Manuel Miranda doing a completely emotion-free narration (as in "I am doing this for the paycheck) of the introduction video, followed by citizen Cena given a content-free promo, followed by LLM Michael Cole welcoming us. When I saw that the first match was Usos & LA Knight vs. Austin Theory, Logan Paul and some Youtuber, I was "nah, I'm good, let's rather watch some indy shows of that weekend".

Hall and Nash tagged a bunch of times on the WWF house show circuit in 95 and early 96 (against Jeff Jarrett and heel HBK, then against Jarrett and Sid and a couple of times against Jarrett and HHH. cagematch also lists (besides a bunch of TNA matches and the Hustle thing) some one-offs in UPW (Rick Bassman's promotion), Juggalo Championship Wrestling and in GLCW (a Wisconsin indy that still runs today, the latest show had a bunch of names on the card like Serena Deeb, Shotzi Blackheart, Mr. Kennedy, Heath Slater and Kevin Fertig).

I remember Cornette making jokes about how uncomfortable Caudle was with being on screen with The Gangstas (and using the Jesse Helms connection as a point-of-reference), so there was definitely something there.

Some stats: the biggest winners (in percent points, not actual percentage) Zack Sabre Jr. +33.4% Gran Hamada +32.7% Spyros Arion +31.6% Dorrell Dixon +19.6% Cody Rhodes +16.3% Otto Wanz 15.4% CM Punk +13.4% Samoa Joe +13.3% Matt & Jeff Hardy +12.4% Jay & Mark Briscoe +11.4% Biggest losers: Royal Brothers -15.0% Ole Anderson -13.5% Angel Blanco & Dr. Wagner -12.5% El Hijo del Santo & Octagon -12.3% Split of people who got in (not sure how Dave calculates the numbers w.r.t. voting categories): Spyros Arion (3rd among reporters, 1st among historians, 2nd among active professionals, 24th among retired professionals) Gran Hamada (1st, 2nd, 27th, 30th) Dorrell Dixon (2nd, 2nd, 21st, 17th) CM Punk (6th, 12th, 4th, 12th) Cody Rhodes (7th, 10th, 10th, 1st) Sabu (9th, 6th, 3rd, 13th) Bobby Bruns (13th, 9th, 13th, 18th) And of people who were close: Hayabusa (4th, 23rd, 16th, 16th) JYD (14th, 15th, 9th, 21st) June Byers (12th, 7th, 19th, 26th) Jesse Ventura (11th, 22nd, 5th, not in top 30) Jose Tarres (10th, 4th, not in top 30, 15th) Ted Turner (8th, 14th, 30th, not in top 30) Von Erichs (5th, 21st, 8th, not in top 30) Gorilla Monsoon (22nd, not in top 30, 1st, 4th) Some outliers among people who did not pass the 50%: Billy Joyce 5th among historians, 39.9% total Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada 2nd among former professionals, 33.8% total Larry Matysik 3rd among former professionals, 39.7% total Dominic DeNucci 5th among former professionals, 32.1% total Randy Orton 6th among former professionals, 31.6% total Edge 7th among former professionals, 27.6% total Matt & Jeff Hardy 8th among former professionals, 35.6% total Tony Schiavone 9th among former professionals, 23.4% total Mike Tenay 10th among former professionals, 48.6% total It's really funny, that former professionals voted for a lot of announcers, but did not vote at all for Jesse Ventura (who is on the ballot as an announcer).

if you ignore the elephant in the room called Jesse Helms

To be fair, there have been a lot of stretches over the last 25 years where an AI would have done a better job than Vince and the writers staff did. As was pointed out time and time again, booking wrestling in theory is anything but rocket science. You have your standard formula and tropes that you use again and again, just making sure to not repeat stuff too soon.