Death From Above

Kamala's WWF "doesn't know how to pin people" gimmick feels like the kind of thing that would have worked much better on a non-televised circuit where a new audience is seeing the shtick every show (and we know this is an environment Kamala did well in), but struggles not to seem utterly ridiculous when put on national TV every week. Having said that, the WWF really should have known better.

The Barry Windham/Steve Williams match at Starrcade 1987. Either the whole thing was just layed out very strangely, or they cut the match short because Doc actually got hit in the groin and couldn't go. Either way, what a shame.

I think the consistency of how they present those segments is really key to keeping the show from falling apart. Otherwise you get into WCW territory with Hogan seeing Warrior in the fucking mirror while Bischoff is like "wtf you on bro" and the announcers are right there commenting on it and it's just a mess. They haven't stepped on this landmine yet because they have way more discipline about what their format actually is. Lucha Underground is constructed as "a TV show that happens to be about wrestling" as opposed to what every other wrestling show in America has always been "wrestling that happens to be on tv". WWE tries to stage itself like TV but doesn't go nearly as far as LU does with how they stage things like all the Cueto's Office segments, the editing, the slick production, the great/cheesy TENSE SOAP OPERA MUSIC, and at first it seems really weird but the fact it's always presented that way makes it work. It's not organic at all, which seems to go against what wrestling is about, but it is really interesting they've found a way to make that work. If you'd just presented the concept to me without seeing it I'd have sworn it would be awful and I'd hate it because it just doesn't sound like how wrestling works. But it absolutely has worked as a signature of their style. Hell, I look forward to seeing what dirty deal will be cut in Cueto's office every show. That shit is great.

Dave interacting with his trolls and using crazy things like facts against them has been one of the pleasant surprises of twitter.

Too many times I've got up at 5 or 6 in the morning on a Saturday to watch Tottenham draw with fucking West Brom or find a way to get ahead and lose to some other vile club. Sports are dumb why do we hurt ourselves

I'm a Tottenham fan so I'm taking a painful second place finish here and even I have no ill will toward Leicester City whatsoever. What an amazing story this is. Did they catch a weird sequence of breaks for this to be possible? Yes, but they've absolutely taken all those chances and hung on with both hands. Something no other team in England this year has even remotely looked like doing, frankly. I hope the party lasts a week.

They are playing season 1 on TLN (hispanic/Italian specialty cable channel) here in Canada on Sunday nights. It's in a block of wacky sleaze programming with the TV series version of From Dusk Till Dawn of all things. I've really enjoyed much more of it than I've disliked. It sort of has an ECW kind of vibe to me where I rarely remember any of the specific matches, I just remember "hey a bunch of crazy shit happened in that hour and I really enjoyed it". I think I've only missed a couple so far, through forgetfulness. They do a really good job of framing individual characters and angles in ways that make it very easy to figure out what the hell is going on at a glance. In that sense I feel it's a much better show than RAW, which feels so goddamn bloated to the point I've basically lost interest off the back of a lackluster Wrestlemania.

Thanks to everyone that put in work to make this list possible. It's been a fun journey with a few new discoveries along the way.

Joe vs. Rusev on a really big stage would be awesome. I agree with that for sure.

I can't find the thread where people were doing it before, but since at this point there's no harm (or any particular mystery) to me saying Misawa was my #1, if I had a Survivor Series team of guys I was high vote on it was Rusev, Chavo Sr., Bobby Eaton, and Misawa. That's one weird team but I'm kind of pleased with it because it does encompass so many different places and times that I enjoyed.

I have no problem with Flair as wrestler of the decade for the 80's, and from a certain perspective I have no problem with thinking the 80's are wrestling's best decade. So I honestly can't say I find any particular issue if Flair is number one at the end of the day.

Bockwinkel is easily the biggest climber for me in the last year, via discussions and match recommendations. I wasn't close to a high voter on him, nor should I be with relatively limited AWA knowledge to some, but I feel really comfortable with the internet's newfound appreciation of him. I think two of the great things (among others) that have come out of this forum for me are a better appreciation of Bockwinkel, and the Puerto Rico thread which literally has stuff in it I've never seen anywhere else in 18 years on wrestling boards.

You've all broken my heart.

The first Tenryu match I ever saw was the 1996 Tokyo Dome match with Fujinami where the whole match is built around Tenryu breaking Fujinami's nose with a punch as a counter to a suicide dive so they spend like 8 minutes trying to kill each other. So for a while I just assumed Tenryu was a completely crazy person.

Ah, Tenryu finally goes down. One of the best old man wrestlers ever, for sure. From the late 80's right into the 2000's he's really a constant factor, and is even one of the few guys that had a whole company built around him with W.A.R. where the main event was basically (insert name here) vs. Tenryu. Honestly, one of the easiest to enjoy guys ever, because what he does is so direct and to the point?

Vader was my #5. Dude kicked ass absolutely everywhere against everyone except the place they put the #PoliticalHit on him.

My only issue is I guess I haven't seen a match where he's the man so to speak. If anyone can point me to a match where he's carrying a lesser opponent to a great match I may revise my view on him. His match with Yuji Nagata is as blatant a carry job of a badly inferior worker as you'll ever find in the history of pro wrestling.

Fujinami seems like a guy that definitely benefits from a much increased awareness about 1980's New Japan beyond a comically small handful of matches. One of the things he always had working against him is that in the heavyweight ranks he is so rarely portrayed as New Japan's #1 guy; he was so often asked to be second fiddle to someone else. But over the course of his career the overall quality of his work really, really adds up. I like how a lot of his matches feature struggles over relatively basic holds or sequences that add a sense of grit to stuff that is otherwise pretty passe. He's definitely a guy that rose for me personally this time around from where I would have had him years ago. He really is pretty close to a true all-rounder in terms of his skills, though obviously the high flying stuff is significantly rarer the older he gets.

I think it's ridiculous too, but I get it a bit more because like Austin he's legit one of the biggest stars in wrestling history and I think that influenced the thinking of many voters. Savage is a really strange case in that I have no desire to talk anyone out of voting for him and I get why he's so loved, but of all the all time great wrestlers is there anyone that actually has a worse ratio of available footage to good matches? Savage really only has a handful of genuine classics to his name. Large periods of his career are really absolutely nothing. I still voted for him anyway. I'm not really sure I even have an analytical explanation. It just feels right. Randy Savage is just core to what wrestling is on some emotional level that goes beyond basic reason.

I have no idea where it's from or who the artist is. I am pretty sure I saved it to my drive ages ago out of one of DVDVR's photos of the month thread but that must have been well over a year ago.

I'm just going to leave this here because this is a place it will be appreciated.

I'm actually a little surprised at the Austin backlash in the discussion threads because of the guys that have been WWF/E ace (Sammartino, Backlund, Hogan, Hart, Michaels, himself, Cena, Triple H, The Rock, The Undertaker), to me he is the guy that overall has the best stuff for us to look at for his career. There are cases you can make for a couple of the other guys above him, but his overall career is pretty damn strong too. And that's despite him being the ace in the Attitude Era when for a couple years match quality and WWF rarely got on the same page. I have no problem with him this high, and it kind of feels like reactionary outrage that hasn't totally been thought through to me.

Martel is at least a hundred slots too high. I think Hennig is a weird number one but at least I understand it. Martel this high I do not.

Has Schneider contributed anything to this project whatsoever other than being triggered in public? Shit is beyond tired.

I would have been shocked if anyone but DEAN had been the high vote for Murdoch it was just a matter of how high. Probably the MVP of the beloved 80's Mid-South set? Akira Hokuto was my highest ranked woman. I had her at #12. I think you can make a case there are a small handful of women that have more "great matches" but nobody made women's wrestling feel more important and did more little things well to me. And her best work is as good as anything, ever. She's got absolutely everything. Kensuke Sasaki isn't even the toughest wrestler in the room when the family sits down to dinner. That's something.