Death From Above

Bobby Eaton, outside shot Aja Kong though I suspect she drops too soon for that.

My God, those Dundee pictures.

Never stopped UWF-i from hyping themselves as "real pro wrestling". I wish Tabe's website from eons past with the old VHS art was around.

I love the concept of U-Style: the 15 minute time limit cut out so much of the absolute funeral dirge nonsense 10 minute leglock sequences that go nowhere you got in UWF-i. It was perfect for that kind of wrestling, I wish it had been a more successful company. I'm also going to cop to fucking up and leaving Tamura off my ballot, undeservedly so. An oversight. I would not have been one of his highest votes by any means, but still.

Baba is in my top 25, #18 to be exact. He absolutely rules the late 60's we have, the 1970's, and he's still really good in the 1980's. By the 1990's he turned himself more into a special attraction but his matches against the younger generation mostly in real world tag league stuff is so fun to watch too. Honestly one of my favourite wrestlers ever.

I seriously think a huge chunk of WWE's own audience has no clue how good Slaughter was in the 80's. It's a shame, he really was very very good in his heyday.

Ha! Right on! Need to make a good talk better? Need to derail a stupid debate? Bored? There's always cause to randomly talk about the Ugandan giant! What would prime Kamala vs 2003 Tamon Honda have looked like? I wonder.

Ohtani was responsible for my all time favourite Satoshi Kojima moment. During one of the Zero-1 Fire Festivals, Ohtani ripped off Kojima's orange Breathe-Right nasal strip to draw heat, as if he was attacking a luchador's sacred mask. It worked. This alone concludes my case for Shinjiro Ohtani thank you and good day.

Sure, but I'm not saying their matches were bad, merely that none of them reached the heights one might expect.

I honestly don't think there's a single "great" Hansen/Misawa match, which is one of the biggest goddamn mysteries of all time. Two incredible workers that simply do not mesh.

I had Hogan one slot ahead of John Cena.

I'd have to really think about that. There are so many guys that you can make a case for 85-100 or are they a "second hundred" guy. It's hard for me to mentally separate those two years and give you a real objective answer, but I lean to thinking probably not because there are guys that I cut who would have more going for them probably.

I clearly like Doc, and Doc/Gordy more than you do. Ace is probably my least favourite All Japan regular that was obviously in good matches but I don't think is actually good. He's that one kid that hung out with the cool kids but wasn't actually cool, to me.

I don't know, I can think of quite a few examples of otherwise good wrestlers not fitting somewhere. Vader in WWF is a shadow compared to everything else, Lawler wrestled in Japan a little and looked pretty lost compared to his norm, El Dandy in WCW became a misinformed early internet meme, Dusty Rhodes never quite fit in Japan either, Dick Togo in WWF Kaientai basically has nothing of note. etc etc

All I ask is that they be true to themselves in their balloting. Listen, I already feel like kind of a wrestling dinosaur at 34 that doesn't totally understand some things loved in the modern game. But with only a couple of small things near the bottom I might change, I am pretty happy that my ballot reflects what I do get and like about wrestling. So do that, because you'll never please everyone all the time. Don't waste a second of effort trying.

Honestly I feel this entire batch was people where even if they aren't where I had them it's really easy to agree with their ranking based on a certain point of view and there's nothing mysterious there. All of these feel like fairly sensible choices from the kind of people that would vote for them. You know who is quietly going to finish really well? Dustin Rhodes.

This must happen. I don't care what it takes.

What a fascinating group of people to go down today. Wrestling is everything.

I think it's funny I wasn't even close to being the high vote on Onita. I swear, that anonymous 7 isn't me! None the less, I'm bringing back my real avatar. I just can't take it anymore.

The Shea stadium match is really good. YOU ARE WEIRD, JERRY

At this point it seems clear it will never turn up and that the footage is all lost to the abyss, but the mythical Destroyer vs. Billy Robinson matches that happened somewhere in the Pacific outside of Japan will forever be the wrestling Holy Grail to me. I know we have a limited footage issue with the Destroyer but I'm happy he snuck into the top 100 anyway.

I chose not to rank him despite once being a big fan. I'm not really here to pass judgment on anyone that did. I think there's nothing to be gained there personally, and I won't have anything else to say on the topic. To each their own.

I'll take 1970's Andre over a whole hell of a lot of things without even giving it a second thought. Loss' summary on the last page is excellent.

Nobuhiko Takada is the only worker in my top 30 that has fallen, which suggests I am a more boring person than I give myself credit for.

Maeda is fantastic in the 80's but I am kind of baffled about the gap between him and Takada because late career Maeda isn't very good at all. And at least late career Takada involves fun nonsense in hustle. Maeda also scores a lot of points for "influence" and "importance" but given where American wrestling was in 95/96 there's a legitimate case to be made that Takada was the biggest star in wrestling for a brief period in the mid-90's so I don't really see it there either.