El-P

Grim, I love your dry humour. Sorry, but as I'm going through 2003 TNA, Daniels is the exact opposite of the cliché criticisms I heard for years. Good on the mic, excellent heel, great bumping and maneurisms, super crisp execution (and no, there's nothing as too crisp), shows more character than any other indy-bred guy apart from Styles. Just a joy to watch.

That Chris Daniels pic is glorious. And I'm probably sure that if I had watched TNA all these years, I would have voted for him without a blink. Big Show on the other hand... What to say ? The most recent stuff I watched from him is the WWECW stint, and he was godawful there. Not bad. Godawful. Huge underachiever to me considering his potential. Probably a great guy though.

Blame me. I voted for Sammy in 2006 I believe, although I was a bit down on NJ juniors already. Haven't rewatch anything from him and I had too many other "old candidates" that I wanted to put in. But yeah, seems he's a forgotten worker now. Cool, he'll be a "discovery" in 2021 or so. (and yeah, thinking guys like Hall, Luger, both of them whom I like more than most, haven't showed up yet while Sammy or Tommy Rogers are there... well, the comeback of mainstream US wrestling I guess) And our second (or third, depending) murderer has dropped. I wonder how high the most famous one will get. PR remains one of my black hole that I always wanted to explore.

Chris Adams was my favourite WCW Thunder worker. His stuff in Texas, well... He sure was holding on things together in a rather mediocre territory, worked well as a babyface and a heel, but I never felt he was better than *good*. Of course he didn't had the best opposition in the world but still. A better version of Brad Armstrong. Kind of a Ted DiBiase guy to me. The only thing I really didn't see that I wanted to was the USWA Austin feud, which may be his best stuff.

91 is too early. Tommy Rogers was my #63. I'm a bit baffled by the drop he took honestly.

I never thought she was sloppy at all. When she got fat after 96, yeah, but before that she was amazing on all fronts.

And that SUCKS. Kyoko was #52 to me. GREAT fucking worker at her peak, way above Toyota. She's head and shoulder about a good half of the people that will show up next. First instance of a huge disappointment, although not surprising. Shit, and we're talking about the fact Lex Luger, Sting & HHH have not showed up yet. Booo people ! Booo !

PPV 33 Two more good matches to the credit of that stupid promotion : Jerry Lynn vs Juventud Guerrera. It’s easy to forget how good Juvy can be, but this match showed how ahead of the pack of those indie guys Juvy is in term of working a Nitro spotfest. Annoying Eddielenko sequence aside (Jerry Lynn is just as bad as Malenko as far as kicking out of his own « pinfall attempts »), this was very good. Juvy doesn’t seem to get along with Konnan that much though, showing too much respect to Lynn. Best X-division match in a long while. AJ Styles showed his versatility by having a very good match with Sandman. Seriously, less than one year into TNA and Styles looks like one of the best worker in the world, and certainly one of the most interesting to watch too. Give him Jerry Lynn, Jeff Jarrett or the Sandman and he’s gonna get the best out of them. Sandman also looks quite motivated since he debuted, so this was a lot of fun. And Sandman got some action with Lollipop ! That guy gets all the ass he wants to apparently. Maybe the cigarette/beer breath. Or the long cane. Dunno. They gave him a good ripoff music too, like they did Raven. The undercard also had a pretty good AMW vs Hot Shots match, already a taste of « old-school » TNA, by that I mean before Russo showed up. No idea what happened with the « tag tournament » since apparently AMW already have a shot at XXX. I guess it was a four team tournament, but we never saw any brackets… Jason Cross vs Kid Kash was notable for a pretty good performance by Kash this time around and by that I mean his execution was on. I’d be tempted to say it was less contrived than the London match. Trinity didn’t do a moonsault. No idea what happened with Jerry Lynn’s title shot he won by winning the gauntlet match two weeks before, since every jabroni gets a title match before him. Slash & Brian Lee had a mediocre match with Simon Diamond & Swinger. Yay ! More ECW alumni, although Swinger I couldn’t care less about. Simon is « that guy who seemed like he had potential in 2000 ». Nothing bad, nothing good. The Church are babyfaces and the crowd chants « Let’s go evil ! ». Funny, in a way. James Mitchell is really not allowed to demonstrate his character much, because we gotta have time for Disco & Sanders interview about, ya know, how great Vince Russo is (and you know that this part of the show is actually Russo getting fellated by two friends). In a completely stupid booking decision, Raven, who said to AJ Styles he could beat any « X-division midget », got booked again… Julio Dinero. Who has never appeared in TNA yet and is bigger than Raven. Clap clap clap. Heatless mediocre match. Hey, it reminds me that EZ Money seems to be gone. And then, awful main event of The Harris KKK vs Dusty & Vader. Ok, Vader throwing around one Harris is nice, but then Dusty selling in 2003 for these two oafs is as bad as you can imagine. Desire who’s outside with Siaki is wearing a miniskirt for the first time because she’s getting a leather strap spanking. Yep. Russo’s booking. And then, more stupid Russo angle, with Russo’s kids filmed by Jarrett to tell how their father wasn’t there for them blabloubli, who cares, I ffed anyway. Big angle is Jarrett getting beatdown by, gasp, David Flair, Brian Lawler (oh no, not again !) and… Erik Watts. Ok. I feel this feud will be rotten. 2003/02/26 Jerry Lynn vs Juventud Guerrera 2003/02/26 AJ Styles vs Sandman

And that people watching those were high too. (BTW, my RVD joke went over the head of everyone) Duggan has a handful of really good matches in his career and was already goofy as fuck by the time Mid-South became UWF. It's not like WWF made him that way. I really enjoy his feud with Buzz Sawyer, who hasn't appeared yet. I really enjoy the Vader match in WCW. I always hated the jingoist gimmick. The pic is awesome. He's officially overrated as all hell.

Excellent worker for a short period of time. And of all three, he's the one who was never quite the Man like Hash and Muto were. He really found his niche already past his physical prime when he turned heel and was the coolest motho on the planet.

Agreed. It was ridiculous. Even going into the details of how they produce guys, they gave him that stupid "It's me, it's me, it's DDP" cactphrase at the beginning of a dull music theme, whereas he had the "Self-high five" which in WCW was as iconic as the glass breaking in term of sound stimulus.ANd let's not even mention the treatment of Kanyon BTW. Wait, where is Kanyon ? Wasn't he nominated ? As far as Lioness goes, she's one who took a massive plunge as I was seeing more of her. In 99, I was a big fan. By 2002, I was rolling my eyes at her work and booking approach. Her coming to ARSION definitely killed what was fun about the promotion. Her fake shoot fight with Hotta in 95 is the most horrendously overrated stiffness jerkfest ever. I'm glad Chiggy will end up higher (and I'm not exactly a Chiggy fan).

Yeah, that's my whole point about how he made all the wrong choices. Balls could work. Hell, he had fun matches with Matt striker on WWECW. He could do comedy too. the whole chairshot was so dangerous and needless.

Me being high on Eadie is the world's worst surprise. Come on, really ? Anything different would have seemed so wrong.

I voted for Chono last time around, probably because I had watched his peak years (which is great) not too long before. I couldn't justify him getting near my top 100 this time around. DDP was my #96. I never thought I'd get so much love. Biggest overrachiever in US pro-wrestling, if not worldwide. For every bad idea or promo he had, whatever political pull he benefited, this guy was a super late starter, worked his ass off to become a really good worker and one of the best carrier of his era. What he got out of Goldberg and Sting in 98/99 is off the chart. He made his finisher the most over move even before Austin, and Randy Orton owes him the only good part of his game. Talking about guys who loved the business, here's one, and at the end of the day, he was a huge positive. Oh, and whenever I hear the argument that "he liked to pre-plan everything", I think of Randy Savage, I think of everytime I hear about how great Cena is, and I chuckle. Oh, and he had the hottest wife too and remained friend with her after they split, which is another accomplishment. Love me some DDP.

This. I haven't spent money on wrestling since my last Lynch order in 2003. Way too much stuff I can watch for free anyway.

RVD : "Hey, sorry I got so high."

The sledgehammer is one for the ages. Stupidest foreign object ever, and they still haven't figure it out.

We don't know the cause of death yet. Hold fire. My bad then. Although he looked in such a poor physical shape lately. He was only four years older than me ? Holy shit.

Mahoney, from the gimmick to the lifestyle, was everything wrong about pro-wrestling in the late 90's. Candido dying in the most stupid way after coming back from hell was heartbreaking. Mahoney is just sadly predictable. That's all I'm saying, really. Sorry if it rubs you the wrong way.

I'd say Stephy, still, because Dixie's influence is irrelevant. I don't think her being out of the way would change much for TNA anyway. I mean, that promotion has been a joke for day one, but at least he got some guys some paydays. Stephy shaped the WWE has we know it now when she got the head of creative back in the days. The product still suffers from that formula.

Yeah, that is interesting. Footage showing up is nice. But if no ones watching it, well... Exactly the same reason why joshi does badly now. The footage is over there, but no one's watching anymore. I'm guilty of it as much as anyone both for lucha and joshi BTW.

Jerry Lynn is my #92, and with all the TNA stuff that adds up, he would have been higher. He had his flaws, but who doesn't. Had so many good to excellent matches with so many people and was smarter than it seems when you just don't pay attention. Terrific worker. I know Gino Hernandez has been helped a lot by NWAClassics it seems, which I don't watch, but man his work in WCCW was the shit. I guess he was already too cocked up by then. Dick Slater, I dunno. My favourite feud part of his career his Mid-South with Dark Journey. Never struck me as better than solid at best, and the Terry Funk obsession was actively distracting at times.

He looked like a giant rat lately, so it's not surprising. When you treat your body like that, well... I hate his gimmick which consisted of bashing someone's head as hard as he could with a chair. It was awful and dangerous and certainly caused tons of concussions and brain cells loss. What's even stupider is that the guy could have been a good worker, as showed whenever he tried to actually work. Talented guy ruined by a shitty gimmick and a junkie lifestyle.

What would be interesting is the result of the 2006 voters, to see how we have evolved actually (or rather, what the rest of us thinks now).

Me too actually ! I thought he would have dropped way earlier with my only #100 vote. I love Raven even more now that I'm watching his TNA work BTW. And yeah. That Jarrett quote. After watching WCW 99-01 and as I'l going through early TNA, the "super smart worker" stuff had me rolling, as he instead shows terrible instinct at times.