El-P

Yumiko Hotta. Surrounded by some of the greatest workers ever in a workrate environment at its peak

He was a good worker during the Varsity Club & Doom feud. Good worker. Some of the New Japan matches are overrated as hell (the very first one, who's the worst Sasaki & Hase match of the year), and those who aren't, well, some great japanese workers made those idiotic Steiners look like Gods. Rick was still good at this point though. The Sting & Luger match is a fun spotfest and wildly overrated. The Money Inc. stuff isn't very good. That cage match is awful. By the mid 90's Rick Steiner was already sloppy and lazy. By the late 90's he was one of the worst worker anywhere.

This is why great match theory sucks. Especially when the great matches aren't great.

You voted for Rick Steiner? Yeah, WTF ? Good worker for a few years in the late 80's/early 90's, then quickly became the worst Steiner then became a godawful worker. BIGLAV BULLSHIT

You voted for Rick Steiner? Yeah, WTF ? Good worker for a few years in the late 80's/early 90's, then quickly became the worst Steiner then became a godawful worker.

Chris Candido at #85 to me, and the drawing line to : okay, maybe not enough body of work to call them one of the top 100, but I want to represent them. Contrary to Dylan, Candido's stint in ECW made his stock rise with me. His SMW work, although he was green, was more positive to add to his resume. I also enjoyed his post ECW/WCW indy work, as random as it was. Of course, he doesn't have the great matches. His death was really a stupid tragedy. Kohsaka at #91, because he's half of my favourite match of all time. If I had a more complete overlook on his career, he may have been higher, or not represented at all. Probably higher.

PPV 30 Might as well just talk about what was good in that awful show. Amazing Red vs Sonny Siaki was the best X-division match in a while and for once Siaki showed a little bit of personnality, although still deeply into that ridiculous Rock cosplaying. I credit Red, who’s playing underdog so well it’s easy to have a good match against him. Then, XXX (Skipper & Low-Ki) vs Slash & Brian Lee was quite good too, with early brawling all over the place then developping into a very nice match, even better than the AMW two weeks before I’d say, before the shit finish double count which has a godawful execution to boot. Those refs just aren’t any good. Where do they come from ? So, Konnan does his own shoott-shooty post WCW interview and calls everyone in the wrestling business racists because they don’t want to push latinos. Funny, we’re in 2016 and WWE is still clueless about this factor, and it took 12 years before Lucha Underground. Konnan is a much better talker than wrestler so this was at least effective. A decent brawl between Raven & AJ Styles which makes you want to see that match. Zbyszko apparently acts on the behalf on Styles now, in some sort of a managerial role, which AJ really doesn't need. The rest… really, was crap. Awful Russo promos and angles with endless beatdown and Jarrett under a mask that everyone could see coming, Jerry Lynn having bad matches again thanks to David Flair & Sanders, BJ James vs Zach Gowen in a ridiculous freakshow that had no purpose (sorry, I just cant buy a one-legged wrestler, although he’s an amazing athlete), Trinity & Desire working a long and disastrous match. Trinity won with a moonsault. Just hard to watch even with the benefit of fast forward. And not enough Lollipop’s ass, really. 2003/02/05 Amazing Red vs Sonny Siaki 2003/02/05 XXX (Skipper & Low-ki) vs Slash & Brian Lee

She's kind of a weird case in that she's obviously a great talent, but so many of her most famous matches are against far more famous workers that were her contemporaries. For whatever reason she was never quite as big a star as a lot of those, despite working several pretty key main events in her era. But I don't think anyone really questions that she was a very good worker. When I did my Zenjo 92/93 watch (years ago now, but still), Yamada is someone that really lost stock. Previously I saw her as a great worker because of involvment in great matches. Simplistic approach. Watching the whole year of TV, she was just not as great as she seemed before. She was never the best worker in her best matches. Very good ? Yes. But not in the same league as her most famous contemporaries and a bunch of others from JWP or even Zenjo's undercard. Plus her post prime in GAEA is really uninteresting, but GAEA would do that to you for a lot of veterans. If I did some serious joshi watching this time around, I'm not sure I would have ranked her anymore, which I still did last time I believe. I like Tenta, but yeah, him getting 11 ballot is really a symptom of workrate relativism at this point. Superstar Graham and Warrior, well, this is just personality voting now.

Art Barr is our first... well, ok, no comment. I thought I would be the high vote for Shane Douglas. I had him at #55

Well, this stuff would be better off the woman horror stories. I'd like to keep this thread about TNA if possible. If anyone can move it. Thanks in advance.

WORD And yeah, WTF with that indy guy #6 of all time ? Tarzan Goto placing, however, is pretty cool.

To me, it's between New Jack and Murakami.

PPV 29 This show is all over the place ! The most infamous moment here is probably Tony Schiavone first and I believe only appearance on a wrestling card after the demise of WCW, cutting a shooty-shooty promo. He’s actually good at it, although it’s sad he has to play into Russo’s chauvinist pig stuff with Goldilocks. Plus after a while, his rambling against Mike Tenay (who’s goofy as hell when he gets that über-serious face of his) just goes nowhere and the crowd chants boring. « Total nonstop action has officialy stopped », as the signed said. Plus there was another Percy Pringle promo beforehand (which gets forgotten immediately, the poor guy just vanishes basically) and Russo showing up afterward. Schiavone as a heel announcer under anyone but Russo would have been quite entertaining though. A bunch of bad matches basically building toward Jerry Lynn vs Ron Killings, with poor execution of the angle. Bad match too with Amazing Red vs Jorge Estrada, who looks useless at this point. Hey, Disco, well, Glen Gilberti is showing up. That is promising… (and I liked Disco, but with Russo at the helm, it's scary) The mixed tag between the teams of Siaki & Desire and Kash & Trinity was a bunch of spots. Actually, it got a « tag your partner ! » chant when the guys were in. Trinity did a top rope quebrada. Athena runs-in. Konnan runs-in after the match and beats on Siaki, then requests an interview with Tenay. More shoot interviews coming I guess. You know, there’s something almost compelling about TNA being the official yet low budget spin-off of WCW’s demise. Then you get BJ James apparently feuding with his referee brother now. Well, at least there are storytelling legs to that feud, but out of shape Road Dog vs retired Scott Armstrong, the lesser worker of the four, is not a match I’m dying to see. In a kinda crazy way, it is kinda cool that the two most solid matches on this 2003 PPV came from matches involving Larry Z., against AJ Styles in a match were Styles has to beat him twice in less than ten minutes, and the Rock’n Roll Express, who turned on tradition because we need a swerve every week, against AMW in the main event. The Larry match was really well worked and even better than the previous week’s match. Ricky Morton still looks solid as hell and although he really doesn’t do anything spectacular, he’s still a good worker at this point. Solid main event, and Chris Harris could learn a thing or two about making a hot comeback from those guys. Raven cut a promo which thankfully didn’t involved Russo nor tradition nor WCW, leading to a Jarrett beatdown. Then later he cut another one on AJ Styles when he requested a title match and immediately there’s some intrigue about a three man feud on top. Raven looks really good, and seeing him bumping and rolling around almost makes Jeff looks like a legit badass. Less Russo and SEX and more Raven vs Jarrett vs AJ Styles please. 2003/01/29 Larry Zbyszko vs AJ Styles

Well, we kinda expected a boring list from you, really... *grin*

Honestly, I could have voted for Kevin Sullivan. I did not, but I'm kinda glad he got some love. Great picture too, so un-Devil like.

Murakami #10. I don't think I've ever seen any decent performance out of this guy, much less matches. Ogawa-like in his fake shoot-style suckiness, although his maneurisms were terrific in a way. BITCHING !! Matsunaga mostly sucked too, but his insanity kinda made up for it. Still, he kinda sucked, and I'm a japanese sleazy garbage fan.

New Jack #25.

Yes. Pretty damn funny to me.

It was a joke, Jerry. Yeah, I know. That's exactly why I said what I said.

Robert Fuller's pic. "You've still got it !" That helped a lot. I remember having several luchadors in my list despite never really watching lucha, just because I had seen a few great matches. This time around, I have none because I really haven't watched any lucha since that time.

The bikini modeling really wasn't who Fukawa was at all. So there, new avatar, much more fitting. Plus, loved that little promotion.

Now I understand why Johnny didn't get the Jericho's tights joke, which was really good. Well, Mima Shimoda finished tied in with Trish Stratus. And Memphis as been like one of the most popular stuff in our little circle for a decade or so at this point (even more when you think DVDVR). So yeah, the fact a RINGS foreigner not called Volk Han gets any vote in surprising to me. It's not like RINGS was very talked about anyway even back then outside or an even smaller circle which I was a part of.

New Jack may be a sociopath, but he's still a pretty funny guy. Although I wish another pro-wrestler would have the same first name as I do.

Come on, an obscure Russian guy from RINGS, 16 years after shoot-style went out of style. I find it pretty amazing, in a good way of course. Always liked Kopylov.

in fact... can we still turn in ballots for tag team? Please That would be awesome. I was too focused on the singles to really take a crack at tag teams. Thirded. And... Andrei Kopylov got 4 votes ? Wow. That's quite amazing. RINGS fans somewhere.