El-P

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.

So you're the high vote for Dory ?

Garvin was all entrance and gimmick. Similar to Finn Balor today. YEAH I SAID IT! I thought the Hayes and Garvin Freebirds were supposed to be sucky, windbag, give the fans as little as possible heels. They sure did. I take Freebirds 90 entrance complete with DDP and Diamond dolls over Finn Balor goofy cosplay anyway too. And would probably have thought so at 14 years old too.

tag teams in may? This Yes. Interrupting the single countdown now would be kinda frustrating, no ?

Funny. That being said, Jimmy Garvin at #47 is pretty much as baffling as HTM to me. Garvin is one of the most boring wrestler ever. Yes, that includes his prime in WCCW. At least HTM was supposed to suck.

Catching up with Lucha Underground Season 2. Well, I'd say it's even better than season 1 thus far. And they manage to make Matanza work for me, despite hating this kind of no-selling dirty looking masked monster kind of character to begin with. Really the best thing that happened in pro-wrestling in the last 16 years.

I didn't get the ARSION reference/joke here. I wish grumpy veteran heel bitch Cuty would have showed up in ARSION though. Agree with the Cuty/Takako pairing. Just ridiculous. I always enjoyed when Cuty was a little older and she had that more edgy, grumpy-like character when she worked with the younger girls. Not to say she was the sexiest Tenryu ever, but since bot had that awkward execution at times, actually, it might actually be truer than I make it to be. I'm the low vote on Savio. Going through WWF TV in 96, I can say without much hesitation he was the best TV worker of the promotion that year. Better than Michaels overall ? Well... He doesn't have the great matches apart from that Austin strap match, but week-to-week...

Man, this guy is such a tool on every level. He only rehashed the same shit he did in WCW. Not only his ideas suck, but he's got about three our four of them at most. PPV 28 The Sheik is dead and TNA is live on PPV in Australia. To celebrate, Lollipop pulls up her tights into G-string shape to show little Aussie flags on her ass cheeks and sluts it up a notch by shaking da booty. In an awesome moment of timing, Tenay says at exactly the same instant « This is what we have came down to. » Two notable things, other than Lollipop’s, a good AMW vs XXX (Skipper & Low-Ki) tag title match, although Chris Harris kinda flubbed the pacing at one time before the last stretch. But the work until then was fun, especially by Ki and Harris (ok, they fucked up a spot badly at the beginning but were fine after that). Not the crispest work as you can guess, as AMW go through too much stuff too quickly, but still a breath of fresh air. XXX steals one, old-school style with a belt shot. Other good point, the debut of Raven, which probably had been spoiled since there was a « Raven » sign visible in the crowd during the terrible four-way main event of Jarrett vs Daniels vs Heavy D vs James, with Jeff bleeding, poor brawling in the stands, table spot and Jarrett eliminating his three opponents. Only cool moment was referee Scott Armstrong rebelling against his brother BJ James and kicking him in the nuts, although it didn’t make sense that a referee would do that, really. Raven steals the belt, with the entire locker room watching him DDT Jarrett without doing anything. Then runs away with Russo. Well, ok, the surprise was cool since Raven really is the first guy with any relevancy directly jumping from a WWE stint to TNA, but the execution was kinda goofy and the fact he’s aligned with Russo is a bummer from the start. AJ Styles works a perfectly ok match with Larry Z., who’s more fun to watch than 90% of this roster honestly. Styles really shows his versatility by not trying to do stupid stuff, keeping it at the right pace and bumping good for Larry. Solid stuff. Opener was ok for an SAT match as David Young, Jimmy Yang & Shark Boy worked quite well with those bad spotmonkeys. Amazing Red actually looked as bad as his partners this time around, very sloppy work for once. What else ? Jorge Estrada looking terrible against Ashley Hudson, who as a wink to Australia isn’t as appealing as Lollipop’s ass shaking, really. Mike Sanders & David Flair making Lynn & Killings look boring and bad. Ok, I’m down on Sanders already. Two useless segment with legends, a pathetic rambling pre-taped promo by Piper (leading to nothing) and Dusty Rhodes confronting Nikita Koloff, talking about Magnum TA and stuff. Ya know, nostalgia is okay for one show, but this is ridiculous and goes nowhere, no matter how good Dusty is on the mic. Plus you get a swerve at the end and a Dusty beatdown. Yawn. And a useless gimmicky X-division title match bewteen Siaki, a jobber and Athena. Still made more sense than the main event and better worked than David Flair or Estrada. Basically a build toward Siaki & Desire vs Kash & Trinity. I hope for a moonsault. Konnan beats up X-division guys again. 2003/01/22 AMW vs XXX (Skipper & Low-Ki)

Could have found a better goofy/awesome pic for Suzuki though :

I dunno which one is better, the John Tatum or the Ken Shamrock pic. I'm amazed in a good way that I'm actually the low vote on Cuty Suzuki. Part of way too many great stuff for me to forget about her. JWP was a terrific little promotion.

No, that's Yumi Fukawa, from ARSION fame. Terrific worker from 98 to 01 when she had to retire because of a neck injury.

So there it is. Trish Stratus and Mima Shimoda ranked at the same level. Tells the poor state of joshi fandom and the overrepresentation of WWE, really, because it's like having Bobby Eaton and, I dunno, Buff Bagwell at the same level.

Fukawa is talked about in the Minoru Tanaka thread. They're married. Same thing. End of story.

Smash ?

Yea what's up with that one? Yeah, seriously now.

I was very conservative, all things considered. Although we're not talking about Takako here.

Shame ? I was the only one voting for Yumi Fukawa ! Fools ! Shoot-style underdog extraordinaire. That way I still keep a Roxy Music like avatar.

Damn ! Jinzaki at 400. He was my #100 in 2006. He got bumped ahead to #97 this time around, mostly because I wanted to add some people on the lower spots and I got rid of a few ones I couldn't vote for anymore. Smooth as a cat. His FMW stint remains one of my favourite.

Oh fuck you had to drop Rivette's name. It is totally unrelated, but you couldn't have picked a worse name today for me to read. Free jazz would be more shoot-style to him, no ? No story, no heel and face, no nearfall, no nothing ! Pro-wrestling noise ! Yeah. Tamura is freaking Ornette Coleman ! Pure joy.

Come on, we don't know who the mystery man is already ? Fine pic of Norton. Why the hell anyone vote for him, that's another mystery. Arisa Nakajima is one joshi worker I know nothing about. Blame my total lack of knowledge past 2002 or so. So, interesting to see her get some votes.

Is Lucha prog-rock, jazz-fusion ou exotica ? That's the real question.

PPV 27 Incredible, but the main event of Road Warriors & Jeff Jarrett & Dusty Rhodes vs XXX (and Vince Russo, but he was a complete non factor thankfully), was actually kinda... fun when you had XXX bumping for the old legends. They made Animal actually look good, giving the old guy a double suplex spot. Hawk, not so much, he looks rough as hell. Dusty does what Dusty does and Jarrett takes the load. Well, it would have been fun until the shit finish, although the ultimate useless swerve of Nikita Koloff under the mask was kinda funny in a ridiculous way. But not really. Russo shoot interview, Russo segment with Percy Pringle beatdown, complete with gross bladejob, Russo segment arguing with Dusty Rhodes (who himself cut quite the fun promo though). Yeah, we get it, Vince Russo is the main heel of this promotion and he talks ad libitum about writing pro-wrestling. Poor guy, still living off 18 months in the WWF and his complete failure in WCW (yeah, only Russo can make a career out of a failure stint). In other surprise appearance, we get Larry Zbyszko showing up after a decent AJ Style vs Ron Killings match. Larry also cuts a decent promo about tradition. No, this is not the nWo angle, not at all. Hey, I can live with the idea of Larry Z. stalling his way into a fun match with AJ Styles, who’s easily the best worker of the company. Jerry Lynn gets Mike Sanders who I liked quite a bit in WCW, but he doesn’t show much here and we get a shit finish with David Flair anyway. Well, sorry, infact the David Flair shit finish was the AJ Styles match, this is the Ron Harris/Dusty shit finish. Kid Kash and Sonny Siaki have a bad spots match for the X Division title, the big surprise being that Trinity, who’s in with Kash, doesn’t get to do a moonsault. She did one earlier on during the AMW title defense, so there is that. And then Siaki gets no heat and has no character at all, so Desire’s boobs and ass, which she has in spades, are the main attraction. She also tried to strip Athena off her pants earlier in the show, in a moment that reeked of unplanned punishement for the poor girl, as she was gripping to her belt with all her strenght. WTF is happening here ? Konnan is showing up to beat on X-division guys with a kendo stick. This is so WCW. Third PPV in a row without any good match. Please, debut Raven already, please.

That is from the time that Aja let her hair grow out a bit, '09 I think. It would always go all over the place during matches. I see. Well, I also thought Bison looked different. I don't want to think about a Bison Kimura match in 2009...

Ok, two down. Unsurprisingly, another japanese woman, although I'm glad I wasn't the only one voting for Shimoda. One of my favourite tag workers ever along with Arn and Eaton. And a great pic to boot. I haven't watched an LCO match in way too long now. Three way tie with Nash and a mystery name, though. She sure deserves to be way higher than this, when you pile up the number of very good to great matches on her resume.

BTW, it really should have been Jeff Jarrett introducing Jackie.