Matt D

Talking this through, aura or whatever else aside, the biggest beneficiaries past some modern New Japan and Joshi people are not just babyfaces (for Tito and others fell) but babyface Aces: Sato, Jaguar, Chigusa, Cena (to be seen), Sting, Hogan, Dusty, Bruno, Mistico, etc. Everyone's holding out for a hero.

Shibata is doing so well because people were able to vote for both him and his brain separately.

I liken him to Randy Savage as much as anything else.

That's fair. That match in particular is interesting. Charles has framed it as the match where Jumbo realizes that time has passed him by but it's also a sign that maybe Choshu just doesn't have enough for an hour. But to some degree, yes, I had Choshu at #21 and not #1.

With all due respect, this paragraph misses the boat on what makes Choshu special in-ring. Choshu presents himself as a star. He understands what fans will respond to and how to get them going. He has the patience to take a beating, to let it build and build and build, and then to have things boil over. When he hits the lariat, it's so often a release of all of his seething fury and rage and frustration. He's so good at taking up all the air in the room but in a way that serves the match and makes it bigger and better. You put him up against Vader and he can work from underneath and make every little victory mean so much. You put him against Saito and he can work it even, make it feel like a clash of the titans. You put him against Inoki, and then every single look across the ring at one another becomes a mythic and meaningful piece of doctrine from which the religious scholars could take fifteen different poignant meanings and argue with one another for years. "Mechanically-speaking" is really not Choshu's case.

Ospreay’s best quality is his earnest, infectious charisma where you can tell how much he loves wrestling through just how he moves. He’s great to watch on the apron in a tag since he’s so into everything. That isn’t going anywhere so he has a fighting chance.

I post Choshu gifs on Bluesky all the time. https://bsky.app/profile/mattd-sc.bsky.social/search?q=choshu The great thing about Bluesky is since no one's actually there, TV Ashii has no idea I'm doing it.

The best part about Twitter is all the young people you get to interact with who have different viewpoints and are working things out for themselves. The second best part about Twitter is that you're not there to be a performative whiny little bitch about literally everything like you've been in this thread. My god, man, give it a rest. I've found it to be a pretty nice place overall. You just have to curate a little bit and take people on good faith. Anyway, big thing with Choshu is that he's gated. I think people would love him on clips and gifs and would track down more things but they're impossible to post.

You guys did a great job with this.

The blurb on Jaguar saying 77-86 is putting a lot of weight on two iffy matches we have of hers from 78 (we have nothing from 77) but the general gist is lovely of course. Eaton this far over Morton is interesting. So close to the top 75. Glad to see Brock gone for multiple reasons. I admit he’s good at very specific things but I’ve made my case against him over the years.

I like ZSJ fine, but Low Ki is a much funnier 101.

If you're not going with just in-ring pro wrestling, but some sort of total package, I can see it, like Rick Rude on Regis and Kathy Lee. He's still performing. Maybe he's telling a story. But it doesn't count as "footage" to me.

Oh I get what you're saying, but in my analogy, one's a religion and the other is the TV show The Righteous Gemstones or maybe the novel Name of the Rose.

Hollinger’s “(or MMA)” threw me more.

The things I value in pro wrestling are so different from what I’d value in MMA that I’m sticking with Space Jam. I read a biography of Edward I this year. That’s entirely different from me reading Wolf Hall.

Given the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if Omega, Okada, and Tanahashi all make the top 10. I don’t necessarily think they will but I wouldn’t be surprised.

I think Dusty has been reevaluated very positively in the last ten years. He got such a bum rap from the 80s sheets and that lingered and lingered. I love Dustin. I ranked Dustin higher than Dustin. I'd be very happy with any positive result for Dusty, even if it put him over Dustin.

But one is fiction and one is non-fiction. It's a hard analogy because it's so bonkers. Ok, how about...it's like saying... the basketball players in the movie Space Jam are obviously great actors in the movie Space Jam because they're really good basketball players.

I could see a logic where a wrestler like Ken Shamrock was able to channel certain instincts and tropes and expertise from actually doing MMA into his pro wrestling. Likewise, leveraging a rep/aura into the artistic choices/presentation one makes in the fictional art of pro wrestling. Or, you know, if you're just focused on the supposed worked Pancrase fights and not legitimate MMA. That makes sense to me. But if you're not talking about that (and I don't think you are), you guys have completely lost me to the point of near-bafflement. It'd be like saying Jack Kirby should be ranked higher in a list of greatest comic writers/artists of all time because he served in World War II and also occasionally drew war comics. Not because how being in the war inspired and shaped him or how it gave him perspective or images to draw from. But simply because he was in the war and also happened to draw war comics.

Mild preferences at this point (meaning things I'd like to see, moderately reasonable from the way the list has gone, but I'm not going to be upset one way or another or anything. It's all copacetic from here on in): Eaton in the top 75 Inoki at exactly 50 Fujiwara and Baba in the top 50 Ospreay outside of the top 50 Bock in the top 35 Omega outside of the top 10

The other two guys I’m looking at here are Inoki and Dusty though Inoki has a gated footage issue.

1. Certain people who a chunk of the younger Twitter voting base are likely to listen to are very vocal for him (I'm thinking Lizzy for one). 2. Current younger voters value aura and Bruno has a lot of aura. 3. He's a much safer vote for some younger people on moral grounds who are voting on rep/WWF Ace than Hogan, for instance, or less grating than 2020s Corporate Cena. 4. Very likely he sustained votes he had last time around. If you were going to vote for Bruno last time, the rise of Ospreay probably isn't going to get you not to vote for him time time around.

There’s an interesting parallel between her Policeman shtick and LA Park’s rudo ref shtick but I’m not quite well versed enough to make it.

We need someone to find a way to ask Eddie about this and tell him all the Japanese guys he's above and hear how annoyed he gets about all of it.

I think guys like Lawler and Bockwinkel are in a slightly different class (and I think given people's ickiness over Lawler, he and Bock could be similar). But we'll see. Eaton has no hope though. Arn will be in the middle of them. But we shall see.