Matt D

He's still active and capable of playing fun roles. He had a pretty good title match with UG not long ago and will assuredly have fun stuff in the Elite tournament.

What's a Conor McGregor?

My argument isn't that the late stuff is ambitious but that the earlier stuff being ambitious may have led to elements of the style of upper-card matches in modern WWE. But I honestly don't know. I'd like people to poke at that a bit more.

I think there was something more referential with Jericho than Michaels, Angle, and even Benoit. Though I'm shakiest on the last one. Jericho was obviously a tape watcher and a fan and that defined the narratives that he wanted to tell. Benoit was a big Dynamite Kid fan but he comes off as more developed internally within himself. It feels that Jericho was doing something different than the others, for good or ill, but I'm not sure I can well define that further right now. It's a new thought to me. The question, I guess, is how far "at least ambitious" takes you against someone like Tito, for instance. I don't necessarily have an answer for that. Both of them have great matches and great feuds. Both of them have a strong philosophy of what wrestling should be. It's an interesting comparison to me.

My feeling with Jericho is that he broke down doors. I just kind of think he did so the Shockmaster way.

I think Jericho deserves credit for having ambition and having a strong pride in the art (and it was that) he was trying to create, even while deep within the WWE system. He continued to push up against the limits put against him. When it worked, it worked very well. Often times, he wasn't able to reach the heights that he had percolating in his own mind, but he was in an environment where others didn't even try, and where those who wanted to try, didn't have the gumption and passion to make that trying become reality. Even when it didn't work, you could see that he cared and that he cared despite the life-sucking corporate product he was a part of. I do appreciate that. We were praising Tito a few pages ago for being the best at the basics. Jericho continued to try to push past his limits. That's how someone and something, in this case, WWE wrestling, grows. I wonder how much of the end product we had in 2013, the one with Punk and Bryan and Cesaro and what not, directly stems from Jericho's attempts to push past his boundaries, as successful or unsuccessful as they were. I wonder how much it would have been harder to see as a realization without him. He shot high, with dubious aim, and he failed a lot, but you can't question the fact that he shot high even when the odds were against him and it would have been well within his best interests to shoot low and accept the status quo.

I'm excited. Heenan rarely came to Houston too.And it's 2/3 falls. Thanks, Bruce.

It's not that I don't think that Jericho is better than Disco Inferno; it's that I'm just not sure.

Personally, I think Hogan's a much better candidate for the "There can be a middle ground between great and terrible" list. He did what he did almost as well as anyone. There are a lot of things he didn't do well. There are a number of things he actively did poorly, to hurt matches, especially outside of a few year prime. Some of his strengths also led to his weaknesses either due to the ability to get away with neglect or because they overshadowed other things. For years upon years, his strengths were overlooked due to a far too narrow view of wrestling by the pundits. He wasn't on my list, but I'm glad to see him on the main list and above someone like Dynamite, for what he represents. It'll be a list that rewards many different qualities and that's probably for the best.

I can sort of accept Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho because for almost two decades they have been considered incredible in ring wrestlers by the majority of the internet wrestling community. I don't agree personally, and nor do many people here, but they either speak to people or people have been conditioned to accept them as wonderful workers. Whereas someone like Hogan has been pretty much accepted as a poor toaverage worker from all sides - even the praise tends to focus on his charisma and character and the way his big matches are structured. So it seems far more strange to see him so high. Just, you know, two of the most important aspects of being a great pro wrestler. Nothing big or anything. Possibly, but if you take that train of thought you end up taking drawing power and merchandise sales into consideration. He was mediocre in ring, and for all his charisma there are very few of his feuds, interviews and/or segments that are worth revisiting. His charisma often raised his big matches into something greater than the sum of their parts, true. Wait what? No I'm not. Charisma can be an in ring trait, just like athleticism. You can qualitatively judge both of them. Character work is far more important to me than hitting impressive spots cleanly or working really hard or whatever.

I can sort of accept Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho because for almost two decades they have been considered incredible in ring wrestlers by the majority of the internet wrestling community. I don't agree personally, and nor do many people here, but they either speak to people or people have been conditioned to accept them as wonderful workers. Whereas someone like Hogan has been pretty much accepted as a poor toaverage worker from all sides - even the praise tends to focus on his charisma and character and the way his big matches are structured. So it seems far more strange to see him so high. Just, you know, two of the most important aspects of being a great pro wrestler. Nothing big or anything.

Steven should have made a big deal about the next person being "HH" before Hase, and then dropped Hogan right after when people were grumbling about Hogan still being alive.

I've considered this as well. It is the thing that will end up annoying me about Hogan's final place on the list. Since it will effect how Cena's place on the list is viewed. It never even occurred to me that Hogan could finish above Cena on this list, but it's starting to look alarmingly possible. I fully think Hogan could appear on more ballots than Cena, at least. Hogan is on both the revisionist platform and the kayfabe big star platform. Cena is on the great match platform and the revisionist platform and the kayfabe big star platform. I think he'll be ok.

When making my list I factored how I felt about wrestlers at different points of my life. 12 year old Andrew's favourite wrestler was Rick Rude. I had to acknowledge that. Plus I find myself always gravitating to 92 WCW. When I wanna throw on something to watch, that's near the top of the list. Sure there is lots of other stuff out there, but the aesthetics of that era is my favourite. During my favourite time Rude was the best. I believe not all years are created equal. It means more to me to be the best wrestler in a year like 92, 94, 89 or 97 than it would in 09, 12, or 99. All of that is fair enough. Thanks for chiming in.

1.) I don't want to distract from the point. I was mainly naysaying the use of such hypotheticals using the Bret example that we've brought up many, many times here. 2.) That said, it's a good question. I think Bret's quality of opponent would be higher. I think the most interesting thing would be that he would be wrestling different opponents every night (or at least every week), and in doing so, would have developed into a very different wrestler, especially if he jumped over early. If you look at the WWF house show line ups on historyofwwe.com, you can see how they ran the same match night after night after night for months, really, while WCW,, at the same time, barely had the same line-up two nights in a row. I'm not sure what that would have meant for his imagination or creativeness and general match quality in a world where it's much harder to get bored in front of crowds with very different expectations.

Andrew, come and talk to us about Rick Rude.

If he had ended up in Mid-Atlantic or Mid-South instead of WWF. If he had jumped to WCW in 1991. If he had homesteaded in New Japan instead. From the evidence we have, Dynamite might have become the best of the WoS workers of his era if he stayed. I get that point. He didn't stay though. He jumped to Calgary and became something else instead. And now he's above all of them, generally by far.

And by that logic, Bret Hart should be #1. I'm not saying Dynamite shouldn't be #212 or something.

Frankly, I prefer the Danish Dynamite.

"Greatest British wrestler ever." Ouch. I like Dynamite at times (mainly as a heel), but considering the Brits who didn't make the list who are far superior, that kind of hurts.

I wish we had more fancams out of the Europe tour. I only want to see Reigns vs Sheamus so many times, relatively. Usually the Europeans do us one step better. Someone at DVDVR posted this though:

I would (and will) argue that being the best at what is most basic and primal is exactly why he should be on a list like this.

I wish Tito was higher but it really is a big jump from last time.

They're bringing Bret in because he was so brutal in his commentary about the company in the last two months, right? What a screwed up company.

There's a lot to dig through here even if the poster's idea of "best of" is sort of dubious: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/csv29tx/