Matt D

More general thoughts later (narrative and storytelling would be better words than psychology and logic), but in specific the main thing you're doing wrong in that last paragraph is underselling what Tenta does well. It's not just "He works to his limits," but instead that he uses the tools that he has, which are different than Dean's tools, to create a greater overall effect. He's excellent at interacting with crowds, very good at creating a mood by knowing how long to take priming an elbow drop before hitting it. So not only does the elbow drop look devastating, but it means all the more because of how he set it up. He has a very strong sense of when to give and when not to give. He's athletically limited? Maybe, but he has tools he can bring to the table that Dean can't. You look at his lack of traditional athleticism as a automatic detriment relative to Malenko, but it's something far more complex than that.

I most prefer "The pernicious fallacy of workrate dogmatism," actually. You weren't too far off in summing up my general thoughts, but I'll add some precision at some point in the next couple of days. Curious to see what people have to say first though. (Also, it's late).

That screws heavily with all of my anti-workrate shift rhetoric.

I watched Veidor vs Davies. There's only the one, right? I thought it was top notch stuff. Davies was obviously somewhat (but only somewhat) more subtle than Hayes as a heel, but I liked his cutoffs and attempts at control whenever Veidor started to get fiery upon him. When he finally did manage to pick up the pace, that first fall may have made me do a fist bump into the air. May. I have my emotionless work-the-arm reputation i need to hold on to here or something? Davies really held himself as the aloof, mostly controlled champion well, so whenever something didn't go his way, it meant something when he reacted. If you're going to have a finish like this which makes everyone look pretty good but still sort of screws the fans, this was as solid a way to do it as anyway. Veidor's selling as the match goes on is by far the strongest thing I've seen out of him. It's tremendous. There's a sense in these matches that I hate calling "Real sports feel" but it's the closest I can get to, things like the way they use the round system to tell stories as the match progresses, just the way they structure things with them, that there can be offensive or defensive wrestling if someone gets a fall up or down, the chance for a draw, and something that reminds me of soccer, the way that someone can press an advantage. It doesn't really feel like shine or heat to me so much as it feels like someone pressing the offense and having the ball continuously on the opposite side, with the occasional breakthroughs and goal attempts by the defending team. Does that make any sense at all?

You know, I really haven't given Adrian Adonis enough thought. Both the babyface run in Portland and the fat movez run in AWA help him.

As an aside, I think that every match reviewed is good for the community as a whole since it's another bit of the map covered. I'll say that. It's another data point for people to draw upon if they need to. Another resource and another reference.

There's a ton of Emilio Charles vs Atlantis singles and trios matches that I don't think are online. They had quite the feud, it seems.

I'm more than happy just changing the damn name for 2016. I don't care about the name at all. I do care about who people around here think are the best wrestlers, bell to bell, ever. The name is just getting in the way of that. I think there's massive amount of variation about what people think when it comes to bell to bell, hugely different criteria, hugely different likes and preferences and methods. There's so much to churn through with just that to make this a very valuable and very interesting process. It certainly has been with a massive majority of us going off of that understanding of what we were doing.

GREATEST WRESTLER EVER* *You know, in ring.

To me Octagon is one of those wrestlers who fall into the "Tool" category.

I like to have as much context as possible in situations like this. To me, the issue isn't that I haven't seen more Kellett but that I haven't seen more British comedy in general, because I'm not entirely sure how brilliant he was and how brilliant the style itself was. That said, on some level I see a vote for him as a vote for the style in general. That he has a number of matches where he's not different, but where the specific things he does ARE stands out to me after seeing, for instance, dozens of comedy midget matches where they do much the same things. Even if the 5-6 matches I've seen is the sum of what he does, and I feel fairly certain it's not, that'd be impressive to me on some level. Am I voting for him? I don't know, but he may be the best I've ever seen at a specific thing. He's the world's funniest Crusher basically.

This is also a case where we're stronger than the sum of our parts. If there's a match that's not online that people feel strongly about, that they see in their searching, whether it's Negro Casas vs Mocho Cota or what, people have tended to upload it. We have specialists who delve deep into a wrestler or promotion, the stuff online and sometimes the stuff not online, and they bring that back to the center. For instance, I just realized that Damiancito el Guerrero vs Cicloncito Ramirez is no longer online. I'm probably going to go to the people who I know feel very strongly about that match and likely have it and see what they can do about it so that others can see it. If I had it myself, I'd do the same.

I haven't watched wrestling on an actual TV set since 2009 maybe? That said, I did buy some DVDs in this process to fill some gaps (Not a ton of early 00s lucha online for instance), but not many. Let me put it this way, though. You could give me another five years and I still wouldn't make it through all the free footage online that I think would be relevant for a project like this, so I don't think it matters too much. I think the bigger issue is that people are going towards great matches instead of holistic 360 approaches of different wrestlers in different situations, but that's more of a criteria/priority thing.

I'd like to get Cortez on too but I just don't know if I have sufficient understanding of him.

That Lord Alfred vs Steve Veidor match is such a blast. It makes me wish we had dozens and dozens of Hayes matches from the mid 70s. He was so great in heeling it up and getting in brazen cheapshot after cheapshot and keeping the pressure on and ducking out of the ring in the best Memphis fashion anytime Veidor showed any sign of life. Veidor had some good futile fire in the front half, but his broad selling in the back half and then the eventual comeback has me wanting to see more. It's different from almost any other UK performance I've seen from this era, so one-sided but without any real specific sense of control save for "Cheating." I really liked the finish because it gave Veidor a comeback, but made it seem that Hayes was just going to cheapshot his way out of it before those last moments. People should see this if they haven't already.

Sheamus will likely make mine too btw.

I've seen a lot of 93 WCW Scorpio. I love the tags vs Austin/Pillman. I've not seen much of his ECW.

I need Scorpio matches to watch. Go.

Brave soul.

I just don't know if I'll be able to get Backlund on. I don't have time to watch enough footage to feel secure about his placement. the good thing is that he faced a lot of guys I'll be ranking anyway, so I could kill two birds with one stone. And I have seen some matches but not for a while.

This was the only Nord in AJPW from 94 I could find online. (at least I think that's what it is). Some awesome Hansen moments in the match. Nord looked ok. Like the world's best possible Brody. He gave a lot less than in WWF but probably more appropriately. His offense looked good. I wish there was more time of him vs Taue in there.

One issue I'm coming across is the weighing of footage. There are wrestlers I'm leaving off due to footage. Then there are wrestlers I feel fairly confident about due to the footage we have, confident enough to put them in the 30-40 range, perhaps, but if we had more footage, they could easily be in the 20-30 range, or maybe even the 15-20 range. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. I'm also not comfortable leaving them off because I have a strong sense of them with just what they have. So the compromise is that they get knocked down the list instead of left off completely, which isn't accurate, but it still somehow feels more accurate than not having them on. Does that make sense?

By the end of the JR/Tony team, they were generally having separate conversations and the few times Tony would try to throw something to Ross, he'd get ignored. I napped it out for a whole show once. Ventura wasn't the issue. The Superbrawl show was good because Ventura took him by surprise and MADE Ross engage with him. I think Ross was more prepared for him later.

I like the alternate past where the WWF listened to Dave Meltzer and added Shamrock to the group.

I like how Kris is trying to be professional at the start when the last episode ended with the youtube description readings.