Matt D

Dudleys were my first thought too, but it looks like maybe they give Ryback some rub off of all of this now.

That Jake spot was amazing. Have the RnRs done that elsewhere? I don't remember ever seeing it. This was another match with a babyface chinlock that was a momentum killer. This time with Gibson doing it to Roberts. The heat on Morton was solid, though, and all of the heel communication was a blast. You don't think of Jake as a stooging heel but he was here.

I really liked the beginning and end of the match, but the middle, with JYD's ill-placed chinlock and Reed's long frontface lock sort of dragged. Anytime they were going at it was gold though. I can't understate how good it was when they were pounding on each other. There was just too much of the other stuff.

That was the one where they had Sid and Jake originally, right? Then Sid was injured and it looked like it was going to be Savage and Jake.

I guess that's why it stood out to me so much last night when Brie Bella took the fans' chants of "We Want Becky" and used them to rile the crowd and get them to do the No/Yes thing with her Bryan-style kicks on FIP Paige. Not only was it Brie Bella who did it (as opposed to Kevin Owens or someone), but it was obviously her responding to something that couldn't have been easily predicted in random Becky Lynch chants. It was as heelish as you get in 2015 WWE. More so, probably.

Dustin's made that spot work more than a few times over the last four years or so.

According to this site, the third crow hunting season of the year in MN ends on 10/31. He probably has to get back for that.

149 is a nice round number.

Regal vs Buck was there to punish us because you guys had to watch so many of those matches.

I rented Survivor Series 1990 so many times as a kid. I think what stands out the most is how surreal the Hogan/Warrior/Tito Santana promo is. I started watching only a little bit earlier so I think my lifelong admiration of Tito came, in part, because I thought he was still a main eventer.

Pretty much all I've seen tonight is the divas. I thought that the story of the match was good, that the work from Charlotte didn't live up to it. Once the backwork started, Nikki did a good job keeping things moving. Charlotte's late match selling was bad, though. It's one thing to drop the selling when it's just subtext or to give the match consequence even though it doesn't build into the finish or the last third of the match. It's enough to drop it when it's the key element of that last third. I didn't buy at all that she couldn't get the bridge because she wasn't making me buy it in the moments before, after, and even in the moment.

I really liked the first 2-3 minutes of the Summerslam match and if they had worked that as a brawl for twenty minutes before doing any big moves at all, it could have been great.

Actually, given the way that WWE's booked the end of feuds the last couple of years, tonight's the night that Ambrose somehow turns on Reigns.

So with Orton injured they took Ambrose vs Wyatts off the card? If they don't have a really good idea for the Open Challenge writing Cena off TV, they could do a lot worse than putting the belt on Ambrose as the new face of America for a few months. Do the open challenges and everything. I had thought they were building to Ziggler with the accidental superkick a few weeks ago and what not, but I guess they didn't lean into that.

What Kris posted had: 3/23/84 vs Bracero/Hector Guerrero and 4/7/85 4 Way Elimination Match: The Rock n Roll Express vs. The Dirty White Boys, The Fabulous Freebirds, The Midnight Express at least.

The most interesting part of today's penalty box match (past babyface Missing Link which I've never seen before and is weird) is how they focused on Dark Journey entirely during her time in the box and she served as a symbolic FIP as Taylor was simultaneously taking punishment.

Where did you rank Mighty Atlas?

Simply put: the issue isn't about "Who do I like the most right now?" or "Who would I most like to watch?" (That is very much as symptom) but "What criteria do I value the most (in deciding who is the greatest) in 2015 and is that the same as it was in 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011? 2006? It's not. So, then who meets that this reevaluated criteria the most?" It's not the wrestlers that have changed; it's not always the footage that has changed; for me, it's the criteria. And even then it's the BALANCE of factors. I have my own issues with blind spots and time limitations, and I've covered that elsewhere. If someone wants to rake me over the coals here, too, that's fine (and warranted), but it'd be a distraction from the clarification at hand. EDIT: I've said it before but a lot of this becomes the issue between specific rankings. Within my criteria, I don't value execution or stiffness highly. But for wrestlers who use those things to create an effect successfully (and even ones who don't, but are just extremely good at it), that's a factor to take into consideration. It's just less of an important factor than other things to me, so while they'll rank, they'll rank less highly. I don't want to watch any more Hansen right now (at least Hansen in Japan), but he'll still be in my top 30, over wrestlers I'd much rather watch right now. There'll probably be 29 wrestlers I'd rather watch more above him, but that's because they meet other criteria. Their meeting my criteria of what makes wrestlers great is more often than not what makes me want to watch them more in this specific case. But even that's not the point. i'm just trying to redirect you away from what I think is a distraction to the point with everything in this edit.

I've been holding in the line about Flair's "impact" for weeks.

Buddy's an interesting case since he has great matches but what'll propel him to the top ten is seeing him from week to week and how switches up his act and reacts to different, sometimes subpar opponents. For instance, vs King Parsons, which leads into this singles: and these two tag matches:

I got a big kick out of Rich playing bullfighter at the beginning. I really liked seeing Duggan and Rich interact too. It all felt like a really big deal. The finish was fine for what it was, an attraction setting up another match. It wasn't ideal, but it's also not like there are kayfabe rankings in Houston. Past things like the brass knucks title or those occasions when the NWA title came on in, Houston feels more like a special attraction battleground where wrestlers from all over the country can meet to face each other. It means that there are both more and less consequence to victory. This was a match where a wrestler from one territory was facing a monster pulled from deepest, darkest Africa. Pete or Bruce could maybe speak more to how the fans in that arena might have felt, but I don't think they were thinking about the effects of a victory on NWA rankings here.

This is fair. It's all good points. To me, there are two categories of people here, those who are like Will and have seen enough to feel like they have it all worked out. For them, things will only move a little here or there. Then there's a lot of the rest of us who are missing huge swaths of wrestling. As much as I'd love to do it before the ballot, I just don't think I have time to focus heavily on Puerto Rico. However, I intend to watch a lot of Puerto Rico in 2016, not necessarily for this project, but just to get a better sense of it and because people have talked it up so much recently. I'm going to keep watching 70s and 80s UK. I'm going to keep delving into lucha. I'm going to lean more towards BattlARTS or whatever. I'll watch more joshi. But most of this, not by the deadline. I'm sure a good chunk of us are in that same boat one way or another. For the person who said that he was looking forward to watching stuff specifically not for this project, I'm sure that means "wrestling he hasn't seen," and some of that would, by its nature, play into the project. That said, you made valid points and it would be a more personal thing for everyone. The lower cost means a lower benefit. I was focused on the cost when it made more sense to focus on the benefit. Even so, I think the sum of new or different material that everyone is watching, along with new voices coming here and some wrestlers on the list being on the cusp when it comes to having enough matches under their belt, is enough that we should at least consider a 3 or a 5 year check in.

I think that we're all watching quite a bit, all the time. The ballots wouldn't move much from year to year, but that'd make it easier on us, but we'd be ever getting closer to seeing everything. It'd help encompass any projects that happen during the year. There's a lot more work in 5 years than there is in one year. In my mind, though, it's more about how we change over time, with younger people seeing more and more and with the older people constantly updating their viewpoints. I think it'd be relatively little effort and a good way to check in where we are every year and to help sum up our years' watching.

What's the downside of yearly check-ins? Most of the heavy work will be done for 2016. It'll just be shifting things around per what you've seen and where the discussion has gone in the 12 months after.

Chad, I listed off my thoughts on what we were doing the other day and the response was that it was a day late and the matter was settled and there was no point in running it into the ground more. So I just sort of accepted that.