Matt D

Promos are the best part of this, including Dusty sort of having to just let Santana go with the Spanish. I thought Marcus looked really bad here, astoundingly bad. He just wasn't giving Tito anything to work with. That must have driven Tito nuts.

My most hated title WIN of all time was the Godfather winning the IC belt, but that doesn't count. Title runs in 98-99 were so short. Like the Karagias Crusierweight run. I really hated the Hogan April-July 98 run too as a kid, but it was relatively slight.

They can call him Dr. π. No one will know,

I'm still playing catch up but people you guys need to have on: jdw Herb Kunze Al Issacs Sean Waltman

Cherry is 40 now. The 50s greaser valet grown into the early 60s housewife. Is she still working?

This is an interesting question for me. It's not been rising and falling so much as me filling in gaps in my viewing from when we started. Obviously, that makes certain people fall or rise by default, but it's not always due to their own actions. Then there are people who are rising in my estimation but that might not make my list anyway, like Duggan who's looked great in the new Houston footage.

They need a Donna Reed style anti divas revolution heel

I'm with Johnny.

I was there live for the Boston one, so I might lean otherwise. I haven't seen it in ten years though.

I almost crashed the car yesterday I was laughing so hard.

How does that Briscoe match rank with their ROH one from Boston?

The way that Eadie worked in and out of the armholds in the opening stretch made me wish that they put him over Martel instead of Hansen. He would have been a great AWA champ for their ring style.

I think "impact" will hurt him.

EDIT: Let's just respectfully say that I think we have more to gain from respecting a plurality of well-explained opinions than trying to force a single truth through when it comes to all sorts of things. It'll make us all happier and stronger in the end.

He's had kind of a hard week. But then considering how many HOF ballots we've seen this week with Edge on them...

I didn't submit because: 1.) By the time I really felt like I had a handle on lucha, I was on disc 5 and to gauge things, I would have had to go back to the start 2.) I decided to go off and do the SC stuff and just look broadly all over instead 3.) Disc 6 was killer with all the trios matches (though I probably wouldn't feel that way now) 4.) It's a lot easier for me to watch/annotate wrestling streaming than off of a DVD at this point. It was the gateway drug for me to watch hundreds of lucha matches, but I never actually finished it.

I hold the Kamala match against Bryan

I'm excited for that match. Eadie, as Ax, was very good at not taking crap from babyfaces who didn't want to give him what they should. Mil, more than any babyface in the history of wrestling, had a tendency to do that. Very curious to see what it looks like (and how it compares to Mil working with Hansen which is fun for all the reasons you'd think).

I'm going to defend Parv here in that I don't think it works quite like that. It's an ingrained function. He's not sitting there with a notebook. Those factors are just constantly present when he's watching a match. He can't shut them off. It's sort of a model overlaid upon a match where things that happen pull in one direction or another upon the grids. And you can train yourself to think like that, or it can happen naturally over time, or it can just be who you are, but I'm not sure if you'll be happier if you train yourself to think that way. A lot is gained in the process but something is lost.

Are those people that wouldn't have made your list anyway?

I'm bumping this, mainly because I'm a jerk.

Edge made it in five times.

Good Ol' Will from Texas still never gave us the link for that.

Did you miss the part where I said Naylor? It's a deal breaker otherwise.

I'm pretty certain that these two will be my top two luchadores, and very likely both within my top five. I'm just not sure which of the two will rank higher. I just want to throw this out there now with a few comments, and I'll try to go more in depth later. Satanico is everything advertised. He's simply the best rudo of all time, quite possibly the best bad guy in the history of wrestling. He's able to portray the joy of evil through his mannerisms and expressions in a way that I've never seen from anyone else. There's almost nothing in lucha I love more than the way he directs traffic in a trios beatdown. He's a technical master, with matwork full of struggle and weight. An extremely smart worker that could have one of the best matches of all time with little more than basic strikes, but that could also turn it up for quick-paced brawls or some of the most amazing title matches you'd ever see. While he has a few babyface (we'll call it that and not tecnico) runs and certainly played that role with the crowd behind him in some rudo vs rudo matches, I think, with him, it's more of a case of being the deepest pond than a wide one. He's as bad as bad can be, the very best of the very worst. Casas, on the other hand, feels far more versatile to me. He has workrate sprints, heated apuestas matches, big title matches, feuds full of character. He's one of the most emotive, charismatic wrestlers of all times, both in his younger, athletic work and in his later, wizened trickster god persona. I don't think he's quite as strong a rudo as Satanico and at times his charisma could even be a negative because it can take away from the clarity of his matches when up against a straight tecnico. I'm not sure there's anyone nominated who has as many great performances that feel as different from one another (maybe Funk?). For someone who could play so naturally cocky a jerk, he could also garner incredible amounts of sympathy. Just an amazing range that carries on to today, where he can light up a trios match just by stepping in through the ropes. I do think there were periods in the early-mid 00s where he could, as a tecnico, fade into the background too much in trios matches, but that was him playing his role and not overshadowing the main focus on the match, so it's hard to hold it against him too much. It wasn't something I often saw with Satanico though. Someone like Hijo del Santo feels "purer" to me, but I think these two have to be my top 2. I'm not sure it isn't a wide vs deep argument here, the very best at one thing (while being very good at so many other things) against someone who's almost the best at just about everything.