KB8

He was given the boot in the end for his incompetence anyway. I reckon Tully would've just hastened his removal and then they end up getting 12 minutes at Beach Blast to work a ***1/2 classic. I'm okay with that.

I'd never even considered Tully as part of the Dangerous Alliance in '92 but it's now shot up the top of my list of things that never happened that I wish I had a time machine to somehow rectify personally. I love the Rockers/Brainbusters series. That 1/23/89 match is like a top 5 WWF/E tag ever for me.

I touched a little on this in Terry's nominee thread back in 2021: That's still where I'm at with Funk five years on. I've seen a handful of Terry Funk matches I'd absolutely call great since then as well (that I never would've known about if not for the Wrestling Playlists) and that played a part in why I had him at #4, even if his case was made up of the NOT-great matches, the ones against your Sal Bellomos or Cougar Jays of the world, as much as the great ones against your Hansens and Flairs and Tsurutas.

My hope is that by 2036 goodhelmet has come out of retirement with that monster 78-disc Tenryu set and the 2020s voters propel him to #1.

EDIT: Posted twice. Terry Funk rules!

I clocked this too and immediately I was like what in the hell?? Very cool and not something I'd have expected. I hope it's from a bunch of people in their 70s going "that fella came back from a stomach ulcer, I like him!"

Perhaps our boy Elliott has significant sway with the new voters! The yoots, as you might say.

Cool to see Eddie staying strong. He wouldn't be my #1 for this (he was my #19), but if it was a favourites list he'd be top spot with a bullet. I'm not sure there's ever been anybody better than Eddie when he was at his very best. As high a peak as anybody, even if it wasn't sustained or prolonged the same as Fujiwara or Casas or Tenryu. The best in the world at the time he passed and there's nothing that makes me think he wouldn't have been elite for around another 10 years. I never voted for Tanahashi. He's someone who's spent the majority of his career working a style I don't enjoy, even if he himself brings some elements to it that I like, but part of me wishes he finished in the top 10 ahead of guys like Austin and Bret (who I did vote for).

I had a good idea where this was going after the first paragraph and I wasn't disappointed. I like Cena well enough and think he's had some excellent matches with some excellent performances, but I also never voted for him. There's a lot of dross in amongst the really good stuff.

Agreed. We need the list of shame for Fujiwara non-voters like we got for the HHH-voters. Name them. Shame them. Shun them. He was my #3 but I wouldn't spend a single second arguing with anyone who had him at the top.

I've also never been a Minoru Suzuki guy. I like some of his shoot style stuff a lot - a couple of those bouts are tremendous - and he has a couple 2010s New Japan matches that I thought were fantastic as well, but there's so much of his stuff that I want to actively switch off that it tips the scale entirely. Back in 2021 when we started revving this thing up again, I made a point of subscribing to New Japan World (is that still a thing?) to watch some of his more recent stuff, maybe kill a few birds with one stone and watch some Shingo, Ibushi, etc., the folks who'd made a real case since 2016. I hated pretty much all of what I watched (Shingo and Ibushi included) and gave up after like four matches. The modern strike exchange is what it is and those guys are far from the only offenders, but Suzuki doing it was even less fun than usual. I'm all for snarling demented goblin looking bastards clonking people in the head now and then, but I'd have Suzuki significantly lower than 00s Kikuchi if that's what we're looking at. I also maybe haven't seen the right stuff, but he's never struck me as the proper evil sadist people often talk him up as. Is this coming from matches where he's stretching people out and working guys over? Or is it him throwing elbows, sticking his tongue out and asking to be elbowed back? Because I'd take recommendations for the former, but the latter I've seen enough of and it's not making me forget a Murakami or a Kurisu. Yeah, Owens is one of my least favourite wrestlers ever. Outside of the Austin match at Wrestlemania I don't think I've enjoyed one Kevin Owens match since he's been in WWE, and there really aren't that many before that I remember liking a whole lot. He's just never resonated with me on any level.

I already do! The French Catch stuff I took to pretty much immediately and I've gone through a solid enough chunk of it, but not really enough of one person specifically - other than Le Petit Prince, I guess - to feel like I knew where to vote for them. I love the French stuff. WoS is sort of the same but I've probably seen less than the French Catch stuff, which is kind of silly considering I probably watched my first WoS match 20+ years ago on The Wrestling Channel while the French Catch footage only really hit our demented corner of fandom like six years ago. Some of the top WoS I've seen is incredible. Like the French Catch stuff though, I haven't seen enough of anyone in particular to really feel comfortable ranking them. I'd say that's a 2036 task but then in 2016 I said it was a 2026 task and I shit the bed on that as well, didn't I. I'm like 400 spots behind at this point but I'm still determined to talk about everyone who ranked.

I'm down to 52. 38 of my top 50 are left and 21 of my top 25. Only Yoshida is gone from my top 10 so far. I'm pretty similar to Boricua in that there are still gaps I want to fill, but they're mostly gaps around wrestlers who've fallen already, like the WoS and French Catch guys, and on the right day maybe some modern joshi or Japanese indies. 2010s New Japan will be well represented in the top 100 and I'm okay with that not being a gap I'll try to fill because for the most part it's a gap by design. I've tried to fill it already and it didn't take. But you're not going to love EVERYONE in a top 100 so...shut up and eat your cereal and stop complaining, I guess.

Yoshida's the first of my top 10 to drop. An ungodly pro wrestler. I thought she might crack the top 100 given the surge in joshi support this time around. To quote Aristotle: "get fucked, I hate you all."