KB8

I'd never seen either of these two guys before. Steinborn looked to be somewhere around his fifties and sure enough a quick check on cagematch.net tells me he debuted in 1951(!) and at one point went by the ring name Dick Gunkel, which for whatever reason just tickles me. He was also the brother-in-law of Jerry Oates, who spent a while in the NWA through the 70s and 80s and had a cup of coffee as a ham 'n' egger in the WWF in the early 90s. So...there you go. Steinborn was pretty damn fun in this as your tough old roughhouse. He had a few cool takedowns and carried himself like a guy who knew how to go, but if things were getting a bit out of hand he would duck under the ropes for a quick breather. You need to learn your limits as you get on in years, you know. If there's any Eisenhower-era Dick Steinborn floating around I may very well be tempted to check it out. I never got much of a handle on Apollo from this. He struck me as Puerto Rico's white meat midcard babyface - solid if unspectacular - but the match was about six minutes long, so it's hard to gauge anything from that. Another nifty studio match, though.

This was one of those Tully matches where he wanted to come in and be as much of a shitbox as possible before finally having to man up and throw some punches. He begged off, stooged, outright ran away, threw cheapshots, and generally acted like an annoying wee weasel. If that sounds like fun to you then you'll probably get a kick out of this. Thought Colon was pretty good again, especially in the way he'd go from merely threatening to punch Tully in the nose at the start of the match to actually punching him in the nose, and often at that, by the end. Tully will do that to a guy, I suppose. Some cool revenge spots on the floor as well, like Tully throwing Colon over the barricade into a group of fans and attacking him every time he tried to climb back over, leading to Colon picking Tully up and dropping him tailbone-first across the barricade later on. Finish isn't executed terribly well, but I liked the idea of it.

Well, I did not know Rick Martel had a brother. Where Rick was handsome and all shredded like a julienne salad, Pierre is gruff and rugged and he looks like a binman. Never seen Dellaserra before but a cursory google search reveals at least four different spelling variations of his surname. The VQ isn't always spectacular on this - though dodgy VQ on early 80s studio matches that you'd never check out otherwise is part of the charm of the 80s sets - so I'm not sure which version of Los Mercenarios this is. Judging by the timeline I'd have thought it'd be Angel Acevedo/Cuban Assassin and Gerry Morrow, but it doesn't look like Morrow. Acevedo's hair/beard combination is absolutely spectacular. He's achieved true lunatic caveman status with that. This was rolling along nicely with some spirited arm work by Martel and Dellaserra, then Martel ends up on the floor and comes back in covered in blood so we have ourselves another 'Welcome to the Puerto Rico, Motherfucker!' situation. I'm all in on Puerto Rico studio matches already. Crowds are raucous and there's blood and shithousing for days. I'm not even sure what the finish was but there was eye-gouging and face-biting and blood and beard everywhere. I dug this.

I think I may have said a word or two about Flair in the recent past, right here on this very blog (note: I'm dragging this over from my blog, obviously). I've perhaps mentioned that the most interesting Flair matches - especially if they're lengthy - to me personally at this point will be against guys I've never seen him match up with before. Well I've never seen him match up with Colon and I was interested in seeing what Colon would bring to a title match (especially after seeing what he brought to an Abdullah the Butcher match), so I was looking forward to this. You have a pretty good idea how the match is going to be laid out and what Flair will do on his end, but how opponents fill in their part of the script can be pretty intriguing if it's an unfamiliar opponent. Colon basically controls the first ten or so minutes by working the arm, and it's not spectacular but it is spirited and looks fairly nasty. The arm work gets dropped soon after Flair takes over, but then I assume we all saw that coming. Flair actually does some pretty nifty stuff working on top, like hitting a couple snake eyes (don't remember seeing him do that before) and another big delayed vertical suplex. Around midway through we get some legwork and Colon reverses the figure four, then applies it himself, and the last stretch is your big Flair run to the finish. There was some pretty great stuff down the stretch, the best being Colon absolutely fucking Kurt Angling Flair head first into the ring post about six times in a row, with Flair taking every shot like a nutter. Colon's cartwheel as his "drop the strap" moment is incredible, btw. The crowd goes utterly BALLISTIC and it's so infectious watching him get fired up like that. I'm gonna enjoy him a ton on this set, I can already tell. Flair grabbing a headlock as a way to transition into the finish is very Flair, but man I didn't expect the actual finish to be what it was. Goosebumps-inducing. Probably doesn't sound like I'm overly enthusiastic about this as a match, but I thought it was really good. Of the three matches so far it probably has the least re-watch value to me for reasons that are likely obvious by now, but it might still be the best of the three (like, I guess).

Well I loved this. Fuck it, I said it, I meant it, I'm here to represent it. Old, balding, two-years-shy-of-retiring-into-a-refereeing-gig Tommy Gilbert isn't the first candidate I'd put forward to play plucky underdog in a studio match against the World Champ, but hell if it doesn't work. Maybe this is the kind of setting in which I'll get the most out of Flair at this point. Short, to the point, pretty much a sprint. Thought he struck a really nice balance between being the aggressor and begging off. Like, I know for a fact I'd be fawning over Rose or Bockwinkel if they worked the match this exact way. Actually, and maybe this is just because I haven't watched a Flair studio match in ages, Flair seemed more aggressive and intent on working on top in this compared to a LOT of Flair matches I can think of, studio or otherwise. He of course gives Tommy plenty, but he'd let loose with body shots, AWESOME elbow drops, kicks to the kneecap, rabbit punches to the nose, a great delayed vertical suplex, etc. He cut a no-nonsense promo before it about how he was the best athlete in the world, and he generally worked this like a guy who could live up to that hype (with the begging off highlighting the hubris in such a statement at the same time). And how about the figure four? Wasn't reversed, wasn't applied to Flair as a revenge spot, didn't feel tacked on for some mid-match heat. It was the figure four leglock in all its glory. Praise the Puerto Rico.

How about this for an introduction. It's taking place in Trinidad and Tobago for the West Indies Championship and I'm like 98% certain it's the first match I've ever seen from Trinidad and Tobago. So there's another one off the old bucket list! The ring mat looks squishy, like a dodgy mattress or a burst bouncy castle. Early parts were all about Colon punching Abby in the ear and trying to rip the ear off Abby's head. Abby sells with mild annoyance. Then Abby goes bonkos and man this might be the most fun I've had watching Abby punch folk in the throat and kick them in the eye with the toe of his boot. He does it at Abdullah the Butcher speed but it all looked great. His elbow drops fucking rule as well, btw. About seven minutes in and both guys have tapped a gusher and Savinovich is on commentary calling the referee a full blown idiot for not stopping the match before a riot ensues. You're listening to it thinking "yeah okay, mate, I'm sure a riot will ensue" and then a few score Trinidadians surround the ring like some shit is brewing. The commentators also reiterate that anything they say about Abby that may be misconstrued as insulting is purely accidental and in the heat of the broadcast because they don't want Abby or his people hunting them down and assassinating them or something. Which was awesome. Eventually the ref' does throw out the match, but Abdullah isn't done and keeps going after Colon post-match. Someone jumps in the ring - a wrestler from the territory, apparently - and Abby punches him in the throat so people outside start trying to grab Abby's legs and yank at his tights. Then Abby steps out the ring and everybody scatters like Abby is the fucking plague incarnate! Fans literally start fighting with each other. Abby goes full Hansen and waddles into this mass of people and folk are terrified, running over each other to get away. Remember when people believed a morbidly obese bag of walnuts who moved at the speed of moss from Windsor, Ontario was a psychotic murderer from the Sudan? Hot damn, that was the pro-wrestling. Bring back the kayfabe! This ruled like fuck.

Finished up disc 1 earlier. I've been writing about the matches and throwing them up on my blog as I go, so I'll cross-post in the threads even though I'm basically reiterating a lot of what other have said already. 1. Ric Flair vs. Tommy Gilbert (9/4/82) 2. Ric Flair vs. Carlos Colon (10/16/82) 3. Carlos Colon & The Invader vs. Los Pastores (Ambulance Match) (12/21/85) 4. Randy Savage vs. Hercules Ayala (3/2/85) 5. Carlos Colon vs. Bruiser Brody (Chain Match) (Summer 1984) 6. Gino Dellaserra & Pierre Martel vs. Los Mercenarios (11/27/82) 7. El Gran Apollo vs. Buddy Landell (5/8/83) 8. Carlos Colon vs. Tully Blanchard (1983) 9. Carlos Colon vs. Abdullah the Butcher (9/21/85) 10. Abdullah the Butcher vs. Carlos Colon (September 1981) 11. The Invaders vs. Los Pastores (Barbed Wire Match) (9/21/85) 12. El Gran Apollo vs. Dick Steinborn (February 1983) 13. Abdullah the Butcher vs. Andre the Giant (9/17/83) 14. Los Pastores vs. Jay & Mark Youngblood (Spring 1985) 15. Hercules Ayala vs. Killer Tim Brooks (Taped Fist Cage Match) (October 1985) 16. Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes (12/21/85) Fun disc to start out, with the Ambulance Match to round out the disc feeling like the perfect way to end the starter course and gear us up for some probable insanity to follow in the main course. I loved Flair/Gilbert. Flair in shorter studio matches against opponents I've never seen him match up with before might be the most interesting Flair footage available to me right now, and I thought he was excellent in this (as was Gilbert, really). He worked dominant enough that it felt like he really was The Man, but stooged and begged off just enough to let Gilbert look like a plausible threat. He also busted out a few things he dropped later in the decade. And I know it's a bit of a running gag at this point, but I loved that the finish actually was what it was. I wasn't gonna stick Flair/Colon at #2 initially, but I thought about it a bit more and favoured that ever so slightly over the Ambulance Match (although I'm generally not in much of a hurry to re-watch longer Flair matches, so I might take that into account if I decide to rework things a bit). Flair/Dusty, meanwhile, had the exact opposite effect on me. I'm all in on Puerto Rico studio matches. Short, wild crowd, a high chance of blood and piss and vinegar -- sign me up. The Landell match was ridiculously fun and Buddy was an awesome stooge in it, particularly with his face-first bump into the middle turnbuckle after being headlocked to death. I'll probably start disc 2 tonight. I'm looking forward to some Chicky Starr.

Y'all are way ahead of me right now, but disc 3 looked tremendous on paper and I'm psyched to hear it's playing out that way in practice. '86/'87 Puerto Rico is the motherload.

Yeah, I can see rankings for this being all over the place. I've still got a few matches from disc 1 to watch and I haven't bothered trying to rank anything yet, but right now I think I'd have Flair/Gilbert #1, Savage/Ayala #2 and the Brody chain match #3. I don't have a ton of interest in watching Flair at this point, but I thought he was great in the studio match and I wound up kinda loving it. Savage just doing crazy Randy Savage shit is something I'll watch with no issue at all and I thought that was some fun Randy Savage shit. I thought I might've overrated the chain match initially because I was stunned at how much better Brody was in it than I'd have expected, but I actually watched it again last night, and nah, it's genuinely a really good, short, spirited brawl. There hasn't been anything I've outright disliked yet, but the Youngbloods/Pastores match got a wee bit long in the tooth and was my least favourite out of everything so far.

Funk was downright unbelievable in that Bellomo match. I audibly laughed out loud about four times during it as a reaction to crazy shit he was doing. Straight away when he kicks out at the ring attendant and spits at him you know he's up for this, then he gets in the crowd and picks a fight with someone. The bit with Gorilla at the announce desk ruled the first time, but Terry chucking Bellomo back out later on and shouting "PIG! PIG!" was even better. Bellomo isn't an all star, but he was definitely game to play off Funk here and Terry gave him a ton. Sal's mule kicks actually looked pretty great and the splash across both of Funk's kneecaps ruled. Still, this was a Funk show, and what a show it was.

I'm not sure how good this actually was, but there's something about Fuerza Guerrera bleeding all over the place and hand-walking Octagon through a mano a mano bout in 2016 that I can't help but enjoy. This isn't 1992, so Fuerza can't hit it all the way out the park like he could then. He can still do Fuerza things, though, and sometimes that's enough (well, it's enough for me). Octagon wasn't all that good even in '92 and he's borderline atrocious now. He moves at half-speed, his mask torn open in three places, dazed and confused like a pensioner who's just been mugged for his shoes. There was one bit where he tried to throw a kick in the corner and I assume he thought Fuerza was going to move, but Fuerza didn't so Octagon just kind of fell into the ropes and stared unapologetically into the front row. But man, Fuerza is everything. He rolled out some of his tricks from decades gone by, like tying Octagon to the rope by the tassels on his mask, and there were at least three instances where he blatantly kicked Octagon in the dick (at one point he then hit the deck like it was he who had been dick kicked). His somersault senton off the apron was also completely nuts considering Octagon could not possibly look less arsed about catching him. Finish was pretty crummy even by dodgy lucha refereeing standards, but I'm not at all upset that I took sixteen minutes out of my day to watch this.

On the Dusty note, I actually watched the Dusty/Koloff coffin match not long ago and thought it was a bit heatless for a Dusty match. Picked up a bit towards the end, but the early parts weren't nearly as raucous as I expected.

Yeah, this was the business. For a sub-five minute match I couldn't have asked for much more. Like, sure, I guess it would've been cool if they'd kept going for a little while longer, but like GOTNW I don't think it actually felt incomplete at what we got. The Suzuki/Nakanoue relationship has deteriorated even further and their hatred towards one another can't be constrained by the rules of a pro-wrestling match. Suzuki was pretty much the world's best potato-farming crowbar bastard imaginable in this. Loved it when he just started laying into his own partner for getting in his way. Then Uto decided he'd had enough and smashed him back, but Suzuki doesn't even give a shit because all he wants to do is jump on Nakanoue's head and who needs a tag team partner anyway? Match kind of reminded me of a Hashimoto v Ogawa tag and if you're successfully aping Hash v Ogawa then you're alright with me.

This was my first taste of the Suzuki/Nakanoue feud and it felt like a pretty great place to start. Fairly short, super intense, buckets of hate, etc. Good grief, Hama is even fatter than the last time I saw him. It's like Dusty Rhodes absorbed Rikishi Phatu Dragonball Z style and this was the outcome. His fatboy splashes all looked very lung-squashy and I pretty much love his twist on the duelling lariat trope by just diving onto Uto with a cross body. Suzuki/Nakanoue is of course what you come to see, though. No idea what the context of this feud is or why they hate each other to death but I'm fine just sitting back and watching them try and maul each other. Constant cheap shots, looks of disgust, flurries of violence - it was all there. The WAR comparison certainly feels apt and considering WAR is just about my favourite promotion in history I was all the way behind this. I don't actually know if I've seen Suzuki before but I liked him a bunch here. He was pretty Tenryu-ish in the way he'd sort of react to Nakanoue's strikes with condescension early on, to later being thoroughly fed up with them and absolutely plastering him in response.

That Cyber Sunday match against Big Show was actually pretty good. I mean, I think. Maybe?

Placements on the overall list are in parentheses because I was editing them into a word document as the countdown progressed, and now I can't be bothered editing them all back out again. 1. Stan Hansen (3) 2. Genichiro Tenryu (13) 3. Negro Casas (22) 4. Jerry Lawler (10) 5. Satanico (37) 6. Toshiaki Kawada (9) 7. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (40) 8. Mitsuharu Misawa (4) 9. Shinya Hashimoto (23) 10. Buddy Rose (36) 11. Terry Funk (2) 12. El Dandy (35) 13. Kiyoshi Tamura (62) 14. Nick Bockwinkel (16) 15. Eddie Guerrero (12) 16. Rey Mysterio (7) 17. Tatsumi Fujinami (20) 18. Daisuke Ikeda (100) 19. Yuki Ishikawa (70) 20. El Hijo del Santo (29) 21. Volk Han (60) 22. Kenta Kobashi (8) 23. Ricky Steamboat (15) 24. Daniel Bryan (5) 25. Ric Flair (1) 26. Bill Dundee (57) 27. Jumbo Tsuruta (11) 28. Dick Murdoch (53) 29. Arn Anderson (19) 30. Riki Choshu (41) 31. Akira Taue (26) 32. Randy Savage (18) 33. Barry Windham (25) 34. Bobby Eaton (28) 35. Ricky Morton (33) 36. Virus (99) 37. Blue Panther (69) 38. Rick Martel (43) 39. Sangre Chicana (95) 40. Dustin Rhodes (32) 41. Vader (14) 42. Jushin Liger (6) 43. Dick Togo (71) 44. Pirata Morgan (117) 45. Steve Austin (24) 46. Fuerza Guerrera (155) 47. Naoki Sano (126) 48. William Regal (21) 49. Fit Finlay (48) 50. Jun Akiyama (27) 51. Tito Santana (80) 52. Alexander Otsuka (127) 53. Chris Benoit (34) 54. Butch Reed (136) 55. Shawn Michaels (31) 56. Masa Fuchi (111) 57. Aja Kong (49) 58. Yoji Anjoh (214) 59. Bret Hart (17) 60. LA Park (96) 61. Jerry Estrada (432) 62. Emilio Charles Jr. (193) 63. Greg Valentine (54) 64. John Cena (30) 65. Black Terry (151) 66. Bob Backlund (93) 67. Tommy Rogers (215) 68. Chavo Guerrero Sr. (247) 69. Mariko Yoshida (187) 70. Koko Ware (250) 71. La Fiera (164) 72. Christian (102) 73. Ted DiBiase (42) 74. Yoshihiro Tajiri (81) 75. Hector Guerrero (452) 76. Negro Navarro (179) 77. Samoa Joe (59) 78. Tully Blanchard (44) 79. Mark Henry (156) 80. Andre the Giant (51) 81. Shinobu Kandori (146) 82. Curt Hennig (55) 83. Jerry Blackwell (118) 84. Sgt. Slaughter (64) 85. Atlantis (74) 86. Mocho Cota (189) 87. Masa Saito (160) 88. Rick Rude (77) 89. Jim Duggan (218) 90. Tama (520) 91. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (320) 92. Takeshi Ono (303) 93. Dennis Condrey (199) 94. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (148) 95. Yoshihiro Takayama (123) 96. Michael Hayes (166) 97. Jose Lothario (276) 98. AJ Styles (39) 99. Austin Aries (176) 100. Kazunari Murakami (341)

Honestly, I'd still have Hansen ahead of Jumbo, though probably behind Misawa and Kawada. But then, I still like old man Hansen trying to hang onto his place in the world by thumping the ever loving dogshit out of folk more than the Pillars working King's Road (that's a broad, fairly simplistic take on things, but I'm on an iPhone at work), even if the latter produced more great matches. I had Hansen ahead of all those guys, but things like Hansen/Andre and Hansen's stuff in America absolutely played a part in that.

It's already been touched on as well, but people are naturally going to be less likely to harp on about the flaws of a guy/girl they're trying to "push" as a top tier candidate if that guy/girl is a relatively new discovery, never to have REALLY been pushed at that level in the past. Work on getting Buddy Rose or Satanico or even Bockwinkel the same exposure as Flair - if that's even possible - first, THEN break it down some more and scrutinize things (similar to what Matt did with Hansen, for example). I'm guilty of only really highlighting the positives of my favourites as well, especially if they're fairly new to me. I wrote something in the threads for Tenryu and Jumbo, but I never said anything about Tenryu being a nondescript mat worker in the Tenryu thread. I did write about how I find a lot of pre-'89 Jumbo uninspiring in the Jumbo thread, though. Maybe it's because Tenryu is a real favourite of mine and Jumbo isn't, or maybe it's because Tenryu-as-GOAT-contender is a relatively new take on things that hasn't quite reached the point where people want to seriously pick it apart. Maybe we just haven't had the time to get bored of Tenryu yet. I'm not sure, but either way, if we do this again in ten years I hope we have 16 page threads for Buddy Rose and Nick Bockwinkel and Satanico and Casas with people going back and forth about how great or not great they truly were, because if that's the case then I would say the fans of those guys have succeeded in getting people to seriously consider them.

I know some folks have been down on him a bit in recent years (I had him at #27, so I guess I'd fall into that category even though I'd still say he was absolutely excellent at his best), but Jumbo dropping out of the top 10 surprised me. Who saw him picking up less #1 votes than Bret?

Man, Eddie is my all time favourite wrestler and he was in my top 15, but even I can't go to bat for him ahead of Tenryu. Tenryu was my #2. Longevity out the wazoo, hugely consistent, greatest grumpy old bastard ever, tonnes of good matches, more than a couple great ones, and I always find him entertaining no matter who he's in there with.

I hope Eddie finishes top 1. Bret is the last guy from my bottom half to drop, while Bock was my number...14, maybe? Hey, imagine we had all that Bock footage from his physical peak? That would be cool.

I don't think it's possible to do something like this and have everyone come out the other side of it completely happy with the overall list, anyway. The only comprehensive list I'd be satisfied with is one that I compiled myself after watching every piece of available wrestling footage known to man So yeah, "the journey" and all that. Of course I wanted Casas to finish top 3 and for Fujiwara, Satanico and Hashimoto to finish top 10. But part of the reason I wanted that - and for people like Mariko Yoshida, Hector Guerrero and La Fiera to do really well - is because I came to the conclusions I came to on those folks during this whole process. My top 20 honestly didn't end up being THAT different to what it would've been before the project started, but those twenty guys were certainly solidified as being fucking transcendently great in my mind over the last couple years. My bottom sixty was where I felt like things were turned upside down, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. If not for this project I probably wouldn't have dived into a lot of those guys' work to the extent I did. Someone would've asked me if the Tonga Kid or Tekeshi Ono is one of the top 100 wrestlers ever and I'd probably have said "almost certainly not." This project showed me that I was dead fucking wrong and that the correct answer to the question is "you better believe Tama and Takeshi Ono are top 100 wrestlers ever!" And, like, we all have our Tamas and Takeshi Onos now that we're at the end of this, right?

Well, shit. There goes my #3 (Casas). Hashimoto was my #9. I love Regal, but I'm stunned he's still standing. I'm not necessarily stunned that Bret is, but it's, like, whatever.