KB8

Hayes and Fiera were mine. Hayes is one of the kings of wild and out of control sub-ten minute bar fights, and Fiera's run during the Dandy feud in 1992 was a gigantic load of sleazeball rudo fun that turned him from a "possible" guy into a "definite lock" guy. Hayes actually did better than I expected him to. I guess Fiera did as well. Outstanding. EDIT: and Saito is another of mine to bite the dust.

Navarro and Aries were both mine. I gave Aries a bottom ten vote because he was one of my two or three favourite wrestlers in the world from about '06-'08, though even that wasn't enough to get me to watch TNA consistently so I have no idea what he was like there. Glad he's in NXT now because it means I'll probably get to see him from time to time.

I'm not a huge joshi fan at all, but I watched a pretty big chunk of Yoshida footage in the couple weeks leading up to the deadline, and for someone I really had no intention of seriously checking out for this project she wound up becoming my favourite (well, probably) joshi worker ever. Of course her case hinges largely on the ARSION run, but I dug her in matches as far back as 1992. There's a trios on the '92 yearbook where she's teaming with Hotta and Yamada against Aja, Bull and Kyoko, and I genuinely thought her performance was the most impressive part of the match. She basically bumped around huge for Aja and Bull for the most part, but her timing on hope spots was good and she was certainly easy to root for. In her peak she would hit the mat and at times burst into life with almost Tamura-esque speed, grabbing limbs and sprawling and shifting position. She also had a knack for milking a ton of drama out of submissions; sometimes being stuck in one for a couple minutes yet constantly struggling and frantically trying to make it to the ropes. There was a sense of desperation in those moments that I don't think too many of her peers could capture (that's also to say I thought she was a much better seller than most of them). I have no real connection to any other joshi worker and wouldn't particularly care if Hokuto, Bull, Kansai and whoever else never made the top 100, but I really hoped Yoshida would. I also had a pretty good idea that El-P would be the one leading the charge to get her there.

Going from being absent completely to top 200 is an admirable climb all things considered, yeah.

I'm part of the problem since I never voted for him myself, thus I really have no grounds to complain, but MS-1 is another guy that probably should be a good deal higher. I left him off because I felt as though I hadn't seen quite enough footage to get a proper handle on him, but he was still involved in maybe the greatest match of all time. So, you know, he had that going for him. He was a late cut (I was forced to cut a lot of luchadores late), but it still stung to do it. Him and Emilio dropping one after the other is a kicker. Did you vote for him, Matt?

Emilio finished somewhere around the middle of my ballot. I get OJ's point about him not exactly having a litany of superb singles matches, but as a trios worker I can't think of many guys I'd rather see in a rudo unit than Emilio Charles Jr.

Condrey making it into the top 200 feels like a pretty damn good run, even though he absolutely deserves to be there. He landed in my bottom quarter.

Seth Rollins ahead of Tommy Rogers? Who is responsible for this madness? Duggan, Rogers and Anjoh were mine. Duggan as walking tall caveman brawler is awesome. Anjoh as pouty, quick-tempered shoot style cheapshot artist is awesome. Rogers as face in peril is awesome. I love all three guys.

Solar was literally one of the last three people I cut from my list.

I actually toyed with the idea of putting Sasha as my #100. Had I gotten around to watching another of her big NXT title defences I might have, but as it was I didn't really feel like I could justify it. Cracking the overall top 250 after a run of only a couple years (more or less) is pretty good going, anyway.

Koko and Chavo Sr. were both on my ballot. I'm actually a little surprised Chavo never made it a little higher, honestly. Koko picking up a top 20 vote is just the greatest thing ever. I had him somewhere around sixty and figured I might have an outside shot at being the high vote. Boy was I dead fucking wrong.

Pretty good run for Stan Lane, all in all. I'm an unashamed mark for the guy and he's been in some of my favourite tag matches ever, but he was a casualty of my final batch of cuts on deadline day.

Sydal definitely had a lot of fun stuff in WWE. I remember almost nothing now of the ROH/Dragon Gate run from around '07 that I watched at the time, but the WWE run was good. Gorgeous George is the first top 5 vote to drop, right?

I'm only about half an hour in, but this is already everything I hoped it would be. Loss not ranking Childs' #98 at all was surprising to me, though. I should've voted him top 30 to make up for such deplorable behaviour.

Eh, I wouldn't really look at it that way. Considering that this time a year ago no one would have considered Jose for a list like this and he made 11 ballots pretty much solely off a slow trickle of new matches from NWAClassics, it's pretty impressive. Tells me that a large number of voters who have been watching NWAClassics decided to vote for him. Tells you just how valuable NWAClassics is that guys like Jose & Gino who probably would not have gotten any votes at all have done this well (with Gino still to come) The NWA Classics footage certainly gave Lothario a huge bump on my own ballot (from "never would've given him a second thought" to making it onto the ballot, period), but it also bolstered cases for other guys I voted for like Chavo Sr., Reed, Tito, Andre, Hector Guerrero (I think the TDM with Lothario was what 100% solidified both guys' spots on my list, actually) and the Midnight Express. Also bolstered cases for a number of other guys that wound up just missing out, like Wrestling II, Wahoo and Gino. I wouldn't necessarily say I think I voted Lothario too low on my own ballot, but when it came to the final draft I kind of wanted to be careful not to end up overrating him due to the dreaded recency bias. The same went for Hector Guerrero, Mariko Yoshida, Tito Santana, Daisuke Ikeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Kiyoshi Tamura and Shinobu Kandori, who were all wrestlers I watched a bunch of footage of in the last couple months for the purposes of ranking them (the last handful of candidates I looked at closely, more or less). In the case of Hector, Yoshida, Lothario and Kandori, I was blown away by just how good I thought they were and saw them as personal "new discoveries" of sorts (though Lothario is a relatively new discovery for almost everyone who's watched the Classics footage), while in the cases of the others I was reminded of just how awesome those guys were. Would I have voted Hector Guerrero higher than someone like Sgt. Slaughter if I'd watched all of that Hector footage before, say, the AWA set? Maybe not. Would I have ranked Mariko Yoshida higher than Ted DiBiase if I'd watched the ARSION footage a year ago and spent the last month going through the Mid-South set again? Who knows. I guess my point here is that Jose Lothario was awesome and the case for him is only growing and fuck it, I should've voted him top 5.

I guess Casas might be the only person to receive both a #1 and #100 vote, then.

Astro was a low-ballot candidate for me, but I eventually wound up dropping him. Dean's ballot is just the gift that keeps on giving!

Ono was another of mine, albeit in the bottom quarter somewhere. The 2009-2010 FUTEN run was pretty spectacular and I'm also in the "Ono/Ikeda is the best sub-5 minute match in history" camp. Koshinaka finishing in the top 100 even in 2006 sort of surprises me. I can't think of many wrestlers who have such a huge gap between their lowest lows and highest highs. He bored me to tears on the New Japan 80s set and was one of my least favourite guys on it, but then he gets older and grumpier and is often very fun during the NJ/WAR feud. Had a nice run in the '96 G1 as well, if my memory of it from the yearbook is worth anything. I enjoy watching him match up with Tenryu about as much as I don't enjoy him matching up with Takada, and it's not necessarily because his opponent is dragging him up or down a level (this is not me taking a dig at Takada, btw).

I'm looking forward to this, and I say that as someone who hadn't even listened to a single podcast in its entirety before the two Parv/Chad GWE podcasts in the last couple weeks. Maybe that's what I learned about my fandom from this project - that I like podcasts now.

Not hugely surprising that one of the joshi candidates was the first from the SC 100 not to make PWO's. Pretty sure more than a couple people had predicted that'd be the case.

There can't be any way Valentine v Wahoo didn't rule.

Greco just missed my list and Espanto was someone I really wanted to vote for on the footage I'd seen, but in the end still didn't feel like I'd seen enough. I actually kind of regret not voting for them, but then there are legitimately dozens of guys I could say that about. Including Hoshino, who was one of my favourite guys on the New Japan set; like a little Bill Dundee-esque shit kicker. Yamamoto was another one of mine. I had him bottom ten.

Murakami is my fourth to drop. He was my #100. Normally that spot is reserved for the wacky/"out there" (or whatever) pick, so in retrospect I probably should've voted him somewhere else in the bottom 10 and made someone else my #100, because I think the best Murakami matches are really awesome and he brings something to the table in all of them. Is he as good in the 1/4/00 Dome tag as Hashimoto? No, and it's probably not even close, but his presence there certainly made the whole thing feel extra chaotic. He also has the greatest lunatic psychopath death stare ever.

Fuck shame, I will wear my Tonga Kid markdom with pride. Genuinely burst out laughing at this.

Seeing all the crazy picks roll out is just about my favourite part of the countdown process. I mean, I think Honky Tonk Man is pretty rubbish, but I also think it's awesome that someone was compiling their list and thought, "yes, Honky Tonk Man feels right as the forty ninth best wrestler in history."