Below the GOAT-candidates: Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4

[soup23]

Loss, Bill Simmons wrote the Book of Basketball of which the bulk of it consisted of a GOAT list of pro players. That is what JDW posted and Simmons separated the players into tiers.

[JerryvonKramer]

I thought it was a reference to Pippen who was mentioned earlier.

[BrickHithouse]

Whatever the case, I'd put Adrian Adonis ahead of Bill Walton on that list.

[Dylan Waco]

I think Adonis would be a tier four guy, but I'd have A LOT of guys in that tier. If we were restricting such a concept to 100 he wouldn't make the tiers at all.

 

My thought on how these break down is similar to soup's.

 

1. People who I would consider for one and/or people where if they showed up on someone else's list as number one I wouldn't think it odd or challenge it.

2. People who I would consider for my top 25 or so and/or people where if they showed up hovering around the bottom of someone's top ten I wouldn't think it odd or challenge it.

3. Solid top hundred guys - i.e. guys who would certainly make my top 100 or so but could fall almost anywhere in that range.

4. Possible top hundred guys - i.e. guys who would have a reasonable shot of making a top 100.

[ohtani's jacket]

This is a bit of a mess if people are just going to throw names out there without providing their tiers, so I'll give it a go even though I only really care about two styles of wrestling at present.

 

The top tier would include guys like Satanico, Breaks, Fujiwara and Volk Han. The whole thing is based on wrestling ability as well as acting and performing ability, which are the only things which matter to me.

 

Tier 2

 

Steve Grey, Marty Jones, El Dandy, Negro Casas, Chigusa Nagayo, Jaguar Yokota, Toshiaki Kawada, Kiyoshi Tamura

 

Tier 3

 

Alan Sarjeant, Jon Cortez, El Hijo del Santo, Blue Panther, Shinya Hashimoto, Arn Anderson

 

Tier 4

 

Terry Rudge, Tibor Szacaks, Mike Marino, Negro Navarro, Black Terry, Yuki Ishikawa, Daisuke Ikeda

 

That's all I can think of right now, but that would be my starting point.

[goodhelmet]

I guess I need to find out where my Tier 1 ends and my Tier 2 begins because I can't think of a Tier 1 list without El Dandy and William Regal.

[NintendoLogic]

Wait, I thought Terry Rudge was the GOAT. Now he's only Tier 4?

[jdw]

Definitely think if we do a GOAT list again, Bills tier system is not a bad starting point. He has a few too many names in his pantheon (or tier 1) level but otherwise he did a good job of distinguishing the candidates in a sport where #1 was never in question.

I'd have to go pull how Bill defined each Level and the Pantheon, but he did have a good general rule for each, and how the cut things off.

 

The Pantheon was pretty much the group that if you surrounded him with a reasonable cast, you were locked into winning at least a Title, and not a flukey one where the rest of the league took a dump. Big O was the exception to this, but his cast can be debated, it was a much smaller league, and you look at what he had to get through (Celtics) and they had a Pantheon guy as an anchor along with studs like Sam Jones and Hondo.

 

He defines it better than that, and it makes sense that there are 12 (or 13 now since clearly Lebron would be in it if he wrote it up now). I don't think he'd put Dirk in there to make it 14, especially now two years removed from Dirk's title and being able to put it in better perspective.

 

The other ones make relative sense as well. You can always believe you're going to come up with a perfect pyramid, but in the end if you have a definition that's based on conceptual criteria (guys who did these types of things) rather than a fixed number (5 guys and fuck it if #6 has more in common with #'s 3-5 than #15, I'm sticking to my number even if it doesn't make a bit of conceptual sense!). I tend to lean more to conceptual criteria, since Shaq and Moses have far more in common with the guys up at #6-10 (and Kobe) than anyone on Level 4 (sans Kobe who has moved up). That even included Hondo, who I love... but Shaq and the Pantheon guys were just something entirely different.

 

As far as a GOAT List, if you try to apply it to what Bill was doing... you basically have two people: Jordan and Russell. I know there are arguments for others (basically Wilt), but Bill in his own comp shreds that in a way that's compelling to himself (and not without compelling aspects to me). So you'd have a Pantheon of 2, and a Level 4 of the rest of the Pantheon guys... and then to match a true pyramid shape you'd have to combine the current Level 4 + Level 3 guys... and

 

It would be a nice "shape", but it would lose the point of how Bill was trying to group them.

 

I'd also add that Bill wasn't exactly trying to be Jamesian in putting this together. Much more a "well educated fan" list and organization of it than a sabermetric type attempt.

 

Anyway...

[ohtani's jacket]

Wait, I thought Terry Rudge was the GOAT. Now he's only Tier 4?

That was just a joke.

[Dylan Waco]

As an aside I really love the Big Book of Basketball.

 

I'm not averse to trying to break down things into tiers more specifically but that would take me a while because there are a fuck ton of guys who I would lump into group four

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd like to note that I've never heard of Bill Simmons or his pantheon.

 

I first used the "four tier" system when someone asked me to provide them a top 100 albums list about 8 years ago. I told them that I couldn't do a straight 100-1 ranking and instead think in terms of "tiers of greatness". I guess it is not that surprising that someone else had the same idea.

 

I've been interested in systems of grading and ranking for as long as I can remember and will write a book on it in the next few years called "Rating Things" -- it is definitely happening.

 

My view that has developed over the past few years is that it is EASY to sort things into these "grade bands" or tiers, but virtually impossible to to select between two things in the same sort of tier. So very easy to tell a a 5-star film from a 3-star effort, but much more difficult to split hairs between two bona-fide 5-star films. David Hume had a similar thought.

 

I think this is the case with both wrestlers and matches.

 

On the DVDR ballots, I think everyone comes face-to-face with this.

 

What I'm undecided on is whether the "best of the best vs. best of the best" argument is actually interesting or worth having. Like arguing the toss over "who was better, Shakespeare or Tolstoy?" strikes me as being pretty facile and pointless.

 

Part of me thinks that the interesting thing is the criteria by which you get to that judgement. So not "Shakespeare vs. Tolstoy", but "why is Shakespeare obviously several leagues above Webster, Kyd and Fletcher?"

 

But then we get stuff like that Flair vs. Bret thread, which has me tearing my hair out even to think about it (because Bret so clearly, clearly isn't in that same league), and I wonder. Absolute subjective relativism strikes me as a basically wrong view -- it just isn't right, the consensuses across every field are too strong to ignore, there's no critic out there who goes and gives The Godfather one star, there's no wrestling fan pimping Dan Spivey as a GOATC, always easier to see this in the extremes -- but I've never been able to work out my argument for why that is without resorting to the idea that "there are idiots in the world".

[JerryvonKramer]

Sorry, ignore that post. I have no interest in any iteration of an objective vs. subjective argument and will tap out before it even starts.

 

All I was trying to say is that the interesting thing might be in the criteria. Like how are you arriving at your tier 1 guys and your tier 2 guys and so on?

[Loss]

Is it really more complicated than asking yourself who you think is the best at this pro wrestling stuff and listing a few guys? Then asking who you think falls just below that and listing those guys? And so on? I don't think there's a real methodology in play beyond that, because quite a few great wrestlers are great for entirely different reasons.

[ButchReedMark]

yeah, I mean if I was to do a list with tiers it'd wouldn't be anything more complicated then "He's in Tier 2 because I don't reckon he's as good as that bloke in Tier 1" method wise. I mean, it's overly simplistic, but I see wrestling in overly simplistic terms when I come to rating people. For example, I think Jerry Lawler is the best ever because I like watching his matches the best. It's that simple for me.

[JerryvonKramer]

Part of criticism is working out why we think the things we do. You don't make judgements in a vacuum, you'll have a critieria, and the chances are that that criteria overlaps significantly with the criteria of other fans. That's how we get consensus in the 80s projects; it's why, as I said, no one has listed Dan Spivey in any of their tiers.

 

It appears "simple" because we don't think about it. The judgements are automatic, intuitive and often not thought through, but that does not mean there are not underlying reasons for the judgements.

 

If it was really as simple as you make out, then this forum would consist of 100s of 1-line posts saying "I think this guy is great". "Oh, I think he's terrible". That's the sort of discourse that emerges if we don't think about reasons for making judgements.

[ButchReedMark]

If I thought about things too hard I'd have an aneurysm. For example, recently I decided that Jimmy Del Ray is just fucking awesome. I tried to think about why he was awesome, but all I could think of was just "because he is". I could tell you why I don't like someone all day (with joy joy enthusiasm too!), but why I do is something I can't explain. Thanks for explaining to me my thought processes though.

[NintendoLogic]

I'm sorry, but wrestling is far too low of an art form to merit the kind of critical analysis and standards we apply to things like cinema and theater. I think that trying to figure out what exactly in wrestling appeals to you is a worthwhile endeavor, but that doesn't change the fact that taste is inherently subjective. You can point to consensus as some sort of objective benchmark, but this board is all about challenging conventional wisdom and finding your own path.

[Loss]

Also, wrestlers can be great in completely different ways for completely different reasons. Sometimes, those reasons even contradict things that make other wrestlers great. I do think distinguishing "favorite" and "best" is important, and that we should at least attempt to set our personal biases aside when we can. But I realize we never completely can set aside our personal biases at the end of the day, we can only try. We are who we are.

[Childs]

I started to sketch this out ...

 

Tier 1 - Hansen, Misawa, Kawada, Tenryu, Flair, Funk, Dandy, Fujiwara, Jumbo

 

Tier 2 - Lawler, Kobashi, Choshu, Fujinami, Hashimoto, Rey, Vader, Liger, Buddy Rose, Han, Casas, Santito, Danielson, Bockwinkel, Morton, Eddy, Bret Hart

 

Tier 3 - Savage, Steamboat, Eaton, Windham, Satanico (probably higher with more footage), Taue, Dundee, Regal, Finlay, Billy Robinson, Tully, Arn, Tamura, Cena, Austin, Steve Grey, Marty Jones, Blue Panther, Baba, Hase, Naoki Sano, Ishikawa, Martel, Pirata Morgan, Dick Togo, Negro Navarro, Dick Murdoch

 

Tier 4 - Tajiri, Maeda, Ron Garvin, Henning, Valentine, Santana, Kikuchi, Otani, Pillman, Yatsu, Owen Hart, Steve Williams, Luger, CM Punk, Jun Akiyama, Mick Foley, Daisuke Ikeda, Gran Hamada, Masa Saito, Masa Fuchi, Butch Reed, Ted Dibiase, Terry Gordy, Andre (higher with more footage), Scorpio, Bill Eadie, MS-1, Minoru Suzuki ...

[JerryvonKramer]

I think that trying to figure out what exactly in wrestling appeals to you is a worthwhile endeavor, but that doesn't change the fact that taste is inherently subjective.

Subjective, yes, but not in a vacuum. Your subjectivity is not some magic autonomous force completely free of the world, it's formed and informed. Someone's taste for sweet foods, for example, is hardly unique. Just so happens most other people like those same sweet foods too. People are not so different from each other. If they were, there'd be no consensus.

 

Just because people like things or dislike things and haven't thought through the reasons ("just because"), does not mean there are no reasons. And naturally, it's easier not to think about them and not to make any effort to explain them than to do so.

 

Also, wrestlers can be great in completely different ways for completely different reasons. Sometimes, those reasons even contradict things that make other wrestlers great.

I agree with this, and it's what I was saying that "two different types of good" are very difficult to compare. And I wonder if the question of "who is best" out of two more or less equally good guys is actually not a very interesting question, because it can have no answer. All I was saying is that the tiers are easier to do than answering the question "Funk or Flair?".

[ButchReedMark]

Just because people like things or dislike things and haven't thought through the reasons ("just because"), does not mean there are no reasons. And naturally, it's easier not to think about them and not to make any effort to explain them than to do so.

So wait, if someone likes something, but doesn't know why they like it then they're lazy or something, or just don't want to put the effort in? Alright then lad...

[JerryvonKramer]

I didn't say that. There is no value judgement in what I've said.

[ButchReedMark]

What's a value judgement? I finished my MA in 2007. I like to talk like normal people now. At least when I'm just bumming about on wrestling forums when I'm bored, anyway.

[JerryvonKramer]

Well I talk like this all the time. Just who I am.

[Loss]

I don't think it was a dig either. An opinion better explained isn't necessarily the more valid one. It's just the better explained one. I think we all agree on that.