Left Out in the Cold - Who will NOT make your list?

[goodhelmet]

This is a tricky question to answer. There are so many guys who will receive votes that won't even make my list. There are certain styles of wrestling that don't appeal to me that I am not going to bother seeking out that footage and will miss out on some guys other people like. The more interesting question is who will be a lock for every list? Is anybody NOT going to put Hansen on their list? Who isn't going to put Austin on their list even if he is low on the list? Is Flair or Funk going to be on everyone's list? I know Lawler won't be on the list for guys like Joe. I don't know if any joshi contenders will be on every list since I know of several people who have no interest in the style or care to vote for certain workers. Matt D is some weird place where he doesn't dig Misawa, Kawada or Kobashi but is he going to leave them off his list outright?

[dawho5]

Bah, I can't imagine I won't be the low voter on Kobashi. I have such a hatred of his later career work (that I know is at least somewhat irrational). Get your own irrational hatreds that mar your judgement, damn you!

[Dylan Waco]

I could see leaving Austin off my list. I doubt I will, but I could see it.

[goodhelmet]

OK, I don't want to disrupt the low man thread so I split the topic to the guys who could make everyone's lists but yours.

[goc]

I really doubt that Foley will make my list.

[JerryvonKramer]

Based on what OJ has been saying in his reviews, I can very well see John Cena not making my list.

[Exposer]

Good question. I'm not sure Dory Funk Jr. will make my list. I also really hate Manami Toyota. She drives me nuts. She still might make my list, but very low.

[tim]

For a while my operating assumption was that Austin won't be on my list but after watching some Attitude Era stuff, even though he's physically limited he brings such excitement and character to the things he does that, in light of that combined with his post-comeback work and WCW stuff, he has a strong shot of being on now. I might leave Bret Hart off. And Shawn.

[goc]

My knee jerk reaction is that Shawn is also not going to make my list but I want to give him a fair shot. I don't dislike him I just have found him to be highly over rated from the first time I got on the internet in like 1995.

[Childs]

I could definitely see leaving Shawn off. Maybe Harley? Or Gordy? Backlund. Rude. Koji Kanemoto. Toyota. Ozaki. Yokota. Maybe Akira Hokuto, even though she was amazing for a year or two.

 

Mutoh and Chono probably won't make it, though I don't imagine those will be unusual omissions.

 

The Rock and Hogan are unlikely.

 

I need to figure out what the hell to do with the Destroyer, though he'll probably make it once I rewatch his best performances.

[Dylan Waco]

Gordy definitely won't make my list, and I say that as a Chattanooga boy who would desperately like to include him. I just can't do it. At this point I legitimately prefer too many others.

[goodhelmet]

This is what bothers me about not having footage of some guys. Lets say in some alternate universe, we only have the following matches from Inoki...

 

Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (2/8/80)

Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (4/3/80)

Antonio Inoki vs. Stan Hansen (5/9/80)

Antonio Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Andre the Giant & Rene Goulet (12/10/81)

Antonio Inoki vs. Hulk Hogan (IWGP League Final) (6/2/83)

Antonio Inoki vs. Riki Choshu (5/18/84)

Antonio Inoki vs. Dick Murdoch (12/10/85)

Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura vs. Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi (12/12/85)

Antonio Inoki & Keiichi Yamada vs. Nobuhiko Takada & Osamu Kido (2/5/86)

Antonio Inoki vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (2/6/86)

Antonio Inoki vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (6/12/86)

Antonio Inoki vs. Dick Murdoch (6/19/86)

Antonio Inoki vs. Masa Saito (4/27/87)

Antonio Inoki vs. Riki Choshu (2/4/88)

Antonio Inoki vs. Vader (7/29/88)

Antonio Inoki vs. Riki Choshu (2/22/89)

Antonio Inoki vs. Vader (1/4/96)

 

- At worst, he is a Top 20 guy. Add his tags and he may be a Top 15 guy. Then you watch the hundreds of hours of Inoki where he just stinks up the ring. Fuck... what the fuck do you do with that while trying to give credit to some guy like the Destroyer?

[goc]

I understand that there are problems with rankings guys who we don't have that much footage on. But I also think that at the least they are worthy of discussion based off the footage we have and what we know of their careers, even if it's ultimately decided that there isn't enough evidence to really support a case.

[Jimmy Redman]

My take on the footage issue is that, that's life, and we just have to deal with it. Some guys we have more footage of than others, some guys have their primes missing, some guys have their shitty periods missing, some guys have the benefit of working in a well-viewed company or time period, others don't. That's always been the case, and always will be the case. There will never be a perfect sample to compare everybody with. And even if there were, it hardly matters anyway because nobody could possibly watch every wrestling match that has ever happened (Loss by the time he's 150 years old or so excepted).

 

We're all only ever going to be able to go on what we've seen, and whether gaps are due to lack of footage, disinterest in watching them, lack of time or resources, people are always going to miss out on certain wrestlers, or miss out on "enough" of their work.That's reality, and I don't think that's a flaw in the project because perfection is a complete impossibility.

 

So for the idea that perhaps the only Destroyer matches on tape happen to be his best ones and we're missing the hundreds of other matches where he stunk out the joint...who knows? Could well be! But it also could not be. We'll never know either way, for any of these limited footage guys, unless the tapes magically turn up in the future. But we can't really judge in hypotheticals. We can only judge on what is there. That's the best we can do, and I think that's enough for what we're going for here.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't really see the problem with a guy like Destroyer (assuming everything that made tape is great, not watched him in my 70s viewing yet).

 

In other fields, this isn't an issue. An example: Robert Johnson only recorded 36 songs that we have today. They all happen to be incredible. That adds to the guy's legend and you see Robert Johnson routinely crop up in "best ever" lists as a song-writer and guitarist, and one of the best Bluesmen ever. Elvis Presley, on the other hand, made an awful lot of shitty records, which in the long run count against him.

 

I don't see a problem with ranking Robert Johnson ahead of Elvis, and no problem with ranking Destroyer ahead of Inoki.

 

There are SO MANY guys from whom we don't have a complete overview of their career, but if there's enough on tape to make a call, we make a call. Shit, someone could make exactly the same argument against Will's favourite, Dick Murdoch. There is a metric ton of Murdoch that didn't make tape, so what do we do? Assume he was having shitty matches every week in Lubbock, Texas? Or do we make a judgement call based on what we do have?

[dawho5]

Oh how I wish there was a better way to put tone into messages on a board. I'll probably not be the low vote on Kobashi, as he'll very likely make my top 50 pretty easily. I was just having a bit of fun with the fact that somebody made the Kobashi comment before I got to it.

 

As far as this topic goes, Michaels, RVD, Sabu, Dreamer and Angle will be somewhere on my 3-400 or 4-500 lists if I ever get around to making them. But that's not going to be a real outlier as far as most of the board regulars are concerned. Jaguar Yokota will definitely not be on my list after watching three matches. Bull Nakano is threatening to be the same way after one. I think a lot of joshi stuff is going to be hit or miss with me, so that may be an area where I don't include a lot of the big names.

[ohtani's jacket]

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

[BillThompson]

Michaels won't make mine, neither will Tanahashi, and Austin I could see maybe not making my list.

[concrete1992]

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

Is it? If you have an insane amount of wrestling to watch and you can only tackle a small, probably recommended, sampling if those initial matches gives a real poor impression then I wouldn't want them to waste time on those wrestlers. Would it be nice if they could get at least 7-10? Yep, but save that for wrestlers with some redeeming qualities otherwise I can't even imagine how many wrestlers will just have to be looked over.

[goc]

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

If someone pimps you 3 matches as someone's best work and you watch all 3 but don't see the big deal, how much deeper should you dig?

[ohtani's jacket]

 

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

Is it? If you have an insane amount of wrestling to watch and you can only tackle a small, probably recommended, sampling if those initial matches gives a real poor impression then I wouldn't want them to waste time on those wrestlers. Would it be nice if they could get at least 7-10? Yep, but save that for wrestlers with some redeeming qualities otherwise I can't even imagine how many wrestlers will just have to be looked over.

 

 

Bull Nakano and Jaguar Yokota have no redeeming qualities? The idea of judging a wrestler based on one match is preposterous. Can you imagine if people did that under normal circumstances? What happens if you choose a bad match to start with?

[PeteF3]

I'm not sure I'll be voting for any shootstyle guys besides Fujiwara, Volk, and Takada, and even voting for Takada seems somewhat against-the-grain in this community where he's taken a beating the past few years. Naoki Sano will probably be on there also, but the shoot stuff is a bonus for him rather than the meat of his candidacy. The other core UWF guys have virtually no chance. I like Yoji Anjo, and I could see being won over by Kiyoshi Tamura or Yoshihiro Takayama as I make my way through the '90s, but I don't know if I can make room for any of them in a top 100. And I'm also not sure that my "first shootstyle guy off the list" spot wouldn't go to Gary Albright.

 

I won't be voting for Gordy or Doc, either.

 

As of right now Akira Hokuto is not guaranteed to make my list. I would imagine she'll end up there eventually, but if the list were due tomorrow there's a very real chance I'd leave her off. (Whoops, now I see Childs listed her, too).

[PeteF3]

 

 

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

Is it? If you have an insane amount of wrestling to watch and you can only tackle a small, probably recommended, sampling if those initial matches gives a real poor impression then I wouldn't want them to waste time on those wrestlers. Would it be nice if they could get at least 7-10? Yep, but save that for wrestlers with some redeeming qualities otherwise I can't even imagine how many wrestlers will just have to be looked over.

 

 

Bull Nakano and Jaguar Yokota have no redeeming qualities? The idea of judging a wrestler based on one match is preposterous. Can you imagine if people did that under normal circumstances? What happens if you choose a bad match to start with?

 

 

Well, I think the point of this forum is to direct people to matches where that won't happen. The joshi thread ideally will have a link to one of the Bull vs. Aja matches as opposed to Bull vs. Madusa from Road Wild.

[dawho5]

That's the thing for me. Time is an element of this and if three or four recommended matches for somebody make me want to not watch them again I have to start looking elsewhere. Especially if you look at a low end of something like 20 minutes on a match. For 7 matches that's over 2 hours. Time I could be spending on something like World of Sport (which I love) , lucha (which I haven't seen much of but I have liked the small sampling I have), 70s/80s territories stuff, 80s/early 90s NJPW heavies, etc. There's a lot of ground to cover and I don't watch hours of wrestling daily. I won't say Yokota has no redeeming qualities, but her style just turns me off so far. Nakano I haven't written off yet, she's got some things she did in that match I did watch that I really liked to go along with the stuff I didn't.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

How can you decide to not vote for someone after three matches or even worse one? That's against the spirit of the entire thing.

If someone pimps you 3 matches as someone's best work and you watch all 3 but don't see the big deal, how much deeper should you dig?

 

 

To be honest, I don't see the point in watching three matches of this wrestler and three matches of that wrestler because at some point if you keep doing that you're going to end up with a top 100 where you ranked workers based on only three matches. If you don't like a certain style and you decide "okay, I'm gonna watch three matches of a worker from this style and if I'm not impressed then forget it," what's the point? You might as well not bother. To me that's almost confirmation bias. It's not an honest effort at getting into a style. I can't tell people how they should watch wrestling, but I would hope that they're more selective with the wrestlers they invest time into than some willy-nilly approach to writing people off.