Lower ranked wrestlers

[Loss]

I don't know that I have a real point in saying this, but I just wanted to say this.

 

I see my #97 as a ringing endorsement. The #97 wrestler on my ballot is among the top wrestlers of all-time. I feel strongly about my #97. I'd go to bat for my #97.

 

We talk a lot about who is in contention for #1 on our ballots, but I find myself just as excited about guys in the 75-100 range. They aren't GOAT candidates, but who cares? My question is, do others agree that how we rank our 80-100 deserves just as much scrutiny and thought as how we rank our 1-20? If you disagree, what is the cutoff where you think the ranking becomes more arbitrary?

[WingedEagle]

#97 is absolutely an all-time great. But folks naturally get caught up in "best" before worrying about the "betters" and "goods." Not sure what the magic number is beyond 100, as hopefully everyone takes inclusion on the list seriously, but I'd imagine we all end up viewing our lists as comprised of certain tiers and after the upper echelon may be more comfortable making sure the names included are representative of their thoughts than the ranking. Hell, you may have a tier that ends after 96 where you believe everyone south of that is clearly inferior to those above it. Maybe that's just me, but I'd expect the process to go somewhat like that for many.

[Childs]

I think I could easily take my list out to 150 or 200 and still care about the distinctions between the guys. I guess I'll put a little more thought into the top of my ballot because those votes have more impact on the ultimate results. But I certainly agree 75-100 won't be an afterthought and will be populated entirely by wrestlers I love and/or respect greatly.

[Jingus]

I think of my lower half in general as "the Tajiri Bracket". I fucking love watching Tajiri wrestle. He's not the best of all time, I've never seen him have a five-star match, and some might argue he never even made it to the four-star level. But I still completely enjoy his work, even when it's beating up Rene Dupree in a three-minute match on some forgotten episode Heat that absolutely nobody will ever watch again. Yoshihiro Tajiri will definitely be on my list. Just because he's not in the top 20 doesn't mean he sucks.

[Cap]

I have been thinking about 90 (or 95) - 100 as the sort of "I want to recognize these people" section. The further from the top 10 I get the harder I find it to have real conviction about the specific spot as much as I am comfortable with "zones" or "tiers". Once I get to the end of the list I my desire to recognize a guy as sort of a tie breaker between guys who will make the list and guys who wont and (perhaps unfortunately) I think that will come down to what I am watching or really into come submission time.

 

That said, it is still a guy I will – as was aptly put above – go to bat for. If I am feeling sort of nostalgic about how much I like Sid when I was a kid, Sid is still not making the top 100 for me. But if I for some reason really into Paul London matches around the time the ballot is due, I can see me putting him somewhere between 97-100.

[JerryvonKramer]

I have hopefully erased the woolliness of including sentimental faves in the back 5-10.

 

The problem with it, is that when I did my list without the system, I had literally about 20 guys I was trying to shoehorn into the "95 to 100" range.

 

I'll preempt whatever remark Johnny will mutter to himself when he reads this:

 

 

But that was the entire idea of the BIGLAV thing, to ensure each and every guy on the list had gotten due consideration and weren't put in on a whim.

[InYourCase]

The back half of my list is the part that makes me anxious about this project. I know I'll be able to defend 1-50, but it's the last half that I'm going to be super indecessive about. There are going to be a few guys that will get victimized and stuck in the lower half simply because I'm not going to be able to watch as much of them as I'd like to by the time ballots are due.

 

95-100 will be fun picks. Genki Horiguchi is my #100 and no one can tell me otherwise.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm not going to rank anyone I don't feel comfortable making a call on.

[Childs]

Parv, are you open to disagreeing with your system? Or will any internal debate be confined to your grading decisions for each wrestler?

[JerryvonKramer]

Childs, I think for the system to have any purpose I need to stick to what the results give me.

 

Even if it does mean Jumbo ends up #3 on my list, which is looking likely.

[Cap]

So then will your list be a list of who you think the greatest wrestlers of all time are or will it be a testament to the system you have created? In other words, how do you conceptualize contradictions? If Jumbo is your number one, but he winds up number three do you think of Jumbo as “really” the third best wrestler ever in your eyes or is he still your personal number one, but just not the best according to your system systems?

 

I am not trying to be critical of the system; I really like the idea of systematizing it, but I am very curious about how someone deals with such a system. For me, it honestly just seems hopeless to try to quantify wrestling, but I applaud the effort all the same. I have my own processes to account for personal bias and to make a list I can stand by on more than just “I like them” but anytime I try to create any sort of quantifying system to measure wrestlers or matches I either get frustrated or I see too clearly how my preferences for what constitutes good wrestling are informing how I structured the system, criteria, and various micro-ratings. In turn, I am curious about how this works for people who find it successful and rewarding.

[JerryvonKramer]

I started by saying "what is my criteria" and worked from there.

 

I think most of what people have done, including me before, is picked the guys they rate highly and then worked backwards figuring out what their criteria is. That's fine, but it's post-hoc justification. It's also wildly inconsistent from guy to guy. People get very swingy with it, a small thing that bugs someone is used as the reason to drop them from 1-5 to 15 (or whatever). All much too whimsical, for me personally. I thought my own list before the system was whimsical.

 

Whereas if the criteria leads, then you can't really say that there's any inconsistency. I'm not dropping Bret 29 places because he dogged it on house shows or putting Jerry Blackwell in my top 15 because I liked watching him bounce off cages in the AWA. Or whatever. There's still plenty of scope in which my biases will show themselves. My list is still going to be long on US and Janapense guys from 70s and 80s and short on Lucha guys and 00s indie workers.

[Jingus]

I don't have a system. Going on total feel and instinct. My basic rule of thumb for every spot is, "if I had to watch a random match featuring #57 right now, would I rather switch over and watch something featuring #56 instead"? And of course that's subjective as hell and very open to changing one's mind, but I think the idea of trying to quantify a wrestler's quality with rating numbers is kinda silly.

[JerryvonKramer]

So using numbers is silly but ranking a top 100 isn't?

 

Genuine question.

[Childs]

How is creating a system to organize your thoughts about wrestling more inherently silly than watching wrestling period?

[Cap]

That makes sense, however the journey works for you is cool in my book. I have been at thinking about this less time than you so maybe I am in a different stage of a similar journey. I am using this as a chance to check out lots new things, watching stuff more carefully, rewatch great wrestling, and really parse out more explicitly what I like about wrestling.

 

I don't know if I agree that is post hoc justification, at least not in terms of the negative connotations that often come with that. I think most people don't really watch wrestling thinking about their criteria for what constitutes good wrestling; we just start liking what we like, so being wrestling fan more general trains people to think in a sort of post hoc way of parsing out criteria. Certainly I didn't start thinking that way until probably 2007 or so and even then it was because I noticed patterns in what I liked. Exercises like these encourage that sort of thinking and I think any good reflexive list will be working through the symbiotic relationship between "what" one likes and "who" one likes.

 

That is all six of one, half dozen of the other though. Like I said, we are all going through this in our own way. I just like how much more good wrestling I have been watching because of thinking about it and how I have been thinking about wrestling since deciding to possibly submit a list.

[JerryvonKramer]

The numbers don't really amount to more than a set of six questions:

 

How good was he in the ring? (On offense, selling and psychology)

 

What intangible qualities such as (charisma, star power, character work etc.) did he bring to the ring?

 

How many great matches did he have?

 

How long was he a top worker?

 

How many different roles and styles was he able to master?

 

How many different guys did he have memorable matches and feuds with?

 

Greatest wrestler ever needs to be impressive in all six. It's not like I've rewritten I.A. Richards's Principles of Criticism. People get caught up on seeing "numbers".

[Jingus]

So using numbers is silly but ranking a top 100 isn't?

 

Genuine question.

I do think the whole idea of ranking the best fake fighters is pretty goofy, yeah. But I'm aspergers-y enough to enjoy a good list-making exercise as well. It's a contradiction, but wrestling fans must learn to put up with so many contradictions that this one example doesn't stick out as anything particularly egregious. And yeah, I do think that breaking it down into quantified sub-categories does generally look dorkier (and I say that as one of the dorkiest persons on the planet, I don't mean it as a pejorative).

[Grimmas]

Lower ranked wrestlers are important for sure. In fact some of them will be my favourite guys who don't follow into greatest category.

 

I love me some Sean Waltman, Big Bossman, Earthquake. Tajiri and Don Muraco. All will be on my list.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't know that I have a real point in saying this, but I just wanted to say this.

 

I see my #97 as a ringing endorsement. The #97 wrestler on my ballot is among the top wrestlers of all-time. I feel strongly about my #97. I'd go to bat for my #97.

 

We talk a lot about who is in contention for #1 on our ballots, but I find myself just as excited about guys in the 75-100 range. They aren't GOAT candidates, but who cares? My question is, do others agree that how we rank our 80-100 deserves just as much scrutiny and thought as how we rank our 1-20? If you disagree, what is the cutoff where you think the ranking becomes more arbitrary?

 

There is a degree to which the bottom of my list is going to get more scrutiny than the top spot(s) because of the fact that it will be hundreds of people scrambling for a handful of spots. I haven't looked too terribly closely at putting together a draft yet, but I'd be willing to guess that I will give reasonable consideration to well over 200 people, and possibly more than 300. I'd say of those at minimum somewhere between 75-85 will be stone cold locks. For that reason I have been very analytical, and in some ways more obsessive, about the bottom of my list than the top of it.

[Parties]

The lower-ranked slots (say 90-100) are interesting for me in that there's the temptation to put in:

1) fun/sentimental/esoteric "I love this character" workers

2) workers who are a little less fun/flashy than those esoterics and not quite stone-cold locks, but who are genuinely awesome from a match/technical excellence perspective

 

Category one would be guys like Sabu (who I can't justify as a fantastic wrestler and is very much a sentimental/nostalgia/"what got you into wrestling" choice). Piper would be another example, but the more early Piper I watch, the more I like him. Ashura Hara, Tatsuo Nakako, Scorpio, Tajiri, Psicosis, Steve Keirn, Cesaro, Foley, Dr. Cerebro. Guys who I totally love but are right there on the borderline and could easily move up or down depending on how much more of them I watch.

 

Category two would be folks who are maybe less anomalous, and who make sense on a list. Cena is a #90-100 guy for me who might not even make my list, but typing that out makes it seem crazy to me given his role and resume over the last 10 years. Butch Reed is a guy who a few years ago could have been top 50 for me, but now he's barely at the cusp of my list as I just haven't watched his peak stuff in a while. Lots of awesome Japanese workers apply here: Katsumi Usuda, Nishimura, Sakaguchi, Jackie Sato, Anjoh, Dick Togo, Mighty Inoue, Takashi Ishikawa.

 

Then there are folks who've been on my mind recently, but I haven't seen enough to know if/where they'd rank. Eric Embry, Tom Pritchard, Fuerza Guerrera, Dynamite Kansai, Devil Masami, Koko Ware. Gary Young doesn't even have a thread and I'm considering nominating him.

 

As of now I suspect my lower ranks will be less about sentimentality and more about the ones who I really think are phenomenal, but even my "soft spot" choices have the matches and performances that justify their consideration and placement. The lower ranks are the down-to-the-wire choices that come down to footage.