Reactions to the Honorable Mention List Part One

[ohtani's jacket]

That's Espanto Jr's son who's currently doing the gimmick in CMLL. I'm pretty sure Tim voted for dad.

[El McKell]

I assume people were voting for the original Espanto Jr and not the one pictured in the results thread. But then again there's no way to really know; maybe some of those votes are for the current Espanto Jr.

[Grimmas]

That's Espanto Jr's son who's currently doing the gimmick in CMLL. I'm pretty sure Tim voted for dad.

wrong pic. will fix.

[Ricky Jackson]

Haha...I was the high vote on Wrestling II. Couldn't have worked out any better for an avatar switch

[donsem43]

 

Kind of wish I had voted low for Io Shirai. Been meaning to get more into Stardom for some time, but haven't seen enough of her work to justify placing her, although what I have seen has been excellent, especially 06/20/15 vs Star Fire. It certainly pains me a little to see dross like One Man Gang or non wrestlers like Bobby Heenan ahead of someone with so much natural talent and charisma. Haven't seen much of OMG outside of the major promotions though, so I'm sure someone will come in and school me on his qualities.

 

Anyone got good recommendations for Stardom shows or matches to start with? Is it available online, or is it good old fashioned tape/disc traders?

Look up stardom world on youtube. They have started a streaming service through youtube for 4.99 a month

 

 

If you go to the Stardom streaming thread and click on the Stardom tag you should have my 2015 women's list pop up plus review threads which some of them should have links to matches themselves. Also Joshi City has a match recommendation page with a bunch of Io matches their as well.

[donsem43]

With that Quackenbush vote I'm fully expecting someone to have CIMA in their top 3.

[elliott]

I've had 3 guys make it: mad dog, Carl Greco and bobby Heenan. 3 totally different people. All were in my bottom 5. I'm striving for accuracy apparently.

 

edit: I was wrong, 4 guys. Espanto Jr made it too.

[anarchistxx]

 

Kind of wish I had voted low for Io Shirai. Been meaning to get more into Stardom for some time, but haven't seen enough of her work to justify placing her, although what I have seen has been excellent, especially 06/20/15 vs Star Fire. It certainly pains me a little to see dross like One Man Gang or non wrestlers like Bobby Heenan ahead of someone with so much natural talent and charisma. Haven't seen much of OMG outside of the major promotions though, so I'm sure someone will come in and school me on his qualities.

 

Anyone got good recommendations for Stardom shows or matches to start with? Is it available online, or is it good old fashioned tape/disc traders?

Look up stardom world on youtube. They have started a streaming service through youtube for 4.99 a month

 

 

Thanks, a very reasonable price, will definitely consider it. Do you know whether Arisa Nakajima works there much? Her match with Shirai is one of the best of the decade so far.

 

 

 

If you go to the Stardom streaming thread and click on the Stardom tag you should have my 2015 women's list pop up plus review threads which some of them should have links to matches themselves.

 

Where, on this board? Edit: found it, thanks.

[stunning_grover]

I'm sort of shocked at Tarzan Goto being this low. I feel like he's pretty accessible and has a reputation as a work horse. I guess I'm not surprised I was the high voter, but I thought he would be bottom 50 on a lot more ballots.

 

I considered voting for Goto. He just missed out. He would have definitely been in my top 150.

 

 

Super Delfin receiving a #11 vote is amazing. I've been a Delfin mark for about twenty years, but I didn't even vote for him this time. I think he's a very good wrestler, but I just don't see him as a GOAT contender. I would have included him on my list if this was a favourite wrestlers list, of course.

 

 

I had Jacques Rougeau at #93. That means eight wrestlers I voted for have appeared in the final results so far.

[DR Ackermann]

I hate everyone who didn't vote for Hoshino.

[Matt D]

I'm at 7 now, all in my bottom 20. (I think)

[Superstar Sleeze]

Do you think Shane Douglas knows who Hoshino is? Do you think Hoshino knows who Shane Douglas is? I fucking love this project!

[Microstatistics]

Faraon (high vote), Miyato (high vote), Yamamoto and Hoshino off my list so far.

[Graham Crackers]

Greco, Yamamoto, and Espanto were all my guys and I'm sorry to see them fall. It's awesome to see that Cooke had Espanto so high. I'm pretty excited to see his list when this is all done.

[Loss]

Morishima was awesome on All American Girl.

[KB8]

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.

[Dylan Waco]

 

 

Warrior I won't defend, and he's the first guy to come up where my vision of the process and project are really at odds with his inclusion. I'm not angry about it, but I do think he's way too high using any metric I can think of other than the boring "I liked him as a kid."

 

 

 

I highly value charisma and think it drives wrestling in a way that the traditional view doesn't always appreciate. I voted Hogan, Dusty, and Bruno in the top half of my list, so Warrior in the back half doesn't feel out of place to me. I started watching WWF and NWA at about the same time, so I also don't have the anti-WWF bias that some have. I see WWF's character approach to wrestling as a valid way to wrestle. Warrior obviously has technique flaws, but I still enjoy going back and watching the matches and character.

 

I was extremely pleased that there were other voters for the Warrior. I'm not sure what you mean by the process, but I watched hours and hours each day for this project and totaled 3888 matches. I tried really hard to shore up my knowledge of Japanese, Mexican, and British wrestling, so I would be a competent voter.

 

 

My point was more or less that Warrior strikes me as a guy where the more you watch the less he's got. I've made the point before that operating purely under Great Match Theory calculus Warrior has a case of sorts for the bottom rungs of a list, and in fact that's one of the reasons I reject GMT as the primary (let alone sole) method of ranking individual performers.

 

Warrior was charismatic in his own way, but he never appealed to me as a kid. In fact I was terrified of him. I'm also a bit weird on things like charisma, because while I can't say I completely excluded it from my calculus, generally speaking charisma is something that I think has limited utility if it doesn't translate to box office success. When I think of the guys where I would consider charisma a major plus - Onita, Colon, Savage, Choshu, et. - all of them were guys who were big time, money making stars, who's charisma got people into the building and added to a matches atmosphere. I don't really know that you can say the same thing about Warrior.

 

In any event my point wasn't to say "fuck the people who listed Warrior," but more to say that my view of the project wouldn't have even allowed me to entertain the idea of considering Warrior.

[Dylan Waco]

For the most part there are a lot of votes where I can understand if a style or era or company is your thing I could see having somebody who is an above average guy from that style making your the bottom half of your list. I really, really enjoy wild brawls, so guys like Sheik and Brody are toward the bottom of my list. I really enjoy 90s AJPW so half that roster is on my list. Same with RINGS and to an extent ECW.

 

With that said, even if you are the biggest fan ever of Chikara, I don't see how somebody could justify putting Quack as #6. Or if you are the biggest deathmatch fan ever putting a guy like Matsunaga #17. Serious question, are these troll ballots?

 

I would honestly vote for Quak and Matsunaga over Brody without a second thought.

[Lee Casebolt]

Bubba already, seems kinda low to me. I really enjoyed Bully Ray in TNA, but I guess nobody watches TNA so that renders that moot. Still, he seems better than being in the middle 300s. Has Devon come up already or was he not nominated? There is no way on Earth, Devon is better than Bubba.

 

I'll defend Murakami along with GOTNW even though I did not vote for him, but I think I nominated him. Crazy fucking energy in every match and awesome facial expressions. The Nagata match is an all-time classic.

 

Oh and I need to change my pic to Fujita Jr. Big Sexy finally jobs.

 

I voted Bubba somewhere in the 90s almost entirely on the strength of "he made me care a little about TNA for four months," which was such an amazing accomplishment I felt it had to be rewarded somehow.

[Dylan Waco]

There is one person who was in my bottom ten who I am legitimately shocked hasn't come up as most of the others I would consider "like" him in some ways have all appeared already.

 

I voted for Hoshino. Not super high but he was there. I'll talk about him at length and maybe write about him at length soon, but to me he had to be included because he's the ultimate symbol of the value of the Best of the 80s projects.

[Loss]

Warrior has one great match. I don't think he proves or disproves anything about Great Match Theory.

 

Edit to add: I don't really care for the Hogan match or Savage part II, and Rude at Summerslam '89 strikes me as more of a great performance than a great match.

[KB8]

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.

[Dylan Waco]

Warrior has one great match. I don't think he proves or disproves anything about Great Match Theory.

 

Edit to add: I don't really care for the Hogan match or Savage part II, and Rude at Summerslam '89 strikes me as more of a great performance than a great match.

We disagree.

 

Considered Yamada. Better worker than many of her overrated peers.

[Eegah]

Third person on my list with Brad Armstrong showing up. I blocked that era of Brad out of my head that the picture was from.

[goc]

I am glad that Kamala managed to get on 7 ballots. Had him at 100. I am also shocked that Bob Armstrong has not shown up yet.