Reactions to the Honorable Mention List Part One

[elliott]

Am I the only one more offended by the presence of the fucking Z-Man than Joey Ryan? It helps that my recognition of Joey Ryan went from "nonexistent" to "dimly aware" when he went viral a couple of months ago.

 

Honestly after 2 days what bums me out the most is Shane McMahon being ahead of Greg Gagne.

[Phil Schneider]

I really should have found a place for Jackie Fargo somewhere

[Matt D]

 

2006 Smarkschoice rankings for today’s dudes:

130) Javier Cruz – 307 Points

149) Silver King – 234 Points

181) Kuniaki Kobayashi – 159 Points

229) Pimpinela Escarlata – 84 Points

246) Hisakatsu Oya – 69 Points

257) Mad Dog Vachon - 59 Points

277) Yumi Fukawa – 44 Points

285) Doug Furnas – 33 Points

293) El Felino – 27 Points

355) Milano Collection AT – 23 Points

361) Hector Garza – 20 Points

372) Tatsuhito Taikawa – 17 Points

417) Yoshinobu Kanemaru – 6 Points

 

Fair to say that Cruz and King are the guys who've fallen the furthest so far in the decade b/w the two lists. The four workers who’ve taken the biggest plunges so far have all been luchadors (Cruz, King, Faroan, and Gran Apache). Worth nothing that the SC list only had 443 workers while PWO ’16 has 567 (or 124 more). I’m sort of surprised Garza didn’t do better overall. Cruz feels like a guy who would narrowly miss a lot of lucha fans lists. I just hadn’t seen enough of his work by the deadline to justify voting for him.

 

Marc Mero feels like a surprise vote recipient to me. Which isn’t to say he’s terrible (he had good matches by the end of his WCW run), but because he would just never even cross my mind in the context of making a list. But I’ll be saying that about tons of people on here. Shine on, DMJ.

• I’m surprised by how low Furnas was on the SC list. Maybe not so much on ours.
• Dave Taylor at #499 is cool even if it’s too low. Surprised he got no votes in SC ’06.
• Even more surprised that no one voted for Kanemura back then. Violent Japanese indies were en vogue in '06, and it was still two years before his sexual harassment suit.
• The photo of Red and Don West is just delightful.

 

My case for including Garza was almost all from after 2006 (or shortly before it), so yeah.

[Phil Schneider]

Order of the Traumas seems wrong, I always thought 1 was clearly the better guy

[Phil Schneider]

Actually not always, I think 2 was better initially, but 1 surpassed him

[Childs]

Silver King and Cruz beat Andre the Giant, Greg Valentine, Tito Santana, Yuki Ishikawa, Ron Garvin and Buddy Rose among others in 2006.

[Parties]

Trauma II was the one who held the IWRG Lightweight Title and had the amazing singles match against Zatura in '09, while #1 has in recent years become his equal on the mat and better brawler of the two.

[Grimmas]

Silver King and Cruz beat Andre the Giant, Greg Valentine, Tito Santana, Yuki Ishikawa, Ron Garvin and Buddy Rose among others in 2006.

Big change coming this time.

[JRGoldman]

I'm sort of curious (not that I think we are anywhere close) as to when the first person who was ranked in 06 will come up.

[victory]

I have to say seeing the list posted like this is a blast so far. I didn't think my anticipation level would be quite this high.

[Death From Above]

I am super annoyed Vader's WCW debut squash of Z-Man is no longer on Youtube because it's one of my favourite sub 5 minute matches ever. Not that this alone makes a GWE case or something, just saying. Vader goes from "Who's this big fuck with a smoking helmet" to "oh shit, this guy" in one match.

[Parties]

To echo Jae's sentiments: as a kindergartner watching in 1990, I also thought Tom Zenk was the coolest guy in WCW. Neon trunks, "Z-Man" nickname, lots of rope running. For whatever reason, kids really love the letter Z. It's like I'd only recently learned the alphabet, and he went and took it to the extreme.

[Jimmy Redman]

I'm sort of curious (not that I think we are anywhere close) as to when the first person who was ranked in 06 will come up.

 

My guess is that it's a woman.

[Eegah]

I enjoyed Joey Ryan in early PWG and there are times Zenk has some decent, fun stuff on old WCW tv.

[Jesse Ewiak]

I mean, you can not like him and all. God knows I don't care about him, but being upset at Joey Ryan for being creepy in his wrestling matches and getting votes for this list seems kind of silly when we're likely to see a domestic abuser, a murderer, a serial statutory rapist, and several hardcore racists likely all fare pretty well. It's wrestling. It's full of scumbags. Ryan's just worse at the wrestling part.

[Loss]

I'm sure he's a nice guy and I don't even think he's a bad worker. I just think he makes deliberate choices that are annoying, and he wrestles in a way that it seems like he's making fun of it. We're all going to bag on each other's votes in this thread, but it's all in good spirits.

[Childs]

Why would you conflate the issue of awful out of ring actions with people talking about what a shitty wrestler Joey Ryan is? No one is upset on a world travesty scale. So why cast it as if it's any more than a wrestling argument?

[JerryvonKramer]

Let's celebrate all the diversity we are seeing!

[El-P]

Parties, these end of the days updates are just tremendous. Thank you so much!

 

Seconded. Although I must say the pictures are killing me. The Abdullah Kobayashi one is unbeatable !

[Childs]

Let's celebrate all the diversity we are seeing!

Go back to setting up your work camps.

[Phil Schneider]

I'm sure he's a nice guy and I don't even think he's a bad worker. I just think he makes deliberate choices that are annoying, and he wrestles in a way that it seems like he's making fun of it. We're all going to bag on each other's votes in this thread, but it's all in good spirits.

 

Yeah thank goodness no one nominated that turd Chuck Taylor

[El-P]

Only one female worker has popped up thus far.

 

And she's the only one off my list at this point, too.

 

Ok, five votes for Little Spike Dudley. I would have voted him about #484 too. Anonymous high vote ? I understand.

 

That Zenk pic disturbs me even more than the fact he actually got two votes.

[Eegah]

Ill just say that although he is 100% schtick now, there was a time that Ryan was good in the ring and had some compelling stuff. I wouldnt put him in the top 100 but I would say hes better than some of the nominees. Recency bias aside he did some good things.

[InYourCase]

Grimmas, #476 is Yuji Okabayashi. You're missing a few letters in that last name.

 

Milano Collection A.T. Was my 100, I'll cop to that even as an anonymous.

 

Kind of an oddball choice in a way I guess, but when I looked over my nearly final ballot and got to thinking about it, he's a guy I'd really like to see (or did enjoy seeing) wrestle pretty much all the other small guys on my ballot. I believe he is the only full time Toryumon/Dragon's Gate rep on my list at the end of the day.

 

One of the greatest ring entrances ever too, for whatever little that's worth.

I tried to cut as much extra Dragon System viewing out of my system for the past six months since that's my area of expertise. Since then I've been watching a lot of 2004 Dragon Gate, right after the Toryumon split, and I'm convinced that me voting Milano at #96 was way too low. I could easily move him up 5-10 spots. He comes across as a total star and every bit as good as CIMA and Mochizuki in that time period. I guess I forgot about that because most of my Milano love comes from T2P.

[Jetlag]

Trauma II was the one who held the IWRG Lightweight Title and had the amazing singles match against Zatura in '09, while #1 has in recent years become his equal on the mat and better brawler of the two.

 

Really? What are those great T1 mat performances? I always thought he was a disappointing matworker,while T2 always looks super talented when it comes to grappling. T1 gets stuck doing the "catch and release" stuff too much, altough his selling is good enough to keep it interesting.

 

Also, Hashi should be higher. Watching some NOAH had me really tempted to vote for him because damn this guy got really exciting, violent exchanges out of guys like Marufuji, even very early in his career. And his 2010 is a truely great year. I'd also replace the recommended match with the Ikeda tag from 2010.