Reactions to the Honorable Mention List, Part 3

[victory]

 

I don't say this as an attack or challenge, but to the people who voted for Sting: what got him on your list? Saying someone was pretty good in TNA and had a better Rollins match than expected doesn't seem like enough to me, though I get that he's been favorably viewed as a legend the last couple years. But what were the matches/performances that caused him to make so many ballots? The Flair stuff? Cactus? NWO stronghold? Voting on "ace" rep/star power? Childhood love? Sting was just never my guy, and even in youth I thought little of him, so I'm genuinely curious what people like about him, esp. since so much of the PWO podcast crew conversation of late has been around "Sting shouldn't be in the WON HOF, Sting was not a draw or a good worker", kind of treating him as a fallacy in comparison to the reevaluation of Luger, etc.

I voted for Sting. To me he was the epitome of guy getting the most out of his charisma and athleticism and putting them together to make a really great wrestler. Guys like Dr. Death and Ron Simmons were way better legit athletes, but it doesn't come across in their matches like if does for Sting.

 

Sting had such a great variety of opponents with varying styles and still had good to great matches with most if not all of them. Sting had what I call a Hybrid style of brawler and high flyer that really worked with most opponents. Take guys like Flair and Rude who had a US bumping style, Cactus Jack the crazy brawler type, Vader the big monster type, Regal a European style worker, Lex the musclehead style, Muta with the high flyer style. There's even more that I don't know how to categorize like Austin, Goldberg, Boss and Windham.

 

Even matches that sucked like Havoc 90 with Sid I can still find something redeeming about the match that make me want to watch it again. His run down the ramp at full speed and diving over the top rope and tackling Sid is an awesome site ( the crappy WCW camera work almost missed it).

 

BTW I had Sting at 25.

 

Disclaimer: I typed this from my phone while watching my kids baseball games. Hopefully it came across like I wanted. 😀

[anarchistxx]

In my opinion it should be about the journey rather than the destination. If you have spent a dedicated two years analyzing and viewing wrestling of every style, it isn't necessarily a wasted effort even if the final list ends up skewed by people who got involved and put something together at the last minute. If the only purpose of your viewing was so we could finish with a definitive list it was a little pointless anyway, since it will always be subjective and you can never achieve mathematical certainty when ranking art.

 

The purpose was surely your own journey and enjoyment rather than the idea that by watching and dissecting all this stuff there was going to be some scientific authority reflected in the final rundown that is suddenly tarnished by the fact Cactus Jack and Christian (ugh) might make the top hundred.

[InYourCase]

Okay finally have some time to catch up on these things.

 

Shingo finishing at 255 is just silly to me. He was my #21 and someone that I could've probably ranked higher. There was a part of me that wanted to put him over Misawa, but that was my bias getting in the way of things. To me, Shingo is perhaps the best offensive wrestler ever. No one makes his stuff look as brutal or intense as him. Wide array of suplexes, slams, and strikes that all look really good. I remember when the Mochizuki match was buzzing, people were criticizing his punches. Whatever. They look like Tenryu's. I like that. His heel work is top notch. One of the best heels in puro history. Just has such an unlikable presence about him that really shows up in his work when he's at his best. Elite peak.

 

I believe that if Parv would've put CIMA through the BIGLAV system then he would've at least come close to ranking for him. I never got around to making a huge case for CIMA because I cut out nearly all Dragon System viewing for the last few months of GWE watching because I felt comfortable with all of the guys I was ranking. CIMA has two peaks. He was a prodigy. By 21 in MPro he had it figured out. Great bumping, selling, offense, and especially facials. That leads into his Toryumon run which I'm a big fan of. Behind Mochizuki as the best worker in Toryumon. Someone that would carry Magnum, Kanda, etc. to really good performances. Then, old man CIMA is the inverse. He keeps things simple and smooth. His 2014 run was awesome and he had a great tag team with Gamma of all people. His December 2015 match was unreal. ****1/2 and one of those matches that I personally think transcends the Dragon System style but who knows.

 

Mochizuki was my #10, glad to see Alan have him even higher. He might have gone up if I would've devoted more time to Toryumon because as soon as GWE ended, I went back to binging on Toryumon and Mochizuki has been outstanding. 2011 was his best year and one of the single best in-ring years I've ever seen. He's constantly in conversation for Most Outstanding. He's an elite worker. Someone who has "intangibles" shooting through the roof. I think for a majority of this site, CIMA has the stronger case because he works a simpler style that I could see some people on here really liking, but Mochizuki is everything I want from a wrestler. Finished ahead of Flair, Misawa, Akiyama, etc.

 

I believe this means no DG wrestler will be in the Top 100. Disappointing, but something that will more than likely change 10 years from now.

[Parties]

35 workers off my list so far - if I have 60 of mine in the top 100, that's actually amazing representation, and I'm not at all someone who really cares about where my picks rank on the overall list. That about 75 of my 100 made the overall top 150 is awesome: I have nothing to complain about in the overall rankings even if I think certain people getting as far as they have is wacky. And by certain people I mean Triple H.

 

Mine that have fallen so far: 413) Jackie Sato, 371) Kengo Kimura (highest voter), 364) Brazo de Oro, 357) Alan Sergeant, 343) Cassandro, 325) Kantaro Hoshino, 319) Espanto Jr., 312) Mascarita Sagrada, 257) Eric Embry, 233) El Solar, 232) Masakatsu Funaki (highest voter), 208) Osamu Nishimura, 190) Gran Hamada, 189) Mocho Cota, 186) Kazuo Yamazaki, 179) Negro Navarro, 172) Yoshiaki Yatsu, 167) Dutch Mantell, 166) Michael Hayes, 164) La Fiera, 163) Terry Rudge, 160) Masa Saito, 155) Fuerza Guerrera, 151) Black Terry, 149) Sabu, 143) Villano III, 138) Marty Jones, 136) Butch Reed, 132) Antonio Inoki, 127) Alexander Otsuka, 126) Naoki Sano, 117) Pirata Morgan, 114) Jaguar Yokota, 111) Masa Fuchi, 110) Chigusa Nagayo.

 

I had Funaki incredibly high (#37) as the second wave of UWF II is some of my all-time favorite stuff and Funaki was amazing in it. He also has his thrilling 1990-1991 run moving into PWFG/Pancrase, his great late-career run out of nowhere in 2010s AJPW where he showed up and was suddenly the best worker in Japan in his 40s, his prodigy run in late 80s NJPW. But his peaks in UWF II (the Backlund match, Anjoh, Fujiwara) are transcendent, and his bout with Tatsuo Nakano is (I'm pretty sure) one of my 5 to 10 all-time personal favorite matches, such that I regret not being able to include Nakano on my list (though I couldn't justify having him higher than #95 and I would have had to ditch too many more deserving career-run guys). I totally buy into the sometime-touted idea that it's the all-time greatest "under 10 minutes" match in wrestling history.

[Loss]

I just did a check of my ballot. 27 down at this point, the highest rated being Masa Fuchi, who I had at #29.

[Coffey]

30 of mine are there already. Big Bossman being my highest at #45. Loved me some Boss Man. Surprisingly, I wasn't the high vote on him though.

[Laney]

I'm counting 17 down for me. I've lost 2 from my top 50 in Perro Aguayo (48) and Chigusa Nagayo (33).

[KrisZ]

82 left at #110

[Parties]

As mentioned earlier, Fuchi is (same as Loss) my highest pick to go thus far at #27. In terms of my rank vs. where lots of others see him, he might be my most important "personal" pick. Though I'm surprised we haven't seen Maeda yet, and hope I'm not cursing him out of the top 100 in mentioning it.

 

Fuchi has one of the best career/consistency cases on my list: great since at least 1981 (more likely '79 at the start of his Memphis run), and he's still watchable today. Was fantastic in the post-NOAH exodus AJPW, carrying the company with Kawada and Tenryu. Extremely underrated juniors champion in the 90s. Many great performances on the All Japan 80s set. But the thing that puts him over the top for me is his '90-'92 run as a tag worker with Jumbo, in matches where he genuinely outclasses Tsuruta as an aging heel staving off the new generation. His hatred and fire in those matches is on par with the best of what we would see from Hansen, Misawa, and Kawada in that era.

 

But being great (or seemingly great based on what we have) for 20 years, plus 15 more years in his 50s and 60s as a very entertaining undercarder now still going at 62 is an amazing run. Having more of him from his 70s runs on the undercard of Mid-Atlantic and All Japan would be so damn amazing.

[The Russian Daydream]

Aw Dory! Of all my guys that have gone, I feel much sadder about Dory than the rest. I really didn't know I cared!

 

I'll admit having only seen a couple of matches from his NWA title run and finding it all a bit dull. He does get some credit in my matrix for actually getting to be a long-term NWA champion.

 

I have seen a fair bit of his AJPW run tagging with Terry however and have grown to really appreciate him in that role. To me, he feels like the Ernie Wise straight man to Terry's Eric Morcambe. He was a necessary and, at times, undervalued part of the equation.

 

I also give him a ton of credit for having perhaps RVD's most coherent match ever, when almost everyone expected a messy clash of styles at Terry's retirement show in 97.

 

I guess, also, there's just a certain charm about Dory that I like, and I do think he's one of the hundred greatest wrestlers ever. At least he nearly made it.

[Woof]

I have questions.

Why is it that whenever someone votes high on a mainstream American worker there's this massive cry for them to defend their pick? Why doesn't that happen with any other genre?

 

Why is it that when modern workers rank high people start claiming "recency bias"? How is working in the modern era any less valid than having worked 30 years ago?

 

How come nobody is crying about the fact that Dragon Gate style workers all got shunted down to the bottom of the rankings or that there's almost no representation of hardcore style guys, like they're doing about the joshi, World of Sport, and other niche styles?

 

What exactly would be the point of seeing results for only select voters? Isn't that basically saying, "we're gonna keep weeding out the ballots we don't like until we get the results we want", which invalidates the whole purpose of doing such a project?

 

How come so many people react to certain nominees with "how can you vote him higher? he was a TERRIBLE worker!" when it was made quite clear by the people who started this that it was not necessarily a rankings of "workers"? Isn't it obvious at this point that some of us voted on an entirely different set of criteria than merely workrate?

How many of you who didn't grow up in the 80's are basing your opinions on a lot of those workers on the various yearbook projects? I mean, weren't those yearbooks meant to be mostly highlights, in which case you were spared seeing a lot of those guys' crap work?

 

In the end, what were people expecting this list to even mean? There were 100,000 wrestling fans crammed into a single stadium two weeks ago for ONE wrestling card. Do we really think that the opinions of the 150 of us who happened to discover this particular message board are really THAT much more valuable merely because we're a little extra nerdy about our fandom?

Yeah, these are more or less rhetorical questions and I'm not trying to piss anybody off. I'm just really kind of dumbfounded by some of the reaction of people in the reveal threads. There's been a lot of fun talk and some quality ball busting, which I'm all for. But man, there's been a lot of eyeroll material too. I love that I've found this little corner of the wrestling world that is full of such passionate and knowledgeable fans, and I'm looking forward to the many discoveries that await me as I continue to dig into the areas of wrestling I have missed up till now, BUT... I've been a fan for well over 30 years now and it never once occurred to me that my opinion on anything - no matter how well thought out or researched - is any more valid than anybody else. I kind of feel like some people round here need to be reminded of that. I'm sorry if my liking WWE guys skewed the results some of you wanted, but liking WWE guys doesn't mean I don't know wrestling. It just means we have different taste, and I pretty sure THAT is what these results are reflecting.

[Timbo Slice]

Really surprised Chigusa went above Jaguar considering if you watched 80's joshi at all, Jaguar was such a standout. Chigusa was definitely good, but Jaguar was a cut above in a lot of ways.

 

I'm out of the running for most in the Top 100, I feel.

[Parties]

I've been watching nothing but early 80s All Japan this week, and while I didn't vote for Dory, his stock is rising for me. His work in Memphis and Japan shows he actually had a lot of violence and fire when called for, and his technique is awesome. The "boring" rep is unfair even if his long singles matches sometimes fit that description. He's one of those cool examples like Finlay or Regal where he seems to have been at his best near the "end" of his day to day career (early to mid 80s, with the understanding that he worked matches here and there for 20 years after that). You can see Terry rubbing off on him as they got older together. I like his 80s stuff more than the 70s stuff I've seen from him, but even the late 70s tag stuff with Terry against Sheik/Abby/etc. is really well done.

[stunning_grover]

 

9 more reveals till we get to the top 100. Anyone want to guess who doesn't make it?

 

Has Mil Mascaras dropped yet?

 

 

Mil Mascaras was #244 in the final results.

 

 

Pirata Morgan, Great Sasuke, Jaguar Yokota, Masa Fuchi and Chigusa Nagayo are all on my list.

 

I was the high vote on Masa Fuchi... I had him at #8.

 

I have only 63 wrestlers left that haven't appeared in the final results so far...

37 wrestlers that are in my top 100 have appeared in the final results so far...

...

#8 Masa Fuchi [#111] (high vote)

...

#14 Chigusa Nagayo [#110]

#15 Fuerza Guerrera [#155] (high vote)

...

#28 Mr. Gannosuke [#277] (high vote)

...

#31 Mayumi Ozaki [#133]

...

#36 Jaguar Yokota [#114]

...

#41 La Fiera [#164]

...

#48 El Samurai [#212] (high vote)

#49 Kyoko Inoue [#217]

...

#53 Tsuyoshi Kikuchi [#148]

...

#55 Great Sasuke [#116]

...

#57 Yumi Ikeshita [#384]

...

#60 TAKA Michinoku [#180]

...

#62 Shinobu Kandori [#146]

...

#65 Dynamite Kansai [#125]

#66 Dan Kroffat [#254]

...

#69 Perro Aguayo [#140]

...

#71 Bison Kimura [#420]

#72 Devil Masami [#135]

#73 Cuty Suzuki [#385]

...

#75 Dennis Condrey [#199]

#76 Pirata Morgan [#117]

#77 Super Astro [#283]

#78 Leo Burke [#296]

#79 Jinsei Shinzaki [#400]

...

#82 Masato Tanaka [#175]

#83 Javier Cruz [#502] (high vote/only vote)

...

#85 Psicosis [#183]

...

#88 Marty Jannetty [#272]

#89 Espectrito [#370]

#90 Masa Saito [#160]

#91 Sabu [#149]

#92 Scott Steiner [#162]

#93 Jacques Rougeau [#339]

...

#98 Stan Lane [#260]

#99 Big Boss Man [#171]

#100 Ron Starr [#403]

[jamesie_2015]

 

I still think the most frustrating name left is the Rock. He had about 5 years as a regular wrestler, and was never an elite one in that time. With HHH you can at least point out time frame someone could have enjoyed him a good deal if your preferences pointed that way. I just don't see that much of an argument for The Rock.

 

 

I have Rock in my 100.I put certain people on my list based on charisma, promos and ability to work a live crowd (Hogan too for example). To me being brilliant in these aspects of pro wrestling are just as important as having great matches all the time.

[Matt D]

I have questions.

Once again, I think a lot of the answers to your questions go back to the discussion or lack thereof on certain categories. Often times, when someone's come forward to defend their pick, after they were asked to, people were happy that they did and satisfied with their answers.

 

I KNOW why Parv put Dory where he did. I know how Loss feels about Chigusa. People know how I feel about Eadie or Mark Henry.

 

So it's frustrating when a wrestler comes up that there was a lot of discussion for and there's dissonance or just an outright mystery.

 

As for the "worker" thing, I think generally people consider the word "worker" interchangeable with wrestler. As it being in-ring vs promos and everything else, that was something that came up a few times in the process, and it does lead to a few voters' preferences, which, if explained, will lead to a gif from Parv of someone shrugging. It wasn't around work-rate but I think there is a wide majority of people who voted that felt it was about wrestling and available footage. Evidence.

[Loss]

"Greatest Wrestler Ever" just rolls off the tongue better than "Best In-Ring Performer In The History Of Recorded And Available Footage".

[Woof]

As for the "worker" thing, I think generally people consider the word "worker" interchangeable with wrestler. As it being in-ring vs promos and everything else, that was something that came up a few times in the process, and it does lead to a few voters' preferences, which, if explained, will lead to a gif from Parv of someone shrugging. It wasn't around work-rate but I think there is a wide majority of people who voted that felt it was about wrestling and available footage. Evidence.

 

 

Understood. But I believe by this point its been pretty openly stated by many people that they considered other aspects and yet there's still this sense of "how did guy X make it this high" when it's clear guy X got ranked by a lot of people for being an all-time legend. My head scratching is more about people who are still shocked that those names are doing well.

 

(And by "all time legend" I mean someone like Hogan, who may not have the most sparkling in-ring career but who transcends that in a way that makes him great in certain people's eyes.)

[JerryvonKramer]

One thing I discovered is that all arguments can be defeated with the line "it's my opinion". I maintain that it is the end rather than the start of most convos.

[Loss]

It is often the end, but threads would be much better if it was the beginning.

[Matt D]

 

As for the "worker" thing, I think generally people consider the word "worker" interchangeable with wrestler. As it being in-ring vs promos and everything else, that was something that came up a few times in the process, and it does lead to a few voters' preferences, which, if explained, will lead to a gif from Parv of someone shrugging. It wasn't around work-rate but I think there is a wide majority of people who voted that felt it was about wrestling and available footage. Evidence.

 

 

Understood. But I believe by this point its been pretty openly stated by many people that they considered other aspects and yet there's still this sense of "how did guy X make it this high" when it's clear guy X got ranked by a lot of people for being an all-time legend. My head scratching is more about people who are still shocked that those names are doing well.

 

(And by "all time legend" I mean someone like Hogan, who may not have the most sparkling in-ring career but who transcends that in a way that makes him great in certain people's eyes.)

 

I think that's blurring the lines though because a lot of people who voted for wrestling-only, voted for Hogan for his in-ring footage. That's absolutely true with Andre. It's true with Piper. It's true with Dusty. It's true with Sting, as we've heard in the last few pages. That's part of why I like to hear the explanations, because I'm working out what all of this means.

 

I want to hear if people voted for HHH just because he had too many good matches to ignore or because of specific elements in those matches and what those elements are.

 

Yes, it's your opinion, but I want to understand that opinion.

[Woof]

"Greatest Wrestler Ever" just rolls off the tongue better than "Best In-Ring Performer In The History Of Recorded And Available Footage".

 

I dunno, BIRPITHORAAF is surprisingly easy to say.

[The Thread Killer]

 

"Greatest Wrestler Ever" just rolls off the tongue better than "Best In-Ring Performer In The History Of Recorded And Available Footage".

 

I dunno, BIRPITHORAAF is surprisingly easy to say.

 

 

Thank you so much. I just laughed so hard Dr. Pepper went up my nose.

[Parties]

For what it's worth, Hogan is an extreme anomaly in that he's at minimum one of the 3-5 biggest stars in wrestling history (and to my mind he's probably #1). He went from being a pretty great wrestler from '80-'87 or even '88 into becoming a mediocre one at what probably should have been the end of his career (say, '92) and then into a genuinely terrible one in WCW before becoming the most problematic, detrimental guy in the business from '97 on. He's maybe the toughest guy to judge of all the nominees. He wasn't on my list, but I can't argue that when he was good, he was great, and that having an 8 year run where you're both damn good in the ring and the biggest act in the business (kicking off one of American wrestling's two all-time peaks) is a singular achievement (depending on how people feel about late 90s Austin). Hogan's contributions are so great that I understand people ranking him, but to me the damage he did and the horrible high-profile matches he had in the second half of his career made him into someone who I didn't want to endorse.

 

People will argue that having polar extremes at the beginning/end of his career makes Hogan no different than Flair and Foley. Which is a fair argument, though Foley didn't make my list in large part because he was so bad and so overused for so long (I love, love, love him from the late 80s through '97). Flair's long peak (say '78-'90) vastly outweighs the 10 years from '01-'11 where he was awful (to the point of being one of the worst guys in the whole business to be regularly making tape during those years, as Dylan and others have noted).

[Woof]

 

Yes, it's your opinion, but I want to understand that opinion.

 

 

Fair enough, but I guess I would be more comfortable with that if it was more evenly balanced rather than the pitchfork raising "DEFEND THAT PICK!" mob mentality that sometimes has crept in (humorous though the pitchfork raising may be).

 

As for the thread discussions, I know personally I didn't participate as much as I could have because I was focusing more on reading up on guys I didn't know about than I did on guys I was solid on. Plus, at some point it becomes clear that no matter how much you may like a guy there's no stemming the tide of hate against them and I don't need the stress of getting in a flame war over why or why not Shawn Michaels' sucks with people who have zero intention of having their view changed.