Reactions to the List: 100-51

[MasterJonBurr]

Baba > Andre, in my estimation.

 

Had Sarge at #36. I've heard reports of him dogging it, at times, but I've never seen that, and I've seen him as Beatiful Bob Remus. Hell, his turnbuckle bump is the only crazier bump than Hamrick's that said wrestler would routinely break out. That alone should get him some major love.

 

Bull at 61? Maybe y'all meant 16, because that's where I had her. Best look in wrasslin history and such an amazing big match worker with such a cool career arc and stellar feuds. I wonder if this is a grim augury for joshi on the whole, or just a plummet for Nakano.

 

Lots of guys here in this slot I didn't rank. I need to revisit Tamura, as I sort of eschewed true shoot style, but don't feel bad about leaving Blue Panther, Atlantis, Baba, and Ishikawa off at all. BP and Atlantis began to bore me a little on the deep dives, to the point where I would avoid their matches. Love their big stuff, but when I actively dodge you that frequently, you off the list! I only ranked one battlarts guy, and that was Ikeda, but you could tell me you think ishikawa is superior and I wouldn't bat a lash. Baba has soared past his once jocular status, but this seems an overcorrection to me. Had Ohtani & Togo about 20 spots higher, as it seems I value the junior work more, but kinda saw this coming. Ohtani's heavy stuff is vastly inferior to his junior run, but then again what isn't. Had Dick Togo slightly behind him as the king of lucharesu.

 

All in all, fun to see where consensus lies now.

 

Yours,

JHHBjr

[anarchistxx]

Never rated Sgt Slaughter that highly myself, although never dug too deeply into his stuff outside his pimped WWF work. The much vaunted Iron Sheik match didn't do much for me. I do absolutely love that Steamboat/Younblood vs Kernodle/Slaughter match that appears on this random set of NWA discs I have, where one disc is almost entirely heavily clipped JIP Flair matches from 1977 house shows.

[jackwebb]

I went on a Baba binge last night. Something I do often. Something dawned on me that might be true in my mind only. For a few years now I've tried to think of who it was Daniel Bryan reminded me of as far as connection with the crowd and babyface personality while he was with the WWE. It was Baba all along. Can't believe I missed it. Same understated, humble demeanour. With a tangible love for what they are doing that shows in their work. Physically not what you would expect to connect with a large audience. Just likeable enough people to transcend all of that bias. Might just be my perception though. Sure people that hate Baba for his strikes would find the comparison laughable.

[jdw]

Accessibility is key. People have to dig pretty far beyond even the highly touted material from another country to get to Tamura.

 

Totally agree. It's really hard to find Tamura...

 

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kiyoshi+tamura&tbm=vid&start=0

 

I think I'd put it this way:

 

I had a far easier time finding Tamura stuff today that classic Prince videos, thanks to his IP people taking a machete to stuff online over the past 3-4 years. Tamura, matches, in contrast, are accessible.

 

They are also accessible in the sense of understanding and enjoying: really simply stuff, even if the holds and exchanges are intricate.

[InYourCase]

Han rapidly descended on my ballot because of Anjoh and Tamura. Glad Tamura ranked, but he should've placed better than Han.

[jdw]

I'd have a lot more to say about Tamura's placement, which is not awful but is disappointing, if my bummed out quota wasn't already being filled entirely by Prince. Maybe in a few days.

 

If there's one thing making the day even harder is how brutal it is to find his music and videos online to share with other folks who are freaking gripping over it today.

[Death From Above]

Baba is in my top 25, #18 to be exact. He absolutely rules the late 60's we have, the 1970's, and he's still really good in the 1980's. By the 1990's he turned himself more into a special attraction but his matches against the younger generation mostly in real world tag league stuff is so fun to watch too.

 

Honestly one of my favourite wrestlers ever.

[goodhelmet]

I can't help but feel disappointed by that Tamura placement. He's just flat better than at least 20 guys who will go above him.

Blame me. Complete oversight on my part. Hell I ranked Han and not Tamura.

[WingedEagle]

Come on, accessibility is more than having an internet connection. Let's not be that simplistic.

[GOTNW]

If you think about it Tamura's ranking makes perfect sense. PWO is the place where wrestling is mostly compared to boring pop rock. Tamura is Beethoven.

[Johnny Sorrow]

 

 

I'd have a lot more to say about Tamura's placement, which is not awful but is disappointing, if my bummed out quota wasn't already being filled entirely by Prince. Maybe in a few days.

If there's one thing making the day even harder is how brutal it is to find his music and videos online to share with other folks who are freaking gripping over it today.

I'm out on my deck sharing Prince right now with my neighbors, wether they like it or not. 😎

[Dylan Waco]

Baba is definitely better than Andre and should have rated higher. I'm an Andre fan, but agree that he's a guy where the pendulum has swung too far.

[bradhindsight]

 

I can't help but feel disappointed by that Tamura placement. He's just flat better than at least 20 guys who will go above him.

Blame me. Complete oversight on my part. Hell I ranked Han and not Tamura.

 

 

We cancelled each other out then. I ranked Tamura (56) but not Han.

[Microstatistics]

 

Points of top ten wrestlers:

 

15261

 

14452

 

13813

 

13216

 

12302

 

12291

 

11910

 

11898

 

11784

 

11603

 

Interesting. The No. 1 is a clear No. 1.

 

Data that strongly supports my Flair as the easy #1 prediction. Could be wrong though. Could be Daniel Bryan for all we know.

[Microstatistics]

Even though he didn't make many ballots, Tamura's final rank is still insanely disappointing for me. Was hoping he would make atleast the top half. The first of my top 10 to fall.

[elliott]

Honestly, I'm pretty pleased Tamura made it as high as he did considering how many people don't like shoot style.

[Death From Above]

I love the concept of U-Style: the 15 minute time limit cut out so much of the absolute funeral dirge nonsense 10 minute leglock sequences that go nowhere you got in UWF-i. It was perfect for that kind of wrestling, I wish it had been a more successful company.

 

I'm also going to cop to fucking up and leaving Tamura off my ballot, undeservedly so. An oversight. I would not have been one of his highest votes by any means, but still.

[Jmare007]

Kinda surprised Brock is gonna rank so high.

[Woof]

Add me to the pile who voted for Han and not Tamura. Wasn't an active "he's better" choice. I just came to shootstyle too late and Han was the only guy I was able to assimilate in time to feel comfortable ranking. This is going to sound awful, but my knowledge of a lot of the Japanese wrestlers was pretty nill up until about a year ago when I learned of the GWE project and as a result alot of the names tended to run together. Trying to decide who to look into further when you're not sure whether they're a NJPW guy, an AJPW guy, a shootstyle guy, a Dragon Gate guy, hell, a Joshi gal... I mean it's hard to find a decent starting point. Han was an easy target for me because I had never heard of him before and his named popped out as something I felt like "I would have remembered that name. What did I miss?" It was the same with Jim Breaks. I dove into both of those guys first because their name was unique enough to get me moving in a direction whereas Tamura could have been some mid-card All Japan guy for all I knew. It sucks because I've started looking into more Tamura (and shootstyle in general) since my ballot went in and I think I'm probably more entertained by Tamura than Han at this stage.

I think that's probably why I'm not really ever surprised by the rankings because I feel like they don't represent a "he's better than the guys that fell before him" result but rather a "he's highly regarded by the people who knew him" thing. The poll represents a collection of little opinions, not one big one.

[elliott]

I love the concept of U-Style: the 15 minute time limit cut out so much of the absolute funeral dirge nonsense 10 minute leglock sequences that go nowhere you got in UWF-i. It was perfect for that kind of wrestling, I wish it had been a more successful company.

 

It's kinda funny because thinking about the absolute top tier Tamura matches, they all go longer than 15 minutes.

 

I'm stoked he got a #2 vote. That's great. Literally my only criticism is the sheer lack of total matches. He wrestled fewer matches in 15 years than a lot of guys did in 6 months. I kinda felt like I had to penalize him for that in the grand scheme of things but at his absolute best I'm not sure anyone was better.

 

I wish we got a run of him in New Japan at some point or something like that. He would have adapted so so so easily to pro-style and could have acted as a gateway for non-shoot style fans. Tamura is one of those guys like Liger, Fujinami or Danielson that I think would have been an all time great even if he worked a different style or was born in a different time and place even.

[goodhelmet]

The poll represents a collection of little opinions, not one big one.

Exactly!!! People need to stop looking at wrestlers as better or worse according to rank.

[Timbo Slice]

Honest question: Do any of those who voted Han higher or didn't vote for Tamura think Han had a better non-Tamura match than Tamura had with Vader?

[The Thread Killer]

Come on, accessibility is more than having an internet connection. Let's not be that simplistic.

 

I have a ton of shoot style stuff on VHS in a box in my crawl space, covered in dust. I've got UWF, UWF-I, Pancrase, KINGDOM and even the first bunch of U-Style shows in there. Problem is, I don't own a VCR and don't have the equipment or knowledge needed to transfer them over to DVD-R or avi or whatever. Or the time. That means if I want to watch any of my old shoot style stuff, I either have to buy a VCR and hook it up to my home theater just for that purpose, or put in all the time and effort and cost to convert all that stuff, or buy it all again which I can't afford.

 

That's why if it's not posted online somewhere, I likely wasn't able to check it out for this project. I have so much wrestling on VHS it's ridiculous, I'm glad technology advanced, but it really hurt my wrestling viewing.

[elliott]

 

Come on, accessibility is more than having an internet connection. Let's not be that simplistic.

 

I have a ton of shoot style stuff on VHS in a box in my crawl space, covered in dust. I've got UWF, UWF-I, Pancrase, KINGDOM and even the first bunch of U-Style shows in there. Problem is, I don't own a VCR and don't have the equipment or knowledge needed to transfer them over to DVD-R or avi or whatever. Or the time. That means if I want to watch any of my old shoot style stuff, I either have to buy a VCR and hook it up to my home theater just for that purpose, or put in all the time and effort and cost to convert all that stuff, or buy it all again which I can't afford.

 

That's why if it's not posted online somewhere, I likely wasn't able to check it out for this project. I have so much wrestling on VHS it's ridiculous, I'm glad technology advanced, but it really hurt my wrestling viewing.

 

 

Youtube has a shit ton of UWF & UWFi complete shows. There are far more complete UWF/UWFi shows online than not online.

[elliott]

Honest question: Do any of those who voted Han higher or didn't vote for Tamura think Han had a better non-Tamura match than Tamura had with Vader?

 

I ranked both and had Tamura quite a bit higher. But figured I'd answer.

 

It really depends on how you feel about Tamura vs Vader. You and I are going to be on the high end of loving it and going nuts over it but people could call that a 3 1/2 star match and I'd get it. Han has some terrific stuff against Kohsaka, Yamamoto & Kopylov that could definitely be considered "better" than Vader/Tamura.

 

I'm not actually sure that Vader match is a top 10 Tamura match and it is one of my all time favorite matches. Its closer to Tamura's 10th best than his best believe it or not.