Reactions to the List: 50-26

[Jmare007]

I had Michaels too, at 52. Just a little surprised his stock went up.

[MasterJonBurr]

Dibiase getting 42 is some Douglas Adams shit, for sure, when it comes to Parv's affection for him. List is heating up!

 

Yours,

JHHBjr

[Childs]

Having 38 of top 40 is perfectly fine with me, since the two are Benoit and HBK.

 

I'm surprised Benoit is still around, given how many people didn't consider him. Have to imagine he'll be in the next group to fall.

 

Foley is the only remaining guy I didn't rank.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I had DiBiase at #41, I was one spot too high. The only three people from my Top 25 have dropped Bob Backlund, Rick Martel and Greg Valentine. I had a boring list.

[El-P]

Had Choshu at #79. I'm a Choshu fan, but I do think people only got to see the best stuff of his and not the mediocre stuff, and really didn't take in accounts his flaws. Seems a bit too high. That being said, nice that he got higher.

 

I have 33 left, which is not surprising since I didn't rate any luchadors (5 are left ?) and I rated some women and shoot-style guy pretty high.

[Danish Dynamite]

Yea and Parv predicted him to finish 42. That was meant to be the tiebreaker for the top 10 guesses

Ah. Got it. Pretty sure he initially had that Ted wouldn't rank. Didn't see him predicting him at 42. My bad.

[Danish Dynamite]

Martel, DiBiase, Choshu... All in my top 50. DiBiase my highest drop so far at #25.

 

I wouldn't mind Benoit (the last I didn't rank), Shawn and Foley dropping next, but I have a feeling only Foley's coming up anytime soon...

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

I have 35 left of the 40. Hokuto is my highest drop, at 13. My other top 20 guys gone are Murdoch and Destroyer.

 

I had Choshu at 25. One of the most charismatic wrestlers ever. He blew me away on the NJ set and I like to think him showing up with his white boots and long hair was like when the Beatles hit the scene with their mop tops. Choshumania!

[stunning_grover]

50. Billy Robinson

In my top 200.

49. Aja Kong.

I had her at #37.

48. Fit Finlay

In my top 200.

47. Brock Lesnar

Didn't rank him.

46. CM Punk

Didn't rank him.

45. Harley Race

I had him at #25.

44. Tully Blanchard

I had him at #67.

43. Rick Martel

I had him at #26.

42. Ted DiBiase

I had him at #43. His Mid-South work is great and the main reason I ranked him in my top 50, but I like his Million Dollar Man run too.

41. Riki Choshu

In my top 200.

Less than 7 days to go...

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

35 wrestlers of my top 100 haven't appeared in the final results yet... (that means 5 of the 40 wrestlers still to come are not on my list)

My list [overall ranking in brackets]

...

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

#9 Sangre Chicana [#95] (high vote: #9)

#10 Bull Nakano [#61]

#11 Dick Murdoch [#53]

#12 Dick Togo [#71] (high vote: #12)

...

#14 Chigusa Nagayo [#110]

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

#16 Giant Baba [#63]

...

#18 Manami Toyota [#89]

...

#24 Dynamite Kid [#78]

#25 Harley Race [#45]

#26 Rick Martel [#43]

#27 L.A. Park [#96]

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

...

#30 Akira Hokuto [#52]

#31 Mayumi Ozaki [#133]

#32 Greg Valentine [#54]

...

#36 Jaguar Yokota [#114]

#37 Aja Kong [#49]

...

#39 Owen Hart [#58]

...

#41 La Fiera [#164]

#43 Ted DiBiase [#42]

...

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

#49 Kyoko Inoue [#217]

#50 Curt Hennig [#55]

#51 Sgt. Slaughter [#64]

...

#53 Tsuyoshi Kikuchi [#148]

#54 Atlantis [#74]

#55 Great Sasuke [#116]

...

#57 Yumi Ikeshita [#384]

...

#59 Brian Pillman [#72]

#60 TAKA Michinoku [#180]

...

#62 Shinobu Kandori [#146]

#63 Shinjiro Ohtani [#65]

#64 Steve Williams [#82]

#65 Dynamite Kansai [#125]

#66 Dan Kroffat [#254]

#67 Tully Blanchard [#44]

...

#69 Perro Aguayo [#140]

#70 Tito Santana [#80]

#71 Bison Kimura [#420]

#72 Devil Masami [#135]

#73 Cuty Suzuki [#385]

#74 Kerry Von Erich [#98]

#75 Dennis Condrey [#199]

#76 Pirata Morgan [#117]

#77 Super Astro [#283]

#78 Leo Burke [#296]

#79 Jinsei Shinzaki [#400]

#80 Hulk Hogan [#75]

...

#82 Masato Tanaka [#175]

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

...

#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]

#94 Andre the Giant [#51]

#95 Atsushi Onita [#89]

#96 Carlos Colon [#103]

#97 Roddy Piper [#83]

#98 Stan Lane [#260]

#99 Big Boss Man [#171]

#100 Ron Starr [#403]

[WingedEagle]

Savage needs to be edited into the list a week or 2 ago. My absolute favorite as a child, but impressionable young me who drew over his face on WWF magazines when he turned heel did not vote. Then again, maybe that kid is the one who voted and left him off.

[Danish Dynamite]

Every day Savage doesn't drop is a good day :-)

[El-P]

I didn't expect Fujiwara to show up that soon after years and years of hardcore pimping, some warranted, some not. I had him at #27. Great worker in the 80's, up to the end of the second UWF. Although he had his ups and down, I'm not fond of his work in New Japan during the UWF feud for instance. Great mat technician and submission wrestler, but could get goofy with no-selling and silly headbutts too. That he's the highest shoot-style guy ranked at #40 is telling, both of the fact he's been pimped like crazy over the last 10 years, and also that shoot-style really didn't fare well.

[Jmare007]

Fujiwara went from 119 in 2006 to 40. That's huge leap, and he had an average vote of 32 so he did really well in the ballots he was in. Would've liked to see him higher but it's still a win imo.

[The Man in Blak]

I didn't realize that Fujiwara didn't make the 2006 list -- even if it pains me to see him under some of the people ahead of him, that's a commendable jump.

 

Michaels, Styles, and Benoit (who I overlooked when I counted last time) are the surviving entries missing from my ballot. Robinson (#25) and Fujiwara (#17) are my fallen soldiers from the Top 25.

[Childs]

Well, he did jump 79 spots so all the pimping certainly had an impact. But I know that even for some of the hardcore footage watchers here, Fujiwara doesn't connect at the highest level. I had him 11 and hoped he'd get into the top 25-30, but I'm not surprised, given the fates of his shoot peers. I was looking at his match results from the '70s last night and thinking how shitty it is that we have essentially none of that on tape. He and Fujinami worked each other constantly as kids.

[Jimmy Redman]

Fujiwara is one of the guys on my list who is ranked as low as he is simply because I have only seen enough of him to get him so far. I like him a lot and if I watched another dozen or so matches he could have got well into my top half. Alas.

[Childs]

Fujiwara is one of the guys on my list who is ranked as low as he is simply because I have only seen enough of him to get him so far. I like him a lot and if I watched another dozen or so matches he could have got well into my top half. Alas.

I think your podcast partner will dig him as well, once he gets there.

[stunning_grover]

I think the overall list is pretty great so far and I look forward to the revealing of the top 40. Even though I didn't consider voting for wrestlers like Brock Lesnar, CM Punk, AJ Styles and Kurt Angle for my list, I can understand why people voted for them. In the end there wasn't any wrestler that was on all ballots anyway, so I guess it's part of the fun (if we all agreed, it would be boring). I don't see this project as something where we need to convince each other... I see it more as something where all of us are together taking part in a learning process and yet at the same time can still have different opinions from each other. There's no right or wrong. As long as you've had fun participating in this project, I think you did your job.

 

I've read several people say they are disappointed with the lack of joshi support. While I am a joshi fan and also secretly hoped there would be more joshi workers in the top 50, I knew that there probably wouldn't be as many joshi in the top 50 as I'd have liked.

 

It's a shame Aja Kong is the only joshi worker in the top 50, but joshi puroresu is a lot less appreciated now than in 2006. There were 8 joshi workers in the top 50 in 2006. However, don't forget that Smarkschoice forum had more joshi fans in general. And, if I recall correctly, they had just done a greatest women's wrestler ever poll prior to the big 2006 GWE poll... so maybe that helped getting more women on the list as well. I could be wrong about this though.

 

Even though joshi is more out of fashion than ever nowadays (especially 90s joshi has seemingly been on the receiving-end of a huge backlash), I still think it's an interesting subgenre. Since there are several people who feel that joshi should get a bit more attention and since there hasn't been any significant focus on joshi in ages, does anyone think something like a Greatest Joshi Ever poll would be helpful? That will possibly reduce the feeling among joshi fans that joshi hasn't been given a fair chance by the majority and it will possibly give everyone a better view of where joshi stands for them in the big picture of it all. Also, it will help seeing the importance of several joshi workers within the history of joshi (while they kind of got lost in the shuffle in this big GWE poll). And by revisiting joshi workers like Manami Toyota, Akira Hokuto and Kyoko Inoue (etc.), I guess I will find out if I have overrated them and my opinion is based on nostalgia bias or if my opinion will still stand and it will become clear my opinion wasn't affected by the joshi backlash. I know people have been re-watching joshi these past couple of years and several people have watched joshi from the Yearbooks (and I am one of those people), but I think it will be interesting to see how the top joshi workers are viewed within the confines of a joshi project.

 

Just for the record, I have 14 joshi in my top 100 and 8 of them are in my top 50.

 

By the way... I'm curious how well workers from the emerging North American women's (indy) scene will do in 2026. Since there appears to be a growing interest in the new wave of North American women's wrestling in some corners of the Internet... maybe we will see workers like Sara Del Rey, Madison Eagles, Athena, Kimber Lee, Candice LeRae, Portia Perez and Nicole Matthews (and whatever new talent will have debuted before 2026) getting votes? Maybe not.

 

[Jetlag]

 

I've seen the last three. I'd consider none as great matches. Good to excellent. Not great.

 

Good to excellent matches in 4 decades is still an achievement that not many wrestlers can boast Especially not Brock and Punk.

 

Fujiwara was among the guys I considered for my #1 spot. He ended up being my 2nd highest ranked japanese worker. So 2 DVDVR 80s sets can give you an 80 place bump?

[Loss]

Am I wrong to think calling Fujiwara a shoot stylist is too narrow a label? Maybe I am. I just see his career as having wider scope than Han or Tamura, and maybe even more than Takada or Yamazaki. Do people think of guys like Naruse, Nagai and Kakihara primarily as shoot stylists? Takayama I know people see as more than that.

[Danish Dynamite]

Fujiwara's awesome. Easily my highest ranked shoot worker (a style I don't like). But he's much more than shoot to me. What a great defensive worker, what a bad ass, and very charismatic. A cool cat.

[MoS]

Curious to see where Styles will drop. He was 301 in 2006 and received a grand total of 2 votes, so this has to be the biggest leap. Unless he has already appeared, and I have missed him like a complete doofus.

[Grimmas]

Curious to see where Styles will drop. He was 301 in 2006 and received a grand total of 2 votes, so this has to be the biggest leap. Unless he has already appeared, and I have missed him like a complete doofus.

He just dropped as you posted this.

[goodhelmet]

Hmmmm... i counted 39 guys from my list but didn't vote of AJ or Benoit or Foley. 2 of my guys dropped and i completely missed them.

[victory]

I had DiBiase at 41. Only off by 1, that's the closest I came to predicting the correct spot.

 

I had AJ at 43, so 39 seems like a pretty good spot for him from my point of view.