Reactions to the List: 25-11

[Grimmas]

I figured Vader would have a good chance at being on every ballot, 148/151 is not bad. Does anyone want to speak up about leaving him or Steamer off their ballot and why?

148 is most amount of ballots anyone appeared on. Vader and two others got that many votes.

 

It's strange not one person could get on all ballots.

[stomperspc]

Vader as one of the three wrestlers with 148 votes surprises me. It never occurred to me that he would be tied for the most votes. I had Steamboat at 13 and Vader at 12 so I am happy with the actual finishes.

 

None of the eight wrestlers since Casas fell at #22 have beaten his average vote of 19.03. None of them have even broke an average vote of 20. None of those eight have even come close to his 52 top 10 votes. This is not meant as a complaint at all. I just find it interesting and it is clear now Casas did really, really well with just the lack of votes holding him back. Looks like he has a shot at top 10 in average vote.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

Vader has appeal to folks who are into mainstream WWE, WCW, shoot style, Japan and even the indies. If you look at it that way, it's doesn't really surprise me that he appeared on so many ballots.

 

Edit: And his brief stint in AWA is well regarded and has gotten a lot of love over the last couple of years. Great match w/ Hansen.

[Frankensteiner]

So now that Fujinami, Bret and Bockwinkel (my #5, #3, and #2 ranked wrestlers, respectively) have dropped, I can safely call everyone ranked ahead of them overrated.

 

I had Eddie top 15, but in hindsight, I wish I had him lower since he's going to be more overrated than I thought. Same applies to Steamboat, Vader, and Mysterio. Of course I've beaten the Flair horse to death already. Given that 13 of my top 14 names have already placed, the results are going to be slightly disappointing.

[Dylan Waco]

Majority of top 13 are guys who made bulk of their cases in Japan.

[Death From Above]

 

Taue revisionism predates this board by a fair number of years. There may be posters here who came to Taue late and thought they'd split the atom, but there's nothing folks can possibly say about Taue that hasn't been said before. If someone had had a new idea about Taue during this project I would have spat on my drink and fallen ass over backward.

 

My only issue is I guess I haven't seen a match where he's the man so to speak. If anyone can point me to a match where he's carrying a lesser opponent to a great match I may revise my view on him.

 

 

His match with Yuji Nagata is as blatant a carry job of a badly inferior worker as you'll ever find in the history of pro wrestling.

[GOTNW]

 

My only issue is I guess I haven't seen a match where he's the man so to speak. If anyone can point me to a match where he's carrying a lesser opponent to a great match I may revise my view on him.

He's cleary leading the match vs. Nagata and vs. Rikioh in 2005/6. Both are great matches though I can't really think of huge Taue carry jobs. But then again I'm not sure I can do the same for Kobashi.

[Death From Above]

Vader was my #5. Dude kicked ass absolutely everywhere against everyone except the place they put the #PoliticalHit on him.

[Loss]

Taue in the Carnival final vs Misawa in 1995 is a great example of him controlling the tempo, bringing great offense and pretty much building the match. Misawa's credibility enhanced it in a way that he couldn't have had that match with anyone else, but the match is far more a testament to Taue.

[El-P]

Majority of top 13 are guys who made bulk of their cases in Japan.

 

Of course. It doesn't change the fact that this list overall is more US mainstream oriented than the previous one. Numbers don't lie.

 

Anwyay, Vader following Steamboat, just like in my list, that's pretty cool. Yeah, Vader time. Still not as good as Aja. Bumped too easily to get into my top 20.

 

And then. A bit a of a surprise. I didn't expect Tenryu not to be part of the Top 10, after all the pimping for years and years and the output in the 00's. He was my #6. Greatest former sumo wrestler ever too.

 

The fact Eddie is still alive is a bit surprising. He has dropped quite a bit on my list.

[Death From Above]

Ah, Tenryu finally goes down. One of the best old man wrestlers ever, for sure. From the late 80's right into the 2000's he's really a constant factor, and is even one of the few guys that had a whole company built around him with W.A.R. where the main event was basically (insert name here) vs. Tenryu. Honestly, one of the easiest to enjoy guys ever, because what he does is so direct and to the point?

[goc]

Another response:

 

Wow, Taker getting hated on, with the premise that he didn't draw the most money therefore he wasn't the best? Hogan and Warrior were massive draws and they weren't very good wrestlers.

 

Fuckin' Arn Anderson is a top wrassler and surely didn't draw that much outside of the Horsemen, and only if Flair was booked.

I don't know where that "Warrior was a massive draw" talking point comes from. I realize it exists because I've argued against it before when someone was trashing Jim Duggan and saying he never drew in a comparison to Warrior. And even after showing numbers from Duggan's run as the top guy in Mid-South when they were killing it in 1984 and frequently selling out the Sam Houston Coliseum vs. Warrior's run as champ where the arenas were often barely drawing more than 60% capacity. And the people who loved that line still hand waved away the numbers and insisted Warrior was a massive draw.

[concrete1992]

Mainstream hardcore fans>Niche fetishists

[ShittyLittleBoots]

Pretty shocked that Tenryu didn't make it to top-10. #13 is still a damn good ranking, though.

[Death From Above]

The first Tenryu match I ever saw was the 1996 Tokyo Dome match with Fujinami where the whole match is built around Tenryu breaking Fujinami's nose with a punch as a counter to a suicide dive so they spend like 8 minutes trying to kill each other. So for a while I just assumed Tenryu was a completely crazy person.

[Loss]

 

Majority of top 13 are guys who made bulk of their cases in Japan.

 

Of course. It doesn't change the fact that this list overall is more US mainstream oriented than the previous one. Numbers don't lie.

 

I want to give this some context now for people who weren't around in 2006. There used to be cries of "puro elitism" (not my phrase) that probably had some truth in them. So yes, this is list is more oriented toward mainstream U.S. names, but it's not fair to say that's because we've closed our minds or anything like that. If anything, most voters in 2006 had their minds closed to great territory wrestling. Now I think people don't care where great wrestling takes place if it's great wrestling, but that wasn't the mentality then at all. It wasn't so much about nationality as it was brand loyalty to a company, and that has absolutely fallen out of style. And good riddance.

[MoS]

I thought it was well-accepted that Warrior failed as a draw when asked to follow Hogan? I remember jdw talking about how they were drawing so poorly that they reduced the house show circuits from 3 to 2. So many discussions have happened on why he couldn't draw, with people saying that Hogan sabotaged his reign at WM 6 with his fallen King performance post-match.

[KB8]

Man, Eddie is my all time favourite wrestler and he was in my top 15, but even I can't go to bat for him ahead of Tenryu.

 

Tenryu was my #2. Longevity out the wazoo, hugely consistent, greatest grumpy old bastard ever, tonnes of good matches, more than a couple great ones, and I always find him entertaining no matter who he's in there with.

[goc]

I am now actually thinking I ranked Bock lower than I should have, and I had him in my top 15. All I had going for him was a pack I DL'd from XWTClassics, and if I had the AWA set, then he surely would have ranked higher. No idea if any seller will ship it to India at a reasonable price though.

 

And fuck you all, Eddie is awesome.

I'm glad to know I contributed to getting him on at least one ballot then.

[soup23]

Guess podcast bias was creeping in as listening to all of the GWE pods, almost everyone had Tenryu ahead of Jumbo so I expected the same result on the overall list.

[Goodear]

 

I'd like the Savage as #1 people to explain themselves. For all the focus on Bret, that's pretty nutty in itself, is it not?

Kelly did an hour podcast making Savage's case.

 

 

Circling back to Savage who I gave a number one vote to because he's awesome from pretty much every perspective I care about as a professional wrestler.

 

To Whit:

From the holistic view, Randy's skill set is virtually immense. Randy could bump like he was shot in the face and hit the mat with a force that if you blinked, BAM he's already on the canvas. Randy could limb sell and sell generalized damage to build sympathy with ease (knee injury during the Flair World Title WWF series being the most obvious example). Randy's strikes were varied and on point: jabs, elbows, the bend the guy over and kick him in the chest... all looked solid and were great in control segments and in the rally. He could work heat and was awesome underneath. His aerial work was groundbreaking and his top rope elbow is an iconic finish. He had unique psychology especially as a heel where he would use the whole ring as a weapon and would utilize spacing in a way no one else did or does. Did anyone ever spend more time going in and out of the ring than Savage? Maybe, I didn't have a stopwatch on him.

 

From the great matches sense, Randy has great matches with a variety of guys with a variety of different skill sets (Warrior, Hogan, Flair, Steamboat, Tito, Lawler etc etc). While some might look at his planning methodology as a crutch, I cannot bring myself to care. Results oriented business allows for all sorts of different ways of getting to the end goal. He's also underrated as a tag guy with his team with Lanny actually being effective foils for the Rock 'n' Rolls.

 

From the cultural perspective, Randy Savage is probably in the top 5 of cross over stars all times. Who doesn't know the voice, the outfit, the snap into it? Who hasn't done the Savage elbow off a diving board into the pool? And while that 'doesn't count' it reflects his charisma and uniqueness which do. Randy Savage is wrestling to me and to a great many people. He's loud and unique and colorful and awesome.

 

And he's awesome. Just so goddamn awesome.

[El-P]

It wasn't so much about nationality as it was brand loyalty to a company, and that has absolutely fallen out of style. And good riddance.

 

Oh yeah, there's absolutely no Memphis loyalty, not at all.

[Grimmas]

 

It wasn't so much about nationality as it was brand loyalty to a company, and that has absolutely fallen out of style. And good riddance.

 

Oh yeah, there's absolutely no Memphis loyalty, not at all.

 

When only Lawler and Dundee make the top 100, there isn't.

[JDerbyshire]

Was really hoping my #4, Bockwinkel, would make the top 10. 16th is a good showing though.

 

I'd assume Eddie will surely be one of the next 2 to fall just before the top 10 - can't decide on the other though. Kobashi or Jumbo would be my guess.

[Woof]

Dumb stat thing that I find amusing to this point: Curt Hennig currently has the smallest difference between his avg ranking and his actual ranking at 0.05. Which means as far as the GWE voters go his ranking was, you guessed it, Perfect.