2026 Ideas

[Grimmas]

26 minutes ago, Matt D said:

@El Dragon Send me some Lacey matches, pal.

Probably the best match is the tournament finals vs Sara Del Rey

There is some on youtube, but streamshimmer.com will have all her matches from Shimmer.

[Kadaveri]

10 hours ago, El-P said:

As far as new moves that are so awesome that no one even dares to do it since then, the moonsault footstomp of Hikari Fukuoka needs to come back in style at some point. Someone will see it, want to do it and someone is gonna be willing to take it...

Io Shirai used to occasionally pull this out:

[Matt D]

3 hours ago, Grimmas said:

Probably the best match is the tournament finals vs Sara Del Rey

There is some on youtube, but streamshimmer.com will have all her matches from Shimmer.

Thanks.

I have thoughts already but I'll I'm going to litigate them with Dan first.

[Microstatistics]

Will there be new discussion threads for individual wrestlers? Or are we continuing from the 2016 ones since I see people posting in those.

[Kadaveri]

We're not making new threads we're just continuing where we left off.

[jamesie_2015]

Just a heads up, my GWE mailing list e mail went into my Spam folder so keep an eye out for that.

[Noah's_Savior]

On 4/9/2021 at 4:44 PM, Kadaveri said:

How much footage of Mariko's matches do you think even exists? These are the only matches I've ever found:

Mariko Akagi & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi 1978
Mariko Akagi vs. Chino Sato 1979

In theory her second WWWA tag title run with Mach Fumiake at least could've been broadcast on Fuji TV cause of Mach's popularity but whether or not those early tapes lived a long life is unknown. April 1975 is the date that I have when Fuji TV made the formal deal with AJW for regular TV broadcasts, what regular broadcasting meant in 1975 is also something I have to look deeper into once I can read more Japanese.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Noah's_Savior said:

In theory her second WWWA tag title run with Mach Fumiake at least could've been broadcast on Fuji TV cause of Mach's popularity but whether or not those early tapes lived a long life is unknown. April 1975 is the date that I have when Fuji TV made the formal deal with AJW for regular TV broadcasts, what regular broadcasting meant in 1975 is also something I have to look deeper into once I can read more Japanese.

Maybe the Joshi Mix guy has more stuff, I'm definitely interested if we can get more.  The only other thing I have with Akagi is with her and Jaguar on a comedy show.

[Matt D]

Vaguely important to note we're getting new mid-90s lucha every week or so right now thanks to Roy Lucier posting stuff. We had a set up for the Satanico vs Garza hair match which got points for both guys last week. The footage keeps coming.

[Clayton Jones]

Somewhat related but I somehow missed the New Footage Friday that featured the Santo/Eddie VS Casas/Panther '87 Juarez match. Holy hell what a find that was and what an addition to the already all-time resume of all 4. You guys covered it perfectly too. I know I'm late to the party on that one but it's crazy to see so much great stuff continue to surface, definitely a really cool time to be doing GWE.

[Jmare007]

Kind of a random thought but after listening to the GWE 2026 podcast I thought a good idea would be to make an episode with different people giving their approach to this project.

Even though I completely agree with being inclusive and welcome as much new people as we can. I think even a bigger barrier to entry than having people looking or taking down to other is that hearing or reading "let's make a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers we have footage of" feels like an impossible task or something that "can't be done" because they feel they haven't watched "enough" wrestling or don't feel like addressing some gaps is possible. I know I tried to make a couple of folks participate in 2016 but just couldn't get them to submit a ballot because of that.

Maybe hearing how different folks will tackle this, and others just being comfortable doing with that they already know + being open to watching anything that's pimped and sounds interesting to them, will also help this seems more approachable and fun.

[Grimmas]

I am all for people running as many podcasts, writing as many articles, etc.. as possible!

[DR Ackermann]

Someone who knows more than me should nominate Mayu Iwatani. Admittedly I'm not super familiar with her resume, but in my eyes she's clearly the best worker currently in Stardom and the ace of the promotion.

[Grimmas]

10 minutes ago, DR Ackermann said:

Someone who knows more than me should nominate Mayu Iwatani. Admittedly I'm not super familiar with her resume, but in my eyes she's clearly the best worker currently in Stardom and the ace of the promotion.

Oh, I will. Legit one of my favourite wrestlers since 2016.

[Clayton Jones]

Does Chavo Sr need a nomination? It seems like the link for him in the nominees alphabetically goes directly to Chavito.

[Marksman]

On 4/12/2021 at 2:51 PM, Jmare007 said:

Kind of a random thought but after listening to the GWE 2026 podcast I thought a good idea would be to make an episode with different people giving their approach to this project.

Even though I completely agree with being inclusive and welcome as much new people as we can. I think even a bigger barrier to entry than having people looking or taking down to other is that hearing or reading "let's make a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers we have footage of" feels like an impossible task or something that "can't be done" because they feel they haven't watched "enough" wrestling or don't feel like addressing some gaps is possible. I know I tried to make a couple of folks participate in 2016 but just couldn't get them to submit a ballot because of that.

Maybe hearing how different folks will tackle this, and others just being comfortable doing with that they already know + being open to watching anything that's pimped and sounds interesting to them, will also help this seems more approachable and fun.

As someone who's potentially not participating due to having a huge amount of gaps, this would be SUPER-interesting to listen to/helpful, yeah. My current base of knowledge is AEW and NXT from late 2020 onwards, WWF/WCW late 90s, classic World of Sport, a small amount of random stuff from the last 20 years, and a rapidly growing amount of 80s joshi. (Which is enough to know that if I do vote, Bull and Aja are in pole position for top 2 places.) I only want to vote if I can cover a reasonable amount of my gaps, but there are SO MANY damn gaps that it's hard to have any idea where to start - people sharing ideas on how they're tackling this would be awesome.

[Grimmas]

1 hour ago, Clayton Jones said:

Does Chavo Sr need a nomination? It seems like the link for him in the nominees alphabetically goes directly to Chavito.

Should be fixed.

[Clayton Jones]

Thanks Grimmas!

As for filling in gaps, coming from someone who just made a similar post asking about blind spots a month or two back before making the plunge, for me it's been surprisingly easy so far. I made a rough draft of my ballot and then started an under consideration/need to educate myself on list that I'm going to cap at 80 names (I'm at 50 or so currently). Based on the rate I've been watching footage that's what I think will be realistic in 5 years. Then I've been bouncing around from names on one list to the other. So I'll go from a Jaguar Yokota or a La Fiera, both of which I'd only seen a match or two from previously, to a Fujiwara who I have penciled in pretty high or a lower level name on my rough ballot like a Curt Hennig. And I'll run through 3-7 of their matches, something like that. I kind of let the flow of the matches decide for me if I'm ready to move on yet.

So at this point I'm essentially casting nets while fine tuning the candidates I think I know pretty well. I intend to revisit everyone multiple times over. This lets me start to fill in the blind spots while not feeling like that's all the project is. As for how I decide what to focus on out of my blind spots, I've found it helpful to focus on names rather than entire areas of education. Through Yokota I'm learning Devil Masami. Through the Destroyer I watched a Rikidozan match for the first time. Etc and so on. Focusing on one individual leads to filling in much more.

It's really been a blast so far and a totally novel way to decide what to watch next. I know that's a vague system but it's what's working for me early on. When I get into the thick of the ballot I imagine I'll have to start watching more concentrated chunks of each career that makes the cut, but thankfully I have years of throwing darts until then.

[Ricky Jackson]

There are five years until the vote, longer than the First World War and nearly as long as the Second. Chill people, there is plenty of time 

[Matt D]

Sequels have subtitles right?

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

I'm pretty sure this should officially be

GWE 2026: The Best In-Ring Wrestler Based on Footage

It'd avoid us so, so many headaches later. It's not limiting at all based on the spirit of the project. It just clarifies. Those are the four elements: "best" "in-ring" "wrestler" "footage" that 90% of us agree upon right? Also sort of turns it from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC which eliminates false advertising for why we can't all vote for Danny Hodge or why we're not all voting for Hogan and the Rock.

[Grimmas]

5 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Sequels have subtitles right?

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

I'm pretty sure this should officially be

GWE 2026: The Best In-Ring Wrestler Based on Footage

It'd avoid us so, so many headaches later. It's not limiting at all based on the spirit of the project. It just clarifies. Those are the four elements: "best" "in-ring" "wrestler" "footage" that 90% of us agree upon right? Also sort of turns it from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC which eliminates false advertising for why we can't all vote for Danny Hodge or why we're not all voting for Hogan and the Rock.

It's the third GWE

[Matt D]

Ok. Sure. Die Hard 3: Die Hard with a Vengeance then. I’m flexible?

[elliott]

GWE 2036: This TIme Its Not Personal 

[Grimmas]

GW3

[strobogo]

What do you do with guys who don't have a long list of 5 star matches, but their performances are always 5 stars? Or how do you weigh guys like Regal and Arn who are clearly great but whose roles didn't necessarily  give them big show case matches like Flair or Jumbo or what have you?