GWE Non-Thread Worthy Comments

[HeadCheese]

One of my favorite things about GWE research so far is going to watch a match expecting to watch more of one and then unexpectedly, someone I was not considering shows out and inspires me to check out more of their work.

The unexpected wrestlers are so fun to deep dive on

I did not have many thoughts about Rambo and Mighty Inoue last week, but they gripped me so much with their perfomances that they feel will probably make my list too..

[HeadCheese]

Passed 800+ matches watched for GWE/GME research this year. It's been so cool to discover and watch things for the first time. 

My list doesn't feel close to final yet but, there are some great wrestlers that I didn't know of/know much kc last year who will make my list with new all time favorite matches.

Not sure if I have shared this here but, here's my spreadsheet of matches watched with links to most of them and my list progression.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjmhE5bpN9Iiog8_4Z1BC1jEfWDYGyeywmOSg8vGISY/edit?usp=drivesdk

[Matt D]

If I could avoid making a list at this point, I would.

There was a certain purity to my 2016 list based on what I haven't seen but I've spent the last five years or so trying to rectify some of the missing spaces and it's like when you clean a room by taking out all of the mess first. I've got ten years before I'm going to be done. If ever. And in general, that's great because life long learning is the way to go. It's terrible for this list though. 

I am going to lay down some ground rules for myself that everyone will hate however.

1. No active competitors unless they were wrestling in the 90s. I don't want to deal with it. I'd love to not have to deal with Danielson too but I probably have to. Hero too. That means no Moxley, no Mistico. I want a more absolute picture of their career I guess? Mainly I just don't want to deal with it. Most of these people wouldn't have made my list anyway. The Omegas of the world aren't making it certainly. I don't particularly like their matches. But I'd have to think about people like Darby or Joe or Kingston or Hechicero and I don't really want to. The Dustins, Christians, Blue Panthers, Fujinamis, etc. are ok.  

2. I can't rate someone unless I have at least a 50-75% understanding of their career (footage dependent) to my standards. I don't for Hashimoto. I'm doing the work now. I don't for Chono. I don't for Liger. I don't for Tamura, at all. I don't for Devil Masami. I don't for Dump. I don't for Yokota. I did a ton of extra work to fill in gaps for the people I was close to being able to rate in 2014-16. I'm not doing that this year. I'm just continuing on with my projects. Borderline people will be UWF 1 guys like Maeda/Takada/Yamazaki even though I'm limited into their 90s, people like Vader where I have big gaps still. someone like Yumi Ikeshita. Pillars are real borderline but I do have a sense of them even though I haven't seen much of their 00s and am limited after 92-93 in general. But I'll probably just rank them lower on the basis of incomplete comprehension. I won't rank Akiyama for instance, however.

I'm making a list out of obligation but I take no joy from it this time around. I do feel like I'll be in great shape in 2036 though.

[DMJ]

I have similar thoughts -

My 2016 list was primarily WWE and 80s NWA/WCW with a smattering of ECW and TNA guys because, at the time, that was basically all the wrestling I had seen. 10 years later, I've watched most every AEW PPV and a good bit of the TV, I've watched all of the ECW PPVs I'd never seen before, have watched much, much more of the TNA PPVs that are on YouTube, and, a few years ago, created a playlist of recommended matches and then turned it into a "catch all" to help me in the GWE process. 

At this point, I'm looking at almost an entirely new list with at least 20 workers who were not on my 2016 one. 

My biggest rule is that I'm not putting anyone on the list who I haven't watched and reviewed 20 matches from. I don't want to vote for anyone based on "rep." This basically means I'll have very few lucha guys and almost no modern Japanese workers.

In the case of the former, lucha is such a huge blind spot and I haven't been "bitten by the bug" yet so there's just no way I'll watch enough of it in the next 4 months to really rank anyone other than the guys that I know and love already (La Parka, Psicosis, obviously Rey, maybe Pentagon Jr.). 

In the case of the latter, my international focus for the past few years has been 80s and 90s Japanese wrestling and I have fallen in love with so many workers from those eras that I'm just not going to make it to more modern stuff - which is also much, much harder to find on YouTube.

I'll admit this does lead to almost shameful results on my list as someone like Konosuke Takeshita will probably make my Top 100 based on the strength of his AEW case and a handful of non-AEW YouTube matches I've watched, while Tanahashi and Okada will probably be absent just because I simply haven't seen enough of their stuff and, based on cursory searches, most of their most-hyped matches are not on YouTube (I'm guessing they're on NJPW World? Is that still a thing?).