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Post by bossrock on Mar 29, 2020 7:18:18 GMT -5
Thought with all the comparisons/contrasts and per Elliot's question in the Hokuto vs. Flair thread, it would be cool to post our own Greatest Wrestler Ever list. After all, 2026 is just 6 years away The top 32 is the only ranking I feel remotely comfortable with. 1. Kenta Kobashi 2. Mitsuharu Misawa 3. Toshiaki Kawada 4. Genichiro Tenryu 5. Stan Hansen 6. Daniel Bryan 7. Jun Akiyama 8. Akira Taue 9. Jushin Liger 10. Rey Mysterio 11. Ric Flair 12. Terry Funk 13. A.J. Styles 14. Shinya Hashimoto 15. Hiroshi Tanahashi 16. Aja Kong 17. Akira Hokuto 18. Carlos Colon 19. Negro Casas 20. Shinjiro Otani 21. Jumbo Tsuruta 22. El Satanico 23. Vader 24. Ricky Steamboat 25. Chris Hero 26. Eddie Guerrero 27. Mick Foley 28. El Hijo del Santo 29. Tatsumi Fujinami 30. Bull Nakano 31. Dick Togo 32. Jerry Lawler
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Post by Cap on Mar 29, 2020 10:48:46 GMT -5
I could probably put together a rough top 25 that I wouldn't be two ashamed of in a week. Maybe I'll try to do that later when I am putting off work.
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Post by elliott on Mar 29, 2020 14:30:21 GMT -5
Boss, Shinjiro Ohtani at 19 really stood out. I need post-NJPW heavyweight Ohtani recommendations.
Today if I had to turn in a list the top 50 would look like this: 1. Terry Funk 2. El Satanico 3. El Hijo del Santo 4. Jerry Lawler 5. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 6. Stan Hansen 7. Kiyoshi Tamura 8. Volk Han 9. The Destroyer 10. Genichiro Tenryu 11. Ric Flair 12. Akira Hokuto 13. Devil Masami 14. Bull Nakano 15. Buddy Rose 16. Alexander Otsuka 17. Sangre Chicana 18. Invader I 19. Chigusa Nagayo 20. Jaguar Yokota 21. Negro Casas 22. Shinya Hashimoto 23. Ricky Morton 24. MS-1 25. Yuki Ishikawa 26. Jushin Liger 27. Tatsumi Fujinami 28. Perro Aguayo 29. Randy Savage 30. Atlantis 31. Jumbo Tsuruta 32. Andre the Giant 33. Giant Baba 34. Rey Mysterio Jr 35. El Dandy 36. William Regal 37. Villano III 38. Dump Matsumoto 39. Vader 40. Dick Togo 41. Fuerza Guerrera 42. Eddie Guerrero 43. Daniel Bryan 44. Ricky Steamboat 45. Dick Murdoch 46. Buddy Rogers 47. Nick Bockwinkel 48. Bill Dundee 49. Riki Choshu 50. Abdullah the Butcher
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Post by microstatistics on Mar 29, 2020 15:11:35 GMT -5
Yeah Ohtani at 19 is awesome, bossrock.
Not sure I want to (or can) rank them but here is a list of Top 25 that I am fairly comfortable with.
Bold are Top 5 though. Definite Tier 1.
Aja Kong Akira Hokuto Akira Taue Black Terry Bret Hart Brock Lesnar Daisuke Ikeda Daniel Bryan Eddie Guerrero El Hijo del Santo El Satanico Genichiro Tenryu Jim Breaks Jumbo Tsuruta Jun Akiyama Jushin Liger Kenta Kobashi Kiyoshi Tamura Lou Thesz Negro Casas Shawn Michaels Shinya Hashimoto Tatsumi Fujinami Volk Han Yoshiaki Fujiwara
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Post by bossrock on Mar 29, 2020 17:08:59 GMT -5
Otani recs, probably some I'm forgetting:
vs. Toshiaki Kawada 9/6/03 w/Takao Omori vs. Yoshihiro Takayama and Kohei Sato 2/18/07 vs. Shinsuke Nakamura 10/12/09 vs. Daiki Inaba 3/3/15 vs. Yuji Hino 1/1/19 vs. Daisuke Sekimoto 6/22/19
He's still very good to this day. In a very similar vein to that Liger, Casas, Togo, Rey category of "How is this guy still this good at this age?"
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Post by KB8 on Mar 29, 2020 18:21:16 GMT -5
I actually reworked my whole top 100 about this time last year.
1. Negro Casas 2. Genichiro Tenryu 3. Stan Hansen 4. Terry Funk 5. Kiyoshi Tamura 6. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 7. El Satanico 8. Jerry Lawler 9. Shinya Hashimoto 10. Toshiaki Kawada 11. Buddy Rose 12. Mitsuharu Misawa 13. El Dandy 14. Nick Bockwinkel 15. Eddie Guerrero 16. Rey Mysterio Jr. 17. Yuki Ishikawa 18. El Hijo del Santo 19. Tatsumi Fujinami 20. Daisuke Ikeda 21. Volk Han 22. Daniel Bryan 23. Ricky Steamboat 24. Bill Dundee 25. Arn Anderson
26. Dick Murdoch 27. Blue Panther 28. Kenta Kobashi 29. Barry Windham 30. Ric Flair 31. Ricky Morton 32. Virus 33. Bobby Eaton 34. Sangre Chicana 35. Naoki Sano 36. Rick Martel 37. Randy Savage 38. Mariko Yoshida 39. Riki Choshu 40. Akira Taue 41. Dustin Rhodes 42. Pirata Morgan 43. Jumbo Tsuruta 44. Fit Finlay 45. Takeshi Ono 46. Fuerza Guerrera 47. Steve Austin 48. Vader 49. Yoji Anjoh 50. Alexander Otsuka
51. Dick Togo 52. Aja Kong 53. Chris Benoit 54. Jushin “Thunder” Liger 55. Tito Santana 56. Butch Reed 57. Emilio Charles Jr. 58. Greg Valentine 59. Jerry Estrada 60. John Cena 61. LA Park 62. Black Terry 63. Jun Akiyama 64. La Fiera 65. Bob Backlund 66. MS-1 67. Shawn Michaels 68. Tully Blanchard 69. Rick Rude 70. Yoshihiro Tajiri 71. Bret Hart 72. Invader I 73. Atlantis 74. Roddy Piper 75. Akira Maeda
76. Negro Navarro 77. Tommy Rogers 78. Koko Ware 79. Yoshihisa Yamamoto 80. Mocho Cota 81. Chavo Guerrero Sr. 82. Billy Robinson 83. William Regal 84. Andre the Giant 85. Shinobu Kandori 86. Hector Guerrero 87. Jim Duggan 88. Sgt. Slaughter 89. Roman Reigns 90. Samoa Joe 91. Brock Lesnar 92. Buzz Sawyer 93. Tama 94. Jerry Blackwell 95. Jose Lothario 96. Kazunari Murakami 97. Juventud Guerrera 98. Tarzan Goto 99. Nobuhiko Takada 100. Herodes
The only thing that stands out as being sort of regrettable there is Takada being in ahead of someone like Takayama or Henry or like, Masa Kurusi or someone, but I stuck him on the list this time just because there's no other wrestler in history who has such a gulf between their stuff that I enjoy and their stuff that I don't. Takada has a number of incredible matches that he's clearly good to excellent in...and then he has a bunch of stuff that's deplorable and I wonder how the pendulum can swing so far. But the good stuff is tremendous and so he's at #99 and fuck it.
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Post by bossrock on Mar 29, 2020 19:10:28 GMT -5
I feel pretty comfortable with Kobashi as my number 1, but my top 6 is anyone who I would be fairly confident in calling the GOAT.
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Post by elliott on Mar 30, 2020 2:07:59 GMT -5
KB8's list is really good.
But I have to ask make the case for Tama in the top 100?
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Post by KB8 on Mar 30, 2020 7:49:43 GMT -5
Honestly, about fifty wrestlers could've landed in that bottom ten, so for the most part I went with my heart and included those that were more personal favourite picks at the time of putting the list together. Tama admittedly gets that personal favourite bump more than most as I'm an outrageously stupid fan of his. Like, is he actually better than Murakami or Blackwell or Juventud? Maybe, maybe not, but I could toss those ten names in the air and re-list them in whichever order they fell and it probably wouldn't make much difference to me.
He doesn't have much meat to his case if you're favouring longevity. It's not that I *don't* favour it; it's just not the most important thing to me personally, especially when you're talking about those bottom 10-20 spots. He has a really small body of work in comparison to more or less everybody else on that list, but the Islanders are one of my five favourite tag teams ever, with a handful of my favourite WWF tag matches ever, and that dude was fucking awesome in all of them. Ridiculously fun and energetic babyface, great face in peril and quite the highspot machine for the era. Then as a heel he was an incredible stooge bumper. His slingshot from the apron inside the ring is the GOAT and he gets outrageous height on everything. Makes ludicrous facial expressions that almost manage to keep a nerve hold compelling. I don't know how he never became at least a solid hand career midcarder in the WWF because he'd easily have had good matches all the way through those early 90s Hogan years, and probably could've stuck around after the old guard were being phased out (he'd only have been 27 in 1992).
The Samoan Swat Team/WCW stuff isn't as fun, but he was still really fun there. He's just one of those guys I'd be excited to watch in basically any situation, and that alone should probably put someone into consideration for something like this.
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Post by elliott on Mar 30, 2020 14:59:02 GMT -5
(he'd only have been 27 in 1992). Holy shit, really? He's had a couple of matches within the last few years actually. Including a tag against Solar?! Weird. I should watch some Islanders during the quarantine.
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Post by KB8 on Mar 30, 2020 17:54:41 GMT -5
The Strike Force series rules and his singles match with Martel is really damn good. There's also a Dream Team match that's pretty awesome and that Hart Foundation match from Maple Leaf Gardens is my favourite Hart Foundation tag. I think maybe they feuded with the Killer Bees as well but I don't even know if I've seen any of those matches (or maybe they never feuded with them and no matches exist). An Islanders/Powers of Pain match is a bit of a dream match for me but I don't think it ever happened, unfortunately.
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Post by Cap on Mar 30, 2020 18:13:25 GMT -5
Putting a top 25 together was tougher than I thought it would be. Depending on how long this social distancing goes on, I may keep picking at this and flesh out a top 50 and then 100. 1. Bryan Danielson 2. Kenta Kobashi 3. Stan Hansen 4. Terry Funk 5. El Hijo Del Santo 6. Ric Flair 7. Shinobu Kandori 8. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 9. El Satanico 10. Kiyoshi Tamura 11. Eddie Guerrero 12. Akira Hokuto 13. Genichiro Tenryu 14. Mick Foley
15. Randy Savage 16. Minoru Suzuki
17. Volk Han 18. Jushin Liger 19. Jumbo Tsuruta 20. Mitsuharu Misawa 21. Shinya Hashimoto 22. Billy Robinson 23. Sangre Chicana 24. Nick Bockwinkle 25. Negro Casas Lots of these could be moved around. Some quick tier thoughts. 1-2: I am pretty sure those are my top two. I won't expand on it here. I plan on putting Kobashi and Bryan together for a wrestler comparison down the road. 3-5: Pretty sure these three belong here for me. Hansen could have been #1 for me at one point. Funk's career is undeniable. Santo - though not my favorite luchador - is hard for me to not think of as the best. 6-13: I have mixed feelings about some of this section. At times I want to move Flair to the bottom of this, but then that feels like me thinking about favorites and not best. There are a lot of people here that are hard for me to compare. On my first edit of this list I expanded this to 13 because I think Tenryu belongs in this grouping I already made some moves within this grouping, but it holds fast as a sort of cuttoff for me. 14-18: Not on purpose at all, but this wound up being the sort of wrestling genius stretch for me, people who I think of as overall talented, but who's greatest strength is their wrestling intellect. Probably no greater example of this than Mick Foley. I could see anyone in this section creeping up. They are people I will get really high on in phases.
19-21: A lot of big Japanese names and aces, again, not on purpose. I feel pretty good about all of them in this range. I could see any one of them being #1 on a list or being left off if their style/era wasn't your thing.
22-24: The biggest victims of footage wound up together as well. My gut tells me if we ran across a treasure trove of footage ever emerged for any of these guys they would shoot up the list, especially Chicana and Robinson. I might sneak Bockwinkle up a bit.
25: I never thought i was someone who was low on Casas, but maybe I am. I mean 25 is still great, but when people talk about him I always feel like I don't like him quite as much. At the same time, I have really sat down and watched a lot of Casas in a bit.
EDIT: Have liger low in hindsight.
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Post by elliott on Mar 30, 2020 20:54:33 GMT -5
I like how you want to move Flair down, but hesitate due to favorite vs best and then you've got Kandori at #7. Hahaha!
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Post by elliott on Mar 31, 2020 3:57:28 GMT -5
Thought this would be fun. Top 25 Joshi and top 25 Luchadores top 25 shoot style. Because they get less love and I'm on pandemic lockdown, so what the fuck.
Joshi: 1. Akira Hokuto
2. Dump Matsumoto
3. Bull Nakano
4. Jaguar Yokota
5. Chigusa Nagayo
6. Devil Masami
7. Meiko Satomura
8. Shinobu Kandori
9. Mariko Yoshida
10. Aja Kong
11. Mayumi Ozaki
12. Megumi Kudo
13. Itzuki Yamazaki
14. Takako Inoue
15. Manami Toyota
16. Yukari Ohmori
17. Mima Shimoda
18. Etsuka Mita
19. Dynamite Kansai
20. Chikayo Nagashima
21. Bison Kimura
22. Harley Saito
23. Lioness Asuka
24. Cutie Suzuki
25. Suzuka Minami
Lucha: 1. El Satanico 2. El Hijo del Santo 3. Negro Casas 4. Sangre Chicana 5. Perro Aguayo 6. MS-1 7. Villano III 8. El Dandy 9. Fuerza Guerrera 10. Atlantis 11. Emilio Charles Jr 12. LA Park 13. Pirata Morgan 14. Black Terry 15. Blue Panther 16. Solar 17. Villano IV 18. La Fiera 19. Espanto Jr 20. Mocho Cota 21. Super Astro 22. Dr Wagner Jr 23. Brazo de Oro 24. Pimpinela Escarlata 25. Lizmark
Shoot Style. 1. Kiyoshi Tamura 2. Volk Han 3. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 4. Yuki Ishikawa 5. Alexander Otsuka 6. Daisuke Ikeda 7. Carl Greco 8. Naoki Sano 9. Mariko Yoshida 10. Super Tiger 11. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka 12. Yoshihisa Yamamoto 13. Akira Maeda 14. Kazuo Yamazaki 15. Yoji Anjoh 16. Takeshi Ono 17. Nobuhiko Takada 18. Masakatsu Funaki 19. Andrei Kopylov 20. Hiromi Yagi 21. Mikhail Ilioukhine 22. Tatsuo Nakano 23. Yoshihiro Takayama 24. Masahito Kakihara 25. Yumi Fukawa
Note...I don't know what to do about Kazunari Murakami, Masashi Aoyagi and Naoya Ogawa. They were more shoot style gimmicks who worked pro-wrestling matches than shoot style wrestlers who did shoot style matches. Murakami would be top 10 if they counted for sure.
Anyway. Pandemic!
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Post by Cap on Mar 31, 2020 6:10:15 GMT -5
I like how you want to move Flair down, but hesitate due to favorite vs best and then you've got Kandori at #7. Hahaha! That is probably fair... I think about how high I am on Kandori a decent amount and I keep coming back to the fact that I genuinely think she is the best female wrestler I have ever seen. I completely get that it isn't conventional wisdom, but she is a singular performer to me. While she isn't the best at everything, but she is awesome at so many things and as a total package she is absolutely elite.
Favorite vs best is also a fuzzy thing to me, always has been. I've gone on about this for years (talked about it a decent amount over at PWO). I think the overlap on the venn diagram between the two is pretty big. I appreciate attempts to create objective measures for sorting out wrestling greatness, but they are all in vain. At the same time I do that they aren't necessarily one in the same.
Trying to navigate that, I probably think more carefully about people that are on my favorites list and how I am judging them/why I like them than your traditional consensus GOAT contenders. In turn, I feel more comfortable about where I have Kandori than Flair. I could see Kandori slipping some as I think about it more or whatever, but I'd be surprised if she fell out of my top 10.
Unrelated (well sort of related given Elliott's earlier comparisons), I came sort of close to putting Brock in my top 25. Ultimately, I felt comfortable leaving him off, but i was surprised that I was even thinking about it.
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