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Post by KB8 on Mar 31, 2020 6:32:25 GMT -5
This is good. I will also participate (the order of these will almost certainly differ from the way they're ordered on my overall top 100. A year's a long time. Prolly)
Lucha: 1. Negro Casas 2. El Satanico 3. El Hijo del Santo 4. El Dandy 5. Sangre Chicana 6. Blue Panther 7. Virus 8. Fuerza Guerrera 9. LA Park 10. Pirata Morgan 11. Black Terry 12. MS-1 13. Jerry Estrada 14. Negro Navarro 15. Emilio Charles Jr. 16. Espanto Jr. 17. Atlantis 18. Mocho Cota 19. La Fiera 20. Villano III 21. Perro Aguayo 22. Super Astro 23. Espectrito 24. Solar 25. Brazo de Plata
Shoot Style: 1. Kiyoshi Tamura 2. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 3. Yuki Ishikawa 4. Daisuke Ikeda 5. Volk Han 6. Yojo Anjoh 7. Takeshi Ono 8. Alex Otsuka 9. Yoshihisa Yamamoto 10. Naoki Sano 11. Carl Greco 12. Akira Maeda 13. Kazuo Yamazaki 14. Kazunari Murakami 15. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka 16. Masakatsu Funaki 17. Katsumi Usuda 18. Tatsuo Nakano 19. Super Tiger 20. Masahito Kakihara 21. Mikhail Ilioukhine 22. Yoshihiro Takayama 23. Andrei Kopylov 24. Nobuhiko Takada 25. Mitsuya Nagai
I feel like there's enough Murakami in Battlarts and Big Mouth Loud to get him on the list, though I only took that stuff into consideration when ranking him (his New Japan and Zero-One stuff probably pushes him higher overall). I didn't really feel comfortable adding folk like Yoshida, Fukawa, Yagi, etc. because I guess I don't have as much of a handle on the joshi/shoot style mish-mash yet even though those first couple ARSION years are tremendous.
Joshi: 1. Mariko Yoshida 2. Aja Kong 3. Shinobu Kandori 4. Akira Hokuto 5. Yumiko Hotta 6. Meiko Satomura 7. Chigusa Nagayo 8. Megumi Kudo 9. Jackie Sato 10. Yumi Fukawa
I couldn't do a top 25. I haven't seen enough to even feel comfortable in the first place, but beyond that my preferences within the style have shifted massively even over the last couple years. I actually think I'm higher on joshi in general now than I've been in about thirteen years, but I still need to be watching chunks of it to get into the rhythm of transitions and so on, but I haven't watched chunks of anything in a while. Yoshida at #1 is probably a "what in the fuck?" pick, but I love her and ARSION my favourite joshi by far. I never liked Ozaki to begin with, but revisiting some of her stuff last year I got more out of it than ever before. So yeah, for the most part (i.e. outside of a handful of women I'm pretty certain about) I don't really know what to do with joshi at this point. So take this as more favourite than best in a lot of ways.
And since lockdown is runnin' wild - standard old US: 1. Terry Funk 2. Stan Hansen 3. Jerry Lawler 4. Buddy Rose 5. Nick Bockwinkel 6. Eddie Guerrero 7. Rey Mysterio 8. Ric Flair 9. Ricky Steamboat 10. Ricky Morton 11. Bobby Eaton 12. Randy Savage 13. Arn Anderson 14. Barry Windham 15. Daniel Bryan 16. Dick Murdoch 17. Tully Blanchard 18. Bill Dundee 19. Rick Martel 20. Dustin Rhodes 21. Greg Valentine 22. Tommy Rogers 23. Steve Austin 24. Roddy Piper 25. Hector Guerrero
That was the hardest of the lot. I looked at it straight after I'd finished and could've changed about ten things. I'm pretty solid on my top 7, but beyond that I could easily have Martel or Arn or Savage or Bryan top 10 depending on how I'm feeling at that moment, and I could drop six of those guys (begrudgingly) in favour of six others on the fringes (that I hated myself for leaving off).
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Post by elliott on Mar 31, 2020 13:40:37 GMT -5
If you think someone is the best of a genre or style, then putting them in your overall top 10 isn't unreasonable at all. She stood out to me because: 1. Seven is a really high ranking. Her high vote in GWE was 9. 2. Her run as a top tier worker is like half as long as everyone else in your top 10 (excluding Tamura).
I try not to get so worked up over favorite vs best. There's not a single person in my top 25 or 50 or 100 that I don't love watching. Its not a list of favorites organized based on how much I like them. But I don't know how someone could make the top 25 if I didn't like watching them.
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Post by elliott on Mar 31, 2020 14:02:46 GMT -5
D'oh! I forgot about Virus. He's in there somewhere between Emilio and Panther. You're probably right. I just think of Murakami and I imagine him & Ishikawa brawling in the crowd or that Nagata match. He'd be in my overall top 100 for sure. Really only just because you left her off the shoot style list Yoshida as #1 Joshi worker isn't outrageous at all because she's not a typical Joshi worker. She absolutely stands out within the style and was fucking awesome at what she did. I wanted to do this but.. I need to think more about a "US Top 25" because 1. It feels wrong to rank Hansen so high when its mostly due to Japan. 2. Puerto Rico should probably count here? So what does that do for Hansen? 3. So then am I just doing US Born Wrestlers? So would I have to exclude Regal or Roddy Piper because they're not US Born? That seems dumb 4. Terry would make a top 25 US based solely on his US work but he wouldn't be my #1 & it would be more work to compartmentalize his US work and try and rank him based on that while completely ignoring all the Japan stuff. And do I ignore Rey Jr's work in Mexico? Eddy's work in Japan? Flair's work in Japan? Vader? 5. So I thought about doing a "World Traveler" list with folks like the Funks, Hansen, Vader, Billy Robinson, Rey Jr etc 6. Then I was like "How am I gonna do a Top 25 US Wrestler list and not have Vader on it?" 7. This is where I gave up and was like fuck it, "I'll just do Shoot style, Joshi and Lucha." I don't have coronavirus, but the cabin fever is catching up
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Post by microstatistics on Mar 31, 2020 15:09:21 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!
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.
Strongly agree. Any objective metric you use (e.g. pacing, compactness for matches or consistency, selling for wrestlers) is, ultimately, evaluated subjectively. That's why I think any placement for a wrestler (or match) is reasonable, as long as you can justify it. I'm not super high on Kandori but if you think all her top matches are classics and she possesses an undeniable aura/charisma, #7 seems perfectly fine and favoritism doesn't necessarily have to play a big part.
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Post by microstatistics on Mar 31, 2020 15:17:39 GMT -5
Joshi: 1. Mariko Yoshida 2. Aja Kong 3. Shinobu Kandori 4. Akira Hokuto 5. Yumiko Hotta 6. Meiko Satomura 7. Chigusa Nagayo 8. Megumi Kudo 9. Jackie Sato 10. Yumi Fukawa I couldn't do a top 25. I haven't seen enough to even feel comfortable in the first place, but beyond that my preferences within the style have shifted massively even over the last couple years. I actually think I'm higher on joshi in general now than I've been in about thirteen years, but I still need to be watching chunks of it to get into the rhythm of transitions and so on, but I haven't watched chunks of anything in a while. Yoshida at #1 is probably a "what in the fuck?" pick, but I love her and ARSION my favourite joshi by far. I never liked Ozaki to begin with, but revisiting some of her stuff last year I got more out of it than ever before. So yeah, for the most part (i.e. outside of a handful of women I'm pretty certain about) I don't really know what to do with joshi at this point. So take this as more favourite than best in a lot of ways. I think Yoshida at #1 for Joshi is pretty reasonable actually. Particularly if classic joshi doesn't click for you. I considered her for my overall Top 25 but her peak is just a little too short. You had her at #38 overall and that seems spot on. Neat Top 100, by the way.
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Post by microstatistics on Mar 31, 2020 15:48:10 GMT -5
Changed my mind and tried to rank my Top 25.
1. Kiyoshi Tamura 2. El Satanico
These two are 'hurt' by lack of quantity but when it comes to a combination of all time classics and a great match/volume ratio, they are the greatest ever. One is arguably the greatest specialist while the other is arguably the greatest jack of all trades.
3. Jushin Liger 4. Yoshiaki Fujiwara
A ton of all time classics and great matches against a variety of opponents. Both were great for 30+ years.
5. Kenta Kobashi 6. Daniel Bryan
Top 2 when it comes to sheer number of great matches.
7. Eddie Guerrero 8. Akira Hokuto
Insane peaks and at the height of their powers, they could do anything. Knocked down by weird gaps in their careers.
9. Shawn Michaels 10. Bret Hart
The quintessential WWE guys.
11. Tatsumi Fujinami 12. El Hijo del Santo 13. Jun Akiyama
Classics, great matches, versatility, longevity.
14. Daisuke Ikeda 15. Volk Han
16. Genichiro Tenryu 17. Negro Casas 18. Jumbo Tsuruta 19. Shinya Hashimoto
Great match machines but lack of truly high end stuff holds them back.
20. Jim Breaks 21. Lou Thesz
The best in their respective styles/eras
22. Brock Lesnar 23. Black Terry 24. Aja Kong 25. Akira Taue
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Post by Cap on Mar 31, 2020 16:07:41 GMT -5
I know I have beat this horse to death as well, but I also don't really prioritize longevity as highly as most seem to when it comes to how I think of greatness. Even if i were making a case for Terry Funk I probably wouldn't start with longevity, even though that is a massive part of his case. That is just not the way I think about it.
I also get that the point about Flair/Kandori wasn't a criticism or anything, but it made me think of another issue more broadly. They are - to me - at opposite ends of a spectrum. On one end you have Kandori who had almost no discernible hype or position in a grander narrative of wrestling (as i experience it here in the U.S). When I started watching Joshi I knew Aja and Bull and Toyota. I heard hype for Hokuto, Dynamite, Nagayo. I didn't really hear people talk about Kandori much. Even once i got into more and started talking to people in forums about joshi opinions were mixed at best. I think here she is thought pretty highly of, but I am the high vote by some distance. That is all niche too. The western fan (let alone non fan) has no clue who Kandori is. There are no highly produced english language docs about her. She is a virtual unkown. With Kandori, I feel like my opinion really formed in watching her and almost nowhere else. Ric Flair on the other hand isn't just known, he is iconic. He is crucial to the very mythos of wrestling, celebrated as one of the all time greats. I think it can make him really hard to to judge in these contexts. There are lots of English language documentaries about and tributes to him him. There is a fucking 30 for 30 for him for crying out loud. Even guys like Hogan, Austin, and the Rock aren't so closely associated with being great WRESTLERS like Flair is. Of course we can all recognize this and it doesn't keep up from forming our own opinions, but when the rubber hits the road, its sort of hard for me personally to think about where he belongs on a list like this... vs the hype... vs the blow-back criticism/overcompensation. That is why I say I feel more comfortable about my ranking of flair than Kandori.
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Post by elliott on Mar 31, 2020 18:51:02 GMT -5
Woohoo! I dunno about this. Satanico has a ton of quality stuff on film. Not just high end classics and MOTYC but very good/good/entertaining/quality performances. Even without extensive footage of his athletic peak there are without exaggeration 100s of quality taped Satanico matches over 4 decades. There's also a perception issue with Tamura because he worked at most a dozen times per year and how do you compare that to people who worked 250-300 matches a year? Well, we don't actually have 275 Ric Flair matches from 1986 on tape. But we have literally 100% of Tamura's career on tape. So how is it people feel comfortable comparing the 40% (at absolute most and its probably more like 5-10%) of Ric Flair's career on tape to the 100% of Kiyoshi Tamura? "Only worked 120 matches in his decade long career" is a weak argument when we can watch all of the matches and see that like 105 of them are awesome. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. You ranked him 1st after all! More than anything, Tamura is "hurt" by people not watching shoot style. People like us who do and appreciate it universally consider him a top GWE candidate and don't care as much about the total matches because we recognize just how good Tamura was at what he was doing. Its a little different from Satanico who is hurt generally by people not digging lucha and more specifically by some lucha fans preferring flashier guys like Casas, Santo or El Dandy. Have you watched this? I need to check it out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5MRvagx2YIs that their only singles match? I'd love to see mid 90s King of the Juniors vs Old Man Fujiwara. Its so easy to forget that Hokuto was effectively done as a full time performer in 1993 at age 26. Between 1994-1998 she worked 18 total matches for AJW. Excluding 1998 when she only worked 2 matches all year, she was more active from 1997-2001 where she averaged just under 25 matches per year for GAEA. Nothing in 2003. Then from 2004-2006 she works 7 total matches against Kendo Ka Shin, Stalker Ichikawa, a battle royal. Shit like that. Including her work in WCW & Mexico, from 1994-2006 she worked roughly 170 matches total. 103 of those came in 1997 and 1999-2001. Her main AJW career was from 1985-1993 with time off in there due to injuries. Footage is pretty sparse of her in the 80s, but what we've got she's good in. I've been reading through the History of 1/4 Tokyo Dome Mega WON from last year and she did commentary on the 1/4/95 Tokyo Dome TV Coverage with Liger. Meltz had this to say: "Hokuto being put in that spot shows just how over and well respected she's become in the last few years and how well accepted womens wrestling has become as well because a few years ago they never would have dreamed of putting a woman wrestler in that spot." Anyway. Hokuto was awesome.
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Post by KB8 on Apr 1, 2020 9:08:55 GMT -5
I wanted to do this but.. I need to think more about a "US Top 25" because 1. It feels wrong to rank Hansen so high when its mostly due to Japan. 2. Puerto Rico should probably count here? So what does that do for Hansen? 3. So then am I just doing US Born Wrestlers? So would I have to exclude Regal or Roddy Piper because they're not US Born? That seems dumb 4. Terry would make a top 25 US based solely on his US work but he wouldn't be my #1 & it would be more work to compartmentalize his US work and try and rank him based on that while completely ignoring all the Japan stuff. And do I ignore Rey Jr's work in Mexico? Eddy's work in Japan? Flair's work in Japan? Vader? 5. So I thought about doing a "World Traveler" list with folks like the Funks, Hansen, Vader, Billy Robinson, Rey Jr etc 6. Then I was like "How am I gonna do a Top 25 US Wrestler list and not have Vader on it?" 7. This is where I gave up and was like fuck it, "I'll just do Shoot style, Joshi and Lucha." I don't have coronavirus, but the cabin fever is catching up My criteria in the end was basically "wrestlers either born in the US or Canada or the UK or Ireland or basically anywhere else as long as they worked a chunk of their career in America, but any stuff they did outside America still counts." So like, Regal and Finlay - who were on the peripheries of the top 25 - and Bret Hart and Billy Robinson and whoever else would still be eligible. I also took into account the entirety of their career rather than limiting it only to what they did in the US, as the latter would obviously make things wildly different. It seemed the least complicated thing at the time but now I'm not so sure... I may actually do a US only list later, where everybody is eligible but only work from within America counts. I'd include Puerto Rico in it as well (for the fact it was an NWA territory and thus feels sort of "American" in that sense; not for any political or geographical reasons as I unfortunately do not know enough about the history of Puerto Rico). So if you REALLY liked Masa Saito's run in the AWA he'd be eligible, even though he's not American. And guys like Regal and Finlay would still be eligible for the WCW/WWF stuff. And if that that short WWF run really does it for you then the Bull Nakano fans could represent her.
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Post by nintendologic on Apr 1, 2020 11:23:16 GMT -5
I tried putting together a list based on an algorithm derived from the results of my rewatching project, but I ended up with Keiji Mutoh ranked ahead of Ric Flair. Needless to say, it's back to the drawing board.
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Post by Cap on Apr 1, 2020 11:39:37 GMT -5
hahah... i feel like there is a funny short film that should be made about a wrestling fan that tries to create an objective system for this and fails in amusing ways that only wrestling fans would get.
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Post by elliott on Apr 1, 2020 15:54:29 GMT -5
hahah... i feel like there is a funny short film that should be made about a wrestling fan that tries to create an objective system for this and fails in amusing ways that only wrestling fans would get. JerryVonKramer was a real life example of this during GWE and it literally broke whatever was left of him to break.
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Post by Cap on Apr 1, 2020 16:18:50 GMT -5
I remember. Wasn't it BIGLAV? I actually thought it was a relatively good system and he implemented it well. It was still - in my opinion - jamming a square peg in a round hole, but it was a compelling attempt. I was following a lot of those podcasts and the project as a whole. Got me through writing my dissertation.
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Post by elliott on Apr 1, 2020 17:09:46 GMT -5
I think peak and consistency are probably the most important things from a big picture POV. Longevity really comes into play as a separating factor among the top tier. Sangre Chicana is the best wrestler I've ever seen... for 2 nights. Compare that to El Hijo del Santo who is "just one of" the best wrestlers I've ever seen, but it lasted for like 20 years. That's where longevity (and consistency) comes into play. Santo was never as good as Chicana was on Chicana's best night. But it would feel crazy rating Chicana above Santo based on those 2 matches when Santo churned out great performances more consistently and for a substantially longer time.
I don't think you one should "start" with longevity when making a case for anyone as a GOATC but you can't dismiss it either. All of the GOATC are going to have things in common such as Peak, Longevity, Input, Output, Consistency, etc. Its how they become the GOATCs. Very few people are going to call someone the GOAT based on a one year run and if they did, we would all agree it would look weird. If someone made a GWE list and the top 5 was: 1. Rick Rude 2. Terry Funk 3. Daniel Bryan 4. Kenta Kobashi 5. Genichiro Tenryu
And the argument was that Rick Rude's 1992 was the greatest all around year ever by a wrestler and was so good it warrants putting him above Funk, Bryan, Kobashi & Tenryu, we would all think it a pretty out there opinion.
I don't think there's a magic number of years or matches or anything mind you. And I would never frame an argument like Wrestler X was Great for 15 years and Wrestler Y was great for 14 years therefore Wrestler X was better. That would be ludicrous. Where it starts to matter I think is when Wrestler A was great for 25 years and Wrestler B was great for 3 years. You have to have a run of some significance to get up to the top tier. (Note, a 10+ year run of being a top level worker like Kandori is not insignificant. That s a long time to be great if you think she's great for that long.)
Agree on the stuff about Flair vs Kandori more specifically. I think Flair actually faces a pretty big handicap in circles like ours for those reasons. That he is able to hold up to the scrutiny that has existed for as long as I've been alive (Terry Funk used to complain that Flair always worked the same match in the 80s) is remarkable. I love Kandori but she wouldn't be able to hold up under the microscope Flair has been put under by hardcore fans. Very few would.
I do think it is interesting that Flair has become a bigger mainstream name & part of the culture in the last 10 years than he was in his 80s peak. Ric Flair was "wrestling famous" in the 80s. But he wasn't as recognizable a part of popular culture as folks like Hogan, Savage, Piper, even someone like Jake Roberts in the mid-late 80s. In the 90s he would have been behind Hogan, Goldberg, DDP, Austin, Rock, Undertaker, DX and Foley as far as wrestlers transcending pro-wrestling and permeating pop-culture. That the Lakers play use the "WOOOO" soundbite in games all the time is a very recent trend.
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Post by elliott on Apr 1, 2020 17:19:55 GMT -5
I remember. Wasn't it BIGLAV? I actually thought it was a relatively good system and he implemented it well. It was still - in my opinion - jamming a square peg in a round hole, but it was a compelling attempt. I was following a lot of those podcasts and the project as a whole. Got me through writing my dissertation. The problem with JVK's system was that it was one pompous doofus arbitrarily assigning arbitrary numerical values to arbitrary categories based completely around one man's subjective and comically ill-informed opinions and then him deeming it an objective exercise because math. So much time was wasted during GWE with people falling for JVK's bullshit.
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