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Post by Cap on Apr 1, 2020 17:53:19 GMT -5
I found the debates interesting. I rarely aligned with JVK on much, but I always liked that he was Flair Flair Flair up to when he "crunched the numbers" and then Jumbo beat him out. His system was still silly and subjective, but he put the dude with the best numbers on tops, even though he had preached Flair as #1 before that. BIGLAV was at least good for a lot of banter and jokes.
I remember after listening to all the discussion and hearing how invested people had come, I laughed so hard when someone put Steiner #1. I cackled in my apt. I knew people were going to have meltdowns.
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Post by microstatistics on Apr 1, 2020 19:04:57 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. Yeah, I should have mentioned the limitation was for different reasons (number of matches worked vs. missing content from prime). Yeah, I've seen Fujiwara vs. Yamada. Nothing special but really good. Not sure if they had another singles match in the 90s. Both were arguably at their best between 1989 and 1994 so the timing would have been perfect. |
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Post by microstatistics on Apr 1, 2020 19:10:30 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. Bingo. |
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Post by pterois on Apr 29, 2020 7:02:54 GMT -5
Keep in mind it's always temporary and that some styles of wrestling remain quite mysterious to me.
1.Genichiro Tenryu
2.Kenta Kobashi
3.Toshiaki Kawada
4.Mitsuharu Misawa
5.Jumbo Tsuruta
6.Ric Flair
7.Chris Benoit
8.Yoshiaki Fujiwara
9.Kiyoshi Tamura
10.Stan Hansen
11.Tatsumi Fujinami
12.Arn Anderson
13.Rey Mysterio
14.Terry Funk
15.Vader
16.Jun Akiyama
17.Akira Taue
18.Bret Hart
19.Ricky Steamboat
20.Riki Choshu
21.Kurt Angle
22.Akira Maeda
23.Eddie Guerrero
24.Hiroshi Tanahashi
25.Bobby Eaton
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Post by Cap on May 12, 2020 18:16:38 GMT -5
That is a bold spot for Arn. I remember he finished relatively high. I was happy for that because I like Arn, but he wouldn't make it that high on my list.
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Post by pterois on May 13, 2020 6:18:19 GMT -5
He finished number 19. Arn was the most consistent wrestler of all time. Never had a bad match. It's super valuable because you're always entertained when he's in the ring. Always good in singles and tags. He had very good if not great matches in weeklies and I haven't even seen all his matches that are on tape. I need to stress how much he was awesome at beating up jobbers during the eighties, one of the most pleasant things in wrestling to watch. I value higly the ability of being entertaining in squash matches because it was a humengous part of wrestling TV in the eighties.
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Post by Cap on May 15, 2020 16:41:54 GMT -5
I just realized I didn't put Minoru Suzuki in my top 25 and that is a mistake. He would be in there for sure. I'll edit later... maybe.
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Post by Cap on May 16, 2020 17:45:42 GMT -5
Updated my list... tentatively
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Post by bossrock on May 16, 2020 20:22:54 GMT -5
Suzuki is on my list although his ranking is tentative (only my top 31 or so is locked). He's still very good to this day but I'm interested in seeing his early shoot stuff.
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Post by bossrock on May 16, 2020 20:26:26 GMT -5
Updated to reflect my current top 32.
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Post by elliott on May 17, 2020 4:10:10 GMT -5
I think it actually took Arn a little while to develop as a singles wrestler. I watched a couple of shockingly boring Arn matches recently against quality opponents (Windham, Garvin & Wahoo). Not to be all MOVEZ, but when he added the DDT and Spinebuster, his singles matches got a LOT better right away because he had some great highspots he could build his matches around. I wouldn't say he's bad, but just pretty bland in singles matches in 85-87 based on what I've watched. He puts it together sometime in 87 I feel like. To be fair, I've skipped the jobber matches and pterois specifically mentioned enjoying his squashes. I don't have an opinion on those but Arn always understood his role well so I imagine pterois analysis is accurate. Of course he was always a great tag worker.
Also, updated my list on the first page to include a top 50.
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Post by KB8 on May 17, 2020 7:27:04 GMT -5
I kind of agree with both sides on Arn. There are certainly Arn singles matches against good opponents that I don't like all that much, even in his prime. I've watched huge chunks of '85-'86 Crockett the last 18 months and I was a little surprised to find myself thinking Tully was clearly better than him at that time (Tully has a few years on Arn so that's to be expected, and not really a knock on Arn anyway). In '85 Arn is rock solid but you can see pretty much from match to match how much he was improving working with Ole. Early in the year he was fairly vanilla working on top, never had any of his awesome stomps yet, etc. By the end of the year he already looked way more polished and assured. By '86 he had the gourdbuster, and while I'd still take Tully that year in big singles matches, Arn absolutely was on the same level working tv competitive squashes/outright squashes. There's a stretch from January to April where he has a super fun match literally every week on tv and a couple of them are awesome. I'd say he mostly ruled by '86, basically (even if I don't think I'd say that was him at his peak yet).
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Post by violentbydesign on Jun 2, 2020 4:01:51 GMT -5
Is Tully over Arn a controversial opinion? I've honestly thought Tully was quite a bit better for a long time.
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Post by Cap on Jun 2, 2020 7:47:13 GMT -5
Suzuki is on my list although his ranking is tentative (only my top 31 or so is locked). He's still very good to this day but I'm interested in seeing his early shoot stuff. As I watch more shoot, Suzuki is shooting up my list. He is quite good good and quite believable. Between that and the fact that he continues to overperform in big spots to this day and be part of exciting builds and stories... he is an timer for me |
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Post by tetsujin on Jun 2, 2020 8:27:44 GMT -5
What are some of the best MiSu matches between his UWFi stuff and his more famous NOAH-NJPW stuff?
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