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Post by Cap on Dec 20, 2021 16:16:26 GMT -5
I've been sort of pondering this since I saw the results a couple weeks back. The short version is simple... is late 80s and 90s AJPW really that much better than everything else?
Of the top 10 matches over the first 3 years of this project, 9 of them have remained consistent. They have moved around within the top 10, but not out. Of those 9 matches, 7 are from AJPW between 1989 and 1997.
I'm really genuinely posing this as a question. Is it simply a matter of this time period being the best wrestling has ever been? Or is there something else going on? Don't hear what I am not saying. I'm not casting aspersions on the results. All of these matches are matches I love and vote for every year. The results are the results and I would never advocate for strategic voting (I really hope that is not something we ever start seeing here) I just can't help but think about how how little movement we see in the top 10. We have a pretty eclectic group of voters with a wide range of tastes and interests. We have also had a rotating cast of voters. Yet, every year, it is more or less the same at the top. I can't help but wonder if it is a matter of AJPW being so crucial in shaping the very concept of great wrestling for so many of internet wrestling fans or if there is some narrative influence where certain canonical matches wind up being hard for people to justify not voting for or not being really high on (I know I have felt this in the past a bit as I try to sort through the old "best vs favorite" chestnut.
Then again, maybe it is just as simple as the results indicate. Maybe these are at or near the top for a reason and that reason is that they are the greatest matches ever.
So what do people make of the results at the top?
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Post by Control21 on Dec 20, 2021 16:28:43 GMT -5
I'm not opposed to the idea that 90s AJPW had a lot of great matches. It's obvious that guys like Taue, Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi, and even wrestlers like Kikuchi or Furnas/Kroffat could put on a show. I would say that maybe AJPW is held a little higher than some other great stuff in the 90s like RINGS, AJW, or even NJPW, and it might be time for the larger wrestling fanbase as a whole to re-evaluate the consensus that was basically inserted into the narrative by tape traders and the WON subscribers from the 1990s. That task is difficult though, and it seems a lot of people, in general, are not willing to let that go away.
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Post by elliott on Dec 20, 2021 16:49:04 GMT -5
All this tells us is the majority of a small group of people who participate in this project prefer 90s AJPW.
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Post by kas on Dec 20, 2021 17:05:21 GMT -5
I think that for most people, 90s AJPW will have been a gateway into puro, and even for those that it wasn't their gateway, they heard so much hype about it that they had to check it out. I'd wager it's the one period of wrestling that everyone on this board has seen and enjoyed to an extent, whereas there are plenty who won't have seen a shoot-style, Joshi, or lucha match. It also helps that pretty much every great 90s AJPW match has been discovered, compared to other styles - the Joshi watch parties every week reveal a staggering amount of hidden gems, even for established names like Hokuto and Toyota.
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Post by Grimmas on Dec 20, 2021 17:14:46 GMT -5
AJW > AJPW
However when you have such a rep like AJPW it's hard to beat that.
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Post by nintendologic on Dec 21, 2021 12:55:45 GMT -5
I do think peak AJPW is the greatest wrestling that has ever existed and likely ever will exist, but the AJPW dominance at the top is more a reflection of the fact that virtually everybody holds it in reasonably high regard even if it isn't their favorite. Compare Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Can-Ams (7th place) to Tamura vs. Kohsaka (24th place). The RINGS match did better on the ballots of those who voted for it (average place of 19 compared to 32.6 for the AJPW match), but the AJPW match benefited from the fact that almost everybody who submitted a ballot included it (17/19). By contrast, the RINGS match appeared on less than half (9/19). In a project like this, matches with support that's a mile wide and an inch deep will do better than ones where the reverse is true.
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Post by Windhy Barram on Jan 2, 2022 12:11:34 GMT -5
Are there similar projects out there online, tracking and ranking the greatest fights and fighters worldwide, but from a mostly japanese perspective? Does 90's All Japan still dominate, if the board is written in japanese letters? Or would New Japan or even WWE get a besser percentage?
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Post by elliott on Jan 2, 2022 13:08:09 GMT -5
That's a great question I wish I knew the answer.
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Post by Cap on Jan 2, 2022 14:42:57 GMT -5
Yeah... I have no clue, but would be really interested to find out.
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Post by nintendologic on Jan 2, 2022 15:22:29 GMT -5
I came across this Japanese website a while back that has a list of great matches. wrestlingheart.com/info/matches.htmlThe lists are broken down by promotion and further divided into super-great must-see matches (名勝負) and not quite as great but still highly recommended matches (好勝負). They're mostly aligned with Western hardcore fan consensus. Google Translate will give you the gist of it if you can't read Japanese. |
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Post by kas on Jan 2, 2022 17:05:11 GMT -5
Great find. Do you know if this is a poll, or a group of people or something like that?
Also, a couple of things that I think are worth mentioning, are the match-ups and peak times. All 4 of the pillars were able to work against each other so regularly that they were able to build these layered stories and develop chemistry with each other, plus I'd say that they all had in-ring peaks at around similar time frames. In singles matches alone, Kobashi and Misawa faced each other 15 times from 1988-2000 while Kawada and Misawa faced each other 16 times from 1992-2000, while the most plentiful rivalry I could find for 90s AJW was Toyota vs Kong, who faced each other 12 times from 1989-2004.
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Post by elliott on Jan 2, 2022 17:24:16 GMT -5
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Post by tetsujin on Jan 2, 2022 18:22:02 GMT -5
Naito being third on that is holy fuckin shit levels of insanity. His defeat against Okada at WK 12 will always be one of the worst booking choices ever.
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Post by elliott on Jan 2, 2022 18:27:08 GMT -5
The big lessons are Keiji Muto won & made the top 20 twice. And Kawada isn't in the top 50. Spectacular .
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Post by nintendologic on Jan 2, 2022 18:46:11 GMT -5
Kendo Kashin just outside the top 25 is kind of WTF. And Master Wato just outside the top 40 ahead of guys like SANADA and Ishii is pretty LOL.
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