2016

As a way to wrap up the GWE project for myself and have some fun, I decided to walk through my GWE viewing experience using the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Year End Awards as a guide. I’ve dropped some awards and added some others because of the differences between projects. Some awards like Tag Team I’ve kept but I’ll use a more GWE context to answer those. I’ve decided to do top 5 for each award plus one honorable mention and I’ll note where each wrestler ranked on my overall list including comments. Since my #1 overall, Terry Funk, would rank in a ton of these categories, I will make a little comment about how Funk relates to each category but won’t officially rank h…

Reactions to the Honorable Mention List: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Reactions to the List: 100-51 50-26 25-11

This is a thread specifically NOT to compare the two and instead lavish both with praise without arguing who is better. Terry Funk is in so many ways the living embodiment of pro wrestling. He had global reach. He just lived and breathed the persona in a way few in history have done. Great at every aspect of wrestling and even peerless at some. Flair had an incredible run that I think is easy to take for granted. He hit a high level consistently, sometimes against great opponents and sometimes against not-so-great ones. He is in other ways synonymous with pro wrestling. He is the model world champion. Together they had one of my favorite feuds of all time, o…

So I decided to make a game for the Greatest Wrestler Ever to see if you can guess all the people ranked, if your only given the style of wrestling they are expert in and by what genre(s)/era(s) of wrestling they are most associated with. I used cagematch as help for the wrestling styles, but some of them could be wrong as I wasn't familiar with a lot of the guys. If you see anything that needs changed please let me know and I can edit it. If someone has mixed that means they do a little bit of everything. I wanted to put shoot style for the shoot style guys, but since I'm not big into Japanese wrestling I wasn't sure who were the normal puro pro wrestlers were and who t…

Reactions to the Honorable Mention List:Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We are in the top 100. Let's have some fun.

People have started changing their avatar to the lowest overall ranking of the person they were the high voter for. Luckily no one I voted for has shown up yet, so Bret stays... far now! Show off your shame folks!

So we have 21 names left. 11 of them won't be in the Top Ten. So which of these guys make it in the Top Ten? 1. Arn Anderson 2. Bret Hart 3. Daniel Bryan 4. Eddie Guerrero 5. Genichiro Tenryu 6. Jerry Lawler 7. Jumbo Tsuruta 8. Jushin Liger 9. Kenta Kobashi 10. Mitsuharu Misawa 11. Nick Bockwinkel 12. Randy Savage 13. Rey Mysterio Jr. 14. Ric Flair 15. Ricky Steamboat 16. Stan Hansen 17. Steven Regal 18. Tatsumi Fujinami 19. Terry Funk 20. Toshiaki Kawada 21. Vader

As we are progressing more and more on the list I have started to wonder. Who is the highest ranking wrestler that no one considers the greatest ever? My personal guess is one William/Steven Regal. I have him ranked in my top 20 and he has an amazing body of work, as most of you are well aware of, which is also why I think he will do very well. But his career also always has been a case of what could have been to me. His personal demons kept him from reaching even higher levels. As far as I know he only has one match for a major championship in his entire career, which is match with Hashimoto from 95 for the IWGP title. For a wrestler of his caliber to never get big o…

So I don't think I had ever seen a wrestling match outside of WWE/WCW/ECW before last week. All the GWE talk since the honorable mention list broke got my e-juices flowing and I've been plugging in random matches on youtube ever since. I don't know if I have a purpose here other than cataloguing my viewing. I could forget about the list tomorrow and have this post become the least viewed in this forum. Or...this could turn into the diary of the most handsome GWE 2026 voter and we'll all look back in awe and sexual interest. If I have thoughts and there's already a thread somewhere on the board, I'll try to keep it there. But if not... Accuracy of promotions and da…

Part 1: http://prowrestlingo...ns-to-the-list/ Part 2: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/33837-reactions-to-the-honorable-mention-list-part-2/ We are on to number 174.

Below is the list of nominees who received no votes: Adnan Al-Kaissie Akira Nogami Alex Wright Arkangel dela Muerte Baron Scicluna Bob Holly Bobby Bass Bobby Jaggers Brian Knobbs Bull Pain Candy Okutsu Caswell Martin Chic Cullen Chico Che CW Anderson Damien Wayne Danny Spivey Debbie Malenko Derrick King Dominic Denucci Doug Somers El Brazo Franz Schumann Gary Young George Wells Great Kabuki Hido Huracan Castillo Jr. Ivan Putski Jado Javier Llanes Jay Strongbow Jerry Saggs Jerry Valiant Jesse Ventura Johnny Gargano Johnny Rodz Jonny Storm Keith Haward Ken Joyce Kendo Nagasaki Kenichiro Arai Kohei Sato Kotaro Suzuki Kung Fu Masanobu Kurisu Mighty Inoue Mike Ba…

If you read the Trish Status thread, you'll see thebrainfollower talking about factoring promos and other out-of-ring elements into his ballot. As I said in that thread, this post is not meant to target him for criticism, merely to clarify the purpose of the project. My understanding all along has been that we're voting on in-ring, not on promos, drawing power, etc. Obviously, there are some gray areas with elements such as charisma, impact, etc. But I want to make sure we're all moving forward with the same understanding. So if Dylan, Steven and other GWE founders (if there are any) could weigh in ...

You voted for Rick Steiner?

Here are the wrestlers that made the top 100 in the 2006 SmarksChoice Poll that won't be making it this time around. 1. Adrian Adonis 2. Akira Maeda 3. Antonio Inoki 4. Chigusa Nagayo 5. Dan Kroffat 6. Dean Malenko 7. Devil Masami 8. Dory Funk Jr. 9. Dump Matsumoto 10. Dynamite Kansai 11. El Samurai 12. Great Sasuke 13. Kazuo Yamazaki 14. Kyoko Inoue 15. Lioness Asuka 16. Lou Thesz 17. Jaguar Yokota 18. Marc Rocco 19. Mariko Yoshida 20. Masahiro Chono 21. Mayumi Ozaki 22. Naoki Sano 23. Nobuhiko Takada 24. Psicosis 25. Shiro Koshinaka 26. TAKA Michinoku 27. The Rock 28. Tiger Mask 29. Tommy Rog…

Just creating this thread for people to post whatever they want to say about Chris Benoit and GWE in here. I think it may be best to keep all of that talk limited to this thread just so it doesn't color everything, but I do think having a place for people to talk on this topic is important.

In the past week two things happened. First, I listened again to Wrestling Culture #50 where Dylan and Dave ran through their top 50s back in 2013. Dave Musgrave's list in particular kind of gave me a burst of renewed enthusiasm and has sort of jolted me out of the funk I was in a couple of months ago. I can now see what everyone was telling me about it being more about the personal journey etc. etc., and on reflection I got too caught up on some little things and couldn't see the woods for the trees. So I think I am going to put in a list. It would be a waste not to. But I also feel much more relaxed about the whole thing in general. So a thanks to Dave and Dylan from 20…

Wanted to point out some folks who despite their rankings had really high averages, as it's interesting to me when workers have such ardent fanbases. I picked the average rank of #60 or better as the cutoff, as you have tons more who are in the #60-65 zone, and because #60 kinda feels like a point where you’re really going to bat for someone. It also helps put certain workers into perspective for me: Chris Hero becomes kind of undeniable when he makes 1/3rd of the ballots at an average of #56. I’ve bolded the ones that seem most worthy of conversation, but all are worth discussing. The ones in bold strike me as significant either because of their high vote, the notab…

We are down to the top 100, reveals start on Apirl 18th. I have lost 28 great soldiers and I am sad to see them go. Seeing Waltman not make the top 100 was pretty sad. I really wanted him to make it, to dispel that myth of X-Pac heat. Carlos Colon was the other sad one to see go, but he did so well compared to 2006. Any predictions? Any thoughts going into the top 100?

Parv wanted a thread for this, so let's have at it. He's considered by a lot of people a slam dunk number 1 pick, but what do you think of Flair? Where will he rank for you?

Here is what is left and when you will get it: Sat, April 16: 119-110 Sun, April 17: 109-101 Mon, April 18: 100-91 Tue, April 19: 90-81 Wed, April 20: 80-71 Thu, April 21: 70-61 Fri, April 22: 60-51 Sat, April 23: 50-41 Sun, April 24: 40-34 Mon, April 25: 33-26 Tue, April 26: 25-18 Wed, April 27: 17-11 Thu, April 28: 10-6 Fri, April 29: 5 Sat, April 30: 2-1

I made a comment in Shawn's thread alluding to a difference between the two words and wanted to clarify how I used them in case anyone was curious. I consider the best worker the most talented guy, in terms of physical gifts and ability to connect to an audience. I consider the greatest wrestler the guy who did a better job of transcending his toolbox to deliver matches that even people who aren't normally fans of the genre or style can appreciate. I have made the comment in the past that in order for a guy to be considered a great wrestler to me, his whole needs to exceed the sum of his parts. In other words, his intangibles are strong enough that they overcome a…

Two questions really. The above question AND where they land on the list. I think it's KENTA at around 325. Who you got??

"Vows are spoken To be broken Feelings are intense Words are trivial" -- Depeche Mode, "Enjoy The Silence" When the idea of revisiting the Greatest Wrestler Ever project was initially presented to me, I loved the thought of it. I was nearing the end of a 1990s yearbook project, which had rekindled a spark that been gone since Chris Benoit killed himself and his family, and this would give the wrestling fan in me new and fairly organized purpose. I was also interested in the historiography of the collective tastes of hardcore wrestling fans. What had changed about our opinions since the initial poll from the now-dormant Smarkschoice.com in 2006? Perhaps more int…

Part 1: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/33786-reactions-to-the-list/

So after Chad posted an early version of his big board today, I think it started some fun discussion about who was up high, who was left off, and those tricky last few spots. I thought it might be fun to have a thread to talk about people we think we are higher on than anyone else. I think it's important that even though we have the individual threads for pimping, people can have a sounding board as we start to get our lists in shape. Just a couple weeks ago, I asked Dylan "How high can I put Super Porky before I'm embarrassing myself?", so right now he's someone that will probably rate higher for me than most others. Who else has personal favorites that are slowly b…