2016

Really interested to see everyone's choices here. 1980-Ric Flair* 1981-Jerry Lawler 1982-Jerry Lawler 1983-Ric Flair 1984-Ric Flair 1985-Ric Flair 1986-Stan Hansen 1987-Barry Windham 1988-Jerry Lawler 1989-Ric Flair *This is based on Houseshows and Television I was attending/watching at the time. Flair was mixing it up in singles and tags vs. Valentine, Snuka, Stevens, Anderson (Gene), Iron Sheik, Jones, Raschke, Masked Superstar, Duncam, Piper, and Race in JCP. He tagged with Mulligan, Andre, Steamboat, Youngblood, Superstar, and Diamond. Plus he made shots in St. Louis vs. Brisco (Jack), Race, Dibiase, Von Erich (David), and Bruiser.

Please recommend me anything you think might be relevant. I will also be checking out some stuff from this thread: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31080-the-best-non-roh-indy-matches-of-the-2000s/ And this one: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/30891-a-look-at-2000s/

You could call this the Ricky Morton or Bobby Eaton question. Who will be your highest ranked wrestler who is primarily known for tag work? Does anyone have a guy known mostly for tag work contending for your #1 spot?

In the latest Ric Flair thread, Loss said... "It would be cool to come up with a standard list of questions that could be used to compare and contrast wrestlers, not so much to limit comparisons to just those questions, but to give us a starting point and some structure." So how about it? Here are some I come up with trying to stay away from "Does he bump good" and more detailed points of comparison that might separate people in a more minute way. 1) Does the wrestler perform with their character in mind and is it internally consistent? Note this says character and not gimmick, which would still pertain to the All Japan guys and so on. I'm not talking ab…

Following the cowboys thread, let's look at the folks who came around after the territories and WCW/ECW died. I may be forgetting some, but here is the list from nominees I put together: AJ Styles Akira Tozawa The Amazing Red Austin Aries Batista Brock Lesnar Bully Ray Cesaro Chris Hero Chris Masters Christopher Daniels CM Punk Daniel Bryan Hiroshi Tanahashi James Storm Jay Briscoe John Cena Katzuhori Shibata Kazuchika Okada KENTA Kevin Steen Kota Ibushi Kurt Angle Kyle Matthews Kyle O'Reilly Lo Ki Mark Briscoe Mascarita Dorada/El Torito Matt Sydal Michael Elgin Necro Butcher Prince Devitt Randy Orton Ricochet Sami Callihan Sami…

And where will they rank for you? Interested.

Its been a few months since this idea and project were launched. If you've watched a decent amount of wrestling in that time you might have some new thoughts about your rankings or confirmed some initial ones. Any surprises as you've been watching? Who's moving up or falling down your list? Who's solidified their position? Who are you on the fence about? I'd love to hear some general thoughts as your list develops. On my end: Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi -- Pretty confident these three have solidified themselves as #1-3. Right now the order is Kobashi, MIsawa, Kawada. There's a lot of Flair I want to watch but am not sure if he or anyone can break into this club…

Due to the GWE project, I thought I'd pull this over from another part of the board. This is mainly to help the guys not wanting to delve too deeply into the 2000's as kind of a guide as to what to cherry pick and maybe you can go down the YouTube suggestion rabbit hole to find other stuff you may enjoy. NOTE: Matches for each company are in CHRONOLOGICAL order. ECW and WCW have 2000 and 2001 combined due to them going out of business. ROH has a Top 10 covering 2002-2003 due to lack of quality matches. NWA-TNA has seven matches for 2002 due to lack of quality matches. Most lists I found easy to narrow to 10 while others were pretty difficult. Some lists have a handfu…

We are a year out at this point, so I thought it was time to start looking at some categories and ranking those. I thought we'd start with the Texans.We have some prominent Texans here (Pete & Will at the least). I've always been a fan of the cowboy gimmick. From first seeing Ron Bass to being into Terry Funk, Stan Hansen, etc.. At this point, how do you rank them? Note: I included all the West Texas State guys and anyone who felt like a Texas guy (Dutch Mantell?) and a few Texans were left off because they didn't seem to fit (ie Eddie Guerrero). Nominees at this point: Barry Windham Bob Orton Jr. Bruiser Brody Dick Murdoch Dory Funk jr. Dus…

Was debating about suggesting a GME poll to follow this poll/go along with but I dug up the sentiment on that one from the "Are you interested" opening thread. And while I know plenty of people would find that list as useful or more useful later on, I'm aware that for many people taking part in this project, they've discussed the best matches for various decades for various regions for a long time now. So my question is, what are the best matches you've come across in research for this project? Would love to know with the wide variety of ways people are going about their research what matches have stuck out.

Elliot sent me a bunch of topics to discuss for this project and I will be cherry picking some of them from time to time. First up is how important being a company ace is to being the GWE? Do you need to be an ace to be a top guy? Is being an ace just a helper, because it means you are more focused? Also, who is the best company ace? Does that make you automatic number 1 for this project?

2015 and early 2016 monthly Wrestler Snapshot (on the Pro-Wrestling Super Show) spot will go to a Greatest Wrestler Ever nominee. Between now and when the vote is due there is 15 months available for doing Wrestler Snapshots. 1 of those is already set to be Mascarita Dorada. That leaves open 14 spots to be looked at. Who do you want the snapshot focused on? Who needs the re-evaluation? Who would you want checked out in this format? I'm turning to you guys for this. This will help me too, as I can look at some folks I may have missed.

This is a tricky question to answer. There are so many guys who will receive votes that won't even make my list. There are certain styles of wrestling that don't appeal to me that I am not going to bother seeking out that footage and will miss out on some guys other people like. The more interesting question is who will be a lock for every list? Is anybody NOT going to put Hansen on their list? Who isn't going to put Austin on their list even if he is low on the list? Is Flair or Funk going to be on everyone's list? I know Lawler won't be on the list for guys like Joe. I don't know if any joshi contenders will be on every list since I know of several people who have no in…

As soon as this list is finalized and published, it will be met with criticism - both deserved and otherwise. However, if everyone vows to create their list based on a set of criteria they have set for themselves and stick to their picks based on that, research, and the time they've put into it, I feel it will be respected and much easier to defend. This topic came to me after thinking about some of the DVDVR 80's sets and various SmarksChoice polls and how they were sometimes plagued with, what I call, strategic voting. For instance, I seem to remember a Terry Taylor v. Rip Rogers TV match from 1990 that someone voted #1 in the Best of WCW poll. I highly doubt thi…

There are a number of candidates that were great wrestlers/personal favorites but I’m on the fence about. I know they were awesome but do they have the resume compared to other candidates? With these guys I’m obviously a little biased so I am seeking out as much as possible in hopes of them having enough to justify being on my ballot. Who are these guys for you? For me its guys like Dirty White Boy, Rick Rude, Brian Pillman, Eric Embry, Larry Zbyszko, Matt Borne, Kuniaki Kobayashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi.

Recently I've been thinking about how this starting has affected the way I look at watching wrestling. It has me thinking a lot about all the things I want to do, wrestling wise and the sheer amount of time involved in it. First and foremost, there was the original plan of revisiting All Japan in some way after a short break. As it turns out, that is going to be a truly in-depth look at things. Which is both good and bad in terms of the GOAT. I'm seeing that my first run through, as complete as I would have liked it to be, was merely a surface look at the promotion in the 90s. And I do love a lot of it and think it deserves my time. That means a lot of time I ou…

The nomination process is real easy. 1) Determine who you want to nominate. 2) Find 3 reviewed matches of their's on prowrestlongly.com or reviews that you did on other sites. 3) Post the nominee and links to the three matches in the nomination thread. 4) Shortly after a the nominee's discussion thread will appear in the nominees forum. From there you are free to go to the nominees forum to make your case. Note: If someone finished in the top 25 in the last poll, then they are eligible to be nominated without the 3 reviewed matches. Note 2: If someone was heavily featured in the 80's project, the review process can be waved.

Several people who have a case that rests largely on indie work have been nominated, but there are others still out there that people seem to be high on. I asked via Twitter for some recommendations, but I don't want to be the guy nominating all these people, especially since I don't like a couple of them at all. Here are the names I've heard that haven't been nominated: Richochet Evan Bourne/Matt Sydal Low Ki Kevin Steen Mike Quackenbush Roderick Strong Christopher Daniels Austin Aries Homicide Amazing Red Ian Rotten Johnny Gargano Tyler Black Davey Richards Bobby Fish Kyle O'Reilly Sara Del Ray Nigel McGuinness Others worth considering Jon…

I was thinking about this today and I could realistically put Ric Flair behind: Jumbo, Misawa, Kawada, Hashimoto, Liger, Fujiwara, Fujinami, Tenryu, Hansen, Funk, Lawler, Bret, Rey Jr., Bockwinkel, Satanico and Hijo del Santo and maybe some more. I am not saying he will be below those guys, but there is a chance. Which means Flair could drop to 17th. Would that be the low vote on him? Who do you think you are going to be the low vote on?

I'm planning on watching a massive amount of matches for this project. I don't necessarily want to write them all up though. I'm sure other people are in the same boat, that they might want to note a couple of sentences per match, have it somewhere easy to find, but it's not really a ton to add to a microscope or nominee note. I was wondering if people thought it made sense to use the site's underutilized Blog function for this, or should we just have people make individual threads on what they're watching? The "Ditch rewatching thread" or the "KrisZ obscure watching thread" or what not.

So how do you do it? I marvel at so many of the posters here seemingly recollection of matches, dates, quality and even move sequences. I've seen tons of wrestling in my life. Re-watched a ton, but most of it is a blur. How do you keep track. Do you use notepaper and pencil? Excel? Word? A blog? Help. I feel like matches I watched last week are already going fuzzy!

Similar to TNA, I think Ring of Honor might be worthy of closer inspection. I've watched a lot from 2002-09 but fell off the RoH wagon thereafter. I'd love to hear some recommendations from the last 5 years or so.... As a starting point for discussion, here's a Top 100 matches, as of mid 2012, from ROHWorld Forums - 1. Blood Generation (CIMA, Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino) vs. Do Fixer (Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito) (Supercard of Honor 3.31.2006) 4.88 (26 votes) 2. Bryan Danielson vs. KENTA (Glory by Honor V, Night 2 9.16.2006 – ROH World Title Match) 4.87 (34 votes) 3. Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness (Unified 8.12.2006 – ROH World …

This is sort of similar to what I did with the indie thread. I don't want to do all of the heavy lifting bringing over reviews myself, and I am also certain that some of these names would have zero chance of making my list. Still these are all guys who have been talked up in various corners of the lucha watching world over the last several years. I honestly could see nominating about half of these names, though I'm not sure there is a single person on this list I would be able to vote for by 2016 (guys like Cavernario, Hechicero and Rush are on the rise and have great resumes for what is out there, but who knows). Anyway the point is as of now these guys don't have …

Because there are things I want to get to but need the extra shove, I decided to recruit the board to help me with this. I have posted the key things I want/need to revisit/watch in the Priorities thread. For the time being I would like this thread to focus on what is in that thread, though it does not exclusively have to be the case, and I anticipate things changing going forward. Basically what I want out out of this thread is simple - every week I am going to try and watch seven matches that fit my "needs." Rather than get lost in a sea of YouTube, or cherry pick what I think will be best, I am asking that you guys pick the matches for me. This will be first come,…

I'm starting to wonder if there's any reason this has to end at Wrestlemania XXXII. I don't think anyone will have seen everything they want to see from all companies in all eras, even by fully engaging themselves in this project. Is there any reason this can't span five years or even longer? I have spent the last five years viewing wrestling from just one decade and I've been quite busy doing it. And I'm still not done. Has even one person here seen everything there is to see, or are they at a point where they can hit that mark by spring of 2016? I personally see no reason to rush it.