DR Ackermann

Henry as UWF champ sounds a lot more plausible. Big hoss feud with Dr. Death.

More charisma and mic skills than Reed, better worker than Atlas. The best of both worlds.

A top worker is someone who ranks near the top in terms of work. Nothing to do with card placement.

It's not just the sloppy execution that hurts this match. Neither one these guys seem to be on the same page at all. I've seen around 16 of the Tenryu vs NJPW matches and this is by far the worst. Most of those matches were very good to great and this was just crap. For whatever reason, these guys just weren't clicking. Really disappointing match. These guys will more than make up for it over the next couple of months though...

In Hennig's defense he was coming back from a major back injury and was possibly still hampered by it.

This really surprised me. I found the Jumbo/Misawach mates prior to this somewhat underwhelming. They had their moments but as a whole I wasn't a fan of either of the matches. Kawada and Taue were still figuring it out at this point too. So going into this match, the idea of three of these guys going 45 minutes at this point in their careers didn't sound like too good of an idea but everyone delivered in a huge way. Awesome all around. One of the best matches of the year and the number one match out of Japan for me at this point.

I wouldn't call his 1993 run great at all. He has some good matches that year, but really only his KOTR match with Bret stands out to me. The Doink match was good, the Flair match was OK. He was solid albeit disappointing that year. The word great is thrown around way too much. The bar shouldn't be that low.

This is possibly my favorite match. Terry Funk's performance in this match is insane, brawling, selling and improvising like a psychotic genius. Hansen is no slouch either and his give-and-take style is perfect for Funk to play off of. I don't know if brawling gets any better than this. The non-finish makes perfect sense, but I would kill to have another 5 minutes and a proper finish in this. Terry's done with wrestling for awhile by August, but he may have been at his peak in 83.

Talk about it here.

The search function seems to be working really well now. Don't know if it was an issue for everyone, but it was useless on the ps3.

I personally don't see how the bar is so low that one solid year warrants a spot, but to each their own. Goldberg looked pretty green to me in 1998, but i don't hold that against him since he only debuted the year before. But it's also not something that compares to a lot of guys' tenth best year.

If a guy is getting exposed by working matches that last longer than 10 minutes, do you really think he is one of the top 100 wrestlers of all time from an in-ring standpoint? What exactly is he being exposed as then, if not a severely limited wrestler? Are you saying he was exposed as merely great as opposed to amazing? Because if he was included on someone's list, that would be the only thing that made sense, unless a person just didn't believe that there were 100 wrestlers who qualified as great.

His downfall is that he simply didn't have enough ring-time to even have the possibility of developing into a great worker. There have been thousands of better wrestlers.

The Funk retirement match is the tag w/ Dory against Hansen & Gordy on 8/30/83. Dory & Gordy are just there. You have to realize that as good as Terry is, what he does wouldn't mean as much without Hansen. Hansen is the ultimate give and take guy. Constantly selling in a very subtle way. I love his series with Baba, which, based on what I've seen is Baba's best 80s work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vT4HalkldY This match is severely JIP. But I think it really shows Hansen's brilliance. Based on my understanding of your view on wrestling, Matt D, I think you would appreciate Hansen's performance.

For a nine year vet in 1993 he was fucking horrible

It would be really interesting to see how people compare Eaton and Bret Hart. Eaton looks good even in throwaway 5 minute matches in the 90s whereas Bret looks average in 10 minute throwaway matches. Bret Hart is someone you will hear being hyped as high as a top 10 guy for some people, when I don't think he comes close to Eaton and you don't see him being touted as a top 10 guy.

Definitely not Jarrett. Murdoch is a very good possibility.

I just realized it said, "who would be above Jumbo." I don't know if I would say Andre was better at that point.

You could throw Andre in there. And Terry Rudge. Fujinami & Rose are both very good by at least 78.

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.

Stan Hansen Terry Funk Genichiro Tenryu Jerry Lawler Ric Flair El Satanico Nick Bockwinkel Yoshiaki Fujiwara Tatsumi Fujinami Toshiaki Kawada Billy Robinson Buddy Rose Barry Windham Bill Dundee Yuki Ishikawa William Regal El Dandy

They got the wrong Flair/Funk match.

Its also worth noting that both those performances were against Fujinami who is a top 10 contender. On the other hand he does hold his own in those matches.

He was the second or third best guy in the big NJPW 5 on 5 gauntlet from 84. That says a lot considering the match was ranked number one on the DVDVR NJPW 80s ballot results. He was in Fujinami's heavyweight debut which was great too, but that's all he was in on the set. Footage is definitely an issue but I've seen some stuff here and there that wasn't great, but he himself was good in. Definitely worth going back and looking at his IWE stuff and whatever else there is to see where he stands.

Perfect description of Maenko. To El Mckell: Yes. Sooooo boring.