pol

The "1 count where there should be a 2.9" thing was started by Kobashi during his big GHC run, I think. I've been playing with the idea recently that some of the very things that made the King's Road style great also made it untenable long term. The learned psychology, the sense of escalation across matches, the way in-ring action reflected the booking and guys getting stronger and stronger as time went on... at some point you can't keep adding new stuff to the equation. I love that rigidly logical hierachy-based booking, but I think it, combined with a lack of new guys who could keep up with the style, and the desire to keep making increasingly desensitised fans pop was really their undoing.

For all the praise of Angle's mechanics, his execution always reminds me of the knock on Daniels; too polished, to the point where it feels sterile. Dude sure had a motor though.

There's also some level of availability of footage too, with Cesaro especially, over Hero. It's a hell of a lot easier for me to watch 200 Cesaro matches than 200 Hero matches. Totally agree. From what I have watched of Hero I would still rank Cesaro a good bit higher. But I will admit that I'm only at 6-7 Hero matches, som I'm in no way dismissing his case. He might well be as good as some here claim. Matt, footage availability is a valid point. I think it's interesting in this case, as the harder to find footage for Hero is what makes his case, while that same footage is a probably a detriment to Cesaro's, as his ROH/CZW runs are largely underwhelming and he is completely overshadowed by Hero in the KoW tag team stuff. It's interesting to me that Cesaro's work in NXT/WWE is far superior to his indy work, but Hero's NXT work wasn't nearly as good as his indy work (save for the Regal stuff). Is it harder to have good matches under road agents, time limits, creative restraints? Or is it just not applicable here at all? If that's true of Hero (and it may well be), I think he'd be one of the few. IMO the vast majority of workers perform better under creative restraints.

This a great name for that phenomenon. Much more worthy of catching on than "Great Match Theory"

God, I detest extended stretches of fighting on the top rope. Especially when it's to set up some unusual top rope move (usually a super finisher) that it's impossible to get into position for without looking incredibly co-operative.

Literally go watch a random Tenryu interpromotional match mate. Haven't seen any post-80s Tenryu yet

Isn't the throat chop a Kawada thing originally? Ishii and Kawada seem to share a lot of offense, maybe a result of both being Tenryu guys, but I don't know if I've seen Tenryu ever do it. Modern Japanese promotions would benefit massively from applying this to elbows. While they're at it, ban guys from starting matches with the "push the guy into the ropes, clean break" spot or trading arm wringers. Maybe this is a thing only I notice, but holy shit like 95% of matches start with one of those two sequences.

Enormous? I don't know if I'd go that far...

I feel like Nakamura is a guy you can justify ranking very highly if you're only looking at his best stuff. If you look at his whole career... perhaps not so much. Even during his (ongoing) peak, he's inconsistent.

Can definitely see the bottom 50 being dense with luchadors, shoot style workers and women while the bulk of the top 50 is made up of your usual Japanese/American suspects. We'll see I guess.

I don't feel any different about him for that reason. I did not grow up on him, and have never had him anywhere near my favorites. Only what he did makes me feel differently about him, than the other cases mentioned in this thread. I think people have explained the difference between Benoit's actions and any other concrete example from the wrestling world. You're right, there absolutely are concrete differences. But I think for many people the one determining factor is the personal connection they had with the guy. Even if it weren't the case that his misdeeds were more heinous than any other wrestler's, I'd still think that people listing various examples of similar cases and calling out others for having a double standard was both obtuse and obnoxious.

It's pretty clear people feel differently about Benoit because he's the one murderer they grew up with and in many cases venerated. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand.

It's worth noting that even universal, unwavering consensus is still nothing close to objectivity.

I am not sure more discussion would have mattered. Looking at placements of guys like Sting, Malenko and Bigelow its seems clear that at least one third of the voters did not really pay any attention to those threads. I'm sure some people took the arguments in those threads into consideration and simply didn't agree, which is fine. What the percentages are, who can say.

This isn't just in response to you, but... They mean a whole hell of a lot. All of us are PWOers. All of us are likely in the top 1% of fans who are in the "know", meaning watch a variety of footage and dive into non-current stuff. I mean, I assume Parv was talking about anonymous voters who literally do not post here. Of course anyone here is a PWOer. This isn't a No True Scotsman thing. I guess my hope was that the result would be an interesting list like the WKO100s, and it's seeming more like it's going to be a list more reflective of the consensus across the wider internet. Maybe that's too harsh—it's more like a hybrid of the PWO and wider internet takes.

I have no doubt a list without anonymous votes would exclude some people who have put serious effort into research. But it would be interesting to see the alternate perspective.

I guess it's a little late to complain about this, but it seems odd to me to have close to 2 years of research and discussion, then allow non-members to waltz in with their lists last minute. I wonder how much that influenced the results? It would be interesting to see the list made up only of PWO members' ballots after the main list has been fully released, at least.

Good to see Okada didn't make the top 100. Dare we dream that Tanahashi didn't either?

One thing the All Japan guys were good at is graduating their timing of kickouts to reflect the amount of damage received. When a guy kicked out at 2.9 it meant something, and the announcers let you know it - listen for "nitenkyu!" This seems to be something largely overlooked by guys following them, many of whom think it's all about kicking out at 2.9 after any big move. As an aside, I'm always amused by fans (and there seem to be a lot of them) that list with amazement the amount of stuff kicked out of when talking up how good a match was. It's like, you do know it's a work, right?

I can definitely see this said of Kobashi's ace run in NOAH. Particularly the 2003 Misawa match and the 2004 Akiyama match. The stretch runs consisting of huge bomb -> 2.9 -> both guys lay around selling like death -> repeat are kind of at the centre of the "self-conscious epic" to me and a huge negative influence on all wrestling going forward.

DG draws better outside of Tokyo because they focus their business outside of Tokyo. You could argue that DDT finding the success they have in the crowded Tokyo market is more impressive than what DG has done, even if DG draws more. That's neither here nor there as regards this project as far as I'm concerned, just pointing it out.

Why are people freaking out about results in the 200s? Do you know what a sample size is?

It seems nonsensical for people to claim that Grimmas' position is indefensible. I'm not qualified to judge on the merits until I watch a whole bunch of Japan stuff, and re-watch all the Bret Hart matches I grew up seeing on TV, but it seems really dubious for various people to conclude there is no legitimate way to reach Grimmas' conclusions. This ranking process is inherently subjective and people are allowed to come up with different criteria in arriving at their results ... The debate is at an impasse and over now as far as I'm concerned. But I don't like one side being cast as a set of heels here, not the case. To me Steven frequently comes off like Carey here, fittingly another Canadian: The guy at wheel is reeling off all these amazing Kobashi matches and all these things Kobashi does better. And he's just saying "no Bret is better, no Bret is better" over and over again. The whole debate, in my view, came off like that. And it's why I've never been comfortable removing output -- that is hard, tangible evidence -- from the equation. There has to be evidence to back up claims. The realm of pure subjectivity in any debate descends to the level of that gif. I mean cool, if that's what you want, great, but it doesn't lend itself to actually getting to heart of anything. How is Steven not providing evidence though? It seems to me that he's just looking at performances, rather than matches.

Re: paying for wrestling, it frankly strikes me as ridiculous that in 2016 it's still necessary to buy DVDs to get certain footage. Just seems like all of it should be online by now. This might sound like whining but I'm not blaming anyone, it just seems strange that I can easily get hold of obscure 80s Japanese crust punk releases online but can't watch Battlarts in any depth without shelling out for media that I barely even have the means to play any more.

It strikes me that more obscure candidates like Cortez are going to be doubly hurt by the fact that those who bothered to explore them are more likely to have put more thought into their rankings. No "16th best wrestler of all time, Booker T" placements for those guys.