Posted July 30, 201510 yr comment_5689017 From the Kyle O'Reily thread -- who can you see ranking with the fewest amount of years on their resume?
July 30, 201510 yr comment_5689024 Roman Reigns. I won't rank him myself but I'd put him above a fair few of the nominees. He'll get a couple of votes.
July 30, 201510 yr comment_5689041 If he makes my list, probably Jay Youngblood. Doubtful though. I don't think pro wrestling has ever been a rookie's game. Seems to me that all the seasoned pros don't hit their true peaks until their 30s. There are excpetions but mostly everyone I can think of worth their salt had at least 10 years on the clock.
July 30, 201510 yr comment_5689060 One thing that is kind of weird to think about is that Arn Anderson honestly has a lot less experience than most of the people that will make my ballot. We only have about 12 years of him on tape which is comparable to people like Cesaro.
July 30, 201510 yr comment_5689063 10 years is the barometer I've often been using when trying to decide on where to rank guys. I figure if a guy is very good, great, or excellent (or some combination of the three) for at least a 10 year period, then they deserve some serious consideration. I'm trying to think of guys who have less than 10 years of solid stuff. Lesnar maybe? He's not a lock yet, but I think he'll be somewhere on my final list. I'm trying to formulate an argument for Batista, but he only really has about 5 years of prime stuff. Not sure if he'll end up making it, as much as I want him to.
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689116 Wouldn't Volk Han be a lock for this? His chronological tenure might've covered six years, but in that entire time he only had about thirty matches. When a dude's entire career has barely consisted of twice as many matches as I have wrestled in front of people, that's pretty inexperienced. Is there any other case of a top-regarded wrestler whose COMPLETE career could literally fit onto a single Goodhelmet-sized DVD set?
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689119 Nah, Brock's got WAY more matches than Volk, he spent two years on the road working a standard WWE schedule. He was wrestling every week on Smackdown, and also house shows, for months and months on end. (Although, Lesnar is still a good example for this thread.)
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689121 I was just naming Brock for this thread. I know nothing about Volk Han. I think Lesnar also totally defies the "needs 10 years of experience" deal that Parv is talking about too. Gino Hernandez is another name for this thread.
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689133 Oh, whoopsie. He's easy enough to learn about, though. Short version: Russian sambo master, greatest mat worker since Lou Thesz, but only competed sporadically and only in Japanese worked-shoot promotions in the 90s.
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689172 Han would definitely count, especially since for a lot of people he's going to be a top 10 or top 20 guy.
July 31, 201510 yr Author comment_5689177 I thought of saying wrestlers other than Han or Brock when starting the thread but didn't. Someone with that few matches, nevermind years, is even more of an oddball scenario. Really just curious about regular, full-time workers.
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689232 Would anyone have had Brock high on their list before his post-UFC comeback? What a difference a mere thirteen matches, over the course of four years, have made in our perception of him.
July 31, 201510 yr comment_5689347 Like Parv said, there are exceptions. But barring a handful of those, I'll probably also mainly rank those with at least a 10 year career, and I'm thinking minimum a handful of years at top level of performance.
August 1, 201510 yr comment_5689359 Volk had somewhere closer to 75 worked bouts, fwiw.Whoops. Fuckin' Wikipedia. (Wrestlingdata and Cagematch didn't have anything close to a full list either.) But still, the overall point stands, that's an incredibly low number for a guy who some might have in their top ten.
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