I don't mean it as a critique -- just trying to figure out if we're determining GWE primarily based on who has footage on YouTube and Dailymotion. And what kind of skewed lists do you think that might create?

That's a good question and one I've wondered about. I'm all the way on the other side of the spectrum--hardly watch anything on YouTube.

I'm only watching free footage. But that doesn't mean relying solely on YouTube and Dailymotion, if it did it'd be impossible to rank 2000s indie wrestlers and Dragon Gate guys, but luckily we've got torrents, openthedragongate.com, veoh and a few other places.

Using free footage has hurt in some places and made a few people hard to explore but for the most part it works out ok.

Only thing I've really used YouTube for, at least in regards to this project, is to check out WoS footage. Everything else is on DVD (Will's comps, yearbooks, all the other discs I've had sitting here for around a decade), and I guess NWA Classics.

 

I probably will use YouTube, Dailymotion and the likes a little more over the next couple months, though. I don't intend to buy a bunch of DVDs in order to check out US indy stuff from the last five or so years, for example.

Interesting question. YouTube and Daily Motion have made up only a small portion of my GWE viewing, but it has helped.

I haven't watched wrestling on an actual TV set since 2009 maybe? That said, I did buy some DVDs in this process to fill some gaps (Not a ton of early 00s lucha online for instance), but not many.

 

Let me put it this way, though. You could give me another five years and I still wouldn't make it through all the free footage online that I think would be relevant for a project like this, so I don't think it matters too much. I think the bigger issue is that people are going towards great matches instead of holistic 360 approaches of different wrestlers in different situations, but that's more of a criteria/priority thing.

Almost zero on Youtube / DM here except for some modern lucha. Everything else is from comps secured through the Village or other trades or WWEN.

There's just so much amazing stuff between YouTube and Dailymotion I can just load up on my phone and watch whenever, I have a justifying signing on to my desktop and downloading torrents. Let alone buying DVD's or hunting down DVD's I already have. I acknowledge there's some amazing stuff I'm missing compared to the tale trader guys, just like how there's some amazing they're missing by not having access to these companies' master tape libraries.

Yeah, torrents for one-offs and certain territorial stuff. And Ditch. Bless the Ditch.

I'm pretty anti-download so I'd much rather use streaming sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. I have some stuff from the Village too. I'd get more but I've been at various points with no money and no job so free streaming works best for me most of the time. There are flaws in that, but it's enough for me to make a pretty decent judgment call on a lot of wrestlers.

This is also a case where we're stronger than the sum of our parts. If there's a match that's not online that people feel strongly about, that they see in their searching, whether it's Negro Casas vs Mocho Cota or what, people have tended to upload it. We have specialists who delve deep into a wrestler or promotion, the stuff online and sometimes the stuff not online, and they bring that back to the center.

 

For instance, I just realized that Damiancito el Guerrero vs Cicloncito Ramirez is no longer online. I'm probably going to go to the people who I know feel very strongly about that match and likely have it and see what they can do about it so that others can see it. If I had it myself, I'd do the same.

Nope. Mixing free stuff, 80s comps my commercial release collection, and streaming services (wwe and njpw).

Almost everything I watch is on Youtube or something similar. It does make it a lot harder to find certain things: modern superindy footage from places like PWG or Chikara or Evolve or SHIMMER is practically nonexistent in terms of full matches. It's hard to find a lot of more recent puro stuff from the larger companies, too, that tends to get taken down pretty quickly.

I'm a mix of streaming, torrents and comps. Whatever the situation dictates. First option is look for it online, last is buying a comp. Usually find what I need before going the latter route

It does make it a lot harder to find certain things: modern superindy footage from places like PWG or Chikara or Evolve or SHIMMER is practically nonexistent in terms of full matches.

For PWG and Evolve:

 

Watchwrestling.to

Ive got WAYYY to much footage on hand to watch youtube & dailymotion stuff, there has been maybe 10 matches ive watched on youtube during this entire process

Just about everything I watch is from Youtube/Dailymotion and Ditch's sites, with WWE Network covering pretty much everything else I care to watch. It means I miss out on pretty much all the modern super-indy stuff, but that holds little or no interest to me anyway. Lucha is also maddeningly inconsistent. It was only a few months ago that someone uploaded a complete version of MS1/Sangre Chicana with decent VQ. And the Santo/Casas 11/29/96 trios was only uploaded earlier this month.

Just wanted to bump this because I think the people who are going to be hurt the most by this are New Japan guys from previous eras, since NJ is aggressive about taking down footage. Your Hashimotos and Ligers are going to do fine since most people are familiar with them, and 80s set cult favorites like Hoshino will probably get at least a few votes. But YouTube is where I think guys like Hiroshi Hase, El Samurai, Koji Kanemoto, and other New Japan stars who peaked in the 90s will struggle.

The people who are going to vote high for those know where to find their stuff or watched it long before New Japan started taking stuff down anyway.

As a newcomer to most of those guys mentioned, between Youtube, Dailymotion and Ditch I've largely not had a problem watching them.