Out of curiosity, I did a little exercise and counted up all the matches I have strongly positive feelings about. There were 150. Considering I ignored some matches that you guys loved and some that probably have to go on because of fame and that we're still watching stuff, I'd say we're facing a hell of a squeeze.

The biggest obstacle is asking people to vote for more than 150 as well as making it cost effective at $40 a donation. We'll just have to make some sacrifices... including North/South matches AND Fujiwara matches.

The plus is that the final set should be cream of the crop and be really awesome. Even if some matches are left off, #150 should be a really good match.

The plus is that the final set should be cream of the crop and be really awesome. Even if some matches are left off, #150 should be a really good match.

See I don't think this should be true, I like the fact that these sets have interesting but flawed matches on them, stuff like the Orchestra match on the Memphis set. I don't think cutting super deep and eliminating awesome stuff is what we should do. If we have to go to 175, ot break NJ into two 100 match sets then we should do that.

The other thing we could do is put this up to a vote on DVDVR. Tell people the options are a 150 set with deep cuts of stuff that we love, a 175 set which might be a little more expensive or two 100 match sets with a staggered release. See what folks think. We can also put the decision off a bit until we get to the final decision.

A few thoughts on this ...

 

1) I don't see much use in asking people to vote until we know the scope of the dilemma.

 

2) My inclination would be to err on the side of including more, because Phil's right, we need to make room for the fun, surprising and weird along with the excellent.

 

3) I'd rather not split the set, because I'm interested to see how people compare say, 1980 Fujinami to 1988 Yamada or the Ishingun-Seikigun feud to the UWF invasion.

 

4) The lack of extras might give us some wiggle room to include more matches without destroying the economy of scale. There are a few really long matches, but we're not dealing with a ton of stuff that goes more than 20-25 minutes. Will, you have a better sense of disc scale than the rest of us so maybe I'm completely off with this point.

 

Maybe this won't end up being a problem. I was just surprised how easily I got to 150 with my informal tally.

TOM'S MODEST PROPOSAL

 

 

This may be a preposterous solution (and I don’t know how to handle this in terms of money that people have already donated) but how about splitting the set into one smaller juniors set (maybe 50 matches) and one heavyweight set (150).

 

Juniors would be singles/tags/multi-person matches involving juniors. A junior tagged with a heavyweight or working opposite a heavyweight would be considered a heavyweight match.

 

I have a feeling in terms of money that Will can get for sets, that there may get more people to shell out cash for the juniors set than would be willing for a complete NJ set. And that the junior heavyweight split will get more people who will buy both than people who would burn out from separate 80-85/85-89 sets.

 

Quickly hand counting the nominations: It looks like we have 311 nominations total and ninety of those would be classified as juniors.

 

Culling from 90 to fifty and from 220 to 150 doesn’t feel particularly intimidating.

 

The two kind of questionable areas in terms of splitting into two sets this way are Fujinami in 82 and Hase/Koshinaka in 89. Fujinami in 82 is really transitioning from junior to heavyweight. I’d say that Tiger Mask/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Black Tiger/Pete Roberts (8/27/82) is a straight up juniors match and would be willing to hear arguments about the other stuff from 82 but everything else I’d say is heavyweight. My sense is that 89 Koshinaka/Hase are actually heavyweights while they were juniors before 89…but I could be convinced that they were still juniors.

 

There are things that are lost by doing this split but I think if we really need a bigger boat than this is a good way to construct it.

Though I agree that would be the most logical way to split it, I really don't want to do it. A lot of the joy of watching NJ is jumping between the juniors and the heavies. And I'm interested to see whether voters will stick to the tradition of favoring juniors or will lean toward the big guys, as I do. You know, will a Dynamite-Tiger Mask match beat Andre-Hansen, even though that would seem completely insane to all of us? Splitting it along junior-heavy lines would just feel wrong and sort of rob the promotion of its essential nature. .

Yeah I don't want to do that either for exactly the same reasons. I was just saying if we come to conclusion that we have to build bigger boat that this is the way to do it that I think will work best and will probably net Will the most.

I was out of town yesterday so I wasn't able to catch this until now. I am going to eliminate the separate junior/heavies set idea. One of the great things about NJ is showing the variety of great matches from the promotion from tag teams, eliminations, juniors, UWF style, brawling, lucha, etc. I also don't think you can aplit it into 1st half of the decade and 2nd half of the decade. Childs nailed this point already. I don't think we should require people to vote for more than 150 matches. That should be the limit. I thought that was a huge number on the Mid South set and I think it still a big number. My opinion on that has not changed.

 

There are matches we all like that are sure picks. Those will be on there. After that, I am still going to try to keep the 150 match limit and give me, Childs and Phil more freedom for personal picks. Maybe look at 105 sure fire picks with no argument and then give each of us 15 personal picks. If you want fun, quirky matches, use your picks. If you think the other crew members overlooked a great match, use your picks. Many of my picks are matches that I thought should be in the discussion but there are surprisingly few matches that I would fight for. Phil and I liked the Bundy Six man tag. Childs didn't. It is not a match I would fight for. I am the only one who fought for the North/South Manila match. I will continue to fight for it. After the voting is over , I can always release a NJ addendum of "other matches you guys should check out". If we get strong reaction of a match, we can add it to errata. The idea of making the set bigger when we have the errata safety net makes no sense to me.