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Has this project meant anything outside our bubble?


funkdoc

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Great post. Should probably be its own thread. One of the things that disappoints me the most about wrestling culture is that mainstream wrestling journalism like this SI dreck and Shoemaker is propped up by a lot of fans as gospel when it is actually bottom of the barrel writing and criticism

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Oh lighten up, people. The only thing worse than some dude making a list for a dying medium that's goofy is the COLLECTED OUTRAGE from people upset by it. Who cares?

I posted it cause it's alarming to me how mainstream publications cover wrestling and constantly get stuff wrong. Johnny P is absolutely right thinking "How do they get these people?" A lot of uneducated fans will enjoy that list and think a guy like Winkie is smart. I posted on Twitter the excerpt of him talking about Ultimo Dragon never getting a title put on him by a major company just to show how wrong he was.

 

What alarms me is if he and other freelance hipster type journalists don't just write about wrestling but also sports, politics and pop culture. Which means they are wrong about most of the stuff they write if they keep getting these gigs. The people he picked on the list didn't bother me but the write ups Winkie did were flat out wrong and could've been corrected with a simple google search. That's why it's embarrassing.

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So how do people like David Shoemaker and this kid Luke Winkie exist? Where did they come from? what's there cred? It comes off as WWE childhood fans do "LOLWrestling" writing for money, and don't see anything wrong with that because they're never in a real space where they are challenged. Fucking Bill Simmons, who SUBSCRIBED to Meltzer for several years, proved himself to a typical douche when he claimed "no one was doing this before you, right?" to Shoemaker, and David went along with that.

 

Yeah, that was pretty jaw dropping both on Simmons and on Shoemaker's part.

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Johnny, to echo and further back up JML - I don't even give a shit about the list. I only skimmed it to begin with, saw some of the embarrassing writing, and started thinking more about Shoemaker, the fact the list guy wrote for SI.com, and the idea of credibility in not really journalism, but within a community. I wasn't being necessarily rhetorical. I legitimately want to know where this hipster writer came from, what his "cred" is to write about this subject at all, if he is paid for it, and what his motives might be. I don't personally have an ambition to "get his job" or put forth "I should make that money." I don't care about the money. I'm not ambitious in a financial sense, nor career-wise (as my life choices and strongly held opinions bare out). I hate the idea of "content providing" anyway, as most of it is contractual obligation to fill space. And that's a bug part of the problems I have. They are ideological. WHY does this even exist? There is a part of me that would respect this dude 10X more if I found out his bullshit, barely thought about, make-the-rent-money list was originally made for GWE. Even then I'd hate his list (and this time I'd focus on the list as I did for all of GWE and not that it exists in the first place), but at least I'd know it was done for a reason I respected. This guy might as well be a prostitute. He's just doing whatever for a check and acting like an authority. That annoys me. He could do any number of writing jobs in offices around the world where you don't have to have any credibility, and at the root of it I hate this idea that "Its just wrestling." If that's the case, I'd love to write sports stories/analysis for ESPN, or commentate on the election for cable TV or some "trusted" newspaper. I'd love to influence people who can't be bothered to do a moment of research or those without independent thought, and then when called on it either never acknowledge it, or say, "it's just (fill in the blank." If that's the case, why am I doing it, and why is anyone paying me, or paying attention in the first place?

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Actually I am a little baffled by the response to the SI list, it is honestly not as bad as I thought it would be.

 

Also the fact that most mainstream writers regularly get things wrong is the case for most of mainstream pop culture writing. Its not like journalism is a field that has high entry requirements, especially not these days where everyone can set up a blog and if they are lucky and hit it big get hired by a mainstream outlet.

 

I mean how many of the ESPN writers outside of maybe Bill Barnwell are giving you better insight into the NFL than the average fan could? Becoming a big time journalist is more about luck and having the right connections than it is about being a good writer. So yeah this is not something unique to wrestling, far from it in fact.

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You know, I was going to respond back to Van Fair that his comment is somewhat reductively true in a very general sense (Well, except that making a list, or frankly being Bill Barnwell is not a journalist, that's a columnist, and those are two separate issues)....then I saw this kids Twitter thanks to Nintendo Logic. Wow, okay. Take aways 1.) he actually is some cocky teenage boy. That's almost never true when you stereotype, but, there ya go. 2.) He writes, according to him, for the internet arm of a lot of known "publications." How about that shit. Van Fair, I'd love to talk about your use of the term journalist in that post, but you were right, Sir. I guess anyone can write for content providers. That's the proof.

 

Again, though, I'm not interested in that very basic conversation (and I'm not trying to mock Van Fair, who wrote a good post, just a topic I've heard for a decade now that I don't have interest in). Where do these people come from. Anyone know the kid's background, does he travel in any known circles, etc? I'm not even looking to trash him with the question (though it will probably end up that way). I'm legit trying to find out. I know he's a nonsense "writer" (he may or may not have a talent at that, but I'd bet he's a SME on Wrestling about as much as I'm an SME on Industrial design.)

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  • 3 years later...
On 7/29/2016 at 9:42 PM, elliott said:

 

Well now I have to click on it. Please god, let there be explanations.

 

edit: The first thing I see is "a definitive ranking of the top 101 wrestlers of all time." now I kind of want to do a running diary of my experience looking at this list. we're off to an incredible start.

 

double edit: No really, go look at it. It is amazing. My favorite stretch is 85-80 which goes:

Davey Boy Smith

Blue Demon

Jimmy Snuka

Ed Lewis

Kane

Seth Rollins

 

Like whoa. Parv will have a 2 Girls 1 Cup sort of reaction to this list. Please God, let Parv see this.

 

"I feel like one day we'll look back on Miz the same way we look back on Ted Dibiase."

Just reading this years later, but most GWE voters didn't value historical significance, drawing power, star power, importance outside of wrestling, name recognition, or pushes: what most others lists value to be "great". Voters- or at least the ones with platforms- valued psychology, workrate, character, storytelling, and Japanese, Mexican, and British stars. GWE relied on footage in circulation. At least that SI list rcognized Golden Age stars and didn't try to pimp obscure "hidden gems" like Virus.

 

 

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Just now, War is Raw said:

Just reading this years later, but most GWE voters didn't value historical significance, drawing power, star power, importance outside of wrestling, name recognition, or pushes: what most others lists value to be "great". Voters- or at least the ones with platforms- valued psychology, workrate, character, storytelling, and Japanese, Mexican, and British stars. GWE relied on footage in circulation. At least that SI list rcognized Golden Age stars and didn't try to pimp obscure "hidden gems" like Virus.

That's because they weren't to be considered in this project.

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29 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Get with the times. It's obscure hidden gem Motta dos Santos. 

Won't it be Delaporte? Just from a sheer footage perspective? Or was he too much of a main eventer. The deal with Virus (who I was basically the high vote on at #10 so that feels a bit like a personal attack) is that we have basically over a decade worth of weekly footage from the guy plus another decade of more scattered footage and plenty of indy matches. 

I mean at least we have over 15 Petit Prince matches, right?

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  • 1 month later...

Looking back on this now, the lower ranking of women in particular makes this list look dated AF to a lot of younger fans.  Also Brock being so high, though i think the Suplex City bullshit hadn't taken over yet when people were voting.

Really curious what a 2026 community list would look like, not going to lie...though you'd get vastly different results on here vs. the regulars on wrestling Twitter or such.

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57 minutes ago, funkdoc said:

Looking back on this now, the lower ranking of women in particular makes this list look dated AF to a lot of younger fans.  Also Brock being so high, though i think the Suplex City bullshit hadn't taken over yet when people were voting.

Really curious what a 2026 community list would look like, not going to lie...though you'd get vastly different results on here vs. the regulars on wrestling Twitter or such.

I was the voice in the darkness re: Brock. No one listened.

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It's interesting that the 2006 list was far more female-heavy, and in the 2016 discussions there was a lot of talk of how Joshi had just gone out of fashion since then. Feels like the pendulum has swung back again now with WWE pushing women's wrestling seriously and there's been such a surge in interest. I can't see Meiko Satomura or Chigusa Nagayo ranking outside the Top 100 if we did this now, and it's not like they've really added to their case since.

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Smarkschoice had a lot of joshi fans though, I think they had their own sub-forum.  AJW was dead by then, but not for that long and joshi is just nowhere near as big as used to be.  

I know I'd have these wrestlers on my list:

Jaguar Yokota

Jackie Sato

Devil Masami

Chigusa Nagayo

Bull Nakano

Aja Kong

Akira Hokuto

Mayumi Ozaki

Dynamite Kansai

Mariko Yoshida

Meiko Satomura

etc

 

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On 7/10/2020 at 9:27 PM, Matt D said:

I was the voice in the darkness re: Brock. No one listened.

There were three things that disappointed me about the results, only one of which was something I really disliked. That was Brock finishing in the top 50. Didn't agree nor understand why he placed so high, it's the only result as the countdown was happening where I had a genuine reaction of disgust at the result. The other two results that disappointed me a bit, more in the vein of it not happening although it was not unexpected, was not getting one Puerto Rican in the top 100 (it was close) and not having one mainly Mexico based luchador in the top 20 (Casas was at 22, although we did get Eddie and Rey up there).

More than the list, for me the whole point of participating in the project was making an effort to check out wrestlers I was not that familiar with. If I were to do the list again, the only wrestler in my top 5 who likely sticks somewhere in there is Terry Funk.  

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Brock is easy Top 50 and I would probably have him in my Top 25, maybe even my Top 10. The Brock Backlash is so bizarre. Best match with Daniel Bryan since his comeback, best match of Finn Balor's life, Match of the Year with AJ Styles, made Goldberg interesting. There is NO ONE better at selling in the 2010s. He is the God King of Selling. He is the second best bumper in WWE after AJ. He is a freak athlete. He understands pro wrestling psychology better than 99% of pro wrestlers. He knows how to vacillate from being vulnerable and dominant without losing credibility in either. 

The fact that LOLBrock dOes 2 many sUpLeXes is such a lame complaint. I would love someone actually try to criticize his psychology. No one is perfect, but when you watch his matches from a plot and character perspective, he is the most consistent WWE wrestler of the 2010s. Brock Rocks!  

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Meiko is a great call, and i bet KANA/Asuka & Io Shirai would be a shoe-in for the top 100 if we did it again now.  Kairi would be a legit possibility too.

Not to mention the Western women who've made an impact since then, like Becky/Charlotte/Sasha...

In fact, i'd bet good money that a new GWE poll would have multiple ballots where the majority of the top 100 are women.

re: Brock, it's not the suplexes themselves that are my problem with him - it's how many of his matches are literally nothing but trading finishers with zero transition involved.

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My issue with the Brock placement at the time (remembering that the voting occurred around Wrestlemania 32) is actually not a quality issue, it's a quantity or volume of work issue relative to many of the other wrestlers that are in the top 100 who can match the peaks and provide more quality volume as well. A top 50 placement was a bit too much for me considering how I weighed the different factors in play.

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That doesn't necessarily make him 'less great' of a wrestler, but I do note that Brock has a huge advantage in that the very prescriptive and homogenised WWE style doesn't seem to apply to him. Like his match with Roman Reigns at WM31 was a classic and he has the last good Undertaker matches, but the fact that he blatantly bladed in them despite the 'no blood' rule has a lot to do with that.

I'd still probably rank him over Manami Toyota though.

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