North South

Nominating: Mil Mascaras vs. The Destroyer: AJPW (10/9/73) - Solid work in all of this. Mil is nifty playing on the mat with Destroyer, and gets rather snapy when he gets out-countered. Good body work and simple and smart wrestling. Nice quality match. vs. The Destroyer: AJPW (7/25/74) - Superb battle in the rematch which shows that these two clicked well in the first outing. Mil does a lot of cool lucha based mat work with Beyer adding nice little touches. For me this is a top three match for All Japan in '74. vs. Jumbo Tsuruta: AJPW (8/25/77) - Mil looks very smooth twisting Jumbo into all sorts of shapes, which is one of the performances of his I've enjoyed the most. Very good effort and Jumbo looks fine as usual. This match sucked me in straight away, which speaks strongly for it.

Nominating with reviews: John Bradshaw Layfield vs. Eddie Guerrero: Judgment Day 2004 - Hard hitting and bloody brawl, with Eddie giving one of his career performances and Bradshaw showing more than he ever had. The champion shows incredible heart while the challenger inflicts massive damage on him with strong fury. Killer brawl, and a career best performance from JBL up until this point. vs. Rey Mysterio: Judgment Day 2006 - Rey does a super job as the struggling babyface at the mercy of the powerful Bradshaw. JBL does a basic job of grounding Rey, with Rey busting into life at certain times. As far as heel performances go this was a masterful showing from Bradshaw. He's such a bully. Strong stuff here. vs. Finlay: WrestleMania XXIV - Sweet brawl between these two which is fun from start to finish. Finlay can brawl with the best of them and Bradshaw shows his decent skills in this setting really well. Good brawl.

To JvK..... I enjoyed both of those matches a fair bit, but it wasn't Tully's performance in either of them that did it for me. The Starrcade match I felt was a killer showing from Steamboat, and an okay one from Tully. As for the Clash tag, I liked Tully's performance in that more than Luger's, and less than Barry's or Arn's. Once again, I think Tully is a sound wrestler, just not one who blew me away with what he himself did in the ring pretty much all the time.

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I'm very sure about the following not making my list, having re-watched all of them over the time of this project: The Great Sasuke: Having watched all of his work from the 90's and so on I've been left feeling nothing. I was left thinking Sataru Sayama was a much more well rounded wrestler than Sasuke ever was. And that's also taking in that Tiger Mask is on the edge of falling off my list. I find Sasuke to be lacking in many areas in the ring. Just seemed to have no good understanding of structure, being the man of a match or how to make a match feel memorable. Tully Blanchard: I think the Magnum I Quit cage match is a classic. I also think he might have had a better series of matches with Dusty than Flair. But it's not enough. I found him to be very underwhelming in everything else i seen him in. He has good smarts, but not the smarts of a guy who is top 100 in terms of what he did in the ring Chris Jericho: Always found him to be overrated. Real sloppy performer who as someone on here pointed out never *got it* as a worker. Basically a guy with the tools but not the mind. Sting: Not worth the time for me. Vader series was excellent. Nothing else i cared about. AJ Styles: Never been a fan. Think i'm the only one as it's seems even his biggest critics have thrown him a bone here and there. Don't enjoy the offense, don't enjoy the structure, don't enjoy anything about him. If i was ever gonna like him i would have by now. Just don't get anything out of watching AJ Styles. Giant Baba: Good mat worker, but nothing that special. I understand he is what he is, but I just can't see there not being 100 other wrestlers not being better. Love the Destroyer match, and i liked his stuff with Harley but that's pretty much it. Dory Funk Jr: Has an all time classic for me with Inoki from 12/2/69 (JWA), haven't enjoyed a single performance after that. Find him incredibly hard to watch 99% of the time. More to follow......

I was watching random 80's matches on YouTube and Dailymotion when I came across Sawyer. The first match I watched of his was with Terry Taylor from Crockett (I'd say it's from 1985). The match just sucked me in from start to finish, thanks to Sawyer's performance. One of those wrestlers you just watch for the first time and just want to see more from, as soon as you can. Going on to watch more of his bouts from Georgia, Florida, Mid South, JCP, World Class and WCW just made me totally fall for him. Guy just oozed quality in pretty much everything I seen him in. I haven't even checked out is tag work yet. He's got matches out there, from 1979-1990 with Terry Taylor, Jim Duggan, Tommy Rich, Tully Blanchard, Bret Hart, Arn Anderson, Jack Brisco, Ted DiBasie and Kevin Von Erich. Also a good amount of tags which I've yet to watch. Going by what I've seen, and how much I've liked it, I just know Buzz is gonna have a spot in my top 100. I can see him anywhere on my list from #51 - #80. From looking at where he ended up in the 2006 poll, it seemed many at the time had not seen much (if any) of his work at that stage. He really seems like a wrestler with the talent who should at the very worst crack the top 150 this time. That can only happen if more people take a look at him. To see for themselves if he belongs. I think so.

This would be my top four. I'm yet to decide on everyone else. 1. Bret Hart 2. Kenta Kobashi 3. Toshiaki Kawada 4. Ric Flair

Randy Savage was on fire in the WWF in '86. The series with Tito Santana, the 7/27/86 Toronto match with Steamboat, the awesome ten minute cage match with Adonis against Bruno and Tito, his series of matches with Hogan which are clearly better than their '89 series. A match i haven't seen but remember someone here saying was watchable (jdw?), a match with George Steele from SNME. Seems like someone who should be talked about for the year.

I can honestly say i have never seen a Booker T match that has entertained me. I think he's a flat-out bad worker due to fact that i've never enjoyed a single match he's ever had. I guess when your brother is Stevie Ray and he's far worse than you, people are going to think your good. But most of us know that's just not true. Again, another guy i nominated as there were people who did like him back in the late '90's. A reason to discuss him.

I never saw any real talent in The Sandman as a wrestler or at really anything else for that matter. But with the likes of other ECW performers such as Tommy Dreamer and New Jack getting nominated, i decided why not him? From what i've saw, his best years as a worker are 1995 and his 1999 WCW run as Hak. The two ECW matches of his that i like would be the '95 ladder match with Mikey Whipwreck and the '98 PPV match with Sabu. I actually don't think his WCW '99 matches with Kendell Windham (Nitro - 4/5/99) and Bam Bam Bigelow (Spring Stampede - 4/11/99) themselves were any bad. Wouldn't be anywhere near my list, but one person did vote for him a vote in the 2006 poll. Take that for what you will.

I dig Milano a good bit myself. Clearly one of the better guys of the Toryumon era. I think the 1/15/05 Saito match may be his career match and performance. A real super outing. I also enjoyed a good chunk of his other matches in Japan. He showed skill in being able to carry dry workers to quality matches also. The Wataru Inoue NJPW bouts from 9/06 and 6/07 are decent examples. His U.S. indy work is also pretty interesting. Rock-solid matches in ROH, IWA-MS and Chikara with the likes of Samoa Joe, Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli. Truth is, he maybe wouldn't make my top 100 due to the quality levels of so many others. But chances are he would crack my top 150.

Added reviews for Homicide and Debbie.

I've posted three reviews for Cruz, Tenzan, Booker, Kojima and Spivey. Joe Malenko is covered. Someone can look around for match links for Dream Machine, Homicide, Milano, Sandman and Debbie.

Listed these in the star rating thread - CM Punk vs. Chris Hero: IWC - 3/22/02 Chris Hero vs. Roderick Strong: IWA-MS - 9/30/06 Super Dragon vs. TARO: Revolution Pro - 11/29/03 (Mask vs. Mask) Samoa Joe vs. Chris Hero: IWC - 11/13/04 Punk/Hero and Hero/Strong are *** matches at best, but are worth watching even if they are kind of short. Dragon/TARO and Joe/Hero i think are two great matches which i rate at ****. Can't decide which is better as their both about of the same quality. Make sure you track them two down if you have not yet.