DylanWaco

Yehi could have been a contender* *though not against Zayn. Even though he had a better March to March.

Oh sure. Totally agree. Drago for example seems to be winning because of his gear and where he works. The thing is though if character work is a factor (and I do consider it when I vote), the gap between Rave and Fenix gets even bigger to me.

The other bright side is that with Rave bounced in the first round, I can avoid long winded posts in future rounds. I am still a bit annoyed that I didn't get to comp him to Owens though. That would have been fun.

I really like Lucha Underground. But it seems people here like Lucha Underground a whole lot more than me.

If you had told me a year ago that these guys would have a first round March Madness match up, and I would think one of the guys was being robbed, I wouldn't have imagined it would be Hechicero that was the one I thought was committing larceny. We live in crazy times friends.

I actually thought Akiyama's hyped singles matches from last year were a hair disappointing and he's my favorite Japanese wrestler ever. Cesaro was on the way to being the best or second best guy on Earth when he got injured. Great in pretty much any setting they tossed him into.

Voted for Southern indies and psychology over the guy who popped up at one with a smile on his face in an otherwise brilliant match. Look forward to Ibushi working Dash in the Global Cruiserweight Series though

Both guys are guys I like, who had melodramatic matches in the period that I really liked and then a bunch of other stuff that ranged from pretty good to disappointing. I'll think about it more

I find both of these guys to be about the same level as workers, but Aerostar was part of a product I cared more about, and he has my favorite dive in wrestling. So he wins for me

What if you kind of find both overrated? I'll probably vote AA because I think they have a ton of potential, and they've had matches I really liked. But live I was shocked at how flat Gable was as an FIP that has soured me a little. Plus Okabayashi had the good since to let Hama's obesity carry him to a good match. This is actually harder than it looks

Bailey is the best PWG style worker in the world. Had lots of good stuff, including things like his work a Best of the Best, which gets forgotten. I thought the Galloway and Strong matches from PWG were the best and second best matches in that company all year. Just a great sprint worker, and my favorite flyer in wrestling (and yes that includes Dragon Lee though it's close). Ishikawa was in my least favorite match of the year v. Sekimoto. I do genuinely love the Twin Towers as a team and would have had to think about it for a half second if they were Bailey's opponent. But as a singles match I'll take Bailey easily.

I liked every match on the Rey dream match tour (v. Ki, v. Red, v. Styles, and yes even the Myztesisisszieziezeiz match), plus loved him at the Lucha World Cup whenever that was. Drago looks cool in vignettes and then..well..I got nothing. Rey.

Well yeah. That was pretty genius. I don't see anyway Fenix could do it. I'm honestly not sure I could name 5 active performers who could.

I voted for Corbin and here is my argument. Omega has a higher ceiling. When he's good he can actually be borderline great. I loved him in matches v. Mike Bailey, Dorada, and yes even Tanahashi. Corbin is middling, but improving. I've liked several of his matches to one degree or another, but loved none of them. That said when Corbin stinks he just stinks. He's a big oafish dude, it's going to happen. When Omega stinks he's insufferable trash and it makes you mad because you know he's capable of being really good. And he stinks a lot of the time. I mean I get the fact that Omega and Young Bucks New Day Tribute Act is very much in keeping with a youth culture built around YouTube stars, animated GIF lol'ing, and the bastard children of "U mad!" memes, but usually it just trolls me out of giving a fuck. So I went with Corbin

I instinctively voted for Breeze, forgetting that Johnny and I have publicly made up and settled our feud, to say nothing of his awesome matches from late in the year in Evovle and the fact that I think his team with Ciampa is actually really good. Plus I liked his match v. Jimmy Rave a lot live. Probably should have voted for him, but when you live the gimmick for so long it's easy to revert.

No point trying to be controversial about Zayn when he's against the evil Adolph Ziggler

If people want to see Jimmy as the angry, mean, Ric Flair in Techwood Drive getting pissed off that Sam Houston dares to fuck with him type match everyone should check out the Chris Crunk match on YouTube. If you want to see him in the Ric Flair is overmatched against more talented babyface but still finds away match, watch his match on YouTube v. AR Fox. Neither would be near the top of my best Rave match list from the last 14 months, but figured i'd pimp them now while they are still relevant to this process.

Curious - aside from Muertes matches what's the next best Fenix match during the time period? I'd probably go with the Ciampa match from AAW, though when I watched it I thought Ciampa was really the guy who held it together (sounds like sour grapes to some probably but I'm serious). After that....uh....

I have to disagree. This isn't like the tape trading days. If Rave were having a banner year, I am sure nearly everyone here would've known about it before now, shared their findings, and the Internet Matches of 2015 would have as many matches as people could find. We just don't sleep on stuff like that. The fact that Rave's goodness is taking a lot of people by surprise is the story in this bracket as is the fact that anyone with half a brain cell and genuine interest in pro wrasslin will sort himself out and watch a lot of recent Jimmy Rave. I think what it really says is that I didn't post on the board at all this year. There were dozens of people posting their WON Awards ballots on Twitter that had Rave in their top 3 for Most Underrated and even Most Oustanding. People that live all over the place too, just not in the South. The issue is that there are little bubbles of sub-communities all over the place now, and they don't always overlap even when you'd think they would.

Yeah I remembered those after I thought about it for literally ten minutes. I'm not even saying that to be a dick either. I sat here and thought "shit I love Busick...but uh...what did he do?" Part of that is that I don't care about PWG, and part of that is that he went to NXT and vanished as most do for a while when they report. He's just out of site out of mind I guess which sucks because I do think he's awesome.

I love Hechicero, but I actually see no case for him which I can't believe I'm saying because before last year I didn't care about Roddy at all. I just feel like Strong had very good and great matches against way too many people, while Hechicero was lost in the shuffle. Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought Strong was a top five guy last year. Not sure where I'd have Hechicero but it wouldn't be near that level. And I love the guy.

Thanks for the tech help Rippa. I am a beast among robots.

That's actually not true. I would argue that social media has done a shockingly good job making him relevant among a sub-set of people on Twitter. That said the sub-set is big enough that he got booked in Freelance, and he's got a couple of other soon to be announced bookings that will be big-ish. That doesn't happen without social media.

Since Rippa asked, here is the link to the Cubed Circle Newsletter Annual. This is the direct link and will take you straight to the PDF. There is a lot of good stuff in it. My piece on Jimmy Rave starts on page 40, is followed by a brief interview with him, and then goes into my top 50 Southern indie matches of the year. It's a pretty good long form case for Jimmy that I would have basically done a cliff notes version of here. http://www.cubedcirclewrestling.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/cubed_circle_newsletter_yearbook_2015.pdf Edit: so maybe it won't be a direct pdf link? Try that instead and just click on the sub link for the PDF

I love Busick, but very little of his year stands out to me. I have to think back to remember the matches of his that I really liked, and he's been invisible in NXT so far. So even though he'll win easily, I voted for Kong because I can remember seeing Kong live and losing my shit for him, really liking him and Hero beating each other up, loving him in AAW, et.