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2018 WON Hall of Fame Ballot


RIPPA

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

Usually it is because they have done something big to add to their career

It is supposed to be a the get one shot at redemption but AJ Styles shot that to shit

But using Styles as the example - he got added back the third time after his New Japan run was so big and that was what got him in.

Some people also get added back if folks lobby Meltzer hard enough to get them to merit another look

Another example - Blue Panther was originally on the ballot in 1998 and immediately dropped off

He then got added back on in 2002

Again - a lot of it comes from guys going on the ballot at too young of an age
 

Who does the consensus believe to have a better case, Taue or Akiyama? Why?

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50 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Taue was a key element in a boom. Akiyama lasted long enough to oversee a decline? That seems to be oversimplifying it all though.

He’s also booking what may be a period of new life—at least slow, seemingly sustainable growth—for All Japan. But we won’t really know for a few years. 

He’s not a better wrestler than Taue—not that he’s lacking great matches—but he does also have a pretty big edge when it comes to championships won, influence, and big shows headlined. Maybe that all puts him ahead—I’d lean yes—but I’m not certain. 

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Is there any current wrestlers that you think will be guaranteed first ballot hall of famers?

A lot of people seem to think Kenny Omega might undeservingly go in this year  but even Dave who is the biggest Kenny fan in the world said that it was too early.

Is there anybody right now that the moment they go into the ballot, they are guaranteed no brainer first balloters?

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1 hour ago, FlaeBlazer said:

 

Is there any current wrestlers that you think will be guaranteed first ballot hall of famers?

A lot of people seem to think Kenny Omega might undeservingly go in this year  but even Dave who is the biggest Kenny fan in the world said that it was too early.

Is there anybody right now that the moment they go into the ballot, they are guaranteed no brainer first balloters?

I think the only no-brainer first ballot HOFer would be Okada. 

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Hmmm, in what way is Taue better than Akiyama? I love Taue but did he ever elevate opponents? Akiyama's story with Makoto Hashi is the perfect Akiyama elevating a guy beyond his means example and that was with a tag partner. Grumpy old Akiyama is so delightful too. I don't know. Taue to me was a guy who most often wrestled to his opponent, which is in no way a bad thing when he was in there with some of the all time greats. At first thought I was thinking somebody would say he did more with less in comparison to Akiyama but then I remembered him destroying people with his apron chokeslams. 

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34 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

I think the only no-brainer first ballot HOFer would be Okada. 

Kazuchika Okada will get in on first ballot, agreed.

6 minutes ago, FlaeBlazer said:

What’s the highest percentage ever for a first ballot HOFer? I could definitely see Okada pulling 90%+ on his first try.

I believe it's Kenta Kobashi, 98%.

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Yeah- with Okada, considering it's about 2023 for his first ballot...it's possible he doesn't go in, but it's at the level of unrealistic to "Okada signs with WWE...AND WWE would have to make it their mission to absolutely bury Okada in such a way it makes the Kato gimmick from TNA look like The Shield in comparison...and Okada would have to have a Caristico-level absolute workrate meltdown in a WWE ring" for Okada to not be a first-ballot guy.

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On 9/24/2018 at 10:53 PM, Matt D said:

I think one element of this is that none of us have seen much, if any, of him befoer the crash. I've watched a hell of a lot of Gary Hart over the last few years and he was really a non-entity at ringside. There was very little he could do physically relative to his peers. For instance, in the Houston footage, with dozens and dozens of Gary Hart at-ringside matches, and a handful of JJ Dillon ones, JJ stood out so much more.

That said, he did have a major connection with the crowd and that allowed him to play a role in key angles like Lewin's face turn, but moments like that were few and far between. I just don't know how well so much of his "work" holds up though.

 

Gary's booking also is a factor.  He's one of the best bookers ever.  I also think Gary had a good bit to do with Muta in a way never seen before, even if it's been argued Gary sabotaged Muta by convicing him he couldn't turn face.

 

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23 minutes ago, SorceressKnight said:

Yeah- with Okada, considering it's about 2023 for his first ballot...it's possible he doesn't go in, but it's at the level of unrealistic to "Okada signs with WWE...AND WWE would have to make it their mission to absolutely bury Okada in such a way it makes the Kato gimmick from TNA look like The Shield in comparison...and Okada would have to have a Caristico-level absolute workrate meltdown in a WWE ring" for Okada to not be a first-ballot guy.

Okada can be eligible next year. His first match was in 2004.

 

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On 9/26/2018 at 4:10 AM, AxB said:

Some of us are in our 40s, and Ultimate Warrior was the overpushed talentless moron we hated when we were sixteen, seventeen years old.

Some (one?) of us has just entered his 60s and we thought the Bladerunners were musclebound oafs, the Dingo Warrior was embarrassingly bad when you considered how long he'd been working and who he'd been working with, and the Ultimate Warrior  was the worst Intercontinental Champion ever and when you consider who he won the belt from that's a pretty low bar to slither under. And the thing is, we weren't wrong about any of it.

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5 hours ago, Oyaji said:

Hmmm, in what way is Taue better than Akiyama? I love Taue but did he ever elevate opponents? Akiyama's story with Makoto Hashi is the perfect Akiyama elevating a guy beyond his means example and that was with a tag partner. Grumpy old Akiyama is so delightful too. I don't know. Taue to me was a guy who most often wrestled to his opponent, which is in no way a bad thing when he was in there with some of the all time greats. At first thought I was thinking somebody would say he did more with less in comparison to Akiyama but then I remembered him destroying people with his apron chokeslams. 

Probably should have been more clear: I was basically saying they’re on pretty equal footing, in terms of having great matches (and contributing to them). At least I think they’re within the margin of error of one another, and, if you’re going to make the case for Jun, it’s maybe easier to highlight the cleaner differences. That said, I prefer Akiyama, but he’s one of my favorites for whom I’m irrationally biased, so I try to temper that a little.

Regardless, this would be a fun comp to spend a little more time with. You've got Taue, maybe as comfortable being who he was as any wrestler ever, born a surly old man; and then there's Akiyama, who never quite seemed to wear the weight of being a company ace as well as he was expected to. In that regard, certainly more was asked of him--Taue wasn't main evening a New Japan dome show--but it's easy to anticipate the argument Akiyama never quite succeeded as he ought to have. (Granted, I get a little reflexively defensive about the "Akiyama was a flop" notion. That New Japan dome show he main evented opposite Yuji Nagata drew 51,500. Different times and all, but that's not nothing.) 

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And just because I am grumpy - I will again point out how silly this is

Kobashi got 98% of the vote.... in his Japan category

Which equaled.... 81 votes

(BTW - this is ignoring that Kobashi had to be voted in and wasn't put in either of the first two classes)

Here are Edge's vote totals

2009: 44 votes - 22% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2010: 32 votes - 18% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2011: 105 votes - 46% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2012: 95 votes - 37% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2013: 129 votes - 37% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2014: 117 votes - 36% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2015: 173 votes - 44% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2016: 141 votes - 40% [MODERN US/CANADA]
2017: 161 votes - 49% [MODERN US/CANADA]

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Just now, FlaeBlazer said:

Why would he have a better case? What impact has the podcast had on the business?

From a business standpoint, it's at least as much of a relative draw than he was? It's more entertaining with better performances than most of his matches? Successful rocket-strapping?

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Wow, so much good stuff to comment on. First and foremost there is some silliness in the way that votes are split up and we're going to have to go to decade by decade splits as Dave's audience grows younger year by year. There are subscribers now some of whom will become voters to whom Edge and his wife are "old-school". Think about it, if you are a 21 year-old fan today, Edge was wrestling when you were a little kid and the 1994 J-Cup took place before you were born!

Re: Kobashi, this is probably close to exactly what went down: (Dave and John D. Williams are writing down the initial class on their flight back to Cali from wherever it was they went.) Dave: "Okay, I've got Kobashi, that's a no-brainer." JDW: "Nah, he doesn't belong in the initial class!" Dave: "Sure he does, he was really the number two guy behind Jumbo and helped solidify Misawa in the top spot." JDW: "His selling was goofy and I already told you that I'm paying for the pizza when we get home." Dave: "Do you have an eraser?"

Gary Hart, I would vote him and have some years, the problem is that he's consistently on the bubble. He gets knocked for convincing Muta that he wouldn't survive a face turn. The thing is, he was probably right, 30-some years later the biggest promotion in the world took the most charismatic mother-fucker to ever lace up a pair of boots and within four months on the main roster he was reduced to "I hit you in the nuts" and "No speak English".

Taue and Akiyama: Both guys have the onus of their tag work being more memorable than their singles work, but look at who they were tagging with!!! 

Lots of folk point at them as being Anderson/Blanchard to Misawa's/Kawada's Ric Flair, but that's a really flawed comparison. Anderson/Blanchard were a great tag-team, Taue and Akiyama had great matches with EVERYBODY. Singles, tag-team, trios... It didn't matter, anytime they were involved you had a decent chance of seeing a ***** match and you were guaranteed to see something above ***. Both guys belong in, my personal preference runs to Taue, but we're talking a matter of degrees here.

Now for Edge... I don't think there's anyone in wrestling that does a better job of radiating the aura of just being a genuinely nice guy as Adam Copeland. Dude worked his ass off to be able to live his dream and that hits so close to home it's not funny. I've always found him relatively entertaining as wrestler, actor, & podcaster but that said I've never been particularly excited to hear that Edge is headlining a show. To me, he's very much like Sting, if he's on tv I'll likely as not watch to see what he does and every so often he will surprise me, but it doesn't happen often enough to get me invested in seeking out his work. People rave about the humor shown on the E & C Show and I remain completely nonplussed by their juvenile humor. And before you suggest that I'm a cranky old bastard who just doesn't get it, let me admit that I'm hardly a sophisticate when it comes to humor, I still think that the Three Stooges is some of the funniest shit imaginable, and while I liked the Jerky Boys, it was tempered by the knowledge that my friends and I had done all that shit ten years earlier and we were funnier. Even now, should I accidentally take an extra pain pill, I can be easily convinced that calling the local 7-11 to inquire about tobacco products and the containers thereof, such as Prince Albert and Carter Hall is hysterically funny as is calling the meat dept. at any large grocery and sending the Asst. Mgr on a futile search in the deep freezer for "leg of salmon", ("It was advertised in your Wednesday flyer in the newspaper at $3.99 a pound, are you trying to tell me you've already sold out? Yes, I think you'd better check again; I've got four kids here that have been looking forward to roast leg of salmon all week...")  So, no it isn't that the humor is too low-brow. In fact, if I were to stumble on to their podcasr by accident, I'd probably ride it out, I just wouldn't go looking for it in the first place. 

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Okay, after several revisions and much soul searching here is my final ballot for the WON HOF. It is by far the most lucha-centric balllot that I have submitted and I still left off the very deserving LA Park. I did so, secure in the knowledge that he has one last ride wherein he'll drop the mask, likely against Rush, and immediately shut down the country as the following day becomes a spontaneous National Day of Mourning. So yeah, I'n cool with leaving LA Park off my ballot. 

What's this? No Johnny Saint? Okay, here's the thing, bu virtue of staying in fantastic shape and not dying as well as remaining in or around the business well into his senior years, Johnny Saint quietly allowed people to make him the face of British Wrestling. He doesn't need my vote and Mark "Rollerball" Rocco does. The knock on Rocco from certain sectors has been to liken him to baseball's J.R. Richard, a pitcher who was unbelievably  dominant for just a few short years. More of a Sandy Koufax than Sandy Koufax if you follow... Thing is that's not really a fair picture, Mark Rocco is more like Sandy Koufax would have been if his rookie year was like his 1964 season and he just stayed at that level. That's how good he was. The ting is Rocco was huge wherever he went, but one of the places he didn't go was the United States... 

So, anyway here it is, what I e-mailed to Dave this morning: 

Ballot from John Pelan (aka OSJ [email protected])
 

I FOLLOWED THE HISTORICAL PERFORMERS ERA CANDIDATES

Enrique Torres

Bearcat Wright

 

I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN JAPAN CANDIDATES

Jun Akiyama

Akira Taue

 

I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN MEXICO CANDIDATES

Cien Caras

Karloff Lagarde

Los Misioneros de la Muerte (El Signo & El Texano & Negro Navarro) 

Blue Panther

Villano III

 

I FOLLOWED WRESTLING IN EUROPE/AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND/PACIFIC ISLANDS/AFRICA

Rollerball Mark Rocco

 

NON-WRESTLERS

Bill Apter

Howard Finkel

Stanley Weston

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On the subject of Marc Rocco, I've seen Sammy Lee vs Rollerball Rocco from World of Sport, but I've not seen any Tiger Mask vs Black Tiger matches from New Japan. Are there any good ones? Are they arguably better than Sayama vs Dynamite? And did they do Black Tiger vs Dynamite Kid at any point?

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