Fair enough, and in the vain of why I started this post in the first place.
I respect your opinions but would ask you to give almas gargano another shot. Very impactful.
May I ask what matches you thought topped these? Since you’re not into weapons you may like the Zack Sabre matches this year or the will osprey matches he’s had too.
I agree with the 5 star ratings of the other matches I didn’t list. In addition to the ones listed I think Almas/Black and Okada/Naito were 5 stars.
I’ll admit there is a lot of bias in these picks. I woke up early enough to catch Okada/Naito live so it holds a little more luster in my memory than the Y2J/Omega match, which I had to rewind and watch after watching Okada/Naito. Also I was in attendance for NXT Wargames last year and Black and Almas had incredible performances on that show which led to me enjoying their match at Takeover NOLA more than I might have otherwise.
It’s like I said earlier all reviews are inherently subjective. Meltzer says this as well.
I also liked black almas more than most. Thst finish was damn near perfect. I think black/cole was horribly underrated from the last takeover. I know you don’t like weapons matches but that was great!
The advantage that Metzler has over other industry reviewers is his longevity. You can go back to his five star matches and WON annual awards and get an idea of what the industry was like every year going back to the 1980’s.
And for better or worse the star rating system is a quantitative measure. Wai and John can rave about a match for 20 minutes in a podcast. But all the great matches they’ve seen or talked about get lost in the hours and hours of audio they’ve produced. The closest they have come is the Archivist capturing the rating of each show.
That being said, in my own personal rating of 1-5 I see dozens of five star matches every year that entertain me and suck me in. Which i’m thankful for. If I only really enjoyed a couple of matches a year I would completely stop watching. And its completely valid to disagree with Dave’s or anyone else’s opinions (thats why we have a 75% disagree thread).
I agree whole heartedly. I think it’s a nice baseline for historical purposes. I prefer a 10 Point marking scale over 5 myself. But to throw away his opinions away outright because you don’t like his journalism without actually reading it and believing what others have said online. I don’t get that.