Childs

As someone who jumps in to watch the big shows and acclaimed matches but doesn't hang on the booking week to week, I've been surprised at the level of distress I've heard from NJPW superfans in recent months. I don't have a horse in it really, and from my limited perspective, they've still hit a few peaks this year. So I didn't recognize the bloom coming off to the degree it has.

I think we're overstating the degree to which his ROH run was comprised of lengthy epics. Outside of his 15 months with the title, when Gabe was booking him to wrestle that way, he rarely went longer than 30 minutes. Even during 2006, which was the peak of it, he wrestled nine singles matches that went 30+ (per Cagematch), which is a lot but not crazy. I haven't revisited those matches in awhile, so I'm not sure how they hold up, but I suspect based on memory that at least half of them are excellent. Then you look at 2007 after he came back from the injury and he was clearly working a more streamlined style. I don't know; I just don't view it as any kind of smudge on his career.

Did you feel that way about the Choshu matches? Those always struck me as the epitome of struggle.

I don't think I had ever watched that tag before, and it was great fun. It was more of a showcase for pissed off young Jumbo and even for Kim Duk than it was for Oki, but you sure get the sense that he understood how to be at the the heart of some mayhem.

She made my list the last time and I can't see her falling off. She's a worker I've always latched onto easily, even when I don't love the match or the promotion around her. I think that speaks to a lot of the qualities others listed above. I always feel like I know who Masami is supposed to be in a given match. She also has some classics to her name, though I'm not the most qualified to list them.

I've bided my time, reading the Kingston reviews by my Segunda Caida buddies and waiting to dive deep. Well, no moment like the present. Watched his cage match with Ian Rotten from IAW-MS last night and what a grimy bit of madness that was. The commitment to close-quarters brawling and deranged verbal selling - aided by the tightest single-shot filming imaginable - was impressive. This was Ian's playground, obviously, but a young Kingston had no problem thriving in it. Also watched a 2006 CZW tag in which he ate a king-sized ass kicking from Necro and Super Dragon with aplomb. So we're off to a good start.

Ki is another guy who does well by the random match theory approach. He has not had long, consistent runs, but he's wrestled all over and rarely been boring. Sure, he's a self-defeating nut job, but he made my list in 2016 and he'll make it again in 2026.

He would be a great one for the random match generator. It's abhorrent that he's rotting as a spare part in Gedo's current booking hell.

Spice in some juniors Fujinami and I think you've got it.

What you won't get from watching Hash is a good grip on the '80s NJPW or on the juniors scene, which was more essential to the overall mix than it was in AJPW.

To bounce off this point, you can't go wrong with a deep dive on the NJ/WAR feud, and the '91 G1 ruled.

I don't think I buy that as a particular criticism of Flair. You could find thousands of good and great matches in which the first 5-10 minutes are loosely connected, at best, to the ultimate narrative. Time killing was a big part of the main-event formula in so many territories; at least Flair generally kept it moving. We, as an inherently nerdy community, fetishize wrestlers who put a lot of obvious thought into their work. Some people - the Nature Boy is a perfect nickname, isn't it - don't need to do that to be great.

His hit rate was lower in his second run, no question. I'm not a fan of the "straight to finishers" formula he leaned on in the last few years or Vince's booking of him as a brand-choking champion. That said, I've never agreed with Matt's blanket assessment of his later period. He wrestled actual matches - with peril and selling and character beats - against Punk, Bryan, Styles, Reigns, Cena, Balor, Taker and perhaps a few others I'm forgetting. They were splendid in the moment and have held up for me on rewatch. I'm still going to give him credit as a great special attraction (imagine what a roving monster he would have made in the territory days) when I consider his case.

I like 100 because it allows you to cover a lot of bases but still forces you to make hard choices. I think lists of 20 or 30 would, in practice, lead to a boring project.

I would recommend combing Loss' top 100 lists at the end of each year from the '90s Yearbook project. If you click on the years in The Matches folder and scroll down below the month listings, you'll find them. There are other good NJ matches from the decade, but that's a great jumping-off point. Here's a link to 1990:

Yeah, I was going to point to those tags (not the Jumbo-Choshu singles Broadway, which is a bit of a chore) and obviously the Tenryu feud that followed.

I'm an obvious Hansen fan, but it strikes me as absurd to say he's lacking high-end singles matches. He had at least very good matches against Inoki, Baba, Backlund, Funk, Andre, Tenryu, Vader, Bockwinkel, Blackwell, Slaughter, Henning, Colon, Williams, Kobashi and Kawada. Some of those - Andre, Funk, Kobashi, Kawada - have received acclaim as true classics in DVDVR votes. Even his "mismatches" against Jumbo and Misawa produced some really good stuff. Your taste is your taste, and I respect few posters more than OJ, but I don't think that view jibes with the consensus from past projects in which Hansen has been a central figure.

This has always been my take on it, as much as I try to value both input and output. We're throwing around names like Arn and Finlay, and while I understand they can't go classic for classic with Kobashi or Flair, they were integral to great matches. I'm going to be more suspicious of a case for great input if there's no great output.

I think I heard Alan say they have a rec list on the GWE 2021 Slack channel. That should be easy enough to transfer over here.

Misawa's surprise win over Jumbo is the ultimate example of this for me. Very good match, not nearly as good as their rematch three months later (I know some disagree), but it's the one that endures because of the finish, the atmosphere in the arena and everything it set up.

What's the general view of her Japanese career? I've seen a few great matches but have little grasp of the total picture other than some vague sense that she was uneven.

He's on my deeper exploration list - beloved enough in some corners (I know Alan4L regards him as the GOAT) and good enough in matches I've seen over the last two years that I want to get a better grip on his whole career. I've never vibed with Dragon Gate, but he seems like one of those workers who can take his basic package on the road and thrive anywhere. I imagine his acclaimed matches will always feel like overkill to some voters, but I expect him to be one of the bigger risers in the final tally.

That's interesting; I think Steamboat and Rey would do well for me by this approach, because they maintained such a high base standard. Yes, you might catch a Dragon vs. Muraco match from WWF or unmasked Mysterio from the WCW death spiral, but chances are you're going to get a straight run of good shit.

I had a similar experience to Matt when we were going through footage for the '80s All-Japan set. I was looking for a reason to put an '89 Steamboat match on, because I thought it would be interesting, but man, did his act not play in that setting. The opponents weren't very good (I'm not a fan of Misawa under the mask) but still. That said, Steamboat's case is deeper than a few handfuls of frontline matches. I don't think he was less than really good in any of his major U.S. runs from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. In fact, we might have more good matches from his '91-'93 WCW run than any other period of his career. You just have to accept that his approach was not adaptable to every setting and every opponent and that he couldn't really transform himself. That keeps him out of my top tier, but I'll still find a place for him in the middle.

I like Roman being booked as an actual heel rather than the baddest man on the planet. If they have the patience (famous last words), his eventual loss should be great.