Jetlag

But could he keep up with the likes of Okada and Will Ospreay?

Probably WALTER, since he went from an outsider indy guy to top guy in the biggest company on earth, I would assume. For similiar reasons: Eddie Kingston, Hechicero, Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Kana/Asuka, Zack Sabre Jr, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Darby Allin, Bryan Danielson (though his stock was already quite high the last time around). Darlings outside the biggest feds that I would guess have garnered quite a bit of hype: Sareee, Takumi Iroha, Chihiro Hashimoto, Fuminoru Abe, Takuya Nomura In my personal estimation: Yasushi Sato, Blue Panther, Keita Yano, GENTARO, Hiroshi Watanabe (just based on the work they've done in the past 10 years)

Always thought Greg Valentine carrying this lame fake native american to a series of great matches had to be among the crown achievements in Greg Valentines review.

https://reverseviperhold.blogspot.com/2025/11/of-all-things-look-at-tony-garea.html I had fun with this one. Yes, this man Tony Garea is insanely bland, but let's not denigrate him by comparing him to the likes of Dean Malenko. Garea knows how to get fired up and always knows what to do in a match. And this 70s/early 80s workrate stuff of leapfrogs and armdrags and fast bumping heels is fun. That 1982 tag against Rodz and Estrada really is great. I couldn't even find the George Steele matches. Tho I do wonder if Garea ever looked like the best guy in any of these matches. To place him on a Top 100 is a massive stretch to say the least, but one could do worse than spend an afternoon watching old Tony Garea. Also, apparently this guys a kiwi? How is OJ not yet on the case?!

Brian Kendrick hasn't received any comments since February of 2016. A bit unfortunate that the last voting commenced at that time, because just in June 2016, the Cruiserweight Classic would happen and Brian Kendrick was doing some undeniably great work that everyone loved. Really interesting guy because he brought a bit more of a psychologically sound and gritty edge into the modern era cruiserweight era. He is still bubbling around on the indy scene and I'd actually be interested to look into some of that work, as he's had quite the lengthy and solid career.

Wait, so we can't vote on someone if they haven't got a comment since 2016?

You've got these two badly confused. Wagner is the taller German, and Dave Morgan is the shorter Brit, who notably spent a lot of time as a globe trotter and eventually settled in Germany. Wagners reputation as a worker really wasn't very good.

So I actually emailed the Swiss and Monaco TV archive about this stuff... Swiss archivers said they don't have them archived because the reels were purchased from elsewhere. So that confirms the suspicion from earlier, that these were probably French bouts purchased for Swiss TV. Monaco archive said they had some reels but they degraded while in storage and ended up unusable. Apparently they have 1 20 minute match that can be viewed on their premises but that's it, and they didn't specify what it was. Otherwise just newsreel type clips. Bummer, but makes me appreciate the French archiving effort more.

From what I've seen Axel Dieter had no problem doing all those flying headscissors, ranas and difficult bridge ups and working a fast paced match, just look at his matches with Mile Zrno or Steve Wright himself. No small feat considering by 1980 he was nearing the end of his career, and he wasn't exactly a small man. Knowing he worked France and Spain quite a lot I wouldn't be shocked if he had been quite the athletic guy in his younger days aswell. We know wrestlers did the quicker handspringy stuff in Britain and France before Steve Wright came around. Also, I've never heard of Steve Wright training anyone besides his son, until his son Alex founded his school in the early 2000s, where Steve would help out sometimes. The guy most credited for training the younger lightweight types in Germany in the 90s is Bernard Benesch, a French wrestler who worked for Lasartesse as a referee in Hamburg. Franz Schuhmann, the most prominent lightweight in the scene, credited Lasartesse himself with training him in the 80s, and he has said most of his training was bumping and how to use the ropes, almost everything he knew he learned from other guys while wrestling, either by being in the ring with them or watching them. Here's Beneschs student Markus Buchholz in action against Bernie Wright: You can see this mirrors a World of Sport style match a bit more, but I don't see how we need Steve Wright in the equation, given his brother Bernie is right there and probably showed young Markus some things in the ring before the match.

Quite great as a pissed off asshole in shootstyle matches punching people in the liver. The 2002 Hoshikawa match is an excellent violent little stifffest and his U-Style work is great. Probably spent a bit too much time in HUSTLE and I haven't really seen anything amazing from him in RINGS, but there sure are a lot of workers worse than Wataru Sakata.

I would, if I knew where to find them!

If this list was about dedicated bumpers, Anton Tejero would be a #1 contender. This guy would fling himself wildly out of the ring dozens of times per match all the way until his last days in 1980s. Really a special case of a guy who had absolutely no problem bumping his ass off endlessly. Also super impressive on offense, when he gets to show of that as often his matches were built around showing off the offense of the babyfaces. His tag work with Inca Peruano in the 1960s is totally radical even in the context of the high level of French wrestling at the time. Definitely a big part of what made the French scene so great considering for how long he keeps showing up and doing his thing. His work doesn't quite lend itself to the conventional understanding of a 'great worker' as in someone who colours matches with his offense and control segments, but as a rudo he's definitely an all time great. I don't recall a single bad match that he was involved in.

You can actually find a bit of Catch related videos in the RTS archive website if you just search for Catch, but it's just short newsreel/documentary type stuff starring the usual suspects: https://www.rts.ch/archives/recherche/?q=catch Apparenlty the Luxembourg archive is going through some work this year to make it more accesible and won't be open to requests until next year, so there is a faint glimmer of hope that whatever they still have might become available. The Monaco archive actually also has an on-demand streaming page but they only have a few videos there, nothing wrestling related.

Amazing research. It would be sick to have these, some killer match ups. Masahiko Kimura? I did not expect him at all. Definitely holy grail material. I remember hearing about a match between Achim Chall and Rene Ben Chemoul taking place in Luxemburg, so I think that country had wrestling.