Jetlag

Since she started with the happy clown gimmick, I imagine the Bolshoi is a reference to the famous theatre in Russia, and she kept it when she become the more serious submission wrestler. I don't really see any connection to the borzoi dog.

See, I love Shinobu Kandori, I put her pretty high on my Top 100, and the scowling faces, her ability to look like a badass, her being good at strikes and submissions were a big reason for that. To me, she's like The Rock if The Rock was a shooter and like, a much more interesting wrestler. I disagree about her being bad at selling, transitions and storytelling too. I've watched a lot of JWP and LLPW, there's still more I have yet to watch but my hunch about her being more than a foil is pretty considering how she elevates matches even against mid-tier opposition. She is defininitely a great seller not in the sense of selling cummulative damage constantly but rather that things always become interesting when she starts selling vulnerability. And as far as her storytelling goes, I think she is great at looking like a badass and making me believe there's a fight going on and what more story does a wrestling match need than having two badasses fight. The Hotta match may very well be the embodiment of that as it's ot about crafting some kind of lengthy intricate epic, it's more about recreating the feel of a crazy fight oozing with aura (and blood).

Putting Orange Cassidy over the likes of Kiyoshi Tamura and Takayama is definitely a choice

Thoughts on guys that received votes but weren't nominated Pt 3:

Oh no, Misawa fell off to be only #10. Tell it to the likes of Virus or Jim Breaks.

The problem is, how do you quantify someones charisma? How is Austin more charismatic than, say, Choshu, or Hashimoto, or Kandori, or Dusty Rhodes, or Dusty Rhodes, or Hacksaw Jim Duggan, or Chigusa Nagayo, or Inoki..? Yes, Misawa is the more stoic type, but I think the stoicness can be quite charismatic too, as evidenced by him regularily bringing Japanese audiences to a boil while hardly showing any emotion. Also, this list was supposed to center around in-ring work, and while charisma does factor in it shouldn't be the major deciding point.

I'd like to see what the Top 100 would look like if we only included ballots that included Yoshiaki Fujiwara.

I like Bull just fine, but her beating Chigusa seems kinda bullshit, given she has nowhere the resume of great matches that Chigusa has. Well, they are just one spot apart, so I guess it doesn't matter in this shotgun blast of a list.

I did not say she should not be in the Top 100 because of that. She should not be in the Top 100 because she's a terrible, repetitive, boring wrestler, and even the joshi superfans often don't find her that great. The last 10 years didn't really do anything to elevate her case, unlike others such as Meiko Satomura. Eddie was #12 last time, so he probably won't climb a ton, but I would still find it a bit strange if he did.

Toyota climbing 40 places compared to 2016. I'm not a fan of this. Feels like boomer-ish opinions got stronger, with this and other oddities like RVD climbing. Her thread hasn't had any activity in 5 years with people being mostly lukewarm. The most Toyota discourse i've seen on X is that supercut of her botches getting some traction.

It's amazing how Suzukis popularity has surged. Around 2010, I remember many being tired of his shit and considered his overly long singles matches a nightmare. The common take was that he was talented but tended to ruin matches with his buffoonery. The audience that got interested in NJPW after the resurgence with Okada seemingly can't get enough of his whacky antics, though.

If we're gonna include MMA fights as a basis for rating, Kazushi Sakuraba should be mandatory in everyones top 10 just for the time he tried to pull Royce Gracies pants off.

Roderick Strong feels very much like a Dean Malenko type of his time.

Thoughts on guys that received votes but weren't nominated - Part 2

I think maybe we should make a separate list for special cases like that.

Yeah, like the Kong match, and, uh... some brawls with Kandori and Ozaki? That Dream Rush tag? That Combat is also apart of? Combat has some pretty decent non-deathmatch work of her own. I'm not gonna say Tsuchiya is a superworker but she was a pretty effective heel and I've found her a lot better than many have given her credit for.

The curious thing about Megumi Kudo is that she gets all the praise and attention for those deathmatches, while her opponents Combat Toyoda and Shark Tsuchiya usually get none at all.

Some thoughts on wrestlers that received votes but weren't nominated:

Looking at some of the names people tried to vote for, yes I think the nominations were a good barrier. Also, if a person can't even make the effort to get a name nominated, what business do they have making a Top 100? It's supposed to be high effort and take several months of preparation.

The list feels like a collection of random names mostly so far. I am amazed Ultimo Dragon has barely moved an inch and RVD has even improved, while someone like Virus who actually added to his case in the last 10 years drops. Hirooki Goto almost a 100 places over Masahiro Chono after not even ranking at all in 2016? That IWGP title win sure did wonders for him. The #1 vote for Ultimo even mentions AEW. Without Ultimo Dragon, we wouldn't have AEW! Preach it.

He can still be contacted by email which is ( I think) the same as it always was.

Masanobu Kurisu ending up this high is kind of amazing for a cult hero who never really had an extended run of main events or anything safe for a minute in FMW in 1990.

Hasegawa, one of the guys behind Mutoha, is happy with Yasushi Satos ranking (making it above the likes of Gypsy Joe, Rusher Kimura and Jimmy Snuka) and wrote a little blog post: https://ameblo.jp/itako1818/entry-12965979197.html

The ranking of japanese indy talents such as Taro Yamada and Yuiga are garnering some happy reactions even among Japanese speakers: