W2BTD

Doesn't Low Ki have a thread already? Or was Parv posting his reviews of this guy someplace else?

The G1 also saw Lance Hoyt have the best match of his life against AJ. This isn't meant as a knock to Archer/Hoyt, who has improved tremendously over the last few years and has gone from below average to a pretty damn solid pro wrestler, but AJ has shown that he can carry guys to special places that they've never been before.

SHINGO being listed Japanese style here, lol. I can see Alan has done some nominating in the last day or so, because there are a bunch of guys i'm excited about popping up. Along with Shuji Kondo, the preeminent power junior in the world. I love SHINGO, and the ferocity he brings to Dragon Gate matches. He is a lock to crack my list.

Hasn't even had three years yet as a non young boy. Obviously well on his way to a great career, with some amazing stuff under his belt already. Not often the first two "real" years of a career feature a legendary series of matches at the top of the best working promotion in the world. If he stays healthy, it's sort of scary how good he can be when he gets to his prime, which might still be a decade or so away.

Yeah, that's what I mean with the "wrestling robot" thing. He's too smooth, too precise, and in a way that is a negative. It's hard to understand unless you see it.

My favorite type of Ibushi match is as a feisty underdog junior facing a bully heavyweight. It brings out the best in him, and forces him to work a more complete style. Exhibit A is the Shinsuke Nakamura match from the 2013 G1, which was an incredible masterpiece that would have been my match of the year in a normal year that didn't feature so much great, great stuff. It almost was my pick anyway. He has mountains of great stuff, and he probably hasn't hit his prime yet. The El Generico trilogy from DDT in 2012 was amazing work from both men. This year in New Japan he has the Ricochet match from Dominion, and the Ishii match from Yokohama, plus the Okada return match, which was a follow up to the 2013 match they had at Sumo Hall in DDT. All great matches. The tag match from two weeks ago w/Kenny Omega vs Endo & Takeshita is a MOTY contender. The breakout of course was the 2007 NOAH NTV Cup junior tag league final, Ibushi & Marufuji vs KENTA & Ishimori. To me, this is one of the best tag matches I have ever seen, and this was from he period where Ibushi was still very raw and basically having the same singles match everywhere he went. Super excited to see where his career goes as a heavyweight, as I think he will ultimately be Okada's prime *and best) rival, as opposed to Naito. This guy has an incredible resume already, and I think the best is probably still in front of him. A lock to make my list, and a potential Top 20 guy when all is said & done.

Underrated & influential as a founding father of the modern indies. He was ten years older than a lot of the big indie guys of the indie boom, so he was the established veteran of the scene. One of those guys who has never had a bad match, and his ring work is as fluid & smooth as anybody ever. Daniels never blows a spot, and is always where he should be. Somebody once joked that Daniels should do a wrestling robot gimmick, because he's too smooth & fluid, to where he sometimes looks mechanical. In that way, he's almost too good. He has a sneaky list of great matches. -ROH, Daniels vs Low Ki vs Bryan Danielson 2/23/02: The main event of the first ROH show, which is one of the most influential matches of that decade. It is no accident any of the three men were chosen for this. Low Ki was the guy on the verge, Danielson was the future, and Daniels was the highly respected "king of the indies" who was i it for credibility and to hold it together. His role was the most important. -TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles 2/13/05: Against All Odds. You could pick any Daniels/Styles match, from one of the many in TNA, or on the indie scene. Daniels is AJ's best opponent & vice versa. This was one of the better ones, but they all rule. -TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 9/11/05: The epic 5-star X-Division three way from Unbreakable. A pantheon TNA match from when the company didn't suck, and one of the best matches of the decade period. -TNA, Daniels vs Samoa Joe 1/15/06: Final Resolution. Joe is another great Daniels opponent. -TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 2/12/06: Of course they rematched these three at Against All Odds 2006, because why not? Not as good as the epic, but still a MOTY contender level match. -TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe 11/15/09: Turning Point, one more time. The forgotten match between the three because it happened when TNA was well into the downfall and many people had stopped paying attention. -TNA, Daniels & Kazarian vs Kurt Angle & AJ Styles 6/10/12: Slammiversary -TNA, Daniels vs AJ Styles 7/8/12: Destination X Last Man Standing match. This is probably my favorite Daniels/Styles match, and they probably had a dozen great ones minimum. Daniels was not only a forerunner of the indie style, but he was also one of the greatest X-Division guys when that meant something, and he was also a great tag team wrestler. He was part of four great tag teams, and all were different styles. Triple X was a highspot X-Division team, the Daniels/Styles team was a workrate team, he teamed with Matt Sydal in ROH which was the reluctant teacher with the rival turned student (very, very underrated team & dynamic), and the Bad Influence/Addiction team with Kazarian which is a blend of comedy & great work when called upon. He'll be overlooked & underrated because so much of his career was TNA. But he'll be high on my list. Way too much great stuff to overlook. A pro's pro, a great pro wrestler.

Long gap hurts, as I think he'd have been a lock had he never went away. His post-MMA stuff has been totally unique in an "aww shit, its time for the Shibata match!" sort of way. You have to stop everything and watch this guy, he commands attention with his realism, and he is the easiest guy around to suspend disbelief for. Also, dave is all alone on an island with that 5-star rating. I could buy 5-stars for the G1 match (I had that one at 4 3/4, I think), but the second match was not even close to 5. I had it at 4, and could easily see others at 3 1/2. 3 3/4. Good match, not an all time match by any means. He really is a special talent, though. Might make my list anyway.

I don't hate Elgin like most people do here, and I think he's had some great matches, but I can't see any way he'd make my list. He hasn't even done enough to spring to mind when people have asked me to run off 15 or 20 top indie names since the indie boom.

Cena has had way too many of forgettable WrestleMania matches, and a few flat out bad ones, to be consider the greatest big match worker in U.S. history. Does he have a top ten Mania match? I don't think he does. Top twenty. Maybe the HBK match? I couldn't even remember all of them, I had to look it up. A coupe of forgettable three ways, and some bad/mediocre stuff like Wyatt, Rock II, JBL, Miz.

common ground *high five*

I already expect there will be people who won't vote for Satanico, and I can think of at least three big lucha fans who don't rate him as highly as I do, so it's not something that would upset me. My picks never do well in this sort of thing. If I were to make my list tomorrow and include Cena, where would I put him? How could I rank him against Satanico who I've seen wrestle in just about every match situation? I'm trying to look at the pros and cons of every worker I vote for and weight those things accordingly, but I don't think I can do that fairly with Cena and a token vote is a waste of space. Having said that, if he's such a lock then maybe I should watch more of him. I don't really see how I can catch up in time though unless I start exclusively watching John Cena matches. I only watch a dozen or so wrestling matches a week so it's a bit of a quandry. I haven't even got properly started on Rey yet. You can watch five random Cena matches and see something great, something terrible, and all points in between. He's really all over the place, but oddly with that said, he's also a guy where you can get a feel for him by watching very little footage. He sticks to the formula and stays in his lane. He's been doing the same routine for 10 years.

I always end up liking Bruno matches more than I think i'm going to before I watch them. He really is pretty great at selling and then making a fiery comeback, in part because he's so great in getting the people behind him.

Liked the Texas stuff, loved the WCW stuff, REALLY loved the stuff riiiiight before the big push as he was rising, and i'm very, very tepid on everything during the hot run (brawl, brawl some more, stunner, pin, yawn). Crowds ate up those boring brawls, so what do I know? I just don't like brawls all that much, I think. Made my list five years ago, would probably make it again. If nothing else, those brawls I didn't like were worked precisely how he should have worked them. He has to get credit for that.

This is a great post. You know that phrase you sometimes hear, "He's so overrated, he's underrated"? Cena is the opposite. He's so underrated by people who hate him, that he ends up getting too much praise from people who like him, and now he's overrated. I am by no means a Cena hater. He's a nice little WWE style wrestler with a nice resume of really good matches, and few really great ones. What I find odd about this thread & the general love for Cena around here, is that Cena is bad at things that many who praise him on this site value strongly (bad punches & strikes, awful looking low impact offense), and does things that routinely get ripped when it comes to other wrestlers (finisher spamming, endless finisher kickouts, video game closing stretches, etc). It seems Cena gets a pass for this stuff from some people. I like Cena. I usually like his matches, but he's also a guy who has a file folder full of absolute shit, the likes of which true all time greats do not. He's a guy who has great matches with high level workers and when he has great chemistry with somebody (CM Punk instantly comes to mind, as does Bryan), but he's also a guy who has trouble carrying bad opponents (the awful Bray Wyatt matches until the gimmick match with the shortcuts...I think LMS at Payback, which was great). He has mediocre matches against mediocre opponents (The Rock, Randy Orton, Big Show). Cena is basically the poster child for working to the level of your opponent. If this were any other site on the internet, i'd be defending him because he'd likely be unfairly ripped by just about everybody. Here he gets the respect he deserves as a worker, but I think we need to pump the brakes a bit and be fair about the flaws. He didn't make my Top 100 five years ago. He'd probably make it now, somewhere in the 80-100 range. The weird thing, is he'd probably be the only guy on my list with tons of matches I don't like very much. But the high end stuff can not be ignored, and with the amount of televised stuff he has (maybe more than anybody), he's bound to have some stinkers.

I'm still waiting for the Joe Lanza vs Dylan Hales Tanahashi debate. So much of it is being divisive on the work, so it'd be boring. It would be like debating Lawler with Will. "I don't like his matches." "I do!" "..." I mean, where do you do from there? I think we're on the same page with the rest. Not a hall of fame level draw, but enough of one for that facet to be a complimentary piece. Same for influence, although I think that part of it might be stronger than some think in terms of his style permeating the rest of the company in terms of how big matches are worked, being the top star of his era in his country, and as mentioned previously, being so integral in getting Okada over which is something that probably doesn't look as important now as it will a decade from now assuming Okada stays on his current path. Think about that whole deal. He loses his title to a complete non entity who got booed out of the Tokyo Dome less that a month earlier. The mach is great, and the other guy had the worst match on the show the month before. He then engages in a long feud with the dude, and loses decisively in the end. He then agrees to work tag matches & underneath for a year or whatever it was in order to allow the new guy's runa chance to breath. All the while, he still manages to keep himself over to where he's still a top guy himself. I'm not trying to paint Tanahshi as a hero for putting somebody over, but there are plenty of huge stars over the years who would have told the booker to piss off at such a scenario, or went through with a half assed version of it. There was a ton of risk involved there for not only Gedo & Jado (more so Gedo, since the Okada thing seems to be his baby), but for Tanahashi as well. If that New Beginning match flops, Tanahashi, New Japan, & the booking team are in deep shit. Obviously credit goes to Okada as well, but the risk and the pressure was on Tanahashi.

I can prove Hulk Hogan is a better draw than Abyss. Nobody can prove either is a better worker.

Firstly I don't see what drawing something derived from "hard data" more so than working ability. If anything, drawing is even more since you have promotions fudging numbers and it being a mystery which is right (how much did Wrestlemania 3 really draw?) while if you're judging video there's not going to be much argument that what you're watching is an accurate representation of the match. To respond to your example, Mookieghana has a list on his website of the guys who've been on the most AJPW cards that drew 5k crowds and the guy to come out on top is Fuchi with almost as many 5k+ cards to his name as Jumbo and Tenryu combined. If drawing is a metric rooted in "hard data" just because you can list off random I don't see why judging workers wouldn't be when you can list off play by play. As Loss pointed out, there absolutely is a ton of subjecivity in looking at the context and coming up with your own interpretation of the otherwise meaningless data. I never said there wasn't a subjective element to breaking down drawing power. Of course there is. What I said, was that it's the only HOF criteria of the three that isn't completely subjective. Your comparison of play by play of matches being the hard data equivalent of gates or attendance figures is completely wonky to the point it nearly loses me, but I guess i'll bite. What does running off a list of moves have to do with whether somebody is a good worker? The answer is nothing, zero. However, if I told you Wrestler X drew, say, a hundred 20,000+ houses, you at least have a base of FACT to draw somewhat subjective conclusions about Wrestler X's drawing power. Wrestler X's working ability is 100%, unquestionably, without zero doubt, completely subjective and based on zero fact.

The thing that struck me about the Okada series, is how different each match was. You had the shocking Okada win in the first match, you had the match where Tanahashi worked over the arm trying to take away the Rainmaker (this was Invasion Attack if memory serves, which I went ***** on), the knee injury bluff Alan mentioned, the G1 30-minute draw, etc. Tanahashi demonstrated this ability again with the recent series of matches vs Nakamura, which again were all very distinct in structure & layout, even more so than the Okada matches.

In that case, no shot!

Maybe the best "big match" wrestler of all time. In the conversation at minimum. His match structure and ability to peak his matches at just the right time are elite level. A big Tanahashi match never runs long or feels like it never ends. When was the last time he had a big title match or main event or major G1 bout that wasn't great? The guy just delivers time after time, like a machine. I can't even think of the last bad big match he's had. He's probably never had one.

It absolutely is subjective in many different ways. But it is also the only category of the three that is at least rooted in some semblance of fact. A million dollar gate is a million dollar gate. 12,000 fans is 12,000 fans. Not all 12,000 fan houses are created equally, but there is at least a starting point before we start arguing about it, where as working ability & influence are essentially 100% subjective and in the eye of the beholder. I don't really understand your reasoning. I mean, yeah, no one is going to deny that a million dollar gate is a million dollar gate, but neither would anyone deny a 450 splash is a 450 splash. Using that metric I don't see much of a different in the subjectivity inherent to judging workers compared to judging draws since both things are heavily dependent on how the voter decides to interpret the data in front of them with the individual moves/numbers You really don't understand how hard data is less subjective than something like ring work which is 100% subjective? Let's use an extreme example. If Wrestler A drew 40 sellouts in Random City USA, and Wrestler B drew 3 sellouts in the same city during the same time frame, I think we could reasonably conclude pretty easily that Wrestler A was the better draw. Wrestler A being a better worker than Wrestler B is completely & totally subjective.

It's a system that feeds into itself, certainly, but if Dave really doesn't want someone in, they're probably not getting in. If Dave really wants someone to get in, I imagine they get in eventually. Tanahashi is a pretty good example if you want to break this down. Is there someone that Dave obviously wanted to get in that didn't get in? Or vice versa? I always just shake my head & laugh at this narrative that Tanahashi wasn't a really strong candidate, and how he wouldn't have made it unless dave worked his devil magic with people to get him elected. To me, and to many, many others, Tanahashi was a stone cold lock no brainer. At minimum he was a strong candidate. As a performer, we're talking about a three time Wrestler of the Year, two time Most Outstanding Wrestler, two time Match of the Year, two time Feud of the Year, two five star matches (two more since being elected), one Most Charasmatic. And it's not just Observer Awards. How about the Tokyo Sports Awards? Two time MVP, two time FIghting Spirit, one time Performance Award, one time Best Bout. Regardless of what most of this particular site thinks about him, he was generally regarded as the best wrestler on the planet for about three years, and not accepting that while championing niche dudes like Sami Callihan who never worked big match in their lives or had the pressure of performing in a big match setting while carrying a promotion, is just being silly. And he was very, very good for many years before that. He's a HOF level worker without any question. None. As a draw, there is no question he was the lead dog in the New Japan resurgence, which is very real and very significant no matter how much cold water people try to throw on it. Probably not a HOF level draw, but very close. Tanahashi is still the go to guy when New Japan needs him to be (see: Tokyo Dome this year when Naito flopped, and the show coming up this Sunday, where they are putting Tanahashi in the match vs Styles at Sumo, a guy they clearly do not trust to draw after not drawing in Yokohama. That is no accident.) And he put over Okada multiple times on the losing end of a long feud, establishing Okada as a much needed new drawing star. Nobody else on the roster could have had that type of influence to get over a new star. dave has also mentioned that Tanahashi did very well among Japanese voters. As in, actual people from Japan, not these supposed droves of American voters who dave managed to brainwash. Tanahashi is in the HOF because he's a transcendent generational talent & one of the best workers to come around in decades. Not because of dave witchcraft.

He would never make my list, but to be fair you haven't seen what has been by far the best stretch of his career.

It absolutely is subjective in many different ways. But it is also the only category of the three that is at least rooted in some semblance of fact. A million dollar gate is a million dollar gate. 12,000 fans is 12,000 fans. Not all 12,000 fan houses are created equally, but there is at least a starting point before we start arguing about it, where as working ability & influence are essentially 100% subjective and in the eye of the beholder.